Death Out of Season

by Meg Elizabeth Atkins

  She stopped making scenes; became an unremitting nuisance. Her ex-husband and children had assured her they would do everything they could to help her through this difficult period; very well then, let them. In a very short time she had exhausted everyone with her demands for attention, threats of suicide, telephone calls, histrionic performances in Sainsbury’s, frantic messages, midnight appearances.

  They had to find her something to do, you see,’ Inez said to the fascinated Sam. ‘She was in the process of buying a house here — making it as long-drawn-out and catastrophe-prone as she could, naturally. They had a house in south Chatfield — ’

  ‘South Chatfield. There’s posh,’ Sam murmured.

  ‘Yes, very. She insisted on having it as part of the divorce settlement, then changed her mind. Said she didn’t have to put up with the pity of her friends. Can’t say I blame her, they’re a pretty poisonous lot.’ So, Inez went on, she decided to live in Clerehaven, where she had been born and spent her early years — ‘close to my roots’. It was this, Jaynie’s ex-husband told Inez, that gave the family the idea, more or less spontaneously. They enrolled her in a local history course. It was a desperate measure, he admitted, and they hadn’t much hope it would work, but it might give her something to think about for a while and stop her driving everyone insane.

  It succeeded amazingly. Jaynie had always had a sense of herself as someone special, here was a chance to prove it. In no time at all she managed to convert the study of the doings and beings of Clerehaven’s more recent past into the closest possible scrutiny of herself. It was, also, an opportunity to ferret and pry and, for a woman who hated to be alone, an excuse to foist herself on other people. The — often strained — goodwill of friends, neighbours, acquaintances, ensured it was some time before anyone realised how relentlessly Jaynie was using her researches to refurbish her ego.

  She took the opportunity to refer, as frequently as possible, to the unsubstantiated claim that somewhere, on her mother’s side, her family had a connection with the Lynchets. It was plain it gave her status. For one thing, the Lynchets claimed to be an old, if not the oldest established Clerehaven family — but no one had ever been quite sure what was meant by that and as it was Grandmother Georgina Lynchet who made the claim no one dared ask. It was true they had lived at Ferns in High Town for as long as anyone could remember. Also, it was understood that Grandmother Georgina had at one time been headmistress of some prestigious girls’ school. There had long ago been a Grandfather Lynchet, whose passing Georgina had never found it necessary to regret, although she dragooned everyone into regarding him with great respect: a man of the highest probity and distinction. Government service was reverentially implied.

  Grandfather Lynchet. That was the first punctured pretension — although no one then realised Jaynie was set on a wrecking course; and no one could imagine what the outcome would be.

  *

  An amiable social occasion: fund-raising for the Waterman Disability Centre. Just a few words from a beautifully caring and careworn woman. Sherry and delicious home-made savouries. General conversation, turning — how could anyone trace the source of the subject? — to the Lynchets.

  ‘Grandfather Lynchet. Heavens … ’ Jaynie’s voice, always unpleasantly off-pitch, became strident when she was excited. ‘No, he worked for the Council. Sanitary department. I mean, you could say he was a local government inspector because he inspected lavatories and things. I mean lavatories … ’ The giggle, the sweeping eyelash glance, assessing reaction: Didn’t you know?

  Strangulated, disbelieving silence.

  Lavatories.

  Fortunately, Nella was not present. Many people there knew her lifetime’s humiliation at the hands of Grandmother Georgina; the consensus was: For God’s sake let’s all just shut up. But would Jaynie, self-absorbed, tactless and spiteful, shut up?

  No …

  She had discovered a source of power: the legitimacy of her ‘research’, which gave her ascendancy in a community where she might otherwise have been treated just like anyone else. Tirelessly inquisitive, she bided her time until another occasion (by then everyone, recognising the signs, had learnt to snap into a social reflex: gritting teeth, feigning deafness, loudly changing the subject).

