Little Fingers! (7 page)

I therefore
pass more of my time than I would like in the pub itself, talking
to Brenda the barmaid, who is just as bored herself during the
bar's many quiet hours. The smell of leftover smoke, yesterday's
beer, and dim lighting haunts me.

Brenda tells
me where Mary Knightly lives, which is not difficult because it is
immediately opposite the pub in a small, manicured cottage close to
the village green, near the church and its cemetery. I overlook it
from my room, and while away some time trying to get a glimpse of
the woman herself. The cottage is an innocuous setting for Mary
Knightly, white sash windows, white door, brass knocker, window
boxes. It is only a few yards away from where I met Tom Willows. I
see the lights go off and on in the house, yet never see her even
briefly. She must use the back door. There is a car park behind the
house. Watching the house at night, I imagine that Mary Knightly
looks out of her window and converses with the dead before going to
sleep.

In
stereotypical fashion, Brenda has accumulated all the village
gossip. She does not like Mary Knightly, not at all. She describes
her as insufferably bossy in her drive to climb onto the higher
social slopes of the village. She disports herself as an aristocrat
in waiting (not Brenda's words exactly). She is a stickler for
manners, and officiously humiliates anyone she can for social
ineptitude, whoever they are and for however little. She fights
gloves-off, but insists that on the surface all must appear
civilised. Civilisation is very important to Mary
Knightly.

Brenda
believes that the most pertinent fact about Mary Knightly is that
she was adopted by the Berringers when she was four or five years
old, having been brought up until then by her impoverished family
living up in a council house on The Mount. Her parents were killed
in a car crash, and the Berringers took on Mary, but not her
sister, who was older and reputedly already wild and
uncontrollable. Anyway, the sisters never got on. The adoption
brought with it a sense of trauma and shame, and conversely a taste
for social respectability, because Dr. Berringer was until recently
the local GP. Someone walks over Brenda's grave. “I wouldn't have
wanted to be adopted by him. She cannot have had an easy time of
it.”

“
Why? Was he
strict?”

“
Very, and
that is the start of it. Poor Mary. You have to be sorry for her
sometimes, except she doesn't thank you for it. She really can be
evil, and she is totally devoted to her father. She has no time for
Phyllis at all, but she dotes on Jeff still, despite. She won't
hear a word against him.”

“
Are there
lots of words against him?”

“
He is a very
dangerous man,” she declares, but refuses to be drawn
further.

The object of
Mary's greatest scorn, or perhaps envy, is Samantha James, who was
born in Hanburgh Hall, next door to my new home.

There is a
story around Samantha James too. Her mother, Julie Fothergill, fell
pregnant at fourteen while living at Hanburgh Hall where her
parents were house-keeper and odd job man. Freddy Fothergill, the
owner of the Hall, immediately took responsibility for her
condition, and married her as soon as she reached sixteen. However,
he was never prosecuted, or even investigated, and no-one ever
believed that he was responsible for her condition. “I would bet it
was Jeff Berringer,” Brenda says, with an expression and a grunt
that suggest she may be spreading malicious gossip, “or it could
have been Tom Willows,” she adds. “Julie saw a lot of both of them,
and too much of one of them, I suspect. Everyone loves Freddy It is
typical of him to step in and cover things up. He is a real
gentleman, if rather too fond of the booze. He is getting a bit
grumpy nowadays, too.”

Mary calls
Samantha “a bastard daughter of a whore”. Samantha calls Mary “a
jumped up little poisonous turd”.

“
I wouldn't
get on the wrong side of either of them,” Brenda comments,
“although sometimes we get no choice in the matter.”

* *
*

I am excited
beyond knowing how to settle. I rove round the whole house, from
room to room, without any greater purpose than to assimilate the
atmosphere and the interior structure.

This is the
start of a grand project, and I love projects. I am not, however,
any expert at interior décor. My skill has been to make money. I
will have to hire someone.

When I am not
in the house, I spill out into the garden. I like wild gardens, and
I am half-tempted to leave it as it is, and even to let it grow yet
more jungly. However, it has been designed as a formal garden, and
it therefore does not adapt well to the wild. The structure of the
lawns, of the beds, and of the hedges imprint themselves unduly on
the wilderness, and render the garden merely unkempt. Brenda tells
me that Tom Willows is my man.

Tom saunters
up the driveway, sweeping his eyes this way and that, taking
careful note of everything. Behind his studied casualness is a
mastery of, and devotion to, detail.

“
It needs a
bit of work, doesn't it?” he greets me.

“
I was hoping
you could help.”

“
It'll take
me a while I am afraid, unless you want to hire me an assistant, or
two, or three. Then we could make quicker work of it.” He scans the
garden again, and makes a calculation. “I would estimate about 60
man days.” He waits for my reaction. “Or 90-plus woman days.” His
eyes glint with challenge.

“
So, 90 days
or so to do it properly,” I riposte.

He hesitates a
second, caught in mid-air, and immediately recovers. “Yes, that
would be about it. 90 days of careful gardening, or 60 days of
shovelling any-old-how.”

“
Do you know
anyone we could hire? I would appreciate a rapid
transformation.”

“
I could
arrange that.”

“
Thanks. I am
also looking for an interior designer-type person. Any
ideas?”

“
Mary
Maloney.” He smiles. “Mary Maloney is excellent. It is not her
mainstream work. She does the books for her husband, Frank's,
transport company, but I have seen a few things she has done on the
side. They are really interesting. You will like her. Do you want
me to contact her for you?”

