O
NE AFTERNOON IN MID
M
ARCH
,
WHEN THE
green-white snowdrops had blown ragged under the tangled hawthorn hedges, the pale constellations of primroses had ceased to be a novelty, and the more robust, sun-reflecting daffodils were in their heyday, an old half-timbered Traveller van drove into the village of Great Calne. There was, in fact, no other Calne, great or small, in the county of Devon; or if there ever had been, it had long since vanished into the indifferent encroachments of the moor. Great Calne stands at the edge of Dartmoor, one of the ancient tracts of land which still, in the twenty-first century, lends out its grazing free to the common people of England – though it must be said that the ‘common people’ are something of a scarcity these days.

Sam Noble, out walking his bitch, Daphne, named for his mother’s still-born twin sister, and having nothing better to do, watched with naked curiosity as the driver of the car negotiated the corner by the Stag and Badger – where, thanks to the pub’s garden wall, the passage was tight and drivers often came a cropper. He was mildly disappointed when nothing untoward occurred. Sam’s was not an especially malicious nature, but Great Calne did not provide the thrills he had once been used to. Before his retirement, Sam had been a film director, and had had hopes of winning the
Palme d’Or at Cannes with a film about women jockeys which had subsequently made waves. However, for the past five years he had lived in Great Calne, where the principal excitement was provided by Morning Claxon’s plans to transform the tearooms into an alternative health centre.

There was another witness to the arrival of the car, a less obvious one. Johnny Spence had, as usual, skipped school and it wasn’t safe for him to show his face till after four o’clock. During the stranger’s arrival, Johnny was hiding, as was his habit, in the upper branches of a yew tree which spread its antique shade over the churchyard wall and on to the garden of the Reverend Meredith Fisher, the latest occupant of the rectory. Johnny, whose researches were thorough, knew that the lady vicar was off doing her counselling training down in Plymouth, and would not be back before six. So he was free to watch the old Morris – which from his calculations must be worth a bit – being brought skilfully round the corner and into the front garden of Spring Cottage, which since the death of Emily Pope had been let out by her daughter, Nicky, to holidaymakers.

Emily Pope had been dead long enough for Nicky to discover that Spring Cottage did not let easily. So far, it had been rented by a couple of families who complained about the out-of-date facilities, and the damp. One woman, from Clapham, claimed to have found toadstools. It had been something of a relief to receive a request via Nicky’s new website – www.moorvacs.co.uk – from the gentleman who had described himself as ‘a writer in need of a peaceful
situation within easy walking distance of shops and pub’. Spring Cottage filled the bill nicely. Writers were notoriously careless people – very likely this one would smoke in the bedroom, but then again he was a man, and mightn’t notice that the back plates on the kitchen hob were dodgy, or that the avocado suite in the bathroom (once the pride of Emily Pope) was now badly out of fashion. Nicky, in the first flush of holiday letting, had splashed out on a Norwegian wood-burning stove, sold to her by a travelling salesman who had hinted at further attractions. These had never materialised, and the stove, prominent in the website details, filled the downstairs rooms with smoke when the wind was in the wrong direction. The Clapham woman had complained about this too; but Nadia Fawns, who ran an antiques store over in Backen, had sold Nicky a couple of convector heaters which she hoped would put paid to the heating problems.

Sam Noble, with several backward glances, had made his way with Daphne through the main street of Great Calne and up towards the moor by the time the driver came to unload the Traveller van. Only Johnny Spence was there to observe him more closely. Johnny’s powers of reconnaissance were keen; had he been asked he would have described the stranger as ‘a fattish old guy who looked as if he hadn’t had a proper shave’. But Johnny’s position on the yew bough would not have afforded a view of the newcomer’s most striking feature – a pair of eyes whose true colour was hard to discern, since they had a quality of shifting from the
brooding shades of a storm-crushed sea to the limpid freshness of a dawn sky.

It appeared that the visitor was at any rate physically strong since he emptied the Traveller in double-quick time. The contents were comparatively few: a knocked-about suitcase, a baggy holdall, a laptop computer, a rather loud-looking portable stereo and some cardboard boxes, one of which bore the name of a well-known wine store. A drinking man, at least, Colin Drover, who managed the local inn, might have remarked. The visitor had brought his own alcohol – which might have been a disappointment to a publican. But with drink, as with so much else, inclination in one quarter usually leads to exploration of others.

