In Search of Love, Money & Revenge

by Hilary Bailey

  ‘That was different,’ her mother told her.

  When her mother had left Vanessa took herself to bed and cried for most of the night.

  It was a dreadful week. Strangely, the Arcadia was fuller on more evenings than it had been since the opening. The weather was hot and humid. Somehow Vanessa and Annie, together with Abigail and her partner, managed the extra work. But they were increasingly tired, going home each night with swollen feet and smelling of food. Melanie and her friend Viv, now on holiday from school, did most of the work in the snack bar, even ordering supplies and pretending to be Mrs Vane.

  On Saturday night Annie reported, ‘We’d have broken even this week, if it hadn’t been for Andy Campbell’s pals’ usual visit.’ The improvement in trade made it even harder to decide whether or not to accept Sam Abbott’s offer. Time was running out.

  ‘Let’s go down and see Tom tomorrow,’ Annie said to Melanie. ‘You still haven’t seen the foxes. It’ll be fresher in the country and it’s a good way of dodging Abbott’s phone call if he rings to ask us for a decision. Vanessa needs to get out, too.’

  The Kenton Post, which had come out the day before, had a full front page covering the Savernake Estate story, by-line, Ben Gathercole. There were pictures of the Savernake residents picketing the council on the day of their emergency meeting. Local teachers had mobilised their pupils – ‘Save our Park’ read the banners. ‘Playspace must be saved’ read a banner, upside down, in the hands of a small child in a balloon-festooned buggy. In the event, chiefly because of Betsey Jones’s recruitment of the Conservative councillors, Kenton Council had voted not to allow a vote on the project by tenants until there was more information and the residents had met to make their views known. Annie glanced at the story, but threw the paper away and didn’t mention it to Vanessa as it would have made her think about Ben Gathercole.

  Of course they should have rung before they went down to Charters House, in the grounds of which Tom’s cottage stood, but they all piled cheerfully into the van they’d borrowed from Vanessa’s father, planning to give Tom a surprise. Even if he wasn’t in, they could drive on the fifteen miles to Froggett’s and surprise Annie’s parents instead.

  But as she headed down the overgrown path in the grounds of the empty and shuttered Charters House, where Tom’s cottage stood, Annie felt a qualm. Was it really such a good idea for five of them, she, Vanessa, Melanie and the two children, to arrive without notice? They’d set out excitedly, but would Tom be annoyed by this unexpected arrival? As they went on, thick trees began to overhang the path darkly. It was very quiet and still. They proceeded in Indian file, Annie in front, Vanessa and the children next, Melanie to the rear. The cottage was silent. They knocked on the door in vain. Annie pushed open the door of Tom’s workshop, a large shed a little distance from the cottage in which he had installed big windows. It was very tidy. At the back stood his small printing press and the screenprinting equipment. On benches which ran down both sides of the shed lay piles of paper, a shelf of type, tidily arranged, pieces of wood, stacked. Tom’s wood-cutting tools hung neatly ranged on one wall. A half-completed woodcut six inches square, showing a field full of sheep, lay on the bench near the door.

  They stood and pondered outside the shed. ‘Well, that’s that,’ said Annie, in some ways relieved, for her feeling they should not have come was getting stronger and stronger. ‘I’ll just try the back door, for luck.’

  It opened. Followed by one of the foxes, which, to the children’s delight, ran in from the wood to stare at them when they arrived, she went into the old kitchen, observing unwashed but tidily arranged dishes on the wooden draining board, a saucepan and a casserole soaking in the sink. She ignored a sinking of the heart. She went into the passageway, calling, ‘Tom! Tom!’, and went up the wooden stairs, the fox still in attendance. Perhaps Tom had worked all night and was sleeping heavily enough now not to have heard their knocking. The fox’s claws clattered on the stairs behind her.

  Annie opened the bedroom door. Tom sat up holding the bedclothes over his naked chest, an expression of fear on his face. There was another figure in the bed, burrowed down under a sheet and a quilt. Annie in the doorway was stricken. She cried out, ‘Oh Tom, who is it?’

  ‘Oh, God, what are you doing here?’ Tom shouted. ‘Why did you come?’

  She muttered, ‘I suppose you never told me you’d be faithful.’ And, not knowing what else to do, turned to go. Then the fox jumped on to the bed and flooded the quilt with a stream of urine.

