Bed of Roses (20 page)

‘Louis, I said
I’ve
got a ticket. You haven’t. Anyway—’

‘I’ll buy a ticket when we get there. Come on, Fan! Hurry up. Get it together. Stop lazing around! Let’s get going!’

They had both forgotten to recharge their mobiles overnight, so they plugged them in while they packed, and carefully arranged them, so they wouldn’t forget them, side by side at the foot of the stairs, right in front of the front door. Half an hour later they both stepped right over them. They climbed on to Louis’s bike and sped away.

Sunday morning. The church bells of St Nicholas ring out across the village of Fiddleford, calling its small congregation to matins.

Clive and Geraldine Adams, all togged up in their Anglican finest, sit in the car outside Kitty’s cottage, their engine still running. The vicar is once again expected for pre-lunch drinks, and Geraldine is adamant that she, Clive and Kitty should arrive at the service on time. As a mark of respect, if not for her own faith, which is non-existent, then for everybody else’s. She honks her horn impatiently, waiting for Kitty to emerge.

Solomon Creasey, in grey silk dressing gown open at the top to reveal a dark, hairy chest, and with the usual faint and delicious suggestion of expensive cigars, and Czech & Speake’s lavender and sandalwood aftershave around him, sits in his breakfast room drinking thick, black coffee. The Silent Beauty is upstairs, expertly emphasising her lovely features with some light, subtle make-up. His three youngest children are outside, squabbling merrily on the trampoline, and Solomon, for once, has a little time on his own. He is thinking about his children’s new headmistress, Miss Fanny
Flynn. After speaking to Grey in Safeways Fanny had left a brisk, not especially friendly, message on his Fiddleford answer machine, agreeing to welcome his children to the school Monday week, and to tackle related formalities later. Since when Solomon has repeatedly tried to speak to her, without success. It’s his first weekend as a full-time Fiddleford resident, and he realises he hasn’t made a great beginning.

General Maxwell McDonald, meanwhile, hair spruced, blazer pressed, is walking briskly across the Manor park, in perfect time for morning matins.

Charlie and Jo, having had their good-morning shag rudely interrupted, are lying in bed pretending to sleep while their young twins clamber over their heads.

Messy McShane, exhausted, is sending a disgruntled Grey downstairs to fetch a freshly sterilised baby’s dummy from the kitchen.

Macklan Creasey, lying in bed beside Tracey Guppy, at number 3 Old Alms Cottages, is running a worshipful hand over her sleeping body – and pausing, briefly, at her belly. She’s getting a little tubby, he thinks. Not that he cares, of course. (So long as she doesn’t end up like her mother, whispers a tiny voice.) But she is. Getting a little tubby.

In a tiny pueblo up in the hills behind Fuengirola, southern Spain, Louis and Fanny have woken simultaneously. They have opened their eyes, smiled, reached across for each other…

And outside the girls’ cloakroom at Fiddleford Primary School, a hand strikes a match, puts it to the petrol that has been spilt all over the windows and door and stands back, mesmerised. He watches the flames licking greedily at the dark red paint; licking higher, higher, higher…

The church bells fall silent. For half an hour nothing further
disturbs the pretty peace which is Fiddleford. The sun shines. The birds sing. The vicar delivers a sermon about renewal. Clive and Geraldine sit quietly side by side, worrying about money. Mrs Hooper sits quietly behind them, worrying about death. The General peers through his glasses and wonders whether the vicar has shaved properly that morning.

Kitty Mozely thinks about lunch, and then about Louis, and then about the contact sheet he put through her door yesterday morning. The images on it were mostly of her and Scarlett after the press conference. Her belly rumbles. She smothers a yawn. But the other images…What the hell was Fanny doing, rolling around in front of a bonfire with a bloody schoolboy? She chortles, a little too loudly. The old bag from Glebe Cottage turns around to scowl.

‘I say, Geraldine,’ Kitty whispers noisily.

‘Shhh.’ Geraldine frowns.

‘Remind me. I’ve got something bloody funny to show you afterwards.’

