Starting Over

by Sue Moorcroft

  ‘It won’t take long. I’ll get it. It’ll sell well when it’s pretty and I’d make money even if she didn’t drop any more. But she will.’

  She listened in as, on the mobile, he became a wistful, would-be E-Type-owner. ‘Between you and me,’ he confided in Mrs Partridge, leaning back in his creaky chair, ‘Tess doesn’t want to spend the money. We’re getting married, you know how it is.’ He grinned at her.

  She shut her mouth suddenly, realising her expression had frozen in muppet-like astonishment.

  ‘I can make you an offer – but it may not be what you hope for.’ But then he backed off, as if the whole project seemed suddenly overwhelming. Then waxed enthusiastic. Then thought again. A contrived negotiation; Tess preferred to savour the hot tea. But she heard him calmly offer an amount that was a little over half Mrs Partridge’s ‘last word’ price and the conversation ended suddenly. ‘That made her stutter,’ he observed contentedly, closing his phone.

  Then he sighed. ‘I do feel bad about dropping you.’

  Her shrug was stillborn on a bleat of pain but she managed to be brave. ‘One of those things.’

  ‘You’re all hurt and pale.’

  She tried to make her eyebrows shrug for her.

  ‘It was a total accident. Honestly.’

  ‘Sure. When can we leave?’

  His mobile played a fanfare, and he read the caller’s number, and smirked. ‘Soon, perhaps.’ Sure enough, Mrs Partridge counter-offered. Ratty hinted he’d found a friend to weigh in a few hundred extra pounds so maybe it was worth another look?

  ‘Why?’ Tess scrambled stiffly back into the van that smelt of oil. Sunshine baking through the windscreen washed a flush of discomfort up her spine, sweat broke out on her forehead and she wound down the window. ‘If you’re already into profit, why keep beating her down?’

  The black curls swung as he turned in amazement. ‘I don’t pay more than I need! Profit equates to success.’

  ‘Is your business in trouble?’ Ow, ow, was any other road so riddled with potholes? Each one a separate blaze of pain up her arm and into her shoulder.

  ‘No, but it might be, one day, if I stop doing it right.’ He grinned at her lopsidedly. ‘Think of all my dependants.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘All my illegitimate children.’

  He laughed at her and she realised her expression must have been horrified.

  ‘Don’t look so disgusted, I haven’t any! I meant losing Jos and Pete their jobs!’

  The visit was fruitful, this time. She played the girlfriend grudgingly giving way, he acted his part with staged embraces, running his fingertips in absent-minded caress along the line of her shorts and buttock. But she was ready for him. Reaching up to kiss his throat in feigned affection, she stood hard on his foot.

  His hands immediately fastened in her hair, careful of her injuries, whilst he took a revenge kiss, tongue and all, before whispering, ‘Bitch!’ leaving her breathless, outraged, amused, to hiss back, ‘Bastard!’

  The deal was soon done and Ratty produced a roll of cash from under his dashboard that made Mrs Partridge look dismayed that she was settling for such a small portion of it. She became very po-faced as he swept off his shirt, fastened dungarees over his tattoos and got down to business with a sudden onset of efficiency.

  Tess dozed and sweated in the van while he worked. Two hours and the wheels were back on the E-Type, it was winched onto the trailer and chained down, the accompanying boxes stacked securely in the van. Sniffing impudently around the outbuilding, Ratty claimed several pieces of trim to lie beside them. A wave goodbye and they were off.

  ‘I’m sure she thinks she’s been done.’ Tess gulped Anadin Extra with bottled water and looking at Mrs Partridge, hands on hips, watching them rumble away.

  ‘She’s right.’

  More miles of motorway, darkening as they travelled through afternoon, evening and into night, the trailer rattling reassuringly behind, and Tess curled, asleep, beside him. He dropped the seat arm to cradle her.

  Sleep made her look vulnerable. And desirable. He wanted to stop the van somewhere unlit and caress her soft, slack lips with his, her sleeping eyelids, the hollow of her throat. Kiss her better, kiss every inch, kiss her awake to make love. He thought of how he’d helped her to fasten her shorts, her silky belly on the back of his fingers. The strong urge to let them dip between …

  It was a slow homeward journey because of pulling the extra load but, for him, it wasn’t onerous. When Tess roused, squeaking in pain as she got her shoulder moving, he distracted her by singing. One song after another, husking his favourite words into the darkness at the endless chain of headlights.

