A Species of Revenge (2 page)

She could hear the children's voices, clear on the heavy air as they played, blissfully unaware of the changes that lay ahead of them. Nothing would ever be the same for them again. Life with a daddy whom they'd hitherto only infrequently seen, apart from flying visits home, one who wasn't going to find such a drastic change in his lifestyle easy, either. And, in between, being looked after by a strange housekeeper.

Dermot had been a TV cameraman, our man in whatever trouble spots of the world demanded his presence, alighting in England only long enough to spoil the girls outrageously before leaving on yet another assignment. It had been an unsatisfactory sort of family life, though Lisa, loyal and good, had never complained. Well, Dermot had now been thrust into the realities and responsibilities of parenthood with a vengeance and, to do him justice, he'd faced up squarely to what had to be done, wangled himself out of his contract with the BBC and found himself a job working with a corporate film and video company. But how long would this satisfy him, after the excitements and dangers of his previous job?

Footsteps at last sounded on the stairs, Dermot with Mrs Burgoyne. The erstwhile owner of the house, she was a tiny, white-haired old lady with a soft pink and white, powdery skin and eyes like an electric drill. ‘No trouble at all, the tenants,' she was repeating her assurances as they came into the drawing room with even Dermot, who was only just above middle height, appearing to tower over her. ‘Because, of course, I've always made sure, as you must, I warn you, Mr Voss, to take only the
right
sort of person in to Edwina Lodge.' And she went on to detail, for Sarah's information, what Dermot already knew about his tenants.

The house was split more or less right down the middle, one half for the owners, one for the tenants. Upstairs, on the first floor, lived Mr Pitt, a librarian. Below him was the Baverstocks' flat – he was employed in the borough accounts department, and she ran a wholefood shop in Folgate Street. Unexceptionable, all of them.

And the attic-floor flat, inquired Sarah, the one where the huge window had been built out over the roof? The eyesore, she added to herself, the incongruity stuck like a blister to the side of the property, doing its bit to add to the ugliness of the house. There was a slight pause. Oh, that was Mr Fitzallan's furnished flat. The window had been added many years ago, by a previous owner of Edwina Lodge, simply for the view, which was magnificent. On a clear day you could see the Rotunda in Birmingham.

‘And that reminds me, Mr Voss,' Mrs Burgoyne went on swiftly, ‘did you pull that door smartly to, as I told you? I didn't hear you, come to think of it, and if you didn't, it won't have closed properly. Mr Fitzallan won't be pleased to come home and find his front door wide open, I can tell you. It's these little things that count.'

Dermot, restless, chafing under the weight of all this instruction, running his hand through his black curls, smiled disarmingly and admitted ruefully that he couldn't remember.

‘I'll go up and check,' Sarah offered, looking at her watch. ‘You'd better get off, hadn't you, if you want to get Mrs Burgoyne to the station to catch her train?'

Dermot flashed her a relieved smile. ‘I'll be about half an hour, then I'll take you and the children straight to the hotel – we're staying at the Saracen's Head for a couple of nights, Mrs Burgoyne. An early night for all of us seems indicated in view of what we've to face in the next few days.'

‘Monday's when your furniture arrives, isn't it?' Mrs Burgoyne asked, eyeing Sarah, clearly not equating a short skirt and bare legs with someone capable of dealing with the removal, as though she would dearly have loved to superintend it personally to prevent anything going wrong. But finally, with a last sharp look round, though with what seemed to Sarah an ultimately unregretful eye, she departed with Dermot for the train which was to carry her to retirement in her south-coast bungalow.

Sarah checked that the children were still safely and happily occupied – Allie, for one, was dreamily accident prone, seeming destined to go through life permanently sticking-plastered somewhere about her person; a recently broken collar bone and a small chip off one of her permanent front teeth from a fall off her bicycle was present testimony to this.

