by Daisy Waugh
‘I was actually wondering, General, if you’d like to pop in to the Old Rectory for a pre-lunch drink. We’ve got the vicar coming. And Kitty. And Robert White…It was meant to be a sort of celebration. Can’t think why we didn’t invite you before! Now, of course – well, I think we could all probably just do with a drink.’
‘Very kind,’ says the General, who dislikes Kitty and Geraldine, loathes Robert, and has endured more drinks with the vicar over the years than he would ever care to remember. ‘What a shame. Would have loved to. But I ought to be getting back.’ His eye is caught by Dane Guppy, in heated discussions with the police. ‘They’re putting him through it rather,’ he mutters. ‘Poor chap. Seems a nice boy.’
‘Yes, that’s Dane,’ says Geraldine vaguely. ‘You’re certain I can’t persuade you?’
‘Thank you so much, Mrs Adams.’
Geraldine isn’t quite ready to give up. ‘But I thought we might have an impromptu sort of emergency meeting,’ she says. ‘I mean, heaven knows. Under the circumstances—’
‘No, no, no,’ booms the General, suddenly very impatient. ‘Good morning, Mrs Adams. Good morning, Miss Mozely,’ and marches resolutely away.
He’s deep in thought, lost in the past, marching back through the village, when he spies a lanky, bearded figure up ahead. Robert White has parked up in front of the Alms Cottages and is peering into Fanny Flynn’s front garden.
And because the last person the General wants to see on his sunny, ruined morning is Fiddleford Primary’s repulsive, malingering deputy headmaster he does something uncharacteristic. He spies the telephone box beside the post office and quickly, shamefully, hides himself behind it.
Robert hesitates at Fanny’s gate. Inside, he can hear her mobile telephone ringing unanswered. The windows are closed. The cottage is clearly empty. He glances up and down the street, spies no one, not even the General’s polished toes peeping from behind the telephone box, and lets himself in to the front garden. Furtively, he peers through her window.
‘What the bloody hell—’ thinks the General.
New silver lanterns, Robert thinks. To go with the ruby-red walls. A bit like a brothel, he thinks, with a shiver.
He glances anxiously at the other two cottages. No sign of life coming from either. So Robert proceeds a little further. He has always wondered about her back garden. Is it large? Is it small? Does she hang out her clothes to dry?
‘What the devil—’ thinks the General.
The garden is communal; the same garden for all three cottages. Large, untended, chaotic, more like a paddock than anything else, with a few rose bushes sprouting out of the grass and a perfect peach tree at the far end. Robert notices none of this. He sees there are several windows overlooking it, but all with their curtains drawn – and that on the washing line, between the red duvet cover, the red pillow cases and the pinky-grey tea-towels, is a tiny pair of gauze-and-lace silky-look scarlet knickers. He breathes deeply, rooted to the spot. And he can’t resist taking them. He snatches. He snuffles them away.
Robert thinks he hears a sound from the third cottage (Macklan Creasey’s cottage) and he darts immediately back towards the front of the house. He hurries out on to the village street and collides with the General, who feels duty bound to bring himself out of hiding when confronted by such suspicious behaviour. He’s on his way into Fanny’s garden to haul Robert out.
‘Oh!’ they both say at once, with equal displeasure. They step back. Scowl at each other.
‘She’s not there,’ the General says. ‘What are you up to, Mr White?’
‘Yes, so I discover. I was just popping a letter through her door…I’ve been invited for a little drink,’ Robert can’t quite keep the pride from his voice, ‘at the Old Rectory. Geraldine kindly invited me…But how are you, James? On this beautiful morning?’
The General screws up his eyes, considers him. ‘Well, you’re looking awfully shifty. Why aren’t you up at the school?’
‘Shifty?’ repeats Robert indignantly, slipping his hand into his trouser pocket and closing it tightly over his silky red booty. ‘I thought I might find Miss Flynn in the garden. As I say. I was only trying to post a letter.’
‘Right. Well. Good, good.’
Robert sniffs. ‘Smells like there’s a fire somewhere.’ Ordinarily, from his house ten miles away, Robert would have had to drive past the burning school in order to get into the village.
‘That’s right,’ says the General, without offering any further details, disinclined to extend their conversation a syllable longer than necessary. The man would find out soon enough, if he didn’t know already. ‘I’d have thought you came past it on your way in.’
‘No. I mean, no. Past what?’
‘The fire. Well. Good morning to you, Mr White. See you again. No doubt.’
