The Seventh Link

by Margaret Mayhew

  ‘I encourage my owners to bring their cats’ own blankets and toys,’ Mrs Moffat told him. ‘It helps them to feel at home.’

  Thursday had no such things and the Colonel had never thought to provide them. He had a feeling that, in any case, they would have been summarily rejected or ignored. Strays had no use for pointless props; only for food and shelter.

  ‘I’m afraid he may not take kindly to being locked up,’ he said. ‘I doubt if it’s ever happened to him before. He’s very much his own cat, if you understand me.’

  She nodded vigorously. ‘I understand perfectly, Colonel. I’m used to dealing with all sorts. I find that they usually trust me. Cats always know if people are cat people. It’s instinctive.’

  He thought of Thursday giving Naomi a wide berth, and of the different receptions accorded to visitors to the cottage – villagers, electricians, repair men, window cleaners, Jacob the gardener. Thursday always sorted them out.

  He was taken on an inspection, proceeding down the row of cages. They contained a wide variety of cats from aristocratic pedigrees to humble moggies. Some were curled up quietly, others – usually the oriental ones – yowled and clawed at the mesh as they went by. All of them seemed well-cared-for and reasonably happy – as much as a prisoner, human or animal, could ever be.

  He booked Thursday into Cat Heaven and learned that an inoculation was required from the vet before he could be accepted. On his way home, he stopped at the pet shop and bought a cat carrier.

  The question was how to get Thursday inside it? The Colonel had never committed the lese-majesty of trying to pick him up, any more than Thursday had ever attempted to sit on his lap. Their relationship had been conducted on a strictly formal level – their evenings spent with the Colonel in his wing chair and the cat at the fireside end of the sofa, plus the occasional stroll together in the garden with Thursday following at a studiedly non-committal distance.

  Surprise was the only way. In his time in the army, the Colonel had learned that surprise was always the key to a successful attack. You had to catch your objective off-guard. He made an appointment with the vet and when Thursday was curled up asleep on the sofa he scooped him up from over the sofa’s back in a lightning movement, inserted him straight into the carrier and slammed the door.

  On the car journey, Thursday glared balefully through the grille and then hissed and spat at everyone and everything in the waiting room. The vet, a cheerful young man in khaki shorts, didn’t attempt to coax him out but simply tipped the carrier on end so that he slithered, scrabbling wildly, on to the table. On the whole, the vet said, giving Thursday a rapid examination after the injection, the old cat was in pretty good shape considering his former lifestyle and his age which was probably somewhere around fifteen. He had a few teeth missing and a touch of arthritis in the hind legs but the rest of him seemed all right. The torn ear wasn’t worth trying to repair.

  The Colonel’s daughter, Alison, rang that evening.

  ‘How are you, Dad?’

  ‘Fine.’

  Unlike his daughter-in-law, Susan, she never tried to interfere in his life. Her own was extremely busy and successful and he was proud of it, though he sometimes wished that she would find a good man to share it with her. The high-powered job was all very well but it shouldn’t be everything.

  He told her about the visit to the vet, which made her laugh.

  ‘I bet Thursday was furious.’

  ‘It had to be done. I’m putting him in a cattery while I go away for a few days. He needed a clean bill of health.’

  ‘Are you going somewhere nice?’

  ‘Lincolnshire. Someone your mother and I knew out in Singapore. His first wife died and he’s remarried.’

  ‘I wish you’d do the same, Dad. You must get pretty lonely on your own in the country.’

  ‘It can be just as lonely in a town.’

  ‘Aren’t there any nice widows down there?’

  ‘I’ve got one next door.’

  ‘Naomi’s not what I meant.’

  There were, indeed, several widows in the village. He’d met them all and, pleasant as they were, he couldn’t imagine living with any of them.

  He changed the subject. ‘When are you coming to stay?’

  ‘Well, I have to go to a meeting in New York next week and I thought I’d go and visit some people I know over there. They’ve got a place in Martha’s Vineyard. It’ll probably be September before I can get down. Is Marcus bringing Susan and the children to see you?’

  ‘They rather want me to go to them instead.’

  The thought of doing so had depressed him and he had prevaricated. The house in Norwich was pin-neat and highly polished. Susan would make him eat healthy, meatless food, there would be no whisky in the evenings and no wine either and he would be forced to go and view any bungalows up for sale in the area with the object of him moving in to one of them. True, there would be the compensation of spending time with his grandson, Eric, and of getting to know his new granddaughter, Edith, but he would have preferred to do so on his own territory and on his own terms.

  The bond he had forged with Eric – a spoiled brat if ever there was one – had come about when the child had stayed at Pond Cottage with him while Susan had been in hospital with a threatened miscarriage. The Colonel had taken him to the Tank Museum at Bovington nearby where Eric had stopped being spoiled and been spellbound instead. He had regaled his grandson with tank facts and figures, pulling no punches with the gory details. They had rounded off their visit with a canteen lunch of chicken nuggets, baked beans, chips and lurid pink ice cream – all the sort of things that Susan forbade at home.

  Alison said, ‘Can’t you persuade them to come to you?’

