I might as well go to bed and try to sleep. And then I realised one huge, gaping gulf in all the arrangements. There was no paperback to fall asleep over. It seemed a bit disrespectful to take a Gideon Bible to bed. But disrespect or not, in it had to come. There’d been one or two Bible-bashers in Rehab. I’d always found them tediously lacking in humour. But tonight I must confess I found the story of the woman taken in adultery spot on. I must have done. It was still open at the page when my alarm-call came through the next morning.
It promised to be another scorcher. I was just about to have a shower when I noticed that there was a swimming pool available. I was halfway down the corridor before I realised I didn’t have any swimmies. But I’d dimly registered you could buy all sorts of trashy jewellery in the hotel lobby; maybe they sold swim things at the pool? I could charge it to my room! No, I couldn’t ask the tax-payer to subsidise me to that extent. Could I? It wasn’t as if I was a very good swimmer. And then that therapy bit about the inner child popped up in my brain.
Those lengths I swam in my new suit – people with personalised abdomens like mine don’t go in for bikinis – might not have been very elegant lengths, but at least there were a dozen of them.
Yes!
A luxurious shower sluiced off the chlorine. I found a hairdryer, which blew my witch’s locks into some semblance of order. And then I strode off for breakfast. Given the amount of food I’d put away the previous evening, I surprised myself by tackling it so enthusiastically. Well, juice, as much fruit as I could afford in a week, the full mixed grill (except someone ought to tell the chef to source his bacon from local free-range pigs), and then toast and conserves. Tea or coffee ad lib. Well, not too much coffee, not remembering Crabton’s loo provision.
I have to confess I shoved into my bag all the half-bottles of shampoo and bath oil on the grounds that they’d only be thrown away anyway if I didn’t take them. The list and that note too. Looking round the room – I’d nothing to leave, so it must have been simply to fix it in my mind – I flapped a hand in farewell. Much as I liked my eyrie, I had to admit that this had a few more home comforts. Home comforts? A bit of a misnomer there, Caffy.
Bugger it: Lucy.
‘And you will be in for dinner this evening, Madam?’ the immaculate young Frenchman at Reception asked. At least, he was pretending to be a Frenchman, but his accent creaked and I didn’t believe him. It was certainly nothing like the genuine French accent purveyed by one of my clients – and I knew he was genuine because he was in senior management in Renault and used to pop across to see how his cars were selling in the outlet in Brum. He’d offered me a Clio once, lots of Va-va-voom: I didn’t accept because I knew who’d get his filthy mitts on it, and to my mind Granville had enough wheels anyway.
I shook my head. ‘I’m just checking out.’ I slapped the key card on the desk as evidence.
‘But is there something wrong? We have a reservation for you for five nights. Last night, that was what was booked.’ No, definitely not French. Somewhere much further east, surely.
‘In that case,’ I said, with what I hoped was aplomb, though I’d never been entirely sure what that was, ‘I’ll be in for dinner.’
Which meant a couple of additions to that list. It was going to be hard enough eating on my own in a place like this – how on earth did Cinderella feel going into that ballroom alone? – I wasn’t going to make it any worse by turning up in the jeans and top that, for want of anything else, I’d had to wear for work. If it had been the Daweses’ money paying for everything, I might have had second thoughts about all this spending. As it was – and though somewhere deep down I realised that everyone who took out a policy would be paying for my treat – Todd’s insurance company seemed so distant and anonymous I should really enjoy spending it.
The question was, as I realised when Paula strode into the foyer, when.
‘I suppose you could take Trev into Folkestone at lunchtime,’ she said, getting into the passenger seat. ‘It took me five whole minutes to start the bugger this morning,’ she explained. ‘He must be missing you.’
‘Needing a service, more like.’
Paula didn’t like helpful suggestions. ‘I suppose Canterbury’s got a better range of shops, but at least you can park in Folkestone if you don’t mind paying through the nose, and there’s a Debenhams right in the middle. Plus a Marks and Sparks for undies and things. Your mate Moffatt called me this morning. He said to make sure you bought enough to last several days. The police would fork out for what Todd’s insurance wouldn’t.’ She was quiet for a bit, then said, ‘We’ve got ourselves into something big here, Caffy. Do you think we can cope with it?’
