Mr Golightly's Holiday

by Salley Vickers

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have coped with this till now. You can’t hurry the leaves on the trees – things have their own way of happening. I couldn’t, I mean, you’ve been…no one could’ve, really…’

  She looked at him – and he looked back levelly. In another existence, she thought, you and I would have been partners, cellmates and soulmates.

  ‘The thing is, you see,’ he said, ‘we’ll always have this, here…we’ll know it, like the sheep and the leer…’

  And that was true, too. Real love isn’t mush, she thought, it isn’t spongy sentiment or sanctimonious milk and water – it is knowledge unspoken, subtle and illimitable as the weather: tacit, unassailable, lawless, inviolable. It is difficult precisely because it doesn’t – won’t – die; it’s a power stronger than reason, because it laughs at the neediness of reason.

  ‘I don’t know who it is can have seen you,’ she said, not needing to answer him directly. ‘But we’d better be extra careful. I’ll lay Jackson off in the morning. He seems to have laid Johnny off already. And then it’s a matter of keeping our nerve.’

  4

  MR GOLIGHTLY WAS PUT OUT TO FIND NADIA Fawns, dressed in startling black lace, when he answered an insistent tap-tapping at the back door the following Sunday morning.

  ‘Hello there. Just called to remind you that you’re invited over to ours for drinks.’ She didn’t want any repetition of the unreliable behaviour over the writers’ meeting.

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Golightly, mentally fishing around for a plausible let-out.

  ‘Any time from twelve noon onwards and for one or two special people there’s lunch to follow – but keep that under your hat, won’t you?’

  Mr Golightly promised that if he had a hat the information would remain securely beneath it. The last thing he wanted to do was attend a drinks party, let alone a luncheon. ‘I may only be able to look in for a few minutes,’ he volunteered.

  ‘Promise you’ll come…’ Nadia smoothed the black lace.

  ‘I have another engagement but I’ll put my head round the door.’

  It is a feature of the English summer that it is capable of almost any enormity, and the day which had been promised ‘fine and sunny’ grew baleful and threatening. A warm front, in from the Bristol Channel, unrolled a thick carpet of clammy mist across the west.

  ‘I was going to have the drinks on the lawn,’ Nadia complained to Sam. She’d had the fish pond cleaned specially and took the weather personally.

  Sam wasn’t bothered what the weather brought so long as it didn’t bring Paula. He’d had enough trouble trying to account for that remark about the tearooms she’d made when they’d met so unfortunately last Sunday in the high street. The fateful snooze had brought in its train further episodes of energetic passion with Nadia. Sam was worn out, and exercised over what to do should the two women meet again. It was a blessing to open the door at noon and be met only by Morning Claxon’s bosom.

  Conversation to start with was a little one-sided. Hugh was undergoing a liver cleanse, which, Morning explained, confined his intake to nothing but apple juice and Epsom salts. He sent his apologies, and Morning. She outlined for their education the philosophy of her guru, Swami Chandraseka Ananda (formerly, Mr Eric Handley of Stevenage). Sam shuffled bowls of nuts, and ashtrays, until Nadia reminded him of the effects of passive smoking and crisply informed him that, the weather not withstanding, anyone who planned to smoke would be asked to do so outside.

  Keith arrived without the vicar, but at the same time as Kath Drover from the Stag, who had brought along a couple of bottles of Hungarian red they were trying out from a shipper who was setting up in Exeter. Colin, Kath said, was up at the pub but hoped to be along shortly…such a shame that Mary Simms was still sick as they had never felt a scrap of worry leaving the Stag in her hands, the replacement girl was not the same at all and Colin had had to check the till twice, which you never had to do with Mary.

  Lavinia Galsworthy, who arrived after Kath, broke the news that Mary Simms was moving into her studio flat, the one once rented by Luke. Lavinia said Mary appeared to be in strapping form. The girl had filled out a lot, lost that peaky look she once had. She felt safer with a woman tenant, Lavinia said. The way young Luke had smoked she’d always been worrying she’d land up burned alive.