  This time Jaynie had Grandmother Georgina in her sights. She would never, in the lifetime of the old woman, have dared to undermine the pretensions of the Lynchets. No one would. Once again, Nella was not present.

  ‘Headmistress? Headmistress? Heavens, no. She helped out in the kitchens — Lady Marchant’s Orphans’ School — yes, I have documentary evidence. I’m very thorough in my research. Yes, her name on the pay sheets … and the copy of a letter, here, saying how efficient she was organising — food — things — saving so much money … ’ The flourishing of her impressive research file, a gold-tasselled pen. And a silence, spreading around her, which even she was forced to apprehend, although not to grasp.

  That dreadful old woman, in the history of the world, might be ridiculed — but not publicly, in the society where she had moved, by this relentlessly trivial woman. Jaynie would have professed to understand nothing of this, had anyone asked her. No one did. Inez said to her special friend Dora Hope, ‘She can do her wide-eyed bit till she splits open — she knows she went too far.’

  ‘Oh, yes, absolutely. It’s Grandfather Lynchet and the lavatories all over again. She expects everyone to join in the laughter. And when no one does — well, her justification is that no one has a sense of humour.’

  ‘Sense of humour … Door … ’ (At the beginning of their acquaintance, before it became a friendship, a misreading of signatures resulted in their afterwards calling each other Door and Index.) ‘Look, the only things she bloody laughs at are whoopee cushions and joke turds.’

  ‘I rest my case. How many people — tactfully — have tried to make her understand that being so brutally frank about the Lynchets won’t do anything for her popularity?’

  Inez gazed wordlessly at her.

  Dora sighed. ‘Exactly. Complete waste of breath. Jaynie’s only form of self-defence is to turn on what she incessantly pursues. Ever since Nella saw her off she’s become so spiteful, the other day she said the Lynchets were nothing special and whoever heard of anyone claiming superiority just because they were named after a ditch.’

  ‘Hasn’t anyone told her a lynchet’s an ancient field system?’

  ‘What would be the point?’

  Silently, they brooded on the basic common sense of this before mentally shifting gear to consider the other reason why Jaynie had, so to speak, sunk her teeth into the underbelly of the Lynchets. The kudos of transferred fame, the casual claim to association with a household name.

  The Toddies.

  It could only be said they were an aberration. They did not belong to Clerehaven, they did not belong to the haughty and fastidious Lynchets; their element was the super-orbiting popularity of a television soap, with all the hype, artefacts, ancillary publications, souvenirs and locations that that meant. There were — sown from their dragon’s teeth and sprung from the gentle earth of Clerehaven — Auntie Vi’s Tearooms, river launch trips complete with 1930s knees-up, Uncle Ern’s Local (singalongs every Saturday), a Toddies’ Trek and, in prospect, according to rumour, a Toddies’ Experience.

  It had happened in a few years. And all because of Alfred Lynchet.

  The late Alfred Lynchet.

  At the time when the Toddies were beginning to bed themselves into the nation’s viewing psyche, Inez said to a friend, a successful, hard-working novelist, ‘Well, look. Alfred. He’s always written, anything, poems, reminiscences, local history. I know because we both do the circuit of small societies. And he never misses an opportunity to bore us to bloody death with his readings — ’

  ‘From what?’ Her friend interrupted bracingly. ‘Inez, he writes crap and pays for it to be published in shitty little magazines.’

  ‘Well, yes, I must say that sounds about — ’ �
��And now he’s hit a winning streak. He got a toe-hold with an agent, somehow — furthermore, one who just happened to know Dee TV were on the lookout for something to replace that thingy series — vet, or something. Independent Telly are contractually bound to produce a certain quota of locally based programmes, including drama. What he had to offer just caught someone’s commercial instinct. It happens. We all think, Christ, let it happen to me. Only it sodding doesn’t.’

