7 - Death of a Dean

by Hazel Holt

  I’d managed to get the freezer emptied and was wondering if two gelid, ice-burned pork chops that had somehow escaped from their wrapper would, if defrosted, be acceptable to our marauding foxes when the telephone rang. Irritated, I got up stiffly from where I’d been crouching on the kitchen floor and went into the hall to answer it.

  “Yes, hello,” I said brusquely.

  A female voice I didn’t immediately recognize said tentatively, “I’m sorry, is this a bad time?”

  “No,” I recovered myself, “not at all ...”

  “This is Mary, Mary Beaumont.” She stopped, apparently unable to go any further.

  “Yes,” I said encouragingly.

  “Well, you did say—that day last week—that you might like to go riding, and I thought ...”

  “Yes?”

  “I thought perhaps you’d like me to fix up something with my friend at the stables at Holcombe.”

  “Ah.” I opened my mouth to find some excuse.

  “I told her all about you,” Mary broke in eagerly, “and she’s got a couple of very quiet horses—I mean, since you haven’t ridden for a while.”

  In the face of such eagerness I knew I couldn’t back down. “Well, yes, that’s very kind of you, Mary,” I said, trying to force some sort of enthusiasm into my voice. “When did you have in mind?”

  “Next week, if that’s okay with you. If you could let me know when, I’d try to arrange a free morning so I could come with you and introduce you to Fay.”

  “That would be lovely. Would Monday or Tuesday be all right?”

  “Monday morning, about eleven o’clock, would be best. My father ...” She broke off, and I realized that this expedition to the stables wouldn’t have his approval and that at eleven o’clock on Monday morning he would be safely occupied elsewhere.

  “Monday would be splendid,” I said, feeling agreeably conspiratorial. “Shall I call for you at the deanery?”

  “Yes, that will be quite all right.”

  “Good. I’ll see you then. Oh, I almost forgot, can your friend lend me a hard hat? I don’t expect I’ll be able to find mine after all these years.”

  “Oh yes, I’m sure she can.”

  “That’s lovely, then, I’ll see you on Monday.”

  I put the phone down and went back into the kitchen. I’d forgotten to put a cloth in the bottom of the freezer and quite a lot of melted ice had spilled out onto the kitchen floor and a neat set of paw prints showed where Foss had walked (deliberately) in the water and then up onto the worktop and thence onto the cooker. Sighing heavily, I reached for the floorcloth.

  Michael was unsympathetic when I told him my plans for Monday morning.

  “It’s your own fault,” he said severely. “You should harden your heart. Just because someone looks pathetic or hard-done-by, you don’t have to let yourself in for goodness knows what.”

  “Well, I thought that if I cultivated the poor girl, won her confidence, I might be able to encourage her to stand up for herself against Francis, so she won’t end up like poor Joan.”

  “Interfering in other people’s lives,” Michael said, “is a mistake!” He took some papers out of his briefcase. “You know you always end up by regretting it.”

  “Not always!” I protested.

  “Well, nearly always. I suppose you’ll have to go for this ride now you’ve said you will, but for heaven’s sake be careful, don’t fall off the creature—dangerous things, horses—and break anything. I don’t want you ending up in hospital.”

  “Well,” I said, touched by this expression of filial concern, “I’ll take care.”

  “If you land up in hospital, who is going to iron my shirts?” Michael, opening a copy of Tolley’s Tax Law, ducked as I threw a cushion at his head.

  I’d hoped for heavy rain on Monday morning so I’d have an excuse to cancel, but it was a lovely day, fine and sunny, not too hot to encourage the flies that I remembered as a tiresome adjunct to riding. My jodhpurs and hacking jacket had long since been sent to a jumble sale, but fortunately I found my jodhpur boots tucked away on the top of the wardrobe in the spare room and, with those and my thickest trousers and a polo-neck sweater, I felt reasonably well kitted out. Not that my first riding instructor, Captain Kowalczyk, would have thought so. He was a former Polish cavalry officer who had ended up in Taviscombe after the war and ran the local stables when I was a girl. He insisted that his pupils were as properly turned out as his horses and was a ferocious taskmaster, barking out instructions to the local Pony Club aspirants as if they were about to lead a cavalry charge against the Prussian uhlans. I always remember hearing him saying to my friend Alison, an exceptionally small and fragile child, “No, no, you hold the reins in your left hand—your right hand is your sword hand!” No, Captain Kowalczyk would not have approved of my appearance, but I hoped it would pass muster with Mary’s friend Fay.

  Fay was a tall handsome woman in her mid-forties, with a brisk friendly manner.

  “Mary told me you’d ride at about ten stone, so I’ve saddled up Prudence for you. She’s very quiet.”

  Slightly put out at Mary’s all-too-accurate estimation of my weight, I looked nervously at Prudence, who seemed to be an exceptionally tall horse.

  “I’ve got some sugar lumps for her,” I said. “Is it all right to give her a few—just to introduce myself?”

  “Sure.” Fay smiled.