  Cherie Wolford, who was hoping her son, Brian, might manage to get along to the party later – Sunday was a problem for them up at the prison, with the new governor introducing a whole new rota system – said she’d had high expectations of Mary Simms and Luke. But from what she’d been able to make out from Paula’s mum, since Luke had been living in Rabbit Row he’d his nose in his writing from dawn to dusk and never saw a living soul hardly – not even Mr Golightly who’d been such a pal of his. All work and no play, was what Cherie said she felt like telling him!

  It was true, Kath Drover said, you never saw young Luke up at the Stag these days, but then Mary had been off work since Easter so, you never knew, maybe that was the reason. At which Morning Claxon announced to the room at large that Love was Everything – a remark which no one knew how to respond to, so it was perhaps fortunate that at that point Mr Golightly arrived…

  Paula had heard about the drinks party up at the Stag from the Drovers and was fuming that neither she, nor her mum, were invited. She’d been quite taken by the offer of running the tearooms. That stupid old git Sam Noble needn’t think he could pick her up and put her down as though she were garbage! Although she was officially due at work, Paula, in her shortest skirt and skimpiest top, dropped by Sam’s house just as the vicar was arriving.

  The vicar was also dressed to the nines, in silk trousers, a combat jacket and a pair of high-heeled mock-croc ankle boots. She complimented Paula on her outfit and embraced her warmly over the bronze-effect Cupid. ‘Come on in,’ she urged, taking Paula’s arm.

  ‘I en’t been invited,’ said Paula, meaningfully.

  ‘I shall say I brought you,’ said the vicar, whose old personality had reasserted itself.

  Giggling, in a manner which Sam, when he answered the door, found unnerving, the two women, ignoring their host, processed arm in arm, to be hailed by Barty Clarke.

  ‘Here come two of my favourite ladies and don’t they look gorgeous!’ After the unsteady behaviour of the Pope child, Barty was keen that peaceful relations between himself and the vicar be restored.

  ‘No, really,’ Mr Golightly was saying. ‘I must be off…’ He found himself jammed into a corner, cut off from a means of escape by a barricade of black lace.

  ‘Oh, not before you’ve seen my cuttings. We’re fellow artists, you and I,’ said Nadia emphatically. She had just witnessed the arrival of the vicar, and Paula.

  Mr Golightly had adopted the old country habit of leaving his door unlocked so that his house should be available for all comers. Johnny, by now used to popping in and out, was already waiting inside when Wolford came by Spring Cottage.

  Johnny had just come out of the bathroom when he saw, from the stairs, the top of Wolford’s ginger head. Johnny backed upstairs and into the box bedroom (the repository of the late Emily Pope’s tax correspondence), where he stayed still as stone.

  Wolford looked around the parlour, coughed and called out, but there was no answering response. The laptop was open on a table by the window and Wolford walked over and idly tapped the key which lit up the messages.

  Someone called ‘Nemo’. Looked like weird stuff going on there. Maybe Golightly was part of some Internet child porn ring, which would explain his interest in the Spence kid.

  Johnny waited till he was sure Wolford had left, counted ‘hippopotamus’ two hundred times, and then slipped out through the back door and under the wire to Ellen Thomas’s. The door from the garden was open and he was looking at her painting when she came through.

  ‘It’s good!’

  ‘Thank you. You don’t happen to know why a raven is like a writing desk?’

  ‘’Cos the
re’s a “b” in both and an “n” in neither?’

  ‘That’s clever,’ said Ellen, once the penny had dropped.

  ‘’Tisn’t me, it was on the Internet.’ Johnny never took credit which wasn’t his due. ‘Mr Golightly asked me to find it.’

  ‘Where is he – you should be going.’

  ‘Don’t know. Just been over there now but that screw was round.’

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ said Ellen Thomas, ‘did he see you?’

  ‘No, I was upstairs. He don’t like me.’

  ‘I don’t think he likes anyone. There’s something horribly creepy about that man. I’d really like you to have left before he comes snooping round again.’

  ‘No, no, it won’t take a tic, I promise,’ Nadia Fawns insisted. ‘I’ve got a copy of A Knight here.’ She all but pushed Mr Golightly before her up the stairs. Across the room she had observed Paula’s midriff, bare but for a large glinting ‘ruby’ in the navel.