  ‘This is a farce,’ declared an infuriated voice. The figure sat upright, and energetically cast off the bedclothes, knocking the fox to the floor. Annie stared at the bright gold hair, defiant stubbled face and bare chest of Tom’s best friend at school, John Woodford.

  ‘Oh,’ she moaned, and turned quickly, flying out of the room, bolting down the stairs, pushing past Melanie standing in the kitchen, and out up the path, away from Vanessa and the children in the garden, crying, ‘Come on! Come on!’ She had the engine of the van running when the others arrived slowly, baffled, at the road.

  ‘Get in the back, Mels,’ said Vanessa calmly. ‘Joanne, jump in.’ She slammed the door on them and carried Alec to the front. Barely had she got in herself when Annie roared off.

  ‘What’s happening? I wanted to play with the fox,’ said Joanne from the back. Melanie kept quiet. After a few minutes, as, far too fast, Annie took the road towards Froggett’s, Vanessa said quietly, ‘Slow down, Annie, love. No point in all of us getting killed.’

  Annie slowed down. Minutes later, out of the strained silence, she said, ‘You were right. We should have stopped en route and phoned.’ Later, on the leafy back road to Froggett’s she muttered, ‘They knew. They knew all along.’

  ‘Who knew?’ asked Vanessa.

  ‘My parents,’ Annie said.

  Her father told her, ‘We knew, of course. That was why he ran away, all those years ago. We thought it better not to tell you, Annie.’ Annie, her parents and Vanessa sat in the warm sunshine after lunch at Froggett’s.

  Vanessa was still very shocked. She’d realised Annie had found Tom in bed with someone, but had assumed it was another woman. That would have been bad enough. It was more horrifying that the lover was a man. She was amazed that Tom had carried about him no clue that he was homosexual. Her shock was increased by the Brownings’ acceptance of Tom’s behaviour. Even Annie, upset as she was by the betrayal, seemed to take Tom’s taste more for granted than she could. In the bright open air, with a view of the valley and the rolling countryside beyond the lawn, Vanessa could hardly believe what had happened only three hours ago.

  Melanie, Joanne and Alec had been sent off to Durham House, to ask Lady Mary if they could swim in the lake. Melanie, discreet as ever, had not this time protested about being treated like an eldest child, put in charge of the younger ones, but had left the adults like a lamb. She was not too concerned that something had obviously happened at the cottage to put Annie off Tom but she was afraid of any changes which might result in her being put on a bus bound for the north with a suitcase. What Melanie really wanted was to get her mother and two brothers down to London, where life had more variety and far more possibilities. Getting her family south, finding her sister Ruth and having a chance encounter with her favourite rock star, leading to romance, were the dreams she kept firmly in mind. Annie’s relationship with Tom did not promise to bring these dreams any closer. Though sorry for Annie, and wondering what had happened at the cottage, she set off for Durham House, holding hands with Joanne and Alec, not feeling too unhappy.

  Juliet refilled everyone’s glass and said, ‘How could we tell you, Annie? The relationship began at school. Tom’s parents knew all about it. They thought it was over when they both left school. Then John arrived, years later, and he and Tom just took off for Paris. Tom was going to study, John write. The Pointons couldn’t do anything. So – Tom did study, John didn’t write—’

  ‘Rich parents, no ta
lent,’ interpolated Howard Browning. ‘We watched you pining, but it would have been too cruel to explain. Or perhaps,’ he said, ‘it would have been better, but we knew you were going off to Oxford and exciting things would happen for you there. Then came Jasmine’s event, the abortion, which I gather Tom’s told you about, and you were at Oxford, enjoying the life – the moment to explain passed. I think the affair between Tom and John wore itself out on Tom’s side in Paris. When he came back a year later, he seemed sobered. That was when he apprenticed himself locally to the old craftsman and stayed with us. He had no money. He did seasonal work for the local farmers when he could, saved the little he earned, gave us what he could, asked for nothing at all. He’d seen a bit of a friend of mine, a writer, Arthur Leclerc, also a homosexual, in France. Arthur said John had got him into a fairly hectic scene there, young people from rich families, geared to going round the world, staying with their wealthy friends and relatives – there were drugs, as you’d expect, and finally a scandal, where some Tunisians set up two of the girls to carry drugs into France. The girls were caught and put in prison. Tom was out of his depth, financially and morally. And, of course, he’s an artist. He was trying to keep a footing in a world which didn’t suit him, for John’s sake, I imagine.’