Robert watches the old man striding off and thinks he’s probably got away with it – whatever it may be. For some reason Robert doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. In fact, he vaguely resents the General for making him feel as though he has.
He climbs back into the white Fiat Panda, drives it the fifty-odd metres to the Old Rectory drive and, with a wave of skittish nausea, swings in between the Adamses’ newly restored eighteenth-century stone gateposts.
‘Hello?’ he calls tentatively, having stood in the porch for over a minute, rung the bell a couple of times, and failed to attract anyone into the hall to greet him. The door is wide open. Robert takes a little step in. ‘Anyone home?’
‘In here!’ It’s the muffled sound of a woman, slightly irritated, shouting through a mouthful of food. Not Geraldine, he thinks. Certainly not. She would have come to the door.
‘Anyone home?’ he says again.
‘I’M IN HERE!’ Kitty Mozely yells.
Robert finds her in what the Adamses call the ‘parlour’. She is the only one there: Scarlett is already in the television room reading a book, Ollie, she presumes, is still in his room, Lenka is still in bed, and all the others are still down at the fire.
The parlour is small, perfect, immaculately proportioned; light, airy and peaceful, with sash windows that stretch from ceiling to floor. The room smells of orchids and freesias and furniture wax and there is not a painting or an ornament – or even a book – whose position hasn’t been thought about, which doesn’t blend with an overall theme. There are creamy brown worsted silk curtains against the windows, and smooth, oatmeal-coloured walls. There are a pair of eighteenth-century rosewood side tables flanking a creamy white sofa imported from a company in New England which has also made sofas, Mrs Adams likes laughingly to explain, for the last three American First Ladies.
Kitty’s presence slightly ruins the effect. She looks particularly slatternly in an armchair beside the real gas fire, which she has lit in spite of the sun streaming in through the open windows. She’s got her nose buried in the style section of the Sunday Times, and all the other sections are spread haphazardly at her feet. Though she hasn’t quite dared to open her hosts’ champagne in their absence, she’s helped herself to some vodka and tonic, and she’s obviously been munching hard on the ovolini. There are only a couple more left.
‘Hi,’ she says, without smiling or standing up. ‘Nobody’s here yet. They’re all still down at the fire. Want a drink?’
‘Oh, well!’ says Robert, rubbing his hands together. ‘If you’re offering! Why not?’
‘Drinks are over there,’ says Kitty, indicating a heavily stacked table between the long windows. ‘But I don’t think we ought to open the champagne. There’s tonic water in the little fridge…there. That’s right. Underneath. The thing that looks like a cupboard.’ Kitty returns to her newspaper. She hadn’t realised Wetty White was invited. She probably wouldn’t have come if she had. Ovolini or no. As Geraldine bloody well knew.
‘Super!’ he says. Pads over to the drinks table. Hesitates. He’s suddenly not quite sure how to begin. A silence falls: awkward for Robert, self-conscious of the fizzing nois
es while he pours his Diet Pepsi, but unnoticed by Kitty, reading a fascinating piece about a wrinkle-eradicating laser gun. ‘So! What’s all this about a fire?’ he asks at last. He asks three times, before he gets an answer.
Kitty tells him.
‘Goodness!’ His eyes are smarting, just thinking about all that smoke. His eyes are red and dry, he knows it. ‘But that’s awful!’ he says, edging his bottom towards the unnecessarily warm hearth. ‘It’s just awful!’
‘Isn’t it?’ she says. ‘You should be up there, really. Since it’s your school, and nobody seems to be able to find Fanny Flynn. You could send the others back down.’
‘Mmm,’ he says, without moving. ‘Though really it seems more sensible to wait for them here, I think, Kitty. As Geraldine’s expecting me. Otherwise we’ll probably end up crossing paths for the rest of the day and never actually catching up with each other!’
Kitty doesn’t respond, and though Robert makes a few attempts at conversation, she doesn’t speak again until Clive, Geraldine and the vicar arrive about ten minutes later.
Robert doesn’t drink often, and never normally during the day but Geraldine insists that he has some champagne. He was too nervous to eat breakfast. And he’s far too nervous now to tuck into what Kitty’s left of the quail’s eggs. Ovolini all gone. One single glass goes to his head. Before long he is nodding along happily while Geraldine engages him with a meticulous analysis of The Weaknesses of Fanny Flynn.
‘I mean, of course, let’s be fair,’ says Geraldine, ‘she’s a marvellous, dedicated teacher – when she’s around.’