  ‘Still not there,’ said Johnny, who was watching Spring Cottage. ‘What’ll we do? We oughta get going before that screw sticks his face in here.’

  ‘Give it five more minutes,’ Ellen suggested.

  ‘No,’ said Nadia, ‘it has to be ink for signings. My fountain pen’s in here somewhere. You know how it is with handbags…?’

  ‘Really, I must –’

  ‘Madam,’ said Barty Clarke, looming beside them, ‘when you have a moment, a word in your shell-like…’

  ‘OK,’ said Ellen. ‘Look, you go on ahead. And will you give your mother this?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s from the man who wants to talk to her. Tell your mother he isn’t angry, he just wants to talk to her.’

  Johnny unwrapped a handkerchief and stared at the dirty disintegrating scrap of crimson material inside. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think it was a rose.’

  ‘Why’s he want to give Mum this?’ asked Johnny, suspiciously.

  Ellen consulted her conscience. If Johnny was to convey the treasured keepsake it seemed right he should know why. ‘Years ago, your mother and he were friends. She gave that to him then. He wants her to see he still thinks the same of her.’

  ‘It’s not my dad, is it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Ellen said. ‘Truly, Johnny, I don’t know the answer to that.’

  Wolford had woken that morning from a dream about crushing a rabbit under his boot. The rabbit had bled from the mouth and looked up at him with beseeching hazel eyes. When he spotted Johnny Spence leaving Ellen Thomas’s house it was as if his mind had disgorged a dangerous secret.

  Wolford’s rational self told him it was improbable that Ellen Thomas was harbouring anyone, let alone an escaped con. Jackson was unreliable – very likely he’d caught sight of a stray visitor, maybe even a lover, who the woman might understandably be shy about. Either that or the whole story was a drunk’s fantasy. Far more potently than any prisoner, it was the boy she had working there, Johnny Spence, he was curious about.

  He’d promised his mother to look in to some drinks party that morning. Walking back up the high street, after parking his car, Wolford decided to call in at Spring Cottage. He didn’t buy that story Golightly had spun him about the boy – he could tell it, there was something dodgy going on there.

  Johnny’s stomach was tight as he set off for Buckland Beacon. It was a long time since he had seen his mum and he felt almost afraid to see her again. The message he had for her, and the scrap of velvet in his pocket, bothered him. The mist had come down heavy by the time he reached the cattle grid so’s you couldn’t hardly see your hand in front of your face. He missed Mr Golightly and wished he’d waited that bit longer. He’d have felt safe with Mr Golightly.

  As Johnny crossed the boundary of the moor, a car slowed down behind him, making a rattle on the metal bars. He waited for the car to pass but it drew up beside him and the window was brought down.

  ‘Well, now, Mister Spence, and where might you be tripping off to so lightly in the mist and the snow.’

  ‘It’s not snowing,’ said Johnny, blunt, but scared.

  ‘Ooh, he’s shrewd as well as bonny. Hop in,’ Wolford said.

  Johnny stood by the car and the mist danced towards him and away again in soft seductive swirls. He had never felt more alone. His instinct was to bolt. The screw wanted something from him he could tell; but his mum was waiting. If he went straight to her now the screw would certainly follow and although he didn’t exactly know why this mustn’t happen he knew it mustn’t and it was up to him to see it didn’t.

  ‘OK,’ he said, suddenly, and opened the passenger door and got in beside Wolford.

  Wolford had not continued up the road to the party after leaving Spring Cottage. He’d hung around, near the lambing pen, where you could see who was coming and going. When Johnny emerged from Foxgloves, Wolford’s heart had contracted so violently he thought for a moment he was having an attack – his dad had died of his heart. He’d gone, almost mechanically, back to the car and had followed the boy up the road. But he’d no formed plan as to what he was doing. Johnny’s sudden swift compliance rattled him.

  ‘So, where are you off to then, Mister Spence?’ he enquired, cautiously. Any slight resistance and he was ready to drop the boy and drive on.

  Johnny fingered the scrap of red velvet in his pocket which had once been a rose. ‘Southbrook,’ he said, calculating fast – he reckoned he could cut back up to the beacon from there. ‘You can drop me off if you like.’

