“What fun for one and all,” said Harry.
“I don’t mean to sound heartless, but it wasn’t as though the poor man died, and it was all so providential. You know what Fergy would have said. ‘It was meant.’ One minute he was fine—jolly and fat—swilling down his tea at a corner table, chatting to a sweet white-haired old lady, a local, not a member of our group, and the next thing he was crawling on his hands and knees to the Gents. Only the Ladies was closer. He almost fell through the door, nearly getting trampled by a stampede of frantic women.”
“What’s the punch line? Had the sweet old lady stirred a teaspoon of arsenic in his tea? Okay, I’m sorry—continue your tale.”
“Thank you. I don’t know the cause of the man’s indisposition—maybe eating smelly kippers for breakfast—but it gave us, the passengers, an hour to kill before his replacement arrived. One of the women in the grey berets, an enormous creature exhaling command, suggested we take a look at ...”
“Ah-ha, let me guess.” Harry closed his eyes. “The monastery ruins?”
“Clever! We do know our guide to Warwickshire, don’t we? You’d think with my vicarage background I’d be all het up about Gothic relics, wouldn’t you? But, Harry, they sort of scare me. Much more so than graveyards where you can feel fairly secure the remains are safely underground. Then, when I got there, I remarked to one of the rubble buffs—just to be chatty—that had those pillars of stone been five instead of five hundred years old, the town council would have ordered them carted away. I nearly got murdered. Only in the very nick of time was I rescued by one of Dad’s soul mates. Bump! Bump! Down the lane that ran in front of the Ruins came this bubble car ... up it pulled, and the driver hopped out, introducing himself as the Reverend Egrinon Snapper.”
“Odd name.”
“He was an odd little man altogether. Not at all like any clergyman I ever met. Fergy declares you can tell one by his walk, and this one didn’t walk anything like Dad. He kind of slithered. He also had frizzy orange hair and a nose that could pick locks, but he certainly was ...”
“Charming?” Harry enquired.
“Let’s say convivial. Spotting a mini-congregation he leapt right into the pulpit. He couldn’t stop talking about those old Gilbertese monks.”
“Gilbertine.”
“Probably. He told us he was on holiday from Kent and spent part of every day sitting in what had been the refectory, soaking up atmosphere. Communing with the spirits, which according to him beat communing with the natives—a sullen, close-mouthed lot, he said.”
“Even the local clergy?”
“I don’t know.” I took a sip of tea and munched down thoughtfully on a forkful of pie. “But I could imagine Egrinon rubbing my placid Dad the wrong way. Even for a Protestant there was something overly enthusiastic in his recounting the excesses of monastic life. Seven-course dinners off gold plates, lurid ambition, monks slothing on their bunks all day reading dirty Geoffrey Chaucer. Henry the Eighth should have had Reverend Snapper on the payroll at the Dissolution. You should have seen how his nose quivered when he said the brothers didn’t get their sensual thrills only from books. His topper was a Scandal Most Sordid!”
“The monk who impregnated the village virgin and got her with unholy child?”
“You are swift.” I took another sip of now cold tea, “But I suppose that is an old story in more ways than one. What makes this one grislier is that the monk hanged himself.”
“Fascinating.”
I glared at him. “Don’t you dare sneer. It was all very sad. The wretched girl’s family booted her out of the house. And don’t tell me that was the done thing in those days. Even for the sixteenth century (and this happened shortly before the Dissolution) they must have been hateful people. Where could she go? Pretty ironic when you think that the usual source of succour would be the monastery.”
“It may still have been. Going on the premise that all monks are brothers, that baby was not short of uncles. Wouldn’t surprise me if the jolly old chaps set to and raised the little tyke while Mummy went gadding off to be a nun as penance for her sins.”
