Colonel Franklyn’s Rover 95 could be spotted, like a distant posse, by the column of smoke it left in its wake. Like the man on the run, I saw him coming. I was planting beans.
Gardening is about common sense and spacing. It’s common sense to cultivate the ground properly before sowing seed, but you have to look up the spacings in a book. Broad beans ‘should be inserted 2 ins deep and 8 ins apart, this being the distance at which the plants will mature.’
‘I used to sow them in the autumn, but I never proved the advantage,’ Marjorie said.
I spent a couple of hours hoeing and raking a patch of ground before lining up and stretching a string, and then carefully sowing the seed. A few spots of rain began to blow out of the forest. It had been a dry warm winter so far. I saw the first clots of smoke from the Colonel’s Rover.
When he had parked it, he climbed out and banged the bonnet. ‘Wonderful bus!’ he yelled. ‘And all you need to keep it tip-top is a screwdriver and an adjustable spanner!’ He walked towards me, and in a lowered voice said, ‘That’s more than you could say about hers.’ He pointed to the Alfa and shook his head.
I was going to say something about his oil seals being shot when Marjorie stuck her head out of the window and croaked, ‘What about hers?’
‘Marjorie!’ The Colonel swung around and smiled.
‘I didn’t hear,’ she said.
He waved over his shoulder to me, said, ‘Men’s talk,’ and went to play cards. Half an hour later, he was forty-two Vestas down and I was washing my hands. It was raining.
Marjorie was holding a full house, he had a pair of twos, a pair of sevens and a queen. Without looking up from her cards, she said, ‘You could check the loft for leaks,’ to me. ‘I’ve been waiting for the chance.’
I fetched a ladder and hauled it upstairs. The Colonel offered to help, but she told him to stay where he was.
I couldn’t find any drips in the loft. It was cold up there, and the rain was loud on the slates. There were a few tea chests stacked by the hatch, but otherwise nothing.
I nagged Marjorie to phone Alice with the news, so she promised, but only if I went out. She didn’t like the idea of having a conversation with an old friend and me lurking somewhere in the lodge. She didn’t say this. She did say, ‘Take the car if you like, but have a bath and wash your hair first.’
I drove to the pub - I felt polished. My hair was neat. I bought a pint, sat in a corner and listened to two farmers. Besides them, the barman and me, the place was empty. Someone in the neighbourhood had been fined for polluting a brook with silage effluent. The taller of the two men said, ‘We made the bloody landscape they like so much, but don’t mind telling us what to do with it.’
The barman was very quiet.
The other farmer said, ‘You’re right there.’
‘It’s like that copse.’
‘What copse?’
The one I scrubbed out. You know.’
The barman nodded.
‘What do people want? I had them queuing to complain. And then they want cheap food.’
‘You’re right there.’
‘The abuse! You wouldn’t believe it! One of them said she was going to chain herself to one of the trees. And it’s the same people who want a pile of logs for their woodburners.’
‘You’re right there.’
‘People think they know everything.’
‘They know too much,’ the barman said.
‘You’re right there.’
‘It’s television. Too much bloody television. And newspapers. I’ve never got the time to read a paper…’
‘Think of the trees in a newspaper,’ said the barman.
‘Yes. I wonder what those people think about that.’
‘What people?’
‘You know.’ I was suddenly the subject of conversation. There was a little silence: the first farmer had looked at the barman; he glanced up at me and then back at his friend. He nodded. I heard a car pull into the car-park.
Nicky recognised me as soon as he came in. He was on his own. He said, ‘You’re the bloke in the Alfa.’ His face was red and his hair lay flat on his head.
‘Yeah,’ I said. The farmers’ conversation and the beer had given me a mellow glow that I connected to my mouth when I said, ‘I’m sorry.’ I could see my mistakes. ‘I’d just had some bad news.’
‘Bad luck,’ said Nicky, meanly.
One of the farmers turned round to listen. The barman leant over the bar.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was.’
The atmosphere in the pub was thick and threatening; I felt hot though it was cold in there. ‘I said I was sorry. I—’
‘I heard you. What sort of bad luck?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Yes, I do,’ Nicky said, and leant towards me.
The other farmer listened. Everyone listened. I said, ‘I’d just heard a friend of mine has cancer. She’s dying…’
‘Marj?’ said the barman.
‘Yes,’ I said.
Nicky leant back. ‘You’re staying with her?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
The threats vanished and I was left with four intrigued men. I had them all ears.
‘She’s dying?’ said the barman.
‘Who’s dying?’ said one of the farmers.
‘Mad Marj.’
‘Marjorie,’ I said.
Nicky went to the bar for a drink. He came back, sat opposite me and drank in silence for a while, before shaking his big head and saying, ‘I didn’t know.’
‘How could you?’
‘It’s a small place. Everybody knows—’
‘Not as small as all that,’ I said.
‘That’s what you think,’ Nicky said.
Nicky was an overweight boy. He ate too much meat and dairy produce. I’d been listening to him talk about how he’d always felt something odd about the old gamekeeper’s lodge when another car pulled up outside. He recognised it as Sadie’s.
He stood up when she came in. She said, ‘Hello, Nicky,’ off-handedly, and then, ‘Greg! You made it!’ to me, excitedly.
I said, ‘Yes. She kicked me out. She’s phoning my Aunt Alice.’
‘That’s the one in Brighton?’
‘Yes.’
‘How’s she been?’
‘Excuse me—’ Nicky said.
‘What?’ said Sadie.
‘You know this bloke?’
‘Greg? Yeah.’
The farmers and the barman enjoyed this twist.
‘You never told me,’ Nicky said to Sadie.
‘Why should I?’ she said, and went for a drink. ‘Anyone want another?’ she said.
I held my glass up. Nicky hadn’t finished his.
‘You didn’t say anything either,’ Nicky said.
I shrugged. ‘What’s it to you, anyway? Is she your wife or—’
‘She will be.’ He raised his voice. ‘You can bet on that.’
‘Short odds?’ I said.
‘I’m the favourite. No problem.’
I didn’t want to argue. The day’s fresh air had made me tired. When Sadie came back from the bar you could have cut the air with a knife.
I wasn’t interested in proving anything, so I just sat back and listened to Nicky as he moaned about his work and told Sadie he was going to buy a sunroof for the Capri. ‘You’ll love it,’ he said.
‘Good,’ she said.
Back at the lodge, Marjorie was reading a book called Yak! (a Tibetan adventure). She’d had a bath, and was in her dressing gown, sitting by the Rayburn.
‘Nice drink?’ she said.
‘The beer was good. How’s Alice?’
‘Fine.’ She went back to her book. ‘She sends her love.’
‘Did you tell her?’
‘What’s there to tell?’
‘I thought that’s why you were phoning her. You said—’
Marjorie held her good hand up and said, ‘Don’t worry. She knows.’ She pointed to the whisky. ‘Have a drink.’
Mum drank as she died. She’d always avoided spirits, but rum became one of the few things she could swallow.
Once she gave some to Bruce, ‘because he watches me when I pour a glass. It’s like he’s asking for a tot.’ Then she asked me to take the dog for a stroll.
I took the dog for a drag. When we reached the garden gate and I put the lead on, he lay down, so I had to carry him to the park. I put him on the grass and dragged him around until a woman came over and threatened me with violence unless I stopped being cruel. I didn’t say anything about Mum having cancer, but I did say that she’d got the dog drunk, and that if she hassled Mum about it, I wouldn’t be responsible for Mum’s actions. Then I picked Bruce up and carried him home.