by Unknown
‘Is he?’ Ellen patted one column of the four-poster, noticing that long black silk scarves had been tied to each one. Kinky.
‘And it mustn’t be allowed to foul the lawns. There’s nothing more offputting than a beautiful stretch of striped grass with a great dog plop in the middle of it.’
‘Quite.’ Ellen turned to look at the garden, which was as tall, wild and luscious as the Goose Cottage paddock beyond. For all she could see, the entire canine population of Oddlode could have been using this new meadow as a doggy loo. ‘I’ll make sure she goes out on her walks.’
‘Be sure to scoop! Mr Gardner and I fought long and hard to get poop bins in the village.’
‘Oh, I will,’ she promised.
‘And do try to enjoy yourself,’ Jennifer added, as an afterthought.
‘Yes.’ Ellen watched as Snorkel rolled wantonly in something undoubtedly very smelly by the pond. ‘You know, I think you’re right, Mum. I might enjoy my stay here.’
The village stores in Oddlode saw little action on a Saturday afternoon because the post-office section was closed. A traditional congregating place for the Oddlode pensioners to pass the time of day, the narrow counter was a shuttered, darkened corner when Ellen pinged her way into the store. But the four people inside were still quadruple the number she usually encountered in the tiny front-room Treglin shop, and she found herself smiling politely at the crowd as she would when entering Bude Safeway.
Two ramblers were choosing cold drinks at the chilled cabinet, and a pink-cheeked elderly woman was deep in conversation with a short, plump man in a loud shirt, both standing in front of the counter. ‘Gone up to Lincolnshire with the rest of the hunters to turn them out to their summer grazing, she has. How she expects to get back in time, I have no idea, but she’s left me to organise everything.’
‘That’s real mean,’ her companion sympathised, in an American accent.
Looking around, Ellen barely recognised the interior of the shop. Outside it might be the same – a village institution for more than a century, forming the pretty, buttery cornerstone of the long terrace of cottages that clustered around the join of Station and School Lanes. But inside it had been gutted since her last visit. One wall now consisted entirely of cooled shelves and freezer cabinets, crammed full of classy delicatessen fare – fresh filled pasta, oak-smoked Cheddar, Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream. There wasn’t a Bird’s Eye Ocean Pie or a Ginster’s pasty in sight. Gone were the Blue Nuns and half-bottles of gin that had once gathered dust on shelves behind the till: a large wine and spirits selection offered discount bin ends and a one-week-only special offer on Pimm’s. And as well as the usual range of stock staples, the shop now boasted freshly baked bread and cakes, magazines and newspapers, greetings cards and postcards, Cotswold souvenirs and even a video library offering the latest releases at an unbelievable one pound a night.
‘. . . then them wine-merchant people phone to say they can’t deliver today, and I tried to get Lady B on her module phone but after it rings a few times I see she’s left it right on the desk in front of me . . .’
‘What a nuisance.’ The American nodded. Ellen guessed from the Hawaiian shirt and immaculate Bermuda shorts that he was an unfortunate tourist who had wandered in for a postcard or a film for his camera, and become trapped with the chatterbox shopkeeper. She didn’t really want to relieve his shift, so hurriedly set about getting what she wanted.
She grabbed a bag of cat litter, a loaf of bread and a carton of milk to take to the counter. There, she waited to be served, but the pink-faced biddy was still mid-flow. ‘So I called that lot at the Pheasant – I mean the Duck Upstream or whatever they call it now – and says, “Can you help?” and that uppity madam says, “I’ve already donated a meal for two, what do you want now? Blood?” and then she puts the phone down. I mean, how rude – of course Lady B would pay them, but I didn’t have a chance to—’
‘Excuse me?’ Ellen waggled her milk politely. ‘May I pay?’
The biddy patted her chest. ‘Look at me, talking away when I’ve a hundred things to do. I am sorry, dear.’ She flashed a sweet smile that puckered slightly as her gaze pressed carriage return on Ellen’s hot-pants shorts and crop top. ‘Mustn’t keep you waiting.’ Then, to Ellen’s surprise, she walked out of the shop with a jaunty ‘ping’ of the door.