Later, inside the church, the small congregation hears the fire engines racing by, sirens briefly drowning out their reckless singing. They glance at one another – ‘
Morning has broken, like the first morning
’ – but keep belting it out – ‘
Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird
’ – and surreptitiously try to calculate where, exactly, the sirens might be stopping.

Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven

Like the first dewfall on the first grass;

Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden—

Dane Guppy bursts into the church, soot all over his face, greasy hair on end, eyes glazed with excitement.

‘Vicar!’ he shouts. ‘I can’t find Miss Flynn nowhere. But it’s all burning up out there. You got to come!’

Morning matins are brought to an abrupt end and the twenty-strong congregation move as one, following the smell and then the billowing smoke, out through the churchyard, through the village, to the scene of the fire.

They find three fire engines and two police cars parked up in front of the school and smoke engulfing the whole west half of the building – the girls’ cloakroom, the stationery cupboard, Robert White’s classroom, the assembly hall, and above it, Fanny’s and Mrs Haywood’s offices. In the middle of the chaos, Dane Guppy, giddy with excitement, jumps between firemen offering help and suggesting causes.

It was Dane who called the emergency services half an hour after that match was struck, and he is proudly announcing it now to the gaggle of horrified churchgoers.

‘I saw the flames,’ he says. ‘Well, no. I smelt them first. Then I looked out the window—’ He turns and points to Uncle Russell’s bungalow: ‘There. That window there. See it? I looked out the window, and I think to myself,
crumbs
.’ Dane pauses to wave at one of the firemen. ‘I know him. I know the other fellow, too, the one behind him. See?’

Nobody replies. Dane Guppy’s exuberance is embarrassing.
With the exception of the vicar, on his mobile telephone trying to get hold of Fanny, and the General, who nods at Dane, eyeing him thoughtfully, the gaggle from church stare at the flames as if they haven’t noticed he was there.

Dane doesn’t seem to mind. ‘They came round to Mum and Dad’s not so long ago. That’s how I knows ’em. I knows a couple of the others, as well. So I’m thinkin’,
Oh, my crumblin’ Mondays!
’ he continues. ‘Because the school’s on fire. And I call the emergency services. I pick up the telephone and I call 999. That’s what I done…’

‘Good thing too,’ says the General. ‘Dane, isn’t it? Aren’t you Ian Guppy’s boy?’

‘That’s right!’ Dane says a little skittishly. He was killing time throwing conkers at passing cars not long ago when he made the mistake of aiming one at the General’s Land Rover. The General slammed on his brakes, wound down his window, and bawled at him so loud it actually gusted Dane’s greasy hair off his forehead. They haven’t spoken since. ‘All I done was call 999, Mr Maxwell McDonald. That’s all I done. I was with Uncle Russell. I looks out the window. And then it’s 999.’

The General shakes his head sadly. ‘Lovely old building,’ he says. ‘Don’t you think, Dane?’

Dane glances at him foggily, with maybe a fraction less respect. ‘
Lovely
, General Maxwell McDonald?’ He laughs. ‘I don’t know about that.’ He feels a tap on his shoulder.

‘Mr Dane Guppy?’ It is a policeman.

‘That’s right. What do you want? All I done was call 999. That’s all. You can ask General Maxwell McDonald.’

‘Do you mind if we have a little word?’

Geraldine spots Kitty, her white clothes flowing behind her, sloping off down the lane towards the pub.

‘Are you off to fetch Scarlett?’ Geraldine shouts over the roar of the flames. ‘I thought you said Scarlett was making her own way?’

Kitty turns back. ‘Her own way to where?’ she asks guiltily. She had been hoping the fire might be a good excuse to skive out of the vicar’s drinks.

But Geraldine says they have
ovolini
awaiting them at the Old Rectory, and quail’s eggs, and baby artichoke hearts wrapped in prosciutto. And champagne on ice. ‘Plus the vicar’s bending over backwards to get us on to that governing body. I do think the least we can do is spare the time to have a drink with him to celebrate. I also think, actually, Kitty, that with the school in obvious crisis, and with bloody Fanny Flynn completely vanished, it’s our duty as almost-governors to put our heads together and come up with some sort of a rescue package. Don’t you? So it’s drinks at the Rectory, as per before. We’ll just be running a little late.’

