by Ivan B
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
I replied to Barney in the affirmative and told him that I’d like to bring Yolande. His reply was best not repeated to Yolande, or Millicent for that matter.
As we drove out of Ipswich station car-park I said to Yolande, or rather I half-shouted over the rattling engine noise, that the next question was where were the other eleven bearer bonds. She laughed, “Well they’re not under the floorboards!”
“Well they must be somewhere,” I replied, “if you find any you get 10%.”
She obviously felt mischievous, “25%.”
“15%.”
“20%.”
“Done.”
I could afford to be so generous as I was fairly certain that the other bonds had gone down in the plane, why else would the mother need to escort the children on such a simple journey?”
As soon as I got home I did some serious calculations regarding my money and some equally serious thinking about the rectory. I was severely tempted to sell the rectory now, as it stood and not even half finished. By doing so I would drastically reduce my responsibilities and increase my freedom. Why didn’t I do so? It was that clause in the will about intending to renovate the rectory; in other words my conscience wouldn’t let me. I often wonder what would have been the course of my life had I pulled out then, but hindsight is always full of ifs and buts and they are no help whatsoever.
Chapter 10
Happy Families
That night I had another disturbed sleep, I was beginning to jump at every creak of the flat and every noise from outside. This time I woke up not knowing what was wrong, I could not hear anything; Fiatimo was quiet and as I has seen the fluffy white cat chasing a snowflake when I had arrive home I knew it was not in the building. I was just going to close my eyes when I realised what was wrong; I could see. Normally the flat was pitch black at night, but I could see across the room and it wasn’t moonlight. I checked my alarm clock and groaned, it was 12:45am. I knelt on the bed and peered out of the window wondering if the police were still hunting their black cat, but this wasn’t the police. Round the back of the rectory was a van with it’s headlights beamed onto the kitchen door. I was immediately sure that I had burglars, or thieves of some sort. As I watched the kitchen light popped on and a silhouette of a person was highlighted in the kitchen door. I put down my mobile phone and stared in disbelief; I knew that silhouette.
Five minutes later I was striding up the gravel path having pulled on a sweater and some jeans. By the time I got to the house the van’s lights were out, but the kitchen light was still on. I strode into the kitchen intent on venting my spleen, instead I came to a dead stop. Yolande was sitting at the kitchen table with her head in her hands and on the floor lay a moth-eaten sleeping bag. For a few seconds I was speechless, then in a fit of inspiration I murmured.
“Problems?”
She turned her red-rimmed eyes on me.
“Of course I’ve got ruddy problems, do you think I’d be sitting here if I was…”
She stopped her tirade and took a deep breath.
“Sorry, it’s not your fault, but in a funny way it is. I’ve had an argument with my parents, well with my dad actually, and it’s over you.”
“Me!”
How could it be over me, I’d never met the chap?
She rubbed her eyes.
“Dad says that I should give the money back. He says that if a man gives a woman that amount of money he’s only after one thing. I asked him if he was calling me a trollop and he said what other kind of woman would have accepted the money in the first place? Our conversation went downhill from there.”
The last few words were spoken in a sort of strained voice that ended in a brief sob. Clearly arguing with her parents was difficult for Yolande; it had always been easy for me.
“Did you tell him why I gave you the money?”
She shook her head causing water droplets to scatter in the not too warm air.
“Didn’t get the chance, he just blew up when he found that I hadn’t been working and that I’d been to London with you and that you’d given me the money.”
Before I could reply another pair of headlight swung round the back of the house and Yolande gave me a desperate glance.
“You didn’t did you?”
“Didn’t what?”
“Give me the money so you could have your wicked way with me?”
I must admit that I found it hard to reply with a straight face. I was beginning to value Yolande’s friendship and her companionship, but I can honestly say that thoughts of her as a sex object had never crossed my mind.
“I gave it to you as a token of thanks, no more, no less and I rather think that had I suggested that it was payment for sex you would have stuck a screwdriver in a part of my anatomy I’d find it hard to forget.”
The kitchen door burst open and Yolande’s father stood in the doorway, I couldn’t be sure if he was angry or concerned for her, whatever it was I was in the way. He took a step towards me and snarled in an superbly intimidating manner.
“Just what sort of man are you? Pervert my daughter would you?”
Fortunately before he could hit me, and I fully believe he intended to, Mrs Cranstone, a diminutive wrinkled sixty-something with snow-white hair, squeezed through the doorway behind him and rushed between us screaming at her husband to calm down. I should have reflected then that this is my lot; mayhem and misunderstanding that is. What other bloke ends up in his own kitchen accused of trying to buy sex with a girl he doesn’t fancy while her parents bawl at one another? Yolande gave me a desperate look, the sort of look that says, aren’t you gong to take control? Take control? I’d rather try and feed raw meat by hand to hungry huskies. As Mr & Mrs Cranstone tried to verbally berate one another I looked around for inspiration, in the end I picked up a paper bag, blew air into it and slammed it between my hands. It made a satisfying bang. In the temporary silence that followed all eyes turned to me as if I was mad. I tried to keep my voice even.