  ‘What a hotchpotch,’ she grumbled as ballads followed folk, country, blues. But she listened, tapping her foot, taking more painkillers, fretting in her seat. And when his throat was tired of singing they talked, pushing the miles by as they considered each other’s lives.

  How Ratty had disappointed his father with what Lester termed ‘that surprising garage venture’.

  Her face turned to his in the darkness; when he glanced her way he could see the lights flickering in her eyes. ‘Do you see them? Your parents.’

  He laughed. ‘Of course I see them. They were at the Spring Ball, you danced with my father.’

  Even watching the road and with only the strobe-lights of the oncoming vehicles, Ratty saw her hair swing out and settle around her left breast as she turned more fully, and felt his breath catch. ‘Did I? I didn’t realise. It was a long evening.’

  He thought about telling her. That he’d seen her home, they’d shared a horny interlude, groaning with frustration he’d watched her pass out and cursed his luck. ‘Extremely,’ he agreed neutrally, instead.

  She told him about her father’s proprietorial interference in her life, his frustrating reluctance to blame Olly for his part in her miserable episode. ‘D’you know, when I rang to complain about Olly thinking Jenna was his, he said, sorry he didn’t get a chance to make things clearer? But, if it’d made Olly interested, it served a purpose! He even told Olly my address when I’d expressly asked him not to! I don’t know what to say to keep his nose out. Unless it’s “Piss off, you selfish bastard!”’

  They shouted a laugh together, rousing themselves from the tiredness of the final hour of the journey. She clutched her shoulder, ‘Ow! Ow! I’d love to see Olly’s face!’ Then speculated, ‘Guy might know what’s behind his reappearance.’

  So, she was still thinking about Olly.

  By the time they reached home, it was late. In the almost total blackness of her garden he moved close. ‘Thanks for your help. And your company. Even if I dropped you in the sea, maybe you don’t think I’m quite such a bastard now.’

  ‘N-o-o.’ She laughed, fumbling left-handed with her key. ‘But you still bear watching.’

  He turned the key for her.

  She paused. ‘What do I owe you for the guest house?’

  ‘Co-driver’s expenses. Reclaimable against tax.’ He went on before the uncertainty in her expression could become a protest. ‘And I’m really sorry about your shoulder and everything.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said, before she closed the green door. ‘And at least I feel as if we’re friends, now. It’s like having a sensible version of Guy; mates, and I know you don’t expect anything ... else.’

  Ratty turned back up the lane towards the Cross lit by the light in Crowther’s shop window, enjoying the honeysuckle smell of the village at midnight. He blew a huge sigh and wondered where she’d got that stupid idea.

  Tess slept very late in the morning, then showered and examined her bruises. The elbow was improving but her shoulder was, if anything, still more livid, as stiff and tender as a great big boil. So she ate brunch and strolled to Pennybun Cottage, pausing, as she drifted by, to admire her new patio furniture. It seemed weeks since they’d cooked on the barbecue and drunk wine but, when she lifted the lid, the shrivelled food was still o
n the rack. She wrenched it free and binned it.

  It would be nice to see how Toby was; she’d call after seeing Lucasta. She couldn’t work anyway until her pain had subsided. And Jos, she could call there too, make him a cup of coffee or something. Poor old Jos, he was used to looking after himself but it was horrible to have chickenpox erupting in all the wrong places.

  She clattered Lucasta’s polished brass knocker. Again. Then more loudly.

  Odd. Lucasta normally answered her door like a greyhound out of a trap. Maybe she was in the bathroom. Or at the shop? Out for a drive with someone from the village? Unlikely that Ratty had taken her anywhere, the garage would already be one man short, with Jos ill.

  She began to retreat, peeping tentatively through the windows. Kitchen. Sitting room.

  The veined leg, when she saw it protruding from behind an armchair, jumped her back from the window. ‘Lucasta?’ She cupped her hands around her face against the glass. Oh God! She could see a burgundy slipper on the foot, a fold of blue-and-white dressing gown across the knee. She banged on the window. Then with both fists. ‘Lucasta!’

