When he woke again he did not at first know what had disturbed him. Then he heard the soft knocking on the door and, putting on his dressing-gown, hurried downstairs. He did not open the door straightaway. The old biddies might talk about their peaceful country village until they were blue in the face, but Ted had felt safer in the centre of Liverpool. Here, in the unrelieved darkness of the night, a whole troupe of homicidal maniacs could descend on him and follow up with an all-night rave, and no-one would be any the wiser unless the next day happened to be Sunday and, even then, he thought bitterly, there was no guarantee that he would be missed.
‘Who is it?’ he called out, opening the door on the chain.
‘Please, let me in. I need help. Sanctuary.’ The voice outside was a woman’s.
‘Stand in the light, please,’ Ted asked.
The visitor stepped back into the path of the floodlight, and Ted saw a slight young girl, dark-skinned, with long, black hair hanging in a thick plait across one shoulder. There was no-one else with her. His heart pounding, he released the chain and opened the door to let the girl in. She stood in his bare hall, shivering and damp from the dew outside. ‘Sanctuary,’ she said again. ‘I’m seeking asylum.’
Ted raked his thinning hair with his fingers until it rose like a cockscomb from his head. ‘Where have you come from? Why did you come here?’
‘Someone, a friend,’ the girl said breathlessly, ‘told me about you, that you were active in the movement.’
Ted was about to ask what movement, when he remembered having made enquiries through some radical friends in the church about a group of priests and laymen who ran safe houses for asylum seekers on the run from deportation. Nothing had come of it at the time, but someone must have remembered his interest and passed on his address to this girl.
‘Come through to the kitchen,’ Ted nudged her before him like a collie with a stray lamb. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. You tell me everything you can.’
‘I had nowhere else to go. I did not know what to do.’ Her voice was soft, but the accent puzzling. It was not like anything Ted had heard before.
‘Where do you come from?’
‘Please, I don’t want to talk about it, not now, not yet, but—’ she hesitated for a moment as if the story was too painful for her to continue, ‘there was a whole group of us hiding in a lorry that had taken us from Holland. Then, while the driver was eating at a café, one of us was spotted and the police were called. I managed to get away.’ The girl giggled suddenly, ‘You could say that I fell off the back of a lorry.’ She gave a little gasp, putting a slender hand to her mouth.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ted’s voice broke with excitement, ‘you must be hungry, exhausted too. You stay there and I’ll fix something to eat. Eggs and ba … bac … eggs on toast all right?’
The girl grinned at him. ‘Lovely.’
Ted fried two eggs, sliding them on to the slices of toast that lay ready on the plate. Putting it before the girl he said, ‘You did right to come to me. I will not be intimidated by the authorities, whatever the cost to myself. Tomorrow, when you’ve had a chance to recover, you must tell me the full story, and I will get in touch with the Organization to get some advice about what our next move should be.’ Ted let out a sigh of satisfaction as he leant back in the chair. After a moment he had to turn away, blushing from a mixture of pity and anger as the girl emptied her plate with speed and thoroughness, leaving not a crumb on the plate.
‘I have to beg your forgiveness,’ Ted said, ‘for a society that allows a young woman to starve as she runs in fear of the authorities.’
The girl pushed her plate away and eagerly accepted an apple. She sank her white, even teeth into the fruit before looking up again. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘But I’m very tired. Is there somewhere I can sleep? The floor will do.’
Ted made up the bed in the spare room, with the red and navy Habitat bed linen that had been a present from an old girlfriend. He lent the girl a pair of pyjamas and found a new toothbrush at the back of the bathroom cupboard. As he left the girl, he stopped for a moment in the doorway.
‘You’re safe now, you know. I won’t let anything happen to you.’ With an encouraging smile he closed the door softly behind him and went back downstairs. He was far too pumped-up to sleep. After pacing the floor for some minutes he poured himself some of the revolting sweet sherry left over from his predecessor and drank it down with a grimace before plonking himself down at the table. His heart was pushing blood around his body at an alarming rate, as if he was suddenly living at twice the normal speed. Taking deep breaths, he looked out of the kitchen window at the village, his village, in darkness. There they all slept, his comfortable parishioners, and here he was, at long last, doing something real, something that actually mattered. All those Sundays preaching to a scattering of people, who thought an hour of their time and a pound for the collection absolved them from responsibilities for the rest of the week, now seemed worth while, leading, as they did, to this night.
