by Ann Purser
“Can you remember anything at all about William?” Ivy smiled encouragingly.
“Nothing much. He got married, I believe, but I don’t remember the name of his bride. There was something, though, later on. Just can’t recall it at the moment. Don’t worry, Ivy,” he added, “I”ll remember it later.”
“Don’t forget to tell us then, or write it down before you forget it again,” Deirdre said, and continued, “and meanwhile, Gus and I can go to the newspaper archive and find William’s wedding notice. That’ll give us his wife’s maiden name.”
“Good idea,” Gus said, sitting up straight and smiling at Deirdre. “It’s worth remembering a brewery statement I read in the local, put in by spokesperson Bronwen Evans. Bronwen? Remember? Alwen Jones’s clever daughter? That might give us a lead. When shall we go?” His good mood increased at the thought of spending some time with Deirdre. Maybe he could ask her out for a meal at the pub this evening, instead of always waiting for an invitation to Tawny Wings. Then he remembered he had promised James at the shop a game of darts, and he gave up.
“It’ll have to be tomorrow,” Deirdre said. “Volunteers’ meeting at the Oxfam shop in Thornwell this afternoon. They want to open a separate bookshop, and I think it’s a rubbish idea. If we’re left with only secondhand clothes and a few bits of old china, it’s not going to attract the most interesting customers, is it?”
“Never mind about Oxfam,” said Ivy irritably. She wanted a bit of the action for herself and Roy, and thought rapidly of something useful they could investigate. “Why don’t we two ask Alwen if she’d like to walk down to the shop with us, Roy?” she said. “A gentle stroll and a casual question or two might catch her unawares. She obviously don’t want to talk about her late husband. If he is late,” she added darkly.
Roy nodded. “Something dawning up here,” he added, tapping his forehead. “Bells definitely beginning to ring.” Maybe he had been wrong about Ivy and Alwen. A walk with two pleasant companions would be just the ticket.
LUNCH HAD BEEN late, the potatoes not quite cooked and the gravy too salty. There had been complaints, and it had taken much tactful assurance of improvement before the residents settled down to their afternoon television. Mrs. Spurling and Miss Pinkney sat in the small office with its observation window newly cleaned by Katya, and stared in defeated silence as three of their residents set off in the autumn sunlight down the path and out of the gate.
“They might just as well be in a hotel,” Mrs. Spurling said. “There are some hotels, you know, Miss Pinkney, that specialise in old people who are able but want companionship. Those three are nothing but trouble here, and Mr. Goodman has been like a dog with two tails since he got that buggy. Can go for miles now, instead of a gentle walk around the garden. I had high hopes of Mrs. Wilson Jones being quite grateful for what we offer, but now she’s fallen in with bad company, and I suppose the next thing will be that daughter of hers coming here to accuse me of neglect.”
“Neglect?” said Miss Pinkney. “Not never ever, my dear. Nobody could accuse you of that! No, my advice is to let them get on with it. We are not a prison, after all, though I have heard Mr. Goodman refer to us as, er . . .” She remembered in time that Mrs. Spurling wouldn’t see the joke, if it was one, and changed the subject.
“That nice daughter of Felix Galloway is due to visit this afternoon, isn’t she? Such a pleasant person. But then Felix is a dear old man, isn’t he. Like father, like daughter!”
“Oh, do shut up, Pinkers,” Mrs. Spurling said. “Just go and see to something, and leave me alone to brood.”
Miss Pinkney smiled. She knew her boss so well, and felt sorry for her sometimes. It couldn’t be easy to remain working in a place where your husband had run off with the cook.
“LOVELY AFTERNOON. WHAT a good idea of yours, Roy,” Alwen Jones said. “Are you sure you’re all right in that vehicle? I must say your steering is pretty nifty!”
The electric shopper, a motorised vehicle for disabled people, had been the best thing, next to Ivy, that had happened to Roy. Although able enough to get around Springfields easily, he could not manage on rough pavements, nor go too far. He had quickly learned the shopper’s little ways, and was extremely deft at negotiating potholes and kerbs all round the village. Dropped kerbs providing a smooth crossing for wheelchairs and pushchairs had not yet reached Barrington, though Deirdre had said she would talk to the right people and get them fixed in no time.