Kitty gets snappy when she’s hungry. She likes the idea
of the
ovolini
, but her empty belly is demanding urgent satisfaction.

‘Well, how long are you going to be?’ she asks plaintively. Flakes of debris from the fire rain down on her. ‘Can’t I go on ahead?’

Geraldine looks across at the vicar, bent into a mobile telephone, still trying to track down Fanny. There is a policeman standing by waiting to speak to him, and also a fireman. She itches to get back to them, back into the thick of the action. ‘Let’s give it half an hour, shall we?’ she says distractedly. ‘I’ll see you there. Oh, I say, General—’ She catches him just as he’s taking a sad last look and turning away. There is nothing he can do. ‘I’m pleased I caught you. I wanted to thank you, on behalf of Kitty and myself.’

He looks blank.

‘I understand that as a member of Fiddleford PCC you’ll be very kindly voting us on to the school’s governing body tomorrow evening! And I’m so terribly grateful.’

‘Mmm? Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Well, well. Welcome aboard,’ he says, not with overwhelming enthusiasm. ‘We’ll need as much help as we can get after this.’

‘Absolutely. Quite. In fact, I was wondering—’

He indicates the burning building. ‘Hard to see how much damage has been done beneath all the smoke. But it’s a bloody awful mess, whichever way you look at it.’ His son Charlie, and his late, much loved daughter, Georgina, had both briefly attended the school, many years ago. Until his wife had died, and they had both been packed off to boarding school. ‘Ah well,’ he sighs, to himself rather than to Geraldine, and turns slowly away.

‘I was actually wondering, General, if you’d like to pop in to the Old Rectory for a pre-lunch drink. We’ve got the vicar coming. And Kitty. And Robert White…It was meant to be a sort of celebration. Can’t think why we didn’t invite
you before! Now, of course – well, I think we could all probably just do with a drink.’

‘Very kind,’ says the General, who dislikes Kitty and Geraldine, loathes Robert, and has endured more drinks with the vicar over the years than he would ever care to remember. ‘What a shame. Would have loved to. But I ought to be getting back.’ His eye is caught by Dane Guppy, in heated discussions with the police. ‘They’re putting him through it rather,’ he mutters. ‘Poor chap. Seems a nice boy.’

‘Yes, that’s Dane,’ says Geraldine vaguely. ‘You’re certain I can’t persuade you?’

‘Thank you so much, Mrs Adams.’

Geraldine isn’t quite ready to give up. ‘But I thought we might have an impromptu sort of emergency meeting,’ she says. ‘I mean, heaven knows. Under the circumstances—’

‘No, no, no,’ booms the General, suddenly very impatient. ‘Good morning, Mrs Adams. Good morning, Miss Mozely,’ and marches resolutely away.

He’s deep in thought, lost in the past, marching back through the village, when he spies a lanky, bearded figure up ahead. Robert White has parked up in front of the Alms Cottages and is peering into Fanny Flynn’s front garden.

And because the last person the General wants to see on his sunny, ruined morning is Fiddleford Primary’s repulsive, malingering deputy headmaster he does something uncharacteristic. He spies the telephone box beside the post office and quickly, shamefully, hides himself behind it.

Robert hesitates at Fanny’s gate. Inside, he can hear her mobile telephone ringing unanswered. The windows are closed. The cottage is clearly empty. He glances up and down the street, spies no one, not even the General’s polished toes peeping from behind the telephone box, and lets himself in to the front garden. Furtively, he peers through her window.

‘
What the bloody hell
—’ thinks the General.

New silver lanterns,
Robert thinks.
To go with the ruby-red walls. A bit like a brothel
, he thinks, with a shiver.

He glances anxiously at the other two cottages. No sign of life coming from either. So Robert proceeds a little further. He has always wondered about her back garden. Is it large? Is it small? Does she hang out her clothes to dry?

‘
What the devil
—’ thinks the General.

