Death in Elysium

by Judith Cutler

  Elaine’s house was in the old heart of the village, in what had once been the main shopping street (I didn’t get the impression it was ever quite Bond Street). Now many of the houses had names like The Old Co-op, Bakery Cottage and The Brewer’s House: they were older and less elegant than The Old Rectory. From the outside, Elaine’s – The Hops – looked like a typical Kentish cottage, complete with peg-tiles; inside, Tardis-like, it was bigger than you could imagine, with a rather dark, narrow hall leading to a kitchen as up-to-date as mine in St John’s Wood. Ours in St John’s Wood.

  As I’d expected, Elaine’s kitchen smelt of baking, but I’d not expected the overlay of good coffee from a machine to die for. Instant decision: my next bit of expenditure must be on something like that. I’d had enough of instant or half-cold cafetière coffee. I’d even turned to tea, but since my taste in tea was as expensive (in proportion) as my taste in cars, I didn’t drink too much of that either. Water? In this part of Kent it was so hard you could almost chew it. Perhaps that was why the tea and coffee tasted so bad?

  Since she seemed embarrassed about something, I jumped in with my query about the building work I’d seen. ‘Surely no one’s trying to build on green belt land,’ I concluded. ‘It may even be an SSSI.’

  She blinked at all the sibilants.

  ‘Site of Special Scientific Interest,’ I explained, now into alliteration. ‘Maybe they’ve got rare orchids over there. Or a newt?’

  Laughing at my ignorance, she said, ‘I’ll ask around for you – see if anyone else has spotted activity.’

  ‘Discreetly, if you wouldn’t mind, Elaine. Rectors’ wives are supposed to be like Caesar’s. Only in this case, it isn’t above suspicion, more above suspecting.’

  ‘I’ll talk to George Cox’s wife, Alison, she’s used to being discreet.’ She added, ‘You know she was once a prison governor? In charge of all sorts of notorious inmates. She still practises martial arts, by the way – I think she’s a senior champion at something or other.’

  If only I could learn not to stereotype people. ‘You might give me the low-down on some of the others one day – Ted Vesey, for instance.’

  ‘Assuming I ever get to find out anything about him. Maybe you shouldn’t ask George Cox, though. No love lost there.’

  I nodded. ‘Is there any reason why they loathe each other?’

  I’ll swear she hesitated; she did know something. ‘No idea. Just a mutual antipathy, maybe. And now it’s my turn to pick your brains,’ she said, putting a pod into the coffee-maker. Ah, that must be a point against the things – not very envir-onmentally friendly. Unless I could get one with pods the worms could eat … ‘In fact, you gave me the idea the other night, and I’ve been mulling it over ever since.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘At the PCC meeting. I blurted something out and Ted Vesey shut me up. About all that food left over after WI meetings. We’re compulsive bakers, Jodie, and very competitive, though none of us would admit it.’

  ‘My poor cupcakes.’ I recalled them with an embarrassed sigh.

  ‘I’m sure you’re good at other things,’ she said briskly, not bothering to deny that they were substandard. ‘This business of the shop moving into the church, for instance. Brilliant. What you said about the domino effect of one institution closing was spot on. Unless they turn the pub into a gastropub and simply attract incomers for a posh meal, the Pickled Walnut will die. Of course we lose the pub either way. Try these biscuits – they’re a new recipe.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, absent-mindedly trying one: it was warm from the oven and so wonderfully full of bad things I wouldn’t let my Theo within fifty yards of one. ‘These are excellent, Elaine! Sorry. You were saying …?’

  ‘I was wondering if the WI could sort of take over the pub – out of licensed hours, at least – and turn it into a tea room. What do you think?’ She looked genuinely anxious.

  ‘Have you talked to the landlady about it? What’s her name – Suze?’ Why should I be involved? It was between the WI and the pub, surely.

  ‘I think the idea might … might have more credibility … if it came from you.’

  ‘As the local business guru?’ I snorted. ‘It might, Elaine, but what it gained in credibility it would almost certainly lose in popularity. Think about that PCC meeting,’ I added ruefully, helping myself to a second biscuit. Instant addiction. ‘I’m persona non grata with at least a third of the members.’

