The Mysterious Miss Mayhew

by Hazel Osmond

  They looked at the verge, the traffic going by. No good. He grabbed her hand and she did a little running limp that made him feel even worse about hustling her out of the house.

  They headed for the small track leading down to fields and the river.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said, trying to jolly up the situation. ‘That’s it, that’s right.’

  They stopped just round the corner. ‘This do?’ he asked doubtfully. She shook her head and he agreed. ‘What about this?’ he said, pointing to the red-brick bungalow, empty and stuck on the market for months. They ran towards the gate. Yup, good overgrown garden and a hedge that came up to his chin. ‘Nip in there, Hats. I’ll stay right here. Find a flat bit and take off your shoes and socks so, you know, you don’t splash them.’

  He looked back up the track. He hoped the car was all right parked on the verge.

  ‘OK, Hats?’ he shouted and got back a relieved-sounding ‘Yes.’

  Dealing with Hattie’s full bladder had set up a sympathetic urge in his. Ignoring it didn’t work. Turning his back to the gate so that Hattie wouldn’t see if she came out, he started to pee into the hedge, not managing to avoid the ‘For Sale’ sign that had fallen into it.

  A noise made him turn his head and he almost ruined his shoes. The odd woman was striding up the road, a bunch of wild flowers in her hands. She slowed when she saw him, and as she was wearing sunglasses he couldn’t see her full expression, just her mouth opening into an ‘O’. He turned back round quickly, trying to look as though it was the most natural thing in the world to be standing there peeing into a hedge, dressed in his suit.

  ‘Morning,’ he said brightly, hoping it would mask the noise he was making, and then ran out of anything to add. It seemed a long time until he was ready to fumble himself decent again.

  Her sunglasses were now pushed up on to her hair and he saw a face that didn’t know what emotion to settle on. Confusion? Bewilderment? Disgust? She said nothing, only speeded back up and, with horror, he watched her heading for the gate.

  The relevance of the ‘For Sale’ sign in the hedge hit him just as she disappeared. He would have put his head in his hands, but he remembered where they had just been.

  Everything was quiet before he heard Hattie and the woman talking and they came out at the gate. Hattie skipped towards him completely unfazed. He did a quick check that she had on her socks and shoes and wondered what stage of undress the woman might have found her in.

  Oh God, she’s still wearing her eye-patch.

  ‘It’s this lady again,’ Hattie said.

  This lady wasn’t holding the flowers any more. That back was very straight. When he went to speak, she eyed him warily.

  ‘Your bungalow?’ he asked.

  ‘Just renting, they couldn’t find a buyer.’ She dropped her gaze to his shirt as she spoke, presumably to see if it was stain-free this morning.

  ‘I know this looks bad,’ he started, ‘but Hattie was desperate for the toilet—’

  ‘I was,’ Hattie joined in, ‘because we overslept, which meant I didn’t have time for a wee. AND I had to eat my breakfast in the car. Dad let me have a whole load of Tunnock’s tea cakes and he says I don’t need to bother brushing my teeth as he’s got some mints in the glove department.’ Big smile to finish, showing chocolate-specked teeth.

  ‘Uh, when you take it out of context like that …’

  He got the same look he’d received after the ‘testicles’ comment and decided to stop making the large hole of mortification he was currently standing in any bigger.

  ‘Well that explains everything,’ the young woman said, briskly, smiling only at Hattie. ‘Lovely to meet you again.’ Still only to Hattie. ‘And … and perhaps if I could give you these.’ He realised that last bit was directed at him and saw her open one of her hands and proffer the tissues Hattie had taken into the garden.

  And obviously used.

  CHAPTER 6

  Monday 12 May

  Unbelievable. Only 9.30 and I already have enough to fill today’s page.

  I have learned that:

  1) When you see a man you barely know weeing in your hedge, you immediately jump to the conclusion that because you have had an altercation the day before, he is getting his own back.

  2) Your second thought is that he might be carrying out some ancient Northumbrian ritual along the lines of, ‘She’s one of us now, lads, let’s go round and pee in her garden’.