‘You’re safe here,’ he mumbled again. ‘I’ll fight for you.’
Village Diary
Tollymead: Don’t forget, this week is the annual Greenway and Tollymead Brownie Pack’s car boot sale, to be held in Greenway church car park. Twenty-five per cent of the proceeds from all sales goes to the children.
The Tollymead Women’s League speaker for their next meeting, on the first Wednesday of the month, is Mr John Trugood, who will speak on the subject of winter colour for your garden. Mr Trugood was Secretary of the South of England Rose Society for many years, and his own garden at Treetops, Haslemere, is open to the public on alternate Sundays throughout the year.
Also this week, Tollymead welcomes a newcomer to the village, Ms Anne Havesham, over here from America for some peace and quiet to work on the script for her latest television show. Proud as we in the village are of our policy of allowing residents to come and go and live and die without interference from anybody, we are sure the newest member of the community will find our village a happy and welcoming one.
Ms Havesham was delighted when neighbour Phyllida Medley welcomed her with a present of a pot of home-made marmalade and half a dozen freshly laid eggs. ‘They’re from my own bantams,’ Phyllida told Ms Havesham, ‘so they’re guaranteed free of salmonella.’ Phyllida added that she knew Americans loved Caesar salad, and with shop eggs that could be a problem.
‘I knew the British are meant to be a friendly race,’ Ms Havesham told me, ‘but even with that in mind, Tollymead obviously takes some beating.’
Four
On the Thursday Evelyn woke at seven as usual and, again as usual, the first thing she did on getting out of bed was to open the heavy, rose-patterned curtains and look out across the garden and the Haville-Joneses’ field beyond. When she was a small child in that same bedroom, she had imagined that the great oak stood guard outside, protecting her from harm, and even now she would nod a brisk good morning. But this morning she lingered, noting, before she walked away, that it was a fine day – cold but fine.
Each spring the huge trunk of the oak was invaded by ivy, and each year, by the time autumn came, unless Evelyn got to it with her Wilkinson’s shears, the ivy grew so that you could hardly see the bark beneath the spreading leaves.
‘You want that tree strangled,’ she had said coldly to Tim Haville-Jones coming out of church last Christmas Day. ‘It’s in the way of your machinery, so you want it dead.’ It amused Evelyn to remember how shocked everyone had been: to bring up something unpleasant like that on Christmas Day. Surely it could have kept until the twenty-seventh?
This year, a week after Harvest Festival, the tree had received a near fatal injury. The men burning stubble had made a mistake, so they said, when calculating the direction of the wind, so the flames had engulfed the trunk of the tree, charring its bark. The same day a notice had gone up on the parish notice-board and on the entrance to the footpath, warning people to stay away from the area round
the tree as it was no longer safe. The tree, the notice continued, would be cut down the following Thursday. Regrettably, with safety foremost in mind, no other action was possible.
When, at nine o’clock, the men came with the tractor and the chain-saw, they found Evelyn chained to the blackened trunk of the tree.
‘I’m not moving,’ she said, dismissing them with a wave of her thermos flask. ‘Why don’t you just go on back to your master and tell him there’s an ugly old woman chained to the tree, so you can’t do your dirty work.’
Grumbling and shaking their heads, they climbed back aboard the tractor and drove off.
Tim Haville-Jones found it difficult to take them seriously. ‘You go across and reason with the old bat,’ he said to Jenny, his wife. ‘I’ve got a delivery from Sanderson’s arriving any minute. And take the girls. I bet behind that bluff exterior she’s a real push-over. Old spinsters can’t resist children.’
Jenny was not so sure, but she dressed the twins in their blue-and-red striped puffas and green gumboots with frog’s faces, and set off across the field.
