Past Tense

by Catherine Aird

  ‘Another known side,’ qualified Simon Puckle again, ‘but as you say, this William Wakefield’s family would probably have been involved in the trust, too.’

  ‘I’ll look into it,’ she promised, closing her notebook and rising to leave. ‘Was there anything else, Mr Puckle?’

  He smiled. ‘I think you’ll find that’ll be quite enough to be getting along with, Miss Fennel.’

  Sebastian Worthington was very welcoming when Joe Short arrived at Curfew Cottage in the hinterland of the fishing village of Kinnisport beyond Calleford. ‘Let me see, now…oh, yes, of course. Joe Short.’ He peered at him. ‘I saw you at the funeral, didn’t I?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. I’m Josephine’s grandson.’

  ‘Of course. Come along in and sit down.’ The old gentleman turned to address the wire-haired terrier barking at his feet. ‘Quiet, Sparky! Down, boy! You don’t mind dogs, do you?’

  ‘No,’ said Joe Short, attempting to pat the little dog that was making a determined effort to bite his ankles.

  ‘If you sit down quickly,’ advised Mr Worthington, ‘he’s less likely to take against you.’

  ‘That’s good,’ said Joe, heading swiftly for the nearest chair, adding lightly, ‘Where I come from dogs have rabies.’

  ‘No, not that chair, my boy. That’s Sparky’s favourite. It’s beside the fire, you see, and he likes that.’

  Joe Short moved hurriedly away from a chair covered in dog hairs and instead made for one deeper into the room.

  ‘That’s better,’ wheezed Sebastian Worthington. ‘He won’t bother you any more. Not now you’ve sat down. Look, there now, he’s gone to his own chair and settled down already. There’s a good boy. So what is it you wanted to talk to me about?’

  ‘My grandmother,’ said Joe Short, taking a look round the crowded room. The walls of the cottage were covered in framed school photographs. Pictures of rows and rows of the indeterminate faces and figures of little boys in school uniform hung there, all against the background of the same school building.

  ‘A great girl in her day,’ Sebastian Worthington sighed. ‘And such good fun, always. She was forever quoting Martial’s epigram: “Tomorrow’s life is too late. Live today”. And she did.’

  ‘You see, sir, you came over to Damory Regis for her funeral and I wondered…you knew her well, I take it?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ the old man sighed, a faraway look coming into his rheumy eyes. ‘I knew her from the old days when I taught at Rowletts – that’s the prep school, you know – that’s how and when. I taught there for the best part of thirty years.’ He sighed as if looking into the past from afar. ‘They were the best years, too. The very best.’

  Joe Short nodded sympathetically. ‘I was…well…just wondering exactly how well you knew her.’

  ‘As well as she would let anyone know her,’ replied the old man gruffly, peering at Joe Short over the top of his glasses. ‘I can tell you that that meant that you had to keep your distance. Oh, dear me, yes. There was no question of anyone taking liberties with your grandmother.’

  ‘That figures.’ Joe nodded. ‘She seems always to have been a very private person…’

  ‘If,’ responded the old schoolmaster energetically, ‘I didn’t so disapprove of the modern idiom, I should have said that you could say that again.’

  ‘Very private,’ said Joe Short ruefully. ‘There’s a lot even I don’t know.’

  The glasses had slipped even further down Sebastian Worthington’s nose. ‘There was a child – a son – but of course you know that since she was your grandmother and that’s your name, too.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Joe Short solemnly. ‘That son was my father.’

  The old schoolmaster pushed his glasses back up his nose and gave Joe a quizzical look. ‘Unless, that is, she married in secret after I knew her, but as she wouldn’t marry then, I don’t suppose she married later.’

  ‘No,’ said Joe Short. ‘At least not that anyone knew about.’

  ‘Her boy was at Rowletts.’ Sebastian Worthington waved a hand towards the wall. ‘George.’

  ‘My father,’ said Joe Short again.

  Sebastian Worthington wasn’t listening. ‘He’ll be on one of those photographs. If you could lift that one over there down, you’ll find him on there. The third from the left in the second row.’

  ‘My father,’ said Joe Short, even more firmly, getting to his feet to the accompaniment of a low growl from the fireside chair.