  3) You wonder if the suit the man is wearing is one specifically reserved for this purpose.

  4) Urine falling on a ‘For Sale’ sign makes a very loud noise.

  5) Only one thing is more bewildering than a person using your garden as a public convenience. And that is two people. Particularly if the second one is a child wearing an eye-patch.

  6) Helping put a child’s socks back on is trickier than it looks.

  7) You do not need a licence to have a child. You do not even need an alarm clock.

  8) Mints are, evidently, an effective alternative to toothpaste.

  9) I will not be sunbathing on the lawn for a while, even though I spent some time clearing that patch.

  10) Gripping wild flowers too tightly bends the stems.

  CHAPTER 7

  Liz intercepted him before he’d reached his office.

  ‘I should really be carrying a scythe,’ she said.

  Liz had cojones of steel; she was the kind of sub-editor who would be sorting out the kinks in copy while flames were licking the building, but she did like everything served with a side order of drama.

  ‘Nothing wrong at the printers’?’ he asked, quickly. June’s edition of the magazine had only been put to bed on Friday and they were in that hiatus between it being at the printers’ and delivered neatly wrapped in plastic.

  She shook her head, but didn’t seem inclined to tell him what was wrong.

  ‘OK, give me a couple of minutes,’ he told her, ‘I need to wash my hands.’

  ‘Planning to operate?’

  ‘Ha, very good.’ He nodded towards his office. ‘You want to go on in and wait for me?’

  In the toilet, he tried not to revisit the twin humiliations of the peeing incident and his walk into the school playground under the judgemental gaze of the mothers already returning home. Even Mrs Dressing Gown had looked superior.

  Heading back through the main office he said some quick ‘hellos’ to the few people already in. The calm atmosphere bore no relation to how frantic it had been last week.

  Derek the photographer was at his computer, peering at the photos he’d taken yesterday. He was doing it in his usual dreamy way.

  Tom often wondered whether Derek did in fact live in a flat in Hexham or just wrapped himself in a cobweb and lay down in a bush to sleep. He could have been on Derek’s case all the time, trying to gee him up, but with his big, soft body and features that looked as if someone had smudged them while still wet, there was something fragile about the guy.

  They chatted about the show, or Tom did because Derek rarely finished any sentence he started.

  ‘Photos turned out to be really …’ Derek offered.

  Tom started to look through them himself, knowing it was probably the only way he’d find out what Derek meant. A Texel ram. A bull looking as if he wanted to nut the judge who’d put such a fey rosette on his snout, and then he almost took a step back, because there was a photo of the woman whose hedge he’d just watered. And another one. And another. Yup, and a fourth one.

  He looked at Derek for explanation.

  ‘Just liked her colouring,’ he said. ‘That hair, the dress… She’s kind of …’

  Tom could think of some good words to finish that sentence, but he let it hang as he continued to scroll through the photos.

  ‘Great one of the llama,’ he said, trying to imagine how Mr Dreamy had got on with Miss Spitty. ‘And good job on the show-jumping shots. Nice and subtle, like you just happened to catch Mrs Mawson’s granddaughter and her ho
rse. Nothing that screams “this photo is only here because Mrs Mawson owns the magazine”.’

  ‘Horses,’ Derek said. ‘They’re my …’

  Undeclared love? What I eat when there’s nothing else in the fridge?

  Tom would never know. He nodded briskly and walked away.

  In his office he shut the door behind him, or would have done if, over the life of the building, the door had not swelled. He needed to persuade it to become intimate with the door frame. Second attempt he got it right – sometimes it took him three goes.

  The Place, The People ranged over the top two floors of a listed building that ran along one side of the village of Tynebrook’s market square. It was a building that was past its best and Mrs Mawson, who not only owned the magazine but also the building, seemed disinclined to spend money working with the authorities to refurbish it sympathetically. Tom was worried that he’d turn up for work one day and find his two floors had shifted downwards and crushed the art gallery below.

