Revenge in the Cotswolds (3 page)

‘You need to talk to Nella,’ Sophie went on. ‘She puts it all a lot better than I can.’

‘And Danny, of course,’ said Tiffany. ‘Between them, they can convert just about anybody.’

‘Danny just does what Nella tells him to,’ said Sophie with scorn.

‘Apart from fixing a date for their wedding,’ Tiffany flashed back. ‘She’s really cross about it, you know. You didn’t see her last night.’

Thea was losing interest in the romantic tribulations endured by the oddly named Nella. Her dog was running impatiently ahead, and the western horizon was filling with unwelcome grey clouds. ‘How far is it?’ she asked. ‘That looks a bit ominous over there.’

‘We can be at the church in ten minutes if we bustle.’
Sophie’s long legs began to stride out, regardless of her companions. Thea was regretting the impulse to grab any chance of conversation, reproaching herself for such a bad choice of local informants. Sophie and Tiffany were apparently deeply involved in some sort of protest activity against a bewildering array of issues. Whilst faintly aware of a major feeling of disaffection in Middle England, she had hardly expected to walk into a hotbed of revolution in the rolling wolds of Gloucestershire.

Feeling very much surplus to requirements, she began to allow a space to develop between herself and the others. Fiddling with Hepzie’s lead gave her the excuse to hang back. She had a murky sense that she ought not to advertise the fact that she was responsible for Mrs Foster’s sister’s house, or that it was empty and vulnerable for the coming week. Tiffany glanced back and gave a little wave as Sophie increased her pace. They disappeared through a gap into another field, and Thea imagined she would never see them again.

Upper End turned out to be a loop of quiet road due west of the rest of Bagendon, with the church and a huge manor house on rising ground above it. On a whim, Thea decided to carry on past the house she was supposed to monitor, and walk down to the church for a quick look. For all she knew it would rain for the next ten days and she wouldn’t fancy any more walks. According to the map provided by the Fosters,
the house in question was to her left and around a curve. She would come back to it and give it a good inspection, before walking back to Daglingworth. The day would be almost done by then.

It took a further five minutes to arrive at Bagendon Church, past a selection of large houses plainly owned by people of means. A massive barn conversion, and a second defunct village school destined to become a house caught her eye. To her relief the clouds had come no closer. A shiny new Freelander was parked outside the church, and Thea could see her new acquaintances standing beside it with a third young woman. She chewed her lip, wondering whether they would object to her following them again. Then she squared her shoulders and marched forward, with Hepzie firmly on the lead. She had every right to go and have a look at the church, after all.

It was very obvious that Tiffany had muttered a quick explanation as to who she was, before she came into earshot. The third woman looked enquiringly at Thea and her dog and said nothing. She was older than the other two, and very thin. Her dark hair was pulled back in a straggly ponytail and her eyes had shadows beneath them. She wore green wellingtons and a blue duffel coat.

‘Here you are again,’ said Sophie. ‘She’s a house-sitter,’ she told the thin woman. She flipped a hand and added, ‘This is Nella.’

Thea had already understood that this was the
would-be bride, who did a sideways little nod of acknowledgement, and patted the vehicle behind her.

‘Why’ve you got Danny’s motor, anyway?’ asked Tiffany.

‘He wanted me to take it for its MOT and then meet him here. He’s walking back from Woodmancote, apparently. There’s a badger sett up there that they missed in the culling. He’s trying to camouflage it.’ Nella’s explanation was certainly comprehensive, Thea thought, imagining the absent Danny as a bearded, sandalled protester with more money than was good for him, if he could afford such a vehicle.

‘They’ll find them, in the end,’ said Sophie bitterly. The slaughter of hundreds of badgers should have been old news by this time, but it had continued to remain in the forefront of people’s minds. Thea suspected it was because of a wholesale sense of shame that proved surprisingly difficult to shake off. Inevitable stories of appalling injuries and lingering deaths had circulated widely, as well as rumours of underground workers saving animals as if they’d been wartime resistance personnel. Even at a remove from the centre of the action, Thea had gleaned something of the heightened emotion and dogged determination to obstruct officialdom that rippled through the countryside.

‘So – what are we doing?’ asked Tiffany. ‘I’ve got an essay to write by Tuesday. I can’t be out here all day.’