  ‘We thought,’ continued Annie’s mother, ‘that he was shocked when the girls went to prison. He’d seen suddenly that that sort of life didn’t work for him.’

  ‘Though Arthur’s opinion was that he and John were through, even before it happened,’ added Howard.

  ‘Oh, God!’ said Annie. ‘I’ve been nicely taken in. Whenever I asked him anything about Paris he told me he’d tell me one day. I had no idea how much there was to tell.’

  ‘I think he loves you,’ Juliet said mildly.

  ‘Hah!’ Annie said in a weak voice.

  ‘You can’t be too narrow about these things,’ Howard told her.

  Vanessa stared at him. They were mad, these Brownings, she decided. The telephone had been ringing in the house since they’d started lunch, but no one was even thinking about answering it. It was probably Tom, who’d guessed Annie might come here, but no one was mentioning that either.

  Later they all strolled downhill and through the back gate in the wall to Durham House. They watched Melanie, Joanne and Alec swimming, then had tea on the terrace with Lady Mary.

  ‘I don’t believe you’re a boy,’ Lady Mary said laughingly to Alec. ‘I believe you’re a fish. I think I’ll have to give you flies for tea, instead of cake.’ But Annie thought she looked thinner and more worn than ever, and detected that her mother was very sorry for Lady Mary.

  There were geraniums in the huge pots on the terrace, the lawn spread below them and the lake glittered in the distance. On the way back Annie remarked to her mother, ‘Lady Mary doesn’t look at all well.’

  Her mother said, ‘Bernard’s in England, but he’s scarcely been down. He’s in London with Nigel and Jasmine. None of them have been near the place for a fortnight. I’ve told her to go and stay with one of her many sisters, but whether she knows it herself or not, I believe she’s hanging on in the house as if Sim were a kidnapped child and she was waiting for news. It’s quite awful.’

  ‘What about Nigel’s sister?’

  ‘Still in New York, running an ad agency,’ Howard joined in.

  ‘Everything’s so lovely here,’ said Vanessa. ‘You’d never believe there’d be any trouble but really it’s like everywhere else.’

  ‘Like everywhere else, only with money,’ pointed out Howard, a Marxist in his Cambridge youth.

  * * *

  They left early and drove silently back to London. The children slept, Melanie listened to a tape through her headphones. It was getting dark when they got to the outskirts of London. Stalled in the traffic, Annie said bitterly, ‘We’re not doing too well, are we? There’s the restaurant, Ben’s gone missing and—’

  ‘I’m very sorry, Annie,’ Vanessa said gently.

  ‘Not much of a day in the country for you,’ returned Annie.

  ‘Never mind,’ Vanessa said.

  ‘Love, money and revenge isn’t going too well,’ Annie groaned.

  Even then a long day wasn’t over. Since Annie had suppressed the news of Ben Gathercole’s feature in the Kenton Post for Vanessa’s sake and not even read the article properly herself, it was late on Sunday evening when Melanie rang excitedly from her friend Viv’s house to tell Annie about Ben’s story in the paper. ‘Listen, it says here,’ she said, ‘that Savernake Developments is a subsidiary of the Samco Company, and the managing director is Nigel Fellows, and the chairman is Nigel Fellows’s father, Sir Bernard Fellows. I was telling Viv what we did today and her dad recognised their name and got out the paper. Viv’s auntie lives on the Savernake Estate and now she’s having a nervous breakdown. It’s tipped her right over the edge, she’s that worried and upset. She’s going to hospital on Tuesday.’

  She left Annie speechless, holding the phone.

  16

  A Sudden Death

  For the council’s second meeting on the Savernake Village project, a week after the first, there was a bigger crowd. Several hundred people assembled with banners and home-made placards outside Kenton Town Hall. Most of the demonstrators were tenants from the Savernake Estate and other estates, but here and there were groups of young political activists, and an older crowd, Les Dowell’s friends. There were also reporters, South East News cameras and a heavier police presence than would ordinarily have been needed to keep order in a crowd of a few hundred men, women and children. But word had gone out from the Home Office that Savernake Developments’ prospective take-over of council property might trigger feelings among local residents, a comment the detective-superintendent in charge of Foxwell police station rightly interpreted as a suggestion that, with the continuing hot weather, a riot might be expected, the last thing needed by Kenton, the Government, and the country at large. Kenton had had two riots. One more with yet more pictures on television of people running through the night, shops in flames, ambulances and fire engines trying to get through, would damage the reputation and prospects of the area irreparably.

