Hartsend (21 page)

It hurt so bad she opened her mouth and screamed as loud as she could.

The door of the van opened. The twins instantly jumped off her and onto the beds. She rolled over on to her front, the thumb with the ring again wedged against her top teeth.

‘‘She's got a gold ring! She let a dirty man touch her bum an' she's got a gold ring!''

Dad yelled at them to be quiet, grabbed her by the arms, and got her to stand.

‘‘Shut up! An' take that bloody thumb out yer mouth!''

The thumb was red, and white where she'd bitten down on it, but there was no ring. It had slipped silently past her tonsils and down into the dark.

At three am Lesley gave up trying to get back to sleep. She put on her dressing gown and went downstairs to make some hot milk. Last night's scrambled egg pan sat in the sink. It was an easy, filling supper, but there was something so disgusting about a pan with water and the remains of cooked egg in it that she had left it unwashed. Now that she could. Now that there was no-one standing behind her.

The Robertsons' outside light flashed on, then off seconds later. A cat on patrol along the bottom of the hedge? Mrs Robertson was getting sillier and stranger by the day.
I hope Lesley's not taking in lodgers
.

The glass disc began rattling in the milk pot. She lifted it off the heat before it could boil over. Had she been unkind, not inviting the woman in? She poured the milk into a mug, stirring in a squeeze of honey.
You're doing so well, Lesley. You're being very brave.
Being back at work had nothing to do with being brave. With her financial situation more secure than she'd expected, she could stop working, but who would there be to talk to? Her days would be as lonely as the nights.

Duncan looked so much younger without his moustache. When they finally found a website with what they needed, he'd let out a sound that was almost a boyish whoop of glee, before pressing a finger to his lips. It cheered her to see him enjoying their conspiracy. That's what he called it.

She'd meant to phone earlier to let him know that she'd left the minister's useful information on Mrs Flaherty's answer phone and that the replacement sugar bowl had arrived. She'd checked to be sure it hadn't been damaged in transit. The staples were embedded in the cardboard, and she had to use a nail file to lever them out. Inside, the bowl and lid were separately wrapped in tight layers of bubbled plastic.

She had to find scissors to cut the plastic wrapping, so much Sellotape had been used. The last piece of wrapping fell away and to her great relief all was well. It looked like new, although it had been advertised as ‘‘Used.'' Did anyone ever use their best china? The cabinet in the dining room contained a set of the same vintage, rarely used even when Mother was alive,
and
what was left of her grandmother's dinner set.

Mug in hand she went back upstairs. The string of beads she'd been wearing all day lay coiled on the bedside table beside her watch and reading glasses. She'd never been much of a one for beads, or jewellery of any kind. Wearing them to work had been rather out of character, but finding them in a drawer, she had liked the feel of them, and the colour.

‘‘Lesley, are those amber?'' someone in staff room said. ‘‘Can I have a look?''

She'd begun clearing out, Lesley explained, handing them over for inspection.

‘‘They're gorgeous. You know, if they're amber they might be really old. I saw one like this on the Antiques Road show. It made more than £400.''

‘‘Lesley, anything else you're thinking of throwing out, could you bring it here first?'' one of the other teachers said.

She wondered if she might ask Duncan to look on the web again. On the other hand, she'd be nervous about wearing them if they were really valuable.

Being the centre of attention was embarrassing but gratifying at the same time. She didn't usually wear beads, although she liked seeing jewellery on other women, earrings in colours that matched a blouse, or enamelled lapel brooches to brighten dark suits. Where then had it come from, this misbegotten, perverse idea that while it was fine for other women, wearing jewellery was in her case a sign of vanity, something to gain attention from men, or provoke envy from women? Even if it had been true once, it wasn't now. She was too old to make other women jealous, even if she wanted to, and the contents of an entire street of jewellers' shops would hardly be enough now to attract a man.