“It’s a revolution, Alwen,” Roy said. “Saves Ivy from pushing an old fogey along in a wheelchair.”
Ivy smiled fondly at him. She knew how much it meant to him to be independent and in charge of a wheeled vehicle again. That was the rotten thing about old age. It changed the way you felt about yourself. Well, she did not intend it should happen to her, or Roy. If you ask me, she said to herself, you have to keep up the fight to the end.
“And you’ve got a lovely big bag for your shopping,” Alwen said. “What shall we buy this afternoon, Ivy?”
Ivy was tempted to say maybe Alwen should watch her pennies after the recent debacle, but she was sure there were plenty more tens of thousands in the Jones kitty.
“We usually keep supplies of our favourite chocs or biscuits in our rooms,” she said. “Nothing like a chocolate digestive if you feel a bit peckish in the middle of the night. Of course,” she added, “I expect when your husband was alive, he’d go down and make a nice hot cup of tea to help you back to sleep?”
Alwen’s face closed up. “I’ve never had trouble sleeping, Ivy,” she said.
“Lucky you,” said Roy. “My dreams wake me up sometimes. ‘Dreaming, oh my darling love, of thee,’ ” he sang in a soppy voice, and Ivy looked at him sharply. Surely he was not referring to her? Well, it had better not be anyone else.
“Watch out, Roy!” said Alwen. “Oh, sorry, I thought that cat was going to run right in front of you. Now, here we are. Can I help you alight?”
There’s no doubt about it, thought Ivy. She clammed up the minute her husband was mentioned. Definitely something funny going on. “Roy can manage,” she said sternly.
Nine
BRONWEN EVANS, NEE Wilson Jones, had received bad news in the post. She and her husband Trevor were having their customary gins and tonics in the smart drawing room of their new house on the outskirts of Thornwell. The builder had described the houses as executive dwellings in the best part of town, but in spite of exterior additions such as coach lamps and a Doric pillar here and there, they were pattern-book estate houses with little space between them. Bronwen had expected more, at her time of life, having lived at home with her mother in a large Victorian villa with kitchen garden and greenhouse until she met Trevor, who had swept her off her feet with practised ease.
Trevor was a salesman, as good at selling houses as he was at selling himself. He was an up-and-coming competitor in the residential property market, and had negotiated a good deal from the developers on the purchase of his own house, although now there was a financial slump—temporary, he hoped—and he was not in the best of tempers.
“What’s the matter with you, Bron?” he said. “It’s me who should be looking grim. Haven’t sold a house for two weeks now, but staff have to be paid and expenses met.”
“Well, at least you’ve got a job,” she said dully. She handed him a letter she had stuffed in her handbag this morning, waiting for the right moment to show it to him.
“Bloody hell!” he said. “This is a bit sudden, isn’t it? They’ve only just taken over!”
The letter said in shockingly brief terms that in view of the economic climate, the new owners of the brewery were having to cut down on staff numbers, and regrettably Bronwen’s post as public relations officer would no longer exist. They would be using a central department within the group. They thanked her for past service and wished her well for the future.
Bronwen watched him read through it again and waited for his reaction. He looked at her for a full minute, and the
n said, “You know what this means, don’t you.”
She nodded. “We’re going to have to extend our loan. I suppose we’d better make an appointment with the bank.”
“Some hopes!” he said bitterly. “We’re up to our limit, and beyond what most people would get, thanks to my weekly games of golf with our friendly neighbourhood bank manager.”
A flash of fear crossed Bronwen’s face. “So what will we do? Don’t tell me we’ll have to sell up our home, after all the work and loving care I’ve put into making it half decent?”
“And the rest. It’ll have to be your mother,” he said baldly. “She’s the only alternative. Rich as Croesus, if all indications are correct.”
“Not from the Joneses! It’s all dribbled away over the years.”
“Not just because of your father?” He knew he was on thin ice here, as Bronwen would not allow any mention of her father, and he had always respected this. But now things were dire, and he needed to know as much as he could about his mother-in-law’s likely pot of gold.