She ran up the two flights of stairs to the attic flat, to find its front door was, after all, closed. But when she leaned her hand against it, it gave against her weight, and swung open. Before giving it the required slam, natural curiosity made her step forward a few paces and take a look round the room. Mrs Burgoyne certainly hadn't spread herself here with regard to the furniture. The few cheap and unmistakably second-hand, unrelated pieces added nothing to the room's character, nondescript with all-over, porridge-coloured paint and a curtainless window. This wasn't, however, the big, ugly protruding window at the side, with its vaunted view. Evidently, this room in which she was standing was the first of two rooms, and the window in question was in the second one, through the opposite door. She felt a sudden urge to see it for herself, curious to know whether you really could see as far as the Birmingham Bull Ring ... She walked across and tried the door handle.

‘It's locked.'

She whipped round. A man stood in the doorway. Mr Fitzallan, I presume. She had a feeling he'd been standing there for some time, and she was distinctly put out to know that guilty colour had flown to her cheeks, to hear herself stumbling apologies like an adolescent schoolgirl. He had, after all, given his permission for the flat to be inspected. If not by her.

‘I – didn't hear you coming up the stairs.'

He inclined his head, not deigning to reply to this fatuously obvious statement. Mrs Burgoyne's warning had conjured up an elderly fusspot, a cantankerous, intolerant person. Looking at him, she saw no reason to change her opinion, except in regard to age. In his mid-forties, maybe, over six foot, wide-shouldered with tousled dark hair, wearing a beautiful slate-blue silk shirt and an unstructured suit in cream linen, polished loafers. Casually cool and elegant in a loose-limbed way, making her aware of every crease and crumple collected on the hot, sweaty journey here.

Boardroom and top management, every inch of him – and living
here?

Sarah looked into a face as dark as the thunderheads piling up outside, saw a square jaw, a strong nose, felt a sense of harsh purpose. Their eyes met and held, hers wide and brown, his a brilliant and unexpected grey under lowering brows. For an instant, she thought she saw a hint of trouble behind them, in the lines of pain drawn down towards the mouth, but quickly decided it was simply general disagreeableness.

‘I'm sorry, I don't usually trespass without invitation,' she admitted, his lack of response to her warm smile transferring itself to her and making her unusually stilted. ‘I was curious about that big window ... Mrs Burgoyne says you can see the Rotunda from it. I saw it from the garden, the window, I mean.'

He stood aside for her to pass. ‘It's hard to miss, Mrs Voss.' He didn't offer to show her the view.

‘Good heavens, I'm not Mrs Voss! I'm just living with Dermot for the time being.' Realizing what she'd said, Sarah laughed and an explanation was on the tip of her tongue when the expression of either acute disinterest or disapproval, the one raised eyebrow, brought her to a halt. Her smiled died. No sense of humour, either. A spark of antagonism cracked across the space between them.

‘I'm very sorry,' she repeated, and turned to go. There was nothing for it other than that, a dignified exit and as graceful an apology as she could muster. He made no attempt to detain her, and she escaped.

And hoped, as she fled down the stairs, that his elegant silk tie might choke him on a sweltering day like this, and thought the other tenants were certainly going to be interesting to meet, if this was Mrs Burgoyne's idea of ‘the right sort of person'.

She'd just filled the kettle ready to make tea the moment Dermot got back – the girls would love a picnic out in the garden, sandwiches and Granny's jam tarts, never mind the wasps or the possibility of thunderstorms – when there was a knock on the back door. The woman who stood there was plump and pleasant, in her early forties, her hair done in a top-heavy mop of curls over her forehead, otherwise shorn into a short back and sides, like a man's. She introduced herself as Doreen Bailey.

‘Oh, do come in and sit down; Mrs Burgoyne mentioned your name.' Not intending to make the same mistake twice, Sarah this time made it clear who she was.

Mrs Bailey smiled and settled her ample figure with the ease of familiarity on to the ugly fifties vinyl-covered banquette seat which someone had once mistakenly fitted in a half-hearted attempt to modernize the kitchen. Sarah rummaged in the picnic basket. ‘I'm just about to make some tea, if I can sort some cups out. Hope you don't mind plastic.'

‘Better than Mrs B's cast-offs, I'll bet. She said she'd leave one or two mugs and plates for you to use while your stuff was being unpacked, but I should use your own – anything
she
hasn't taken, it won't be worth much, I can tell you. She'd cut a currant in two, that one.' She laughed and got up to open a cupboard next to the sink, sniffing. ‘As I thought! Chipped,
and
cracked, what cheek! Only fit for the dustbin. She tell you I'd be willing to come and help out with the cleaning a couple of mornings a week?' she continued, without pause. ‘I work afternoons at the checkout down at Safeway's, but I've come to Edwina Lodge twice a week, mornings, getting on for twelve years. I'd be willing to carry on, if that's all right with you.'

