by J M Gregson
It was a good thing that the lady herself couldn’t hear such shocking suggestions.
TWO
The lady in question was in fact very busy with quite different concerns.
Lorna Green was contending with that fiercest of contemporary ogres, senile dementia in a loved one. Her mother was eighty-four now. Until a year ago, Barbara Green had been a lively and vigorous octogenarian. She had done her own shopping, argued her corner with any political canvasser who had the temerity to knock at her door, played swift and imaginative bridge with three ladies who had once been her golfing companions.
It was just a year since the doctors had mentioned that sinister word Alzheimer’s. The symptoms were there, in a mild form at present, but the tests had confirmed it. No, it wasn’t possible to forecast the speed of development. Many people passed away peacefully without suffering really serious mental decline. In others, deterioration was rapid. There was much more they could do to keep the worst at bay, with the drugs now available.
Nevertheless, Lorna should now keep a close eye on her mother.
It wasn’t meant to be a message of impending doom, but it rang like one in Lorna’s ears. The answers to her questions confirmed it. Yes, someone should be in the house with Mrs Green. Not all the time; not at present, anyway. Lorna gave up the flat she had been renting and moved back in with her mother. It was what the people from Mrs Green’s church thought a spinster daughter should do, even in the twenty-first century. Her mother still attended the high stone church where her daughters had been christened.
Lorna wasn’t a churchgoer herself. She was pretty sure that she was now an atheist rather than an agnostic, and her mother’s decline seemed to be confirming that for her. It was so relentless, so cruel, so illogical. Nor was Lorna a typical spinster, if there was any longer such a creature. She had never married, though she had come close to it on two occasions. She had never been promiscuous, but she had undertaken by her count four serious relationships, where she had lived with a man for two years or more. That none of them had ended in the formal ties of marriage had been her choice, on three of the four occasions. Perhaps she expected a little too much of her men, or perhaps she had simply not been the best of choosers.
She had never wanted children and she didn’t miss them now. She declared that forcefully to anyone bold enough to raise the subject. Some listeners felt that the lady did protest too much, but had more sense than to voice the thought.
Lorna had a degree in history from the University of Birmingham – one of the older and more respectable universities, she assured anyone who cared to listen. She didn’t approve of these modern, tin-pot institutions, which should never have been allowed to call themselves universities. All they did was add to the lengthening lists of unemployed graduates, with their degrees in media studies and sports science and even less suitable subjects for higher education. These opinions received a good deal of support from her contemporaries, except for the occasional moments of embarrassment when she propounded her views to parents unfortunate enough to have their children in attendance at these dubious institutions.
Lorna had greater concerns than embarrassment at this moment. Her mother’s long grey hair was flying round her head, though Lorna had combed and brushed it for her before leaving for her meeting at Westbourne Park. A shorter style would be better when the hairdresser called next week, if she could persuade Barbara to accept it. The television was blaring loudly through a children’s programme, though her mother did not seem to be following it. Lorna turned the volume down to a level which would allow her to think. The old woman looked at her resentfully, but said nothing.
Lorna forced a smile and tried hard to relax. ‘Did you have a chat with the Meals on Wheels lady today?’
‘No. She didn’t have anything for me today. She was in such a hurry that she didn’t even apologize.’
Lorna looked at her for a moment, but her mother’s attention had returned to the television set. She went back along the hall and into the kitchen. A plate of cold casserole lay on the table, with a knife and fork untouched beside it and the gravy congealed at the edges. Barbara had forgotten to eat again. You had to get her through the first mouthfuls and then she’d carry on. But the Meals on Wheels lady wouldn’t know that and she had other dinners to deliver.
She went back to the sitting room. This place was far too big for the two of them, but she couldn’t face persuading Mum to move and then enduring the agonies of selling and packing. She had always rather despised material comforts, but now she missed the convenience and modern fittings of the neat flat she had forsaken to come here
Barbara Green was sitting staring at the television, her forehead frowning her resentment that she could not follow the excitements of the child actors.