‘Well, that’s right,’ says Robert. Head swimming slightly.
‘And how could she ever have guessed that the place was going to go up in flames? She couldn’t. But I do think that if a person finds themselves in a position of unique authority, as of course Fanny does, it’s just plain irresponsible to waltz off, God knows where, without leaving some sort of contact telephone number.’
‘Her car’s there,’ says Robert.
‘That’s what’s so frustrating.’
‘But Louis’s bike isn’t…’
‘I mean, where is she?’ continues Geraldine, not quite picking up. ‘That’s all we want to know. We’re not asking who she’s with, for heaven’s sake. Or if she’s in bed with somebody—’
‘No!’ He’s worried he’s blushing, so he looks down, takes a nervous gulp from the glass just refilled. ‘Certainly not,’ he reiterates. But he still can’t resist. ‘Although since you happen to have brought that subject up, Geraldine, I think she does get – how can I put this? I think she does get very easily distracted by certain matters. By the male…gender, if you like. I actually think she’s a very, very, very sexual person. And Louis—’
‘Ye-es,’ agrees Geraldine, trying quickly to accommodate this new weakness into her analysis of Fanny Flynn. A very, very, very sexual person. She hadn’t particularly thought of that. ‘Mmm, well, I suppose you’d know…’ she says, suddenly remembering and smiling at him slyly. ‘Since a certain little bird told me that you and she were seeing a teeny bit of each other. Am I wrong?’
‘Fanny and Me?!?!?’ So highly pitched only a bat could have entirely made it out. ‘Fanny and Me?!? Ha! Geraldine! Fanny and Me?!?!?’
‘No?’
‘Certainly not! Gosh, no. No. Certainly not!’
‘Oh. Well, anyway. Sorry, no offence, I hope?’
‘What? NO! Of course not. Don’t be absurd, Geraldine. Really. No, no, no.’
Geraldine shrugs. Hard though it may be for Robert to understand, she’s not actually that interested. ‘However, I agree with you, she’s certainly hot-blooded. Of course, you weren’t there when she stripped off half her clothes in front of the entire village.’
‘Mercifully!’ Another nervous swig from the champagne. ‘But perhaps she’ll simmer down a bit now. Now she and Louis have finally got it together.’
‘Have they? Are you sure, Robert? I got the impression they’d fallen out. How do you know?’
Mistake. How does he know? Another bubbly swig. He can see their feet now, all tangled together. Louis with his trousers round his thighs, all the moaning and groaning, and the front door banging against the ruby red, open and closed, open and closed…How the hell does he know?
Geraldine laughs merrily. ‘Seriously, unless you’ve been spying on her from your sickbed, Robert, I don’t honestly see—’
Empty glass. ‘Well, I don’t know. No. Of course not. No. I don’t know. But between you and me, and judging by her track record, I think that young lady will open her legs for just about anyone.’
Geraldine pauses. Glances at him uneasily. It’s an odd thing to say. It’s an unattractive way of saying it. In fact, everything about it feels entirely – to use one of Geraldine’s favourite words – inappropriate. Robert smiles at her; soft lips, mouth closed. It’s meant to be reassuring. ‘Not,’ he adds quietly, ‘that Miss Flynn’s sex life has anything to do with me.’
‘No,’ says Geraldine coolly. ‘No, it doesn’t.’
Robert senses his blunders. Acutely. But, dizzied by so much creamy-brown prosperity, by the smell of those freesias and orchids, by all the champagne bubbles knocking around his brain, he doesn’t yet feel inclined to backtrack. He breathes deeply and continues. ‘You may think that was an odd thing to say, Geraldine.’
‘Well.’ A very tight smile. ‘Just a tad, Robert. I didn’t have you down as a misogynist.’
‘Me? Ha! A misogynist? Geraldine, I’m offended! I worship ladies. Absolutely worship them.’
‘What, all of them?’ she asks drily.
‘The fact is, I do have a little experience of Fanny’s…well, what can I call it?’
Geraldine raises one of those nicely plucked eyebrows. She waits.
‘The fact is, Geraldine, I’ve had a few problems with Fanny of my own.’
‘Really, Robert?’ She smiles. Robert thinks it’s patronising. ‘Fanny’s a terribly attractive woman,’ she says. ‘I don’t imagine you’d find many men complaining.’
That annoys him. ‘You can laugh, Geraldine. People usually do. But suffering from sexual harassment in the workplace isn’t really a joke. In this day and age. And it isn’t the sole prerogative of women, either. As I’m surprised I should need to remind you.’