And the publican’s optimism would have been confirmed. When the stranger had unpacked the van, and distributed some of his belongings in the cramped interior of Spring Cottage, he strolled up the main street to the inn, paused a moment to inspect the menu displayed outside, which promised
Tasty Snacks & Bar Lunches
, and then pushed open the solid double doors to enter the fire-lit warmth within.

T
HE NAME OF
G
REAT
C
ALNE’S INN WAS THE
Stag and Badger – known to locals as the Stag and Badge – and its manager, Colin Drover, was out the back hurrying up Paula over the prawns when Mr Golightly made his way to the bar. Customers liked their prawns better ‘shell-off’ but it was God’s own task to get Paula in the kitchen to shell them. There was always some excuse – if not her periods it was her boyfriend’s back, though what the devil that had to do with anything Colin Drover couldn’t imagine, as if ‘boy’ was what you could call Jackson anyway! Jackson had been at school with Colin Drover and both had seen the best side of fifty. As usual with any encounter with Paula, her employer had got the worst of it and this made him of a mind to try that bit harder with the person he now saw seated at one of the bars.

‘Good evening, what can I get you?’ The publican infused his greeting with a special concern, unconsciously hoping that this might act as antidote to any inhospitable shelliness in the Stag and Badger’s prawns.

The new customer smiled back. He had an agreeable expression and, thickset and sensibly dressed in an old tweed jacket and woollen shirt, had the appearance of a country person himself. But when he spoke Colin couldn’t place the
accent. Welsh, maybe, he thought, or a trace of Derbyshire? Colin had family, on his mother’s side, in the Peak District.

‘Thank you. A pint of your special bitter, if you’d be so kind.’

Colin Drover had never lost his pleasure in drawing a pint of really good ale. He was proud of his beer, which he still reckoned king among the alcoholic beverages. People nowadays went overboard for wine, but in Colin Drover’s view you couldn’t beat a decent pint of real ale. A solid nononsense beer drinker was always welcome in the Stag and Badger.

He drew the beer to a foaming head and set it down delicately on the bar where the foam rocked and then slopped gently over the glass’s side. The man on the other side of the bar treated the drink with equal care, lifting the glass to his lips to sip the dark gold liquor beneath the creamy rim and Colin Drover watched, anxious to see how his beer went down.

The stranger sipped and sighed, and the landlord of the Stag and Badger sighed too with vicarious enjoyment. ‘Nothing like a good pint, I always say,’ he remarked with the subdued enjoyment that a satisfactory sale always brought.

‘Nothing like it, except perhaps another one!’ the stranger promisingly agreed. He seemed a self-sufficient sort, not chatty, but not one of your gloomy types either. He sat quietly absorbing the atmosphere, his eyes half lidded over as if to keep a veil over his thoughts. Not the kind to give much away but could make a valuable customer, was Colin
Drover’s conclusion as he forced himself back to the kitchen to take up the cudgels again with Paula.

The newcomer looked about him, apparently taking in his surroundings. The inn was prosperous-looking: mahogany fittings, brass lights, and wallpaper with a leafy National Trust motif in the restaurant area, where tables were set out for dinner guests. It was in this part of the pub, where the stranger was sitting, that a few stools were available for the more elevated drinkers. But it seemed that the stranger did not include himself in this category for after another sip of beer he slid down and made his way round to the public bar, just as a thin young man with an earring and a closefitting woolly cap came through the door.

The young man took up a place as if this was a regular perch. Luke Weatherall was a poet, who comforted or rewarded himself, depending on the day’s output, most evenings about this time. This particular evening was one for comfort – his long, narrative poem, based on a Creation myth of the North American Indians, had stuck fast. Luke had pinned the sheet of paper he had covered in useless stanzas to the stud wall of his room – in Lavinia Galsworthy’s barn conversion just outside the village, where Luke rented a studio flat – and thrown darts at it before making his way down the hill to the Stag and Badger. It was at times like this that Luke wondered if he mightn’t have done better to choose the other Indians for his poem – the Eastern ones – about whom there was more known and less room for artistic confusion.