“
Please.
Perhaps you would both come round to lunch.”

“
You can
cook?”

“
Funnily
enough, yes.”

“
Any
particular day?”

“
No, I'm free
forever.”

“
OK, I'll
arrange it.”

* *
*

It is funny,
and I am not sure in which sense, to recall that first lunch party
with Mary and Tom, watching Mary as, I am now, in front of me
contentedly reading a book on the sofa.

It is a
cliché, but the minute I greeted Mary at the front door and saw her
face, I was captured by her. So beautiful, a little overweight,
perhaps ten years older than me. Not the most obvious thoughts to
be provoked by instant infatuation, yet they were.

She had, and
she has, both a vivacity and a sadness about her, continually
flickering between the light and the dark sides of her nature. I
used to calculate that she would switch mood each day, and count
the days forward up to a specific event - good, bad, good, bad,
good, bad, damn. Now it is much less predictable, with longer
spells of both. You are never sure when she will turn from being
bright and breezy to cold, even chilling.

In those first
meetings, I never saw, or perhaps registered, the shadows behind
her eyes. She was all smiles and reserved charm.

I noticed the
way Tom looked at her. I guessed that he was as close to being fond
of her as he was ever likely to get. He was much gentler and more
attentive in front of her than was his general habit.

It was not
during that first lunch party, but several months later, that Tom
admitted, in front of Mary, that if he were ever to marry, it would
be to her, not that she would see it that way.

“
Really?” I
responded. Mary remained silent, and knowing.

“
It is not
going to happen, by the way,” he added. Mary nodded. “I am a
confirmed bachelor living off the fat of the land. I fell in love
once. That is enough.”

“
So, who
broke your heart?” I asked. I assumed Mary knew, although I
neglected to ask her for some time.

He considered
me. “You wouldn't know her. She left Hanburgh many years ago. I am
not sure even Mary ever met her…….”

“
Yes, I
did.”

“
She's dead
now, sadly.”

“
Were you
really in love with her?” I press. Why was I posing the question? I
think it was because I wanted to use the word “love” in front of
Mary.

His expression
said “Why are you carrying on with this?” He actually said “It was
one of those situations where we just missed each other. After a
promising start, she decided not to have anything to do with me. It
was a missed opportunity from my point of view, and pointless, I
suppose, from hers.”

“
And then she
died?”

“
Much later
on. Even when I knew her, there was a kind of death wish built into
her, although I could never work out whether she was planning to
kill herself or those who got close to her. Most people said I was
mad to go anywhere near her. She would destroy me at a thousand
paces. A moth to a flame. Well, I was badly burnt, and she is
dead.”

"I am
sorry."

"You needn't
be. It was over probably before you were born."

"A lady never
discloses her age. And nothing since?"

“
Anyone in
the village will tell you about my love life.” He glanced at Mary.
“I am sure Mary would. Lots of life. No love.”

“
Whatever
rows your boat.”

“
My boat is
adrift, which is OK so long as everyone understands the
rules.”

He was telling
me the rules.

“
I understand
what you mean.”

“
You
do?”

“
Yes, I do. I
have led that sort of lifestyle myself, without your excuse. My
heart was never broken. At least, not in that sense.”

“
By what
then?” Mary interposed. I was flattered by her interest and I
answered her in an uncharacteristically straight way. “By the death
of my sister, then my mother, I suppose.”

“
That must
have been hard for you.” Mary commented quietly.

“
My sister's
death was really hard. She was only six. She died of leukaemia. My
mother's death was more predictable. She was depressed most of her
life, and she eventually committed suicide when I was
sixteen.”

“
Then what
happened?”

“
I went
frantic for a bit, and then completely off the rails by going into
the City.”

Neither
laughed.

“
Did you make
a lot of money though?” asked Tom.

“
Yes.”

“
So why are
you here?”

“
As I said by
the stream……..”

“
The beck………”
he corrected me.

“
Beck?”

“
Yes, that is
what we call it around here.”

“
Well, as I
said by the beck, I want to live off the map for a while. I want a
break from my frenetic life. I want to come to terms with
myself.”

“
Yes, but why
Hanburgh?” His calm grey eyes transfixed me determinedly. “I don't
buy it, Julia. There is a reason that you have chosen Hanburgh,
whether personal or cosmic.”

“
Then it must
be cosmic.”

“
We'll
see.”

Mary got up
and went to the toilet. When she came back she declared that
nothing had ever happened in her life.

“
Time to
start living,” pronounced Tom.

“
Not your
way, Tom,” Mary riposted, but she gave him a smile
nonetheless.

“
No, you
would never do it my way,” Tom assured her. “Frank and Mary were
childhood sweethearts. I think that the first bed they shared was a
cot.”

“
Near
enough,” Mary confirmed. “I met Frank in the playground when I
started going to the village school at the age of four. Even then
he looked out for me.”

“
A traitor to
his sex,” Tom observed.

“
I think he
has been amply rewarded for his treachery,” Mary said. “Crime
obviously pays.”

“
Well, you
have to make ends meet in the transport industry
somehow.”

“
Don't I know
it, Tom. It is murderous, especially at the minute.”

“
Even more
cut-throat than gardening?”

“
Definitely.
If I knew anything about gardening, I think I would really like it.
It is like Frank's fishing. I could never bring myself to sit on a
chilly river bank for hours, pestered continuously by gnats, but I
can sort of understand why Frank loves it so. Country pleasures,
quiet, slow, and something to show for it in the end.”