  ‘Quiet, Sparky,’ said the dog’s master. He turned back to Joe and said, ‘I taught him, you know. Nice boy. Quiet and hard-working, quite good at games but not good enough to ruin his work, which always helps. Sorry to hear about the accident,’ he added awkwardly. ‘Quite awful. Your poor mother, too. We put it in the Old Boys’ magazine. Mr Thompson – he taught geography in your father’s day – wrote the obituary.’ He scrabbled about through a pile of papers by his chair. ‘I’ve got a copy here somewhere.’

  ‘I’ve seen it,’ said Joe Short with constraint.

  ‘Yes, naturally you would have done. Well, Josephine cut herself off from everyone after that. Went into a nursing home and wouldn’t see anyone at all. Quite understand that, of course. Would have done the same myself. Not much fun, though, all the same, to end up like the poet said of the old oak tree “dry, bald, sere”.’

  Joe said sadly, ‘She didn’t even want me to come back home to see her.’

  Sebastian Worthington pushed the glasses back up his nose again and said pointedly, ‘But you didn’t come to Rowletts.’

  ‘No,’ said Joe, answering the accusation implicit in the statement. ‘You see, Dad was working out in Africa then and they thought I was too young to come home alone.’

  The schoolmaster sniffed, unappeased. ‘A lot of boys did, though.’

  ‘My mother didn’t want me to come back to England anyway – besides, Granny had retired from the school by then and Dad thought Rowletts mightn’t have been the same there without her.’

  ‘It wasn’t,’ said Sebastian Worthington with great feeling. ‘At least, not for me.’

  ‘I think she had come into some family money by then, too,’ explained Joe. ‘I expect that had something to do with it.’

  ‘Very possibly,’ said the old gentleman. ‘But there was no chance of her marrying anyone, anyway. Not then.’ A wistful note came into his voice. ‘She told me once she was still in love with your grandfather’s memory.’

  Joe Short looked up sharply. ‘That meant he was already dead by then, doesn’t it? You see, we…that is, I…never knew who he was.’

  ‘Neither did I,’ responded the old gentleman crisply. ‘As I say, your grandmother always played her cards very close to her chest.’

  Joe Short said, ‘And why burial at Damory Regis, sir? That’s something else I don’t know about.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ responded Sebastian Worthington, ‘but knowing your dear grandmother as I did for many years I am sure she will have had her reasons. Good ones, I should say. Hers always were good reasons.’

  Joe Short shook his head. ‘I can’t imagine what they were. The vicar said she didn’t seem to have gone to church there or have any connection with the place that anyone knew about.’

  ‘Life’s full of mysteries,’ sighed the old schoolmaster. ‘And the longer you live, the more you realise it, and I don’t only mean the Mary Celeste. Now, what about something to drink?’

  Chapter Eight

  Janet Wakefield paused in her rapid tidying-up of the house as the telephone rang. Pushing the vacuum cleaner to one side she picked up the receiver and said, ‘Hullo?’

  ‘Is that you, Jan? It’s Joe Short here. I’m really sorry bothering you again but I just wondered if you’d be free to come over to the nursing home at Berebury with me? Simon Puckle says it’s all right for me to go ahead and take away Granny’s things now.’

  ‘Oh, Joe,’ Janet sounded quite breathless, ‘I’m so sorry but I just can’t. Something’s ha
ppened…’

  ‘Nice or nasty?’ he asked quickly.

  ‘Oh, nice. Very nice. It’s Bill – that’s my husband, you know. He was called back to his head office yesterday all of a sudden from Brazil – no warning at all. He only flew into the UK in the evening and tried to ring me but of course I was with you at the Bellingham, wasn’t I?’

  ‘You were,’ said Joe.

  ‘And he said that anyway it was much too late to come on down here last night by the time Head Office had finished with him – they’re like that, you know – these big firms.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ said Joe Short feelingly. ‘Remember, I know all about big firms and their merry little ways.’

  ‘No warning at all,’ she repeated. ‘Well, he’s just rung me again now. I asked him where he was and he said he’s going to be catching a train from London as soon as he could get away from his head office. I promised I’d meet him at Berebury station – that was going to be after I’d done some shopping and got some food on the go for us.’