  ‘But you won the day. Or you will when we’ve presented the report, anyway. Violet’s absolutely desperate to move; the post office will make no objection so long as a fully trained clerk continues to work for her, which isn’t a problem because the existing one is afraid he’d never get another job, the way things are. Her nephew reckons he can fit a decent glass screen—’

  ‘That’s one job that has to be done professionally!’ I warned her.

  ‘He runs his own kitchen and bathroom installation company. Knows all the safety and fire and building regulations. Says he’ll compete in open tender against anyone.’

  ‘Excellent.’ It was. And so was the third biscuit. ‘All the same, Elaine, I’m an incomer and I’ve made enemies. For a project like the teashop, you might do better to get Mrs Mountford on side.’

  Elaine paused to let me make my own deductions. ‘If you were to get involved,’ she continued, in a somewhat wheedling tone, ‘where would you begin?’

  ‘You’d need a business plan for starters.’

  She looked appalled. ‘Even if we’re volunteers?’

  I nodded firmly. ‘Especially if you’re volunteers. I know you’d be amateurs, but there mustn’t be anything amateurish about the way you do it. Opening hours, rotas for cake-making, substitutes if someone’s ill. Is it just cakes and coffee or would you do light lunches too? If you did, would lunches come with alcoholic drinks? It’s a brilliant, brilliant idea, Elaine, but so that you all stay friends – with each other, with Suze and with the customers – you must all know exactly where you stand and what you’re committing to. Not just cooking the cakes, either: waiting at table, washing up, cleaning. And sourcing – do you buy wholesale, go to a supermarket or effectively subsidize the village shop, wherever that’s located, by buying there?’

  Her face a picture of despair, she tossed back her hair. ‘It sounded so easy, just baking a few cakes and biscuits.’

  ‘I’m sure when you get into a rhythm it will be. Actually, I may be able to suggest a washer-upper or two, not to mention some waiting staff – but they’d have to be paid, and at the national minimum wage, too, if not the living wage. And you’ll have to watch the number of hours they work, so they don’t try to work full-time and still claim the dole.’

  ‘Not those awful kids you seem to have taken under your wing? Oh, Jodie.’ Her mouth turned down quite comically.

  ‘Something to discuss with your colleagues.’

  She looked at me sharply. ‘Our colleagues. You’re a WI member too.’

  Having agreed, with as much enthusiasm as if I was signing up to root canal work, to attend a special WI meeting the following week, I walked home as briskly as Theo would have wanted, my high-vis jacket like a buckler against the dark forces he feared might beset me, the torch a sword. In reality, the beam cast a broad clear light. I needed it. What pavements there were disappeared from one side of the road only to reappear twenty metres or so later on the other. They were uneven too, a mix of flagstone and tarmac. At least I was sure-footed enough in my new flat-heeled loafers, though my former colleagues would have gaped in disbelief that I could bear to wear anything so unfashionable. There were hardly any cars on the roads, and no sign of any of the youngsters who would have alarmed most people but whom Mazza and Burble had assured me were their mates and would therefore never harm me. A couple of elderly dog walkers (the ambiguity is deliberate) greeted me with a cautious wave. Only another three or four hundred metres to go and I’d be within sight of home.

  There was one section of my journey
I didn’t even like by daylight: a K-shaped road junction, the upright of the K being the main street. Any signal a motorist gave couldn’t be clear: was the car heading into an acute or an obtuse angle? A pedestrian needed eyes in the back of his or her head.

  Even as I leapt backwards faster than I knew I could, I found time to wonder why on earth the car had no lights. I don’t think I hit my head as I went down, but I certainly landed hard and awkwardly in a banana-skin pratfall. I blinked hard at the pitch darkness enveloping me. If I hadn’t hit my head, why couldn’t I see? I had a nanosecond of panic: had the fall somehow detached my retinas? Both of them?

  While I talked to myself sternly and found my feet, at last my eyes grew accustomed to the dark – there! I wasn’t blind! – and I was able to pick out on the street the squashed sausage that had once been the torch. It could, I reflected soberly, as I picked up the pieces, have been one of my limbs.

