by Diane Janes
It was evident that the concrete guy (who Simon introduced as Vic) mistrusted us on sight, because his opening words included the phrase ‘cash up front’. Simon attempted to protest that he understood the arrangement was cash on completion, but once it became apparent that Vic had no intention of unloading his cement mixer until our money was safely in his pocket, Simon backed down and went inside to fetch the cash, leaving the rest of us to stand awkwardly alongside the pick-up. There was no disguising the exchange of satisfied looks which passed between Vic and his sidekick. Local Builders 1, Suspicious-Looking Hippies nil.
Vic pointedly counted the cash before carefully stowing it in the back pocket of his trousers. While this was going on I glanced from Danny to Simon and back again. We would have to be very careful – palpable tension might make the builders suspicious.
‘Right then,’ said Vic. ‘Let’s see the job, shall we?’
Simon led the way round the side of the house and across the garden to the pond. While we were still ten yards away Danny gave a shout and began to run. We had all in the same instant seen the little dog shoot ahead and dive into the hole. Sand flew upwards while Danny charged headlong to the rescue and Vic bellowed, ‘Gerrout of it, yer bugger.’ At the sound of Danny’s approach and his master’s voice the dog – clearly thinking better of it – emerged and trotted away.
‘Thinks ’e’s gonna find a bone,’ the youth said cheerfully.
I couldn’t bring myself to look at Danny, fearing to read in his expression how much the terrier had uncovered. Danny was about to hop down into the hole, but he was checked by Vic, who said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll soon smooth it out again.’ By this time we had all reached the pond and it was too late to do anything anyway. I glanced down at the spot where the wretched dog had been burrowing, but the hole he had made was hidden behind the little pile of sand he had dug out of it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Simon edging around the pond in order to get a better view. I had a desperate urge to sit down. My ears buzzed and spots danced in front of my eyes. This was it. We were going to be found out – right here, right now.
Simon startled us all by jumping into the sandy hollow and kicking the sand back into place with his boot. ‘Bloody dog,’ he said. ‘We spent ages yesterday, getting it perfectly smooth.’
I saw Vic give him a funny look – probably wondering why Simon was getting so het up over nothing. Danny strolled round to offer Simon a hand back up. I saw him say something quietly and Simon gave a half-nod. Vic didn’t appear to notice. He began to survey the job, taking an agonizing length of time to peer into the sand-lined hole from all directions, walking slowly round the outside, humming and hawing and chuntering about the angle of the sides and whether they were too steep to take the mix. Just when I began to be afraid he was going to say it couldn’t be done, he jumped into the hole, landing heavily on a spot immediately above Trudie’s head. We watched in horror as he began stamping about, leaving his great boot prints all over Simon’s smoothed-out sand. I imagined the soil compressing into Trudie’s features. It was all too much. I charged headlong across the grass and vomited into the rose bed.
Danny was beside me in a moment, holding my shoulders, uttering words of comfort. ‘Come inside,’ he said. ‘Come on . . .’
I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand, tried to calm myself. I was shaking violently. As if from a long way off I heard Vic ask, ‘What’s wrong with her then?’ and Simon’s voice, discreetly lowered – presumably issuing some platitude about a tummy upset.
‘I’ll go in,’ I said. ‘You’d better stay out here with Simon.’
Danny only paused to consider this for a moment before nodding. ‘You’re right,’ he said.
I stumbled off in the direction of the kitchen, feeling like a coward and a traitor. Once inside I stood trembling beside the sink, imagining what might happen if the blasted dog jumped into the hole again or Vic took it into his head to start poking about or scraping away some of the sand; but after what seemed like hours I heard the unmistakable monotonous rumble of the concrete mixer. By the time I felt able to return, having washed my face and changed my T-shirt, work was well under way.
‘Better?’ asked Danny and I nodded, miserably aware of a lingering taste of vomit, which matched the sickness in my heart.
The concrete mixer had been set up close to the pond, where it stood tumbling its contents a few feet from where Vic was at work, kneeling on a big board in the bottom of the pond, using a trowel and flat to apply a smooth layer of concrete like a master chef icing a giant inverted birthday cake.
Not wishing to leave Vic and his mate unsupervised, Simon and Danny had offered to help, affecting a willingness to learn by their involvement. Vic accepted this readily. He evidently liked the idea of having this expanded workforce at his disposal and when I arrived he found a role for me too – I was to act as tea lady, keeping the menfolk continuously supplied.
In truth there was only a limited amount of fetching and carrying for the labourers to do, so Simon, Danny and Gordon (as the youth turned out to be called) were left for long periods with nothing to do but stand about, watching Vic at work. Gordon was a garrulous lad, blissfully oblivious to the level of indifference his observations inspired in us. He tried football, then pop music, and when those lines of conversation failed he diverted to television, but we were not fans of The Fenn Street Gang and hadn’t seen Top of the Pops in weeks. His attitude toward us was a mixture of curiosity and condescension. In common with many of those who entered the workforce in their mid-teens, he viewed university students as work-shy parasites, who enjoyed long holidays at the expense of the working classes ‘and half of them not doing anything useful after – I mean it’s all right if you’re studying to be a doctor . . .’ Yet at the same time we represented a form of glamorous independence, living out here all summer, not having to keep regular hours and answerable to no one – probably getting up to all kinds of wildness – orgies and drugs, like what was reported in the Sun.