Her daughter said gently, ‘Jean did leave your meal, Mum. You forgot it.’
Barbara turned her head and looked at her intently. ‘It’ll do for your Dad when he gets in. He likes stew, does Wally.’
It was this strange mixture of comprehension and nonsense which she found most hard to deal with. Lorna looked hard into the lined, familiar face and said quietly, ‘Dad’s dead, Mum. Wally died eight years ago.’
Her mother looked at her for a moment sorrowfully. Then she spoke as if the fifty-three-year-old woman beside her was a child in plaits. ‘He’ll be in presently, just you see. He’s probably been kept late at work again.’ She transferred her gaze to the television, rocking gently backwards and forwards on her seat.
It was only when Lorna had been sorting through his papers after her father’s death that she had found the letters which showed that he had conducted affairs with other women. Barbara had always been very tolerant and very trusting about Wally’s need to work far into the evenings a couple of times each week. Lorna wondered whether her mother had known nothing of his amours or whether she had chosen to ignore them. Now she would never be certain about that – unless of course Barbara let it out unwittingly in one of her musings about her husband. Lorna hoped she wouldn’t. It seemed to her an invasion of privacy to discover through her illness things which her mother would normally have concealed.
Lorna felt suddenly weary. She went into the kitchen and sat down for two minutes. Then she rose and made a simple meal with sausages and new potatoes and carrots. She had learned to cook only what her mother would eat; it was very irritating to see Barbara turn away from dishes which had taken her hours to prepare. Barbara liked spaghetti bolognaise, but the eating of it had proved a disaster last time Lorna had prepared it. Today the old lady demolished the simple meal with apparent relish; presumably she’d eaten nothing since breakfast. Then she laid her knife and fork down neatly and said, ‘Our Debbie’s a good cook. Better than you.’
Lorna tried not to feel resentful. She had been her father’s favourite, but Barbara had always favoured her younger sister. ‘Debbie’s four hundred miles away, Mum.’
Barbara nodded with a small, secret smile. ‘Debbie’s in Aberdeen. Looking after my grandchildren.’
Lorna was about to say that they were grown-up now and had left home. But what was the use? She bit back the explanation and said merely, ‘That’s right, Mum. Debbie’s a long way away.’ But she was a naturally precise person – positively anal at times, her best friend had told her – and it came hard to her not to correct the old woman’s facts.
Probably that’s what she should have done in the meeting this morning, bitten her tongue and held back the words. Dennis Cooper had obviously been put out when she had corrected him on the history of Westbourne Park. It had meant a loss of face for him, in front of his staff. And she had gone on a bit; she could see now that she had enjoyed correcting Dennis and embarrassing him in front of others. Initially, she had merely been anxious to have the correct facts established, so that the eight people in the meeting wouldn’t go away with false information.
All the same, she could see now that she had been insensitive. Dennis Cooper had been careless, not h
armful. There had been no need to make him look a pompous twit in front of his staff.
Lorna Green watched her mother toying with her strawberries, pushing them around her dish instead of eating them. Eventually, Barbara dropped her spoon and a long splodge of cream shot out across the clean tablecloth. Lorna would put it in the washing machine, as soon as she’d stowed her mother safely back in the sitting room. Perhaps the time was coming when she’d have to give up tablecloths. She’d already abandoned them for breakfast and lunch, but she’d kept them for the evening meal; they were a symbol of the civilized life which was ebbing away from her mother.
For the first time, Lorna wondered whether the strain of the strange, loving battle she was conducting in her home was affecting her conduct outside it.
At Westbourne Park, Hugo Wilkinson was nothing like as exhausted as Lorna Green. At fifty-five, he was a couple of years older than Lorna, but he had energy to spare.
It was a curious life, being the head chef with responsibility for the kitchens at Westbourne, but over the three years Hugo had been in post, he had grown used to it and found that the work suited his present needs.
