The Perfect Daughter

by Gillian Linscott

  I said, ‘I’m enquiring for my brother. He’s thinking of moving to the area and I wonder if you have anything that might suit him.’

  I don’t like lying but the truth would have made him very unhappy. As it was he cheered up again, probably hoping that my brother would be more prosperous than I looked.

  ‘Has your brother a family?’

  ‘A wife and three children.’

  True, at least, though a long way from Epping. Mr Jones cheered up even more.

  ‘What kind of thing has he in mind?’

  ‘I was wondering about these.’ I showed him the properties I’d marked in the paper.

  ‘Yes indeed. Four of those I can thoroughly recommend for a family and there’s another one come in since we put the advertisement in.’

  ‘My brother’s quite particular about some things. It must be no more than three miles away from the station and reasonably private. He does so hate nosy neighbours.’

  ‘I’m sure he wouldn’t have any trouble with those in our class of property.’

  ‘And he wouldn’t want to take anywhere that’s been standing vacant for a long time. Places do deteriorate if they’re left empty, don’t they?’

  ‘Our properties never get the chance to try it, ma’am. They’re snapped up very quickly. If your brother is seriously interested in any of these, I’d advise him to move quickly.’

  Not half so quickly as I might be moving. ‘I thought I might walk round and look at some of them – draw up a short list for him.’

  ‘Certainly, certainly.’

  He took a piece of paper from his desk and started drawing a sketch map of the area, putting crosses where the houses were.

  ‘Rosedene, Rosebank and Rosemount are all completely new properties in the same road within two minutes’ walk of the station. They’re very high-class family developments and I’m sure they’d suit your brother down to the ground.’

  ‘Not lived in at all?’

  ‘Not at all. The builders are just out of them.’

  That ruled them out.

  ‘The Firs is about a mile out towards Epping Bury, very secluded with a nice garden for the children to play in.’

  ‘I like the sound of that one.’ True again.

  ‘Then there’s the one only just come in, Tomintoul. That’s a mile out on the edge of Wintry Wood, backing on to the Forest. Very secluded, but the garden is a little overgrown.’

  ‘I think I’ll look at the Firs and Tomintoul.’

  ‘Not our nice new Roses?’

  He was disappointed and went on for some time about fireplaces, fully fitted gas appliances and plumbing, but gave in at last.

  ‘Would you like to borrow the keys to the two you’re interested in? You could post them through the letter box if the office is closed when you get back.’

  Feeling mean because he was being so helpful, I said yes please to the keys. As he was looking for them in a desk drawer I said, ‘I don’t suppose my cousin has been to you. She was helping him look too, but that would have been a few weeks ago. Young, quite tall with red-brown hair.’

  ‘Nobody of that description, ma’am. Most of our clients tend to be more mature ladies.’

  I left with the two sets of keys, the sketch plan and a headful of directions. I chose the lane leading to The Firs first because it looked shadier and the afternoon was hot. The house turned out to be medium-sized with a lot of fancy brickwork, a gravel drive almost as wide as it was long, rhododendrons in the front. There was a similar house next door to it with enough shrubbery in between to make things difficult for nosy neighbours, then nothing else but fields and some buildings half a mile away that looked like a farmhouse and barns. I used the keys and wandered upstairs and downstairs through empty rooms, footsteps echoing on bare boards. The place had been thoroughly cleaned out and there wasn’t as much as a hairpin to show who had lived there or what they’d done. I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for, only that whatever it was, it wasn’t there. As I let myself out and was bending to lock up a man’s voice said, ‘Good afternoon, ma’am. I’m from next door. I wondered if you needed any help.’

  So much for shrubbery deterring them. He was an elderly brown-faced man in a Panama hat, leaning on a stick. I explained I’d got the key from the agent and was looking on behalf of my brother.

  ‘What does your brother do for a living?’

  By the sound of it, you’d have to pass a viva voce examination before they let you come and live here.

  ‘He’s a doctor.’

  A nod, conceding that doctors might be acceptable. ‘It was a professor who had it before.’

  ‘What kind of professor?’

  ‘A retired one. Classics, I think it was, but retired a long time.’

  It didn’t sound like a nest of anarchists.

  ‘Did he have a big family?’

  ‘Only a daughter who kept house for him.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘He died two months ago. His daughter’s gone to live with her sister’s family in Crawley.’

  ‘And nobody’s been living there since?’

  ‘No. I keep an eye on it of course, make sure that everything’s as it should be.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  No need of the watchers, with this one around. He raised his Panama to me, I wished him good afternoon and walked back to where I started.

  * * *

  The way to the other place, Tomintoul, was along the main road northwards. The scenery was nice enough, a wide expanse of town green, then the cool forest on the right. I looked at it longingly as I trudged because the sun was hot and the road dusty and infested with motorcars. Five of the brutes swept past me before I got to the opening of the lane that Mr Jones had marked on my map – one of them close enough to send me diving into the hedge. The lane at least was too narrow to attract them, no more than a track between the trees, rutted by carts and dented with hoofprints. After a few hundred yards it broadened out into a little clearing with three houses in it and forest all round, like a set for Babes in the Wood.