‘Evening, there,’ he said to the man who now came and sat beside him. Luke had a friendly nature, but he also hoped to have his mind taken off the worries of creation.

The other man acknowledged the greeting with a slight nod of his head and for half a second there flashed across Luke’s mind an image of a mountain lake in which there was perfectly reflected a pellucid gentian sky. Perhaps the stanzas hadn’t been so bad, after all.

‘Golightly’s the name. What can I get you?’

‘Hey, thanks, man. A bitter’d be great.’

The stranger waved a hand at the barmaid, a slight girl with long red hair demurely caught back in a velvet band.

Mr Golightly, who liked all prettiness, gave an affable glance in her direction and ordered. ‘How’s the weather been round here?’ he enquired, showing he was a thoroughbred Englishman and knew what bar talk entailed.

The girl set down the glasses so that not a drop slopped over the rim on to the polished surface of the bar.

‘Middling only, there’s been terrible rain but there’s been some God days, too.’

‘She means the odd sunny one,’ explained Luke, alive to the dangers of social exclusion.

But his concern for his new acquaintance was unnecessary, as once again Mr Golightly gave his accommodating smile. ‘Ah, yes,’ he agreed, ‘I know those!’

He seemed disinclined to chat further, so Luke turned to the back of the newspaper, which was kept for the customers, and started in on the crossword. The North American myth
of Creation had cruelly reduced his circumstances; the only chance of a paper was when he walked down in the evening to the Stag.

The door opened again, letting in the cleansing draught of a March wind and an apricot spaniel dog who trotted ahead of her owner. Sam Noble, the former film-maker, was also a regular at the pub. There was no need for him to speak his order and a gin and tonic was wordlessly laid before him by the red-headed barmaid.

Sam hesitated a moment as if unsure whether in betraying curiosity he mightn’t betray rather more, and then ostentatiously sat himself on the other side of Mr Golightly. ‘Evening,’ he said. ‘Visiting these parts?’

The question was unnecessary since he had witnessed Mr Golightly’s arrival at Spring Cottage earlier that afternoon. Perhaps Mr Golightly guessed this. In any case, he merely agreed that he was staying in the area.

‘In the village, is it?’ Sam asked. It was part of his social ritual to pretend to know at once more and less than he really did about his neighbours. ‘Holiday?’ he asked again.

But Sam’s project of enquiry was doomed, as all the other did was renew his opaque smile. He appeared more taken by the spaniel, who had sidled up and was rubbing her parts seductively against his boot.

‘Nice dog you’ve got there. Bitch, is she?’

‘Daphne, yes,’ agreed Sam, slightly affronted that his pet was making more impact than himself. But then the newcomer didn’t know about the Palme d’Or. Time enough to
bring that up later. ‘Named for my aunt,’ he added. ‘My mother was a twin and lost her sister when she was born. Nowadays it would count as trauma.’ He was quietly proud of the tragedy which hung over the family psyche.

But even the account of this disaster did not disturb the newcomer’s humour. ‘Ah,’ he agreed, ‘it would, I suppose.’ He spoke as if he might have added that in his day they saw such matters differently – life and death, his demeanour seemed to suggest, were not so important that they should interrupt a quiet pint.

Sam Noble, sensing that conversation was drained dry, turned to the man who had approached the bar to ask for ‘twenty Lambert and Butlers’.

Jackson, the so-called ‘boyfriend’ of Paula out-the-back, was Great Calne’s handyman, though ‘handy’ was hardly the word to describe his skills. Residents of the village would frequently ask, on the matter of Jackson, why on earth they bothered – something of an existential question, as Jackson, like most who work in the building trade, dealt in promises of doubtful validity. No one in their right mind seriously believes a builder when he tells you he will be with you next Wednesday; certainly not when accompanied by the rider, ‘on the dot of nine’. As all the world knows, to a builder ‘next Wednesday’ means in a couple of months if you’re lucky, and no man or woman born and bred in Britain would seriously count on it being otherwise.

Jackson, however, took this licence to extremes, interpreting ‘next Wednesday’ to mean as much as a couple of
years off. Nor, when he finally arrived to do a job, could the results be said to be satisfactory. He had set up old Emily Pope’s electric shower, down in Spring Cottage – in the days before it was let to holidaymakers – so that the first time she used it a jolt of electric current went through her naked body which people said had very likely contributed to her being carried off altogether the following year.