The sugar bowl had been a wedding present, according to Duncan. Not something she would ever have. This mug in her hands was stoneware, with the school crest on one side, and the dates of the centenary on the other. Not that she needed presents. If she needed anything, she could afford to buy it herself now. She might buy a new washing machine, the kind with the tumble dryer function. It would be lovely to get rid of the pulley. The women in the staff room would know which make was best.

Duncan was so funny. He thought he lived a very simple life, but really he was fussy about so many things. Proper coffee. Writing with a fountain pen, and blue-black ink. He refused to wear synthetic materials. Braces on his trousers rather than a belt. Proper shoes no matter what he was doing.

What had made him shave off the moustache? She'd always assumed he wore it as an act of homage to the Captain, whose portrait hung half way up the stairs. She remembered him as a silent figure in the background of parties, or rather of the beginnings of parties, as he never seemed to stay long.

If she ever had to choose wedding china, she'd have something without a pattern. No tangled roses or butterflies or hand-painted gold rims. It would be beautiful, of course, but plain. The way the amber necklace was plain. The way the full moon was plain. It would be used every single day of its life.

As she switched off the bedside light, it occurred to her that she was involved in three conspiracies, not one. She'd shared Mary Flaherty's troubles with the minister, helped Duncan find a sugar bowl and she was storing Mr Robertson's fish tanks. All conspiracies with men, and two of them married!

Don't let her spoil the rest of your life
.

Easy for Dr Gordon to say. Young and handsome and kind to stupid middle-aged women who thought momentarily and quite mistakenly that he resembled their lost lovers. How easy life was for men like him. She felt for the necklace on the bedside table, and raised the cool, uneven lumps of amber to her lips.

‘‘I would have been a good wife,'' she told them. ‘‘I would have let my husband have all the fish tanks he wanted.''

When Dr McKinnon left, Mrs Crawfurd returned to the kitchen. The pleasant, authoritative female voices on the radio which had previously been discussing pension plans were now debating the virtues of breastfeeding. She switched them off. She had been weighing flour for a batch of fairy cakes – most of them to go into the freezer, but a dozen to be iced for Duncan to share with the library staff. He was well regarded at work, she believed.

The daisy-patterned paper cases were as she had left them, crisp and frilly in their trays, and the cooling racks were waiting on the worktop. The maxims of Miss Scott the Cookery Mistress, immaculate in white, spoke to her still across the decades.
Good cooks think ahead and tidy as they go.

Instead of putting her apron back on, she switched off the cooker, and made her way, one hand lightly touching the dado rail, through the corridor and up the back stairs to the small second floor room which had begun life as a maid's bedroom and was now her sanctum. Duncan had helped her with the colours. They had found a replica Owen Jones wallpaper in exactly the correct shade of muted pinkish red to suit the ancient Crawford tartan curtains and carpet. North-west facing, the quality of light in the room was often poor, which was a soothing thing when the world became too much. It pleased her that there was no clock, no calendar, no rack of magazines, nothing by which to guess the date or time. A gold-framed blackwork representation of York Minster hung above the mantelpiece, silk on linen worked by herself when a girl. On the opposite wall was a back and white photograph of her late parents in front of the bungalow in Rangoon. Her father had one hand on the bonnet of the newly arrived Austin 12, the other arm round her mother, tall, slim and looking like a film star in her sunglasses.

She sat in the Indian rosewood armchair. Turning it slightly so that she could look out at the hills, she settled a mohair shawl over her knees. After a little while she drew it higher, until it was over her shoulders. She fussed at it, trying to tuck the sides in tight around her.

Once upon a time there had been nothing but fields beyond the mixed hedge of holly, hawthorn and beech, planted in her grandfather's time. As a child she had crouched to look through the gaps at the Clydesdales, with their pale brown foals sleeping in the sun. She had only one other memory of that era; being given a white enamelled pail with a royal blue rim (or was it a colander?) to fill with gooseberries – pale green, perfectly veined, enormous to a child's eyes. Hard and sour when raw, they were wonderful when grandma's cook made them into pies with the thinnest, crispiest pastry in the world.

‘‘I'm not asleep, dear.''

Dr McKinnon ceased tiptoeing and approached the bed in a normal fashion.

