by Rebecca Tope
‘He died?’ We had both liked Mr Everscott, who was ninety-three and wanted to cause the least possible disturbance by his death. He had hated being in the nursing home, where they spoke baby talk to him and teased him simply because he was the only male. It was a small place, decently run, but nothing could make him like it.
‘Yes, and they want him removed right away. I said I was on my own, and they said they’ve got somebody there to help me.’
‘He’s not very big,’ I remembered. ‘But you shouldn’t have to go by yourself.’ For the second time in two days I was reminded of the plentiful staff at the undertaker where I had formerly worked. There had always been a team on standby, ready for just such a call.
‘But I’ve got the car!’ I remembered. ‘How are you going to manage?’
‘Den let me have his, with the trailer, but he says it’s just this once and I can’t have it again.’ Den Cooper drove a two-door Yaris, into which a dead body could in no way be fitted. But a trailer!
I groaned. ‘Maggs – we can’t remove him in a trailer. That’s awful. What are you thinking of?’
‘No, it’s fine,’ she promised. ‘It’s got a proper cover, and is just long enough. I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before.’
‘Somebody’s going to have to help you get him in. It won’t be dignified. They’ll tell the opposition and we’ll be a laughing stock.’
‘Drew!’ she interrupted. ‘Trust me. It’s fine. Stop agonising. I’ll make a virtue of it. It can be part of our image.’
The only image that I could come up with was of the cover blowing off the trailer on the dual carriageway, and poor Mr Everscott finding himself bowling along the road like a tree trunk lost from a timber truck.
‘No,’ I said. ‘It can’t. You can do it this once, if you’re very careful, but never ever again.’
‘That’s what Den said,’ she replied dolefully. Then she cheered up. ‘Why are you in the Cotswolds again, anyway? Did something go wrong?’
‘You could say that. I’ll tell you all about it when I see you. Meanwhile, I’m going to have lunch in a pub with a nice lady. Two ladies, actually, and probably a man as well. And a spaniel, I expect.’
‘Lucky you. But that doesn’t explain why you’re in a field.’
‘Signal problems,’ I said shortly. ‘It’s lovely here,’ I elaborated, looking around again at the landscape. ‘Very Cotswoldy. Mrs Simmonds’ house has got a fabulous thatched roof.’
‘Thatch isn’t typical of the Cotswolds,’ Maggs told me.
‘How in the world do you know that?’ It was a daft question – Maggs knew a million pieces of trivia like this. She seemed to absorb them through her skin, because I never saw her reading.
‘I just know,’ she said, as always. ‘But there are a few villages that buck the trend – you must be in one of them.’
‘I suppose I must,’ I agreed. ‘Well, I should let you get on. Pop in and see Karen when you get back, OK? She had a headache yesterday.’
‘I won’t be back for hours, probably. It’s a fair old way, you know. When are you getting home?’
‘I doubt if I’ll be able to rush this lunch, but I’ll try to leave by two, and be back around three-thirty.’
‘Hmm,’ she said, in her uniquely Maggsian manner. ‘Sounds as if you like it there.’
‘It’s Saturday,’ I defended.
‘Right, and your poor wife’s got to entertain two kids all day. Just like a man.’
I remembered Timmy’s hope that Maggs might take him swimming, but refrained from mentioning it. It was bad enough that she’d been called out on a Saturday, when she must have a thousand things to do at home. ‘So what’s Den doing?’ I asked, instead.
‘He’s still catching up with sleep, but this afternoon he’s doing the garden,’ she said. ‘Digging out buttercups, I think.’
‘Go!’ I ordered. ‘No more chit-chat.’
Her answering snort was perfectly reasonable, I acknowledged. I knew I had a bad habit of staying too long on the phone, somehow not liking to sever the fragile link between myself and the other person.