  But, Inez thought, what was astonishing about all the years she’d been forced to listen to Alfred’s pontifications on moral values, local culture, literary insights, was that there had never been a mention of the Toddies until a year before his death when, amazingly, he produced a series of short stories that went straight into the conveyor belt of agent, TV production company, prime time viewing. The medium was voracious; the programmes were recently networked in the United States, distributed — incomprehensibly — in Finland and Greenland, and lately, Inez had heard, sold to Japan. She was left dazedly considering how 1930s characters of quintessentially English comic gentility would go down in any of those alien locations.

  *

  After Sam left to go about his own concerns, Inez settled before the fire with the newspaper and her feet up, but she was not inclined to concentrate. The early, bracing walk up on the Stray, the gossip with Sam, turned lazily in her mind, gently collided with a recollection. Two — three years ago? 1987 or thereabouts.

  It was a day she had walked over to neighbouring Byehaven (four miles, via the Stray, footpaths and open land. Seven by road.) to lunch with a friend.

  She returned just as dusk was stealing over the Stray, the town lying below in an elegiac light. Just as she was ready to turn from the track and begin her descent, she saw Nella’s Citroën 2CV parked farther on, dangerously close to the toppling chasm overlooking the river.

  She halted. She could make out the darkened silhouette of Nella at the driver’s seat. She could not think why Nella should sit there alone, motionless. Instinct told her there was something catastrophic, hidden … She approached hesitantly. Nella, oblivious, stared straight ahead; the image of someone destroyed.

  Inez tapped on the window. Slowly, the fat face turned towards her, the eyes unfocused.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Inez asked gently.

  The window wound down. Partially, reluctantly. ‘Leave me alone, Inez.’

  ‘Yes, yes, do forgive me.’ Drawing back a few paces. Pausing. ‘But … is there anything I can … Look, what about coming home with me and we’ll have a cup of tea — ’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake leave me alone.’ Wordlessly, Inez retreated.

  She knew about despair, how it needed its aloneness from which, with fortune, came the strength to face the next day, and the next …

  She knew Grandmother Georgina was ill and Nella was going through a hard time; and it had not really been all that long since her brother, her only sibling, had died — an unlooked-for, violent death.

  All the same. Nella, permanently apologetic about her very existence, had the occasional high manner, stopping just short of arrogance, but she had been drilled in courtesy, it was out of character for her to be so rude.

  There was nothing to do, so Inez made her way home, spent an uneasy hour, then walked up to High Town and casually approached Ferns. She lingered at the double gates. Everyone was tucked away at home, having sherry, supper. There was no one to see her lift the catch and slip into the drive.

  Ranges of bushes. Trees, dense hedges on either side of the house … She stepped on to the grass to save crunching the gravel. Moments later she was saying to herself it was surprising how deep you could get into someone’s garden in the dark.

  A curve in the drive and the house came into view. Her attention was at once taken by a lighted, half-open window. It was the drawing-room, she knew it from uncomfortable social occasions: a cold, gloomy, people-hating place. There was a glimpse of Nella, approaching the window; behind her the seated monolith of Grandmother Georgina. Then the window clamped firmly shut, the curtains were drawn.

  Go home, Inez. Nella has not, you have the evidence of your own eyes, driven her little tin car over the cliff into the river. What in God’s name made you think she would?

  So there’s nothing to do. Just go home, Inez.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Friends of Clerehaven met on Thursday evenings at the Memorial Hall. Nella Lynchet, who belonged to everything, was not punctual. For one thing, the meetings never started on time; for another, as Grandmother Georgina so frequently said, only common people were punctual.

  Grandmother Georgina’s opinions, strictures, precepts and prohibitions stuck to Nella like burrs. She could, from time to time, remove one — always with the slightly uncomfortable sense that she was removing, along with Grandmother’s exacting rules, some particle of herself. That was the difficulty, because for all the wretchedness of being bullied and ridiculed she had at the same time been relentlessly drilled into a sense of impeccable social superiority. As her grandmother said to anyone within hearing: ‘If Nella hasn’t the wit to be grateful to me for anything else, she can at least appreciate I have taught her faultless conduct.’

