by Hazel Osmond
He registered that there was also a play area with some swings being bullied by the wind and a well-worn slide.
‘You all right there?’ the taxi driver asked.
No, put my stuff back in the boot and drive away like a bat out of Hell.
‘Yes, lovely place. Away from everything; just how I like it. No distractions from thinking and writing. Looks like there’s plenty of good walking to be had.’ He waved his hand towards the black nothingness.
‘Not a great walker myself,’ the taxi driver said, starting to close the boot and then stopping. ‘Hey, I keep a shovel in here, do you want a lend of it?’
‘For any snow that’s on its way?’ Mack squinted at the sky in what he hoped was a knowledgeable, country manner.
‘Why no, to beat off the locals.’ The taxi driver shut the boot and walked towards Mack with his arms outstretched as if he were a zombie. ‘Saw some of these curtains twitching when we pulled up. Best watch yourself.’
‘Ah, yes. Funny, very funny,’ Mack agreed, wishing he could club the man with his own shovel, if only to stop the incessant flow of humour. It had started when he got into the taxi at Tyneforth, after a jarring, bouncy ride on the little train out from Newcastle where he’d morosely watched the view out of the window get greener and greener with every mile. He wasn’t even going to think about the earlier, shabby little meeting with the so-called Third Party in Newcastle Station. Even now it made him want to wash his hands.
The taxi driver’s merry chatter had been kept up as they’d driven out of Tyneforth on the dual carriageway and then along little roads that wound past streams and down into valleys and through villages until for a long while there was nothing and then there was Brindley.
‘How much do I owe you?’ Mack shouted into the wind once the zombie impersonation was over.
‘Forty-five pounds. Want a receipt?’
Mack paid and acted as a windbreak while the taxi driver struggled to write out the receipt and then, because it was O’Dowd’s money, he handed over a large tip.
He regretted it when the taxi driver raised his eyebrows and said, ‘Last time I got a tip like that it was one of them journalists. Could charge the silly buggers anything you liked. They’ll have your knadgers off round here if they think you’re one of them.’
‘Do you really think I’m a journalist dressed like this?’ Mack kept his voice level and his delivery slow despite the surge of adrenalin he’d just received.
‘Aye, crackers idea,’ the taxi driver said looking him up and down and hastily pocketing the money.
After executing a showy three-point turn he was gone, and Mack stood in the road and wondered whether he should just wait for the four-times-a-week bus service to run him over. The wind was trying to tear off his fleece, and even with one of his new jumpers on, he felt chilled. Little pricks of ice in the wind were numbing his face.
‘So, let me guess,’ he said, walking towards the cottages, ‘which one of these delightful residences is mine?’
Each of the four cottages in front of him had a gently sloping front garden bordered by a path, which culminated in a run of little steps, at the bottom of which was a decorative wrought-iron gate set in a low stone wall. Only one had an overgrown garden, a door faded to a faecal brown and a dry-looking creeper hanging on to the stonework for grim death.
‘Ah, that’ll be mine, then,’ Mack said and that fact was confirmed as he drew nearer to the gate and saw a battered number ‘3’. On his journey to the front door he tried to look as if he was not trudging in case he was being watched. Retrieving the keys from his pocket, he opened the door.
A smell of damp dog, or possibly dead dog, came out to greet him and another gust of wind propelled him through the door. He was standing at the bottom of a flight of stairs, in a cramped space only just bigger than he was. To make enough room to close the front door, he had to balance his suitcase on the end of the banister, with the rucksack on top, and, steadying both with one hand, reach behind him and give the door an almighty slam. Alone at last, he lowered his head, let the luggage fall where it could and ripped into the world, Northumberland, O’Dowd and Phyllida using every swear word he knew. If he hadn’t, some valve or artery would have spontaneously burst. He finished with a venomous, ‘And there isn’t even a sodding pub. That’s because it’s not a village, it’s a hamlet. And we all know what a bloody depressing play that is.’
