Snake in the Grass

by Dominic Luke

  With that, she swept past the panther and the other committee members, Mrs Pole trip-trapping behind her. Dick Emery, after a moment’s shilly-shallying, looked apologetically at the committee, spread his arms as if to say what can I do? and hurried after the two women.

  The crowd of spectators was already on the move, dashing back round to the front of the village hall. Dean was caught up in the stampede, bundled along until he found himself by the front door just as the vicar was leaving.

  A voice beside him – Old George again – said quietly but very distinctly, ‘Ooh, you are awful – but I like you.’

  To Dean’s astonishment, the vicar went bright red and almost tripped over his own feet in his eagerness to get away.

  Lady Darkley cut a swathe through the crowd, people falling back as if at the onset of an enraged bull – all except for the reporter girl who was too busy scribbling in her notebook to realize her peril. The photographer was backing away, click-clicking at top speed, continuing to do so as Lady Darkley bore down on the reporter and gave her a hefty shove in passing so that she went sprawling across the grass, her notepad and pen flying away over the heads of the crowd.

  Lady Darkley opened the door of her four-by-four, then turned back to face the crowd, eyes blazing.

  ‘You haven’t heard the last of this!’

  The car door slammed. The engine roared. Gears crunched. Doing a U-turn in the road, Lady Darkley zigzagged along the High Street past the pub, accelerated up the hill, swerved left, cutting across the green, her wheels slicing through the turf and gouging up great divots of mud. Then her car turned a corner and was gone, zooming off at twice the speed limit in the direction of Overbourne Hall.

  Dean let out his breath. All around him there was a buzz of conversation, people talking in little groups, gesticulating, eyes wide with wonder, faces expressing shock, consternation. One voice suddenly rose above the hubbub: Old George’s. ‘Isn’t it about time that pub was open?’

  The landlord in his Morris gear said with feeling, ‘That sounds like a very good idea.’

  But Dean just stood there, blinking in the sunshine (it was bright enough to make your eyes water). He felt crushed, for as Lady Darkley had been getting into her monster car on one side, Cally had got in on the other – and she had not given him so much as a glance.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE PUB COULD never have seen such trade, thought Lydia as she pushed her way through the crowd – two-thirds of the village at least. The landlord was working flat out, still in his Morris gear, sweating profusely. Alas, she said to him silently, no time for ogling the female customers today, but think of the profits!

  ‘Lydia! Lydia! Over here!’

  There was an incredible babble, everyone talking at cross purposes, but the Stasi’s unmistakable voice rose above the noise, calling Lydia to a table in one corner of the room. Lydia pushed and shoved to reach it, Terry trotting at her heels. She resisted the temptation to pat his head and call him a good boy, even though in the village hall he had been a good boy and barked at the nasty woman.

  ‘We’re having an emergency meeting,’ the Stasi greeted her. ‘To decide what to do.’

  The landlady was enjoying this, thought Lydia: such drama, and to be in the thick of it! All her Christmases had come at once. But one shouldn’t begrudge people their little pleasures.

  ‘Is this all of us?’ asked Lydia, taking a seat and looking round at the depleted group.

  ‘Dick Emery has defected,’ said Gwen. (She would never call him Dick Emery usually: not in public, not out loud, thought Lydia. Even Gwen was over-excited.)

  ‘Sandra’s on guard duty,’ added the Stasi.

  ‘Guard duty?’

  ‘At the village hall,’ Gwen explained. ‘In case Imelda Darkley comes back and tries to close the Exhibition down.’

  ‘Would she really do that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past her,’ sighed Gwen.

  ‘How can we stop her? What can we do?’ cried the Stasi. ‘We must make plans!’

  ‘Perhaps, all things considered,’ said Gwen, diffident, hopeful, ‘we should call the whole thing off?’

  Anything to keep the peace, thought Lydia: but wasn’t there something to be said for taking the path of least resistance? One didn’t exactly enjoy being called a snake in the grass, even in the cause of art, not to mention having one’s private business – the baby – broadcast to all and sundry.

  Terry leaned forward in his chair. ‘You mustn’t let the likes of her—’ he jerked his head in the direction in which Lady Darkley’s four-by-four had disappeared ‘—walk all over you! Keep the Exhibition open, I say!’