  5

  IT WAS WARM WHEN ROSIE HAD SET OUT AND SHE’D brought no coat or cardigan. Waiting in the mist on the top of the beacon, she shuddered beneath her thin dress. She was half desperate, half reluctant to see Johnny. If only, she thought, you could start over again, you might get it right next time…

  She sat down on the boulder by the Ten Commandments and lit a cigarette. Someone had been cleaning the carving. Grandma would have been pleased. Incredible in this day and age that there were people whose job it was to clean the Commandments. The clearing operation seemed to have stopped at the commandment not to bear false witness. Well, she’d broken that one, for sure, along with all the rest…

  ‘Listen,’ said Ellen. She thought she’d seen a figure up the road by the lambing pen as she saw Johnny off, but it had disappeared now. ‘I think we should get out of here. The mist is so heavy no one’ll see us. I don’t want you here in case that vile man comes back. He might have reported this to someone.’

  She’d gone to Bainbridge’s room where he was lying flat in his usual position, except he seemed to take up even less space than usual.

  ‘Whatever you think…’

  He left it, his tone said, to her – for himself he didn’t care. But she now, after all this time, was filled with a sense of vital urgency. ‘Where can I take you that will be safe? I’ll leave Mr G. a note.’

  It was funny, they had hardly spent any time together, she and Mr Golightly, yet when they met it was as if he were her oldest friend. She would miss him, too, when he left Spring Cottage – she almost regretted they weren’t having, as that horrible man had insinuated, a love affair.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Think – where’s safe till they’ve spoken to Rosie?’

  ‘I don’t know – the mire maybe…?’

  At Southbrook, Wolford said, ‘The weather’s pretty rough. I’ll take you on where you’re going.’

  Johnny had prepared what he was going to say next. He wasn’t having the screw track him to where his mum was waiting. Mr Golightly could tell her about the man. His job was to lose Wolford and make sure Wolford didn’t find her. ‘Yeah, OK. I’ll show you.’

  Directing the screw, mostly by instinct, because the conditions made it hard to see, Johnny remembered the day he had taken Mr Golightly to the mire and told him about the sheep. He got Wolford to drop him by the track which led to the old sheep cot. It was so quiet in the baffling mist they might have been on Mars.

  ‘Yeah,
well, thanks,’ Johnny said, getting out of the car, and his heart hit the soles of his feet when Wolford got out too.

  ‘Lonely spot this. What you plan to do here, then, son?’

  ‘I need a piss,’ Johnny said, and walked off deliberately up the track to behind the sheep cot. He’d undone his flies when he felt a hand on his waist.

  Johnny turned and kicked hard in the direction of Wolford’s groin. Then he ran towards the mire. He knew it well enough during the hours of daylight but with the mist down it was trickier to see the lie of the land.

  Johnny’s kick knocked Wolford off balance but it missed its target. Thwarted desire, mingled with alarm at what he’d been about to do, flamed into bare panic and rage and he plunged after the boy. Unaware where he was following, he made some progress by sheer momentum, across the marsh, then staggered, swore, and began to founder. With his athletic strength he had almost managed to haul himself out, when Johnny, approaching along a solid spur of land, kicked him again, this time full in the face.

  Wolford screamed, flailed around, and then grabbed at Johnny’s ankle, pulling the boy towards him.

  Inside the sheep cot they heard the cries. ‘Wait there,’ Ellen said. ‘Don’t move till I come back. Just wait here. Promise me you won’t move…’

  The last thing she saw of Jos Bainbridge was his assenting eyes, like great drops of dark rain.

  6

  IT WAS FELT BY MANY AS REGRETTABLE THAT THE latest edition of the Backbiter should appear with the headline SHOCKING SCENES AT FILM DIRECTOR’S PARTY so hard upon the terrible catastrophes which hit Great Calne. It was Barty Clarke, himself, people said, who started the whole thing, telling Nadia Fawns that it was Paula’s dad, Jenson, who had been up in court down in Plymouth, for living on immoral earnings. But then Nadia Fawns shouldn’t have said what she said to Paula – though, as Kath Drover said, by rights the little madam shouldn’t have been at the party at all.