The clientele, for a start, was very different from that of the fashionable restaurant by the Thames he had left to come here. Older and more polite, which was good. Much more conservative in their choice of dishes, which was not so good. After finding that his more adventurous items had few takers, he had been forced to revise his menus for the premier restaurant at Westbourne Park. But the place was licensed for weddings and other functions, which gave him the occasional chance to spread his catering wings.
The oddest factor about Westbourne for a chef was the change in working hours. Like most men of his calling, Wilkinson had grown used to working at top pressure through hot and frantic kitchen evenings and not arriving home until after midnight. The odd working hours had helped to destroy his marriage, he told anyone who asked him about his private life. It was a useful ploy; people usually nodded their heads sympathetically and did not press him any further about the real reasons.
At Westbourne, with its opening hours of ten to six, the peak period was in the middle of the day; the restaurant was invariably full at lunchtime during the summer months. You worked intensively for four hours or so. Then you were less stressed as people came in for teas. During the evening, when most chefs were dealing with temperamental staff, high emotions and colourful language, you could relax. On a summer evening like this, you could enjoy the gardens in tranquillity, or even enjoy a game of croquet on the Theatre Lawn.
Croquet wasn’t a hobby of Hugo Wilkinson. Nevertheless, he often went out on to that great lawn with its raised grass stage, where outdoor performances of Shakespeare had once disturbed the wildlife. He was always delighted when he heard the shrill voices of Jim Hartley’s sons. The head gardener was trying to introduce Sam, eight, and Oliver, six, to the joys and mysteries of cricket, and Hugo would join in as an extra fielder and underarm bowler whenever he was free. He’d no children of his own and he’d never enjoyed cricket much at school, but with a tennis ball and children of this age, he was a valuable addition to the ranks.
Tonight, there was no cricket or croquet and Hugo Wilkinson was indoors and restless. It seemed a pity to waste a still and perfect summer evening, but he was waiting for a phone call. It was one he couldn’t take on his mobile in the grounds. They’d agreed not to use mobiles, because you needed to be certain that no one else could overhear the conversation. You couldn’t be too careful; secrecy needed to become a habit. That had been drummed into them by the man who’d been in this from the beginning and they were all happy enough to accept it.
Hugo watched a little television, read a few pages of his thriller, put in a couple of clues in his crossword, but found he could settle to nothing. The last glimmers of light were seeping away from the western sky when the phone shrilled in the corner of the room. Five past ten, his watch told him. He was across the room and lifting the receiver as the second rings began.
‘Wilkinson.’
‘It’s there now.’
‘Thank you. It will be well received.’
This was the code that was agreed between them, when the leader had emphasized that brevity was essential. The line went dead immediately. It all seemed a little silly and melodramatic, Hugo thought, as he stared down at the phone. It was like some Masonic ritual, though he had never known the Masons to favour brevity. He’d been a member for a few years before deciding that the arcane ceremonies had little to offer him. There weren’t many Masons in the world of haute cuisine, so that he’d enjoyed few companionable handshakes and no advantages in the promotional stakes.
He hadn’t realized how tense he’d been, until the call brought him satisfaction and relaxation. He went over and turned on the computer which stood on the small desk at the side of the room. These were the times when it was best to live on your own. You didn’t have to dive like a rat for cover when anyone else came into the room. You didn’t have to wait for hours or even days to indulge yourself.
You could go about your business and pursue your little hobbies undisturbed.
Whilst Hugo Wilkinson fretted and waited for his phone call, Detective Chief Superintendent John Lambert was thoroughly enjoying the long summer evening. That did not mean it did not contain moments of tension, because he was on the Ross-on-Wye golf course.
He was partnering Detective Sergeant Bert Hook whom he had introduced to golf, despite this sturdy son of Herefordshire’s declared contempt for a game he had previously declared appropriate only for toffs and the seriously deranged. They were playing in the second round of the club’s knock-out fourball competition. And thanks to Lambert’s steadiness, Hook’s high handicap, and a little luck, they were winning.
