‘We sell this place. Add in your redundancy pay-off and the money your studio flat realised. The vendors will drop the asking price by—what, twenty percent?—for cash.’ She dared me to argue.
Perhaps I breathed the words upkeep and maintenance.
‘I’ve already lined up months of freelance work at twelve hundred pounds a day, double that for weekends.’ She ticked off the house’s attractions on her fingers. ‘Tennis court? Good. Swimming pool—too small, but we can enlarge it. Parking? We’ll need a bigger garage.’
‘We’ll never get planning permission.’
‘Not for anything above ground, okay, so we go underground. Croquet lawn. A lake. Check if it needs dredging, will you? Yes, it all looks good. What’s this about contemporary furniture? Oh, I thought they meant modern, not made at the same time as the house was built. We’ll buy as much as we can from the vendor. We can pick up the rest at auction.’
For we read you, of course.
It was possible to view auction lots on line, but I wanted to become properly acquainted with items I proposed to spend the rest of my life with. North Yorkshire: there I found a portrait of a horse that was good enough to be a Stubbs which would look lovely in the hall. Devon: in the unpromising surroundings of what was normally an indoor stock market there was a collection of early editions ideal for the library—Jane Austen, the Brontes, Scott and George Eliot (I know she was too late for the house but Middlemarch is set at the time of the 1832 Reform Act and just qualified). For the kitchen came gleaming copper pans and moulds from a village hall near Harlech. An early Worcester dinner service to display—not use!—in the dining room came from Birmingham. And in Cirencester I found a sampler I put hurriedly back on the table—someone had carefully embroidered the legend, Marry in haste; repent at leisure.
Not that I was repenting at anything. Finding time to teach IT at a local school—volunteers with my background were, after all, like hen’s teeth—I developed a pleasant enough routine. On days when I wasn’t at auctions I would stroll into the local town, and buy supplies from local traders. Moatham was undistinguished in appearance, but I liked its people, from the ex-serviceman Big Issue seller for whom I always bought a corned beef sandwich in exchange for the next episode of his life story, to the tradesmen I consulted about work I needed to do on the house or employed for more serious renovations. I enjoyed working in Knottsall House’s grounds (no mere garden for us) and kept the now huge pool and unused tennis court pristine. I was fitter than I’d ever been.
As for Taylor, I hardly saw enough of her to discover if she was still happy. I knew from our joint bank account that she was making eye-watering amounts by descending on big organisations and telling them how many hundred employees they should shed. I doubt if any of their settlements were generous. At first, at her suggestion, as it happens, we banned phones from the meals we managed to share—I was becoming an expert on high energy, low calorie meals so she could work fourteen hours, take no exercise and still look like Victoria Beckham. Later, however, there came texts she had to deal with, calls she had to take, and tweets she needed to giggle over.
By now her work as corporate executioner was taking her further afield; she roamed the multinationals, making them leaner and fitter. Work fled from the UK and Western Europe. Ted, the Big Issue seller, got a job with accommodation attached—in other words a prison sentence—and was replaced by Karl, an unattractive Polish specimen whose saving grace was his love for a mangy dog. He thanked me for forking out for vet’s bills by simply walking away from his pitch: I never knew what happened to him.
Occasionally I was invited to tag along with Taylor to some jolly or other, either in the city or even abroad, a corporate husband with all the corporate wives. The amount of flesh they displayed seemed to be in direct proportion to their husbands’ income. Thank goodness men could withdraw into the carapace of a DJ or a tux. It was surely only their wives’ eyes who appraised the jacket to see if it was the latest style. No, champagne and jet lag were not for me.
But our life together was still excellent. For one thing we never had enough time to quarrel. Furthermore, it was as if the itinerant nature of her life made the marriage bed more special. So I could tell myself that though my career path was far from the one I’d envisaged, it was one of contentment and fulfilment. If I was becoming, in my own quiet way, the lord of the manor, I wouldn’t argue. Church fete? Hold it on our lower lawn. Fundraising drinks and nibbles? Use our terrace or if it’s wet the grand entrance hall. Model yacht club? Feel free to use our lake.