  Inside the hot, airless council chamber, built with much use of wood to impart a dignified and semi-Parliamentary atmosphere, Les Dowell, reluctant to alienate his two invaluable Conservative supporters, had spoken with less than his usual ferocity against the sell-off of the estate. With a certain satisfaction, Joe Banks had referred to the Department of the Environment’s refusal to mount a public inquiry into the affair. Betsey Jones had insisted that this decision meant strings were being pulled somewhere. Though the left-wingers were being subdued, there were still mutters of ‘Bastard!’ at Joe Banks, and anger even from the moderates when he tried to make out a case for supporting the project. There was annoyance that Savernake Developments had declined to send a representative to the meeting. ‘Let’s have these faceless men in here,’ cried one man, to a chorus of agreement.

  A motion that no decision on the sale should be taken until the matter had been investigated by a sub-committee and their report studied by the whole council went through easily on the strength of the two Tory votes rallied by Betsey Jones, some further unexpected support and several abstentions.

  The unlikely alliance of Les Dowell, Betsey Jones from the far left, and Emily Littlejohn and Hugh Patterson, the Conservatives, met after the meeting to congratulate itself at the Duke of Westminster, round the corner from the Town Hall. Mutual congratulation was short, however. ‘Someone came to see me the other day,’ Emily Littlejohn, a retired headmistress, said in her clear voice, ‘and said they were delighted about the opportunity to sell their flat at a good price. And the rumour is they’ll be allowed to sell earlier than the regulations permit. It’s likely to set the owner-occupiers on the estate against the tenants. Divide and rule.’

  ‘There’s a meeting on the estate tonight,’ Betsey Jones said. ‘Will you be coming?’

  ‘I th
ink I will,’ Emily Littlejohn agreed. ‘I take it I’ll be asked to speak?’

  ‘We’re on the same side,’ said Les Dowell, with an effort. ‘Hugh?’

  ‘I’ll come for an hour,’ the other Conservative answered. ‘Can I pick anyone up?’

  When they had discussed transport arrangements, Emily Littlejohn took up the subject of the development once more. ‘All in all, I’m afraid these people, the developers, have the ear of the Department of the Environment.’

  Les Dowell said, ‘We can go to court.’

  Betsey Jones said, ‘Much good would that do.’

  They were interrupted by the arrival of Ben Gathercole. ‘Thought I’d find you here. Any comments?’ He opened his notebook.

  ‘You can collect Mrs Littlejohn here in your car for the meeting tonight,’ Betsey Jones said firmly. ‘Then you can get your comments.’

  Ben Gathercole got into his hot car and drove out of his way, to Rutherford Street, in the hope of catching a glimpse of Vanessa or the children. But the street was deserted, there was no sign of life around her house and Ben felt despair. His wife had persuaded him his child needed a father, as indeed he did. But each morning Ben went into his own bathroom and looked at it as if he were staying in a hotel. His ironed shirts on their hangers in the wardrobe did not seem to belong to him, his wife, taking off her make-up in the bedroom at night looked like a stranger. Only his boy, the sound of his small feet running up the hall, both his small hands grasping his breakfast orange juice at the table in the morning, the body he soaped in the bath at night, had any reality for him and he thought, how long can I go on? Heavy-hearted and not knowing what else to do, he drove to the Kenton Post.

  At a humid meeting later that evening at the Savernake community centre, Councillor Joe Banks was shouted down angrily by a crowd of two hundred of the estate’s residents. Many were standing, due to a shortage of chairs, and there was a feeling of tension. Councillor Littlejohn, nominated chairman, had a job keeping any order at all. Joe Banks had noticed the hostility emanating from the meeting when he stood up, but continued unwisely to speak against the shouts of protest. In the end Emily Littlejohn had to rise and whisper in the shouting Joe Banks’s ear, ‘Sit down, Joe, it’s hopeless. As soon as I close the meeting, get out to your car as fast as possible.’