by Freya North
While Fen slept in her old bed, Matt sipped a glass of water to make the Nurofen go down and his stomach contents stay down. While Matt sipped water, Jake zipped up his jeans. And Abi watched him, remaining in bed where she lit a cigarette though she knew it was as dangerous as it was decadent. All the while, Gemma, who had gone to bed early with what may well develop into flu, slept soundly; unaware that a man had been in her house, let alone her housemate’s bed.
‘Seen my socks?’ Jake whispered. Abi motioned to the chair by the window, and then to her chest of drawers to the left. Jake found one sock under the former, the other on top of the latter. Fully dressed, he came over to Abi in her bed, and started to kiss her breasts most attentively.
‘You’d better go,’ Abi laughed quietly, though she’d have been happy for him to stay. ‘I’m giving a presentation tomorrow morning and I only want to feel shagged in one sense of the word.’ She eyed the flies of his jeans appreciatively. He kissed her, wishing she’d had a drag of fag after, rather than before.
‘I’ll let myself out, shall I?’
‘No bloody way,’ said Abi, ‘I’ll follow you down to chain the door. Don’t want to find you lurking in the broom cupboard tomorrow morning.’
‘Why don’t you come and lurk in my broom cupboard tomorrow evening?’ Jake suggested lasciviously as he stood on the doorstep.
‘Can’t do tomorrow,’ Abi said, matter of fact, ‘but I could do the next night.’
While Jake strolls out in search of a black cab, Matt decides his flatmate is a dirty stop-out and goes to bed. Matt and Abi switch off their lights at much the same time. Judith continues to sip wine in bed. None of these three can drop off to sleep. There’s too much recent sex bombarding their minds and continuing to make their bodies fizz, throb and ache.
Gemma, though, sleeps soundly – but will wake up with a stinking cold tomorrow. Fen sleeps soundly too. For these two, sex is far from their minds. For the time being at least.
Ten miles from Fen, at Keeper’s Dwelling, Barry the lurcher and Beryl the labrador huff and twitch in their baskets. Upstairs, James is out for the count, snoring; but so lightly that he’s really just breathing heavily. Margot Fitzpatrick-Montague-Laine comes into his dream, comes into his house. She brings Fen McCabe with her. Fen is wearing wellingtons. She looks dowdy. She has a terrible laugh. And she’s scared of the dogs. She has horrible hands. Chewed fingernails and red, blotchy, scaly skin. She keeps laughing at nothing. ‘I want to hit her over the head with Eden,’ Margot whispers to James. ‘And then I want you to fuck me like Adam is fucking Eve,’ Margot says, eyeing the sculpture greedily.
James wakes from the dream with a hard-on. But he ignores it. The dream, though bizarre, was vivid. He is disconcerted that he is now a little nonplussed by his future visitor. And yet, hadn’t he cleaned the house, quite thoroughly, quite excited, during the evening? And bought fancy biscuits and pikelets to be toasted?
‘The Fetherstones,’ he reminds himself out loud. ‘I want her to want them. I need the money.’
Sleep continued to elude him. John Grisham was no help. Nor was a Thames & Hudson book on sculpture. Nor was the thought of a wank, let alone a few trial tugs. He switched on the light and listened hard to the silence.
James had brought the oil sketches and the small bronze into his bedroom. Almost as if this was to be their last night in his ownership. He looked across to them, to Adam and Eve in two dimensions and three. Suddenly, he didn’t want to lose them.
Perhaps I’ll cancel Fen McCabe. She in the wellies with the ugly hands. Maybe I don’t need the money quite as urgently after all. I’ll phone the bank first thing. And dependent on their advice, I’ll cancel McCabe.
FIFTEEN
The two divinest things this world has got,
A lovely woman in a rural spot!
James Hunt
‘Gracious, Fenella,’ Django murmured.
‘Blimey, Django,’ Fen responded.