  ‘Susan’s not very keen on travelling with the baby.’

  ‘That’s pathetic.’

  Alison, he knew, had very little patience with her sister-in-law, and nothing at all in common with her, which was a shame. She and Marcus had once been close but, inevitably and rightly, Marcus’s first loyalties now lay with his wife and family.

  They talked for a bit longer and then she rang off. He lifted the phone receiver again. Susan would have to be rung. He had promised to let her know if he went away. On the last occasion, when he had failed to do so, she had been on the point of phoning the police by the time he had returned. He dialled the number and his daughter-in-law answered. There was the usual exchange about his health and his diet and he gave the usual lies. No, he wasn’t eating any fatty things or junk foods. Yes, he was taking the vitamin pills she had given him, yes, he was eating a lot of pasta which she always insisted was so good for him and which he thoroughly disliked.

  ‘When are you going to come up and stay with us, Father?’

  If only she would call him Hugh!

  ‘Wouldn’t that be too much trouble for you?’

  ‘No, Edith is sleeping through now. And Eric keeps asking about you. He’d like to see you soon.’

  He felt very guilty. ‘I’d like to see him too. If you came down here, I could take him to the tank museum again. I think he’d enjoy that.’

  ‘I really don’t feel I could face the journey, Father – not with all the baby things. There’d be such a lot to bring and I need to keep Edith to her routine. That’s very important.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Well, I’ll certainly come soon.’

  ‘You remember that nice bungalow down the road I told you about that was for sale?’

  He did, indeed. She had mentioned it a number of times.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, somebody was going to buy it but then the sale fell through so it’s back on the market again. You really ought to go and view it when you come to stay, Father. I think you’d like it. It would be very easy to run. Much easier than your cottage with all those old beams and those dangerous stairs. And just a small garden all on one level with only a little bit of lawn. And it’s got full gas central heating and parquet floors and the kitchen is brand new. It�
�s even got a garbage disposal so you’d hardly have any rubbish to put out.’

  He realized how decrepit he must seem to her: incapable of coping with stairs, rubbish, mowing or much else.

  ‘Really? That sounds interesting. By the way, Susan, I was ringing to tell you that I’m going to be away for a few days.’

  ‘Oh?’ Her tone sharpened, alert to any potential trouble. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Up to Lincolnshire. An old friend has moved there. He and his wife run a Bed and Breakfast.’

  Her reaction matched Naomi’s. ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that! Imagine having strangers in your home!’

  ‘I won’t be a stranger. Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know.’

  ‘We worry about you, Father. That time we couldn’t get hold of you was awful. We were sure something had happened to you. That you’d had an accident in the home or out in the garden and nobody would know. You could be lying there for days.’

  He said drily, ‘I think they’d find out soon enough.’

  ‘But you’d be so much safer in a bungalow and living near us. And we wouldn’t have to worry.’

  He said gently but firmly: ‘It’s good of you to be so concerned, Susan, but there’s really no need. I’m not yet senile and I can still look after myself perfectly well. And,’ he added, equally firmly, ‘As it happens, I don’t care for bungalows at all.’

  She was hurt, of course, and he was very sorry about it but there was only so much interference that he was prepared to tolerate, however well meant.

  Later, he went out to the shed and resumed work on the Matilda tank. He was on Step Nine and it was taking shape quite nicely.

  THREE

  Geoffrey Cheetham was staring into the depths of the lake. Lake was a rather grand name for it, but it was big enough to be able to go for a decent row in the old dinghy and the B & B guests were welcome to take it out any time they liked. It could accommodate five quite comfortably, even more at a pinch. Most of them didn’t bother, though.

  The good thing about B & Bs, as he had discovered, was that the guests never stayed for long. Overnight, or maybe two nights, or even three, but not usually more than that. They moved on elsewhere or went back home. Also, they were not there during the day. In general, as he had also discovered, they were well-behaved, considerate, and anxious to please and be pleased. He and Heather had put up foreigners at The Grange from all over the world, as well as the home-grown British. Americans, Australians, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Swedes. On the whole, he favoured the Americans. They were always so impressed by everything – the old house, the oil paintings, the furnishings, the gardens, the lake.

  The only problem about the lake was the blanket weed. He had fought a pitched battle, donning chest-high waders to get to close grips with the enemy, heaving himself through the thick mud bottom and tearing the weed out in handfuls, all to the point of exhaustion. Then he had read somewhere that pulling it out only made things worse as thousands more spores were released into the water. Three weeks ago he had tried some new stuff that claimed to clean up ponds within two weeks. The explanatory leaflet showed a photograph of goldfish swimming happily around in crystal-clear, weedless water. He had followed the maker’s instructions to the letter, sprinkling the granules evenly over the surface and he had taken the dinghy out to do more sprinkling where it was too deep for his waders. So far, there had been no difference and the only time he caught a glimpse of the fish was when they came up to the surface when they saw him through the weed. One or two of them were doing that now – plopping up by the bank where he was standing in the hope that he had brought them something to eat. But overfeeding the fish was said to encourage the weed and make it grow even faster, so he was careful not to do that any more.