Sarah said, perhaps unwisely on such short acquaintance, but she'd taken one of her immediate likings to Mrs Bailey, ‘I'm sure Dermot would be delighted if you could manage it.'

Mrs Bailey gave a satisfied nod and, having drawn breath, went on, ‘I do for Miss Kendrick and her brother as well – they live at Simla, next house along. Makes a change from the supermarket – I feel like a battery hen there, sometimes, and the housework gives me a bit of exercise, besides helping with the mortgage. I was determined we should go for one of the houses in the Close when they went up, but it's a struggle, sometimes.'

Sarah assumed she was referring to the cul-de-sac of newish houses which lay between this house and the next one in Albert Road, the one she'd called Simla. ‘Ellington Close, you mean? That's convenient.'

‘That's right. They pulled a big old house down and built our houses on the site. Heath Mount, the house was called the Kendricks had lived there all their lives, their great-grandfather or some such built it, but you know what it's like trying to keep places like that going. They sold it in the end and moved into Simla. Bit of a comedown for them, but I shouldn't waste your breath feeling sorry for them, they couldn't have done so bad out of the deal, my Bob says, and he's in the building trade, painter and decorator, so he should know. Two sugars, m'duck, I know I shouldn't but I use a lot of energy.'

‘What are they like?' asked Sarah, grabbing the opportunity to speak as Mrs Bailey paused to take possession of her tea.

‘The Kendricks? All right. Bit on the snooty side. Clever, highbrow, you know. College types – Cambridge, I think it was. He writes books. And of course there's Mrs Loxley, the other sister.'

‘What sort of books does he write?'

Mrs Bailey was vague. ‘About art, and that sort of stuff. His study's full of pictures, not that I'm allowed in there, except to take him his coffee when his sister's not there. She teaches maths at the Princess Mary – the girls are all terrified of her, but they respect her, if you know what I mean. She's strict, but fair – got my niece through her maths GCSEs, and that's saying something! Patti's a lovely girl, and bright with it, but not when it comes to figures.'

Doreen Bailey's flow of chat was interrupted by the arrival of Dermot, Lucy hanging on his arm, Allie a step behind. ‘Do I smell tea?' he demanded, smiling engagingly at the older woman who, in turn, was gazing admiringly at the handsome man with the tanned skin and the smiling blue eyes that exactly matched his open-necked shirt.

Damn, thought Sarah, who'd sensed a rich vein of information waiting to be tapped in Mrs Bailey, now I shall have to wait to find out more about the tenants – though the obnoxious Mr Fitzallan could go and jump in the lake for all the interest she had in him.

St Nicholas's church, Lavenstock, was tolling its single melancholy note for eight o'clock communion as Harry Nevitt arrived at his council-owned allotment the next morning. The thunderstorms of the previous day had cleared the air, and it was a little cooler, though there was promise of returning heat later on. Meanwhile, the morning sparkled. Everything appeared clean and new-washed. Ruby beetroot leaves gleamed, celery stood erect and waved its bright green fronds, cabbages were diamond-studded. The earth was warm and damp and Harry was anxious to get cracking with the hoe, put paid to the weeds that would have come out in full marching order.

He considered himself lucky that his allotment was in one of the prime positions, in a coveted spot which not only had the best of the sun but also allowed him to park his car nearby, since it ran alongside the narrow dirt road that cut through the middle of the site. He'd worked it for twenty-odd years, getting the soil into good heart and growing prize-winning onions and chrysanthemums, and now he was retired, and a widower, he happily spent most of his day here. He lacked nothing: tea-making facilities and a radio, his daily paper and a deck chair in the little green hut where he kept his tools and his garden supplies. Even a much-disparaged mobile phone which his daughter insisted on him carrying around. Today, he'd also brought writing materials; he was working on yet another petition to the council to do something about repairing the road behind his allotment.