“How can you snicker like that! You’re exactly like the Reverend Snapper. He positively seethed with delight when relating how that poor girl barely survived the stocks and a dunking in the village pond, to say nothing of the death of her spineless lover. Standing in those Ruins I could feel her horror, feel how she must have felt when her baby—a little girl—was born. Who would dare help her even if they wished? Okay, I know I sound soppily sentimental, but there is a reason. That young mother wrapped her child in a blanket, put her in a basket, and left her on the doorstep of some local gentry, people who were childless and kind. She also left them a note which read ‘This is your daughter Tessa.’ Oh, Harry, can you imagine how I felt when I heard that! The monk’s name was Tessail. Those people did raise her and she grew up to marry a cousin of the family.”
“Very interesting, though long-winded. But ...” I sensed rather than saw Harry stiffen in his chair.
“But nothing. The cousin inherited the property through an entail or something, and Tessa’s descendants still live in the old ancestral, Cloisters—a house that, ironically, was built on the monastery land a few years after the monks were given the push.”
“Jolly good. All’s well that ends well.” Harry stood, stretching languidly, muscles rippling under the wool shirt.
“Not entirely.” I didn’t have to fake the wistfulness in my voice. “Tessa never knew what became of her mother.”
“So saith your gleeful little cleric. What an incurable dreamer you are, Tess.” Moving towards me he twined a loose strand of my hair around one of his fingers. “The legend would lose much in the telling if the fallen woman had ended her days fat and happy, swilling down mead at the local tavern. Don’t glare at me. I don’t want you agonizing … seeing yourself as the reincarnation of this namesake.”
“Harry, that isn’t it at all.”
He stepped away from me. “Give yourself a break, Tessa. You can’t blithely assume, because your own history bears something of a resemblance to a dubious folk tale, that your mother ever lived anywhere near Flaxby Meade. All right. I’ll grant you are dealing with an interesting coincidence. But thousands of day trippers will have heard some version of the story you were told. If this is to be fantasy time, I suggest that some woman found herself pregnant under difficult circumstances and decided her child would have a better chance in life if presented to the world with a romantic flourish.”
I took a patient breath. “Please listen. We have the legend. We have F.M.’s easy proximity to Kings Ransome and now we discover the Monk’s Pottery. Conveniently placed, I might add, right next door to the cafe. And guess what I found among the monk salt and pepper shakers? A monk flask. An absolute double of the one left in the basket with me.”
Take that Harry. Start taking me seriously.
But he didn’t. He was now leaning up against the kitchen counter quirking a compassionate smile at me. Every moment brought greater clarity that he was not, after all, the man for me.
“The following day,” I said, “I paid a second visit to Flaxby Meade by car. What I hoped for I am not really sure. I know enough about small villages, even discarding the Reverend Snapper’s dour commentary, to realize that I would accomplish nothing by tapping on cottage doors, making discreet enquiries into my origins. So there I was, back in the cafe eating Chelsea buns, when inspiration struck. The inspiration that is to start you and me upon a life of crime.” I smiled—bewitchingly I hoped—up at him.
“Will it be something lip-smackingly vicious and obscene?” He inched a shade closer and panted into my neck.
“Hardly, considering whence came my inspiration,” I said, eyes on my hands, primly folded over my governess frock. “I got my fabulous idea from two elderly but sprightly spinsters. They were sitting at a corner table when I noticed them. It would have been impossible not to notice them. All they needed were signs ro
und their necks marked Endangered Species. Amazing. I had believed that women like that were extinct outside of books. And speaking of books! The legs of their table were hidden by stacks of books. Library books.”
“Could I interest you in a glass of cider to wet your voice?” Harry had turned and was rummaging in a cupboard. “Sorry to interrupt, but before you get too far along, I think I had better admit that I have never felt that manly urge to knock little old ladies over the head....” He paused, holding a glass in each hand. “However”—the word came out slowly as he poured the cider—”roll out the yarn—what did these funny old birds look like?”
I stood up and we tapped glasses. “The shorter one was wearing a pale lavender-blue twin set above a long striped wool skirt, cherry net gloves even while she ate just like the Joyful Sounds, and a preposterous hat. A goldfinch perched in a nest of feathers! But the other one ...”
“Her friend?”