I lived, however, with two fears. The first was the economic bubble would bring along a Russian oligarch so eager to add to his property portfolio that he made Taylor an offer she wouldn’t hesitate unilaterally to accept; the other—the flip-side of the coin—was her work would dry up, and we would be forced to sell. In the event, it looked as if neither would be realised: Taylor decided we should have a baby.
Georgiana, named, poor child, after that unhappy Duchess of Devonshire, was the joy of my life. Unfortunately Taylor and I were unable to agree on how Georgiana should be pronounced: Georgi- a-na or George-ayna. It was hardly worth arguing about: to me she was always Georgie, although Taylor stigmatised the name as passé middle-class nineteen-fifties. I never could be bothered to Google it to see if she was right. I had to share Georgie with a nanny—a succession of nannies as it happened, changed according to whichever theory of raising toddlers was propounded by the magazine Taylor happened to be reading at the time. The baby became a little girl: she held my heart in her grubby little hand. I knew from the way she ran to me with each new discovery, from the pain of a gravel-rashed knee to the wonder of a May-fly, that she worshipped me in return. If Georgie’d been as studiously polite to me as she was to Taylor it would have broken my heart, but Taylor seemed to think that was how children should treat their mothers. She also thought the best way to treat Georgie was to send the little mite to school. Not the local primary school. Away to school. Aged six. Her main motivation appeared to be the cuteness of the little uniforms with the curly-brimmed straw hats.
To say I objected is a masterpiece of understatement. I argued. I explained. I raged. I pleaded. And I gave up on the marriage.
Taylor sensed something was wrong, but probably couldn’t understand what it was. She knew the major changes she’d told me to make to the house weren’t being done; they wouldn’t be, because every day I could, I headed off into the next county to spend time with Georgie. Incensed by my apparent inefficiency, she started to leave me the sort of lists she’d left the cleaning lady, who’d left because she could stand them no more. I suspect Taylor never realised she’d gone, because I simply did her work to fill the emptiness of my days. I pocketed the inadequate pay, too.
The latest Big Issue seller was a pretty girl, Mina, who said she liked egg mayo sandwiches but really loved smoked salmon with cream cheese. One day, tucking into a Fair Trade chocolate bar I’d brought as her dessert, she observed she’d make more money back home. It seemed that she was highly qualified—she was a nurse who’d lost her job when the local hospital trust was merged with another to meet efficiency targets which might or might not have been set by Taylor. I asked why she stayed—I’d even have helped with the air fare home myself. But Romania wasn’t her target: her boyfriend, a tennis coach, who’d been working in South Africa, was now in America. I worried about her safety: what if Georgie was ever in the same awful situation? Something must be done. If she couldn’t go home, home must come to her, one way or another.
I’d had time to clear out and refurbish—heavens, the place now met the highest environmental criteria—what had once been a stable block. Taylor’s briefly evinced desire to ride had come to nothing, so I was reasonably sure Mina would live there undetected. All those unused rooms in the house, and she lived in a stable! She was probably warmer where she was, but my conscience was still wrung. But she insisted she was fine, even though she refused to give up her Big Iss
ue pitch and set off before eight each day.
I also made time to refresh my IT skills: a return to the job market was becoming more of a necessity each day. I needed to be able to prove to a family court that not only was I a fit person to have custody of Georgie, I was able to provide for her, too. I improved so much I was able to sort out a glitch in some software Taylor was using which had defeated the IT section of her current employer. I should have felt guilty, I suppose: while I was repairing it I couldn’t resist having a look at some of her files. What I found made interesting but unsurprising reading. In addition to the money she regularly put into our joint account she put an even greater sum into an account of which I knew nothing. It would have been the work of moments to syphon off an insignificant but regular amount into a new account for myself, but I resisted. It was Georgie I wanted, not money. Georgie and the house. Not just any house. The house I’d put my heart and soul into.
On rare days between jobs Taylor would walk round the grounds with me. I was terrified she might detect some sign of Mina, despite our agreement that each day before she left for her pitch the rooms she occupied must be forensically clean. Mina obviously wanted even less than I did an explosion from a wife who might consider herself betrayed. Not that I’d ever touch Mina: I felt she was a grown-up version of Georgie, to be cared for and cherished.