‘It’s either that or go under.’ It wasn’t quite the answer to her question but it was the best I could manage. I tried again. ‘Maybe Moffatt’ll come up with an undercover cop to look after us.’
‘He didn’t say anything?’
‘I think he’s worried about the money involved – remember all that stuff on Meg’s radio about police budgets?’ I refused to think about that swimsuit. ‘Unless he didn’t think he could find someone who could paint.’
‘Not Taz again?’ She dropped her voice a little as if she were speaking to an invalid.
I breezed back, ‘Well, he’s really with the Met. And he’s very junior – he wasn’t really here in any official capacity.’
‘He seems to have known who to speak to, though. I didn’t know quite what to make of him,’ she continued. ‘I mean, he’s a real dream to look at – he ought to be on TV, in one of those costume dramas. Imagine him in knee-breeches. Heathcliff! Caffy!’ she called out, clasping her hands on her chest, as if the joke were new. Believe me it wasn’t. Then she looked at me. ‘Do you know what I think? I think he’s like one of those gorgeous chocs you get given at Christmas, no other time, not just inside a lovely box but specially wrapped, too. Lindt, I think.’
I didn’t comment.
‘Imagine a choc like that, only when you bite into it it’s hollow.’
I nodded. I got the gist, at least. ‘But he’s not, not really,’ I protested. ‘He got me out of ten kinds of mess – before.’
‘You know something,’ she said. ‘I reckon you may have been in ten kinds of mess but the person who got you out wasn’t him, but you.’
‘I couldn’t have done it without him,’ I insisted.
‘Or what you thought was him.’ Paula always liked to have the last word, so I thought it was best to let her.
There was a beat-up old utility truck parked outside the manor gates. The driver waved Paula over as she got out to open them. After a few moments’ conversation, she pointed. He followed me in and parked alongside me.
Paula’s smile was as dry as they come. ‘This is Sid,’ she said. ‘Come for a day’s trial, he says.’
We shook hands solemnly.
Whereas Taz looked a likely subject for a painter, Sid looked ready to slap the old pigment anywhere it was needed. He was built, to use the elegant Midlands expression of my childhood that fear of offending Paula had once made me stifle, like a brick shithouse, giving the impression he could carry not just a hod of bricks but Paula and me to balance the other shoulder, so to speak. ‘You give the orders, Guv,’ he told Paula, ‘so far as this job’s concerned.’
To my ears, everyone south of Watford talks like Eliza Dolittle before the Professor got at her, but this was the thickest Southern accent I’d ever heard.
Paula took him over to meet the others, simply introducing him as Sid.
‘Morning, girls – a nuvver nice day. Jus’ wo’ ve doctor ordered. Wo’ we go’ to do today, ven?’
Girls. We always referred to ourselves and each other as women. And no professional painter would welcome broiling heat like this. Our smiles were polite, no more.
Paula sent him to rub down the window Taz had botched. She turned to us all: ‘Well?’
‘It’s the way he talks that does my head in,’ I said.
&nbs
p; ‘Glottal stops,’ Meg said.
‘What’s a glottal?’ Helen asked.
‘A glottal stop is where instead of moving your tongue forward to say “t” or whatever, you just stop it. “Wha’ever”, not “whatever”: get it?’
‘So what’s a glottal?’ she repeated.
‘Maybe it’s something to do with an epiglottis,’ Meg pondered, and off they went, still talking.
Van der Poele was in the house all morning, so there was no opportunity for heroics, with or without glottals. Sid rubbed down and dusted off and even applied a turpsy rag to his window frame before applying primer. His movements were surprisingly delicate, quite finicky, for such a big man, his great bananas of fingers curling round the brush-head almost protectively.
God, it was so hot. We’d all been known to paint in shorts and bikini tops, but for various reasons none of us seemed inclined to strip today. Either we felt it would be wrong with a male in our midst, or we couldn’t face the thought of Sid’s naked beerbelly flopping round overhead. At lunchtime, the van was like a sauna, despite being parked in the shade with the windows and doors wide open. It started first time and I got into reverse.
