by Ann Granger
Meredith showered, dressed and breakfasted and turned her attention to the washing machine in the corner of the kitchen. She had a pile of laundry but was unused to having a machine at her disposal. She peered at its various buttons and dials and wondered if it were possible to wreck it by unintentional mis-setting. A hunt in a drawer produced a handbook. She sat and sipped her tea and read it. It all seemed fairly simple. She loaded it up. First attempt to get it to go failed because she hadn’t plugged it in to the electricity supply. A second attempt did better. It began to chug away, her underwear rotating past the little window in the door. Meredith, feeling quite pleased with herself, put on her anorak and set out to explore a little more of Pook’s Common. The road continued past the cottages so there must be something down there and it ought to be the common itself.
She walked past Ivy Cottage and down the narrow roadway. Before the last cottage she paused as a woman appeared in the doorway.
‘Good morning,’ she called. The woman peered at her short-sightedly and looked bewildered. ‘I’m living at Rose Cottage!’ Meredith shouted.
‘Oh, the Russells’ cottage!’ The other scurried down the garden path towards Meredith. ‘Have they sold? I didn’t know.’
‘No, just gone away temporarily.’ Meredith explained.
‘Oh, I see.’ The woman looked relieved. ‘I’m so pleased they haven’t put the cottage on the market because that would leave it empty. Yet another empty cottage here would be just dreadful! How nice that you’re going to be here. Pook’s Common could do with a few more people, don’t you think? Such a lonely spot.’
‘Have you come to spend Christmas?’ Meredith asked, puzzled.
‘Oh, no!’ The woman looked horrified. ‘We’re going to my daughter’s for Christmas! We’ve only come today to make sure everything is all right. We’re going to retire here as soon as we’ve sold our house.’ She sighed. ‘My husband likes the . . . the quiet of Pook’s Common. Forgive me, I ought to have introduced myself. I’m Lucy Haynes. Geoffrey!’ she called out suddenly.
‘What do you want?’ came an irascible voice from inside the cottage in return.
‘I want you to meet someone, Geoffrey!’
There was a further irascible grunt and a short, stocky red-faced man appeared.
‘My husband,’ said Lucy Haynes with a touch of resignation in her voice. ‘This lady, Geoffrey, is renting Rose Cottage.’
Mr Haynes approached mistrustfully. ‘I thought the Russells had taken off. Where have they gone?’
‘Dubai,’ Meredith informed him.
Mr Haynes gave another snort of disgust. ‘I’ve no desire to go running round the world. I can’t wait to settle down here permanently. Peace and quiet, that’s the thing! We’re just down for the weekend to air the place out and run the heating. Got to watch out for damp in these old places.’ He stamped his feet like a restless pony, obviously anxious to get back to whatever he had been doing.
‘Nice to have met you,’ said Meredith tactfully and moved off.
‘I hope we’ll see a bit more of you, Miss Mitchell,’ said Lucy Haynes, it seemed to Meredith a trifle wistfully.
She walked on, wondering whose decision it had been to buy a retirement home in such an isolated spot. Geoffrey’s, she suspected. Lucy Haynes was going to find it lonely. Geoffrey was probably a ranting misanthrope so it didn’t matter. Not a good idea to shut yourself away like this once you got a bit older, thought Meredith. You depended on your car unless you fancied walking two miles to Westerfield to catch the bus. No shops. No doctor’s surgery. Lots of fresh air and not much else.
After a few minutes’ walk it seemed she had truly left the hamlet of Pook’s Common behind. Hedgerows grew straggling on either side, bare now in mid-winter, black, grey and brown instead of green. But here was something. An acrid odour mingled with the unmistakable smell of farmyard manure struck Meredith’s nose. She had reached a five-barred gate and a notice board nailed on a tree trunk proclaimed ‘Pook’s Stables’. That seemed fitting. Meredith leaned curiously on the gate and looked over.
It was a stable yard all right. The loose-boxes were set around three sides of a square and away to the right, half-hidden, was a neglected-looking dwelling. There was a small horse-box parked in one corner of the yard and just on the other side of the gate a large Mercedes. Its wheels and the lower half of the bodywork were splattered with mud. It looked pretty impressive, even so, in these rural surroundings.