Feeling only marginally better, he reached out and pushed on the door to his right. It swung open to show a small, shabby sitting room. Brown walls, brown carpet, brown curtains. He flicked on the light. Brown lampshade. Presumably Beautiful Homes had only just finished their photo shoot.
He shivered. It seemed colder in the house than outside and he’d need to find the controls for the central heating. That’s when he realised there would be no controls for the heating because there was no heating to control. He looked at the tiled fireplace, its mouth filled with some broken bits of wood and newspaper. This wasn’t the twilight zone, it was the Middle Ages. In frustration he gave the nasty brown sofa a kick and watched a puff of dust bloom out of it. He was seriously cold now and he could see his breath as clearly as the dust from the sofa. He wanted to lie down on the floor and never get up again. He had no heart for this ‘thing’ he had to do. How could he possibly have imagined he could pull it off? This wasn’t his world. He’d already nearly blown it with that tip for the taxi driver.
He reached into the pocket of his jacket for his mobile. No signal. He got out O’Dowd’s phone. Nothing there either. Probably no Internet coverage either. He looked around. No telly.
He wrenched open a door to what he presumed was the kitchen. Battered units, an old gas cooker, Formica-topped table and possibly the smallest fridge he had ever seen. Why had he assumed someone would have stocked it? Although now he’d met the Third Party he wouldn’t have wanted to put anything he’d touched near his mouth anyway.
Returning to the sitting room, he plonked himself on the sofa, reached in his pocket for the chocolate bar he had stowed away earlier, and morosely started to unwrap it.
Jennifer switched on the printer in Ray’s office, or to give it its proper name, the ‘Oh-Bugger Room’ – which was what Ray shouted at frequent intervals when he was stuck at the desk doing the farm accounts or completing the welter of Ministry forms needed for just about every activity on the farm.
The posters for the Drama-Club meeting started to print just as her mobile phone rang, and she got it out of her bag and made sure the office door was firmly shut before answering it.
‘Greetings there in little old Engerland,’ a mock-American voice shouted into her ear and she laughed out loud.
‘Cress, that’s dreadful, I hope they’re not paying you for that accent?’
‘Pound a word and cheap at the price. Serves them right for inflicting all those Cockney chimney sweeps on us. So … what’s new?’
‘Just printing off the posters for Finlay’s Drama-Club meeting on Thursday and, oh yes, Danny flashed Mrs Chambers. Not to her face, but via lamb-cam … we are verrrrry sophisticated over here.’
There was a prolonged period of giggling from Cress and Jennifer let it wash over and around her. It seemed to bring the Californian sunshine along with it.
‘Anyway, enough of flashing,’ she said when the giggling had lessened. ‘You sound back to your normal obnoxiously enthusiastic self – not feeling homesick any more?’
‘No, your therapy worked marvels. Cheque’s in the post.’ There was a pause. ‘Thank you, Jen, I’m not sure I could do this without you …’ Cressida’s voice powered up again. ‘So, knocked them for six, like you said. Saw the rushes yesterday and boy, even though I say it myself, I’m amazing.’
‘And why, Miss Modesty, aren’t you in make-up having your slap and lippy trowelled on?’
‘There’s been a teensy technical problem—’
‘Teensy?’
‘I’m working that “upper-class English gir
l” thing and it’s going down a storm. Complicated underwater scene and something’s gone awry. They did explain it and I pretended to understand. Now I get to have breakfast by the pool rather than pretending to fornicate by a lagoon in the studio.’
Jennifer got up and twitched aside the curtain on the window and looked out at the darkness. It was hard to imagine Cress sitting in the garden of her little pink bungalow, the sun glinting off the water in the pool.
‘Not tanning that peaches-and-cream skin of yours, I hope,’ she said.
‘Bog off, Jen. It’s not that warm today, only in the high sixties, besides I have minions to hold a parasol over me.’
‘Ah, didn’t take long for you to go Hollywood. I’m going to send out those overalls Dad used to lend you during lambing.’
More laughter and then Cress said, ‘Hang on a mo, Jen,’ and there was a clunk and Jennifer presumed the mobile phone had been put down. A couple of minutes passed with vague sounds of talking going on, and then Cress was back.