‘Tim’s very worried,’ she knelt down by Evelyn. She turned to the children. ‘Give your Auntie Evelyn a kiss, there’s my good girls.’ She gave the twins a little push. Reluctantly, they planted a wet kiss each on Evelyn’s veined cheeks. Chained up as she was, Evelyn had to content herself with a fearsome glare in their direction, sending them whimpering back to their mother’s arms.
‘I’m worried too,’ Evelyn said. ‘That’s why I’ve chained myself to this oak. Normally I don’t do this.’
There was a pause. The girls stopped whimpering.
‘You’ll get cold,’ Jenny tried. ‘Surely this tree is not worth catching pneumonia for?’
‘In my opinion it is.’
Then the telephone rang.
‘I must be mad,’ Jenny said, ‘but I thought I heard the phone.’
‘“I’m in when I’m out”,’ Evelyn quoted smugly. Rummaging round the large canvas bag at her side she brought out a mobile phone. ‘I think you’ll find it’s Liberty Turner, my neighbour, calling. I’m sure you’ve met. I asked her to train her binoculars on me and to call at the first sight of trouble.’ Evelyn placed the phone to her ear. Looking sternly at Jenny she said, ‘You’re trouble.’ And she snapped up the aerial. ‘Hello, hello, Evelyn here.’ There was a pause as she listened to what was said at the other end. The girls stared at her, open-mouthed. Evelyn winked at them, reducing them instantly to floods of tears.
‘Yes Liberty dear,’ Evelyn said with an evil glance at the children. ‘I think you can call my nephew Oscar Brooke, the editor of the Tribune. No dear, I don’t think there’ll be any unpleasantness.’ She pushed the aerial down and replaced the phone in her bag.
Jenny grabbed her daughters’ hands. ‘I’ll go and speak to Tim. I’m sure he’ll be able to think of something.’
‘I’m sure he will,’ Evelyn said soothingly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to have some coffee.’
By the time Tim Haville-Jones arrived, the reporter and photographer from the Tribune were already there. The photographer, a woman, was snapping Evelyn from every direction. ‘Lift your chin a little, that’s right, lovely, perfect.’
The reporter, a young man of around twenty, squatted by Evelyn’s side. ‘“Tantamount to murder,” did you say?’
‘That’s right,’ Evelyn said with a gleeful look at Tim Haville-Jones. ‘Murder.’
Liberty, who had taken the morning off from her translation work to help Evelyn, suddenly felt a little sorry for the farmer and, before she knew it, she had smiled at him. She felt instantly annoyed with herself. Now she was not writing any more, her way of seeing everyone’s point of view was becoming nothing but a bad habit. She knelt down by Evelyn’s other side and, picking up the mug from the ground, tipped out the remains of the coffee from the cup before pouring in some more that was hot and fresh. ‘What about the loo?’ she hissed in Evelyn’s ear.
‘Chamber pot,’ Evelyn hissed back, ‘under here.’ She clanked the chain against the blankets, hitting something hard.
‘And how old are you Mrs Brooke?’ the reporter asked, respect for whatever age Evelyn would admit to ready to ooze from his voice.
‘It’s Miss Brooke, and I’m seventy-five.’
‘Seventy-five, you don’t say.’ The reporter nodded at the photographer who moved closer. ‘The readers will love that.’
‘She sits there like some evil totem, and you lap up every word she says!’ Tim Haville-Jones was shouting, his face brick-red. Liberty looked closely at him; if he suddenly began to perspire profusely, it would be a heart attack. ‘Don’t you understand,’ Tim carried on, ‘that bloody tree is dangerous. Now do you or do you not want my side of the story?’
The young reporter looked up from his note pad. ‘Well let’s see, sir. You want to cut down a five-hundred-year-old oak that probably saw Cromwell passing by—’
‘And Charles the First,’ Evelyn chipped in.
‘—and Charles the First, as the lady says, to make it easier for your machinery.’
‘I told you, the tree is unsafe!’ Tim bellowed.
‘I believe it was one of your men that set fire to the tree.’
‘Damn it, you turn everything round your way. It was an accident. A regrettable accident but, now it has happened, the responsible thing is to cut the thing down.’