‘Hi!’ said a voice behind her.
Meredith turned. Harriet stood there in breeches and waxed jacket, holding a rope halter and a plastic bucket. She smiled at Meredith’s surprised expression.
‘I followed you down. I would have caught up with you earlier but I saw you talking to that poor downtrodden mouse of a Haynes woman and waited till she’d gone. I can’t stick Geoffrey.’
‘He seems a bit brusque.’
‘He’s a real old misery. She really ought to stand up to him. I’d give him the order of the boot. But she hasn’t got the gumption. And I know what’s going to happen as soon as they really move in. He’ll want to change everything. He’ll want the road made up and start pestering the council. He’ll want proper street lighting instead of our present hit or miss lamps. He’ll complain that the horses deposit muck outside his gate. He’ll want a bus service and a pavement.’ Harriet glanced past Meredith and raised the hand holding the rope halter in salute to someone unseen behind her.
Turning, Meredith was just in time to glimpse a man standing by one of the loose-boxes. She had a brief impression of a swarthy, handsome face and strong build, a quilted body-warmer and well-worn sweater, the inevitable riding breeches and boots. Then he ducked into the loose-box out of sight.
‘Tom’s in one of his funny moods,’ said Harriet with a shrug. ‘Come and meet Blazer.’
They walked on past Pook’s stables and reached open fields. From behind a hedge a sudden whinny made Meredith jump.
‘He’s heard us,’ said Harriet. ‘He knows I’m on my way for him.’ She opened a gate and held it for Meredith. Fastening it behind her she started out across wet turf. Meredith whose walking shoes, though practical enough for most surfaces, were not really adequate for squelching through boggy terrain, made her way along behind her as best she could, seeking out the firmer spots. Rushes grew here and there in clumps across the pasture. It must be very low-lying. She asked if there were a river nearby.
‘Just down the road a little way. There’s a bridge.’ Harriet stopped and whistled. Two horses came plodding into view, one a handsome chestnut with a startling blaze down its face and the other a grey, following behind. As they came up, Meredith was surprised at the amount of body-heat coming from them in the low outside temperature. They seemed to steam slightly.
‘Here he is!’ Harriet stretched up to pat the chestnut neck. Blazer put down his head and nuzzled at her coat pocket. ‘All right, you greedy brute. Hang on.’ She delved in her pocket and produced a wrapped boiled sweet. She managed to unwrap it with difficulty, Blazer trying to scoop it neatly out of her hand with his flexible upper lip. The grey stood back a little, watching. ‘I’ve got one for you, too.’ Harriet said. She pushed Blazer away from her. ‘Get out of the way! It’s not your turn!’
The grey was more cautious. It approached sideways on and flung up its head, eye rolling. ‘He can,’ warned Harriet, ‘whirl round and give you a kick, this fellow. Here, come on . . .’ She clicked her tongue.
The grey sidled up and took the proffered titbit and then suddenly bucked and danced away. ‘Tom’s horse,’ Harriet said. ‘He’s a bit like old Tom in character. You can get round him if you go the right way about it. But he can cut up rough and turn a bit nasty if he’s got a mind to. I’m fond of him, though.’
This time Meredith asked, ‘Tom or the horse?’
Harriet glanced at her and laughed. ‘I’m fond of Tom and the horse. But you haven’t to let either of them get the better of you! They’ll play on it.’ Bl
azer had come ambling up again. Harriet threw the rope halter over his head. ‘You and I, old chap,’ she said softly. ‘We get along just fine, don’t we?’
They returned to the gate, Harriet leading the horse. ‘I keep my tack up at Tom’s place. I’ll see you later, perhaps?’
Meredith waved goodbye and watched her set off back the way they had come in the direction of Pook’s stables. She continued her own walk down the lane. She came to the river after about five minutes and stood on the bridge, leaning over the parapet to watch the water race by. The level looked quite high. Further down the lane the fields came to an abrupt end and an expanse of open ground stretched in front of her. The grass was coarse and tufted, crossed here and there by narrow, half-obliterated footpaths. Isolated trees struggled, windswept, for survival. A large bird, a crow as far as she could tell, flapped up from picking at something on the ground and wheeled away high above her. The prospect did not encourage one to wander further. The common seemed somehow unfriendly. If the pookas were out there, they were welcome to it. Meredith was not sorry to turn back.
