Strangers at the Gate

by Catriona McPherson

  Monday

  Chapter 1

  We were walking up the dark drive to the big house. The fog was so thick it swallowed my torch beam a step ahead of me, so thick it dripped from the trees pressing in on both sides, so thick it turned my breath loud in my ears and cold in my mouth.

  It was me that heard the footsteps because Paddy was sloshing through the puddle and I was edging round it.

  ‘Hey!’ I said, urgent but quiet. ‘Someone’s there.’

  ‘What?’ His voice was a squawk, and whoever it was up in the trees heard him and started plunging away from us, cracking twigs and kicking leaves.

  ‘There!’ I said. ‘Listen.’ But there was nothing to hear now. I played my torch back and forth, peering into the dazzle of lit-up fog.

  ‘It was probably an echo.’ Paddy was beside me now, his eyes screwed up and his chest rising and falling. ‘Switch your torch off.’

  I did. A second later another little bead of light snapped off too.

  ‘My God,’ I breathed. ‘Did you see that?’

  ‘Reflection,’ Paddy said, but his voice was shaking. ‘It’s the fog. Playing tricks.’

  ‘More fool us for letting it,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t we drive?’

  ‘We’d look like townies,’ said Paddy. He was back to his normal voice. Me moaning meant him mocking, the seesaw of our marriage rocking steady on its base again.

  ‘We are townies,’ I said. Him putting on airs meant me puncturing them. Seesaw. ‘A car would have given them warning we were on our way. Same as an entry-phone. This way, it’s like we’re ambushing them.’

  ‘They invited us.’

  ‘Actually, Paddington, they didn’t invite us. Lady Bountiful just informed us.’

  ‘One night,’ he said. ‘A welcome party.’

  ‘And an office party on Friday to welcome us again. Then we’ll need to have them over to ours. Before you know it, we’ll be playing bridge.’

  ‘I can think of worse things. Anyway, we need to sign the house papers.’

  I said nothing. Typical lawyers, was what I was thinking. We were paying the council tax and bills in a free house off a colleague but God forbid we’d wing it. Anyway, it wasn’t free at all, if this was in the small print. Paddy had never made me hang out with lawyers when we lived in Edinburgh. I loved that about him. ‘We’ll probably get run over,’ I said, ‘stumbling along a lane like something from Thomas Hardy.’

  ‘They go in and out the other way,’ Paddy said. ‘She just came round by us today to say hello. And make your mind up. You can’t get run over if it’s too quiet. Do you like traffic or not? Eh? Finnie? Eh?’

  The truth was I liked traffic that went past on the street, nothing to do with me. At teatime, when I’d heard a car, I was perfectly happy. It was when I realised the car was slowing and stopping right outside the gate lodge I felt my pulse quicken. I drew myself into the shadows at the back of the room where no one – Jehovah’s Witness, broom-seller, serial-killer – would see me. When I heard the front-door handle rattling, I went through to the hall, keeping my right hand hidden behind my back.

  The key turned, the door opened and Paddy put his head round it. ‘Finn?’ He’d squinted at me. ‘Why’s the door locked? Is that a hammer?’

  ‘I’m hanging pictures,’ I said. ‘Was that a car?’

  ‘Did you think it was an owl?’ Paddy said.

  But I wasn’t ready to laugh about the owl yet. ‘Who’s there?’ I said.

  Paddy stood back and held the door wide for a tall, thin old lady in a belted mackintosh and buckled wellies. She had white hair brushed straight back and clenched up in a row of curls at her collar, like the Queen. A slash of red lipstick was the only colour on her pale, powdered face. Also like the Queen. She had better bones, though.

  She was simpering up at Paddy. I’d seen it before. He could charm the birds from the trees. I used to watch him at church functions and marvel. One time he got out of a speeding ticket and the policeman even apologised for making us late.

  ‘Tuft Dudgeon,’ the woman said, dragging her eyes away from his face at last and marching up to stick out a hand. ‘And you must be Finnie.’ Her fingernails were red too and she wore a lot of rings. They dug into my palm as we shook. ‘Welcome to Widdershins. I told Paddy here I wouldn’t take no for an answer. You are having supper with us tonight. Seven for eight, dears.’

  Then she turned round, wellies squeaking on the lino and marched off again.

  ‘Tuft,’ I said. ‘Lovatt and Tuft Dudgeon.’