‘We’ll wait a bit longer. What did you find for me at Itlay?’ Nella’s voice was low, and her gaze roamed
across the rising ground towards Daglingworth and all the places Thea had traversed during her walk.

All three then glanced at Thea, as if fearing she might be a spy. ‘Tell you later,’ said Sophie.

‘Well, so this is Bagendon,’ said Thea heartily. ‘I’m going to have a quick look at the church, while I’m here.’ She smiled vaguely and went to the small gate into the churchyard.

‘Nice meeting you,’ said Tiffany. Of the three, this was definitely Thea’s favourite. The other two both seemed faintly bonkers.

‘Danny’s behaving himself, then?’ asked Sophie, as Thea tried to operate the unusual latch.

She caught Nella’s laugh as she finally got through and up towards the small low-slung church. ‘Oh yes. You should have seen him this morning. Really apologetic. He’s going to be fine from now on. It was all just a silly mix-up.’

Tiffany’s yelp of pleasure echoed in Thea’s ears as she entered the porch.

The church was probably very historic and interesting, for an aficionado. Thea liked wall paintings, gargoyles, and the ungrammatical little leaflets and notices that were sometimes to be found. In this one, she liked the red kneelers, each with a different animal or bird embroidered into the centre. She thought the kneelers were lovely. And then, idly reading the memorial plaques, she found one dedicated to a man called Rev. John Lewis Bythesea and his brother Edmund. She almost crowed with delight, much as Tiffany had just done outside. She wished passionately that Drew were with her to see this incredible name fixed for eternity on a marble slab. The brothers had been born in the 1760s, she calculated. John had previously lived in Wiltshire – which was not at all by the sea. How,
how
, did anybody acquire such a surname? She
was transported and fascinated. Here was a glimpse of eighteenth-century rural life in a single surname. Did anybody still carry it, centuries later? Almost certainly not, she assumed. They’d change it to Blythe or Birtlesea or something.

With a final giggle, she went back to retrieve the dog she’d left in the porch and retrace her steps back to Upper End – which was also vaguely eighteenth century, she supposed.

The three women had disappeared, along with the vehicle. The village was deserted, as all Cotswolds villages habitually were. People remained indoors or in their back gardens, if they weren’t away in London, where their real daily lives were conducted.

Mrs Foster’s sister’s house was a large traditional stone building, with the usual tidy garden and well-kept paintwork. It was more recent than the Daglingworth one, but still a good century old, she guessed. She extracted the key and long list of instructions from her backpack and took a deep breath. The door opened smoothly, and she went into a shadowy hallway, feeling unusually apprehensive. After all, she had never met the owner, and had not even been told her name. The arrangement struck her as uncomfortably ad hoc, on reflection. If the woman was only away for a week, couldn’t the plants manage on their own? Was there some sinister ulterior motive for bringing her here? Was she being foolishly naïve, or foolishly
nervous? The burglar alarm had to be deactivated, and she carefully keyed in the numbers she’d been given, wondering what her chances were of successfully setting it again when she left.

Her worries were allayed as she tiptoed into the living room. Hepzie had been left on the doorstep, her muddy feet rendering her ineligible to walk around a strange person’s house. It turned out to have been a wise decision. The sofa and chairs were upholstered in spotless fabric of a creamy colour, surrounded by spindly antique objects all too easily knocked over. A deep window seat was full of exotic indoor plants. Beyond that room lay another, containing a massive oak dining table and a lot more plants. It smelt of polish and frangipani and air freshener; clean, fresh, hygienic smells that betrayed nothing organic or agricultural. Modern oil paintings hung on the walls and a shelf of books bridged an alcove next to a fireplace. Underfoot, there were short-pile rugs in colours that echoed those of the curtains. The walls were neutrally painted in almost-white shades.

Who were these people, Thea wondered? How much time and attention did they devote each day to maintaining this perfection? What else did they do with their lives? Except, there had been no reference to a husband. Just a sister. Had she cleaned up after a divorce, perhaps? A guilty man handing over his house and cash at his injured wife’s insistence? There was no trace of children, no family photographs. The niece in Australia presumably stood to gain quite a substantial
inheritance from these two country aunts, if there were no others in her generation to share the spoils.