  Sometimes he found the building’s rough walls and slightly off-square rooms charming, other times, as the roof leaked, or yet more of the plaster moulding in his office fell off, he yearned for the soulless steel and glass hutch of his office in London. Hattie unreservedly loved the place, particularly the great galleon-type windows that allowed her to stand on the sills and pretend she was a pirate surveying the ocean.

  Liz had assumed her customary position next to his desk. He spotted the art portfolio leaning against the legs of her chair and sensed that was where the bad news lay. He also spotted the cup of coffee on the desk. ‘This for me?’

  ‘Yeah. I am Anne Hathaway to your Meryl Streep.’ She didn’t quite get to the end of the sentence before they were both laughing at the comparisons.

  Despite Liz’s tendency to tell him regularly that the sky was falling in, he overlooked it because she was funny. And she worked like a pit pony. On a magazine with 160 pages to fill every month and only a limited number of core staff to fill them, both he and Liz had to get involved in a lot of things that weren’t strictly in their fancy job specifications.

  ‘Here’s to the havoc of mornings,’ she said, raising her own coffee cup. The smile she gave him was a sympathetic one, being a single parent herself.

  He raised his cup in response before taking a tentative sip from it. Liz’s coffee was terrible, the kind that removed the enamel from your teeth and came back to haunt you as heartburn. Everybody suspected she made it like that on purpose, but nobody had ever raised the issue with her. Liz was a woman who held grudges very, very tightly.

  When his throat had stabilised he said, ‘OK. Bring out your dead,’ and let her enjoy her moment.

  She put down her cup. ‘You know Felix mentioned this illustrator who might be just what we’re looking for?’

  ‘Yeah. The website looked promising.’

  ‘Well, he dropped his portfolio in first thing this morning. So … Felix and I have had a look. We drew lots to see who should show it to you because we both wanted to see your reaction. I won, obviously, as Felix knows everything about design, but f*** all about cheating.’ The portfolio was hauled up and opened with something of a flourish.

  ‘Holy crap,’ he said when he saw the illustration in the first plastic wallet. It was as if Toad of Toad Hall had mated with Reservoir Dogs to produce an intensely disturbing vision of the English countryside that was all fangs and scything claws.

  He flicked quickly to another illustration. A fox ripping off a chicken’s head.

  ‘This doesn’t bear any relation to the stuff on his website.’

  ‘No. He told me he’s “moved on”.’

  ‘No kidding.’ Tom flipped the page again. ‘Oh, hang on, this is better. Badgers play-fighting. Bit dark, but perhaps Felix could lighten it up.’

  ‘Shall we ask him to rub this bit out too?’ Liz was pointing at something on one of the badgers.

  Tom looked closer. ‘Ah, not fighting then. Perfect. That’s going to have Outraged of the Shire foaming at the mouth.’

  He gave the portfolio a shove. ‘Why is it so bloody difficult to find someone who can draw wildlife? And cobble together a bit of description? Get back to this guy, would you please, Liz? Tell him we think he’s too … challenging for us.’

  The brisk way Liz was zipping the portfolio back together indicated that she was even more frustrated than he was. ‘Don’t know how much longer we can keep regurgitating Charlie’s stuff and pretending we’re doing it as a homage. The readers won’t be happy, Mrs Mawson won’t be—’

  ‘Yeah, thanks for pointing that out. But they’ll be even more unhappy if I flash Armageddon in Ambridge at them. Right, anything else? Good.’

  He was on his feet trying to shepherd Liz out of the room before she had time to answer that last question, but she had applied the brakes and had her Cassandra voice on again.

  ‘Did I mention I think it’s time we sacked that tosser who writes the book reviews?’ she said. ‘He only just got them done last time.’

  ‘Yeah, you mention it every month. So that tosser has upped his game.’ He went to his bag and with as dramatic a flourish as she’d used earlier, extracted his laptop and opened it. ‘He got through one of the books this weekend, I’ll forward the review to you now. And … while we’re throwing insults about, that woman who fannies about with the films needs a kick up the backside as well.’

  ‘Hey!’ Liz looked aggrieved. ‘If that poor woman has to see another zombie film, she may kill herself because, after all, if you can’t beat them, join them.’