  The door was locked. She scuttled round the cottage, clutching her shoulder, searching vainly for an open window, banged again on the sitting-room glass and yelled, in case she could be heard, ‘I’ll get help!’

  Poor Lucasta, how long had she lain there? Was she alive? Tess raced back to Honeybun. Phone, phone, phone the garage! Engaged signal; she groaned. Wavered. Ambulance? Or Ratty? Ambulance?

  Ratty first, he’d have the key. She reversed the Freelander into the lane, engine moaning, leaving the shrubs waving, first gear – ‘ouch y’bastard’, as her shoulder twanged. Little Lane, as fast as she dared, must get Ratty.

  Late brake, glance left, ready to whip right and accelerate. A glimpse of McLaren hurtling joyfully towards her across Main Road.

  ‘Shit!’ She stamped on the brake and yanked the steering wheel left, ‘Owwwww!’, dreading the inevitability of car colliding with dog.

  She felt the bump.

  It didn’t seem very hard. But the Freelander was a big vehicle. And McLaren wouldn’t be very solid.

  On a wave of sickness, she pulled up the handbrake and turned off the ignition. No anguished yelping. Pushing the door with a trembling hand, she stepped down, hardly daring to look at her front offside.

  ‘McLaren!’ Sitting quietly in the road, he looked dreamily in her direction and away again. ‘McLaren, thank God!’ She dropped down beside him, wiping tears she hadn’t notice start. Was there any damage? His coat beneath her tentative hands was as white and brown as always, there was no blood. Did that mean he was OK? She certainly couldn’t leave him, anyway, poor lad, sitting so unnaturally well behaved in the middle of the junction of Little Lane and Main Road.

  Gingerly, lip biting, praying for his customary docility, she hauled him into the back of the Freelander, ‘Ouch, ouch,’ and he stretched out slowly. He was bound to be shaken up. Dazed.

  Lucasta! ‘O-h-h-h, G-o-d!’ she groaned, scrabbling back into the driver’s seat, fumbling the ignition, driving with exaggerated care into Main Road and on up to the Cross. Ratty was on the phone near the folded doors when she drew in all anyhow and slithered out of the car.

  He stared. ‘Call you back,’ he said to the phone. ‘You’re crying!’ accusingly, to Tess.

  Her breath was out of rhythm, nipping her chest, making it difficult to speak. ‘It’s McLaren and Lucasta! Ratty, Lucasta’s on the floor and I can’t get in! And you were on the phone, and I’m desperately sorry, but I was rushing and he just bounded across the road from nowhere, I’m sorry!’ Her hair clung infuriatingly to wet cheeks, she tried to shove it behind her ears but it stuck instead to wet fingers.

  She took a panting breath. ‘I should’ve phoned the ambulance. But I thought you could get in, you’ve got a key, and McLaren just ...’

  Ratty stilled her hands, speaking sharply. ‘Wait, tell me properly, calm down, tell me! Lucasta first. What about Lucasta?’

  She dragged in a deep and ragged breath and concentrated. ‘I went round to see Lucasta and she didn’t answer the door and it’s locked and I can see her leg, she’s lying on the floor and your phone was engaged. And I got into the Freelander and I was rushing to come here and …’ Her voice dropped to an agonised whisper. ‘McLaren ran out and I ... I ran him over.

  ‘I can’t see any damage to him,’ she excused herself to Ratty’s back as he snatched at the rear door of the Freelander. ‘But he seems a bit ... bemused.’

  All too horrible. All too horrible, rushing back to Pennybun Cottage with Ratty’s key, calling the paramedics for Lucasta whose face was darkly red, whose breathing was loud in deep unconsciousness. Then ambulance chasing, with Ratty hurling the Freelander about in complete silence, Tess snivelling in the passenger seat and McLaren shaking about silently in the luggage compartment and being a little bit sick.

  Racing into the hospital. Ratty trying and failing to contact Derry Meredith, Lucasta’s son, who hardly ever came to see her and lived in Mill Hill, North London.

  Tess wringing her hands and saying, ‘I’m so sorry!’

  Ratty having to be the one that the doctors took into the relatives’ room. Emerging, blinking huge eyes. ‘She’s gone.’

  Ratty carrying McLaren into his house from the Freelander, stone-faced. Kicking the door shut from inside.

