Every Woman for Herself (12 page)

‘Do you want me to take her away? She’ll cover the bed with hair.’

‘No, leave her,’ Anne said, leaning back and closing her eyes. ‘She’s company.’

That’s another thing Anne’s never sought much before. I backed out, feeling a bit ruffled, but leaving the door slightly open for Flossie when she remembered food and attempted to find the kitchen.

Anne’s hand was on Flossie’s head, in a touchingly dying-Brontë way, but Flossie’s tongue was just starting to explore the perimeter of the tea tray.

I put my head into Bran’s room on the way down. He was standing by the window, saying something calmly, but in an obscure-sounding tongue, to Mr Froggy.

‘Tea, Bran? Hot cheese scones?’

His light brown eyes regarded me amiably. ‘Buttered angel cake?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. Em always has to make angel cake for Bran. He interpreted this for Mr Froggy, and then stuffed the toy unceremoniously into his pocket before picking his way through a drift of books and papers. Someone, either Em or Gloria, had put new leather patches on the elbows of his corduroy jacket.

I led the way down. ‘There’s a jumble sale tonight at the church hall, Bran. Do you want to come? Books?’

‘Books,’ he agreed.

Jumble Sale Etiquette

Step one: queue in an orderly fashion in front of the door, peering in to see where the best-looking tables are, if you get the opportunity.

Step two: as soon as the doors open, stampede in, jostling for position at your chosen table with your elbows. (As Mae West once so memorably put it: ‘He who hesitates is
last.’
)

Step three: grab anything that looks remotely interesting without stopping to examine it until you have an armful and can’t grip any more. Then retire to a corner of the room and sort through them, returning to put the rejects back on the table and pay for your chosen items.

Stow paid-for items in a bag and repeat step three.

Em, Gloria and I formed a cordon around Branwell to prevent him wandering into the hall and rifling the books before the doors officially opened. Walter had somehow managed to insert himself at the head of the queue, and could be heard informing Madge that he had no eyebrows, and, probably, that he had no hair anywhere else either.

It was a good jumble sale, and well attended, since word had got out that Lady Hake-Hackett had been having a major clear out. Word had also got out that the vicar was including some of the obscure volumes left behind by the previous incumbent, but no one except Bran was showing much interest in those: I had to go back and get the car at the end and load them in.

The vicar helped. He seems drawn to Em like an unwary moth to the flame.

‘Barkis is willing to what?’ I asked her later while we examined our booty in the kitchen, Bran having retired to his room with his books.

Jessica and Ran had gone to the pub in our absence, leaving the girls in the nominal care of Anne, but they’d gone to bed when we got home. Anne said she’d told them a few stories first, which seemed unlikely, because the only stories I’d heard her tell usually ended something like: ‘… and bugger me if the next second he didn’t tread on a landmine and get himself blown to smithereens!’

Em shrugged, pulling a voluminous mass of tawny crushed velvet out of her bag. ‘Marry me, presumably,’ she said off-handedly, holding the dress against her dungarees and squinting critically downwards. ‘Do you think this will fit me? It looks big enough – must have been a Hake-Hackett. They’re all built like barn doors, except Felicity. She’s the runt of the litter.’

‘I’ve never seen you in a dress!’ I said, amazed. Come to think of it, I’d never seen her in anything other than dungarees over a T-shirt or jumper, and big boots.

‘I need to make an impression, or I’ll die a bloody virgin.’

‘But Barkis is willing.’

‘I can’t seduce a vicar when I’m about to embrace the Dark Powers. You can’t seduce vicars anyway. It isn’t done. You have to marry them, which is impossible.’

‘It’s not impossible, and he’s rather attractive.’

‘I don’t want to marry, I’m quite happy with my life the way it is, or I will be, once we’ve got rid of Jessica. No, I just want casual sex, preferably in a place of power, like the standing stones on the moor. Besides, I couldn’t have any sort of relationship with a man who thinks Dickens is the greatest British novelist!’

‘No, I suppose not. Er … you do
know
all about safe sex, don’t you, Em?’

‘Wasn’t born yesterday,’ she said indistinctly as she pulled the dress over her head. It fell in loose folds about her and would have been flattering had it not been for the layers of bulky fabric underneath, and the boots. ‘I’ll wear this next Friday, for Father’s birthday feast.’

