Ruth sighed. Night had fallen outside and she drew the curtains over the blacked out windows. Somewhere downstairs she could hear Starlight wailing; Heather must be trying to get her to bed.
Simon had been delegated to telephone Aunty Muriel and put their master-plan into action. Belinda had written the number down for him from a diary in her handbag. As he approached the telephone Granny McKay’s voice could be heard shrieking, ‘Will someone answer that bloody telephone!?’ and it instantly began to ring. As he answered it, Simon wondered with a weird shudder if Granny was some kind of psychic.
A few moments later, he replaced the receiver on the hook and rubbed his hands together. His task, of inviting Aunty Muriel, had been made blissfully easy. The caller had been the extremely irate matron of the Oaks who had enquired initially whether Mr Burgess was at this address, and then, when this was confirmed, demanded to know why an old and infirm man had been abducted, without permission, and taken to some remote and god-forsaken corner of the country by total strangers. On further enquiry it seemed that Mr Burgess had been taken away from the Oaks without the sanction of his family or the knowledge of the management. The possibility of kidnap had been very much at the forefront of everyone’s mind. Only a chance telephone enquiry from Miss McKay had solved the mystery for them. Now, with the confirmation that Mr Burgess was indeed safely (if illegally) ensconced, a local GP would be contacted so that he could deliver and administer some vital medication. Also, she must warn him, a police team had been mobilised and would soon be on the scene. Finally, a police car was being despatched from the Oaks with a member of the nursing staff to recover the errant resident.
It had taken Simon no time at all to suggest that Aunty Muriel also be one of the passengers in order to calm Granny McKay’s distress at the loss of her male companion. A quick call to Aunty Muriel, therefore, to confirm this arrangement, had completed his task. Her satisfaction had been quite evident. Inclusion in the party, even if only at the last moment and under these unusual circumstances, was better than nothing, and the chance to humiliate Sandra in person and, by association, June, for such foolishness, could not be passed up. And to achieve this at no personal cost or inconvenience in the way of travel was an added bonus. She would throw a few things into a case and be ready for the officer when he called, she said, straight after she had bobbed next door to Mrs Powell to explain the whole ridiculous story and to leave her key.
Simon explained the situation briefly to Heather as she passed through the hall with Starlight, who was to be put to bed. Starlight’s co-operation in this process was evidently not to be relied upon; she thrashed and wailed in her mother’s arms. Jude had been recruited as reinforcement and his face was grim. They mounted the stairs as the condemned might mount the gallows.
He met James coming from the kitchen bearing a drinks tray complete with ice bucket and a selection of bottles, and gave him a conspiratorial wink.
‘Cocktails are served in the lounge, sir,’ James intoned.
‘More drinks?’ Simon laughed, ‘Oh well, we’ll probably need them. I think there are going to be fireworks. Stand by.’
‘Right you are,’ James winked. ‘“Anything can happen in the next half hour.”’
‘That’s about the size of it!’
Simon proceeded to the kitchen where Tansy and Rachel were setting the table under instruction from Belinda. He took his sister to one side and prepared her for a surprise arrival from the police imminently.
‘Of course,’ Belinda laughed grimly. ‘Apart from the arrival of an escaped convict it was the only thing left that could possibly happen! I suppose they’ll all want dinner?’
✽✽✽
Ellie had topped her mobile phone credit up at the shopping centre and had discovered that a weak, intermittent signal was to be found near the empty fountain on the front lawn. She stood and shivered in the chilly air. Caro’s phone rang out but she didn’t answer. Ellie was reduced to recording a plaintive voice message. ‘Caro, it’s me. I don’t know if you got my texts. You haven’t texted back. Please don’t say anything to Rob, Caro. If you tell him... it would just be so awful, for me. There are things you don’t know, things that I haven’t explained very well. I think I might have given you the impression that... But I can’t go into it all now. Caro, please, if you’re my friend, don’t tell Rob. Please, Caro, please, whatever you do, if you care about me at all, please, don’t tell Rob. You don’t know... You don’t know what he’s like...’ The connection broke off abruptly. She had no idea whether any of her messages had been transmitted. She sat forlornly on the cold stone of the fountain’s parapet. It was quite dark; the grass and the trees just shades of grey in the deeper dimness, and out of the gloom a ghostly figure loomed, two figures - Mitch and his dog.