  With no dedicated editor for the Culture section, the two of them had to carve it up between them, fifty-fifty. The only thing Tom had stipulated was that he wanted to do the theatre reviews, even though it meant getting a babysitter every couple of weeks. When Liz had accepted his explanation that he was passionate about drama of all kinds, it made him feel ashamed that he was such a good liar.

  ‘I’ll see you in the boardroom in a minute,’ he said, finally steering her to the door. He wrenched it open. ‘So fly, little bird. Go dump your cheer on some other poor sod.’

  He was aiming for a swift door-in-door-frame scenario to underline that he’d had the last word. And, by some fluke, he managed it. There was a satisfying clunk, followed some moments later by a thud as more plaster grapes fell from the wall.

  Outside the door he heard the unmistakable sound of Liz laughing.

  *

  ‘Liposuction, breast-enhancement, dead-heading and blossom end rot …’ Across the boardroom table, Victoria paused in her shuffle of press releases. ‘Oh, not a beauty treatment – this must be for the gardening section. But you need to watch out, Kelvin, blossom end rot sounds like something you might be prone to.’

  The man opposite gave her the smile Tom supposed someone had once told him was devastating. The same person who probably said, ‘You, Kelv, my son, have a way with the layyyy-deees.’

  Victoria was still reading the press release. ‘Ah, it’s actually a very nasty disease that afflicts tomatoes,’ she said, ‘so there you go, first it’ll affect your blossom end, then spread to your tomatoes.’

  ‘Look forward to that.’ Kelvin was going for a smoulder, but as Victoria was half-trophy wife, half-Teflon, she snuffed it out quickly. All that was left was the lingering smell of Kelvin’s aftershave, commonly known as ‘Eau d’Erection’.

  ‘OK,’ Tom said, tiring of the entertainment, ‘on we go. Anything else, Victoria?’

  ‘Thought we could follow up June’s article on safe tanning with one on after-sun products.’

  ‘Good. And …?’

  ‘And double-page spread on packing light for holidays? Three different kinds of trip – show what you should take. We can make a big thing of the right luggage, too?’

  Kelvin was nodding, eyes closed, and then – ping – they were back open again and his expression suggested Victoria was a genius. ‘Yeah, might get a tie-in with a store – link with an ad. Half-page landscape,
probably.’ Kelvin was in Ad Manager mode, but under all that business talk was the suggestion that Victoria might like to reward him for supporting her so enthusiastically.

  Victoria’s smile was very expensive and she didn’t waste much of it on Kelvin. It was Tom who got the full veneer treatment. He smiled back, partly at the deflated expression on Kelvin’s face and partly because he found it hard not to be amused by Victoria’s blend of balls, enthusiasm and blatant toadying.

  She was someone he’d brought in to add some much-needed ‘bigger thinking’ to a Fashion and Beauty section that had previously been marooned in the 1990s. Her only fault was that she sometimes needed to be reined in. And not just from teasing Kelvin’s groin and then slapping it back down again.

  She had a tendency to forget their readership was canny with its money and that their eyes would bleed if presented with a pair of shoes she called ‘reasonably priced’.

  Tom glanced towards Liz to see if she wanted to add anything.

  ‘Seems OK,’ she said, not looking up from the notes she was making. ‘What happened about that spa article?’

  ‘Thought nearer Christmas. Kelvin’s in negotiations with them about a review and a reader’s offer.’

  ‘Yup, I am,’ Kelvin said. ‘I’m very optimistic.’

  Sub-text: And hopeful that my fantasy involving me, Victoria and a jacuzzi will finally, finally come true.

  Tom wondered whether Kelvin had noticed that he was no longer an up-for-it lad, but a dad in his late forties. Or was it only Tom feeling his age today? Probably. Kelvin was still as shiny as his suits – a guy who could talk someone up from a quarter to a full-page ad and make them think they’d got the best of the deal.

  Tom thanked Victoria for her ideas, but because she looked a little too smug, added, ‘Just remember, no banker’s bonus stuff.’

  Her hand went over her own, very flashy, watch.