  I held out my hand flat, in a placatory fashion, with a couple of sugar lumps lying on the palm. Prudence vacuumed them up in one go, leaving a smear of greenish froth, and allowed me to pat her nose. She then drew back her lips in what I took to be a sneer and blew gently down her nostrils.

  “Right, then,” Fay said. “I thought you’d like to go a few times around the tanbark just to get the feel of things again, and then Mary will take you out over the hill.”

  She gave me one of those new helmet things that people wear nowadays which I put on and led Prudence over to the mounting block. I managed to heave myself into the saddle and pick up the reins correctly.

  “Oh dear,” I said, “it’s been a long time ...”

  “Oh, you never forget,” Mary said encouragingly.

  And it was true. After a few circuits of the indoor ring I found that I was rising to the trot and sitting down in the saddle for the canter in the old familiar way.

  “Okay?” Mary asked. “Shall we venture out?”

  In her riding clothes (very neat and well turned out) and with the air of natural authority that comes with doing something you do well, Mary was a different person. She led the way along the (mercifully quiet) road and up a wide track into the hills behind Holcombe. She was a good teacher, too, tactfully and unobtrusively correcting my faults and making me feel that I was really doing rather well.

  “Mary,” I said impulsively as we stopped at the top of the hill to look at the magnificent view out over the Quantocks, “this is what you should be doing, not working in a library!” She gave a bitter little laugh.

  “It’s what I want to do more than anything in the world, but Father ... I’ve tried and tried to talk to him, Mother’s tried too, but he won’t hear of it, you can imagine! And he gets so angry.”

  “But Mary, you’re, what are you? Twenty-three? Why don’t you just go! What’s to stop you?”

  “I can’t. He’d take it out on Mother, you know what he’s like. Her life’s wretched enough as it is—he’d go on and on! I’m sorry, Mrs. Malory, I shouldn’t be talking to you like this...”

  “Please call me Sheila and yes, I know what your father’s like, I grew up with him. I know how—difficult—he can be, and I’m so very sorry for your mother. But you should be able to live your own life.”

  Prudence pulled at the reins and put her head down to crop the grass.

  “Fay would like me to work at the stables—she’s a wonderful person, well, you saw. It would be everything I’ve ever dreamed about. And now,” her face darkened, “now I’ve got to work in the cat
hedral with him. He’ll be around all the time, criticizing like he always does. Nothing is ever right for him. Adrian has had it for years, not that he seems to mind as much as I do. I think Father broke his spirit a long time ago, when he was a child. Poor Adrian, it’s too late for him ...”

  “Oh, Mary,” I exclaimed, “I do wish there was something I could do!”

  “There’s nothing anyone can do,” she said fiercely, “we’re all helpless against him. All I can do is escape whenever I can, like today. Come on, let’s make the most of it. There’s a really good track along the top, no rabbit holes, quite safe for a gallop.”

  She touched her horse with her heels and was off. Prudence, suddenly aware of the loss of her equine companion, raised her head and moved forward. I shortened the reins and we galloped after the fast retreating figure, in flight, I felt, from the unhappy reality of her life.

  The next day I was fine, full of plans for riding again, but the following day I was very stiff indeed.

  “Oh God,” I groaned as I tried, with some difficulty, to put dishes of food down for Tris and Tess. “Never again!”

  “I thought you were planning to spend every spare moment in the saddle,” Michael said, retrieving a slice of bread that had just shot out from the toaster. “A right little Annie Oakley.”

  “Yes, well, that was yesterday.” I eased myself into a chair and sipped my coffee.

  “Shouldn’t you get straight back onto the horse again, or something?”

  “Never. Never again.”

  “It seems a shame to give up just when you’ve started again,” he said provocatively. “Anyway, won’t Mary expect you to go on?”

  I groaned. “You’re probably right. It’s a tragedy about that girl. Goodness, Francis has a lot to answer for! Think of the lives he’s made miserable!”

  “Not what you’d call a practicing Christian,” Michael said. “Talking of which, any word from David?”

  “No. He was going to try Lydia—I told you. I have a horrible feeling that was no good. I’m sure he’d have rung to tell me if it was good news.” I got gingerly to my feet. “Perhaps if I soaked for ages in a hot bath I might eventually regain the use of my limbs again ...”

  I heard nothing from David all that week, then on the Saturday he rang in the evening.

  “David! How did it go with Lydia?”

  “No luck, I’m afraid. Very sympathetic, of course, would have been only too delighted last year, but she’s just gone and bought a farmhouse. In the Dordogne. And, of course,” his voice rose in a perfect imitation of Lydia’s plaintive tones, “you know how that simply eats money!”

  “Oh, David, how unfair! She’s got two homes and you’re about to lose your one and only!”

  “Well, dear, if it hadn’t been that it would have been something else, I expect. Darling Lydia has never been exactly openhanded. I suppose I was a fool to expect any help from her.”

  There was a short silence while we both considered this palpable truth, then I said, “So what now?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” He paused for a moment and then said, “Actually, Sheila, I wanted to ask you a favor.”

  “Of course, what is it?”