  There was, of course, no sign of the offending driver.

  Theo, whiter and shakier than I was as he checked me over for anything more than bruises, went into middle-aged mode. ‘It must have been one of your young protégés too busy nicking a car to look where he was going. I’ll get on to the police.’

  ‘Would they be interested? A near miss? And in any case, sweet one, I had a sense of a big, powerful car. I think. I couldn’t give any sort of description. I never saw the driver’s face – it could even have been a woman. You know the way some of these incomers drive when they’re off to collect their spouses from the station. Shame about the torch, though. Now, you tell me how that confirmation class went and pour me a drop of that Sauvignon Blanc while you’re about it.’

  ‘And we’ll also talk about a car for you – Monopoly money permitting.’ He added with a grin, ‘I suppose you could always sell Piccadilly Circus.’

  SIX

  The weekend is the busiest time of the week for the average clergyman, especially poor Theo, with so many churches to keep an eye on. Of course he had support: there were a couple of people called lay readers who were allowed to read services and even give sermons, but not to give Communion. There was also a priest who’d retired from Bradford but now lived free in a house in the furthest flung village; in exchange for his accommodation he gave up three or four days a week to parish work. I’d devised a simple program for Theo to work out who was at which church at any given service.

  I hardly saw him on Sundays, when he had to take at least three services; I simply had to accept that for parsons Sunday was the opposite of a day of rest. I still found it disconcerting, however, after a life involving concerts, opera and theatres every weekend, to be on my own on a Saturday evening, and I longed for Theo to be able to sit and share an hour’s peace with me. Was it acceptable to pray for the phone to remain silent? I was always embarrassed to ask for something that would benefit me; in any case, my prayers would rarely have been answered. Tonight it rang just as Theo had picked up a glass of wine. The sound of the voice at the other end made my stomach clench: clearly someone was desperate. It turned out to be a young parishioner whose husband had just announced their marriage was over; he hadn’t, he said, signed up to being the father of a disabled child who simply took over every aspect of his mother’s life. Kissing Theo as I waved him off, I reflected that Merry would have had a pie or cake for him to take with him for the harassed mother. When he’d tried to counsel and pray with the couple, he said he’d drop in on a lonely old lady in one of the alms houses in the same area of the village. But he wouldn’t be late home.

  Back home in St John’s Wood, Saturday evenings were the most convivial of the week. If I wasn’t involved with music, I’d be eating with friends at the latest trendy restaurant. If for some reason I found myself alone, I’d simply have donned my running gear and pounded round well-lit streets with lots of CCTV to keep an eye on me. But after last night’s incident, however much I’d played it down, I was a little jittery. It would be an evening in for me. On my own. Did I dare admit I was lonely?

  Come on. I was a grown woman. Self-sufficient.

  I checked my iPod. Beethoven? Mozart? But how could I luxuriate in an evening of my favourite music when Theo was working his pastoral socks off? I tried to shut out the nasty, niggling voice of conscience, but halfway through the slow movement of Brahms’ D minor Piano Concerto I had to give in. Work for me too. And that meant parish work. But not till the end of the movement: no one could leave Brahms’ Requiem for Schumann half-heard.

  Unable to face cake-making in the user-unfriendly kitchen, I went for another form of punitive homely activity. I’d been cajoled into making fabric bags, some forty centimetres by thirty, to fill with things that would keep children quiet during a service. Had there ever been any children young enough to enjoy the contents it would have been a really good idea. But nothing loath (actually, that’s quite wrong: I hated the chore), I accepted the job, and was supposed to have bought up some remnants from a shop in Canterbury. Needless to say I’d forgotten. I was sure Merry would never have been so remiss. In any case, if one of the kitchen drawers was any indication, she’d probably had a whole bag of scraps of material that might just come in useful one day.

  I hadn’t, of course. Or had I?