She gave the plants some water, picked up the meagre scattering of letters and flyers from the doormat, and prepared to leave. At the last minute, she realised she needed a pee, and found a downstairs lavatory with immaculate modern accoutrements. So modern, in fact, that when Thea tried to remove the plug from the bathroom basin after washing her hands, she could not see how to do it. There was no chain, no little lever, nothing to grip hold of. There had to be a trick to it, but she could not for the life of her work out what it was.

Why on earth had she pushed the plug down in the first place? she asked herself. The answer was that her hands had been rather grubby from the various things she had touched during the walk, and she had very much liked the smell of the soap provided. So she had made a thorough production, half filling the basin in the process. The only thing she could think of was to bail out as much as possible of the water with a small glass she found in the kitchen, and pour it down the loo. It left a puddle of rather grey water that she could not scoop up. Shrugging helplessly, she left it, promising herself to see to it on the next visit.

When she emerged from the house, having used extreme care in resetting the alarm, she found that rain had set in to an uncomfortable degree. A mile’s country walk with a reproachful dog and only a flimsy
jacket was not a happy prospect, and she hovered on the front doorstep, unsure what to do. Already the return walk was acquiring a daunting new prospect. The first part would be uphill, the gap into the woods probably difficult to find. She had taken no precautionary notice of landmarks on the way down. The bare trees would drip on her and provide very little shelter from the rain. And her shoes were hardly more resilient than her coat.

She extracted the map from her bag and peered at it. Walking back via roads was hardly any longer, and probably much more sensible. Negotiating the big roundabout where several small roads joined the new A417 would be the biggest hazard. On the map a tangle of green and yellow lines made it look worse than she remembered it from that morning. So long as she had Hepzie firmly on the lead, it should be all right.

She went back down to the church and turned right towards something called Perrotts Brook on the map. Her shoulders were already wet and Hepzie was turning frizzy. Her mood, which had lifted somewhat during the past few hours, dropped back to worry and frustration. She should have prepared better for such weather. She should have got a move on, and simply checked the house and turned back. If she’d done that, she’d have dodged the rain completely.

When a noisy engine came up behind her, she was in a narrow part of the lane, so dragged Hepzie closer and turned to face the vehicle. It was a muddy
Land Rover, of an age and condition seldom seen in the affluent Cotswolds. When it stopped beside her, a man in his fifties with greyish-ginger hair and a lean face leant over the passenger seat and pushed the door open. ‘Want a lift?’ he asked.

A black-and-white sheepdog was in the back, pushing its face eagerly towards her with a wide grin.

‘Yes, please,’ said Thea without hesitation. ‘I’m getting soaked.’ She didn’t have to apologise for her dog or her wet feet, as she might in a proper car. She lifted Hepzie in ahead of her, and climbed up onto the grubby seat. When she slammed the door behind her, she was aware of a rich smell that could only be labelled as ‘farmyard’. It was lovely, and she sighed.

‘Where to?’ he asked.

‘Daglingworth. Lower End, if that’s all right. Is it terribly out of your way?’

‘Terribly,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I was going to North Cerney. Totally different direction. You’ll owe me.’ His accent was that of any educated middle-aged Englishman, with no rolled rs or archaic grammar. ‘This is Rags,’ he added. ‘She’s an old girl now.’

Thea reached back and gave the collie her hand to sniff. ‘Hello, Rags,’ she said.

‘Did you break down or something?’

‘Oh, no. I decided to walk across the fields. I had no idea it was going to rain. It was fine when I set out.’

‘Not local, are you?’

‘No. I’m house-sitting for a couple of weeks. I like
to explore when I’m on a job. It gets a bit boring otherwise.’

‘House-sitting?’ He repeated it as if the words and the concept were both entirely new to him. ‘Who for?’

‘They’re called Foster. Do you know them?’

He frowned. ‘He’s not the auctioneer, is he? The Cheltenham one. Does antiques and stuff.’

‘Might be. I don’t know what they do, actually. If it is him, there aren’t any antiques in the house.’

‘Don’t worry – I’m not planning to burgle them.’

‘Oh no – sorry. I didn’t mean that.’ She was hot with embarrassment and he laughed. She babbled on. ‘They’ve gone to Australia for a wedding. Makes a change from cruises, at least. They seem to be a real growth industry.’