“Give me another gin,” she said. “And if Mother has what you hope for, it’s Wilson money from her own family. And,” she added with emphasis, “she’s not telling. Nor, I’m afraid, would she in any circumstances lend us more than twenty pounds. If that. Scrooge is her middle name, and she’s renowned for being a lifelong miser.”
Trevor stared at her. “Then you’re going to have to play Tiny Tim Cratchit, my dear,” he said. “I’m off to the club.”
“It’ll be too dark to play a round,” she objected.
“I don’t intend to play golf. More important things to discuss.”
She heard him slam the door and rev up his car, skidding off down the drive and disappearing at speed.
“Fool,” she said, and poured herself another gin.
NEARLY SEVEN O’CLOCK, Gus said to himself. Just time to ring Deirdre and make a date and time for their visit to the newspaper archive. Then off to the pub for a convivial pint of Jones Brothers Best and a game of darts with James the Shop.
His eye was caught by the envelope he had stuck behind the dusty clock with a broken spring that stood on the mantelshelf. That letter. He supposed he should think seriously about it. Perhaps his persecutor would settle for monthly repayments? Thank God he’d agreed to a retainer from his previous employer. “You might be the only person who can help us,” they had said. “Naturally we would not wish to disturb your, um, retirement, but we’d like to think we could call on you in an emergency. A small retainer, Gus? Would that be acceptable?”
He could just about spare a small regular sum, which would allow him to pay off his debt in one hundred and fifty years. He sighed. “Worth a try, anyway,” he said to his ever-faithful Whippy, who lay curled up on the best of a bunch of shabby chairs. “Maybe you’ll have to make a sacrifice, too, little dog,” he said, and an ear twitched to show she was listening. “No more luxury dog feasts made with best cuts of beef and lamb. Back to evil-smelling tripe blocks in packets impossible to open.”
A knock at his front door interrupted his conversation, and he peeped from behind the curtain to see who it was. Miriam Blake, of course. Ah well, he had the perfect excuse for getting rid of her.
“Hello, Miriam! Nice to see you! Can’t ask you in, as I’m due at the pub. Meeting James for a game of darts.”
Her face fell. She had come bearing a neatly arranged basket of salad items from her garden. She thrust them at him, and said maybe he’d like to come to supper tomorrow? She’d got lovely lamb chops from the butcher and wanted to try a recipe with white wine and herbs.
“Yum,” said Gus. “Lovely! Can I confirm tomorrow? Good-o. Must fly now.” He eased the door shut as politely as he could, and watched her droop past his window. Oh dear, if only he fancied her, how easy it would be. She might even lend him a few bob. . . .
“MONEY IS THE root of all evil,” said Ivy, pushing a small pile of matches over to Roy. They were having a leisurely game of cribbage in Ivy’s room, an arrangement hard fought by Roy and only recently won.
“You’re right, Ivy,” he said. “Thank goodness I’ve never had any.”
She squinted at him, and said that she really must make an appointment with the optician. “Can’t even see the numbers on the cards now,” she said crossly. Ivy did not like to lose, and Roy went along with the fiction that it was trouble with her eyes that accounted for him winning.
“Another game?” he said. “Or would you like to listen to that play about two blokes living together and wanting a baby? It’s all about how they manage it, apparently. Using a surrogate mother, of course,” he added hastily.
“If you ask me,” Ivy said stoutly, “a baby needs a mother and father of the usual kind. What sort of a childhood is it going to have?”
“Better than some regular ones, they say,” Roy said mildly.
“Well, I’m glad I don’t have to think about it,” Ivy said. “Let’s have another game of crib.” She reached for her spare pair of specs. “These might do the trick,” she said, and Roy shuffled the cards.
“I wonder what Gus is doing,” he said. “I thought he was a bit down today?”
“Playing darts at the pub with James the Shop,” Ivy said.
“How do you know that?”
“I know everything,” Ivy replied, and burst into a very rare shout of laughter.
They concentrated on the game, and Ivy duly amassed a respectable number of matches. The room was quiet, broken only by a couple of doves cooing appropriately outside the window. Suddenly Roy thumped the table, giving Ivy such a shock that she dropped her hand of cards.