  I’d brought down to the village a couple of dresses that I’d hoped to wear at suitable social gatherings. So far there’d been a big round zero. In desperation I’d organized a supper party myself, only to find people turning up in trainers and fleeces and staring at my London gear as if I was a sideshow. Furious with myself for having the wrong expectations and making such a mess of everything, I dragged the dresses from the back of the wardrobe where I’d shoved them and cut them up. Then I settled down with Merry’s old electric machine. There were, I have to say, at the end of my evening, some very grand-looking bags indeed – even if none of the corners was quite a right angle. No wonder I’d been banned from domestic science at school. Still burning with undirected anger, I stuffed each one with scribbling paper, crayons, and a couple of puzzle games, all from pound shops. I’d also raided charity shops for cuddly toys, each of which I’d washed to within an inch of its life. A row of twelve hopeful-looking bears, depressed lions and even a baleful hippopotamus regarded me from their new lodgings, temporarily on the long and fiendishly uncomfortable sofa that dominated the living room. At last I managed to laugh – at them and, more importantly, at myself.

  At last I heard Theo’s key in the lock. But his face told me he’d find nothing to amuse him in the sight.

  Monday morning saw Theo back at the old lady’s, with a casserole I’d made; I was better with savoury food than sweet, which wasn’t saying much, of course. There was also one for the newly-single mother.

  Then I spent half an hour online, striking while Theo’s conscience was still warm. If he now thought I needed a car, I could indulge in something – ah, something that wouldn’t attract Mazza’s keys or vociferous condemnation from Mrs Mountford. So no Porsche. On the other hand, I wanted a little more oomph than the poor Focus possessed. What sort of cars parked here for PCC meetings? I discounted the huge environmentally unfriendly four-by-fours immediately, and a couple of elderly Fiestas. But there were no fewer than three mid-range Audis, if that’s not an oxymoron. So I could have something similar, preferably one that looked mid-range but actually had more under the innocent-looking bonnet than you thought.

  And according to the Internet there was one apparently sitting waiting for me in Ashford, though its twin exhausts would give the game away to anyone in the know. Within minutes I’d fixed a test drive for Wednesday: much as I wanted that jolly red A3 now, now, now, I didn’t want to load Theo with further pressure, and I certainly didn’t want to sacrifice our free day.

  When Burble arrived, not long after ten, which was pretty early for him, I joined him in the garden, hoping to make a final assault on the brambles. In the fine drizzle he made no more than a half-hearted effort; had he not looked so ill and careworn, I’d have snarled at him. At la
st, as damp as he was, I brought out a mug of drinking chocolate apiece and a packet of biscuits from Violet’s. He helped himself almost mechan-ically, while I asked him if he knew anything of the valley building developments. He cocked a half-closed eye at the horizon, as if seeking inspiration, finished the chocolate and declared the green wheelie bin too full for anything else. Since I’d already been told off by the binmen for trying to get rid of bags of green refuse, bags with sharp prickles moreover, I could do little more than agree. He made to leave, but turned back.

  ‘This here website, the one Mazza’s on about – what would it have on it?’

  ‘The sound of the church bells for a start – background music. A list of village activities—’

  ‘Blank page there, then,’ he snorted.

  ‘Announcements about things like the fête. An appeal for funds for the church repairs.’

  His interest was clearly waning, and why not?

  It was time to think on my feet and come up with something I should have thought of at the start. ‘And a montage of photos of people and places. Not just the pretty-pretty cottages and the ducks. Real people. Mazza’s phone’s got a camera. Has yours?’

  ‘Mine’s run by a hamster on a little wheel,’ he snarled, clearly thinking of his peers’ superior models.

  I laughed at the image. Reluctantly, but nonetheless sincerely, I think, he joined in.

  ‘How about you borrow my camera?’ I asked, as casually as it’s possible to ask when offering a piece of kit worth – well, probably more than Theo’s poor old car. ‘It’s pretty straightforward. It’s not point and shoot, but you’d pick it up pretty quickly.’

  He tried to look bored and insouciant, but the inner little boy won hands down. ‘You sure, Jode?’

  ‘Let’s see how you get on with it. Leave your shoes by the back door, will you?’

  Shouldn’t have asked that. He had trainer foot in spades.

  His eyes rounded when I produced the camera, putting it on the table in front of him. ‘Telephoto lens and all? I mean – bloody hell, Jode.’