  ‘Yes, we must give people a chance to visit,’ said the Stasi. ‘It will be in the local paper after this, perhaps on local TV too. People will flock.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Gwen, ‘perhaps we ought to … take down the, er, the controversial … picture….’

  ‘We can’t do that!’ cried the Stasi. ‘That’s the one everyone will want to see!’ She paused, looked sidelong at Lydia. ‘Who,’ she said slyly, ‘did you get to model for that painting? Who is Mr One-Ball? The face is rather blurred.’

  ‘It is meant to be,’ said Lydia. ‘It is abstract. Symbolic.’

  ‘But you can tell us, Lydia! We won’t let the cat out of the bag!’

  ‘It’s no one,’ said Lydia, almost speaking the truth. She always felt a certain detachment from her paintings once they were finished, but with this particular work she felt she had hardly been involved at any point during the creative process. It had painted itself, so to speak: the paint had all but flowed onto the canvas of its own accord as if it had nothing to do with her – or with Richard.

  But this was not the time or place to start discussing her work, with half the village listening, people hanging on their every word, wondering what would happen next. More drama perhaps? Was it worth sticking round for?

  ‘There can’t be many people,’ the Stasi mused, ‘with only one testicle.’

  ‘More than you’d think.’ Lydia tried to control her irritation. ‘Hitler only had one ball,’ she added and suddenly laughed, remembering Richard stripped and shivering in her little cottage, making pathetic jokes as a fig leaf to cover his embarrassment.

  Gwen interrupted. ‘Oh, Lydia, really!’

  The tone of exasperation was out of character, but Gwen, of course, would know exactly who Mr One-Ball was, or at least she would have a very good idea. Jokes about it would seem to her to be in very poor taste.

  ‘We need to decide what to do,’ Gwen wailed.

  ‘You’re right, Gwen, of course.’ Lydia was contrite. After all, heaven forefend that she should start acting like a snake in the grass.

  ‘It seems to me,’ said Terry, who could be relied on to be pragmatic, ‘that the Exhibition needs protecting. If you want to keep it up and running, you will need to keep Lady Darkley and her cronies out. There will need to be someone on duty – on guard – day and night.’

  ‘Day and night?’ repeated Gwen plaintively.

  ‘We can draw up a rota!’ exclaimed the Stasi. ‘I’m good at rotas, just ask my staff. There are four of us including Terry, plus Sandra of course, and … and you’ll help, won’t you, George?’ Her eagle eyes had spied George loitering in the crowd.

  ‘No I will not!’ said George. ‘That there Exhibition is a load of old tat!’

  ‘But I thought you were on our side, George!’

  ‘I’m not on nobody’s side, me. I like a quiet life. You can count me out.’

  ‘Quiet life!’ It was Gwen’s daughter piping up, Lydia noted: rather a precocious child. What was her name again? One forgot these things. ‘That’s not what you said outside, George. Better than telly, you said.’

  ‘Never mind what I said!’

  ‘I thought better of you, George, I really did,’ sighed Lydia.

  ‘Now then, missus, don’t you start. I’ll still vote for you in the elections. I’m not voting for
old widow Pole, not when she stole my horse manure right from under my nose! I’ll vote for you, missus, and for all of you, but that’s as far as I go.’

  ‘But what about Imelda Darkley?’ said Gwen. ‘We can’t just ignore her!’

  ‘Oh can’t we?’ said George mulishly. ‘Let me tell you about Lady High-and-Mighty Darkley – or Ann Smith, as I like to call her: it’s her name. When she was first married, she used to go hunting—’

  ‘What has this got to do with—’ the Stasi began, but George silenced her with a glare.

  ‘As I say, she used to go hunting when she first got married. Now, being in the saddle all day, all those fine ladies, they don’t have time or opportunity to go to the loo. So what they used to do is, they shit in their jodhpurs—’

  ‘George! Must you?’ Gwen looked pained: you could almost see her temples throbbing with it.

  ‘You’re making that up!’ shrieked the Stasi excitedly. ‘It’s revolting!’