‘Oh!’ A few buzz-words to jolt her. Magic words. ‘Apologies, Robert,’ she says hurriedly. ‘I am sorry. I certainly didn’t mean to be insensitive…Gosh. Well, you should have said. So what exactly…?’
Robert shakes his head. ‘I don’t really think it would be appropriate to go into details. Suffice it to say—’
He’s rescued from saying anything at all, by Clive suddenly shouting across the ‘parlour’ to his wife. ‘Geraldine – sorry to interrupt – what’s the name of that terribly nice man, Ollie’s godfather? Ex-boyfriend of yours…’
‘Where is Ollie, by the way?’ Geraldine asks vaguely. ‘Don’t tell me he’s still in bed?’
‘He does Portakabins,’ continues Clive. ‘Reverend Hodge and I were just thinking – they’re going to need to come up with some temporary classrooms ASA, if the school’s to reopen by the end of half-term. And your friend, What’s-his-name, might be able to help us out. Don’t you think?’ Clive turns back to the vicar. ‘I’m saying he “does” Portakabins. I think he’s actually the largest portable-cabin manufacturer in Europe – isn’t he, Geraldine? And as luck would have it—’ Clive laughs. ‘If only either of us could remember his blessed name.’
‘He’s called Tony Milson,’ says Geraldine succinctly. ‘What a smart idea, Clive. Why didn’t I think of it?’ She looks at her watch. ‘I could call him now, before lunch. Get the ball rolling. But I should know first exactly what we need up there. Wouldn’t want to waste his time.’ She sighs. ‘Robert,’ she says decisively. ‘You haven’t seen it yet, have you?’
‘Not yet,’ he grimaces. ‘I’m worried I’ll find it terribly upsetting.’
Geraldine,
still feeling wrong-footed re male gender sexual harassment and her own insensitivity to it, gives his shoulder a comforting pat. ‘It is upsetting,’ she says. ‘I’m afraid you will be very upset. But with Fanny gone AWOL—’
‘She hasn’t gone AWOL,’ Kitty looks up suddenly. She’s been so bored by the company, and apparently so engrossed in the Money* section of the Mail on Sunday she’s barely contributed a word all morning. ‘She and Louis have buggered off to Spain for half-term. Oops.’ She glances unrepentantly at the reverend. ‘Sorry, vicar.’
‘Believe you me,’ chortles the dreary reverend, ‘I’ve heard it all before.’
‘Honestly, Kitty. You might have said,’ snaps Clive. ‘Saved us all a lot of bother.’
‘Thought you knew,’ Kitty shrugs. ‘Didn’t you see Macklan Creasey in the village?’
‘And that, effectively,’ interrupts Geraldine, very businesslike now, ‘leaves you, Robert,’ she gives him a dazzling smile, ‘in charge! You are now the acting head teacher. Am I not right, Reverend Hodge?’
‘Indeed, you most certainly are.’
‘Robert! Mr Deputy-Headmaster, sir!’ she twinkles at him, swaddling him in warm approval. ‘Congratulations – and thank goodness that one member of our little school’s staff can see his way to being available at such a crisis!’
‘Well, of course,’ says Robert uncertainly, ‘somebody has to—’
‘Exactly. Everyone, a little toast for the acting head,’ orders Geraldine. ‘To our marvellous acting head. And then, Robert,’ she takes a hurried gulp, ‘you and I are going to pop up to the school so you can have a quick look at the damage.’ She’s already slipping into her creamy-brown linen cardigan. ‘And Clive, I think you should go and see what Ollie’s up to. Get him out of bed.’
‘He’s in the bath. Or he was twenty minutes ago.’
She turns her attention back to Robert. ‘It’ll be upsetting for you, I know, but we’ll need your expert opinion, Robert, on the portable-cabin issue. How many. For which functions. And so on. And of course you’re going to need to speak to the police, who’ll no doubt still be there.’ Robert is still clutching his glass, his lean bottom in front of the fire. He looks torn: proud and flattered by her attention, and yet struggling with an inclination to disobey. He is, after all, off sick at the moment. And it is a Sunday. And this is, strictly speaking, Fanny’s job, not his. ‘Did you come with a jacket, Robert? Clive, dearest,’ she turns to her husband. ‘I think Robert left his coat in the hall. Could you be sweet…’ She turns to the vicar. ‘Reverend, I hope you won’t think I’m rude.’