by Wendy Holden
Now, finally, he was telling her about the phone call from the London publishing house.
Within their fringe of mascara – albeit not so thick as usual – Angela’s eyes were wide and excited. ‘Really? Round here? A celebrity author?’ She wasn’t a big reader and hadn’t heard of Dylan Eliot. The nearest she had recently got to literature was Murderous Death at the Chestlock Pavilion Theatre. And the least said about that the better.
‘This editor woman thinks he might be,’ Jason hissed, flicking one of his frequent glances back towards the bar. Ryan was on duty again and currently struggling with a Pimm’s.
Angela looked round to see who might possibly be a disguised writer. No one in Pumps. Apart from herself and Jason there was just a pink-faced man calling over from the bar to his wife. ‘Shirley! What’s your poison?’
Angela jumped, and her spritz slopped over the table.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Jason.
‘Nothing,’ snapped Angela, but then, remembering herself, added ‘Sorry, Jase. Another bad day.’
She was having a lot of bad days, Jason thought, smiling to show he accepted the apology. What was wrong with her? Angela was looking worse than he had ever seen her. Her hitherto high degree of personal grooming was just a memory these days. ‘Heard anything from the hospital?’ he asked.
‘Hospital?’ Angela looked at him indignantly. What did he know? She had told no one she was ill, nor did she intend to. She was going back for more tests tomorrow and was dreading it.
‘I was just wondering whether there was any news about Dan.’ Jason wondered why his companion’s face was so white.
‘No idea.’ Angela did her best to sound detached.
Jason sighed. ‘I know it sounds selfish, when the poor chap’s so ill. But that van of his is still rotting in my car park and it’s not doing much for the view.’
A couple now came into the bar; Nell and Adam Greenleaf, Jason recognised. ‘I’ve sent the beds over,’ he called.
‘What beds?’ demanded Angela. She too had spotted the couple and did not like what she saw. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded of Jason.
He filled her in about the furniture, but refrained from offering his views on any other matter. A romantic at heart, Jason was pleased that things had moved on since Adam and Nell had spent the morning yelling at each other outside the pub front.
That had been unfortunate, but Jason didn’t bear them any ill will. A few guests had heard a disturbance, but none had their hearing aids turned up high enough to hear anything specific.
And it was obvious there would be no recurrence of the drama. Even though the thin line between love and hate seemed to have been crossed in this case with amazing speed.
Jason slid a look at Angela. She looked annoyed, as he had expected. But there was something else there: desperation? Perhaps even helplessness. Jason knew, as did everyone on the estate, that Angela had done everything she could to hamper Nell.
But Nell seemed to prevail, even so. The woman had staying power; she was a survivor. A life-saver, literally, and with the knack of getting people on side in a way Angela had never managed. Take Geoff Diggle of Sustainability. He could be an odd sort of stick but Jason had heard he’d actually called Human Resources to enthuse about Nell and congratulate them on employing her.
He watched the couple take their drinks outside. They were talking and laughing as if they had known each other for years and yet there was an excitement about them that seemed entirely new-minted. Look at them, Jason thought indulgently. Whispering sweet nothings. Young love – well, young-ish – was just so touching.
Dylan and Nell were, in fact, discussing more practical considerations.
‘I have to do something about Dan’s place.’ Dylan was frowning at his pint. ‘He can’t go back to that pigsty. He’ll just get whatever lurgy he has all over again.’
Dan’s house was the sort of place people put on special suits to clear out. Yet he had to do it, Dylan knew. His boss didn’t seem to have anyone else.
And, actually, he didn’t really mind. Working at Byron House had given him his first taste of helping other people. It was a sensation he realised he had seriously underrated.
‘And I’ve got George’s garden,’ Nell said. ‘And the key to the house. I guess I’ll just have to keep looking after it all until we know what’s going on.’
They smiled ruefully at each other. ‘We seem to have got ourselves into all sorts of complications,’ Dylan remarked. She had the feeling that he meant more than just their caretaking responsibilities.