  ‘They shit in their jodhpurs,’ George repeated, ‘and then they pat it all round their thighs, nice and neat.’

  ‘I don’t believe that for one moment,’ said Lydia.

  George turned his baleful stare on her – then, unexpectedly, he grinned. ‘Never mind if you believe it or not. All I’m saying is that she shits just like the rest of us. She’s not some angel out of heaven. She don’t intimidate me. Never has. If she crosses my path, I just picture her patting her jodhpurs and I laugh.’

  It might have worked, thought Lydia as she watched George pushing his way to the bar to fetch another light ale, it might have protected me. But all I could do at the time was wonder if she was right, if my pictures are pointless. Do they strike a chord; or am I waving in the dark?

  ‘Never mind,’ said the Stasi. ‘We don’t need George anyway. There are still enough of us for a rota. If, that is—’ She glanced at Lydia. ‘—in your condition.’ She nudged Lydia with her elbow. ‘You’re a dark horse! Fancy not telling us, ha ha ha!’

  Gwen sat there expressionless – rather magnificent in a way, thought Lydia. You’d never guess that she’d known about the baby for ages. How many other secrets had she got tucked away in that head of hers? So many people talked to her, she made time for them all – even that dreadful Pole woman. And yet she always seemed the most straightforward and transparent of women.

  ‘Quite a surprise, this baby, with you being single and everything.’ The Stasi was like a dog with a bone. Ears were flapping on all sides. ‘I can’t imagine who Daddy is!’

  Terry stirred in his chair and blurted out, ‘Not that it’s any of your business, but the baby is mine!’

  Lydia gaped at him. Was he out of his mind? He had gone bright red, looked shifty – as if he was regretting his words now. But it was too late, the damage had been done.

  There was a fresh buzz of conversation (what was it George had said about all this being better than telly?). Lydia knew that she was being discussed all round the pub. However, talk soon turned back to more interesting matters (Lady Darkley’s ballyhoo); there was no sense of outrage, no whiff of scandal, as there might have been if the baby’s real father had become known – or even if it had been Richard’s. The Stasi had already lost interest, was busy drawing up a rota: who was to follow who on guard and when.

  Lydia had had enough. It was high time, she decided, for the snake in the grass to slither quietly away. As she pushed her way out of the pub, she was aware of Terry trotting at her heels. She no longer felt like patting him.

  Out in the street she rounded on him. ‘What were you thinking? I am fed up of people meddling in my life! This baby has nothing to do with anyone except me!’

  He looked crestfallen in his shapeless waterproof, old cords, scuffed shoes. ‘I … I was only trying to help, to stop all the hurtful conjecture.’

  ‘I don’t need your help, I don’t need anyone, I am better off alone. Apart from anything else, what you said in there is patently ridiculous, impossible. There is no way the child could be yours! We have never even—’

  ‘I know! I know that we have never! But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to, wouldn’t like to!’ His face was even redder now than it had been in the pub. She could almost feel the heat coming off his cheeks. With an air of desperation, he shouted, ‘I think you’re wonderful, the most wonderful woman in the world!’

  Abruptly, he turned and fled, heading for his battered old Renault in the village hall car park. Lydia was left standing in the middle of the road, mouth agape, staring after him.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘HASN’T THIS GONE on long enough?’

  Basil looked at his wife down the length of the table, an aggrieved expression on his face. Dean stifled a sigh. This continued wrangling was putting him off his lunch. Adults could be so childish. You wouldn’t catch him sulking and grousing and being a misery, not now he was eighteen-and-a-half. He hadn’t said do I have to in weeks.

  Amanda, of course, didn’t seem to notice the strained atmosphere, or if she did, it didn’t stop her from stuffing her face. She’d end up as fat as a pig, if there was any justice in the world.

  But where was the justice in finding a girl then losing her? He hadn’t seen Cally in days; there’d been no word. It must all be over. She’d dumped him, and that was cause enough to put you off your soup even without the bickering, his mother and Basil going on and on almost as if they were enjoying themselves – which would be just too, too weird.

  ‘It’s the principle of the thing, Basil.’

  ‘What principle?’

  ‘Well, freedom of speech and so forth.’