‘Well, whaddaya know! I thought she’d never go.’ The plump American chuckled, clapped his hands together and headed behind the till. ‘Okay, young lady, let’s ring these babies up.’ He grabbed a barcode reader and started waving it over Ellen’s meagre purchases.
‘Can I put a card up in your window?’ she asked as he did so, feeling in her back pocket for the piece of paper she’d written out.
‘Sure can – it’s fifty pence a week.’
‘I’ll take a fortnight.’ Ellen handed it over.
He read it at arm’s length. ‘Kind homes needed for well-behaved ten-month-old Border collie bitch and three-year-old black and white cat (male nutter). Can separate. Call Ellen on . . .’
‘It’s neuter,’ Ellen pointed out. ‘Male neuter, not nutter.’
‘Ah!’ He chuckled again, flipping it over to make a note of its expiry date on the back. ‘Neuter, not nutter. That’s kinda funny.’
‘Well, actually he’s both,’ Ellen admitted.
‘That’s even funnier.’ The round, cheerful face beamed, and Ellen realised that this was what Father Christmas would look like clean-shaven. ‘We haven’t seen you in here before, have we?’
‘Not for years.’ She dug through her purse for a fiver.
‘We’ve only been here six months.’ He thrust out a big, warm hand. ‘Joel Lubowski. Swell to make your acquaintance, Ellen.’
‘And yours. Hi. The shop looks great.’ She smiled back, and turned as the door pinged again. A bona fide Goth swept in – female, black hair, white makeup and long black coat despite the sweltering day. Not looking at Joel, Ellen or the ramblers – who had now moved on to the postcards – she skulked over to the video display.
‘Hi there, Godspell!’ Joel called, and was ignored. He puffed out his fleshy cheeks and raised his eyebrows, looking ridiculously hurt as he packed Ellen’s purchases into a bag. Joel was clearly a man who liked to spread happiness.
Godspell picked up the box for the latest Johnny Depp video and started reading the back, head bobbing.
‘It’s a real good movie!’ Joel called, as he gave Ellen her change. ‘Lily and I watched it last night.’
Godspell ignored him.
‘Personal stereo,’ Ellen pointed out kindly. ‘She can’t hear a thing.’
‘Oh.’ The big face perked up as Ellen winked and headed for the door. ‘Hey – have an ice-cream on the house. Treat for pretty customers. Just beside you there.’
‘Thanks.’ Touched, Ellen helped herself to a Zoom. She really wanted the M and M Cornetto, but there was only one left and she didn’t want to deny any of Joel’s paying customers. ‘See you around.’
‘Call again soon!’
Grinning, because she had found the encounter quite bizarre, Ellen unhooked Snorkel’s lead from the pegs outside and took her across the lane to eat the ice-cream on the green. Quite a few villagers were out, soaking up the sunshine, passing on gossip, kicking balls around or walking dogs. Ellen settled on a deserted bench overlooking the duck pond, under the shadow of three huge horse-chestnuts. She set Snorkel free to go and admire her reflection in the water and, hoicking one leg up on the bench, lapped up her Zoom and thought about the Goose Cottage Shaggers.
The more she thought about it, the more convinced she grew that it simply couldn’t be Dot and Reg. They certainly weren’t cleaning and gardening, but she had a pretty shrewd idea that neither were they doing the dirty in the flowered four-poster bed. What need would they have for condoms at their age? And they hardly sounded the sort to indulge in long Gran Turismo 5 battles on the alien PlayStation.
Which left either another member of the Wyck fam
ily – Saul was suspect number one in that camp – or the estate agent at Seaton’s. First thing on Monday, Ellen planned to haul him over the coals. Even if he wasn’t using the most desirable property on his books as a base for his illicit encounters, he had to know that the state of the place must be putting off potential purchasers. And, now she thought about it, why wasn’t there a for-sale board up?
Sitting beside the sapphire eye of Jennifer Jamieson’s jewelled brooch, Ellen had a perfect view of the gold filigree cottages lined up along one side of the oldest part of the village – a triangle formed by the green, Chapel Row and the Hillcote road along which she had driven into the village. More skips than cars were parked outside the tiny cottages, and many of the higgledy-piggledy line were decked out with scaffolding and rival builders’ boards. One of the oldest, still wigged with moss-strewn thatch, had its face entirely hidden behind boarding on which a local vandal had charmingly spray-painted, ‘Yuppies Fuck Off.’