She sipped her wine. ‘Plus, I’ve got the beds to put up in my own house. I should be going and getting on with it really.’
‘I’ll help you,’ Dylan said immediately. This helping thing, it was addictive.
They walked slowly through the village. The air was warm and smelt richly of grass. The grind of distant baling could still be heard, along with the plaintive cries of sheep.
Bright flowers nodded over the low stone walls of the gardens. The giant red poppies had gone to bed for the evening. Nell admired the brilliant colour, noticed how the crimped edges of the petals were folded into scarlet tricorn hats.
‘Wow,’ said Dylan as they approached Beggar’s Roost. ‘You’ve cleaned it all up. It looks amazing.’
‘I can’t take all the credit,’ Nell admitted. ‘I’ve had a bit of help, you could say.’
‘I can see. From some fairies, I’m guessing. Or some superheroes.’
She let them in. Watching his eyes switch from side to side, taking in the details, Nell felt a swell of pride at what she, Rachel and Juno had achieved in such a short space of time.
She’d done a fabulous job, Dylan was thinking. Pieces of vintage furniture which suited the idiosyncratic size and shape of the old building had been mixed up with newer items. She obviously had a good eye.
‘It’s seriously cool,’ he said. ‘You’ve got great style.’
‘It wasn’t really me. My friend Rachel chose everything.’
‘Is she an interior designer?’
Nell laughed. ‘She should be. Actually, she works in an insurance office and she’s studying in her spare time to be a barrister. She’s also a single mother; her daughter’s a trainee Miss Marple.’
‘They sound terrifying.’
‘Oh no, they’re amazing.’ Nell seized the opportunity to praise her friends. ‘I can’t wait for you to meet them. They’ll . . .’
She was about to say ‘love you’, but stopped herself. Something was telling her not to rush this, not to assume or predict. Of course Rachel would love Dylan – when she got to know him. It would obviously have to be stage-managed quite carefully.
Dylan was now admiring the glass-fronted bookcase in which Rachel had arranged the works of Dickens. ‘Read these, have you?’
‘Afraid not. But I’m going to.’ Nell had happily imagined herself sitting by the fireside, absorbed in David Copperfield. ‘Have you?’
He opened the cabinet and took out Oliver Twist. ‘Dickens was my mentor, so far as it went.’ Dylan flicked through the pages. ‘He showed me how to write, basically. Comedy alternating with tragedy. Plus lots and lots of description. Spit spot. And there you have it.’ He snapped the book shut, and smiled at her.
He was being too modest, Nell thought. There was more to All Smiles than a mere exercise in imitation. She thought of the book he had lost and wondered what it had been like. The same? Better?
‘What was it called?’ she asked hesitantly. ‘The book that . . .’
She stopped as he frowned at the floor. She thought he wasn’t going to reply, but then he said, ‘Charm Itself.’
‘Good title.’
He shrugged. ‘My editor came up with it.’
‘Editor?’
&nb
sp; ‘Eve,’ he said, in a musing tone. ‘Eve Graham. She was always very good at titles. She thought of All Smiles, too.’
A flash of excitement shot through Nell. This was much more information than she was expecting. Perhaps he was thinking about writing again. Were the juices of creativity flowing once more? And if so, might it have something to do with them meeting each other?
He was looking directly at her now. ‘But that’s over,’ he said. ‘I never want to see her again. Or write again.’
‘Let’s get on with those beds,’ she suggested.
CHAPTER 52
DIY had never been Dylan’s strong point. Perhaps ironically, given the number of volumes he had sold, he had never even put up a bookshelf. Let alone put a bed together.
‘I’m not sure where to start,’ Nell said, setting out small packets of screws in plastic bags and doubtfully consulting a piece of paper with the instructions on it. ‘I think this is translated from Chinese. “Put piece wood on wooden piece and through hole connect.” What does that mean?’