  But Paddy didn’t laugh with me. He laughed at me. ‘I can’t believe you’re greeting guests with a hammer,’ he said.

  ‘I thought it had all changed,’ I said, gazing after Tuft. ‘Scampering out when they click their fingers.’

  ‘What?’ said Paddy.

  ‘Never mind.’ I went outside to make sure she had really gone and saw Paddy’s racing bike sitting on its kickstand on the gravel. ‘She gave you a lift home, then? That didn’t last long.’

  ‘She offered. I couldn’t refuse.’

  ‘Scamper, scamper,’ I said, under my breath, as he wheeled his bike round to the shed.

  Whether he heard me or not, he was smiling again when he came in at the kitchen door. ‘It’s Monday-night supper,’ he said. ‘We’ll be back in time for the ten o’clock news.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’ We had lived in our lovely flat for eighteen months and never crossed any of our neighbours’ thresholds, except to feed a downstairs cat. And since when did he call it ‘supper’? I went into the other room to where our so-called drinks collection was half unpacked. I thought we had a new bottle of sherry, but it turned out to be port and it was Tesco’s own brand.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Paddy said.

  ‘We can’t go empty-handed.’ I had my head in the fridge now, thinking maybe there was some posh pickle or something I could wrap in tissue paper. But we had cleared out all that crap before we moved.

  ‘Ahem.’ I looked up. He was holding a Christmas cactus, covered with flowers. ‘I’m not a caveman, you know.’

  ‘How did you get that home without her seeing it?’

  ‘She didn’t ask. People like the Dudgeons are masters of not noticing things.’

  ‘People like the Dudgeons,’ I echoed. ‘Posh gits, you mean? Are you sure you want to take me along? What if they ask where I went to school?

  ‘They won’t,’ said Paddy. ‘They already know all about both of us.’

  So there was that, too. Now, as I tramped up the drive in the pitch black, going for a meal I didn’t want with a pair of old farts I didn’t know, it hardly helped to wonder what they’d unearthed about me.

  The drive had been tarmacked sometime in its life, but there were ridges and potholes, these days, and a deep ditch on both sides. Paddy had boots on and trudged straight through the bumps and puddles. I had put on a half-decent pair of wedges to go with my wrap dress and was picking my way a bit more carefully. When a giant sinkhole appeared in our torch beams, he went through it on one side, I round it on the other.

  So we were far apart, right at either edge, when I saw the movement and Paddy said it was an echo, and then a reflection, and I didn’t believe him. I don’t know how long we stood there, the two of us. The three of us. It was long enough for my heart to stop banging and my fingers to stop tingling. Long enough for the slump after the rush to kick in. I felt my shoulders fall and turned to Paddy. I could see the glint of his wide-open eyes and the tiny white puffs of his panicky breathing. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was as spooked as me.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, reaching out and squeezing his arm, before a cracked branch had me whipping my head back round again. Out there, in the trees, there was a flash of paleness, then the steady rustle of dead leaves as someone moved away up the hill. ‘That’s not an owl,’ I said.

  Paddy let go a long breath at last. ‘No. It was a deer.’

  ‘It had a torch. Deers don’t have torches.’

>   ‘Deer don’t have an s either,’ said Paddy. ‘It’s like “sheep”. And it wasn’t a torch. It was a reflection. Let’s ask Lovatt and Tuft if any of them are tagged.’

  ‘Paddy,’ I said. ‘That was not a deer. A deer would run away. It wouldn’t wait to see what we did, would it? Would it?’

  ‘Maybe it was a dog. Maybe you saw its name tag glinting.’

  I closed my eyes. Was that possible? What did I know about how light worked in fog? Or if deers’ eyes – deer’s eyes? – were like cats’ eyes.

  ‘Come on, Finn,’ said Paddy, pulling at me. ‘We’ll be late.’

  ‘Are there still poachers?’ I said, when we were on our way again.

  ‘Okay,’ Paddy said, trying a laugh. ‘We’ll agree on poachers if it means so much to you.’

  He slung the arm without the Christmas cactus round my neck as the drive ahead of us began to glow and we emerged into a clearing, where a lamplit house sat waiting.

  It was a bigger version of the gate lodge, the same sludgecoloured walls and black timbers, the same latticed windows, squint in just the same way, bulging on one side of the door and clenched in the shadows on the other. It had more gables and chimneys, being so much bigger, and the ivy scrambling over it was clipped close, so you could see its stems clutching at the walls, like arthritic fingers.