‘Sorry about that.’ She sounded embarrassed. ‘Met Rory Sylvester for the first time last week, kind of pre-shoot get to know each other, and he’s just sent me a car.’
‘A whole car? To keep?’
‘Mmm. And the maid doesn’t know what to do with it as it’s my driver’s day off.’ There was a pause. ‘Oh God, Jen, send those overalls right away.’
‘So … Rory … he obviously … thought you were very … nice.’ Jennifer was aware that she was veering off into the kind of territory that Cress preferred not to talk about on the phone.
‘Rory’s a generous man, Jen.’ Cress sounded guarded too. ‘Very charming and more handsome in the flesh than on the screen.’
Jennifer couldn’t imagine how he could look more handsome without things bursting into flames as he walked past. Rory was all dark hair and dark eyes and a body that was just the right mix of lean and muscled. Such attributes had allowed him to corner the market in action heroes with a sensitive side and Cress landing a role as his love interest was probably going to be her big Hollywood breakthrough. After a few more pleasantries and clichés, Cress said, as if changing the subject, ‘You ever hear from that boy with the dog who had a black spot right in the middle of its back?’
‘No, shame that.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Cress said with a snigger, and Jennifer knew that her cousin was telling her Rory Sylvester was cast in the same mould as Josh Brewers, a good-looking lad who had turned out to be vain and spoiled and quite happy to invite Jennifer and Cressida to join him in a threesome on the sly while he was dating one of their friends.
‘I believe he got married, that boy,’ Jennifer added, wanting to know what Rory’s wife was like.
‘Yes, someone very like that Biology teacher I had.’
Mrs Ravenscroft had married a very much younger man, and whenever she was seen out with him, had him clamped to her side as if under arrest. So, Rory Sylvester’s wife was obviously insanely jealous and kept him on a short leash.
‘So, you and Alex, out tonight then?’ Cress asked unexpectedly and Jennifer felt a little bit of gloom push its way into the room.
‘Mmm. Didn’t see how I could wriggle out of it.’ She heard Cress take a breath. ‘And don’t start, Cress. I know what I’ve got to do, don’t go over it again.’
‘I know Jen, it’s just I can’t bear—’
A sound of water splashing suddenly drowned out what Cressida couldn’t bear, and then Jennifer heard her shout very distinctly, ‘Oh my God, you stupid great idiot’, in a most un-English-rose type of way, and, just before the phone was either put down or dropped, Jennifer heard, ‘One of them has only gone and fallen in the pool!’
The noises that followed sounded as if all Hell had broken loose. There was the pounding of many feet, and a great deal of loud but indistinct yelling from a number of different voices, and above it all that weird sloshing noise.
‘Cress, Cress, are you all right?’ Jennifer kept asking over and over.
What’s fallen into the pool? A statue? A bird? A member of staff?
Cress was back, breathing heavily as if she had been running.
‘What fell in the pool, Cress? What?’ Jennifer asked again.
‘One of the paparazzi. Little shit. Climbed up the tree that overhangs it. I heard this whirring noise just now, when we were chatting and just thought, “Blimey, those crickets are loud.” Then there’s a splash and he’s in the pool.’ There was an exasperated sigh. ‘Stupid bugger was convinced I had a man here with me. Only just got him out before he went down for the third time, all that camera stuff round his neck.’ Cress suddenly sounded weary. ‘My God, Jen, is there nothing this lot won’t do to get some dirt on me and a man? Is my sex life really worth that much?’
CHAPTER 7
Jennifer glanced at Alex as he drove them back from dinner at the Henshaws’, and as the miles flicked by her mind churned through what she had to say to him. He was trying to turn the clock back on their relationship and if she didn’t call a halt now, she’d look as though she was letting him.
Why couldn’t she come straight out and tell him?
Because you’re afraid that this might be the best it’s ever going to be, and if you don’t have him, who do you have? But how many more of these evenings can you take?