  Tomintoul would have been trundled in from a different stage set. It was a rambling bungalow in the style of the Indian Raj, behind a green-painted fence brimming over with climbing roses and honeysuckle. A path led from the rickety gate through a front garden so overgrown that I had to unwind myself from trails of perennial sweet peas fighting a losing battle with rampaging brambles. There was a wide verandah at the front of the house. The back garden was a space carved out of the forest, with an expanse of overgrown lawn, a children’s sandpit with an abandoned tin bucket in the middle of it, a swing with a broken seat, all framed in tree branches hanging over a sagging fence. I went back to the verandah and unlocked the door. Like the other house, it had been well tidied, but there were indications that its last inhabitants had been a large and easy-going family. The wallpaper was scuffed, the skirting boards scratched and dented. A room that looked as if it had been the nursery had a line of horizontal pencil marks on the walls, probably recording the family’s growth, and grooves in the linoleum that might have been made by a rocking horse. All disappointingly innocent.

  I locked the door behind me, chalking it up as another blank, and walked back up the path. Opposite Tomintoul was a less ambitious bungalow with a tidier garden. Next to it, the top of a thatched roof was just visible behind a high yew hedge. I was being watched again, or rather the young woman dead-heading roses in the garden of the bungalow was trying hard not to watch. The child with her, holding a garden trug for the rose heads, was less polite and I could see she was telling him it was rude to stare. We exchanged good mornings over her neat hedge and I explained I was house-hunting and felt mean again when I saw how pleased she was.

  ‘We’d love to see it lived in again. There’s been nobody for Jimmy to play with since the Hayworths went.’

  ‘A big family?’

  ‘Six children. We were so sorry when they left, but he was offered a headmaster’
s job in Yorkshire.’

  ‘How long’s it been empty?’

  ‘Two months, nearly.’

  Which disposed of Tomintoul. I was resigned to going back to the town and starting again, but didn’t want to tramp along the main road again and asked if there was a footpath through the Forest. The woman said yes, of course there was and came out of her gate to show me. She was ready to stop and talk, perhaps grateful for any adult conversation after a day with the child. She told me what a nice area it was, peaceful and healthy.

  ‘Do you get many strangers round here?’

  ‘Not many. A few walkers now and then.’

  The child meanwhile had wandered off. She called, ‘Jimmy, where are you?’, and his voice came back from the garden of the thatched cottage next door telling her he’d found an enormous butterfly. She gave me a mock despairing look.

  ‘I don’t care how enormous it is, darling. That’s not our garden.’

  She unlatched next door’s gate and went in under an arch of neatly clipped yew hedge to fetch the boy back. I stood outside by the gate, listening to the bees buzzing and admiring the little cottage that dozed behind its cushiony yew hedges like a cat in a basket. It was newly thatched and cream painted, with apricot-coloured roses over the porch and rows of beans at the side. The woman brought the boy back and I opened the gate for her, glancing at the carved wooden nameplate under my hand: Yew Tree Cottage. Fair enough name. Then something sparked – YTC.

  ‘Oh God.’

  She glanced at me.

  ‘What a pretty cottage,’ I said. ‘I suppose that one’s not for rent?’

  ‘Oh no. That belongs to our writer.’

  ‘Writer?’

  She was occupied with the child who was grizzling at being dragged away from the butterfly.

  ‘It’s supposed to be his hideaway, but of course we all know round here.’

  ‘Hideaway from what?’

  ‘There are plenty of other butterflies, darling, look. Just somewhere he can come and work in private when he’s starting a new book.’

  Something knotted up inside me. I wanted to walk away before this took me somewhere I’d rather not go.

  ‘He must be a successful writer if he can afford this.’

  ‘Oh yes. He and his wife lived here just after they were married. He was a teacher. Then when his books did so well they moved to somewhere larger in Surrey but they loved Yew Tree Cottage so much they kept it on. That was long before we moved here, but of course the local people do gossip and we’re all very proud of him.’

  ‘Are we talking about Vincent Hergest by any chance?’

  ‘Yes.’ She smiled, pleased I’d guessed. ‘I love his books, don’t you? Have you read his latest?’

  ‘Does he come here very much?’

  ‘Not very often. We’ve only seen him a few times. We just say good morning, the way you would to any neighbour. After all, if he comes here for privacy we should respect it, shouldn’t we?’

  ‘Has he been here recently?’

  ‘I last saw him about two months ago. He came to call on Mrs Grey when she was staying there.’

  ‘Mrs Grey?’

  ‘He’s very generous about letting his friends use it.’

  VG. Verona Grey? I tried to keep my voice on the same conversational level.

  ‘Was she staying on her own?’

  ‘While her husband was away working in France. She had a woman friend with her sometimes, but the friend had to go up to London a lot, so Vera was left on her own. I think she must have been lonely sometimes but she was very brave about it. We got quite friendly.’

  ‘An elderly woman?’