“Sister, as it turned out. She was wearing an inky-blue-and-red peasant dress, lime-green patent shoes, a muddy dishcloth shawl, and the most enormous dangly earrings. Enough to knock her silly every time she moved her head! A head of suspiciously black hair all swept up into a great big thundercloud. She looked like an aged beatnik. Strange. They were both strange!”
Harry downed the last of his cider. “I don’t know. They sound the spitting image of two of my father’s elderly relatives.”
“Really?” I nearly got sidetracked. “I didn’t know you had any relatives except that aunt in Devon. You positively must have her get in touch with Daddy. Anyway, seeing their piles of books made me think it wouldn’t be a bad idea to spend the morning hunting up a definitive work on that weak-kneed Tessail and his victims. Then I heard the old girls talking. They were discussing Regency romances. You know—earl meets girl, et cetera. Let me tell you, they were passionate on the subject, squabbling over who should get first dibs on The Highwayman and the Hangwoman. It was rather sweet really. Whatever would they do if one cold and blustery night a highwayman did come leaping at them out of the bushes? I was sitting there hidden away behind a potted plant sprouting plastic oranges and lemons, toying with the notion, when the waitress went up to them—all of a bob and curtsey—and spoke to them by name. The Name. The name of the family who took in the first Tessa.”
I walked slowly across the kitchen and then turned back to face him, “It was all meant, you see.”
“Meant?”
“Yes. When I heard that name I knew what I had to do.”
“Pass yourself off as a member of some historical society, enquiring if the old girls knew of any twentieth-century take-offs on the old family saga?” Harry was smiling as he pulled at a loose thread in his shirt. “You needn’t have gone to all that trouble. If you really think those two old ladies can help you, I ...”
“Would what? Recommend the direct approach? Harry, you don’t listen. I have been describing two women past sixty, living in a fantasy realm where the most daring intimation of sex is a bare ankle. Let us suppose that twenty years ago a member of their family or household had a child, and all was hushed up. Would they glibly spill the beans at the first ‘Hello—does the name Tessa Fields ring a bell?’ No. Of course they wouldn’t—but perhaps if they were to get to know me ...”
“That shouldn’t be too difficult,” said Harry thoughtfully, and I felt a little spurt of hope. Despite himself, he was becoming interested.
“Well, it wouldn’t be difficult to get to know them casually, I am sure. One can always manage something of that sort. But that wouldn’t be enough. I would need time. Quite a bit of time in which to break down their defences. And the only way to achieve that would be to somehow wheedle a visit to their house.”
“Afternoon tea?”
“Oh, no.” Absently I stuck a pin back in my hair. “I am sure I would need to remain for at least a week. And that is where you come in, Harry. In the guise of a modern highwayman.”
“What?” He picked up the cider bottle and studied the label. “Maybe this has a higher alcohol content than stated.”
I waved him back to the table. “Come and sit down—this isn’t as drastic a measure as it sounds. I’m not asking you to rob the old ladies. All I need is for you to stage a heinous attack upon my person—causing such palpitations and attacks of the vapours (very much the in thing in Regencies) that I will suffer a nasty bout of amnesia—to be witnessed by one or both of them. That part I haven’t quite worked out ... fixing them on the scene, I mean ... but I’m sure between us we can solve that small problem. Now what else should I tell you?”
I couldn’t read the look in his intensely blue eyes and decided it was probably just as well. A strand of hair had fallen over my left eyebrow and I blew it away. “Let’s see ... the ladies’ name is Tramwell. They live in this vast house called Cloisters. And, really, I don’t anticipate any trouble at all in luring them into offering me hospitality until I simultaneously recover my memory and uncover my origins.”
Harry did not sit down with me. He shook his head with disbelief. “Of all the outrageous, arrogant schemes. To assume that because these women are old they are also completely senile. I almost think it would serve you right if I let you go through with it—and spend a week in an atmosphere of mothballs and woodworm.” He thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and looked at me. “In plotting this little drama, didn’t you give any thought to the police being brought in to investigate? And do you seriously suppose you would escape a thorough medical before being carted off to the padded cell?”
I should have known! Hadn’t he failed me before when I desperately needed him? Rising, I thrust my chair back with a wonderful grating sound, and made an ostentatious display of looking round for my bag.