The people sitting round the Henshaws’ dining table had been the friends Alex had known since he was a child. She’d had nothing in common with them when she was seventeen and that hadn’t changed. Even their conversations were the same – beef and lamb prices; hunting, shooting and fishing talk; the absurd amount of government legislation they had to deal with and county gossip.
At several points Alex had mouthed ‘Are you all right?’ and she had made an effort to join in, offering up her views on subjects as scintillating as the windows in the new swimming pool and the chances of it being fine for the county show.
It felt like she was acting, although what part she was meant to be playing she wasn’t certain. She had a creeping suspicion that Alex thought it was ‘straying girlfriend returning to the fold’.
When the conversation spiralled, tipsily, into who was sleeping with whom, Alex started making ‘What can you do with this lot?’ faces at her, but she felt it was because he could see she was uncomfortable, not because he was. She excused herself and went and sat in the downstairs toilet for a while. When she returned, they were still on the same subject and she looked at Alex laughing away, and wondered what had happened to that rebel who had turned up in Sixth Form refusing to go back to his boarding school to do his A-levels.
She had been too young to realise that this rebellion was mainly directed against his monumentally snobbish father and did not represent the flowering of a free spirit. At the time though, with his blond hair, tanned skin, washed-out shirts and worn-down cords, he’d had a touch of the wild frontiersman about him and by autumn half-term Jen and he were a couple.
His skin was more weathered now from being outside all day, with a slight rosiness to the bridge of his nose and the top of his cheeks and he’d filled out a bit across his chest, but physically he did not look that different from the sixth-former he had been. So Jennifer could not quite explain how, in the years since they’d split up, he had begun to turn into a less tweedy version of his father. It was discernible in his gestures and speech patterns, even that way he had of standing, feet slightly apart as if there was a sergeant-major in his head shouting ‘At ease’.
Jennifer had another go at practising what she had to say. Whatever she did, she mustn’t think of all his visits to Manchester to see her in the hospital straight after the accident. All those little kindnesses since. That would only intensify the guilt she felt at being so spectacularly ungrateful about it.
But this gratitude of yours, if you’re not careful, you know where it could lead.
As they passed through Brindley, she noticed there was a light on in the cottage next to Mr Armstrong’s, but no smoke coming out of the chi
mney. Bit of a cold welcome to Northumberland.
When they pulled into the farmyard and Alex turned off the engine, she knew he would say ‘Not a bad run back’, just as she would reply, ‘No, not bad’. She saw him unbuckle his seat belt and his hand moved gently to her knee, to land half on and half off her skirt. She hoped no one had heard the Land Rover pull up.
‘Alex,’ she said quickly, ‘it was … interesting to see everyone tonight, but I’m really—’
‘Tired. I know.’ He frowned as if that thought pained him. ‘I’m sorry. It’s a strain for you, meeting people.’
‘No. No. It wasn’t a strain, not in that way. I’m fine with people I know. Who know me.’
His hand patted her knee and settled completely, this time, on flesh.
‘It’s all right, Jennifer, you don’t have to pretend with me – everyone else, but not with me. I could see it was a strain.’
‘Only because,’ she said, trying to get back on track, ‘I felt everyone was assuming we were back together again. And that’s not how I feel.’
He removed his hand from her knee and switched on the light.
No, no. These things are easier in the dark.
‘Well, I haven’t said anything to give them that idea,’ Alex said defensively, and the hand that had been on her knee was now resting on the steering wheel. She looked at it warily, feeling that, like a large flying insect, it might at any moment settle on her knee again.
‘I’m not accusing you, Alex. I’m just worried that since you split up with Felicity, which I somehow feel was to do with me, you’re starting to hope we could pick up where we left off.’
There, the hand was no longer on the steering wheel, but it did not land on her knee. She felt him take her own hand.
‘Jennifer, I can’t help how I feel about you.’
There was such tenderness in his eyes and in his tone that she was tempted to reel in the rest of her speech – until she remembered her time spent in the loo at the Henshaws’, reading Horse & Hound and feeling like an alien.