Bitter Poison

by Margaret Mayhew

  He had never taken much interest in flowers or gardens before, having spent most of his life without any personal involvement in either, and when he had moved into Pond Cottage he had barely been able to tell a daffodil from a daisy. Thanks to Naomi, he had begun to learn. It had been a slow process but he had reached the stage where he had begun to understand what gardening, even in a very modest, amateur way, was about. It was, he had discovered, not only a source of pleasure but of solace. A reflection of one’s inner feelings and thoughts. Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are. He had read that somewhere and there was probably some truth in it, though he wasn’t quite sure what that made him.

  The garden at Pond Cottage had been a bramble-choked, nettle-smothered mess when he had arrived. Naomi had encouraged him to clear it and made helpful suggestions, given him spare plants and lent him an excellent gardening book, but she had insisted on him making his own choices. The whole point, she had maintained, was that it should be his garden. Mistakes and all. Every gardener made mistakes, apparently, and they could always be rectified; plants moved, new ideas tried out and old ones done away with. And through the garden at Pond Cottage he had somehow regained his faltering grip on life. Found a reason to carry on.

  Thursday appeared from the direction of the sitting room and went to sit in front of his food bowl. An early supper was, apparently, required. The Colonel got out a tin of cat food that had NEW RECIPE printed in large letters across the label. Tempting Fish Morsels for Discerning Cats. He forked it into the bowl and stood back. Thursday approached the tempting fish morsels as cautiously as a soldier entering a minefield. He sniffed at them several times before he walked away towards the kitchen door and waited again, ignoring the perfectly good cat flap that had been specially installed for him. The Colonel bowed as he opened the door.

  He went into the sitting room to light the fire. It caught quickly, flames leaping and crackling, and he sat down in his wing-back chair and picked up the newspaper. He had just read the front page when the phone rang.

  ‘Hallo, Dad.’

  He had braced himself for his daughter-in-law and it was a relief to hear his daughter’s voice instead and not be addressed as ‘Father’.

  ‘How are you, Alison?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. Busy, as usual. How about you?’

  ‘Fine too.’

  She would be phoning from her office high up on the thirty-third floor of a glass building in the City. She was extremely successful in her work and a director of her company. He was very proud of her, but he still wished that she could be happily married as well. He rarely broached the subject and her answer was always that she had never met any man she would want to spend the rest of her life with, or who would want to spend his with her. ‘You and Mum are a hard act to follow,’ was her usual comment. ‘You set the bar pretty high.’

  Being left alone as one grew old was not something he could recommend, which was why he feared for her. But he kept his black dog days from both his children. They had their own lives to lead.

  ‘I was thinking of coming down to see you the weekend after next, if that would be OK, Dad?’

  ‘Of course it would. Come on Friday, if you can.’

  ‘I don’t think I could get away till Saturday. I’ve got a late meeting. It’s pretty hectic here, as usual.’

  ‘Saturday it is, then. We’ll go to the pub for lunch.’

  They talked for a while and he had just put down the phone when the front door bell rang. Not Marjorie Cuthbertson, he most sincerely hoped.

  ‘I’ve found you at last.’

  Joan Dryden was wearing the same wolf fur coat that had so impressed, or shocked, the Frog End Players at the village hall read-through. She wore it with the collar turned up and framing her face, her hands dug deep into the pockets, her bucket-sized bag slung over her shoulder. In his opinion, real fur looked far better on its original owner but, in this case, he was almost prepared to make an exception. Almost, but not quite.

  He said, ‘I’m sorry if you’ve had trouble doing so.’

  ‘I wanted to phone but I didn’t know your surname so I couldn’t look you up in the book. All I knew was that you were the Colonel and you lived in a cottage on the village green. I’ve been to four of them already and the woman in the last one was some funny old maid who wasn’t at all helpful. I don’t think she wanted to tell me which cottage was yours. I had to ask her very nicely. Can I come in?’

  He showed her into the sitting room.

