Deception in the Cotswolds (2 page)

She saw the old man approaching some minutes before he reached the front door. His head, with its covering of floppy white hair, was unprotected from the rain, and he wore no jacket or raincoat. It was as if the weather made no impression on him at all.

‘You must be Donny,’ she greeted him, when he finally arrived. ‘I’m Thea Osborne and this is Hepzibah.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed with a nod. His shoulders were narrow and slumped, his legs spindly inside the cotton trousers. A constant tremor kept his whole body moving as if he were shivering in a cold wind. His eyes
were a faded brown, peering through lids that seemed to lack the energy to open properly. Stubble covered much of the lower half of his face, suggesting four or five days without a shave. But there was a vitality to him that Thea recognised instantly. This was a man who made things happen, and didn’t wait for life to come to him. Wasn’t he here on a drizzly Sunday, ready to meet somebody new and take his chances with her, rather than huddling in his little house watching inanities on the television?

‘Cup of tea?’ she suggested.

‘Coffee,’ he corrected, with a hint of reproach, as if she should have known his preference. ‘Black, no sugar.’

He followed her into the kitchen and sat at the table watching as she hunted for a mug and teaspoon. ‘The blue one’s mine,’ he said, in his light piping voice.

She gave him a look. ‘Is instant all right?’

‘Perfectly, thank you.’

The kitchen had fewer modern gadgets than many Thea had experienced. Harriet Young was pleasantly normal in that respect, it seemed. A faintly grubby microwave sat on one counter, near a large wooden bread bin. The fridge-freezer was stuffed with anonymous bags and trays of assorted meat, bread, ice cream and vegetables. The top of it, too high for Thea to reach, was piled with
dusty-looking
cookery books and a fat half-used candle. Fruit for the geckoes was in a special plastic box,
with some dried insects that looked like raisins.

‘Managing, then, are you?’ Donny asked.

‘So far. It’s not very difficult, really, although I’d banked on decent weather. I’m trying not to worry about the geckoes.’

‘Silly things,’ he smiled, his head quivering in the perpetual tremor. ‘Don’t know what she was thinking of.’

‘Oh well. They’re quite sweet, I suppose.’

He waved the topic away, and cautiously sipped the coffee, holding the mug tightly in both hands. It was a tense business, and Thea realised she should have made sure it wasn’t filled too close to the brim.

‘Never get old, not if you can help it,’ he said, having managed a swallow of the hot drink. ‘It’s a miserable business.’

‘Not much choice, is there?’ She sat down opposite him and tried to concentrate. Would she really get old one day, like this man? Like everybody, more or less. ‘I suppose it’s better than dying young.’

He shrugged. ‘My daughter died last year. She was forty-one.’

‘Oh gosh! I am sorry. My husband died three years ago. He was forty-two.’

He closed his eyes. ‘Forty-two,’ he murmured, as if it hurt. ‘That’s another one dying too young. Was he ill?’

‘No. Car accident. Was your daughter? Ill, I mean.’

‘Oh yes. Had a bad heart all her life. They did a transplant and she died.’

They did a transplant and she died.
Thea heard a whole anguished story in that little sentence. ‘Right away?’ she asked, too horrified to mince her words.

‘Eighteen months after the operation,’ he said. ‘You should have seen her.’ Again he closed his eyes. ‘It should never have been allowed. They think they’re so clever, but there are things they never even stop to consider.’

How did we get into this so quickly?
Thea wondered. It was as if Donny needed to unburden himself of this enormous trauma before they could settle into a normal discussion of the weather or the next general election.

‘Such as?’ she prompted.

His eyes opened fractionally wider, to reveal a rage undimmed by his own physical failings. ‘Such as, how is a person supposed to live with somebody else’s heart inside them? They just laughed it off as fanciful when she said she didn’t feel as if she was herself any more. She would hold herself …’ he clasped his own mottled hands over his chest ‘… and say she could feel the person’s life thumping away, trying to escape.’

‘Sounds a bit … well, oversensitive,’ Thea suggested with a smile. ‘Although I can see it must feel terribly strange, especially at first.’

‘That was her nature, taking everything hard. She’d always been like that.’

‘And I suppose she would have died young, without the new heart?’

‘So they told us.’

‘You didn’t believe them?’