The garden is communal; the same garden for all three cottages. Large, untended, chaotic, more like a paddock than anything else, with a few rose bushes sprouting out of the grass and a perfect peach tree at the far end. Robert notices none of this. He sees there are several windows overlooking it, but all with their curtains drawn – and that on the washing line, between the red duvet cover, the red pillow cases and the pinky-grey tea-towels, is a tiny pair of gauze-and-lace silky-look scarlet knickers. He breathes deeply, rooted to the spot. And he can’t resist taking them. He snatches. He snuffles them away.

Robert thinks he hears a sound from the third cottage (Macklan Creasey’s cottage) and he darts immediately back towards the front of the house. He hurries out on to the village street and collides with the General, who feels duty bound to bring himself out of hiding when confronted by such suspicious behaviour. He’s on his way into Fanny’s garden to haul Robert out.

‘Oh!’ they both say at once, with equal displeasure. They step back. Scowl at each other.

‘She’s not there,’ the General says. ‘What are you up to, Mr White?’

‘Yes, so I discover. I was just popping a letter through her door…I’ve been invited for a little drink,’ Robert can’t quite keep the pride from his voice, ‘at the Old Rectory. Geraldine kindly invited me…But how are you, James? On this beautiful morning?’

The General screws up his eyes, considers him. ‘Well, you’re looking awfully shifty. Why aren’t you up at the school?’

‘Shifty?’ repeats Robert indignantly, slipping his hand into his trouser pocket and closing it tightly over his silky red booty. ‘I thought I might find Miss Flynn in the garden. As I say. I was only trying to post a letter.’

‘Right. Well. Good, good.’

Robert sniffs. ‘Smells like there’s a fire somewhere.’ Ordinarily, from his house ten miles away, Robert would have had to drive past the burning school in order to get into the village.

‘That’s right,’ says the General, without offering any further details, disinclined to extend their conversation a syllable longer than necessary. The man would find out soon enough, if he didn’t know already. ‘I’d have thought you came past it on your way in.’

‘
No
. I mean, no. Past what?’

‘The fire. Well. Good morning to you, Mr White. See you again. No doubt.’

Robert watches the old man striding off and thinks he’s probably got away with it – whatever
it
may be. For some reason Robert doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong. In fact, he vaguely resents the General for making him feel as though he has.

He climbs back into the white Fiat Panda, drives it the fifty-odd metres to the Old Rectory drive and, with a wave of skittish nausea, swings in between the Adamses’ newly restored eighteenth-century stone gateposts.

‘Hello?’ he calls tentatively, having stood in the porch for over a minute, rung the bell a couple of times, and failed to attract anyone into the hall to greet him. The door is wide open. Robert takes a little step in. ‘Anyone home?’

‘In here!’ It’s the muffled sound of a woman, slightly irritated, shouting through a mouthful of food. Not Geraldine, he thinks. Certainly not. She would have come to the door.

‘Anyone home?’ he says again.

‘I’M IN HERE!’ Kitty Mozely yells.

Robert finds her in what the Adamses call the ‘parlour’. She is the only one there: Scarlett is already in the television room reading a book, Ollie, she presumes, is still in his room, Lenka is still in bed, and all the others are still down at the fire.

The parlour is small, perfect, immaculately proportioned; light, airy and peaceful, with sash windows that stretch from ceiling to floor. The room smells of orchids and freesias and furniture wax and there is not a painting or an ornament – or even a book – whose position hasn’t been thought about, which doesn’t blend with an overall theme. There are creamy brown worsted silk curtains against the windows, and smooth, oatmeal-coloured walls. There are a pair of eighteenth-century rosewood side tables flanking a creamy white sofa imported from a company in New England which has also made sofas, Mrs Adams likes laughingly to explain, for the last three American First Ladies.

Kitty’s presence slightly ruins the effect. She looks particularly slatternly in an armchair beside the real gas fire, which she has lit in spite of the sun streaming in through the open windows. She’s got her nose buried in the
style
section of the
Sunday Times
, and all the other sections are spread haphazardly at her feet. Though she hasn’t quite dared to open her hosts’ champagne in their absence, she’s helped herself to some vodka and tonic, and she’s obviously been munching hard on the
ovolini
. There are only a couple more left.