  ‘It’s a nice house, isn’t it?’ Paddy said.

  I looked at him to see if he was joking. ‘Yeah, why not have fake beams if there’s no neighbours to judge you?’ I said. If I laughed at the place maybe I could pretend it hadn’t unnerved me.

  ‘Shh! It’s not “fake”,’ Paddy said. ‘It’s Arts and Crafts. Come and see what it’s like inside.’

  I followed him up the steps. The porch was a circle of red bricks that made me think of a mouth. And inside the mouth the front door stood open, as if in welcome.

  Chapter 2

  ‘Poachers?’ said Lovatt Dudgeon, taking our coats. ‘Wouldn’t that be marvellous! If I thought any of the local layabouts would trap a rabbit on my land instead of throwing chip papers out of the car window as they drive by, I’d take my hat off to them. Straight on, straight on.’

  We’d entered a square hall with wood panelling and a real fire crackling away, but he was shooing us towards the smell of cooking at the end of a long corridor. There was a worn strip of faded carpet, prints just as faded on both walls.

  ‘No, we haven’t had a poacher here in living memory.’ We arrived in a steamy kitchen. Tuft Dudgeon was basting something in a grill pan, holding a cigarette in the same hand as the basting spoon. ‘They’d starve before they caught a fish and gutted it themselves, wouldn’t they, Tuftie my love? If it doesn’t come in freezer portions, they’d starve.’

  ‘Says Raymond Blanc,’ Tuft said, sliding the grill pan back in and slamming the door. ‘Welcome, dears. Now, isn’t that pretty? Put it in the middle of the table and we can feast our eyes on it over our frozen chicken breasts.’

  The kitchen wasn’t like the passageway. It was sleek, with brushed steel and granite. Very tidy too. Gleaming. I set the cactus down on a small table set for four beyond the island and turned to find Lovatt and Paddy already on their way out of the room.

  ‘Gone to fetch drinkies,’ Tuft said. ‘Pull up a pew.’ She bit her lip. ‘That’s not politically incorrect, is it?’

  ‘Nope,’ I said. I was used to people getting weird when they found out what I did for a living.

  ‘Oh, good. I’d crucify myself if I thought I was being crass.’ She winked.

  I laughed as I settled onto one of the high stools. She shoved a bowl towards me. ‘Rub that in, will you?’ she said. ‘Crumble-top. I’ve got some lovely early rhubarb.’

  Silently thanking Masterchef, I rolled up my sleeves and got going.

  ‘So,’ said Tuft, smiling at me. She was scrubbing potatoes with a Brillo pad. I tried not to notice. ‘Are you looking forward to getting stuck in? We’re all very excited.’

  ‘Uh,’ I said.

  ‘I’m a volunteer,’ she added. ‘Chair of the committee, actually.’

  ‘The committee that…?’

  ‘That fundraises,’ said Tuft. ‘For St Angela’s and now for you.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘You’re my boss, then.’

  ‘Not at all. You’re the boss, dear. And you mustn’t hesitate to bring your experience to bear. Your experience got you the job.’

  ‘My experience,’ I echoed. I’d been a deacon nearly ten years, but I’d never had a full-time gig anywhere. Maybe she meant my hard-won skill-set. ‘I was surprised, if I’m honest, that you needed me here. It seems so…’

  I’d come to the interview expecting boarded-up shop fronts, with only the bookie and offy thriving, maybe miners’ houses, sheltering refugees now that the mines were boarded up too. Instead I found a dress shop, an ironmonger’s, three cafés and a family butcher. Snug little cottages. Trim gardens. Shiny cars.

  ‘So smug?’ said Tuft. ‘So bubble-wrapped?’

  ‘So settled,’ I said. ‘So steady. Paddy’s job was a dream come true all on its own. Mine as well is like a fairytale.’

  ‘You two, in a matched pair, are a dream come true for us!’ Tuft said. ‘Heaven-sent to lick Simmerton Kirk into shape.’

  ‘Well, it’ll be a listening brief for the first year, I expect. I’ve got a lot to learn from you all.’

  ‘Very diplomatic. Although between you, me and the gatepost, the Reverend Robert Waugh is a bit of a chocolate teapot. Well, you did meet him, didn’t you? When you came down to interview? I’m assuming you caught him between golf games.’ She grinned at me, her eyes pinched against the smoke from the cigarette she held in her red lips. And maybe she saw me looking. ‘Silly me,’ she said. ‘Would you care for a ciggie? I’ve stopped asking, to be honest.’