They’d driven towards Matlock, through the small town of Farley Bath and Django’s 2CV had made a brave assault on the 1:4 hill that met them just as soon as they’d crossed the humpback bridge. The steep road ahead was just as twisting as the river they’d been following. An army of oaks and cedars stood to attention as Fen and Django trundled upwards. The density of foliage threw light around the road in shards and pebbles and made the shade seem eerie. Under this canopy, the old stone walls were not grey as those on the moors; here they were mottled with moss and fringed with cascades of ivy. Django and Fen had remarked that they’d been unaware there was a house up this road. They’d thought the whole area was Forestry Commission, that it was a road that merely transported travellers from A to B. They’d never seen the lion and unicorn lurking either side of the entrance of a hidden driveway on the right. When Fen had read through Mr Caulfield’s directions, and come upon the lion and unicorn, Django had taken the sheet of paper from her convinced she was making it up. But there they were, the lion and unicorn, licked with lichen, ears chipped or missing, time corroding a clear delineation of their features. Still, though, they were impressive; the lion had one paw draped nonchalantly over a shield, the unicorn reared up with forelegs slicing the air though his horn was only half its original length. They presented a grand herald, but still Fen and Django weren’t quite prepared for the grandeur of Delvaux Hall at the end of the majestic drive.
‘Gracious, Fenella,’ Django murmured.
‘Blimey, Django,’ Fen responded.
‘Don’t think I’ve met this Delvaux chap,’ Django mused, whilst a pillared double doorway soared in front of his eyes.
‘I think he’s probably long dead, Django,’ said Fen, thinking the proportions of the windows set into smooth, creamy-peach stone, quite beautiful. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘I’m not to go to the main hall, but the keeper’s dwelling.’
Fen and Django sat in the Citroën and regarded the smaller driveways left and right of the main house.
‘Right!’ Django declared. ‘Right!’ he proclaimed. ‘I’m nearly always right,’ he chortled. And he chugged the car off to the right. Only to arrive first at the Forester’s Lodge and then at the Huntsman’s Cottage. ‘Well, right might have been wrong but we’ve had a bloody good nosey,’ Django said, retracing their tracks, the 2CV coping valiantly with the dinks and ruts in the tarmac forming the lane left of Delvaux Hall.
‘Now, you’re quite sure you don’t want me to accompany you to the front door?’ Django offered, having drawn up outside impressive iron gates.
‘Quite sure,’ Fen assured him.
‘And you’re quite sure he does indeed possess works of art by Fetherstone,’ Django continued, gravely serious, ‘and you’re sure that he isn’t a homicidal axe-wielding madman?’
‘Quite sure,’ Fen laughed, ‘on both counts.’
‘Call me if you need a lift to Chesterfield,’ Django said, taking the tip of her nose in the crook of his fingers, like he used to when she was young.
‘What!’ Fen teased. ‘You’d forego dominoes afternoon at the Rag and Thistle to drive me to my train?’
‘If,’ Django paused, lifting his index finger, ‘if I really had to. Though I hasten to add that I’d hold it against you and would dock, accordingly, a great proportion of that which I intend to leave you in my will.’
‘I’m sure Mr Caulfield won’t mind running me in to town,’ an unsure Fen breezed. ‘He probably drives a white Rolls-Royce with a gold-coloured radiator grille.’
‘Not if he has Fetherstones,’ Django reasoned. ‘They would suggest he has taste. A white-and-gold Roller would preclude that altogether.’
Fen was delighted. She never realized that Django actually appreciated the work of Julius Fetherstone. In the past, he’d remarked that Abandon looked like two people being mangled by a tumble dryer. In the past, he’d referred to Fetherstone as ‘a dirty old codger’. He’d looked at a maquette for Hunger and declared it ‘downright rude, just porn legitimized by being in bronze and a
century old’.
But that’s all a show, Fen thought with great satisfaction, though she did wonder why she hadn’t twigged before now, that before now she had truly taken it personally.
‘Bye, Django,’ she said fondly, wrapping her arms around his neck and giving him a heartfelt squeeze. ‘I’ll come home again soon. Hopefully, with my two sisters.’
‘Hmm,’ Django mused, slipping the steering-wheel through his hands, ‘and maybe a new lover in tow!’
‘Django!’ Fen objected, tugging against his slack seat-belt, wishing she could make sure he’d fix it.
‘Have fun, young ’un,’ he said with a wink.
She watched the 2CV list and lurch its way away. And then she observed the iron gates.
‘Julius!’ she said under her breath, suddenly feeling absurdly happy. Derbyshire. Delvaux. Django. ‘J’arrive, Mr Fetherstone. I’m here.’