He was hovering at a little distance, unwilling to intrude, but she acknowledged him with a smile and a flick of her hair.
‘Hello,’ he said.
He had his hands thrust deeply into his pockets. His shirt, surely too thin for the penetrating chill of the evening, filled and billowed like a sail in the breeze. His hair, just a shade too long perhaps, winnowed attractively in the wind. She had, even with all her troubles, been conscious of him during the day, a hesitant, self-effacing figure in the crowd of vociferous relatives. He managed to be physically present and yet somehow psychologically at a distance, not quite at ease, forever poised to leap up and go off at the least indication that something was needed. She wondered how much he had heard of her message.
He jerked his chin up towards the sky. ‘Seen that star?’ he asked. ‘Venus. Always the first one to come out.’
Her eyes followed his up into the blue-black tent of the sky. Venus glowed, an icy white shard above them. ‘Do you know them all?’ she asked. She was, in fact, quite impressed. It was not the kind of knowledge that boys her own age would have, or at least admit to.
He came over and sat next to her. ‘Some,’ he acknowledged. ‘In Africa, there were more of them, too many to make out with the naked eye.’
The word naked hovered between them momentarily.
From the house the screams of Rob’s computer game, mingled with Starlight’s angry remonstrance at being put to bed, came to them across the lawns. Silent, but just as agonised, Ellie knew, was the straining of family forbearance within. Just June had been bad enough, but now? How many doddering McKays were there, she thought, just more distractions that would let her brother get away with torturing her.
‘What must you think about us all,’ she murmured rhetorically.
‘What do you mean?’
She nodded towards the house and gave a self-conscious laugh. ‘You must think we’re all mad.’
‘I don’t think anything at all about it,’ he said. ‘It’s none of my business.’
‘I should be so lucky!’ Ellie grimaced. How wonderful it must be to be unconnected! If only she could sever the ties which bound her to her brother!
‘Your brother?’ he suggested. Ah. So he had heard her message. ‘What’s his problem?’
She gave another laugh, harsh and hopeless this time, then shook her head. ‘He really is mad I sometimes think. He’s screwed up, anyway,’ she said. ‘He didn’t want to come on holiday – well, the way things are going, that’s understandable – and whenever he’s miserable he takes it out on me.’
‘I see.’
‘Really, what he wants,’ Ellie said, surprised at how easily, with him, the words came, ‘is to be sent home. He’s behaved – well – just so badly. Having that game on all the time, so loud, all that horrible screaming. He was so rude to Rachel...’
‘And he’s upset you.’
‘Potentially.’
‘Would you like it if he was sent away?’
‘Oh! Yes! But that’s not going to happen, is it. What would the great McKay gathering be without Prince McKay?’
‘Sounds like, for you, it would be much more enjoyable.’
Suddenly a bedroom window was
thrown open and a piercing whistle shattered the night.
‘Oh,’ said Mitch, getting up. ‘I’m needed. They mustn’t be able to get the baby to settle.’ He snapped his fingers a couple of times and Tiny emerged from the shadows under the trees. Mitch took a few steps towards the house and then turned. ‘Are you coming in?’ he asked. ‘It’s cold. Don’t stay out here by yourself.’