That was satisfying, for they were playing against a cagey and experienced farmer from the Forest of Dean and one of the club’s bright new talents, a young Glaswegian called Alex Fraser, who played off a handicap of two and was proving every bit as good as that implied. Alex was slightly built and looked even younger than his twenty years. Whether because he was a little in awe of the older men around him or whether because he wished to concentrate on his golf, he didn’t say much. He was perfectly polite, but responded mainly in monosyllables, even to his partner from the Forest, who was no great conversationalist himself. But the excellence and accuracy of his striking compelled a respectful silence in his three companions.
Hook had been a sturdy Minor Counties cricketer for almost two decades and was now rapidly improving at golf. Although he still held a seventeen handicap, he had holed several crucial putts on the outward half. Lambert, who played off eight, had not looked like a single-figure man at that time, but two pars on the tricky tenth and eleventh showed his quality. The pair were two up when they came to the twelfth tee.
The twelfth at Ross is a picturesque short hole, played over a large pond which is alive with roach and bream. The pond stretches invitingly in front of the tee, but finishes well short of the green. Only an absolute novice or an absolute mishit would deposit a ball in the water.
Bert Hook’s ball disappeared with an impressive splash into the very middle of the still and inviting pool.
‘Bad luck!’ said his farmer opponent automatically.
‘Bad bloody shot more like!’ said Hook dismissively, slamming the offending club back into his bag.
‘It can happen to anyone,’ said John Lambert consolingly. The fact that he said it through clenched teeth rather took away from any consolation Bert might have felt. He was left to meditate on the truism that there are very few shots in golf, good or bad, that do not please someone. No doubt his two opponents had been extremely gratified by this one.
Lambert teed and addressed his ball carefully, then dispatched his six-iron shot into the middle of the green, some four yards behind the flag. He accepted the congratulations of the other three modestly and gave Hook a reassuring smile. Bert for some reason thought of it as admonitory; no do
ubt his attitude was influenced by the ripples still visible upon the previously still waters of the pond.
Alex Fraser pitched and stopped a gentle eight-iron six feet below the flag, watched Lambert nurse his putt carefully down the hill to the side of the hole, then struck his own putt confidently into the middle of the hole for a two. Back to one down.
The Lambert/Hook partnership halved the tricky thirteenth, then the long par-four fourteenth, where they both received shots. Fifteen and sixteen are two shortish par-fours, and the young Scot made birdies at both of them to put his side one up with two to go. It was not just Alex Fraser who was saying little as the players toiled up the long seventeenth which is agreed to be the most difficult hole at Ross. The police partnership had the advantage of shots here, and Lambert sank a curling eight-feet putt for an unexpected four to square the match.
The sun had sunk behind the Welsh hills to the west as the four contemplated the long descent of the eighteenth hole to the final green and the clubhouse. Lambert hit his drive a respectable distance and straight. Hook was too far left and could not reach the green with his second. The farmer found the trees on the right, but young Alex hit a three-wood to exactly the spot he had chosen on the fairway. After watching Lambert bounce his ball accurately into the green, Fraser hit a short iron which stopped impressively within a few feet of the flag.
After the two lesser players in this little drama had failed, it was left to Lambert and Fraser to act out the final action. After ritual consultation with Hook about the line, Lambert crouched over his ball and dispatched it impressively to within a foot of the hole. The four was duly conceded. Then young Alex stepped up to his ball, glanced twice at the hole, and rolled his putt slowly into the heart of the hole for an impressive winning three.
With but minimal help from his older partner, he had secured victory for them against Lambert’s impressive steadiness and Hook’s huge handicap advantage. It wasn’t until he stepped forward with a shy smile and removed his baseball cap to shake hands that they registered his most distinctive physical feature. His hair was the brightest red that either Lambert or Hook could recall in their now considerable experience.