He said, ‘I heard a rumour that you might be selling some of your plants.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘My neighbour.’
She smiled. ‘Trust Naomi to spill the beans. It is true but I’m not exactly up and running yet. I’ve had the idea simmering for ages but it still needs some working out. Do you think it’s a good one?’
‘I certainly do. If the plants you sell are anything like the ones in your garden, you’ll have long queues.’
‘Naomi’s says she’ll help me – give me advice and so on.’
‘Then you can’t lose with two sets of green fingers.’
She laughed and held out her broken-nailed hands. ‘I don’t know about green – more like black. Actually, I didn’t care a damn about gardening before – not till I came back from London to look after my mother. Now it’s an absolute passion.’
He wondered about her other passion – the seemingly unhappy love affair that Naomi had mentioned. Perhaps a married man? That was always an unhappy situation.
He said, ‘Well, I’d like to buy some of your plants, when you’re open for business. My garden needs them.’
‘I promise to let you know.’ She opened the door again for him. ‘Where are you off to now, Colonel?’
‘The Hall. It’s my last stop.’
‘It’s a bit different from Naomi’s day.’
‘So I gather.’
‘Shame it had to be turned into flats, though I gather they’ve been rather well done. Very luxurious. All the latest mod cons.’
‘What are the residents like?’
‘I’ve no idea. We never seem to see any of them around the village.’
‘I was hoping they’d be both rich and generous.’
‘Well, they must be fairly well-off because the flats cost a bit, from all accounts. Lois Delaney has taken one of them, apparently. The actress. I remember seeing her on the London stage years ago.’
‘Yes, I saw her, too.’ She had been one of the most beautiful actresses of her generation. A brunette with a heart-shaped face, emerald green eyes, perfect complexion and a wonderfully low, smoky voice. She belonged to the old and largely defunct school of glamorous glamour. It seemed to him that the leading young actresses of the present all looked rather ordinary and very much alike; he couldn’t tell one from the other. The paparazzi snapped them arriving at airports in crumpled clothes and outsize sunglasses, and whenever they dressed up for some film première the result was usually a disastrous mess.
He said, ‘I’m surprised Naomi didn’t tell me.’
‘I shouldn’t think she knows. It doesn’t seem to be on the general grapevine yet. I only heard because Tom Harvey was called out to see her the other day and he happened to mention it to me.’
She said it offhandedly but he saw a tell-tale blush begin in her cheeks. Ah-ha, he thought. Our nice young doctor is in with a chance.
He set off again, trudging through the snow. Ruth Swynford waved from the Manor doorstep and he waved back. It occurred to him, also, that the reason for Major Cuthbertson’s miraculous recovery from flu and sudden desire to take over the collection had very probably been because he had also just heard the news of Lois Delaney. The colonel smiled to himself.
Three
‘There’s someone coming up the drive, Neville.’
‘The postman?’
‘No, not him. I don’t think there’s a delivery today. It’s a bloke, though.’ Craig peered sideways through the ground-floor window. ‘He’s going to the front door. Looks like he’s collecting for something. What’ll I do?’
‘Wait and see if he gets in. The Barnes’s may not open it.’
‘S’posing they do? S’posing he comes here?’
Neville Avery looked at his lover with mild exasperation. ‘You have two options, my dear Craig. Either you answer the door, or you don’t. In the first case, give the man some money, in the second, do nothing and he’ll go away. No need to make a song and dance about it.’
The young man said sulkily, ‘I’m not. I just wasn’t sure what you wanted me to do.’
He went on watching out of the window. The bloke was still waiting for the door to be opened. A tall guy in country tweeds with a posh look about him. The sort of look that Neville had – though in a quite different way and which he himself would never have in a million years, no matter how expensive the clothes he wore, or how hard he tried. Whenever he saw himself in the mirror, he realized that he still looked like what he had always been: Craig Potter, born in Eltham, mother a barmaid, father unknown, brought up with two brothers and a sister (different fathers, unknown as well) in a two-room slum that was also home to an army of cockroaches, mice and bedbugs. At thirteen he had left – got out and headed for the bright lights of the West End to seek his fortune. He’d slept rough in doorways and under arches or in shelters for the homeless before he’d got a job in a restaurant kitchen, washing dishes and sweeping floors. Plenty of cockroaches and mice there, too, though the customers never knew it. Just as well people never saw what went on behind the swing doors or they’d never touch the nosh on their plates, let alone eat it. Blimey, he could tell some stories, even about the snobbiest places.
He’d worked as a skivvy for a few months, living in a hostel, before he’d moved on to a better place where he graduated from the sink to waiting at tables. He was rather good at it, being nimble on his feet and quick with his hands; he knew how to serve plates with a flourish and to whisk them away deftly, and he knew how to handle the customers. He bowed and scraped to the men, smiled charmingly at the women, flirted discreetly with the girls. It helped, too, that he wasn’t a bad looker.
He had made several more moves to other kinds of restaurants – Italian, French, Greek, Spanish, picking up a smattering of whatever language was necessary. Because he was dark-haired and olive-skinned, he sometimes pretended to be the nationality of the restaurant, but it was risky. If a real French person, or a real Spaniard started gabbling away at him then he was made to look a fool and he didn’t like that.