We all instinctively understood the need to humour Gordon. He was incurably chatty and sure to tell his mates about the job he had worked on at some funny old place inhabited by a bunch of hippies. Our best hope was to appear uninteresting – because it was soon clear that Gordon assumed all manner of excitement might be available. ‘Bet you have some great parties up here,’ he said, and ‘’Ave a lot of friends down, do you, at the weekends?’ To these and other enquiries, we responded with a negative. We just worked in the garden and kept the house tidy – dull as ditchwater, that was us.
It was from Vic, however, that the most alarming question of the morning came. He was kneeling on a board in the pond, smoothing concrete across its curving side – the angle of which had not after all proved too steep for the mix to be applied. ‘Where’s that Trudie, then?’ he asked.
There was a horrified silence. Vic was concentrating on what he was doing and didn’t see our faces. ‘I suppose she’s still in bed, is she?’
I stifled my Tourette’s. Simon couldn’t take his eyes off the place where Vic was kneeling. Danny recovered first. ‘She’s not here any more,’ he said. ‘She’s moved on.’
Nothing more was said on the subject just then, but while Gordon took off on another digression into the world of Slade and T. Rex, I began to speculate frantically about Vic’s question. How on earth? Then I remembered that Trudie had accompanied Simon into town, the day he embarked on his quest for a helpful builder. She had evidently introduced herself to Vic -and probably to every other builder they had called on. And they would hardly have forgotten her – it was not every day a Trudie showed up in your yard. It was only a matter of time, that was all. I half wished Sergeant Mathieson would walk around the corner of the house and arrest us there and then, just to get it over with. Simon was standing in front of me and I noticed that, like mine, his T-shirt was soaked in sweat.
‘Now then, young lady,’ Vic interrupted Gordon’s latest monologue – spoke right across him in fact.
‘How about another cup of tea?’
I bristled. No one except my father called me young lady – and he only did it because he knew how much I hated it. I swallowed my resentment – on the being patronised front, the score now stood at approximately Local Builders 30, Hippies nil, but we dared not stop humouring them.
‘Right ho,’ I said.
Gordon went to stand by the concrete mixer, slightly apart from the others. When I approached to get his cup he gave me a knowing wink and said: ‘Have to get rid of her, did you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That Trudie – causing trouble, was she – between you and the other lads?’
‘No.’ I went for indignant, but didn’t quite manage it. Instead my voice emerged in a cruel parody of Minnie Mouse. ‘We didn’t – haven’t got rid of her.’
‘I thought he said she’d gone.’
‘She has – but she was only staying with us for a while.’
‘Where’s she gone then?’
I wasn’t prepared for this. It wasn’t that he was suspicious – he was just making idle conversation: but we still hadn’t worked out exactly what to tell people, which left a real risk that I might pluck something out of the air, only to have Danny or Simon contradict it later – and that would make him suspicious. I let the cup I was holding slip out of my fingers. It fell on the grass and didn’t break, but it was enough to divert his attention and enable me to make my escape.
When I brought out a fresh brew of tea Gordon hung back until everyone else had taken a cup from the tray, then gestured me to one side, a little way from the others. I didn’t like the look of this but I couldn’t see any way out, so I followed him a few steps towards the edge of the lawn, as if we had discovered something of mutual interest under a clematis-draped arch.
‘You’re in trouble, aren’t you?’ he said, keeping his voice low, eyeing the others to see if they were watching us.
The idea that he must know about Trudie lurched crazily into my head. I couldn’t see how – but somehow he must have found out. Maybe he’d been hiding in the woods that night – or detected something amiss with the base of the pool. Irrational as drunks, these thoughts weaved around my mind while he awaited my answer. When none was forthcoming, he said, ‘It’s all right. I won’t say nothing to Vic’ When he lowered his voice the local burr intensified – Trudie would have called him ‘a country boy’ or ‘a local yokel’.
‘Nothing about what?’ I stuttered.
‘About you bein’ pregnant. I know the signs, see – sick in the morning and jumpy as a cat. My sister got herself into trouble last year. I can get the address of this clinic off her, if you want.’
Only intense indignation prevented me from laughing out loud. ‘I am not pregnant,’ I said, haughtily. I stalked back to the house in a fine state of high dudgeon. Once in the kitchen I began to laugh. It came out in a gush, like water released by the collapse of a dam. I had to sit down before I buckled under its weight, laughing until it turned into sobs which hurt my throat and wrenched my chest.
The noise of the cement mixer ground on all through the day. My head became so full of it that every turn it took seemed to slice painfully into my brain. The outside temperature had risen to baking point again, weaving a blanket of heat across everything like a deadweight. There had been several thunderstorms already and I guessed we were in for another one. My head started to throb in unison with the mixer, but when I sought refuge in the kitchen the sound intruded even there. We kept the transistor radio on one of the kitchen shelves and in a desperate attempt to blot out the sound of the machine I reached up and turned the lower of the two dials. The radio came to life with a loud crackle of complaint, followed by Johnnie Walker’s voice talking about a postcard he had received from some holidaying listeners who hailed from Manchester: a welcome reminder that somewhere in the world people were focusing on normal cheerful things, instead of secrets and death.