I found a gateway onto the road, went up to the junction at the top and turned right, my mind on Mr Everscott and the most likely day for his burial. Maggs and Den were more than I deserved, I reflected, not for the first time. They put their weekends aside when the business demanded, sacrificing normal married life without a murmur. Den’s suggestion of the trailer was typical – his practical nature would quickly identify the solution to the problem of Mr Everscott. He had been a police constable when I first met him, but had resigned shortly before Karen’s shooting, for reasons I never entirely grasped. His romance with Maggs had been sweet to watch, their wedding, only a few months earlier, a triumph of originality. The trip to Syria had been a kind of delayed honeymoon. Karen was already predicting an imminent announcement that a new little Cooper was on its way – but somehow I had my doubts. Maggs might be fond of my Timmy, but children in general appeared to leave her cold. I also selfishly dreaded such a distraction. As a mother, Maggs could not possibly hope to be such a reliable colleague in the business as she currently was.
My route back to the cottage seemed further than I expected, which turned out to be because I was going in the wrong direction. I’d reached an unfamiliar row of houses, the road dipping downhill, and swung round, trotting back in a state of embarrassment.
‘Where on earth have you been?’ asked Thea Osborne, when I eventually got back to where my car sat outside Mrs Simmonds’ cottage.
‘Sorry,’ I panted. ‘Have I made us late?’
‘You’ve been more than half an hour,’ Jessica accused. ‘We didn’t know what to do.’
I didn’t like to admit my stupidity, so shrugged and mumbled something about needing to sort something out at home. My idea of skipping the lunch and going back right away seemed to have evaporated. With a new funeral coming along, I would be more solvent than expected – enough to afford a pub lunch, so long as I didn’t have to treat everybody.
We turned right at the main street, walking in an untidy group, Thea’s dog straining at the lead, dragging her ahead of the others. The boyfriend was with us, as expected. Paul something – Middleman, I remembered after a few minutes – was young and relaxed, smiling a lot and giving Jessica fond glances. Twenty years earlier, he would have been horribly aware of sharp looks coming his way from locals, an alien in this impeccably white English village; but now he strolled easily along – just as Maggs would have done, skin colour a matter of utter irrelevance.
Maggs was mixed race, adopted out to a sensible couple in Plymouth, who raised her to ignore all issues of skin colour. No nonsense about culture or heritage for them – they simply cherished her for the amazing person she was, and shrugged away the ignorant and unkind remarks sometimes made by schoolmates. This Paul was very much blacker than Maggs, but he appeared to have arrived at the same confident attitude to life and I found myself liking him for this reason alone.
Because, I was slowly beginning to realise, there were not many other reasons to like him. He talked about a stag party he had recently been invited to, where monumental quantities of alcohol had been consumed, and the groom had been left tied to some railings outside his grandmother’s house, stark naked. Paul thought that was funny. I found myself musing on the differences between men – the cads versus the decent blokes, in the lingo of the Thirties. It was not a new topic for me, and as usual I came to the conclusion that you were formed by the sort of women there were in your life. A good woman could rehabilitate the most dreadful bounder, given a chance. But that didn’t explain why the decent ones remained decent, even if harnessed to a sarcastic nagging slut. That, presumably, was down to their mother, who sowed the seeds of right thinking so firmly they could never be uprooted.
I found myself catching the eye of Thea as she turned her head to see if we were keeping up with her. She had listened quietly to Paul’s story, revealing nothing in t
he back view she kept to us as she trotted along, but somehow I knew she hadn’t liked it. Jessica had giggled in the right places, for which nobody could really blame her.
Now, in Thea’s eyes, I saw my own feelings reflected. For good measure, she rolled them upwards in the universal sign of scorn, but she hadn’t needed to do that. I had already decided that she was a kindred spirit, the previous day. I did something I couldn’t remember ever having done before, and winked at her, wondering how she would take it. Her answering grin came as a relief.
We walked about half a mile to the Baker’s Arms, passing several beautiful buildings on the way. A long, low one on the right, calling itself the Old Malt House, was a very upmarket guest house, according to the sign. Then a small fairytale church, opposite a high wall topped by a hedge with birds and other things created out of its greenery. The pub came next, on the right. We all filed in, only to be told that dogs were not permitted in the bar. Crossly, Thea led us to a chilly little arrangement outside, just beyond the kitchen, where some sort of creeper provided a bit of shelter. ‘It’d be lovely in June,’ said Jessica.