  ‘How cosy! I rather envy you. We positively rattle around in Hassels and it’s freezing cold, even with the heating full on.’

  He took the heavy coat from her shoulders and laid it over a chair. How many wolves had given their lives for it? Four? Five? Six? It was hard to say.

  ‘Please sit down, Mrs Dryden.’

  She took Thursday’s place, and Naomi’s. Luckily neither was there to mind.

  ‘Do call me Joan. What do I call you?’

  ‘Hugh.’

  ‘I’ve always liked that name. There’s something very attractive about it.’

  ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea?’

  ‘A drink would be much better. Vodka and tonic, if you have it.’

  ‘Ice?’

  ‘And lemon.’

  He went away to make her drink, pouring a plain tonic for himself to keep her polite company. He wondered why she had called. ‘How are you settling in?’

  ‘Packing cases everywhere still. Kenny says he’s too busy to help and my dear daughter won’t lift a finger, of course. She just lies around all day doing absolutely nothing.’

  He remembered Alison coming down from London to help him with his cases when he had moved into Pond Cottage, making light work of a depressing and sometimes harrowing job. Unwrapping things that belonged to the past: books, ornaments, pictures, vases, lamps, framed photographs that he and Alison had both known well from the time when Laura had been alive and which had gone with them from one soulless army married quarters to the next, transforming them immediately into a home. He had doubted whether the same would happen with Pond Cottage. He had done his best, but Laura’s magic touch was missing.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m used to it. We’ve never got on since the day she was born. It’s entirely mutual. Clarissa hates me and I can’t stand her either. In fact, I wish she’d never been born. Does that shock you, Hugh?’

  ‘No. But it’s very sad that you should feel like that. Perhaps things will improve as she grows older.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Is she studying?’

  ‘Studying! That’s a joke. Clarissa has never studied in her life. Her last school finally got fed up with her and kicked her out, and several others before that one did the same. None of them would keep her. Now she’s hanging around, waiting for Kenny to buy her a flat in London. You see, she’s cottoned on to the idea that the worse she behaves the sooner he will, just to get rid of her.’

  ‘Surely not.’

  ‘It’s true, but I won’t bore you with the subject any longer. Actually, I came to ask you to have dinner with us a week on Saturday. We have some old friends, the Bournes, staying over that weekend. I think you’d enjoy meeting them.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you but my daughter is coming down from London.’

  ‘Bring her too.’

  He said, ‘You’ll have to excuse us, I’m afraid. Alison and I don’t see each other very often.’

  ‘You’d have all the rest of the weekend.’

  ‘It never seems quite enough.’

  ‘Your daughter must be very different from mine.’

  ‘Well, she’s a good deal older, for one thing. She’s in her late thirties.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Partner?’

  What an inadequate word it was, he thought. Partners were for forming companies, playing bridge or tennis, or dancing with. It had nothing to do with t
wo people sharing their lives. The English language – so rich in words – had failed miserably to come up with anything better.

  ‘No, not that either. I wonder if you realize that the Players rehearse every Sunday afternoon? They’ll be expecting you to turn up.’

  ‘So I gather. Actually, Hugh, I’ve decided that I really can’t take part in that tedious play. Mrs Cuthbertson will have to find another Snow Queen.’

  ‘What a shame. You would have been perfect.’

  ‘I don’t have much to say or do.’

  ‘But you’re the central character. The title and the whole point of the story. And they won’t be able to find anyone else who looks nearly as good.’

  ‘That’s their problem, not mine.’

  He said, ‘I’m sure there’s no need for you to be at all the rehearsals. Just the last few, to get the moves right and practise with the sledge.’

  ‘Sledge? What sledge?’

  He smiled slowly. ‘The one I’m making for you.’

  ‘You’re making it?’

  ‘I’m doing my best. I’m afraid it’s nothing special. Just some old planks nailed together, but I’ll be painting them white to make them look as good as possible. And it’s going to have concealed wheels so that you can be pulled across the stage. If you remember from the read-through, the Snow Queen enters and entices the boy, Kai, to go away with her to her ice palace at the North Pole. It should be a proper horse-drawn sleigh, of course, complete with jingle bells, but unfortunately the Players can’t run to that, and nor can the village hall stage, so it will have to be the home-made sledge.’