He snorted. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing.’

She managed a faint laugh of her own, thinking this man was just about the last person ever to find himself on a cruise liner. ‘Anyway. I’m Thea Osborne. It’s very nice of you to give me a ride, I must say.’

‘Doesn’t happen so much any more. You were brave to take me up on it.’

‘Desperate, more like. I was talking to some women an hour ago. I should have asked them to take me back, if I’d known it’d rain.’

‘You mean those idiot protesters, I suppose? I saw them in that Freelander, outside the church.’ He shook his head. ‘You don’t want to get mixed up with them. They’re all crazy.’

‘I did wonder,’ said Thea, feeling briefly disloyal. Tiffany, for one, had been perfectly nice and not at all crazy.

‘You can’t imagine. There’s a dozen or more of them, men as well. Never sure who’s going to join them next. All they do is find things to complain about. They make a lot of people very angry, I can tell you.’

‘Including you?’

‘Yes, including me. They’ve got no idea what it’s like trying to run a decent farm with a bloody great debt around your neck and prices going nowhere. Do they think I
want
to sell land? Nobody wants to do that. My dad’ll come back and haunt me for it, any time now. But it’s a scrappy bit, off in a corner, and
they
asked
me
if I’d part with it. It was never my idea. Some bloke knocks on the door one day and says it’s worth a hundred grand as a building plot. Good access, nice outlook – all the boxes ticked. So what am I going to do? That sort of money doesn’t come along more than once. It’s
one acre
, for God’s sake. I’ve got another hundred and four that’s still going to be part of the “natural landscape”, as they keep calling it. You know the latest thing – they told the council they’d found a rare orchid growing there, which couldn’t hope to survive being moved or built around. All I had to do was put some bullocks in there and that’d be curtains for the orchid. Madness. What else can you call it?’

They had turned right onto a similar lane, and then right again. The road had trees on one side, reminding
Thea of many others across the region. She looked out at the wet scene and said nothing. The driver was ranting every bit as excessively as Sophie had done. Had she blundered into a wholesale war, in which nobody could think of anything other than their grievances?

‘Sorry,’ he said, as her silence finally registered. ‘You probably don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.’

‘I got the gist,’ she said.

‘It’s a nightmare,’ he went on. ‘Though there’s other farmers who get it even worse. The ones who support the badger cull are lucky if they ever get a decent night’s sleep. They harass them in the small hours. But the police say nobody’s breaking any laws. We just have to stick it out and wait for the gang to move on to some other obsession somewhere else. What do they expect to gain, anyway?’ he burst out loudly. ‘Do they want to stop all new building altogether?’

Silently, Thea tried to justify the protesters, having always instinctively sided with any efforts to preserve the landscape, and having found most newly built Cotswolds houses to be too big and far too yellow. They were ostentatious demonstrations of wealth, in most cases, she judged. Probably owned by wealthy Russians or Saudis, and no use at all in providing homes for ordinary local families.

They were at the big intersection, with late-afternoon traffic quite heavy along the main road. The Land Rover driver seized a small gap and got hooted at as a result. ‘Careful!’ squeaked Thea.

‘Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.’ He sounded offended.

‘Sorry. I’m a nervous passenger. Ignore me.’

‘Just take my advice and don’t get involved with those loonies. They’re parasites, you know. They’ll drag you in if they think you can be of any use to them, and then just drop you again. They do nothing but harm. Most of them come from the other end of the country – what brings them here, I can’t imagine.’

‘I’m only here for two weeks,’ she said. ‘I doubt if they think I’m worth bothering with. They didn’t seem very keen to talk to me, anyway, when I met them. They were too busy talking about somebody’s boyfriend.’

He gave a huff of impatience, and turned left at the crossroads that was Daglingworth. ‘Up here somewhere, are you?’ he asked.

‘That’s right. But you can drop me here, where it’s easy to turn. I can walk the last bit.’

‘I’m Jack Handy, by the way.’ He pulled up at the side of the road. ‘Thanks for listening to me. I s’pose I sounded pretty much of a nutcase myself, going on like that.’

‘No problem,’ she said. ‘And thanks for the lift. You’re very kind.’

He grinned at that. ‘Not many people think so,’ he said.