By the time he was seventeen, he was working in the very best places and it was at Le Champignon Noir that he had met Neville Avery, who had come in alone one lunchtime. There had been plenty of approaches from older men before but he’d never fancied the idea. It had been different with Neville, though. He’d come in several times before he’d said more to him than to give his order, but Craig had known very well that he was interested and he was flattered. He could tell that Neville was a genuine toff by the way he spoke and by the way he ate and by the way he behaved, and he’d obviously got plenty of dosh. Three or four months had gone by before he’d been invited to visit Neville’s posh flat in Knightsbridge and, a month later, he’d chucked the waiting job and moved in. He’d settled into his new life quickly. Got used to being given money to spend on nice clothes, to being taken to the theatre and to swanky restaurants like the ones he’d slaved in before. Concerts and operas bored him stiff, but he sat through them somehow as part of the price. He might have got tired of it all eventually, except for two things: first, and much to his surprise, he’d fallen in love with Neville; and second, he’d learned to cook. Both those things had given meaning and purpose to his life and he was as near to being happy as he had ever been. At the back of his mind, though, lurked the fear that one day Neville would get fed up with him for being such an ignorant lowlife and throw him out.
The move to the country had worried him, but the doctor had said it was a good idea because of Neville’s asthma and so he’d gone along with it. It was bloody dull after London, and he thought the Hall was an ugly old place, but he still had the cooking, and he still had Neville and sometimes he was allowed to help with making the dolls.
He’d been gobsmacked by the dolls, at first. It’d seemed such a weird thing for someone like Neville to do, and even weirder that so many people wanted to buy them and pay a fortune for them. But he had to admit that the dolls were ever so well done and ever so
lifelike. Of course, they weren’t made for children: they were what were called ‘Collectors’ Treasures’ and a lot of them went to America where people fancied that sort of thing. Sometimes they were referred to in the barmy doll magazine advertisements as ‘Heirlooms’ or ‘Keepsakes’ and they were Limited Editions with their number on. Neville always signed his dolls in 22-carat gold.
The characters were either out of a film or a story book or they were real people – Snow White, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland, Her Majesty, the Queen, in her Coronation Robes and the Queen Mum in hers – that sort of thing – and Neville had done a very nice Angel of Glad Tidings specially for Christmas with green glass eyes, a velvet and gold braid robe, sparkling organza wings and holding a wooden lute. Craig’s favourites were Scarlett O’Hara in the velvet green dress she’d made out of the curtains to visit Rhett Butler in prison and Grace Kelly in her lace wedding dress when she’d married Prince Rainier. He’d always thought Grace Kelly had real class.
Neville had someone to make the bisque porcelain heads and bodies but he did all the rest himself – hand painted the faces and hand set the eyes, glued on the real hair, made all the clothes, the shoes, the jewellery, the lot. It was fiddly work and took ages but Neville always said that every detail was important. Sometimes he let Craig do simple things, like sticking on sequins and stringing beads and Craig enjoyed it because it meant them working together. But he was really much better at cooking.
He’d once asked Neville why he bothered with the dolls; after all he didn’t need the money when he’d got a stack of his own already. ‘Because I enjoy it, dear boy,’ had been the dry answer. ‘And think of the pleasure I give to people.’ Bloody odd people, Craig had thought to himself: playing about with dolls when they were grown-up. But of course he hadn’t said so aloud.
The caretakers must have opened the door because the bloke had gone inside. Sure enough, after a moment or two, there was a ring at the flat door.
Neville said, ‘You might as well answer it. ’Tis the season of goodwill to all men, after all.’
If it had been up to him he’d have pretended to be out, but it was like Neville to be generous. Craig opened the door. The bloke was even taller than he’d thought. He stood up very straight and the silver-grey hair looked what people always called ‘distinguished’. His voice, when he spoke, matched the hair.
‘So sorry to disturb you. I’m collecting for the Save the Donkey fund and wonder if you’d care to make a donation?’
Donkeys? Jesus, whatever next?
‘Ask the gentleman in, Craig,’ Neville called out. ‘Don’t leave him standing on the doorstep.’
There wasn’t a proper doorstep, anyway, but he held the flat door open further and stood aside for the bloke to come in. Neville had got up from his table and was being ever so friendly.
‘How do you do? I’m Neville Avery. Did I hear you say donkeys? I love the creatures. Amazing the way they have that cross on their backs, don’t you think? I often wonder which came first – the cross or the Palm Sunday story.’
Neville was opening his wallet and feeding a note into the slit of the collecting tin – a tenner, Craig thought, by the look of it. What a waste! The bloke was thanking him ever so politely and he could see his glance wandering to the table and the doll that Neville was working on. Neville had noticed it too.
‘My latest creation. The young Queen Victoria. What do you think of her?’
‘Extraordinary. Did you do it all yourself?’
‘Down to the last detail – except for the porcelain head and body. I have those specially fired for me. This portrays the moment when the princess has been awoken to be told that her uncle has died and that she is queen – hence the nightgown and the flowing locks. I’ve entitled it “I will be good”.’
