A Place Of Safety (3 page)

The music suddenly became very loud. Whether it was this ugly intrusion into her painful reflections or the renewed conviction that the girl had indeed stolen one of her most precious possessions, Ann suddenly found the courage to move. She strode along the landing, half ran, half stumbled up the attic steps and banged on the door.

The volume increased again, hugely this time. The pounding bass battered her eardrums, burst through, invaded the inside of her head. The wooden panels of the door and the boards beneath her feet danced and shuddered. Consumed by anger -
this is my house, my house!
- Ann thundered on the door with her fists until the knuckles grazed.

The music stopped. A few moments later Carlotta appeared, standing square in the doorway in her dusty black jeans and T-shirt. Split sneakers on her feet. Long matted dark hair tugged through a purple scrunch band. She wore the expression so frequently present when they were alone together. One of amused contempt. Then she ducked under the Mind Your Head notice, crossed the threshold and stood, blocking Ann’s way.

‘Got a problem, Mrs Lawrence?’

‘I’m afraid I have.’

Ann stepped boldly forward and, surprised by the sudden movement, Carlotta stood aside. She did not follow Ann into the room which was very untidy and reeked of cigarette smoke.

‘What’s that then?’

‘I can’t seem to find my mother’s earrings.’

‘So?’

Ann took a deep breath. ‘I was wondering if you’d . . .’

‘Thieved ’em?’

‘Borrowed. Perhaps.’

‘I don’t wear old lady’s stuff. Thanks all the same.’

‘They were in my jewellery box the other day—’

‘You calling me a liar?’ Spittle flew as the words twisted thin scarlet lips.

‘Of course not, Carlotta.’

‘Search the place then. Go on.’

She knows I never would, thought Ann. Especially with her standing there watching. She imagined calling Carlotta’s bluff but couldn’t bear the humiliation of not finding the earrings. Or the awful scene that could ensue if she did.

She wondered if the jewellery had already been pawned or sold and felt quite ill at the idea. She pictured her precious things being handled by knowing, dirty fingers. Money, a fraction of what they were worth, changing hands. It was this that prompted her fatally rash next words.

‘If you do know anything about this I’d like them returned by tomorrow. Otherwise I shall have to tell my—’

The girl ran forward then, pushing past Ann with so much force she nearly fell backwards. Carlotta hurtled around the room, pulling out drawers and tipping the contents over the bed - make-up, tights, underwear, hair spray. A box of powder burst: tawny dust flew everywhere. She ripped down posters, pulled old clothes out of the wardrobe and cushions from chairs, shook open magazines, tearing savagely at the pages.

‘Don’t seem to be here, do they! Or fucking here! Or here neither!’

‘No! Carlotta -
please
.’ It was a cry of horror. Ann realised Carlotta was weeping as she stumbled blindly about. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. I must have made a mistake.’

‘You’ll still tell him though, I know you. Any chance to get rid of me.’

‘That’s not true.’ Ann, facing the fact, protested too much.

‘You don’t know what it’s like out there, do you? You spoiled bitch! You ain’t got a sodding clue.’

Ann hung her head. What could she say? It was true. She didn’t know what it was like out there. She didn’t have a clue. The savage snarling raged on.

‘You any idea what it’s meant to me, this place? People want to harm you where I come from, you know?’ She dragged her sleeve roughly across her face, grossly swollen with tears. ‘They want to do you damage. Now he’ll send me back!’

It was then she ran away. One second she was screaming in Ann’s face and throwing books about. The next, gone. Down the stairs. Across the hall. Out into the night.

At this point Ann, by now lying in nearly cold water, struggled to put a clamp on these wretched reminiscences. She wrapped herself in her robe and took the claret and her glass into the bedroom. She drank a little wine but it made her feel sick so she simply lay down on the bed and prayed for oblivion. But it was nearly dawn before she fell asleep.

There was a certain amount of talk the next day in and around the village touching on the possibility that someone might have fallen in the river over Swan Myrren way. The Wren Davis milkman, whose cousin lived nearer the spot, said the police were there round about midnight. And an ambulance. He, his wife and the neighbours went out to see what was going on but the police were not very forthcoming. Asked a few questions but didn’t give much in the way of answers. After a while they worked their way down river and that was the last the milkman’s cousin saw of them.