  ‘Oh no, very young, younger than I am. My husband said to me she hardly looked old enough to be married, let alone…’

  ‘Expecting?’

  She gave a little nod and a significant glance at the child. ‘I must have said something when we were talking and I could see her blushing and she looked at me in a way that, you know – well, you just know, don’t you?’

  ‘Was Vera Grey slim with red-brown hair?’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘I think perhaps I do. What was the friend like?’

  An anxious look came over her face. ‘Well, different. I must admit I was quite surprised that she and Vera … I mean, you know … although she was always perfectly polite when we happened to speak, which we didn’t often because she always seemed to be dashing off somewhere, but…’

  I thought I recognised the source of the anxiety. She was trying to convey without saying so that the friend was socially a step down from Vera.

  ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘Small, with dark hair cut short, like a pageboy’s.’

  ‘A northern Irish accent?’

  ‘To be honest, I thought it was Glaswegian, but they do sound alike if you’re not used to them, don’t they?’

  I didn’t answer, staring down the path of lavender bushes to the cottage. A few minutes ago it had looked a pleasant place. Now I wanted to drive a fist into its plump, self-satisfied face. The woman was chattering on happily.

  ‘Anyway, her husband must be back now.’

  ‘Vera’s? How do you know?’

  ‘We haven’t seen her for about a month, so we assumed that’s what must have happened.’

  ‘You didn’t see her go?’

  ‘No, but we were away visiting relatives around the end of May, so that must be when she went. I’d have liked to see her again, but it’s nice to think of her being back with her husband.’

  I suppose I said yes, very nice, or something along those lines. She walked with me to the start of the path through the Forest, the boy trailing beside us, still mourning his missed butterfly. They waved me off through the trees. Her parting words were, ‘I do hope you find the house you’re looking for.’

  I wished I hadn’t.

  Chapter Twenty

  IT DIDN’T EVEN FEEL LIKE ANGER. ANGER FLARES up and down, with sulks and smoulders in between the outbursts. The feeling that came over me didn’t change at all on the way back to London. It was as if a diver’s helmet had closed over my head and all I could see through the visor was a world that had changed and would never change back again. This new world felt and looked in some ways like the old world, but there wasn’t a single thing in it you could rely on to be the same. The train tracks might, if they chose, end in mid-field. Things that looked like doors might refuse to open, things that looked like walls might melt away to mist. When I talked to people, as I had to for the simple business of buying tickets and checking platforms, it was a surprise that they seemed to understand and answer me. I must have managed. I’m pretty sure I remembered to put the two sets of keys through the door of the estate agent before I left Epping.

  I got myself out to Elephant and Castle by underground and found the half-demolished street off Walworth Road. It was after seven o’clock by then, all work on the sites over for the weekend, but the smell of brick dust and drains was still hanging in the warm air. The gate to the scrapyard was unlocked. I went inside and pulled it up after me, not taking much trouble to be quiet. Kitty’s brother couldn’t be permanently on guard and with luck on a Saturday evening he’d be trick shooting at some music hall. It was possible that she’d be with him doing their double act, but there were figures moving inside the uncurtained windows of the martial arts academy so somebody had been left to look after the business. I got behind the remains of an old copper boiler and watched from a distance. It was fencing this time and, as far as I could see, three people there. The small one might be Kitty, but it was imposible to tell for sure because I could only see the top halves of their bodies and they were wearing masks and padded waistcoats. The sound of thudding feet and the occasional male gulp of triumph or frustration drifted out through an open window. After twenty minutes or so everything went quiet and there were no moving figures. Ten minutes after that two young men came round the side of the studio in flannels and jackets, hatless. The
y were carrying canvas sports bags and looked well exercised, pleased with themselves.

  ‘Fierce little filly, isn’t she,’ one of them said.

  They went past me without noticing and out of the gate. I walked over and looked through a window, standing to the side. There was only one person in the studio. She was sitting on a bench in the changing area at the far end of the room with the heavy curtain half-drawn back. The fencing mask was off, but she was still wearing the padded waistcoat. Even from a distance you could see that her short dark hair was spiky with sweat and her usually taut body slumped with tiredness or depression. The bench and the floor round it were strewn with foils, Indian clubs, shoes. The end of a long, hard day – only it wasn’t the end and it was going to get worse. I walked round the corner of the building, in at the door, smelling the beeswax odour of dry sweat.

  ‘Good evening, Kitty Dulcie.’

  She’d started putting things away and spun round, a shoe in each hand.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Come to talk to you.’

  ‘He told you, we don’t want you.’

  ‘How much were you paid?’

  ‘Get out, will you. Get out.’

  She dropped the shoes and started walking towards me, eyes on my face, arms a few inches out from her sides, hands at hip level.

  ‘Going to throw me out, are you? I shouldn’t try.’

  There are rules and courtesies in ju-jitsu and if I kept to them, she could probably get me on the floor. But I was around six inches taller, at least a stone heavier and in no mood for keeping rules. She stopped just beyond arm’s reach.