“Shall we sit at the table, I don’t think that shouting at each other will get us anywhere do you?”
Like lambs Mr & Mrs Cranstone sat down, but I wasn’t fooled, he was fuming like a pot-boiler. I looked him in the eye and tried to ignore the sense of loathing disgust coming the other way. “Let me make one thing clear,” I stated as firmly as I could. “Yolande uncovered a small number of bearer bonds that I would not have discovered without her. As a result of that I am over £100,000 richer and my gift to her was by way of thanks for that discovery, nothing more and nothing less.”
Mrs Cranstone’s grey eyebrows rose a considerable way towards her receding hairline.
“Did you say over one hundred thousand?”
“Yes.”
Mr Cranstone went to open his mouth, but I jumped in first, “And as for the visit to London, I made it clear to Yolande that she could charge for the day on her monthly invoice, so there is no loss to your company.”
Mrs Cranstone looked at her husband in that superior way that wives adopt when they are right.
“There you are dear,” she crowed, “I said it was all perfectly innocent.”
He gave me a look that said he understood my motives perfectly well, and they were anything but innocent. He growled a consolatory reply, but his eyes sent an entirely different message.
“So be it, but I think that it will be best in the future if Yolande doesn’t work on this project, it’s a big one anyway, and I will finish it off.”
Yolande looked up like a startled meerkat,.
“I’m quite happy with what I’m doing, I’ve drawn up all the plans.” She indicated a folder on the kitchen worktop by her box of Pot-Noodles.
He crossed his arms.
“All the same I’ll finish it off.”
I could see that Yolande was already worn down by her previous argument with her father and had little energy to argue, so I intervened.
“Actually,
” I said as nonchalantly as I could, “I’d rather Yolande completed the job if you don’t mind.”
He swivelled his eyes onto me, and replied in what I can only call a warning voice with hissed menacing undertones.
“Your contract is with the company, and we decided who does what if you don’t mind.”
I began to get angry, he was sitting in my kitchen, talking about my job and treating me like a piece of cattle dung. I stared back at him.
“The contract is with your company as long as Yolande works on the job, if you decide that your company doesn’t want the work then so be it, but if you want the work I want to have Yolande do it.”
Perhaps the ending phraseology was unfortunate, perhaps he was looking for a point to argue over, who knows; whatever the motive he ceased on my words.
“Oh you want to have her alright…”
Yolande’s eyes opened wide and she yelled.
“Dad! Don’t you dare discuss me like a piece of meat.”
Mrs Cranstone interrupted on a different tack.
“Yacob,” she said forcibly, “she’s not a child anymore.”
In the face of this verbal pincer movement Mr Cranstone retreated into a glowering silence. Yolande rubbed her bare sinewy arms and I realised that she must be cold. She fixed her dad with a brown-eyed mournful stare, like a deer cornered by a lion, and said quietly;
“If you pull out of this job I’ll set up on my own. I don’t want to set up on my own, but if you force the issue I will.”
She might as well have kicked him in the groin and after a look of absolute pain crossed his face he opened his mouth to speak; Mrs Cranstone beat him to the verbal output by hissing fiercely, “Don’t you dare! Do you really think you could run the business by yourself? You say one word – just one word – and I’ll never type a letter for you again.”
A good soldier knows all about strategic retreat and he turned to face me.
“I take it you won’t object if I come and work on the project with her?”
“Of course not, I just want the job done.”
He stood up and walked out, to be followed by a scurrying wife. Yolande and I sat in silence as the van drove away. Eventually she said in a low tired voice.
“Thanks for that.”
I shrugged, to be honest I was glad I’d escaped intact.
“What’ll you do now?”
She stood up, “Go home.”
For some bizarre reason I felt guilty, goodness knows why.
“I’m sorry if I got you into trouble.”
She gave a fleeting smile.
“It had to come sometime, I can’t be junior partner forever.”
She paused in the doorway.
“Sorry if I brought my troubles here, I had nowhere else to go.”
I did my macho bit, I rather think I’m good at doing macho bits.
“No problem.”
No problem? I’d been terrified by his huge hands and had pictured then several times during the conversation – normally round my throat!
She left and I went back to the flat to discover a fluffy white cat fast asleep on my bed.
The following morning, being a Saturday, I knew the rectory would be empty and I set out on a mission. An eleven bearer bond £162,993.93p mission. I started at the top of the house intending to work my way down and I started with the piano. Any good pianist knows how to take the covering off a concert grand and if I say so myself I am a good pianist. By the time I had finished I could guarantee that there wasn’t even a postage stamp hidden in the piano, let alone eleven bearer bonds. After that it was a crawl through the under-eaves storage and a minute examination of every room. It took me five hours and I didn’t stop for lunch. I finished up in the kitchen taking up the bases of the oak kitchen units, apart from some fearsome spiders I found nothing. I retreated to my flat and did the same and then repeated the process in the garage. By early evening I was both tired and convinced that the bearer bonds were never to be found. Halfway through a tepid shower I realised I had not been to the basement.