  ‘Couldn’t we just slip over to the nursing home now, then?’ asked Joe Short persuasively. ‘It shouldn’t take too long and you could do your shopping and then go straight to the station from the nursing home. I’m sure there’d still be time.’

  ‘Well…’ she hesitated.

  He sounded diffident. ‘You see, it’s that I don’t really like to go through Granny’s things on my own…’

  ‘Of course, I quite understand that,’ said Janet readily. ‘There isn’t a lot of stuff there, of course. I do know that.’ She hesitated and then said slowly, ‘I suppose I could take in going there with you since I’ve got to be in Berebury afterwards anyway to meet Bill off the train.’

  ‘Bless you,’ said Joe swiftly. ‘I’ll meet you at the place in twenty minutes.’

  He was as good as his word, standing waiting on the forecourt of the Berebury Nursing Home as Janet’s car drew up.

  The matron, Mrs Linda Luxton, came to the door herself, explaining over her shoulder as they walked down the corridor about the break-in and the broken vase. ‘We don’t know what the burglars were after,’ she said, giving a light laugh. ‘Anyway, we’re pretty sure they didn’t find anything.’

  ‘About this broken vase,’ said Janet, suspecting diversionary tactics.

  ‘We found it in pieces on the floor,’ said Mrs Luxton. ‘We don’t know how that came about but I’m very sorry about it.’ She unlocked the door to the room and stood back for them to enter. ‘The police have had the room examined and say we can go in again now.’

  ‘Poor Granny,’ said Joe, looking round the bleak little bedroom. There was a bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers and precious little else in the room.

  ‘We let residents bring their own furniture when they come here,’ said Mrs Luxton defensively, ‘and you must remember that by the time they come to us they’ve probably only been living in one or two rooms in their own homes anyway. Besides, most of our residents are usually quite glad not to have to bother looking after their own houses and possessions any longer.’

  Joe Short said, ‘My grandmother – tell me, had she sort of given up on life?’

  The matron’s expression softened a fraction. ‘It was difficult to say,’ she hedged. ‘Josephine was one of those who never talked about the past at all. We knew there had been some sort of a tragedy—’

  ‘I’ll say,’ interjected Joe with vigour.

  ‘But, Mr Short, she didn’t tell us any of the details. She was always…well…very self-contained. She didn’t complain at all.’

  ‘What about?’ demanded Janet immediately. ‘What was there to complain about here?’

  Mrs Luxton shot her an unfriendly look. ‘Nothing here, Mrs Wakefield, I can assure you,’ she said stiffly. ‘I was talking about her physical ailments, that is the normal loss of powers and faculties that usually accompany old age. Sight and hearing normally decline with time, and naturally illness inevitably overtakes all our residents in the end.’

  ‘Death and taxes being the only certainties in this world,’ chimed in Janet as Joe Short drifted towards the chest of drawers at the far side of the room.

  He pulled a long face and said solemnly, ‘As Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “Old and young, we are all on our last cruise”, but it can’t have been much fun for Granny, all the same.’ He stooped and pulled each of the drawers of the chest open and shut in turn, pausing at the bottom one.

  ‘That was where Josephine kept her papers,’ announced Mrs Luxton, adding half apologetically, ‘which I only know because towards the end she couldn’t bend down to open it herself.’

  Joe put his hand in and withdrew a tattered brown envelope out of which spilt a handful of old photographs. He picked them up and looked at them one by one. Janet moved to his side and said, ‘Do tell me who they are.’

  ‘That’s me, for a start,’ he said, offering her a head and shoulders photograph of himself.

  Janet regarded it critically. ‘That’s a good likeness.’

  He smiled a little and reached for another one. ‘And there’s me in rompers. Mum must have given her that.’ He turned a rather faded snapshot over. ‘There – it says on the back that it was taken when I was two and half. Can’t say I remember that one being taken.’

  Janet took the snap in her hand, too. A little boy was steadying himself against a chair by a dining room table set for a meal, his head only just level with the top of the table. Joe dipped his hand back into the pile of photographs and handed her another one. ‘That’s an old one of Mum and Dad taken when we were in rural Africa. Very rural, it was, too. From the look of it I think Dad must have developed it himself.’