  She stared at him. ‘Is this meant to be funny, Hugh?’

  ‘Not at all. It’s very serious.’ He smiled at her again. ‘You’ll be perfect in the part, and I promise to do my best with the sledge.’

  Freda Butler adjusted the U-boat commander’s binoculars to improve her view of the Colonel’s cottage on the other side of the green. It was surprising how well she could see with them even when it was dark. No doubt, the captain would have used them at night, too, searching for his prey. Convoy ships were blacked out, she knew, but their silhouettes would still have been visible in certain conditions, especially in full moonlight. Unlike the U-boat commander, she had the advantage of the Colonel’s sitting-room lamp as an aiming point. Fortunately, he had not yet drawn the curtains.

  Sometime earlier, Mrs Dryden had parked her car outside Lupin Cottage and knocked at her door – unnecessarily loudly. She had seemed very put-out when Miss Butler had opened it, having concealed the binoculars.

  ‘Oh! I was looking for the Colonel.’

  She had been wearing that dreadful fur coat – real fur – that she had worn for the village hall read-through. Miss Butler found it very upsetting to think of the poor animals who had died to provide it. Wolves, she thought, and several of them. They might be savage on occasion, but they were still God’s creatures and entitled to live out their lives. In fact, she had recently read a very interesting article in a newspaper that had said that wolves were good for the environment because they preyed on deer that would otherwise strip young trees bare if left to browse unthreatened. Thanks to wolves keeping the deer numbers down, forests and plants flourished, providing a habitat for birds and all kinds of species.

  She had said, very politely, ‘I’m afraid the Colonel doesn’t live here.’

  ‘Well, can you tell me where he does?’

  The tone was impatient but Miss Butler had held her ground. After all, an Englishman’s home was his castle – not to be disclosed to all and sundry.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’

  ‘I’m Joan Dryden. My husband and I have moved into Hassels recently. I’d like to return the Colonel’s call on us – if someone will kindly tell me where he lives.’

  Of course, Miss Butler already knew perfectly well who the woman was – the whole village knew – and she also happened to be familiar with her other name, Joan Lowe. She had once been famous for modelling clothes and her name and photograph had often appeared in the popular press – though that had been some years ago. If Miss Butler remembered correctly – and she usually did – there had been a big scandal when she had run off with Mr Dryden while he was actually married to someone else. Today, of course, nobody would be in the least shocked. It happened all the time. She seemed to remember, too, that his first wife had tragically committed suicide after he had left her. There had been quite a bit about it in the newspapers.

  ‘I’m not sure if he’s at home.’

  ‘I can find that out for myself.’

  She had stuck to her guns. ‘He may be working in his shed, in which case he won’t wish to be disturbed.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll mind if it’s me, do you?’

  It had been a valiant but vain attempt to spare the Colonel. In the end, she had been obliged to point out Pond Cottage, across the green, where the lamp was glowing in the sitting-room window.

  What a dreadful woman! As she had suspected, Joan Dryden had a lot in common with the late Lady Swynford. She found herself disliking her quite as much.

  It was almost an hour now since she had watched Mrs Dryden drive away round the green to Pond Cottage. She had tracked her up the path to the front door, seen the Colonel open it and Mrs Dryden go inside, then watched them moving around the sitting room.

  And she was still there.

  ‘You’re early, Naomi.’

  ‘I’ve come to protect you.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘From the likes of Joan Dryden. I thought she’d never leave, Hugh.’

  ‘I assure you, protection is not required. How did you know she was here, anyway?’

  ‘I looked out of my window and saw that flashy car of hers parked outside your gate.’