As she re-passed the stable yard, she heard the sound of voices, a man’s and a woman’s, raised in some altercation from inside the buildings. Suddenly Harriet’s clear tones rang out. ‘I’ll do as I damn well please!’
‘You owe me at least—’ the man’s voice began angrily.
‘I don’t owe you a thing! And I’m not going to discuss it with you while you’re in this foul mood. You can call by later if you’ve got over it – and not if you haven’t!’
‘Attagirl!’ thought Meredith with a grin. Mr Fearon wasn’t getting the better of Harriet, certainly.
As she passed the Haynes’ cottage, it seemed something was amiss there, too. But this time it was Geoffrey’s voice which rumbled on aggressively, with occasional mild squeaks of protest from his wife. They had probably been married for some thirty-odd years, perhaps longer. Difficult now, Meredith thought, to change habits established over the best part of a lifetime. Perhaps after all there was much to be said for remaining independent, carving out your own orbit. Lucy Haynes was as tied to her bad-tempered spouse as a satellite moon to its planet. Geoffrey led and Lucy followed. Harriet, by way of contrast, wasn’t a follower but a leader. How did one stop a person like Harriet, headstrong, independent, beholden to no one? Short of tripping her up and hitting her over the head, goodness only knew.
Independence. It was easy to surrender your independence in ways which you hardly realised until too late. Even by accepting Laura Danby’s kind invitation, Meredith’s own fiercely maintained independence could be said to have been undermined. It was different for Alan, the Danbys were his family. Although once he’d had a wife of his own. Meredith allowed herself a moment’s speculation about this never-discussed time in Markby’s life. Or at least never discussed with her. Did he ever speak of it with anyone? His wife’s name had been Rachel, that much Meredith knew, and it was all. He’d tell her about it one day, she thought. But he clearly wasn’t ready to yet.
She returned her thoughts to the Danbys. What would they make of her? How did they view her? As Alan’s girlfriend? God forbid. That wouldn’t suit either Alan or herself! Perhaps she had already compromised herself beyond recall by accepting the invitation. The thought sent an uneasy shiver down her spine. Back at Rose Cottage, Meredith consulted the calendar, frowning.
It was Saturday, half over already, and that meant only three more entire days remained before Christmas Day, the coming Wednesday, when she had committed herself, she now feared rashly, to festivities with the Danbys. It was generous of them to ask her along, she didn’t deny. Or perhaps it was kind of Alan. He may well have asked his sister to invite Meredith. That thought made Meredith even more uneasy. She hoped that she did not appear to others like a worthy cause. Poor old Meredith, all on her own. Can’t leave her to spend a solitary Christmas . . . It was possible they thought nothing of the sort, but she still felt she had to do something to show she was not entirely alone and friendless. Going away for just a day before Christmas to visit a friend or relative, just to let Alan Markby and Laura Danby know that she did have someone else, would bolster her morale. The trouble was that now, after so many years abroad, most of her friends were Foreign Service personnel like herself and nearly all abroad on postings at the moment. As for family, she had few of them. No one close unless, of course, one counted Aunt Lou.
Dear old Aunt Lou! Meredith’s finger, running down the calendar, retraced its path and lingered over Sunday. She must be, what, over eighty? She wasn’t a real aunt but a courtesy one, the widow of a former colonial service administrator and a friend of Meredith’s late parents. But it would be nice to go and see the old lady. She lived an easy drive away, near Newbury. Meredith had brought her back some embroidered handkerchiefs, as it happened. She could take them along. Indomitable Aunt Lou, whom nothing could shake.
Meredith hunted down Aunt Lou’s telephone number and dialled it. The old lady had been deaf for years and had what she called a ‘thing-gummy-jig’ on her telephone receiver which was intended to help her hear her callers more clearly. Aunt Lou was inclined to mistrust the device and confuse it with what she had read of ‘bugged’ telephones in the newspapers. It certainly didn’t appear to be much help to her. If people visited the house and the old lady answered the telephone while they were there, the visitors in their armchairs five yards away could hear the caller distantly but clearly, but Aunt Lou on the phone still yelled, ‘Speak up!’