  The matron stirred. ‘It would be a great help, Mr Short, if you would be kind enough to check that there isn’t anything missing from the room. We have no reason, of course, to believe that the intruder was actually in here…’

  ‘Except for the broken vase,’ chipped in Janet quickly.

  ‘Indeed, Mrs Wakefield,’ said the matron smoothly. ‘Furthermore, as far as we knew Josephine had nothing of…well…intrinsic value in here anyway, except, of course, for the rings she always wore.’

  ‘I’m sure she hadn’t.’ Joe Short shook his head and said with deep feeling, ‘She’d already lost everything that mattered to her.’

  The matron inclined her head. ‘So I understand…but in any case for obvious reasons we don’t encourage residents having really valuable things in their rooms—’

  ‘Those rings,’ interrupted Janet suddenly. ‘What happened to them? I certainly wasn’t given them when I came here after she’d died.’

  ‘They went with her to the undertaker’s just as she had requested,’ said the matron. ‘Perhaps you should check with Morton’s…’

  ‘Could the vase have been really valuable?’ began Janet tentatively. ‘You never can tell with old china.’

  ‘Naturally we haven’t thrown the pieces away,’ said Linda Luxton stiffly.

  ‘I expect someone could tell from those if it had been a real antique,’ said Janet.

  Joe shook his head. ‘I don’t know for certain but I wouldn’t have thought it was. I’m sure I would have heard about it if it had been Ming or something. She would have said.’

  ‘It might have had a sentimental value,’ suggested Janet.

  Joe Short shook his head. ‘I very much doubt it. Believe you me, Granny was the least sentimental person I’ve ever met.’

  Suddenly Janet glanced at her watch and gave a little start. ‘Oh, my goodness, look at the time. Joe, I really must go now or I shan’t meet the train.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I think I’ve been here quite long enough, too.’ Joe Short stuffed all the photographs back into their old envelope and bent down to put them back in the bottom drawer. When he straightened up he looked the matron in the eye and said, ‘Tell me, I haven’t asked anyone yet. What exactly did my grandmother die from?’

  ‘Heart failure,’ said Mrs Luxton
immediately.

  ‘That’s something we all die from,’ countered Joe Short.

  ‘Perhaps so, Mr Short,’ she responded stiffly, ‘but that is what is on her death certificate. That and nothing more.’

  Janet Wakefield stood on tiptoe as the London train drew into Berebury Station. She was still a little out of breath following her last-minute dash onto the platform. Parking the car at the station had been a problem as usual and she had only just found a space and got into the station before the London train rounded the last bend and drew to a standstill.

  She stood as conspicuously as she could near the ‘Way Out’ sign, scanning the passengers as they descended from the train.

  ‘Here, Bill,’ she called out, waving madly as she caught a glimpse of her husband. ‘I’m over here.’

  William Wakefield, tanned and open-shirted, stepped off the train and looked round. He caught sight of her and waved, letting the other travellers go on ahead of him.

  ‘Darling,’ he said, his words tumbling out as he kissed her. ‘Isn’t this a lovely surprise? You could have knocked me down with a feather when Carruthers called me back to the office from the site. He’d had this email from Head Office, you see…’

  At this point the train driver sounded his horn preparatory to departure, the noise echoing round the station, drowning whatever else William Wakefield might have said.

  ‘What email?’ asked his wife when she could be heard.

  ‘The one ordering me to report to Head Office in London without delay, of course.’ He grinned. ‘As Carruthers pointed out it was marked “Private and Confidential” and he said he didn’t know anything about it so he couldn’t tell me anyway, darling, and I couldn’t tell you – not until I’d been back to Head Office. Then they said it was all right if I let you know now.’

  ‘Let me know what?’ she asked anxiously. ‘You haven’t been sacked or anything, have you?’

  He chucked her cheek. ‘No, I have not. What on earth put an idea like that into your head?’

  ‘Your being called back to Head Office like that,’ she retorted promptly. ‘Have you just dropped a clanger or something, then?’