Beyond the sagging roofs, most now tiled with slate or stone, Ellen could just make out the bell-tower of the old school that lay at the heart of the triangle and whose over-popularity was the cause of the village’s great debate – a favourite bugbear of Jennifer’s at one time. And beyond that she could see the hills in which she’d stopped to let Snorkel run earlier, now just another slice of the striped vegetable terrine. She squinted to pick out the rape field with the derelict Dutch barn, tapping her Zoom stick against her teeth. A moment later, she found herself spitting out something small and squirming.
That was when she discovered why her chosen bench had been deserted. Not only was it in the shade but the horse-chestnuts above it were raining down small, wriggling caterpillars. She shifted right up to one end to find a tiny spot not under the tree’s canopy, twisting round to stretch out her legs and shake off those that had already landed.
‘“Bevis Aspinall”.’ She read the inscription on the bench’s brass plaque that she’d been leaning against when eating her ice-cream. ‘“Beloved son, dearly missed. 12.12.74–22.6.91”. Oh!’ She clasped her mouth with her hand as the connection registered. ‘You poor bugger. Only sixteen.’ It struck her as desperately sad.
She patted the weatherbeaten wooden arm beside her, feeling a curious affinity with Bevis in his shady corner by the pond. They shared the same birthday, and both liked to be close to water. Digging into her loaf to feed the ducks before she left, she told Bevis to keep an eye open for nefarious villagers with large private collections of console games.
As she and Snorkel headed home to start the clear-up operation, cutting a diagonal line across the green to Goose Lane, Ellen saw the pink-cheeked biddy who had been talking to Joel in the shop. She was now chatting to someone outside the tall wrought-iron gates to Oddlode Manor, on which Jennifer had pretentiously based the design for the Goose Cottage ones. Spotting Ellen and Snorkel, she nudged her companion and bobbed her head in their direction, her mouth still moving non-stop.
Ellen gave her a cheery wave and fanned air into her T-shirt, swinging her bag of shopping and wondering where she could get hold of a few PlayStation games.
By six, she’d had enough. The worst of the Shaggers’ rubbish was in the three fat bin-bags that sat outside the door to the boot room, the bottles were in the recycling crate and the bedclothes were swooshing around in the washing-machine. After a long hunt for the keys, every grubby window in the house had been opened to air it, and bunches of lily of the valley, sweet rocket and French lavender sat in milk bottles in the kitchen and sitting room to disperse the smell of stale cigarettes.
Because Ellen had forgotten to buy cigarettes in the shop, and because she hated cleaning at the best of times, she was feeling twitchy and short-tempered. Poor Fins was yowling in his closed-barracks confinement of the utility and boot rooms. She longed to let him out, but she knew that he’d scarper and probably never be seen again. He had to stay there, at least for a few days.
To get away from the noise, guilt and dirt, she headed into the garden and contemplated the jungle. It would take her days to sort it out. The grass was so long that it needed to be strimmed or scythed before she could get a mower on to it. The rampant flowers clogging the beds looked rather spectacular, but docks and nettles that would take for ever to pull up were already bullying them out. The pond was a stagnant pit and had developed a repulsive-looking slime on its surface, which frothed ominously. And the paddock – once let to a local girl for her pony, as she recalled – was now a wild heath through which Snorkel was ploughing twisting furrows as she chased insects, followed enticing scents and sporadically stood stock still to look pleadingly at Ellen.
The collie was accustomed to running miles each day with Richard, swimming in the sea and clambering up and down the steep Cornish cliff paths like a mountaineer. Today’s occasional loo breaks, playtime in the Goose Cottage garden and gander across the village were wholly inadequate.
‘We could head back to the shop for cigarettes?’ Ellen suggested, closing one eye as she tried not to give in to the nicotine temptation. ‘Or I could quit today and take you to see the river.’
Snorkel just barked and bounded stupidly, blinking and sneezing as she sent up a cloud of pollen and grass seed.