‘Hi,’ she says, without smiling or standing up. ‘Nobody’s here yet. They’re all still down at the fire. Want a drink?’

‘Oh, well!’ says Robert, rubbing his hands together. ‘If you’re offering! Why not?’

‘Drinks are over there,’ says Kitty, indicating a heavily stacked table between the long windows. ‘But I don’t think we ought to open the champagne. There’s tonic water in the little fridge…there. That’s right. Underneath. The thing that looks like a cupboard.’ Kitty returns to her newspaper. She hadn’t realised Wetty White was invited. She probably wouldn’t have come if she had.
Ovolini
or no. As Geraldine bloody well knew.

‘Super!’ he says. Pads over to the drinks table. Hesitates. He’s suddenly not quite sure how to begin. A silence falls: awkward for Robert, self-conscious of the fizzing noises while he pours his Diet Pepsi, but unnoticed by Kitty, reading a fascinating piece about a wrinkle-eradicating laser gun. ‘So! What’s all this about a fire?’ he asks at last. He asks three times, before he gets an answer.

Kitty tells him.

‘Goodness!’ His eyes are smarting, just thinking about all that smoke. His eyes are red and dry, he knows it. ‘But that’s
awful!
’ he says, edging his bottom towards the unnecessarily warm hearth. ‘It’s just
awful!
’

‘Isn’t it?’ she says. ‘You should be up there, really. Since it’s your school, and nobody seems to be able to find Fanny Flynn. You could send the others back down.’

‘Mmm,’ he says, without moving. ‘Though really it seems more sensible to wait for them here, I think, Kitty. As Geraldine’s expecting me. Otherwise we’ll probably end up crossing paths for the rest of the day and never actually catching up with each other!’

Kitty doesn’t respond, and though Robert makes a few attempts at conversation, she doesn’t speak again until Clive, Geraldine and the vicar arrive about ten minutes later.

Robert doesn’t drink often, and never normally during
the day but Geraldine insists that he has some champagne. He was too nervous to eat breakfast. And he’s far too nervous now to tuck into what Kitty’s left of the quail’s eggs.
Ovolini
all gone. One single glass goes to his head. Before long he is nodding along happily while Geraldine engages him with a meticulous analysis of The Weaknesses of Fanny Flynn.

‘I mean, of course,
let’s be fair
,’ says Geraldine, ‘she’s a marvellous, dedicated teacher – when she’s around.’

‘Well, that’s right,’ says Robert. Head swimming slightly.

‘And how could she ever have guessed that the place was going to go up in flames? She couldn’t. But I do think that if a person finds themselves in a position of unique authority, as of course Fanny does, it’s just plain
irresponsible
to waltz off, God knows where, without leaving some sort of contact telephone number.’

‘Her car’s there,’ says Robert.

‘That’s what’s so frustrating.’

‘But Louis’s bike isn’t…’

‘I mean, where is she?’ continues Geraldine, not quite picking up. ‘That’s all we want to know. We’re not asking who she’s with, for heaven’s sake. Or if she’s in bed with somebody—’

‘No!’ He’s worried he’s blushing, so he looks down, takes a nervous gulp from the glass just refilled. ‘
Certainly not,
’ he reiterates. But he still can’t resist. ‘Although since you happen to have brought that subject up, Geraldine, I think she does get – how can I put this? I think she does get very easily distracted by certain matters. By the male…gender, if you like. I actually think she’s a very, very, very
sexual
person. And Louis—’

‘Ye-es,’ agrees Geraldine, trying quickly to accommodate this new weakness into her analysis of Fanny Flynn. A very, very, very
sexual
person. She hadn’t particularly thought of that. ‘Mmm, well, I suppose you’d know…’ she says,
suddenly remembering and smiling at him slyly. ‘Since a certain little bird told me that you and she were seeing a teeny bit of each other. Am I wrong?’

‘
Fanny and Me?!?!?
’ So highly pitched only a bat could have entirely made it out. ‘
Fanny and Me?!?
Ha! Geraldine!
Fanny and Me?!?!?
’

‘No?’

‘Certainly not! Gosh, no. No. Certainly not!’