‘She’d never have managed a baby, or climbed Mount Everest, or run a marathon. But if she looked after herself, and kept herself quiet, she’d have lived more than the time she did. And she’d have been easy in her mind. They break the ribs, you know, to get at the heart. For a woman …’ his eyes lost focus, filmed with tears ‘… well, she was dreadfully scarred. Like cutting up a piece of meat.’

Too much information
, Thea thought, with a wince. But it was all true, as far as she understood the procedure, and it chimed with the occasional fleeting notions she had entertained on the subject. Could she ever be so utterly desperate to live that she would permit such drastic medical interference for herself? Did everybody cling to the hope of continuing life so passionately that they were willing to pay such a price when it came to the crunch?

‘I’ve made a living will,’ he said, conversationally. ‘So I won’t fall into their clutches.’

‘Oh?’ She had heard the phrase before without being entirely sure what it meant. ‘How does that work?’

‘They’re to leave me to die,’ he said fiercely. ‘That’s what it means.’

‘Oh,’ said Thea again, a jumble of conflicting
thoughts all clashing together in her head. ‘But … I mean, are they
allowed
to do that?’

His bravado evaporated. ‘It depends,’ he said.

‘They mean well, you know,’ she said feebly. ‘Palliative care and all that. Lots of people say it’s really nice in a hospice, if you can get a place in one. Everybody being so honest and open, and making every minute count.’ She smiled tentatively. ‘That sort of thing.’

‘I’d never get a hospice bed. They give them all to people with cancer. That’s about the only thing I haven’t got. I’m just supposed to slowly crumble away, until I can’t control any of my bodily functions.’

He breathed heavily for a few seconds, and then drained the coffee with difficulty. Thea had no choice but to hear and understand what he was telling her. No platitudes would help him, nothing she could say would change the reality. Pity flooded through her, and a surging desire to help. She reached for his quivering hand. ‘Don’t think about it,’ she advised, earnestly. ‘I know it sounds pathetic, but you’re here now, chatting to me, and it’s OK this moment, isn’t it? That’s all that matters. You don’t know what’s going to happen. We can’t plan our own deaths, you know. You could drop down dead now, with a stroke or something, and all this worrying will have been for nothing.’ She smiled into his eyes. ‘And you look to me like a man who enjoys life.’

Again, the film of tears sluiced his eyes. ‘I knew
you were a good ’un, soon as I saw you,’ he said faintly. ‘It’s a rare thing, for a woman to talk so frankly as you just have. I just wish Mimm would listen to me sometimes. She’s always in such a tizz, she can’t stop long enough to hear what I’m trying to say.’ He was mumbling, forcing the words through a wash of emotion.

‘Mimm?’

‘Jemima. My daughter,’ he elaborated, rubbing his midriff. ‘It’s not such a good day, today, to tell you the truth. Too many aches and pains.’ He fingered his stubbly chin. ‘And I ought to get myself a shave as soon as Weena comes back.’

Thea refrained from questioning this second odd name. Edwina! she remembered. His lady friend. ‘Doesn’t your daughter do it?’ she asked.

He snorted. ‘I won’t let her. Far too ham-fisted, she is. I’d lose half my skin.’

Thea winced in sympathy, hoping there was no requirement for her to volunteer to do it. Donny went on, ‘I miss Weena when she goes off. She’s always very good to me, even if we do have our disagreements. She means well, nobody can deny that.’

Hepzie, noticing her mistress’s solicitude, decided to join in. She approached the old man and pawed gently at his leg. He looked down and smiled at the large liquid eyes and floppy black ears. Automatically he reached down and fondled the soft head. ‘It might be different if I had a dog,’ he murmured. ‘Something
to live for, that would be. You can’t let them down, can you?’

‘Have you ever had one?’

‘Once. We had a little Westie when we were first married. He got run over and my wife said she couldn’t bear another one, knowing it would die one day. Silly, really. Same with Mimm. She’s like her mother, though she won’t hear of it if I say so.’

Thea recognised a feeling of mutual understanding that went beyond the brief verbal exchanges on this first encounter. Rightly or wrongly, she thought she understood this old man, his wishes and fears, priorities and prejudices. She could hear a lot of his thoughts between the words, and even thought she grasped some of the essence of his daughter as well.

He sat quietly for a few minutes, mastering his emotions, then he gathered himself and got to his feet. ‘Thank you, my dear. I’ll be going now.’