‘It will have to be cleaned first.’

‘It’s clean already – still got the cleaner’s tag pinned in the neck.’

‘Is anyone else coming on Friday?’ I asked. There had to be some reason for the dress.

‘Mace North – Father’s invited him. Jessie’s delirious with pleasure.’

‘Big deal.’

‘He hasn’t accepted any other invitations, though that Whippington-Smythe woman’s been shameless. Maybe he only
looks
nervous when I talk to him – you watch him on Friday and tell me if you think he fancies me.’

‘I will, but you’re flogging a dead horse on that one, Em. Even ugly middle-aged men can pull pretty young girls if they’re rich or famous enough, so he’s probably got a queue waiting to jump into his bed.’

‘I’ll put something in his drink. And he’s not ugly.’

‘I didn’t say he was – it was just a generalisation. He’s … interesting-looking, and he has a very attractive smile.’

‘Hmm,’ Em said, staring at me. ‘Why’s he smiling at you? You don’t want him, do you?’

‘No, I’ve gone off men permanently, except family, of course. And I don’t mind the vicar, he’s rather sweet. Otherwise, even casual sex seems pointless now I can’t get pregnant any more.’

‘What have you got in your jumble bags?’ she asked, changing the subject, to my relief. I was not a rival for anyone’s affections; I’d been through the sex/marriage/dwindling sex/divorce cycle already; I didn’t want to repeat the whole damned thing with anyone else, even on a temporary basis.

‘Jeans, and a lot of sea-green stuff. Dresses, T-shirts … a dark green suede jacket … matching desert boots, sandals …’

‘Now that definitely
was
Felicity. She had a green phase last year; thought she was a bloody naiad, but it didn’t suit her. Too yellow. That’s a nice dress.’

‘I think it’s a nightie really,’ I said doubtfully, holding up a wispy green chiffon number. ‘But it has got an interestingly Peter Pan touch about it – frondy.’

‘Well, call it a dress and wear it next Friday. When do we ever dress up?’

‘Never?’

‘We
shall
go to the ball,’ Em said.

I spent a couple of days washing, altering and mending my new wardrobe; Felicity was a little larger than me, even though I was starting to fill out a bit. I’d had to filch one of Bran’s belts to keep my jeans up, but I didn’t suppose he’d notice.

The two little girls (who, under Anne’s practical influence, had started calling themselves Clo and Feeb) helped me to paint a jungle on the inside of the veranda’s glass walls in poster paints. It would come off eventually, but gave me the right dense green atmosphere to work in until I got enough plants.

I was glad the paints were non-toxic, because Flossie tried licking the glass and smeared several leaves before she decided she didn’t like the flavour.

Clo painted a sort of monkey in her bit, and Feeb did lots of butterflies and a lizardy thing like a salamander.

I did a snake. The serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Skint Old Gardening Tips, No. 2

Spider plants have no reason for existence – they are simply a sort of green chain letter.

1) Place in a cardboard box and abandon them somewhere they will be found quickly: e.g., outside a charity shop just before opening time.

2) Include the macramé potholders.

3) Walk away: just feel that relief!

One afternoon Em appeared at the Summer Cottage in her loomingly silent way, followed by Frost, who tried to poke his head into Flossie’s igloo, and got short shrift.

Since a blast of dank, icy air had fingered its way in with them I deduced that they had come in through the veranda. They’d taken to using the place as a short cut up to the Parsonage after their walks, which was fine, except for the surprise; I wasn’t big on surprises after the Dead Greg episode.

With my meagre wages from the nursery I’d purchased an economy-sized can of pale yellow one-coat emulsion and was obliterating the flowered wallpaper in my kitchen/diner/bedroom.

‘I’ve got you another job,’ Em said casually.

‘What do you mean? What sort of job?’

‘Caitlin’s nanny. Mace took her away from the Rainbow Nursery because she didn’t like it, and now he’s finding it hard to concentrate on writing his play, so he needs someone to look after her in the mornings while he works.’

‘But he doesn’t like me!’

‘I don’t know why you think that – and anyway, Caitlin likes you; she said she wanted you. It’ll be fine. You can bring her to the Parsonage, and take her for walks and things. You’re starting at nine thirty tomorrow, and he’s going to pay you London wages.’