‘Who?’ screeched Aunt Lou down the telephone now.
‘Meredith, Aunt Lou! Meredith Mitchell!’
‘Oh, Merry! How are you, my dear? And why are you calling from so far away? Think of the expense!’
‘I’m not far away, Aunt Lou. I’ve just got back to England. I thought I’d come and see you tomorrow, if that suits you.’
‘Right you are, dear. If you come about twelve, I shall be back from church.’ With that she abruptly rang off before the thing-gummy-jig wrought any mischief.
Aunt Lou’s house looked exactly as it had always done. Meredith, looking up at it in the sunshine, felt five years old again. It was a large, rambling, gracious Edwardian building. It had been a wonderful place for exploring. It had had its own peculiar smell, compounded of wax polish and the pot-pourri Aunt Lou made and put out in little dishes in every room. There had been a brass dinner gong in the hall and oh, the delight when allowed to strike it, just once, with its little hammer.
Necessity had led to changes since those days. The house had become far too large and expensive to maintain for Aunt Lou and so it had been altered, the top half being made into a separate flat on the first floor and a studio apartment created in the former attics. Both had been sold off and Aunt Lou remained in residence on the ground floor which she’d had converted into a suitable flat for herself. The arrangement had not proved perfect. Aunt Lou seldom approved of the people who lived above her, but it worked after a fashion.
The house next door, similar in style, did not seem to have suffered the same mutilation. It had the quiet secluded air of a gentleman’s private residence about it. In its drive stood a Japanese four-wheel-drive vehicle and as Meredith looked across the laburnum hedge at it, a woman of about her own age came out of the house, slamming the door crossly, got into the vehicle and reversed out into the road, driving off at speed. Meredith had only time to see that she was expensively dressed, sharp-featured and bad-tempered in looks. She dismissed her from her mind and rang Aunt Lou’s bell.
‘Come in, my dear,’ said Aunt Lou, dragging open the door.
Aunt Lou had never looked young, at least not to the child Meredith. She had always had grey hair, scraped back into a no-nonsense knot and wore baggy knitted suite. The hair now was white, but the baggy suits hadn’t altered in style a jot and she had changed remarkably little except that, as Meredith was distressed to see, the old lady now had a walking stick which accompanied her everywhere. With her stick Aunt Lou moved
quite briskly, however.
‘I have,’ said Aunt Lou fortissimo as she led the way into her ground floor flat, ‘made us bean casserole.’
‘Oh, still vegetarian, Aunt Lou?’
‘Naturally!’ snapped Aunt Lou testily. ‘What else should I be? Do you think I should have lived as long as I have on meat?’
The living room hadn’t changed much. The same antique plates gleamed behind the glass doors of a walnut cabinet. The muffled tick of the grandfather clock echoed in one corner. Crocheted antimacassars graced the backs of all the chairs although it was many years since a gentleman with pomade on his hair had sat in one of them.
‘Those,’ said Aunt Lou, lowering herself stiffly into a chair and pointing with her stick at the walnut cabinet, ‘are yours.’
‘Oh, the plates?’
‘Yes, they’re in my will. I was intending to give them to you when you married. But you haven’t married and I dare say you won’t do so now.’ Aunt Lou scrutinised her visitor. ‘You’re not a bad-looking girl. Aren’t there any young single fellows about where you are? When I was young and Roger was in the colonial service, young single European women were much in demand. Girls who couldn’t get themselves a husband in this country were sent out to find one in the colonies and it seldom failed.’
‘Yes, Aunt Lou. But I’m not thinking of marriage.’
‘Aren’t you?’ said Aunt Lou unkindly. ‘Chance would be a fine thing, I dare say. It’s not what you think, my girl, it’s what the man thinks. Or don’t girls wait to be asked these days?’
‘Not always, I believe, Aunt Lou. I think it’s quite common now for them to do the asking.’
Aunt Lou looked mildly taken aback but not for long. ‘Yes, well, common is probably the word to describe that sort of behaviour. Your trouble, my girl, is that you’re too independent by half. It don’t do. Of course a woman should know her own mind and few men really relish a life with a clinging vine, but it can be taken too far.’