  “Could I come and stay with you for a bit? You see, I told my bank I was going away for a while to try and raise the money—they’ve been really very patient, I must say, but there are limits ... I’m expecting them to get in touch any day now to see how I got on and, if I’m not there, unavailable (I’ll tell Julian not to answer the phone, just leave the answerphone on), then they may think I’m still negotiating some sort of loan and give me a bit longer. I know I’m only buying time, but you never know, something may turn up.”

  “You know we’d love to have you. Come tomorrow.”

  “Bless you, dear, that would be marvelous. And, to be honest, I shall be glad to leave the house and everything. It’s so dreadfully depressing to look around and think I may have to lose it all.”

  “Oh, David, I do understand. Look, get that twelve-something train, you change at Birmingham, and I’ll meet you at Taunton. Okay?”

  I put the phone down thoughtfully. Lydia had been David’s last hope. I couldn’t think, now, of any possible solution to the problem. Still, if a few days with us helped to take David’s mind off the now inevitable loss of his beloved house and the destruction of his prospects, then we must do all we could to make his stay agreeable. I was sure his old friends would rally around—I must phone Rosemary—and try to arrange a few diversions for him. I went upstairs to make up the spare bed and turned my mind to the problems of catering.

  Chapter 6

  David seemed quite cheerful when I met him at the station, but then I suppose being an actor is very useful when you want to conceal your real feelings.

  “It always feels most peculiar to be back in dear old Taviscombe,” he said as we drove through the outskirts of the town. “Do you think we could drive past the house? I’d like to have a look at it again.”

  I turned the car up West Hill and parked a little way away.

  “Not right outside, dear, otherwise Nana might see us—she’s still quite beady-eyed, I’m sure. I suppose I must go and visit her sometime, but, to be honest, I don’t feel I could cope at the moment. When I think of all the money tied up in that place!”

  Certainly it was a fine old house, large and imposing, built of the local red sandstone and surrounded by substantial grounds.

  “You could get half a dozen bungalows in there,” David remarked moodily. “Think of all that lovely cash.”

  “I think we’d better go,” I said, “before you get all broody.”

  David is not an animal person himself, but being a sensitive soul he understands and is tolerant of animal worship in others, so he was not put out by the rapturous greeting the dogs gave him (barking and jumping up) and the signal honor bestowed on him by Foss, who curled up in his lap (covering him with cat hairs) the moment he sat down.

  “I’m sorry, David,” I said apologetically, “put him down if he’s a nuisance.”

  “No, he’s all right,” David said, stroking the soft fur absently. “I can see, in a way, that animals might be quite a comfort. Undemanding.”

  I gave a snort of laughter. “That remark could only come from someone who never owned an animal!”

  “Oh, we did have a dog when we were boys—some sort of terrier. We were supposed to look after it, to teach us responsibility or something, feed it and brush it, take it for walks, that kind of thing. When it was his turn, Francis, needless to say, was always busy with something else, so it was always left to me. It bit Francis once. It was a nice little thing...”

  The days passed. We did nothing very much, went for drives to places we both remembered, seeing old friends, and David seemed reasonably happy. Some days he would go off on his own, wandering around the town, revisiting old haunts, walking by the sea.

  “I must say,” he said one afternoon, when he came back after one such expedition, “they’ve done their best to destroy the town. All those revolting cheapjack shops and racks of clothing outside—awful!”

  “Yes,” I replied sadly, “when you think what it used to be like. It’s the council’s fault—all those local shopkeepers being greedy, trying to make money out of the visitors and not considering the residents. There’s simply nowhere to park now—fifty pence for an hour, if you can believe it—and no proper shops anymore, only horrible gift shops and cafés, the one and only fishmonger closed down last year. We mostly do our shopping in Taunton now.”

  At the back of my mind was the thought that if the worse came to the worst and David lost his little house in Stratford, he might come back to Taviscombe. I was sure he couldn’t bear to stay on in Stratford in some miserable lodgings. I didn’t mention his troubles and neither did he, until Friday morning at breakfast he said, “I suppose I ought to telephone Julian and see if there have been any messages. I didn’t give him your number on purpose, because I simply wanted to get ri
ght away. But one can’t bury one’s head permanently in the sand. Tonight, perhaps, quite late, if you don’t mind, after he gets back from the theater.”

  “Of course,” I replied absently, turning the pages of the local paper, “any time you like. Good heavens!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nana’s dead!”

  “What! What do you mean?”

  “Here, in the deaths column. ‘Esme Yates’—that’s Nana’s name, isn’t it? ‘Of Wootton Lodge. Aged 85. Funeral next Monday at All Saints. 12:30.’ ”

  I put the paper down and we sat staring at each other.

  “I suppose Francis put the notice in the Gazette,” I said.

  David didn’t say anything for a moment and then in a voice quite unlike his own he said, “Can I have another cup of coffee, please, Sheila?”

  I poured one for him and he spooned sugar into it. Then he said, “I’d better try and get hold of Julian. I expect Francis left a message.”

  He went out into the hall, but returned in a moment.

  “No luck, he must be out jogging.”

  “Sit down and finish your coffee,” I said, “then you must ring Francis.”

  We were both silent for a while, trying to come to terms with what had happened and all its implications.