‘Very apt.’
‘Her own words, of course. Though she actually spoke them earlier on another occasion – when she first realized that she was the heir to the throne.’
After that, the bloke was shown other dolls and he admired those too. Or pretended to. It was hard to tell with someone like that. You never knew what they were thinking and they were much too polite to say if they thought something was crap. A lot of people thought the whole doll thing was a bit creepy, himself included. Anyway, Neville was telling the guy all about it and he was nodding away, as though he was really interested. He turned out to be Colonel something, which wasn’t surprising. Neville beckoned him over.
‘This is Craig, my companion.’
He’d never thought much of the word companion; it sounded like someone an old woman employed to run around after her. Partner would have been nicer but Neville never called him that.
The colonel’s handshake made him wince and feel glad he’d never had to go into the army. All that marching up and down, and swinging from ropes and crawling through mud under barbed wire. He’d have hated it.
He was glad when the bloke finally pushed off with his donkey tin. He shut the door firmly behind him. Good riddance!
‘I’m doing a mushroom risotto for lunch, Neville, and I thought we’d have a tomato salad to go with it. Will that suit?’
‘Whatever you like, dear boy. You always produce something delicious.’
He went off into the kitchen and got busy.
The caretaker who had let the colonel into the Hall had mentioned that Lois Delaney lived in Flat 2 on the ground floor.
‘The famous actress, sir. She came here to get away from it all. I expect when you’re famous like her, people bother you all the time.’
The colonel rather doubted that the younger generation would be interested enough, but there were still plenty of older fans who might pester her. He wondered what the protocol was with famous celebrities in hiding. Did you pretend not to recognize them, or would that offend them even more than being pestered? In the event, when he pressed the bell of the second ground-floor flat, nobody answered. Rather disappointing.
The caretaker, who apparently lived with his wife on the ground floor at the back, had also offered the information that there were three more smaller flats on the first floor and a further one above, in the attics. The colonel made his way up a fine oak staircase illuminated by a large and luridly-coloured stained glass window. As Naomi had admitted, the Hall was a bit of a Victorian horror – outside and in – but it had all the good qualities of its era. It was very well built, spacious and solid.
He pressed the bell of the nearest of the first-floor flats and it was answered by a man about the same age as himself. Not ex-service, though. Judging by the faintly yellow hue to his complexion, he had retired from some post involving many years spent under a tropical sun. A contribution was duly given – several pound coins clinking into the tin.
‘Sorry it isn’t more. My wife usually has plenty of change but she’s away at the moment. You’re local, I expect?’
‘A mere newcomer,’ the colonel said. ‘I only moved to Frog End last year.’
‘Army?’
‘How did you guess?’
‘You can always tell an old soldier. For one thing they always stand up straight. It’s a bit early, but can I offer you a New Year drink?’
He was shown in to a large and pleasant room with windows overlooking the back of the house. He had been right about the tropics.
The large ebony elephant standing in one corner; the jade dragons breathing fire on the mantelpiece; the heavily carved hardwood furniture and rattan chairs; the paintings of waxen flowers, lush palms and distant mountain peaks; and a framed photograph of a verandaed bungalow very different from those he had just visited – they were all from the Far East.
It was his turn to make a guess. ‘Malaya?’
‘That’s right. My wife and I spent more than thirty years out there. I was in the import/export business and we moved around quite a bit: Penang and Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. We only came back to England a few months ago. The name’s Ward – Roy Ward.’
The
colonel introduced himself and they shook hands.
He was handed a glass of very pale sherry. ‘How do you like being back here?’
‘To be perfectly frank, I hate it. I’d have stayed on out in Malaya for ever but my wife wanted to get home to be near her family. We’ve a daughter and son both living over here, and there’s Jean’s sister, too. She’s just had a hip operation and Jean’s gone to look after her. So, I’m stuck here wishing I wasn’t.’
The colonel sympathized. He, too, had found it very hard to settle down in England after serving all over the world.
‘Yes, it takes some getting used to again.’
They talked about Malaya and Singapore for a while and places that they had both known – the Cricket Club, Tanglin, Raffles, the sailing club, the racecourse, beaches, hill stations, the impenetrable jungle that had been supposed to keep the Japanese army out.
Roy Ward said, ‘We should never have lost Singapore to the Japs. It was a complete fiasco.’
The colonel agreed. Who could not? ‘Not something the British Army can be proud of.’
‘In fact, the writing was on the wall for the British decades ago – well before 1942 – and it has to be said that, on the whole, we got pretty much what we deserved. Yes, the British turned Singapore Island from swamp and jungle into one of the world’s greatest trading places, but we feathered our own nests at the same time and lived like lords. It couldn’t last for ever, though. When I went out there in the early Sixties there were still remnants of the old colonial life and it was good while it lasted. Servants and sunshine and an endless round of pleasure. Not quite so wonderful for the natives, of course. But I loved everything about Malaya. The good, the bad and the ugly.’
‘Even the mosquitoes?’
THREE SILENT THINGS a cozy murder mystery (Village Mysteries Book 2) Page 4