‘But, Em, he saw me bashing melons the other day – he can’t want someone he thinks is loopy. And he can’t know about Greg either! You must have forced him to offer me the job.’

‘Of course I didn’t force him. I just suggested it when I popped in with some melon and ginger jam,’ she said, slightly self-consciously. ‘He probably thinks you have to bash the melons as part of the process or something. He didn’t mention it, anyway. And I don’t think anyone round here other than the family know about Dead Greg. It only made your local paper, after all, thanks to that earthquake and the lurid sex-murder trial.’

‘Jessica knows.’

‘Yes, but I told her if word got out we’d know it was her, and we’d kill her and drop the body down the old well, so that’s OK.’

The image of a tiny Jessica looking up from the bottom of a well sort of twitched my painting nerve.

‘Did you take the vicar any jam?’ I asked curiously.

‘Not yet … but I might,’ she said, smiling in an unusually Mona Lisa way. ‘And one of my advance copies of
Womanly Wicca Words of Spiritual Comfort
.’

When Em and Frost had gone up the Parsonage stairs I assembled my melon-bashing equipment in the garden. (Ripe ones are
so
messy.)

First, the stand Walter made, Greg-height and spiked to hold the melon still. Then I positioned the fatal kitchen steps and climbed up holding the pan …

This time I checked there was no one on the track before I took the first swing.

The blow connected solidly, but the sound was too soggy.

The second landed fair and square too, and it almost sounded right …

I set the last one up, climbed back up on the steps, and lifted the pan high, as if it was hanging on the hook. Then I shifted to a two-handed tennis racquet grip to swing it down and—

‘What are you doing?’ enquired the vicar curiously, his head bobbing up right next to me.

The pan had begun its inexorable swing, missing Chris by a hair’s breadth and connecting with that oh-so-familiar-from-my-nightmares meaty ‘thunk!’

The melon bounced off its spike rather gruesomely and rolled away.

‘That was the sound!’ I said, amazed. ‘That was it! And I
couldn’t
stop the pan, even though I was afraid I was going to hit you.’

‘No, I’m sure you couldn’t, not from that height and holding it like that,’ he agreed. ‘Once it started to swing down, that would be it. Did you mean to hit the melon?’

He sounded interested rather than surprised, so after he’d helped me take everything into the cottage I made some coffee and prepared to Confess All, which I suppose vicars are quite used to.

‘I expect people tell you this sort of thing all the time,’ I finished.

‘Not really,’ he answered thoughtfully. ‘Still, I hope you are now truly satisfied that you didn’t mean to kill this Greg?’

‘I am
now
… and even the noise was right. It felt – cathartic.’

‘Good. Accept that what happened really wasn’t your fault, and although it will be hard to live with the memory of it, it was just an accident brought on by his own actions.’

‘I only hope his wife, Angie, accepts that too. She was feeling very bitter and vindictive towards me after the inquest, and she’s sent me poison-pen-type letters threatening to come here and tell everyone about me. I expect she’s left a million nasty messages on my mobile too, only of course you can’t get a signal within five miles of Upvale, so I’ve left it switched off since I came home.’

‘Poor woman,’ he said charitably. ‘If she does, I’ll speak to her and offer her comfort.’

She might have been interested, at that, but I didn’t think they’d both define ‘comfort’ in the same way.

I sat back in the old wooden rocking chair and everything suddenly looked subtly different, as if it had all shifted in space slightly and become brighter. I felt reborn: a slightly dazed new phoenix Charlie arising from the ashes of her old nest.

‘Do you know, Chris, I think I could paint again? I’m going to paint Jessica down the old well.’

‘Oh? I understood from Em you only painted the jungle.’

‘I do, but Jessica’s going to be at the heart of the next one, far, far down a well, looking up.’

He looked thoughtful. ‘I expect there’s something deeply Freudian about that, but we won’t pursue it. I’m glad you’re feeling better.’

‘Yes, and once I’m painting I won’t need another job. Em’s got me a temporary one, looking after Mace North’s little girl in the mornings while he writes, but I expect the cottage is just a whim. A famous star won’t want to hang about in Yorkshire for very long, will he?’

‘I rather selfishly hope not,’ he confessed, looking glum. ‘She – Em – likes him, doesn’t she?’