He straightened slowly, and turned for the door. A final thought detained him. ‘But you’re not right altogether, for all that,’ he said, without meeting her eye. ‘One thing’s sure – I will end up dead. And I need to get the funeral sorted out. Mimm has some plan for putting me and Janet together in the churchyard, but I’m not sure that’s what I want. She won’t let me talk about it, you see.’ He gave her a searching look. ‘Have you any suggestions as to how I might go about fixing that?’

‘As a matter of fact, I have,’ she said. ‘I know the very man to help you.’ And she detained him on the threshold for another ten minutes while she explained all about her friend Drew Slocombe and his alternative burial ground.

She phoned Drew soon after Donny had left, and explained the situation. ‘I’ve no idea how much time he’s got, or what he can afford. I only just met him this afternoon. But I thought you could maybe send a leaflet or something, and he could contact you,’ she said carefully.

‘But … will he want to be brought down here, away from where he lives?’

It had been over two months since she had heard his voice, but it was as if they’d been speaking every day. Dimly she noted that she had established an almost instant friendship with Drew, much as she had with Donny. It made her feel slightly complacent, the way she could simply take up the threads again, despite not having seen or spoken to Drew for so long. Preliminaries had been minimal – she could hear
everything she needed to know in his easy response to her initial words.

‘What about the Broad Campden field? Is that going ahead?’

He sighed loudly. ‘Extremely slowly. Your man would have to live the best part of another year at this rate to stand any chance of a grave there. But at least it’s still under discussion, and I’ve completed a large mountain of paperwork for the planning committee.’

‘Oh. Well, I should think he might manage that. He’s still walking, and feeding himself. I don’t know what his prognosis is. I don’t even know what the matter is, except it looks like Parkinson’s.’

‘Poor chap. And you’ve only just met him, did you say?’

She gave a self-deprecating snort. ‘I know. Seems crazy, doesn’t it? But we just seemed to hit it off from the first moment. He had no intention of settling for small talk. Just plunged in with the serious stuff.’

‘He’s lucky.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, to find you. Nobody but you would have let him talk about his own grave after five minutes’ acquaintance.’

‘Rubbish. You would. And your Maggs person.’

‘That’s different. It’s our job.’

‘He wanted to talk about it. He asked if I could give him some help with his funeral, a minute before he left, and I told him what you did, in a fairly
general sort of way. So where do we go from here?’

‘As it happens, I’m coming up on Tuesday, to see the legal people. I might be able to drop in and talk it over with him. Where are you?’

‘Cranham. It’s on the western edge of the Cotswolds, down a maze of little roads. Have you got a map? But let me check with him first and call you back. It’ll be this time tomorrow, I expect. He comes every afternoon, so we could easily fix something up for Tuesday.’

‘OK. I can probably find it. If this is to be the first customer in the new cemetery, it’s worth getting a bit lost.’

‘Good,’ she said vaguely, thinking it would be nice to see him again.

‘Thanks, Thea,’ he said warmly. ‘I appreciate you thinking of me.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ she said.

She took Hepzie around the village at five, when the drizzle finally gave up and a late sun emerged to brighten the evening. It shone warmly on the damp hedgerows and verges, creating a steamy humidity that felt quite foreign. She had no real feel for Cranham yet. The only resident she had met was poor old Donny. She passed quiet stone houses with flower-filled gardens and no signs of life. It was no different from many other Cotswold villages she had experienced in that respect. A few cars passed by, containing the first of the trickle of people coming home from a day out –
some probably even worked on a Sunday. Once back, they seemed to disappear out of sight, regardless of the weather. Long summer evenings were no more effective at tempting them onto their front lawns than a November downpour would have been. Occasional voices floated from back gardens, where privacy was guaranteed by walls and fences and hedges.

But there were a few people in the woods when Thea and Hepzie turned off the road and passed the unusual community playground which the locals had evidently established for their children. This, she remembered, was the last weekend of the half-term holiday. School would begin again the next day, with whatever small snatches of freedom modern children enjoyed curtailed for another six or seven weeks. There were two girls sitting on top of a sturdy climbing frame, talking intensely, heads close together. A man with a large grey poodle approached her. He wore a blue Breton cap with a wide brim over his face, and a
lilac-coloured
shirt. He had shapely, fleshy lips, reminiscent of the figures in many a Pre-Raphaelite painting.
The only gay in the village
, flashed through Thea’s mind, and she gave him a warm smile, prompted largely by inner amusement at the inevitable reference. He smiled back, and stopped walking.