One bright, warm morning was so lovely I wondered why I’d ever toiled in an office, when working in the grounds was so rewarding, I accompanied Taylor on a swift tour.
She nodded: yes, they could have stepped from the pages of a heritage magazine!
In the middle of the largest lawn, she stopped dead, pointed at the lake, which for safety’s sake I’d fenced off the moment Georgie started walking, and declared, ‘We should have a party. A big one. With a theme. A beach party.’
‘We haven’t got a beach,’ I objected foolishly.
I had to admit she had more vision and imagination than I did. ‘That bank over there, where the geese kept coming ashore last winter,’ she said pointing.
Marvelling that she’d even noticed such a detail, I nodded. ‘They didn’t do the grass there much good, did they?’
‘So we get rid of the grass.’ For we read you, of course. ‘Dig it out to a really good depth—a couple of metres. More. We need a beach at least thirty metres wide, five or six deep. A little platform for a life guard here. Some beach huts over there. A volleyball net there. The sand will have to be top quality, of course.’
‘What about the displaced soil? Any plans for that?’ I asked, desperately keeping irony out of my voice.
‘What about making an island in the middle of the lake? Maybe the damned birds would nest on that instead. And now Georgie can swim, tear up that hideous fence—it’ll make a good bonfire and we can have fireworks at the end of the party.’
It didn’t take me very long to master the controls of the digger we hired, at least as far as the excavating was concerned. I was less pleased with the island I’d been told to create, but when it was turfed over and a few maturing trees planted, it would look good enough at dusk. It was the work of moments to work out how many cubic metres of sand I’d need, to achieve a nicely sloping beach, but Taylor came and peered over my shoulder: ‘Double that,’ she said.
‘Not if you want a slope—a nice gradient into the water. The amount you suggest would practically make a sheer drop—a sand dune at least,’ I conceded, trying to laugh her out of her folly, but only reinforcing her intransigence. ‘It’d be far too steep for beach cricket or volleyball. Now, what about a few canoes?’
We worked out the guest list together, nominally at least, since I’d lost touch with many of my old friends and she had plenty of contacts she needed to cultivate. Then there were decisions to be made about food.
‘I’d be happy to run the barbecue myself,’ I said mildly.
‘If you want the best you hire the best,’ she said.
We compared quotes from three catering firms and agreed on her choice. I also booked a couple of marquees, in case it dared to rain.
Then I turned my attention to new beach. For some reason the contractor simply dumped a mountain of sand some twenty metres from the edge of the lake. Fortunately I could hire a dumper truck before Taylor came back from her latest trip—the Channel Islands, I think—and I was more than half way through the mound when she came down to inspect my handiwork.
‘You’ve not distributed it very evenly,’ she observed, as I trundled up with the latest load. ‘You should have raked it over more often.’
‘I think I’ll need the JCB to do that,’ I said, hoping to play with a familiar machine rather than continue my wrestling match with the controls of a decidedly contrary one. She’d been right, of course: the beach was no more than an intermittent series of humps.
‘For goodness’ sake, you’ve got a rake, haven’t you?’
I parked the dumper truck and jumped down on to the beach, looking up at her irate features. ‘It’s hard work,’ I said, doing my best. At last, having made very little impression, I started to scramble out. I might have been trying to ascend a down escalator. With each step I took, I slipped nearer the lake. A last a crabwise approach worked, and I hauled myself back up, ending in a gasping heap beside the dumper truck.
‘I’d forgotten what a wimp you are,’ Taylor informed me. She looked at her watch. ‘I’ve got an hour or so before the taxi to the airport is due. You tip and I’ll rake.’
‘You don’t want to hurt your back, Taylor; it’s not just dragging the sand around, it’s getting safely up and down.’
‘Just get on that damned truck and do it.’
‘I’ve got a full load. At least let me empty most of it first. It always goes with such a rush.’
‘What part of do it don’t you understand?’ she demanded icily, leaping down on to the most recently dumped pile of sand and disappearing, of course, from sight.