‘’Ere, young lady! Wha’ d’you fink you’re up to, ven?’
‘Going into Folkestone for a spot of shopping, Sid. Want a lift?’
In answer he zipped round to the passenger door and popped inside. ‘At least I should be able to use this,’ he said, flourishing his mobile.
‘Not until about a mile down the road. Pain, isn’t it?’ We set off.
‘You know what it means, though: it means His Nibs in there has to use a landline – should be able to get a tap on that.’ In private, his accent, though pretty strong, was at least no longer impenetrable.
‘Emails?’
He tapped his nose, settling back to enjoy a really scenic ride in what seemed like contented silence.
As we picked up the motorway, he dabbed away with those enormous digits, and was soon muttering into the handset. As the one most intimately involved, I’d have liked a decent chance to eavesdrop, but he hunched away from me, and the van’s engine noise – it really did need a service, by the sound of it – and the nasty concrete road surface combined to drown him out.
The traffic in Folkestone was holiday-season bad, and parking, when I got to the town centre car park I wanted, was dodgy. I might have squeezed into some of those tiny spaces in a Fiesta, but I was after something a tad more spacious. At last a little old lady pulled her Nissan Micra out of a slot big enough for a Sherman tank and I dived in, much to the chagrin of a family in a people carrier. Tough. I’d only twenty minutes to shop and they had all day to drift round.
‘See you back here at ten past?’ I asked Sid.
‘See me every time you turn round, more like,’ he said. ‘I’m sticking with you, kid.’
‘I’ve got to buy undies,’ I said firmly.
‘I shall be an embarrassed hubby. OK, embarrassed dad,’ he corrected himself.
And I would be an embarrassed young woman, unless I could shake him off. I set a cracking pace.
The bugger kep’ up with me, step for swea’y step.
‘This a’ernoon,’ he informed me, ‘I dun ’alf fancy having a quick shuftie round the building. Any ideas?’
‘Provided van der Poele’s out of the way, ask Paula to do what she did for Taz – give a conducted tour. Your boss should have told you: she’s got a detailed ground plan you might find useful.’
He nodded. ‘And if he doesn’t go out?’
‘She probably wouldn’t want to risk it. The only thing she might do is go inside herself to open a window for you to paint the frame. But if you went in for no reason and he caught you out, she’d sack you in front of him. Assuming the dogs left her anything to sack.’
‘Ah,’ he said. And fell silent.
I felt quite sorry for him as the women descended on my bags of shopping, Paula quite forgetting to point out that I’d extended my lunch-hour. I’d have extended it even more had Sid not driven while I chomped a Marks and Sparks sarnie. And sorry for the women too – much as I’d wanted to splurge, I’d had no time to do more than grab the essentials on my list, and there’s not much to squeal about when it comes to multipacks of knickers, socks, clean jeans and a couple of T-shirts. Even my bra was bog-standard. But they did have a little squeak over what I’d bought for evenings in the hotel, a slinky wrap-around skirt and skinny tops – two for the price of one. The trouble was, if I often ate the sort of meal put before me last night, I’d soon need a bigger size: there’s nothing like being poor to control calorie intake. Except, of course, for the temptation to buy filling, comforting junk food. Thank goodness I’ve never had a sweet tooth, and an early tendency to spots kept me off the greasy end of the market. But there was a clear stone less of me than when I was on the game, and I’d not been fat then.
Paula coughed and looked at her watch. The stuff went back into the bags and into Trev, and we started work. Paula’s only concession to the heat was individual water bottles for each of us and a reminder to wear our floppy sunhats.
It was a good job Sid was handy with a paintbrush: there was no chance for him to do anything else. Van der Poele lurked inside all day, only appearing – just as we were about to descend for our tea-break – with the damned dogs, one of which took instant exception to Sid, snarling furiously at the bottom of his ladder. Sid appeared to take no notice – but he stopped working on those tricky window edges and addressed himself to the sills instead.