They closed the door on the night and Mitch dashed up the stairs, passing June as she descended with Granny McKay perched frailly on her arm. Granny was wearing full royalty regalia, including several strings of paste pearls and earrings which flashed alternately red, white and blue. Mr Burgess followed, assisted by Sandra and Les. Mr Burgess wore no trousers. His portmanteau, still clasped to his body, had turned out to be entirely empty. He had soiled his trousers and refused to borrow anyone else’s. He wore a pair of Les’ underpants in the mistaken belief that they were his own. Their progress down stairs was extremely slow; Granny complained querulously at every step that there was no lift. Todd and Toby bowled down the stairs around them and darted down the corridor towards the boiler room where they dumped their gear in soggy heaps. Simon met them erupting back towards the study where Rob had promised them a turn on Fatal Blow.
Todd stopped only to look up earnestly into his father’s face and pant out, ‘Aunty Ruth says we’ve got to play a board game after tea, we don’t have to do we? I don’t want to be bored!’ He chortled at his own hilarity, before darting after his brother.
Simon, his sons, Ellie, Granny, June, Les, Mr Burgess and Sandra converged in the hall. Ruth was descending the stairs with another armful of laundry. On the landing above Heather, Mitch and Jude paced with a wailing Starlight. Elliot emerged from the lounge pink from pre-dinner cocktails en route to his room to get changed for dinner. Mary and Robert were already in the lounge with James and Miriam. Rob was in the study, from where the sound of deafening explosions and blood curdling death throes emanated. Kevin, it later transpired, was with him, having made himself useful there by revealing various cheats and shortcuts on the game.
Then the police arrived.
They spilled out of the two black vans which had arrived at speed on the gravelled sweep, perhaps a dozen or fifteen in number. The men split into teams. One group spread out over the lawns and lay commando style on the grassy sward which only an hour before had been the stage for faerie frolicking. Another team filtered like shadows into the darkness, circling the house, hugging the stonework round to the rear. A third stood in readiness on each side of the front door. Their spectacular entrance owed as much to many hours of rehearsal as it did to back-episodes of Taggart and the Sweeny. Their knock and shouted warning caused Tiny, recumbent on the hall hearth, to leap to his feet with unexpected alacrity and begin to bay and snarl in ferocious tones that his Baskerville cousin would have been proud of. The shock as the squad burst in through the door brandishing truncheons and in full battle cry caused Mr Burgess to urinate involuntarily. The splash of liquid on the polished floor was surprisingly loud even in the furore of shouting and screaming. Simultaneously, at the back of the house, the kitchen door flew open and three constables stumbled in causing Tansy and Rachel to scream like banshees and Belinda to drop a tray of meringues onto the floor with a clatter.
‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ she said crossly.
In the lounge, finding the doors locked, the policemen shone torches into the room and shouted instructions at the people inside to stand against the far wall with their hands above their heads.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ complained Miriam, ‘where do they think we are, Baghdad?’
In the hall, Sandra knocked into the hall table. A vase of flowers crashed to the floor. Todd and Toby, white faced, threw themselves behind their father. Ruth threw the laundry down and ran back up the stairs, screaming Ben’s name. Jude, on the landing, positioned himself in front of his wife and child. Les put his hands up above his head, June prostrated herself on the floor.
Granny sank regally into a deep curtsey and said, ‘Welcome, your Majesty.’
The policeman in charge established an interview room in the study. His comrades took off their combat gear and slouched around the hall. Presently they were offered tea, which they accepted in good humour. Belinda served the children with their dinner in the kitchen. The boys’ eyes were agog with the excitement of it all. They all talked about the arrival of the policemen at the same time, their mouths full of mechanically extracted, reconstituted lamb. Toby even ate his vegetables without noticing it. Their fear had been utterly forgotten.
Ellie complained that she was not allowed to eat with the grown-ups. ‘I’m not a child,’ she said bitterly.
‘Hah!’ Rob shouted.
Ruth, who had not been forewarned by Simon of the impending invasion, had nevertheless recovered quickly from the ordeal. She poured drinks of squash for the children and passed tomato ketchup round. ‘Goodness knows how long it will be before we can eat anything,’ she said. ‘It could be hours. Luckily, the lamb steaks won’t spoil, whereas your burgers would have been like cardboard if we’d kept them hot any longer.’