Very well, I’d tip and she’d rake. Pulling the tip lever gently, I hoped to release a steady, gentle stream. Instead, I released a cascade. I did my best to halt it. The hopper hovered in mid-air. But there was still enough momentum in the remaining sand for tonnes of it to pour remorselessly down.
Bracing myself for the sort of scathing criticism I realised Taylor enjoyed delivering, I slid nervously down from the seat and peered over the lip of the beach. ‘I’m sorry—the lever’s not very easy to control. Why don’t you do the next load and I’ll do my best with the rake?’
There was no reply. No doubt she was speechless with anger. Or perhaps—there were dents in the soft dry sand that were the nearest you could get to footprints—she had stomped off in anger, and gone to do her packing. Like a guilty schoolboy I tipped three or four more loads. Better make it five or six. If I could have found the rake, I’d have had another go at smoothing it out myself.
I checked my watch: she should have calmed down by now. Tail between my legs, I trudged back to the house, calling my apologies the moment I’d pulled off my wellies by the back door.
Silence. I really had offended her, hadn’t I?
I made some coffee and took it up to her bedroom. It had become hers when Georgie had had a terrible attack of croup and needed night-time caring. Naturally I’d moved to the bedroom next to hers, so Taylor could sleep in peace. Her case—the largest she could wangle on board as cabin luggage—and her computer bag stood neatly beside the door. Her travel outfit lay on the bed. Of Taylor and her sandy jeans there was no sign.
With cold horror I knew where she was. And I also knew that no amount of frantic digging would move those tonnes of sand which would have crushed or suffocated her.
Which would do Georgie more harm, knowing her father had killed her mother—however accidentally—and might serve time in jail for manslaughter, or believing her mother had simply not returned from a business trip?
No contest. But first I needed Mina, not to confess to, heavens, no. Just for a little chat, which took place over not her everyd
ay egg mayo but over her real favourite, smoked salmon on wholemeal. Had her boyfriend found another job?
She nodded, a little cream cheese on her lip. ‘It gets worse. He’s been head hunted for a club in Ecuador. Sometimes I think I shall never see him again.’
‘I think I may be able to fix it. In fact, I know I can. Pack up and come back to the stables in about an hour. No fuss. Just knock off early. Okay? All you have to do is trust me.’
It didn’t take very long to make a few changes on Taylor’s computer. Firstly, I rebooked her ticket: she no longer wanted a return to Monaco, but chose a single to Ecuador, a country with which of course the UK had no extradition treaty. Then I gave her reason to go to Quito: once I’d accessed her secret account (it held a great deal more than I’d expected) it was easy enough to move funds to a company there from a couple of the blue chip companies for which she’d worked. In view of her savings, perhaps escape had been on her agenda anyway, if not to South America. As for her passport, if Mina pulled back her pretty hair into a tight and forbidding knot and looked angry, she was a dead ringer for Taylor. From her purse I extracted the bank card operating the secret account. Oh, she was so careless with her passwords—how often had I warned her?
I intercepted Mina before she could return to the stable and explained.
‘You mean I can draw money using this card?’ she squeaked. ‘As much as I want?’
‘As much as you feel you ought,’ I said. ‘You’ll need an apartment, a car—don’t stint yourself. The only condition is you must promise me that within a year you will change your name. You must never try to leave Ecuador in your own name or using this passport—come on, Mina, there are enough drugs criminals over there to sort out your ID. You—and this woman—have to disappear.’
As the deserted husband, I had two choices: to continue with the party, putting on a brave face, or to call it off. By the time the JCB had flattened the beach down to a compact smooth surface, with Taylor some four metres beneath it—though I couldn’t be entirely sure how far or under which mound she lay—I did what she’d have done in similar circumstances. First I reinstated the fence. Next I confirmed all the arrangements and the show went on, with the caveat that I thought the contractors had messed up their beach-laying and it was unsafe to venture on to the sand. I might not have liked Taylor very much but I drew the line at dancing on her grave.
Murder at the Beach: Bouchercon 2014 Anthology Page 5