  ‘Never mind freedom of speech. I’ve had the Daily Mail at my front door, Gwendolen: the Daily Mail!’

  Dean crumbled his roll, listening, watching his soup go cold. They were talking absolute nonsense. Could they not hear what they were saying? He began silently to annotate.

  ‘It’s all down to that arty woman.’ (Basil, arbitrarily judgmental as usual.)

  ‘What woman?’ (Mother being deliberately obtuse. She must know how irritating that was.)

  ‘You know what woman’ (Stating the obvious.) ‘Lydia What’s-her-name.’ (Pretending he’d forgotten.) ‘Dragging you down the pub at all hours for those meetings.’ (Outrageous exaggeration.) ‘You’ll be turning into an alcoholic next!’ (Ditto, plus breathtaking hypocrisy.)

  ‘One small glass of wine now and again hardly constitutes alcoholism.’ (So prim.)

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that, but there is certainly something … different about you just lately, Gwendolen.’ (Hmm, he could have a point there.) ‘A certain contrariness.’ (The trademark Basil frown – and yet, oddly, his tone of voice didn’t quite match it. What was going on?) ‘That woman leads people astray. She is not in her right mind.’

  ‘Nonsense, Basil!’

  ‘You think her behaviour defensible? Seducing a boy young enough to be her son—’

  A warning ‘Basil!’ stopped his stepfather in his tracks. Silence fell. Dean stirred his soup with a growing sense of unease. This talk of seduction: it was rather too close to the bone. Had the panther said something? But if she had, Basil would have passed some comment or other by now, Dean was sure of it, and as for his mother…. But what other explanation could there be, unless … unless … unless the panther had seduced someone else?

  Dean watched his mother get to her feet. Nothing more was to be said about the seduction business, that was obvious. Perhaps it was for the best with Amanda sitting there listening. Amanda was already too much of a know-all as it was.

  ‘I’m due down at the village hall for guard duty. If any of you want pudding—’

  ‘Dessert,’ Basil corrected her.

  ‘If any of you want pudding, you can get it yourselves. Have you finished with that soup, Dean?’

  Gwen swept up the plates, cutlery, uneaten rolls and went through to the kitchen. Basil, heaving himself out of his chair, picked up the salt cellar, using it (Dean conjectured) as a transpar
ent excuse to follow Gwen and continue the argument in private.

  With Basil out of the way, Amanda leaned across the table and whispered, ‘Oh my God! Did you hear that bit about Lydia Taylor? It’s Richard: it has to be Richard!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Richard has been doing it with Lydia Taylor!’

  ‘Doing it!’ Dean mocked such a juvenile euphemism.

  ‘Yes, doing it. Sexual intercourse. Copulation.’

  Copulation! What sort of word was copulation? She was such a smart arse. ‘There’s no evidence whatsoever. You are not being scientific.’

  ‘I am using my powers of deduction. Who else can it be? Who does Miss Taylor hang round with? There’s that beardy lecturer from your college, but he’s not young enough to be her son. Richard is.’

  ‘But no one would … with Richard—’

  ‘Get real, Dean. Richard could charm his way into bed with anyone.’

  Richard? Charm? She had to be joking.

  ‘Lydia Taylor’s all right for her age,’ Amanda continued. ‘Richard would so go there if he got the chance. He’s such a slag.’

  ‘But she’s—’

  ‘She’s what? Go on, Dean! I bet you’d do her!’

  ‘No I wouldn’t!’ Dean felt his cheeks burning, the trauma of that terrible night with the panther coming back to haunt him. Whatever happened, Amanda mustn’t be allowed to find out about that. He grabbed the pepper pot, began examining it, twisting it round, just to show how cool and nonchalant he was, uninterested in her chit-chat.

  ‘Copulation,’ he muttered derisively. ‘What a stupid word.’

  ‘It’s just sex, Dean,’ said Amanda loftily. ‘Nothing to be embarrassed about.’

  ‘I’m not embarrassed.’

  ‘Yes you are. You’ve gone bright red.’

  ‘No I haven’t! Anyway, shut up!’

  ‘Embarrassed because you’re a virgin. Everyone says you’re a virgin.’