‘Well not necessarily,’ Evelyn’s voice dripped with sweet reason. ‘With proper care the tree would heal. I will look after that side of things for free. Just fence it off for now to be on the safe side, and I’ll do the rest. For free, as I said.’
‘You’re saying the tree can definitely be saved?’ The reporter looked admiringly at Evelyn, as the photographer took another couple of pictures. Evelyn turned to the camera, her chin a little raised. ‘And that you yourself are willing to look after it?’
‘That’s enough,’ Tim Haville-Jones yelled. ‘This ridiculous fuss is all because of Oscar bloody Brooke. This is nepotism of the worst kind. I’ll call the Press Complaints Commission. We’ll see what they have to say about all this.’
‘I don’t think it can be nepotism,’ Liberty interjected mildly, making Tim swing round to glare at her. ‘You see, you’re accusing a nephew of showing favour to an aunt, not an aunt or uncle to a nephew. It’s fascinating really; the word actually dates back to the days when the sons of popes were euphemistically known as nephews, from the Italian nepote, a nephew, and—’
‘I don’t care where the damn word comes from,’ Tim Haville-Jones said between clenched teeth, ‘but I do care about this waste of my time and money. Now my men will be here in …’ he glanced at his watch, ‘thirty minutes. If you’re not gone by then I’ll have you all charged with unlawful obstruction.’ He narrowed his eyes at the journalists and marched off.
Evelyn and Liberty played ‘I Spy’ and the reporter made some more notes.
‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with T,’ Liberty said when it was her turn again. It had taken her almost five minutes to guess Evelyn’s ‘Newshound’.
Evelyn followed her look. ‘Tractor,’ she said.
Two men got off the tractor, and the reporter hurried up to them asking them if they cared for the survival of the planet. ‘Have you got kids of your own?’
Evelyn held out a packet of Rich Teas. ‘Biscuits?’ she offered.
‘Mr Haville-Jones told us to start cutting whether you were there or not,’ one of the men said, but his voice sounded uncertain as if he was not sure he had heard right. His companion, younger, bow-legged and sturdy, moved towards them with a slow, rolling gait like a cowboy lining up for a shoot-out. ‘That’s right. Start cutting, whatever.’ He lifted the chain-saw with both hands.
Liberty moved closer to Evelyn as the photographer attached her camera to a tripod. ‘Evelyn,’ Liberty said, ‘I think you’d better move.’
‘Never!’ Evelyn gesticulated, sending biscuits popping fro
m the packet.
The man started the saw and moved the whirring blade closer. ‘It don’t have any trouble cutting through metal, do it Clive?’ the older man said, but he looked nervous.
Clive said nothing, but raised his chin in an upside-down nod.
‘You realize this’ll be in the next edition of the Tribune?’ the reporter said, backing away from the blade.
‘The smaller the member the bigger the tool,’ Evelyn said in a slow, thoughtful voice as if she was judging the truth of her words.
Clive stopped dead. ‘What was that you said?’
‘Funny,’ Liberty agreed, ‘that’s what I’ve heard too.’
Clive glared at Liberty. ‘You get away from that tree.’
‘Mr Haville-Jones has agreed to pay the damages has he?’ Evelyn looked concerned. ‘You see, I don’t think your insurance will cover you for malicious wounding, and the damages awarded in court could run into millions.’
Liberty nodded and Clive, while not turning off the saw, looked unsure for the first time. ‘Is that right Bob?’ he asked his companion. Bob shrugged his shoulders. Clive turned back to Evelyn, and suddenly he lunged towards the tree. Then just as suddenly he grinned, turned the saw off and swaggered back to the tractor. He paused on the step and with another grin called out, ‘I’ll consult with my lawyers, but I wouldn’t get too comfortable out here if I was you.’
‘Can I quote you on the bit about the smaller the member—?’
Evelyn did not let the reporter finish his question. ‘Certainly not,’ she said.
‘You didn’t reckon with the power of the press, did you!’ the reporter shouted instead after the departing men. An arm came through the wound-down window, punching the air in a twofingered salute.
A Rival Creation Page 6