Leaving the Goose Cottage doors unlocked and all the windows open – she was accustomed to Cornish isolation – Ellen set off across the lane towards Goose End, pausing under the big lime tree that formed a rural roundabout at the point where all the lanes and tracks met. Tarmac gave way to unkempt gravel as the long drive to Lodge Farm opened up ahead and Goose End swung to the right. Ellen took the latter, looking up at the top windows of the huge Lodge, just visible over its high stone wall.
If Goose Cottage had suffered six months of neglect, then the Lodge had suffered years. It had been empty and dilapidated for as long as Ellen remembered, those high garden walls only just holding back the impenetrable, enchanted forest that sprouted beyond. It was the sort of place that entranced children, their imaginations fired by ghost stories featuring deserted mansions or tales of enchanted gardens. Ellen remembered her father telling her that a famous sculptor had once lived there and that the grounds were full of his bronzes. She longed to open the arched wooden gate, which squatted like a magic porthole half-way along the garden wall, and take a peek inside.
With its mysterious, neglected Lodge and ancient barns, Goose End had once been the forgotten corner of Oddlode, but now it, too, had been touched by modernisation. The barns had been converted into three luxurious houses; the tatty old farm-workers’ cottages beside them had been sold on and spruced up. Yet as the village gave way to the bridlepath, which cut its way up through the hills, it still made Ellen think of the days in which all roads had been like this – simple tracks in which cartwheels got stuck and labourers’ boots sank to the ankle as they walked.
The grassy bridge across the Odd marked the true start of the bridlepath. Despite the scorching heat of the day, the river was as high as Ellen remembered it. After an April where the showers had been non-stop torrents, one sunny, heatwave week in May had barely dissipated the gushing, bubbling force of the little river, which galloped its way through its high-banked winding trench to the north of the village like a bobsleigh along an Olympic course.
While Snorkel plunged into the gravel-bottomed shallows beside the bridge, Ellen climbed up the grassy arch and leaned on the stone wall, looking down into the clear, bubbling depths. Her father had brought her here a few times, excitedly showing off the gudgeon, dace and three-spined sticklebacks that took a patient eye to spot. Ellen had never had the heart to tell him that in the brooks around Treglin these fish were as common as minnows. But by far the most exciting residents of the river Odd were the crayfish that appeared every year for just a few days in such numbers you could catch them with your hands. Ellen couldn’t boast that of Treglin. The crayfish were a well-kept village secret and fishing them was strictly limited, overseen by several self-appointed ‘guardians’ of which Ellen’s mo
ther had been one. Jennifer had been active on village committees. If there was a planning proposal to be fought or an amenity to be saved, she was always in the thick of the action. That well-meaning tenacity had been brought into play when she’d fought long and hard to stop Ellen seeing Richard ‘for your own good’.
Ellen shook her head to stop herself going there. Plenty of time to think about Richard when she was riding across Mongolia or trekking in Tibet or spending time in any number of places that didn’t make her think about him in relation to her mother.
Snorkel was still plunging around in the river’s shallow gravel bed, trying to catch water fleas, her muzzle sending up great fans of drips as she nosed in and out like an ebullient duck.
Ellen crossed the bridge and tried to whistle her onwards, drawing level with a curious building that she’d never really understood – a pillared stone dome, covered with the man-made graffiti of spray paint and nature’s vandalising ivy. Her father always claimed it was an Aphrodite temple, erected for villagers to conduct illicit affairs, but he was given to these flights of fancy, regularly quashed by a furious tut from Jennifer. Ellen doubted that many villagers used it for adulterous liaisons – especially not when they had Goose Cottage at their disposal. Overgrown with nettles and brambles, it would take a brave soul to get down to the buff in there.
‘Horrid, isn’t it?’ said a voice just beside her. ‘Even the glue-sniffers have abandoned it, these days.’
Ellen jumped and swung round to find a woman at her shoulder. She hadn’t heard her approach but if she hadn’t been so blinkered by the thick arms of her shades and the lowered peak of her baseball cap, she would certainly have seen her. Magnificently endowed and as broad-hipped as a lyre, she was an Aphrodite fit for a true Greek temple, albeit a mellow goddess in a slightly ruined one. From the mane of wild dark oak curls through the creased, floaty white smock dress to the camp gold flip-flops, she oozed scruffy sensuality.