“What on earth was that about?” she said, scrabbling on the floor with difficulty.
“I’ve remembered,” Roy said triumphantly. “That thing I couldn’t bring to mind about the Joneses. About William, to be precise. I still can’t remember his wife’s name, but I do remember that he went missing.”
“Missing? What d’you mean?”
“It was in the papers. Without any warning, he just didn’t come home one evening. It was all hushed up, of course. George had influence in so many places, including with the local newspaper owner. The story just disappeared, like William. I heard no more, and not being in the charmed circle of the mayor and his entourage, I completely forgot about it. But there it is, Ivy. He could’ve returned, but by the time I read about it he’d apparently been gone for a couple of months. The original story was leaked out by William’s gardener, if I remember rightly.”
“Gardener?” Ivy said sharply. “Did you say gardener?”
Roy confirmed he had said gardener, and wondered if her hearing was going. But no, Ivy didn’t waste words. He would no doubt be enlightened in due course.
Ten
“I’VE THOUGHT OF a possible snag,” Deirdre said as she and Gus cruised along in her big cream-coloured car. Gus was always a nervous passenger with Deirdre, irrationally anxious in case he suddenly vomited on the cream leather seats, or had Whippy’s best on his shoes.
Now he looked at her in alarm. “What snag?” he said, rather more sharply than he intended.
“Oh, it’s only a possible,” she said, turning to smile at him. “Just my enquiring mind churning away.”
“Go on, then. What is it?”
“Well, if we’re looking for a wedding notice and hopefully photograph, we might be heading for the wrong newspaper. Most girls are married in their hometown, not their husband’s. We don’t know where Alwen lived before she was wed, do we?”
Gus was silent, trying hard to remember if Alwen Wilson Jones had said anything about her early life and times. He thought not. She was unusually reticent about anything to do with her past. All they knew was that she had been a head teacher in Thornwell Primary School until her retirement. She had never talked about her husband, and had in fact deliberately avoided mention of him.
“Do you remember her saying anything directly about him? And has she ever actually denied having anything to do
with the brewery Joneses?” Deirdre said.
“Says she was distantly connected, I think. We must ask Ivy and Roy. They see more of her than we do. Maybe their walk to the shop yesterday will have turned up something. Anyway, we’re nearly there now, so we might as well have a look in the archives.”
THE RECEPTIONIST IN the newspaper office was helpful and interested in their request. “Looking for William Jones’s wedding, are we?”
Gus nodded. “It would be about forty years ago, we guess,” he said. “Sorry we can’t be more specific.”
“Don’t worry. The Joneses are a well-known local family, always in the news, so we’re sure to find it. Who did he marry?”
“Well, possibly it was a girl called Alwen Wilson. We don’t know if she was a Thornwell girl. We just hoped that because it was the brewery family, there might be a mention or a photograph. Could have been quite a big wedding.”
The receptionist, a pleasant-faced woman in her forties, said that this was not necessarily the case. “Now, if you’d asked for George Jones’s wedding, that would be easy! But his brother William was always in the background. Seemed to like it that way. Some said he was actually the clever one, too, clever by half, said some. But George had a better business head. Anyway, I mustn’t stand here gossiping. There’s a queue forming! If you’d like to sit down over there and help yourselves to coffee, I’ll see what we can turn up.”
Bronwen Evans had just joined the queue. She had decided to comb the jobs vacant pages in back numbers of the newspaper, and as she stood waiting, she was sure she heard her father’s name mentioned at the desk. She watched Gus and Deirdre cross to the coffee machine and was certain she had seen one or both somewhere before. Why were they enquiring about her father? She could tell them all they needed to know, but she certainly did not intend to. Maybe the new brewery owners had commissioned a history of the brewery? She could help with that, but saw no reason why she should assist in glorifying a company that had just sacked her! The history idea had occurred to her once or twice. Good public relations, she had said to Uncle George, but he had scoffed at the idea. Everybody knows the story of Jones Brothers Best, he had insisted, and turned down her suggestion.