But no one else was.
Oh dear, James. Did the bank manager tell you there was no need to sell your Fetherstones? Were you not able to make contact with Fen McCabe directly? Up there, on Farleymoor and deep down here, in the grounds of Delvaux Hall, her mobile phone has no signal. Have you gone off to work, then? Mrs Brakespeare’s, isn’t it? And on to Tammy Sydnope who now wants you twice a week?
The gates, despite their apparent age and in spite of their daunting dimensions, swung open easily and noiselessly. Fen walked towards the front door of the dwelling – which she decided immediately was far too humble a name for the building before her. Dwellings, surely, were constructed from wattle and daub, with a split stable door as an entrance, and sleepy small windows sunken into uneven walls. Would a keeper dwell behind such fine stonework and a beautiful, arched oak door? To say nothing of mullioned windows. And a clock and weather-vane. Fen supposed it depended on what the keeper actually kept. And this one has three works of art by Julius Fetherstone.
The doorbell did not seem to work but a rap on the knocker (it was an iron version of the lion and unicorn) was satisfyingly loud and assertive. Only no one came to answer. She knocked again.
The walls must be thick, Fen thought, the interior walls too. And maybe Mr Caulfield is old and infirm and takes a while to totter to the door, to displace a dachshund from his lap, to find his glasses.
Fen, your imagination is far too fertile. I don’t think there’s anyone home.
Well, I’m going to knock again – in a little rat-tat-tat rhythm.
Oh.
Well, now I think I’ll peer through the windows. Kitchen. See! Dogs’ bowls. Two of them. Mind you, each about the size of a dachshund. Looks fairly tidy. And over through this window, on the other side of the front door, a sitting-room. The back of an old leather armchair. I’ll just knock on the windows, in case he’s nodded off.
Oh.
I’ll knock on the door again. I don’t want to lurk around behind the house.
No one answered. Fen stood still, with her back to the front door, wondering what to do. She felt a little embarrassed, as if she’d been led along, as if she should have verified details, phoned last night to check, this morning too perhaps.
Even if he is, as Django fears, an axe-wielding homicidal maniac, I’ll be just fine because at least he is nowhere around to butcher me.
Fen! Your imagination.
She stood against the door and then decided to cross the patio, descend stone steps, cross a gravel promenade and go through into the garden beyond. Because, you never know, the Fetherstones could well be out of doors. As it was nearly the second week of April, the rhododendrons were just beginning to spew their fabulous colour out into the world. Fen was utterly taken by a particularly violet specimen, at least fifteen feet high and wide. With her back to the garden, she gave the shrub her undivided attention, partly because it warranted it, partly because it gave her time to wonder what to do next.
Whump! Something has shoved her in the back, face first into the rhodos. Heavy breathing. Manic panting. Fen gasps and tastes raindrops from the leaves. She spins around. Immediately, something hard and insistent pokes at her crotch. She gasps and looks down. It is an enormous, hairy, wet lurcher. Thump! Something knocks her off her feet and she staggers sideways. Righting herself, she is confronted by a wet, slathering labrador which, standing on its hind legs with its front paws on her shoulders, is practically eye to eye with her. Its tongue is lapping at her cheek. She keeps her mouth closed at just the right moment. Fen is not normally scared of dogs. But these two are huge and, momentarily, she is unsure of the sincerity of their welcome. In an instant, she clocks that tails are wagging. And there’s all that licking going on. And a moment later, with the shock subsiding, the cogs of memory start to turn.
It’s that lurcher – the one whose coat resembles Django’s Astrakhan gilet. I’ve seen this dog before. Recently. Yes! The Rag and Thistle when I was up here last with Cat and Pip.
‘Beryl!’ Someone is yelling and the labrador barks once, turns on a sixpence and bolts away.
‘Barry!’ Someone hollers and the lurcher reluctantly drags its face away from Fen’s crotch. It too tries to turn on a sixpence but its lanky legs threaten to interweave with disastrous consequences. Shoving its flank against Fen’s thigh for support, the lurcher untangles its legs and lopes off with its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth to make way for a deep, hound-like woof.
Fen stands stock-still, with her hand clasped to her heart in a most Jane Austen-like fashion. Raindrops from the rhododendron seep down the back of her collar and course midway down her spine. She shivers.