  Child’s play for the Frog End KGB, he thought. They would know to the minute what time his visitor had arrived and exactly what time she had left. The ‘funny old maid’ mentioned by Joan Dryden as her fourth port of call round the green would have been Freda Butler, who was doubtless still on conning-tower duty from her sitting-room window.

  ‘Well, come in and have a drink.’

  ‘Jolly good idea!’

  Thursday, who had just settled himself comfortably in his fireside place on the sofa, was re-parked at the other end while the Colonel drew the curtains, thwarting Miss Butler, put on another log and poured the drinks.

  ‘Good health, Naomi.’

  ‘Cheers, Hugh. What did she want?’

  ‘To invite me to dinner. She has some friends visiting soon for the weekend.’

  ‘Are you going?’

  ‘No. Alison is coming down.’

  ‘That’s nice for you. And a good excuse.’

  He said drily, ‘She didn’t seem to think so.’

  ‘I don’t suppose people often refuse her.’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Well, I hope she’s going to turn up for the rehearsal on Sunday afternoon.’

  ‘She’s actually decided to opt out completely.’

  ‘Oh, Hugh, that would be disastrous! We’ll be left with Monica Pudsey.’

  ‘I may have managed to persuade her to stay.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘For one thing, I told her I didn’t think there was any need to attend every single rehearsal.’

  ‘There isn’t. She’s only on a few times and hardly says anything. I’ll have a word with Marjorie and she’ll sort it out.’

  ‘I also told her about the sledge that I was making especially for her to be pulled around on.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She thought it sounded rather amusing.’

  ‘Amusing?’

  ‘Well, difficult to take seriously.’

  ‘I hope Marjorie doesn’t get to hear that.’

  ‘I assured her that it was far from a joke. Especially for me.’

  ‘How are you getting on with it, by the way?’

  ‘I’ve made a start.’

>   ‘Good. Can I see it?’

  He said kindly but firmly, ‘No, Naomi. You may not.’

  EIGHT

  Alison arrived on Saturday morning. The Colonel hadn’t seen his daughter for several months and, as always, it was a pleasure. He kissed her cheek and she smiled up at him.

  ‘You’re looking well, Dad.’

  ‘So are you.’

  But he thought that she looked tired.

  ‘It’s mostly make-up, Dad. I’m about to have a breakdown from overworking.’

  ‘Lucky you’re taking a holiday soon.’

  ‘Can’t wait. But I’m sorry I won’t be spending Christmas with you, like last year.’

  ‘I think you’ll find Zermatt has rather more to offer than Frog End.’

  ‘You know, I used to think it was deadly here but I’ve changed my mind, now that I’ve got to know it better. And it seems to suit you, Dad.’

  ‘It does.’

  ‘But Marcus says you’re going to them for Christmas.’

  ‘That’s the general idea.’

  ‘Will you survive Susan?’

  Alison had never made any secret to him of her poor opinion of her sister-in-law. He regretted it as much as his own inability to feel closer to his son’s wife.

  He said, ‘It’s very good of them to ask me.’

  ‘Well, don’t let her persuade you to go and live near them. You’d hate it.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘I see Thursday’s still condescending to stay.’

  Alison was a cat person, like Marjorie Cuthbertson, otherwise Thursday would never have come into the sitting room. He walked past her and jumped up on to the sofa where he allowed her to pat his head before he settled down, paws folded beneath his chin, blinking his eyes slowly, prepared to listen to their conversation.

  ‘Yes, I’m in favour at the moment.’

  ‘Well, he knows he’s on to a good thing, Dad. Cats aren’t fools.’

  They walked over to the Dog and Duck for lunch. It was rather a shame that the pub had been done up since the time he had visited it many years ago when he and Laura had been touring in Dorset. In those days there had been an old flagstone floor, heavy wooden settles, draught beer, cheese and pickle sandwiches and Smiths crisps. Now the flagstones had disappeared under a patterned carpet, the benches had been replaced by modern chairs, the beer came out of a keg and a new extension had been built on the back of the pub where full meals were served. Still, one had to move with the times. Or rather, pubs did, if they wanted to keep in business.