  All right. Only its applicability was not nearly so useful as Grandmother claimed (the correct way to address a bishop had little place in Nella’s life), but argument was out of the question — she had never known any law but Grandmother Georgina’s and that was absolute. (It was true that in the old woman’s final illness Nella said most of the things she had always wanted to say, but Grandmother was by then beyond comprehension and there ceased to be any satisfaction in telling the truth to someone who was incapable of understanding it.)

  Nella and her brother Alfred came to Clerehaven from Dorset as children, after a boating accident that took their parents’ lives. Alfred, the elder by five years, could remember his mother and father, retrieve fragments of early childhood; Nella could not. She had never known what it was to live anywhere except Clerehaven, with Alfred and Grandmother Georgina. Growing up, she slipped into place as the humblest and least considered member of the household. Alfred, of course, was always the object of his womenfolk’s unstinting admiration — a reward no more than his due.

  At Grandmother’s insistence, they went into local government — safe and respectable, besides, their characters were so conditioned to the anxiety of doing the right thing they scarcely noticed the transition from home to work. Nella’s status was humble; she accepted Alfred’s as prestigious, even though common sense indicated it was not, but Nella, a true Lynchet, had an amazing capacity for self-deception.

  In her late thirties she had her only love affair, although she was so innocent her notion of love had nothing to do with the exploitation she endured. He was a small, dapper, fast-talking salesman, plundering her body in a way that bewildered and repelled her but, as she assumed she represented sexual desire, she bore the hasty fumblings and gruntings with resignation.

  She was secretly amazed that neither Grandmother nor Alfred attempted to discourage her. It was true ‘the boyfriend’ was seldom allowed over the doorstep and never invited to family occasions. Grandmother managed, always, to call him by the wrong name and Alfred’s loud remarks — out again this evening … he must be keen … when do we expect an announcement? — were made with a faintly detectable sarcasm. But she took as a sort of encouragement their smiles, whispers, knowing looks, which remained unchanged even though he was plainly humiliating her and continued — if anything, became more evident — after he dropped her. Their sympathy then was of the bracing it-was-obvious-he-was-up-to-no-good variety. In her desperate hurt she suggested timidly that they might have warned her, to be told by Grandmother that if she wasn’t capable of looking after herself at least they thought she’d have the sense to look after her money. Her salary was adequate for her modest needs, she always saved from it, and she had a small inheritance from her parents; he had managed to con and bully her out of most of it. That was what
had attracted him; and they always knew. Her pathetically failed love affair finished up as just another triumph for Grandmother.

  Even after her death, so powerful was her personality, Grandmother Georgina continued to stride through the corridors of Nella’s memory. Tall, gaunt as a hungry eagle, with fierce eyes that saw everything, clothes that never altered, long and dark and skinny, three generations out of date — although she was much too distinguished for anyone to point this out to her. After her death Nella found wardrobes and chests and cupboards full of them, musty with the smell of an old body, by their very volume claiming tenacious occupancy of Ferns.

  Without hesitating, Nella made a bonfire in the garden and burnt them all. It was her first act of independence, justified by a wholly new sensation of bitter and vengeful satisfaction: what else could she do with them? A charity shop would scarcely be appropriate for a woman who had never had the least charity toward anyone.

  With Grandmother’s death she was alone, Alfred having met his end, with shocking violence, two years previously, killed by a hit and run driver who was never traced. With the sense of posterity instilled in him by Grandmother Georgina, he left his worldly goods to his sister Nella (they were, at the time he drew up his will, pretty trifling). More significantly, he made his grandmother and Nella his joint literary executors.

  Joint — it went without saying — was a courtesy designation. Grandmother Georgina moved into the driving seat of Alfred’s accelerating reputation — nagging his agent, terrorising the production team, grandly according interviews. Only her failing physical condition kept her from manhandling script conferences where, legally, owing to Alfred’s forethought, she had a say. In all this, there was no question of the least whisper of Nella’s voice being heard.