But although the excitement was over almost before it had begun that did not stop Ferne Basset making something of a meal of it. Drama had been in short supply since the church fete when the pig, whose weight everyone was trying to guess, had broken out of its pen and ran amok, laying waste several stalls and making a mess in the refreshment tent.

In Monday’s pension queue at the post office it was generally agreed that there was no smoke without fire. The police would not turn out for nothing and were no doubt concealing the true state of things for reasons of their own. It would all turn up, sooner or later, on
Crime Watch
. Disappointment that no one in their own village seemed to have disappeared was well concealed.

The conversation in Brian’s Emporium, the single tiny self-service shop, had a harder edge. A bloody hoaxer, was Brian’s opinion. Nothing better to do than waste police time with daft phone calls. If he could get his hands on them. Someone in the lottery line-up suggested it might be the old lady who lived near Penfold’s Mill and was sometimes to be found wandering and reciting poetry. The poetry clinched it. People dispersed to await the news that she had been found floating downstream supported only by a brace of rhyming couplets.

Lunchtime in the Red Lion saw a more crude, even heartless response. Many customers suggested well-known personalities who could well be spared and were more than welcome to a watery grave. These included politicians, sportsmen and television personalities. The conversation then got more personal and several relatives, neighbours, a spouse or two and, inevitably, someone’s mother-in-law were thrown into the ring.

Louise Fainlight heard the rumour from their postman. She strolled into the huge steel garage where Val was racing through his daily twenty miles, today on a dazzling Chaz Butler. The bike was balanced on rollers which made a powerful humming noise, like a tremendous swarm of bees. Speed transformed the wheels to a blur of flashing light.

Louise loved to watch her brother exercise though she knew he didn’t really like this. Val rode like a man possessed, his face a grimacing mask of concentrated effort, eyes invisible behind screwed-up lids, lips clamped together over gritted teeth. Perspiration flew from his body in a constant glittering spray. Every now and again, when his legs would not,
could
not go any faster he cursed, using imaginative and profane language.

When he did this Louise laughed, relishing the contrast between this demonic display and the ironically detached persona Val liked to present to the workaday world.

She heard the computer attached to the frame click off. The humming gradually became less powerful, the outline of the wheels more distinct. Then the spokes. The hubs. The delicate but immensely strong chain. And finally the bike was still. Val climbed down, the powerful muscles in his legs and shoulders still quivering. Louise handed him a towel.

‘You’ll be back in the Tour de France yet.’

‘Too old,’ Valentine grunted and mopped his streaming face. He took the machine off the runners and placed it carefully at the back of the garage where there were already almost a dozen others. ‘Got the coffee on?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good.’ They made their way across a covered walkway leading to a verandah at the back of the house. ‘Any mail?’

‘Only junk. And some gossip from Postman Pat.’

‘I was promised the proofs for
Barley Roscoe and the Hopscotch Kid
.’

‘Don’t you want to know what it is?’

‘What what is?’

‘The gossip.’

‘For God’s sake, woman.’

‘Someone’s jumped into the river down by the weir.’

‘It’s Lavazza, the coffee - right?’

‘Right.’

‘Good. I didn’t like that chocolatey stuff we had last week.’

 

It was the cruellest type of day imaginable in which to wake to anguish and remorse. Ann, curled up tight, arms straitjacketed round her body, agonising cramp in every limb, squinted at the lovely pattern of greyish leaves floating and shifting on her bedroom ceiling. Through the window she could see a rectangle of brilliant blue sky. The whole room was flooded with autumn sunshine.

Already the torture had begun. The whole dreadful business of the previous evening, powerfully animated and brilliantly lit as if on a cinema screen, running and rerunning through her mind. Herself climbing the attic stairs full of apprehension. Carlotta howling and throwing books and clothes around the room, her flight into the darkness. The quickly flowing water.

Today Ann would have to tell Lionel. She
must
tell him. He would want to know where Carlotta was. But, without knowing why, Ann knew she couldn’t reveal the whole truth.