Dylan took the paper. ‘I think I might have understood the Chinese better,’ he said. ‘Put together sides and screw through from other side.’
‘I think it’s telling us to connect the pieces of wood together with screws,’ Nell concluded. ‘But I think we know that already.’
Dylan stood confidently above the pile of wood planks and small plastic bags. He was hoping that if he looked down on it masterfully enough, he could get it all to behave.
Nell, more practically, was arranging the wood into a shape vaguely resembling a bedframe. ‘I think we need to get the sides together and put the slats across to join them. Then we match up the right screws to the right holes and bingo.’
‘Which are the slats, though?’ Dylan scratched his head. ‘All the pieces of wood look the same.’
His chest was still heaving from the almighty effort of dragging the mattresses up the stairs. They had weighed about a million tons each.
‘I think they’re these ones, the paler ones.’ Nell, on her knees, smiled up at him. It felt delightfully intimate to be assembling flat-packs with Dylan. Such a classic young couple rite of passage; the sort of thing millions of men and women struggled with together every weekend.
‘The good news is,’ she added, ‘that we don’t need a screwdriver. Which is just as well, as we don’t have one.’
‘You mean we can just mind-meld it?’ He’d considered various angles, but not the Mr Spock one.
Nell laughed. ‘No, we can connect everything together with a two-pence piece. Look!’ She waved the instructions, pointing at a little drawing in which a coin was connected with arrows to the groove in the top of the screw.
Dylan knelt beside her and examined the screws in their packets. He didn’t wish to advertise quite how utterly clueless he felt; blokes were supposed to be good at DIY. And he’d already heard rather more than he wanted to about someone called Tim and his gang of merry builders who’d cleared the cottage out in the first place. It was hard not to feel that his manhood was in question.
Half an hour later, they had got nowhere. The two-pence approach was useful for getting each screw halfway into the piece of wood it was intended for but it went no further, and the end result was dangerously rickety. It would collapse under a light mattress, Dylan reckoned. Under those mothers they’d dragged upstairs, it had no chance.
‘Maybe they weren’t two-pences, they were yen,’ Nell was ruminating.
‘I don’t think it matters,’ Dylan said. ‘Look, I hate to bring up the word “power tools” here . . .’
‘That’s two words.’
‘. . . but do you have any? Or know where you can get some?’
Nell was about to shake her head when a brilliant thought struck her. ‘George might have one. Next door. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind . . .’ Nell scrambled to her feet. ‘Let’s go and have a look.’
The sky outside had changed from the eggshell blue it had been when they went inside the cottage. They now stood in the Beggar’s Roost garden staring at coral rags of sunset spread against a sky of pearly violet.
‘It’s so lovely,’ Nell whispered.
She was ultra-aware of how close Dylan stood in the gathering darkness. Her fingers seemed to be straying towards him of their own accord, pulled like metal to a magnet. She yearned to have his arms about her, as they had been outside the hospital, except properly now, not impulsively or out of pity.
Then she clenched her fists, breaking the circuit. It was too soon. She did not need another involvement, let alone with Dylan. She barely knew him and, as Rachel had pointed out, what she did know was distinctly strange. And Rachel, of course, didn’t know the half of it.
Dylan followed Nell as she went down her path, out into the road and back up the other side into the old man’s garden. It struck him that he could as easily have climbed over the low dividing wall, just as he could have kissed her, just then. Her face had suddenly seemed so near; he could feel her breath on his cheek, smell her light, herby perfume.
But he had stopped himself. Was he mad? Things between them were going well; there had been, so far this evening, no rows, hysterics or unexpected revelations and that was a first. So why rock the boat? Plain sailing was what was needed now, letting things take their course. Was that the same thing? He wasn’t sure; he knew even less about sailing than he did about DIY.
She was unlocking the old chap’s door now and Dylan stood a few feet back, respectful. She seemed to appreciate this; turned and smiled. ‘I think it’s OK if you come in.’