  ‘I haven’t had so much as a puff for over a year,’ I said. She took it from her lips between finger and thumb, like a workie, and held it out to me.

  I cocked an ear and heard Paddy laughing at something a good long way away from the kitchen. I grinned back.

  It tasted a bit of Brillo pad against my bottom lip, but as I sucked a cool, harsh jet of smoke down into my lungs and felt the nicotine thwack me, I almost swooned.

  ‘To be honest,’ Tuft went on, ‘I’m just as happy not to have a conscientious minister looking over my shoulder. Wouldn’t you agree?’

  A door opened somewhere else in the house and the men’s voices grew louder. In one movement she took the fag from my hand and held out a bowl of olives.

  ‘Stuffed with anchovies,’ she said. ‘They’ll mask anything.’

  She was asking me how Paddy and I had met when the kitchen door opened and they came back in with a drinks tray.

  ‘We’d both spent time in Canada,’ I said.

  ‘Canada?’ Lovatt’s eyebrows shot up and bristled.

  ‘But we met in Edinburgh after we were back again,’ Paddy said. ‘On St Patrick’s Day. Finnie had a maple-leaf hat on.’

  ‘Closest thing I could find to a shamrock,’ I said, like I always do. It’s a well-worn tale.

  ‘And a year later we were married,’ Paddy said.

  ‘That’s what I like to hear,’ said Tuft. She was spiking the scrubbed potatoes all over with a fork. I thought I could still see traces of pink foam on them from the Brillo. ‘Far too much shilly-shallying these days. It took Lovatt six weeks start to finish, from spying me across a crowded room to dropping on one knee. Met at Christmas, engaged by St Valentine’s Day, married in time for Easter.’ She threw the potatoes into the microwave and slammed the door.

  ‘Thought I’d better snap you up while the going was good,’ her husband said. ‘Did you know, young Paddy, that there’s a better answer than “yes” to a man’s proposal?’

  ‘Is there?’ Paddy said. He was sucking down the large whisky Lovatt had provided, and had eaten two of the anchovy olives and a handful of crisps. Right at home.

  ‘I said, “Will you marry me,
my sweet?” and she said…’

  They had their own well-worn tale.

  ‘I said, “Yes, but only for ever”,’ said Tuft. ‘None of this high-jinks-at-the-sailing-club nonsense for me.’ She wriggled a pair of joined-together oven mitts onto her hands and reached into the grill for the chicken.

  ‘I’d had a somewhat checkered past, you see,’ said Lovatt, ‘but I put it behind me from that day onward. And we’ve had a gay old time, haven’t we?’

  ‘Twenty-five happy years,’ said Tuft. ‘I wish you two the same and much more since you’ve started rather earlier. You’re children still.’ She pushed a bowl of pink glop towards me. I guessed I was supposed to sprinkle it with the crumble mix.

  ‘And I’m no less romantic now than I was when I carried you over the threshold,’ Lovatt said, in ringing tones. ‘Age has not withered me.’

  ‘Romantic?’ said Tuft. ‘When I was down in London seeing the Dutch masters for a few days, Finnie, he texted, “Have put your toothbrush in an egg-cup of Listerine for your return.”‘

  ‘What could be more thoughtful than that?’ said Lovatt, his eyebrows high on his bald brow again.

  ‘This is beautifully en pointe,’ said Tuft, prodding the chicken. ‘I loathe overcooked meat. À table, children.’

  I was a bit of a fan of no salmonella, but I didn’t want to quibble.

  ‘Most romantic gestures – teddy bears and whatnot – are so banal,’ Lovatt began again, as we settled to our filled plates. The salmonella chicken tasted okay. Even the baked potatoes tasted okay, the Brillo soap zapped in the microwave.

  ‘What I can’t stand is home-made wedding vows,’ said Tuft. ‘Ugh. One squirms with embarrassment for them and it’s all so terribly earnest.’ She stopped with a fork-load of chicken halfway to her mouth. ‘I hope I haven’t dropped a brick.’ We reassured her. ‘We sat through one where the groom maundered on about loving his bride’s sunny smile and her beautiful eyes. I mean to say: how many people have ugly eyes?’

  I laughed and pressed my leg against Paddy’s under the table, forgiving him for dragging me up the drive, for dragging me down to the lodge, for everything.