Thea ranted briefly about society’s ridiculous change of heart concerning dogs. I paid a visit to the loo, pausing to admire a large wall hanging depicting the pub. ‘Distinctive,’ I murmured to the woman behind the bar. ‘Is it a tapestry?’
‘It’s actually a rug,’ she said wearily. ‘A local woman made it for us, ages ago.’
It then turned out that credit cards were not acceptable, so we had an undignified scramble for cash, with Paul producing a meagre sixty-five pence. ‘I don’t really do cash,’ he said, as if it were an obsolete practice. I emptied my pockets, managing to produce enough for myself and a little bit over.
Finally we got the food, which I spoilt for myself by a growing feeling that I should not be there. I should be at home, dealing with family and business, garden and car tyres – not indulging in this strange interlude with people I was never going to see again. We spoke briefly about the grave and its transgressions against the council, but Thea waved my worries away with an airy dismissal of petty bureaucracy. ‘They’re just trying it on,’ she said. Jessica tried to put the official view, but was out of her depth when it came to the legalities. I knew a lot more than she did on the subject, but refrained from making this too apparent.
Another person with pressing worries was Thea. ‘I was booked to stay here for another week,’ she said. ‘And now I don’t know what to do. They tell me the house belongs to the older nephew now, Charles Talbot, but he doesn’t seem interested. He hadn’t seen Greta for five years, and he’s in the middle of a horrible divorce. I couldn’t get a straight answer out of him when I asked what I ought to do.’
‘Have you been paid?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘That’s another thing,’ she said.
‘Well of course you should pack up and go,’ said Jessica. ‘If you don’t even know whether you’ll be paid, it’s crazy to stay on.’
‘Except it’s rather nice here,’ I commented. ‘You could see it as a free holiday, I suppose.’
‘Right!’ she agreed fervently. ‘Especially as they say the weather’s going to pull itself together.’
‘Don’t you get lonely?’ I asked rashly, imagining the solitary vigils in the various houses she was commissioned to take care of. ‘The days must seem long at times.’
‘I do in some places,’ she admitted. ‘But only in short bursts. There are always animals to look after, and Hepzie’s good company. And people come to visit.’ She smiled at her daughter. I noticed she did not include Paul in her smile, and wondered if this was his punishment for the distasteful little story he’d just told, or whether she had a deeper animosity towards him.
‘Well, you’ll do as you like,’ said Jessica, more in calm acceptance than any kind of huff. This was not a daughter who felt she should control her widowed mother’s life, I suspected.
‘Of course I will,’ said Thea. ‘Doesn’t everybody? What else would I do?’
‘The right thing,’ chipped in Paul, crassly. ‘Follow the rules.’
‘With some people, it’s the same,’ I could not resist saying. ‘I mean, what they want to do is the right thing.’ I looked at Thea, and clamped down on the obvious remark that she was one of those people.
‘That’s Mum,’ laughed Jessica, with a swift look at her boyfriend. ‘But in this particular case, there’s no clear rule to follow. Is there?’
It fizzled out at that point, with Paul ordering another pint, and Jessica resignedly foregoing any alcohol at all because she was to be the driver on their journey back to Manchester.
‘I must go,’ I said, without moving. ‘Duty calls.’ I threw Paul a conciliatory glance, which he ignored. ‘I hadn’t planned to come up here again today.’
‘I still don’t understand why you had to come back in person,’ said Thea. ‘You could surely have talked to the council man on the phone?’
‘Throwing his weight around, that’s all,’ I said. ‘You’re quite right – it could easily have been done on the phone. He didn’t even have a proper look at the grave.’
‘Will they really get you to move the body?’ Paul queried, with some relish.
‘They might try.’
‘The man’s an idiot,’ said Thea. ‘That’s obvious.’