Paula, descending from her ladder to snapping distance, called coolly, ‘Bring them to heel, Mr van der Poele. They’re putting my workers at risk, rushing at the ladders like that.’ When he took no notice, she added, ‘An investigation into a fatal accident by the Health and Safety inspectors would set us back days. If not weeks.’
Not to mention bringing all sorts of unwelcome visitors to the site. Van der Poele scowled and whistled. These days he seemed to be able to manage them without that whip. The dogs slunk back to him, but not without a couple of farewell growls.
‘You’ve brought in another man,’ he said, as if blaming Paula for the canine fuss.
‘You asked for speed: that means more workers.’
‘What happened to that pretty boy?’
‘I had to let him go. You didn’t see the mess he made of the only window he tried.’
‘Hmph. OK. So what time are you finishing tonight?’
‘We’ll take our tea break as soon as the dogs are inside,’ she said pointedly, ‘and work on till five-thirty.’
‘But there are still a couple of hours of daylight after that.’
‘That’s the standard day, as I explained when you accepted our estimate. We have to abide by the European directives on working hours. Unless,’ she added, with a limpid smile, ‘you pay cash overtime like you did this weekend.’
There’d be no overtime tonight, that was clear as he stomped off inside. And I don’t think, as we eased our sweaty bodies inside soaked clothes, that we particularly cared.
I transferred my purchases to the utility truck, Sid having informed me that he’d be running me back. I assumed he meant to the hotel, and was basking in anticipation of a luxurious bath, followed by dinner in my new gear.
But he pulled into a lay-by only half a mile from Crabton Manor and poked his mobile. ‘Zilch. No effin’ phones, no effin’ roads. What a bloody place. Bet you wish you were back in Brum sometimes, don’t you?’ he added, as if to encourage a bit of a natter – if without any ‘T’s’.
‘Not very often. Except I do miss a good balti.’
He put his phone away. ‘Funny bugger that van der Poele of yours,’ he said, without remarking my choice of food.
‘His dogs didn’t think much of you, did they? Perhaps it’s true what they say – you can smell a copper a mile off. Though you’re dead nifty with a paintbrush,’ I added, not wanting to offend him.
‘My dad was in the trade. He’d have
skinned me alive for a single paint drool.’
‘Quite right. Tell me, are you here to protect us or to get access to the building? Or a bit of both?’
‘Whatever, I was wasting my time today, wasn’t I? Strikes me that Paula could have taken on Hitler and won. Pity she doesn’t play cricket – we could do with her in the England team, couldn’t we?’
I explained about sport in the paper and the radio being dedicated to Meg’s news programmes.
‘That’s what’s so different about your lot,’ he said, snapping his thumb and finger. ‘No nasty little trannies, all tuned to different stations.’
‘If we want music, we wear Walkmans.’
‘A bit hot for anything extra, even that light,’ he sighed, mopping the back of his neck. ‘Can you navigate from here, like?’
I looked at my watch. ‘My betting is that now he thinks we’ve gone, van der Poele will have gone out. I had to leave a couple of windows ajar. If you fancy a shuftie I’ll keep watch.’
Despite his apparent eagerness earlier, he asked cautiously, ‘What about them bleeding dogs?’
‘He usually locks them in an outhouse.’
‘Bit rough on the poor buggers in this weather. I wonder if we could call in the RSPCA.’
‘You’re welcome – when we’ve finished. We need the money, remember.’
‘You really expect him to pay?’ he half-sneered.
‘Paula shares your view of him, so he’s paid in advance for the materials. And he paid cash for the weekend overtime, which is why he was miffed with us for finishing on time today.’
‘I wondered about that. Bit of a risk, isn’t it?’
‘You mean you’d expect us to work all hours God sends and be surprised when we end up with damaged joints from climbing all the ladders or repetitive strain injury from too much waggling the wrist back and forward?’
‘Well, I –’
‘Would you expect a team of men to work extra for no more pay? Well, then. We’re just the same as men – only we’re women.’
Scar Tissue Page 15