It’s the raindrops.
You just had the shock of your life, Fen.
Just the raindrops.
Who’s this, striding up the lawn with the two dogs running apologetic circles around him?
Lord Delvaux?
Or maybe the keeper of the dwelling.
The man seems to be making a leisurely, if not downright slow, passage towards her. Before her, the lawn sweeps down and away, fairly steeply, bordered on all sides by shrubs and trees and bushes, all well tended, all bursting with foliage or spring flowers. Beyond the perimeter of the garden, the land sweeps upward, clad in the uniform pine and ordered ranks of Forestry Commission land. The horizon, which, due to the steepness of the incline, is high up rather than far away, is punctuated aesthetically by a folly. All glistens; the skies are clearing, there’s fair weather ahead, after four solid hours of rain this morning.
Here is the keeper, or the squire, or maybe just the gardener, strolling towards her in a battered old Barbour, jeans and hiking boots. Might this be James Caulfield? Fen doubts it. Could Mr Caulfield really be anything other than a nice pottery old man with a dachshund on his lap, a gammy hip and three Fetherstones he’s owned for donkey’s years?
‘I’m so sorry,’ the man calls to Fen while he continues to approach. The dogs look up at the target of his apology and decide to bound towards it, to offer theirs. ‘Dogs!’ the man hollers and, though they do not return to him, their reaction to Fen is much less demonstrative than before. They don’t venture above her knees this time, though her shins and ankles are given a good sniffing. ‘Fenella?’ The man approaches. He holds out his hand, which is dirty with earth. He wipes it on his Barbour, which has damp patches where a rewaxing is needed and trickles of wet trying to cling to where there is wax. Fen clocks his face; he is handsome – weather tanned with good bones, something a little Mediterranean, perhaps because of the dark hair, the olive eyes. His gaze is quite penetrating and she glances away and down the lawn. He extends his hand again. Still muddy but surprisingly long and shapely. ‘James Caulfield.’
‘Fen McCabe,’ says Fen, politely pretending she hasn’t seen the state of the hand she’s shaking. ‘I thought you’d be old.’
James looks surprised and flattered. ‘I’m not as young as I used to be,’ he says by way of an explanation.
‘None of us are,’ Fen theorizes, wondering how on earth the conversation can progress. They stand awkwardly
for a few moments. ‘Gorgeous garden,’ Fen offers, ‘it must take some upkeep.’
‘The grounds of Delvaux Hall as a whole were loosely modelled on those at Chatsworth,’ James informs, perusing the view.
‘How interesting,’ says Fen, knowing that her enthusiasm sounds embarrassingly disproportionate.
He doesn’t look anything like an axe-wielding lunatic. He looks, actually, rather fine.
‘Well, Fen McCabe,’ says James, ‘shall I introduce you to them? Barry! Beryl!’
‘I’ve seen them before,’ Fen says as James leads on to the house.
He stops and regards her, baffled. ‘How?’ he asks, a little defensively. ‘They’ve never been out of my sight.’
‘But I saw them a couple of weeks ago,’ Fen corrects.
‘Where?’ James enquires, frowning, going through the garden gates which swing back at Fen.
‘At the Rag and Thistle,’ Fen shrugs, uncomfortable that it’s such an issue.
‘The Rag and bloody Thistle?’ James exclaims, opening the front door which was unlocked. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The lurcher buried its nose in my crotch then,’ Fen explains, standing in a rather dark and chilly, flagstone-floored hallway. James flicks on a light and regards Fen. He has a peculiar urge to remove small shreds of shrubbery from her hair. But he decides it wouldn’t be seemly. And his hands are dirty. And why does he want to touch her anyway? Just because she’s seen his dogs before?
‘I thought you meant Adam and Eve,’ James explains, keeping his hands to himself (it’s only now he’s inside his home that he is aware of how dirty they are). ‘The dogs are called Barry and Beryl.’
‘That’s nice,’ Fen says absent-mindedly, not that interested which is which; really craving a nice cup of tea.
James made a very nice cup of tea. And, to Fen’s amusement, he served hers in a fine china teacup and saucer, though he poured his into a mug. She thought of Lady Chatterley and Mellors and felt rather refined and just a little flattered.
‘Biscuit?’ he offered, sitting down.