‘They taste like cardboard now,’ said Ellie sulkily.
‘At least we don’t have to sit and watch Granddad eat,’ Tansy whispered. The old man’s table manners had revolted her. He was always spilling and dribbling and he made loud chewing and swallowing noises which were disgusting and made her feel sick.
In the lounge, the other grown-ups gathered round the drinks tray. Elliot was busy topping up glasses. He had assumed the guise of suave and charming host once more. Surprisingly, he had not waged a one-man war of attrition against the police, barring them from his house and promising legal action for the intrusion of his privacy. In fact at first he had been rather afraid and had sought more to placate than to provoke. Then, as the police officer and Simon between them had explained the situation, he had regained his composure and suggested that the police weaponry could be dispensed with, and tea provided. Mary, naturally, was shocked and upset. James had taken her under his wing and was seated in the far corner of the room with her on the raised hexagonal rostrum area, chatting quietly and calmly over the events which had led up to the raid. Old Robert had been rather traumatised by the whole thing. He had been too young to fight in the Second World War, of course, but he had not escaped National Service and, after that, driving his wagon, had experienced one or two nasty moments in Eastern Germany. Heather sat next to him and stroked his hand. She had been badly shaken too, completely misconstruing, for a while, the reason for the police raid and clutching Starlight to her with grim determination. Granny seemed to have forgotten all about the arrival of the police. She stood by the drinks tray and guzzled gin and tonic and regaled anyone who would listen with an entirely fictional account of her evacuation as a child to Balmoral, where, it seems, she had befriended Princess Margaret and where they had both been seduced by an under-footman. All attempts to put Starlight to bed had been abandoned. Alone, she seemed entirely unperturbed by the arrival of militia. She was busy entertaining the troops in the hallway, trying on their helmets and untying their bootlaces.
Sandra and Kevin had been seized as the main quarry of the police search once Mr Burgess had been identified and briefly checked over, and his trouserless state explained. An attempt to interview Mr Burgess had proved quite hopeless. He had no idea where he was, or how he had got there, but had been well treated and was especially looking forward to meeting Her Majesty.
Sandra and Kevin had been taken into the study where the policeman had interrogated them, pressing Kevin quite forcefully to admit that he had attempted to kidnap Mr Burgess with a view to extorting money and that the whole thing had been undertaken in league with and possibly at the instigation of his notorious, criminally-connected brothers. Kevin, in stammered half sentences, protested his innocence of anything more than ‘fetching the old codgers on holiday,’ and it did increasingly seem to the investigating officer quite
unlikely that his suspect would have the wit, let alone the nerve, to conceive and execute such a plan. Sandra had been weeping and snivelling quite openly, protesting their innocence. She wrung her hands while she spoke and bit her nails while she listened and occasionally wiped her nose on her sleeve, having no handkerchief to hand. Mr Burgess had had a suitcase, she said. He had been waiting on the drive. He had climbed into the car with Granny voluntarily. She had assumed that this had been arranged the night before and that her mother had simply failed to let her know. It had happened before, she said, lots of times. Her mother would send her to collect something from a shop and by the time she got there June would have been on the telephone to order extra, or other items. This had been just the same. It had happened in a very natural way which made her think that everyone except her knew about the arrangement. Kevin nodded eagerly, but looked deathly white, and, if possible, more gormless than usual.
June had been in hysterics. Rob and Les had had to carry her up to her room. Ruth had offered a tranquiliser tablet to calm her but she had called insistently for brandy instead. Now she was lying in a darkened room moaning softly.
Les had left her to it. ‘This is what happens when you interfere,’ he had said, at the door. ‘You owe all those good people an apology. Your mother doesn’t belong here - she needs full time care. Sandra and Kevin weren’t invited and neither were we. I told you we should have gone home on Friday.’
Relative Strangers Page 22