  And, after a sweaty and awful sleepless night, when Tess rang timidly in the morning, Ratty was as cold and hard as marble. ‘McLaren didn’t wake up.’

  Her mind was wool, her ears refusing to accept what she heard. ‘What? What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s dead! OK?’ And then, with gravel in his throat, ‘I don’t want to talk to you, Tess.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Almost the entire village walked into church for Lucasta’s funeral. Tess sidled, last minute, into the hindmost honey-coloured pew, avoiding Ratty. Expressionless Ratty, foreign in a charcoal suit, with Derry, the bearded son from Mill Hill, leading the pall-bearers, two by two slow-stepping up the flagstone nave. Black coffin, brass handles – reminding her joltingly of the brass doorknocker she’d rapped at Pennybun Cottage – a row of wreaths trembling in time.

  Amazing Grace and Abide With Me, but she couldn’t open her throat to sing.

  Feeling as if she wanted to be invisible on the fringes of the service in the churchyard. She tried not to look at the ugly grave, the raw sides of the hole, the heaped earth, intending, the instant the minister was finished, to seek the refuge of Honeybun.

  Of course, it didn’t happen. Angel worked her way backwards to join her, whispering, ‘Hasn’t it been appalling? I’ve had to get Pete’s mum to come and have the kids and Toby’s just a monster at the moment. And Jos is heartbroken to be missing the whole thing.’

  Gwen Crowther, black mac buttoned over her shop overall, dabbed her eyes. ‘Poor Lucasta, we’re all upset, I shall miss her.’

  Of course, Pete followed Angel and, automatically, they converged with Ratty as the service ended.

  Ratty, well-brushed, crisp and most unlike himself, walked alongside a man with startlingly silver hair. Dead straight, it swept across his forehead with the neatness of a bird’s wing above blue eyes that held an expression of control. He was somehow familiar; maybe she’d seen him around the village.

  For the funeral Tess had plaited away her hair, bought a stark navy dress which flounced around her ankles and had three-quarter length sleeves to cover her bruises. Her heeled navy shoes sank into the grass, giving her an excuse to lag. But, in the end, she couldn’t avoid contact with Ratty’s waiting eyes. She slid her gaze past and behind him.

  ‘You’ve met Tess Riddell,’ Ratty told the silver man. ‘Tess bought Honeybun Cottage from The Commuters.’

  ‘Of course.’ The man extended a very clean and soft hand.

  Met? Tess tried to remove the puzzled O from her lips and smiled weakly, pummelling her memory. She was plainly expected to remember. In the
expectant pause for her to join the conversation, her mind went absolutely blank.

  Her glance flickered back to Ratty. I’m stuck.

  Neutrally, he cooperated. ‘Tess is a very talented illustrator, Father.’

  Father! And ‘very talented’. Wow, very nearly a standing ovation by Ratty’s standards. She was able to gather herself to respond, eyeing Lester Arnott-Rattenbury with interest. ‘We met at the ball,’ she agreed, as if she’d known all the time. So many dinner jackets had accompanied her around the dance floor that she’d stopped looking at who filled them.

  Lester Arnott-Rattenbury was familiar for the features he shared with his son. The contrasting hair had thrown her, but the likeness was there, though Lester’s expression was so careful where Ratty’s was ever a mirror for his thoughts: the humour that so often lit his face, the grimness that sometimes spoilt it, concentration for those who entertained him, contempt for those who bored him.

  She resolutely avoided his eyes, sure now they’d be shining with accusation, inevitable anger, even dislike.

  I don’t want to speak to you, Tess.

  Since she’d heard them, those words had whipped around her mind, kept time with her footsteps as she walked through the village and along the bridleways where the nettles were growing long and reaching towards one another. I don’t want to speak to you, Tess.

  She had, after all, killed his dog.

  Some dreary business she’d occupied herself with, that day, the day after Lucasta and McLaren’s deaths, brushing away, blotting away, wiping away the sliding tears. Somewhere, sometime she’d heard it was an actor’s trick to prompt tears by telling themselves, ‘My dog is dead.’ As she ironed jeans and shirts, her mind kept helplessly supplying, ‘His dog is dead. I’ve killed his dog. Poor, poor McLaren!’ The tears slid on.