Jackson’s chief interest in life was baiting badgers, and girls. In the latter case, if not one of nature’s gentlemen he was at least one of her democrats. He had no fine feelings about what a girl looked like provided she was willing to drop her knickers with no fuss. Of course, it was a bonus if they were lookers too, but not essential to his general aim.

What happened to a girl once she had come across was another story. Paula had made history by keeping Jackson’s attention long after she had become unpredictable in the knickers department. Jackson himself did not wholly understand the reasons for his unusual constancy. Like many apparently aggressive men, he was frightened of violence and wasn’t at all sure what a dumped Paula mightn’t do. More than once, she had darkly referred to the collection of kitchen knives which were kept at the Stag and Badger for slicing cold meats. Jackson had an uneasy feeling that Paula’s mind, if sufficiently stirred, might turn to ideas of slicing other kinds of flesh. It was well to keep in with her; the badgers were a different matter.

In the days before Paula, Jackson had a vague scheme to get his leg over Mary Simms, the red-headed barmaid. But
Mary herself had higher ideals. She had recently enrolled in an Open University course on Romantic poetry and had no plans to waste her time with a layabout like Jackson. ‘How are you getting on?’ she asked Luke who was frowning at the crossword. Luke was a poet and the course on Romantic poetry was not entirely coincidental.

‘“This Old Testament prophet gets cut off short in drought” – five letters?’ he queried aloud, oblivious to who was speaking. He was on unfamiliar territory with the Bible – American Indians were his thing.

Sam Noble decided to have a go at Jackson. ‘Any chance of you getting round to fixing the pond?’ he asked. This was a routine question; the pond had been waiting to be ‘fixed’ since the day Sam had moved into the village, leaving behind his showbiz career.

Jackson, who reserved a special contempt for townies, contracted his little red eyes as if in fierce thought. ‘Be with you Thursday –’ he announced oracularly – ‘Friday latest. Right?’

‘Very good,’ said Sam primly. ‘I shall expect you not later than Friday noon.’ After five years he was still prone to the error of imagining that his former position and class made any headway with Jackson.

A family party, parents and two small children, now arrived and flustered Colin Drover by ordering the prawns ‘shell-off’. The publican made a sortie out the back – to Paula’s domain – and returned red-faced to suggest that ‘shell-on’ could be had for a ‘pound off’. ‘Mu-um,’ the small
boy whined, catching on that here was a chance for a scene, ‘I don’t like them with shells.’

‘Of course not, darling,’ said his mother. ‘I’m sure the nice man will get us some without.’

‘Nonsense,’ said his father. ‘Shells are fun! Daisy thinks they’re fun, don’t you, Daisy?’ He beamed at his daughter, calculating that if they all had the prawns with shells on the meal would be four quid less. He wanted to get back home for the match on TV; the evening out had not been his idea.

‘Don’t like shells,’ his son stubbornly maintained. Daisy was only four – what did she know? She didn’t eat grown-up food anyway.

Mr Golightly, who had been looking at nothing in particular, now turned his glance in the direction of the restaurant, and the boy piped down and shuffled his shoes against the table leg. They were new shoes, bought during the half-term which was almost over. He didn’t want to go back to school where he was bullied in the playground and had had his head pushed down one of the girls’ toilets.

‘Shells are fun!’ his father repeated. Like most repetition this was not convincing. But at that minute a grinning Colin Drover emerged from out the back with four plates of naked, steaming, rosy prawns. Inexplicably, Paula had buckled to and shelled them.

‘There now,’ the father spoke with wooden cheer, the promise of four quid saved disappearing with the arrival of the prawns. But by Monday the kids would be back at school
and the half-term horror would be over. ‘Wasn’t that kind of the man, Daisy?’ he prompted, more enthusiastically.

Mr Golightly had turned his eyes from the table but the boy continued to watch him. He looked a bit like that picture of the man feeding birds, in olden times, his teacher had up in the classroom.

Mr Golightly finished his pint, lowered himself from the tall stool and stood looking round as if to take his leave of the company at the Stag and Badger.

‘Old Testament prophet six down,’ he said, passing behind Luke Weatherall to the door. ‘Hosea. Not a bad sort,’ he added.

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