Not that he wasn’t the most understanding of men. And to understand all, as she had so often been told, was to forgive all. He made endless and sometimes, she thought, foolish allowances for all the young people taken temporarily under his wing. Those to whom society had shown only a cruel indifference. The distraught and abandoned, the criminal and near criminal. She had always (with one exception) tried to welcome them into her home.

Ann hesitated because she knew Lionel would be bitterly disappointed in her. Even ashamed. And rightly so. What excuse could there possibly be for a woman in her late thirties, coming from a secure family background, comfortably off and living in a large, beautiful house to turn on a wretched creature who had taken refuge there and drive her into the night? Only the disappearance of a pair of earrings which she may or may not have taken. Which was no excuse at all.

Ann got out of bed, painfully straightening her bruised limbs. She put on her rose brocade slippers, stretched her arms to the ceiling then touched her toes, wincing.

Lionel would sleep for a while yet. He was home quite late last night. Ann decided to make herself some tea, take it to the library and work out just what she was going to say to him.

She was putting on her dressing gown when she heard the front door open and her daily help call out, ‘Mrs Lawrence? Hello? A lovely day.’

Ann hurried onto the landing, forcing a smile and some semblance of warmth into her voice. She leaned over the stairwell and called a greeting back. ‘Good morning, Hetty.’

 

Evadne Pleat, of Mulberry Cottage, The Green, had just concluded the most important business of her day, namely the loving care and maintenance of her six Pekinese dogs. Brushing, washing, clipping, feeding, worming and walking. Their temperatures had to be taken, their collars checked for cleanliness and comfort, their beautiful creamy fur closely investigated lest any foreign body should have dared to trespass.

Once this elaborate routine was over, Evadne had her breakfast (usually some porridge and an Arbroath Smokie) then placed a white Kashmir geranium in the kitchen window. This signalled that she was ‘at home’ and from then on her day was so crammed with incident she had hardly a moment to breathe. The reason for her popularity was simple. Evadne was a miraculously good listener.

It is rare to come across someone more interested in others than in themselves and the inhabitants of Ferne Basset were quick to appreciate Evadne’s remarkable qualities. She always seemed to have the time to give people her absolute attention. Her eyes never strayed towards the face of her pretty grandmother clock nor did its sweet chimes ever distract. Whatever the subject under discussion, she would always appear sympathetic. And totally discreet.

Inevitably people started to seek her out. The most comfortable chair in her cluttered little sitting room was always occupied by some troubled or excited soul getting it all off their chest while being sustained by shortbread tails and Earl Grey. Or, after 6 p.m., Noilly Prat and Epicure cheese footballs.

Evadne never gave advice, which, if they’d thought about it, would have surprised her visitors for they always left feeling comforted, occasionally going as far as to say they could now see their way clear. Sometimes they even regarded the people they had come to complain bitterly about in an entirely different light.

This day, of course, they talked about nothing but supposed events on the river bank. Lack of any solid evidence did not hold back a flood of almost Gothic extravagance. Not that there was anything to go on, she must understand. The vaguest of stories, my dear. Apparently no one actually
heard
anything. Even so - no smoke without fire. By the time Evadne’s lunch break arrived she was rather regretting that she had no writing talent for she had enough melodramatic narrative to keep a soap opera going for the next ten years.

At lunchtime she removed her geranium and called Piers, the oldest and most sensible of the Pekes, to her. Gave it a basket with a note and some money in an envelope and sent it round to Brian’s Emporium for her
Times
, some Winalot and a few iced fancies. She was out of tonic water too but felt it wasn’t right to expect a dog to struggle with heavy bottles.

When Piers came back with the wrong change (not for the first time), Evadne put the Yale down and started to prepare lunch. She sweated a couple of shallots and some chopped celery in unsalted butter, threw in a bay leaf, added fresh chicken stock and left the pan bubbling quietly. Then she poured out a small glass of elderflower wine and laid the table. Beautiful silver cutlery - a retirement present from the library staff at Swiss Cottage - a spray of hothouse mimosa, warm granary rolls.