I laughed at her plain speaking, but forbore to agree. The silent presence of Jessica was making me uneasy. She was bound to be on the side of the council. I looked at her, hoping she would say something light and good-natured. She did not meet my gaze. After our talk outside the grave field, I had thought we were making headway, but it seemed she still had severe doubts about me and my character.
‘Have you got any more funerals this week?’ asked Thea, sensitively changing the subject.
I told her about Mr Everscott, and she became quite energised, asking a stack of questions about my life and work, Karen and Maggs and the children. Her interest warmed me, and made it even more difficult to leave. But by then we were back on the road, walking in unambiguous pairs. I even took the dog’s lead, and firmly reined it in, to give Thea a chance to listen to me properly.
On the way, we walked down a track beside the little church we’d seen earlier, to look at an ancient Quaker meeting house. It was locked, which we all agreed was not in the right spirit at all. As we retraced our steps, Jessica ran up the little path to see if the church was open. A second locked door set us off on a discussion of petty crime versus open access, a conversation that went nowhere. Across the road we admired again the long curving wall made of the local stone, topped with a magnificent length of topiary hedge, which we could not properly see. It was twelve or fifteen feet high, at least. There was something medieval and forbidding about it. The contrast between the Quaker modesty and this piece of ostentation was unsettling. There were no people around. ‘Might as well get back,’ said Jessica. ‘Not much more to see here.’
When we got back to the cottage, the sun was shining, but the wind still strong. We stood indecisively at the junction with the small side road containing the cottage. ‘That’s the road to Blockley,’ Jessica told Paul, pointing ahead and to the right.
I tried to puzzle out the geography. ‘The grave’s down there, isn’t it?’
Jessica gave me a withering look. ‘How can you not know?’ she demanded.
‘These little lanes are very confusing,’ Thea defended me. ‘It took me days to get it all straight. It’s one of those places where it can be quicker to walk across the fields than meander round the lanes by car.’
Jessica seemed unconvinced. She actually marched across the road diagonally, to where the Blockley turn-off was. ‘There!’ she pointed. ‘It’s about half a mile down there. We drove up here only a couple of hours ago.’
‘Yes,’ I said, following her. ‘I realise now. I came back up there, after making my phone calls to—’
‘Hello,’ she interrupted. ‘Something’s going on.’ Following her gaz
e, I noted a couple of cars parked oddly further up the road.
‘Nothing that need concern you,’ said Thea, who had drifted after us, with the dog. ‘Stop being a police officer for one day, can’t you?’
But Jessica and Paul had already loped off to investigate, and we stood watching them. It was all going on about two hundred yards away, by a wooden gate that I rather thought was the one I had used to emerge from the field into the road, after my phone calls. I saw Jessica jerk herself upright in an assertion of her professional status. I saw Detective Paul reach for a phone in his pocket, and wave instructions at the three people assembled by the gate. He called to a fourth, somewhere out of sight, who suddenly materialised as if he had been sitting or kneeling and now stood up.
‘Oh, my God,’ said Thea. ‘It can’t be. Damn it, it is. Something awful’s happened.’ She looked down at her dog, which met her gaze. ‘Brace yourself, Heps. Here we go again.’
‘What?’ I demanded. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I’ll go and find out,’ she said. ‘Can you hold Hepzie?’
She trotted along to join the others, while I followed hesitantly with the spaniel. ‘There’s a dead man in there,’ said a shrill woman, waving at the patch of scrubby woodland beyond the gate. ‘I heard his phone going off, and when I looked, I could see his legs. My husband went to see. He says it’s horrible.’
Already she was repeating words almost drained of meaning, the shock alone giving her voice its high tones. She must have recited them to the two people from the second car, and then to Jessica and Paul. The picture she painted was clear enough, though – except she and her husband must already have been parked, with the engine off and the window open, if they were to stand a chance of hearing a ringing phone. Jessica evidently had the same thought at that moment.
‘Had you stopped here for some reason?’ she asked.
‘Yes!’ The woman’s excitement was at fever pitch. ‘David thought he saw a green woodpecker in that tree, and stopped for a better look. It flew away, just as he wound his window down.’