‘‘Your feet are freezing,'' his wife added moments later.

He removed them from her pleasantly warm calves, switched on the bedside light and opened ‘‘Fortress Malta: An island under siege.'' He had left the submariners trying to maintain good spirits the previous evening in Chapter Seven, and was not hopeful that things would improve. Chapter Eight was entitled, ‘‘Valour at Sea'', which was worryingly unspecific.

‘‘I'm sorry, I tried to be quiet,'' he apologised, as his wife turned onto her back.

‘‘You were quiet, dear. I can't sleep. I've been thinking about Eunice Calvert and the Primary children and all these terrible rumours.''

‘‘I'm sure she'll appreciate that. I'll just phone and let her know.''

‘‘Don't be silly. It's after midnight,'' she told him.

He tried to get back to the brave submariners, but his mind was elsewhere. Had Edith Crawfurd been offended? Would she take up his suggestion? More to the point, would Duncan? Had he acted with valour, or was he meddling where he had no business to? He had no faith in a Supreme Being, and no desire to begin acting like one at this stage of his life.

Squadron Leader Peter Townsend was just beginning to train a younger airman in the art of dog-fighting when a small voice said from beneath the quilt, ‘‘Darling, you don't suppose there could be any truth in what they …''

‘‘No,'' he said firmly. He closed the book and laid it on the floor. ‘‘I must confess I've sometimes been tempted to start a rumour. Something harmless about myself. An ingrown toe nail, or something of that ilk. I'd tell three different people in complete confidence, and see how long it took to come back to me transformed into chronic gout or gangrene. Please don't get yourself agitated, Marjory. It won't help.''

She turned to cuddle into him. ‘‘Why is the world so terrible? It wasn't like this when our girls were growing up.''

She was quite wrong, the world had always been terrible but he was too tired to argue. He tried a different tack.

‘‘You did a good job with them. You were always there for them.''

‘‘Well I didn't have to work. They were my work.''

She seemed to settle, and after a while he switched off the light. But there was one more question. Later he would remember how it had come last, like the question patients would ask on the point of leaving, casually mentioning what was uppermost in his or her mind.

‘‘Roderick. Mrs Flaherty's one of your patients, isn't she? The woman who cleans for Edith. ''

‘‘Yes.''

‘‘Someone said her husband's back in the district.''

‘‘And?''

‘‘They thought he'd been in prison. Mrs Flaherty threw him out years ago, because he. …''

‘‘Johnny Flaherty wasn't a paedophile, if that's what you're thinking. He was an alcoholic and a womaniser, and he battered his wife when he was drunk, but I am absolutely certain he never hurt his own children or anyone else's. Now please can we go to sleep?''

She was silent. After a moment an apologetic arm crept round his stomach. He patted it through the quilt.
Never let the sun go down on your wrath
, his father had told him, the day before the wedding. A very wise man, his father. Some clichés were worth holding on to.

‘‘Daddy.''

The Reverend Smith typed on but mentally readied himself. When Harriet used that word instead of Dad, it was usually a signal that something with the potential to ruffle feathers was to follow.

‘‘Can I talk to you?''

‘‘Yup.'' He misspelled ‘‘apocalypse'', and pressed the plus sign instead of the delete.

‘‘It's quite important.''

‘‘Mmn.''

‘‘Very important, in fact.''

‘‘Right.''

On the third try it was correct. He peered at the rest of the paragraph.

‘‘I went into town this morning, and I've just had my belly button pierced.''

‘‘No, you haven't, but you can if you want to.''

‘‘Really?''

‘‘Of course not. What's the problem?'' He pressed ‘‘save'' and swung round to face her.

‘‘Ryan wants me to do something, and I'm not sure if I want to do it.''

So it was Ryan now, not Ryan Flaherty.

‘‘Go on,'' he said. And silently,
God help us all
 …

She'd taken a jar of coloured paper clips from the window ledge and was picking out the white ones. ‘‘Someone's been making funny phone calls to his house. Not obscene calls exactly, just not speaking …''