I almost decided not to bother, but in the end something about doing a job thoroughly made me go back. I armed myself with Yolande’s giant torch and went down into the basement. I must admit that it felt so damp and eerie that I almost gave up before I started. First on my agenda was those concrete tunnels. They were basically and inverted U shaped concrete tunnel and the floor was just bare and none too dry earth. Each one was about twelve feet long, eight feet wide and five feet high. To my surprise I found that at the ends they were joined by a small intersecting tunnel and that the one nearest the front of the house had an escape hatch into the front garden under the lounge window. Otherwise I found nothing in them save too many cobwebs and one old children’s shoe. After the tunnels I checked out the rest of the basement, which as I said wasn’t too large really. I recall that I even fished about in the drainage sump to no effect. Finally I looked at the safe, but as I’d already looked in it I almost walked away. I suppose there was that last spark of thoroughness in me that made me open it. After assuring myself that it was bare and that even the old blue vase was empty, I went to close the door and paused in the act. The safe was basically one huge lump of metal and inside there were little pegs sticking out of the sides on which slid the shelves. The shelves themselves were made of pressed steed and rather like giant inverted baking trays. What had made me pause was that there were pegs for three shelves, but only two sets were used. The lowest set sat like ugly protruding teeth while the middle set had not only its own shelf but another slid on top of it. Because of the shape of the shelves I realised that this would create a thin hollow between the shelves and my pulse began to race. I carefully eased the shelves apart to be rewarded by the sight of no less than four brown foolscap envelopes. My heart did a somersault and my greedy brain screamed ‘success!.’ I shut the safe and took the envelopes back to the kitchen. The first envelope contained nothing as all. The second held a group picture of the Grant family. The third another photograph, but this time of Mr Grant with an attractive woman. The fourth had one old fashioned large white five pound note. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement.
Once my initial disappointment was over I went back to the safe to make sure that nothing was taped to the underside of any of the shelves; there was nothing, absolutely nothing. I shut up the rectory and took my not-to-welcome finds back to my flat. As I ate my microwaved ‘shepherd’s pie for one’ I idly studied the photographs and considered the Grant family. The group photograph, if the date on the reverse was correct, had been taken in the May prior to the demise of the wife and children. It wasn’t a particularly good photograph and had obviously been staged in some studio or other. Rather than linking me with the Grants in made me uneasy; it was the smiles that made me uneasy. The photograph had two types of smile; Mr Grant with his relaxed ‘I am enjoying this’ smile and the rest of the family with their forced ‘cheesy’ lets get this over with smiles. It did not reassure me that they were one large happy family. The other photograph was of Mr Grant and a beautiful woman that was not his wife walking hand in hand beside a huge yacht. The woman was one of those people who had obviously worked at their beauty by having the best clothes, the best make up and assuming the best ‘natural’ position to look good. Unlike the other photograph the smiles in this one were real and if I had not known of his family I would have naturally assumed they were lovers on an evening stroll. I returned to the first photograph and studied it more closely. Mr Grant looked casual and relaxed , but Mrs Grant, even with the cheesy smile and younger years, looked battle-weary and exhausted. However, what really disconcerted me was that the oldest of the three girls had a smile on her lips and fear written all over the rest of her face.
Chapter 11
A Look Back in Time
Sunday morning I set out with three things on my mind. The first was my continuing hunt to find a local church that I could settle in. To this end I decided to try St James, afte
r all I was living in their ex-rectory. As the fields were frozen solid I walked to the church and to be honest half expected a dismal service as I have never been a fan of Anglican liturgy. They say that if your expectations are low they are sure to be fulfilled and my expectations were fulfilled, and some. The service turned out to be a sung Eucharist, but sung to a backdrop of modern hymns that I knew well. The congregation was much larger, and younger, than I expected and, to my utter surprise, my Julius Caesar priest preached a blistering sermon that left one both wanting more and having enough to chew on for the rest of the week. As I chatted to a young couple over coffee I suddenly realised that I had come home, come to a spiritual home that is. This is an indefinable state; you can visit excellent churches with all the trappings of what you need and not feel at home, or at one with the congregation. On the other hand you can visit the most dismal chapel and know that this is the place for you. I was fortunate as I both found a modern minded congregation and a church I knew would be OK as my spiritual home. The church also held two other surprises, firstly they already had three organists and secondly Yolande was in the choir. After coffee I tackled my second task for the day and sought out the Reverend Tommy Vines – my Julius Caesar – and handed him an envelope. He raised an eyebrow and looked into my eyes, I tried for a smile, but giving away so much money is painful.
“I heard from my solicitor, he said pay up and don’t waste money trying to fight because I would lose.”
He held the envelope like it was a new born baby.
“Is it the full amount?”
“£199,768.”
He looked both highly uncomfortable and ecstatic at the same time, I decided to make his day.
“I’ve also decided about your graveyard extension, you can tell your church council that if they want I’ll give them both fields.”