She shut the door and switched the light on. Dylan stared round. It was like stepping back fifty years. Seventy, even. Stone flags. Wooden stairs. Plain white walls.
Nell had disappeared at the end of the passage and he followed. The old chap’s kitchen looked like something from a museum: a black-lead stove with a rag rug in front of it; a plain wooden table, much worn and scrubbed; a stool that Tess of the D’Urbervilles could have used to milk her cows from. But clean, Dylan could see; everything was shining and cared for. The evening light glowing through the small, deep-set windows gave the simple, unpretentious room the quality of a painting. Beautiful. He felt the fleeting urge to write his impressions down, then dismissed it. He was here to look for power tools, not gather literary atmosphere.
Nell was looking in various cupboards; they seemed, from where Dylan stood, to be full of plain white plates and large bowls. ‘Where would he keep his tools?’ she wondered.
‘Maybe in there?’ Dylan gestured towards a grooved door beside the kitchen sink. It led to a scullery which smelt of damp newspaper and leather; a row of clean boots, he saw, was lined up in the shadows on several open copies of the local freesheet.
Dylan glanced up at the shelves above his head; various boxes were stacked up here. He could see a glimpse of orange flex in one of them. Bingo.
He carried out his prize to Nell. She was no longer in the kitchen, however. He found her down the passage in the old man’s sitting room. It was tiny but cosy, with a small sofa and an armchair opposite a solid fuel stove with clear glass doors. The chair was evidently the old man’s; a folded newspaper was on the arm and an empty cup and saucer were on the floor close by.
There was a framed photograph of a couple on the wall; the guy in RAF uniform, Dylan saw. The woman, meanwhile, was a knockout: her skin pearly, her teeth straight and white, her silky pale hair parted in the centre.
‘My God,’ he blurted, ‘she looks just like you.’
Nell decided not to go into how she had been confused for Edwina. ‘They were married for sixty years,’ she said. ‘Can you imagine that? Being in love with the same person all your life?’
Dylan felt, suddenly, that he could, absolutely. And definitely with a woman who looked like this. He looked closer at the airman in the pictu
re. ‘He’s got a caterpillar badge.’
Nell peered. ‘So?’
‘It means he’s used his parachute.’
‘Why?’
Dylan smiled. ‘Chrysalis, you see. Opening up into a butterfly.’
Such a romantic image, Nell thought, in such a deadly context. ‘How do you know that?’ She would be able to surprise George, next time she visited.
He shrugged. ‘Kind of thing you pick up if you’re a boy, I guess.’
The drill helped, inexpertly applied though it was. A couple of hours later, the three bedframes were up and two of the mattresses on them. Dylan was heaving the last one into place to the sound of Nell, in one of the other bedrooms, ripping the plastic off packets of new sheets.
He went to find her; she was stuffing a pillow into a case. ‘Well, that’s it,’ he said. ‘Done.’
She put the pillow down but then looked self-conscious as if not sure what to do. They glanced at each other and Dylan, remembering his hesitation in the garden, took the initiative. It was probably entirely the wrong thing, but he was going to do it anyway. He might not have another chance.
He turned and pushed the door shut; in the same swift movement trapping her in his arms. She arched into him; they clung to each other. Neither was sure who sank to the bed first; perhaps they both sank together.
Dylan’s kiss made Nell melt inside; the touch of his tongue almost made her faint. Longing roared inside her. They moved silently, with wonder, gasping softly as pleasure pulsed and built. Nell had once read that the best sex took either three minutes or three hours. She was to discover over the course of the evening that both were true.
Afterwards, between, they lay huddled together. Her face pressed into Dylan’s hair, which tasted of salt and smelt of pine. Nell felt that she never wanted to move. It had all been so perfect. She felt a fierce, burning happiness. It was, now, quite dark beyond the windows. But Nell felt that, inside her, a brilliant light had been switched on.