‘And now,’ said Johnnie, ‘we have Anne Murray singing ‘Danny’s Song’.
I waited by the radio intrigued. I hadn’t realized there was a song for Danny. An instant later I almost broke the knob in my haste to turn it off. I hadn’t known the title of that particular number was ‘Danny’s Song’. It was the song Trudie and Danny had sung as a duet, that first afternoon on the beach. The first song they ever sang together. A terrible vista yawned ahead of me – of a world in which everything led back to just one thing.
Now that I had silenced the radio, the cement mixer seemed if anything louder than before. I remembered that we had a bottle of soluble aspirin somewhere: Trudie had bought it a couple of weeks ago, somewhat annoyed that she had to buy the larger size because the little chemist had run out of bottles of fifty. I hunted about until I found it, unscrewed the cap and prised the lump of cotton wool out of the neck. When I tipped the bottle half a dozen tablets tumbled into my palm before I could stop them and I had to feed all but two back in. These I dissolved in a glass of water, gently agitating it to speed up the process. They were all but gone when Danny popped his head round the door.
‘You okay?’ he asked. ‘I came to tell you that the pond’s finished.’
‘Why is that bloody machine still going then?’
‘He’s cleaning it out. They do it with stones.’
No wonder it sounded noisier than ever. Danny went back to join them. After a while the machine stopped. There was a longish period of quiet before I heard the engine of the departing pick-up. It sounded a long way off, although it was really only down the hall and just the other side of the front door. As the sound faded into the distance I experienced a curious sense of desolation. I had not liked Gordon and Vic, but their departure left me feeling stranded. They had their truck to take them away, back to that other world of normal life, where normal people did normal things, but there was no escape for me.
It’s the heat, I told myself. It’s so oppressive.
I went outside to find the guys. They were standing beside the pond.
‘He says we can fill it with water tomorrow,’ said Simon, as much to himself as to us.
‘It’s going to take a lot of filling,’ said Danny. ‘How long do you reckon it’ll take, Si?’
I noticed the way Danny sounded almost cheerful. The sight of the finished pond temporarily lifted my spirits too. After all, the chances of discovery had just been radically reduced in our favour. By contrast Simon’s voice was completely flat. ‘Ages,’ he said. ‘Maybe all day.’
‘Could be,’ Danny agreed. ‘How are you feeling?’ he asked me.
‘A bit better – specially now they’ve gone.’
‘If you don’t feel up to making our dinner, I could rustle something up.’
I was on the point of accepting but then I noticed how tired he looked. Dark curls of hair were sticking to his forehead. His clothes were pale with dust from the sacks of sand and cement. ‘I’m much better,’ I said quickly. ‘I’ll be all right.’
‘Great,’ he said. He put his arm around my waist as we walked back towards the house. ‘It’s all over now, babe,’ he whispered into my hair. I wished I could believe him, but I knew he was wrong. It was too hot for displays of physical affection and I disengaged myself as soon as I was decently able.
After we had eaten we sat outside, well away from the newly completed pond. It was obvious that a storm was coming – the sky had faded into shades of mauve and grey and, although we saw no lightning, every so often a prolonged rumble of thunder reached us from far away in the Welsh mountains, sometimes followed by a breeze which rushed through the garden, leaving the trees and bushes whispering nervously among themselves.
Danny had discovered some lemonade at the back of the pantry, which he used to dilute my whisky. I drank quite fast. It was something to do with my hands. Our desperate attempts at conversation were interspersed with lengthy silences. It was as if we had already said everything there was to say to one another – or else that everything left was unsayable. Several t
imes I caught Simon looking at me speculatively, but each time our eyes met he looked away. It was starting to spook me. When Danny went inside to the bathroom, I could stand it no longer. ‘Stop staring at me, will you? You’re giving me the creeps.’
My shrill protest seemed to annoy him. He fixed me with an unremitting stare. ‘You’re crazy about Danny, aren’t you? I wonder how far you would really go for him. What’s your limit, Katy?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I said. There was a wobble in my voice and I edged sideways across the grass, putting an extra couple of feet between us. Rachel Hewitt had been crazy about Danny and look what happened to her. She had been stabbed with Simon’s screwdriver – no – wait – that wasn’t right – she had been strangled – with Trudie’s scarf. I stared into the shrubbery, not wanting to look directly at Simon but conscious that he was still watching me.
Danny flopped down beside us. ‘It reckon it must still be over twenty degrees in there,’ he said.
I heard him without comprehension. I stole another quick look at Simon, but he was dismantling a daisy he had plucked out of the lawn: picking it apart petal by petal, with ugly ragged nails. From nowhere I remembered how perfectly shaped his nails had been at the beginning of the summer, before they were ruined by the digging. What had Simon been saying a minute or two ago – had he in fact been saying anything at all?