  He had no idea how many fish there were in the lake but some of them seemed to have grown quite large. The biggest was a ghost carp that very occasionally appeared – silver-white and two feet long at least, gliding by silently. Spooky, he always felt. Come to think of it, there was something rather sinister about all fish. The fact was they’d strip the flesh from your bones if they got half the chance. You weren’t only the provider of food you were food, potentially speaking. Hauling himself round in his waders, he never felt comfortable if they came too near.

  He walked back across the lawn towards the house where Heather was still clearing breakfast things away in the kitchen. He had already done his bit earlier in the day, waiting at the table in the dining room, carrying in tea or coffee, the plates of full English breakfasts, the racks of toast. Making polite conversation to guests as he did so. Had they slept well? Had they got everything they needed? Would they like more toast? More milk? More coffee? More tea? He knew all the stock questions and the answers were nearly always the same. Yes, they had slept very well, thank you. Yes, they had everything, thank you. No, they wouldn’t be needing any more toast. Or any more, milk, coffee, or tea either. It was all perfect, thank you very much.

  At the moment they only had one guest. Some wacko woman who was taking part in the Tudor re-enactment they did every summer up at the Hall. They dressed up in period costume, spoke in olde English and pretended to be Tudor cooks, or labourers, or seamstresses or mummers, or whatever. He’d no objection to the concept – each to his or her own – but he thought it was carrying things too far to come down to breakfast already in costume and insist on conversing in olde English – which was what was happening every morning with Miss Warner. He’d had more than enough of the forsooths and by-your-leaves, the methinks and prithees while he was trying to serve her breakfast, and, unlike most guests, she was staying for what seemed to him to be an interminable length of time.

  This evening seven more guests were due to arrive. Eight, if he included, Hugh, which he didn’t. No need to stand on ceremony with Hugh, thank God. And it would be a real pleasure to see him again after so long. He rated him as one of the best chaps he’d ever met. A man of absolute integrity – and there weren’t so many of those around these days. Shame he’d never remarried, but then Laura had been a hard act to follow. He knew that he himself had been very lucky to meet Heather. At fifteen years younger than himself, she kept him younger too, and though it hadn’t been quite like the first time around with Anne, he was very fond of her and very content, and grateful, too, for her putting up with an old codger like himself. For preference, he would have stayed in London but when Heather’s parents had died and left her the family home she had been very keen to move back there. He knew that the place meant a lot to her. She had been born and brought up in the house and Fossetts had lived there for donkeys’ years. It was much too big for the two of them, of course, with their respective children grown-up and gone, and it had needed some sprucing up, to say the least. Holding up, described it better. The trouble was that it cost a small fortune – far more than his pension allowed – which was why they had started the B & B. Heather did the cooking, Mrs Catchpole from the village helped her with the cleaning and his job was to serve the breakfasts and keep the garden under control, including the lake. It was a far cry from his desk-bound banking career, but it was important, he thought, to keep busy in retirement, to keep the cobwebs at bay.

  He helped Heather finish in the kitchen and afterwards they made up the beds and put out towels for the coming guests.

  ‘We’ll put your Colonel in the Blue Room,’ Heather said. ‘He should like that.’

  The Blue Room – so called because of the faded blue wallpaper – was the nicest, in his opinion. It also had the advantage of being a safe distance from Miss Warner’s room so Hugh would be unlikely to encounter her in the corridor, spouting her olde English. The six other guests – all ex-RAF men attending the Buckby Reunion over the weekend – would be sharing the three twin-bedded rooms and the seventh – a last-minute booking – would have to go into one of the former servants’ rooms in the attic which had been done up recently.

  They quite often had guests who had been stationed at RAF Buckby d
uring the war. Men who came back to take one last look at their past, though the past was vanishing fast. There wasn’t much left of the station buildings which were in ruins and smothered by brambles, but the control tower was still standing and so was one of the hangars, and the main runway still existed, along with half the perimeter track.

  It was rather a novelty, Geoffrey felt, to have an old wartime airfield at the bottom of the garden. All the land had been owned and farmed by the Fossetts until it had been requisitioned at the start of the Second World War and taken over by the RAF, together with the house. After the war, both house and land had been returned to the family but hard times in the seventies had necessitated selling the land off to a big consortium which had contracted out the farming. Two of the three runways and half the width of the perimeter track had been taken up to make more room for crops and because concrete fetched big prices as motorway hardcore. The surviving hangar was spared to use for storing corn, the other buildings left to crumble away. Fortunately, the consortium had had no objection to the control tower being preserved by local enthusiasts.

  The ex-RAF men who came back to visit often got quite emotional about the old airfield. He’d even seen them weep. It must have been a traumatic time. Flying into hellfire with a snowball’s chance of survival, and so many of their comrades dying so young. No wonder they got upset, remembering. They’d had a former rear gunner staying who’d told them he’d had a life expectancy of around forty hours, or five sorties. Even so, the chap had thought he was better off than the bomb aimer who lay prostate in the nose blister and saw the full horror of the flak and flames and other Lancs being blown to pieces.