“You didn’t bring one.”
“Huh! I should have remembered what a spoilsport you are, Harry Harkness.” Stalking across to the kitchen door I flung it open, stood glaring at it for a moment, swung it backwards and forwards biting down on my lip, and waited. Wasn’t he going to say anything?
“Goodbye,” I said with awful finality.
“Tessa, nobody wants you to be happy more than I. Whatever has happened between us, you are still the most important person in the world to me. But ...” As a declaration of affection it was spoken in a strangely flat tone. And that was what touched me, what forced me to blink back the tears. He wasn’t hiding behind flippancy anymore. Turning, I ran to him, twining my arms around his neck and burying my face against the comfort of his rough shirt. His fingers moved slowly, gently, through my hair shaking out a spray of pins, and I forgot our quarrels, the woman in his bed. We were a team. We had always been a team.
“I still say”—his voice was muffled—”that your plot is mad, outrageous, and in all likelihood pointless.”
Disengaging my arms I moved slowly away from him. I had to be reasonable, coherent, and imperturbable, all difficult when I was breathing in the giddy scent of his aftershave, becoming lulled by the idea that nothing was really that important outside this room.
“Why mad, outrageous, pointless?”
“Mad—because the chance of pulling the thing off is less than minimal, without a hidden ace—or two. Outrageous—because you know nothing about these women, and pointless—because you have no proof that your connection is to their family.”
“Okay.” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “We do have an ace up our sleeves. The Tramwells’ thirst for romance. Poor old pets, you only had to look at them to know the high points of their lives are shopping at Harrods twice a year and Princess Diana’s having another baby. In a way I think it is rather splendid that we can let them live out one of their fantasies. And as for not being related to their family, maybe I do want to believe I am descended from that other Tessa because it would all fit so well, but if I am wrong about that I still may discover something about my origins through being in that house. If my mother ...”
“Tessa, why aren’t you more curious about your father?”
“What do I need him for? I have Dad.”
“But you can’t just ignore his role, even if you have no desire to know him.”
I shook my head. “Fergy always said that she reckoned he was a sleeping partner in more ways than one, but I see him more as a hit-and-run motorist. If he had been around when my mother needed him, she wouldn’t have had to do what she did. Harry, you are going to help me, aren’t you? Please.”
I reached out to him with both hands and he took them slowly.
“Yes,” he said. “But for my reasons, not yours.” And I was too happy to wonder then what he meant.
* * *
Chapter 3
For all my bravado I did experience the occasional twinge of conscience at the prospect of tricking two innocent old ladies. And on the morning of the great event I could not get warm. Fergy’s words kept knelling in my ears. “God pays debts without money.” Although fortunately for her peace of mind she had no idea of what turn my wickedness had taken. She and Dad believed I was engaged in a farewell bed-and-breakfast tour of the Cotswolds. She wrote saying future correspondence would be directed to the Kings Ransome post office, that she was busily occupied in founding a new chapter of the Joyful Sounds, and in keeping the ladies away from Dad. What could be more captivating to predatory female instincts than a new clergyman with a spotlessly kept house? Yes, Fergy could see her work cut out for her, especially as Dad had displayed a certain uncharacteristic waywardness in inviting Vera’s sister Ruth to tea and actually requesting the silver pot.
How innocent it all sounded. If Fergy had seen me that first night at Cloisters, lying in a narrow bed in what had been the nursery fifty years ago, she would have dragged me out by the hair. Lying back on my pillows, I looked about the room. Impossible not to feel the eeriness. A faint scent of dried lavender hung in the air, but it couldn’t cover the deadness. All those relics of spent childhood; the ink-stained desk, the arthritically slouched rocking horse, frayed picture books, and dolls. Those dolls were the worst, with their blind-eyed stiff china smiles. In the centre of the room was a full-sized swing suspended on thick ropes from rings in the high-beamed ceiling. Creak, creak. I did not relish waking in the dark to the sound of a gibbet out on the windswept moor.
02 - Down the Garden Path Page 5