‘Nice little spaniel,’ he observed. The poodle was ignoring Hepzie completely, its sharp nose averted.

‘Thanks.’

They watched the dogs in silence for a moment,
pausing before the inevitably continued conversation. The balance had been tipped the moment the man halted and spoke. And yet there remained the traditional British reluctance to engage with a stranger.

‘Haven’t seen you around before,’ he said.

‘No. I’m house-sitting for Harriet Young, at Hollywell.’ She waved towards the Manor.

‘Are you indeed? Well done you. Fabulous house, of course. Full of good things. I like good things. And hasn’t she got some kind of reptile in the cellar?’

Thea smiled again at the image of a massive iguana lurking in the shadows that the words evoked. ‘A few, yes. Only little ones.’

‘And you’ll have to suffer the miserable Donny Davis as well, I imagine?’

‘He drops in. I don’t find him at all miserable. I rather like him.’ She sounded stiff, even to her own ears.

‘People do, at first. He’ll soon drive you crazy with his self-pity.’ He raised his eyes to the sky. ‘Please let me die,’ he quoted, in Donny’s quavering tones. He looked hard at Thea then. ‘Why doesn’t he just find the guts to put an end to his misery, and do us all a favour, if he’s so adamant that he won’t let a doctor look at him?’

Thea was shocked. ‘He enjoys life too much, I suppose. It’s not so easy to just kill yourself because it might be convenient to your family. And I imagine he’s within his rights to stay away from doctors and
hospitals after the dreadful time he had with his daughter.’

‘If you ask me, it’s a sign of dementia. And you’re wrong about dying – it’s as easy as pie. It’s staying alive that’s difficult.’ He gave her a straight look. ‘I should know.’

The man was in his late thirties, she estimated. Probably quite affluent and apparently in good health. He obviously had no idea what he was talking about, despite his claim. Her mouth felt full of arguments, jumbled assertions about fear of death, and essential human ambivalence, and a burning need to leave some sort of trace behind.

‘Oh,’ she challenged. ‘Why’s that, then?’

‘As it happens, I’m a doctor myself. Cardiovascular surgery, to be exact.’

Thea gulped back her astonishment. ‘Fancy that,’ she managed. ‘I would never have guessed. But I stick to my point. I still don’t think you understand about Donny. You probably have to be old and ill to have any hope of getting inside his head.’

He held her gaze. ‘But you’re neither, and you seem to be claiming some special insight.’

She quailed for a moment at his refusal to give way. ‘At least I’ve been
listening
to him,’ she blustered.

The man shrugged elaborately. ‘Well, I don’t mind telling you I head for the hills if I see him coming my way. Jasper and I know a few nooks and crannies in these woods, if we need to make an escape.’

‘I wouldn’t worry,’ she flashed, determined not to be intimidated by him. ‘Donny’s not very fast on his feet, after all. I wouldn’t think there’s much risk of him catching you.’

‘Ooh—’ even before he finished his remark, she had found herself registering this outrageous parody of Kenneth Williams ‘—listen to you! Here for five minutes and already knows all about it, am I right? Well, Madam House-sitter, you’ll learn. Come back to me in a week and tell me I was right. You will, you know. My name’s Philippe, by the way. What’s yours?’

She told him, but neglected to introduce her dog, as she normally would. This
Philippe
was quite frivolous enough for both of them, and if that made her seem stiff by comparison, then so be it.

‘Have fun, then, Thea Osborne,’ he said, and continued on his way.

She released the spaniel from the lead and wandered slowly along the woodland paths, one eye on the plumy white tail that bobbed amongst the holly and brambles beneath the big beech trees. Cranham was still quite unknown to her after a busy twenty-four hours. Part of her hoped to keep it that way, staying quietly at Hollywell Manor, making coffee for Donny and catching whatever sunshine there might be on offer. A year earlier she had been at Temple Guiting in a blazing hot spell, with Detective Superintendent Phil Hollis. Now a new Philip – she would have been happy
to bet that was his original name before he Frenchified it – had crossed her path, albeit highly unlikely to find himself in anything like the same kind of relationship to her as Hollis had been. Now firmly in the past, she preferred not to think about him and the perverse way she had treated him. Since then, men had been in short supply in her life.

Except for Drew Slocombe, of course. And Drew didn’t really count.

The evening wound down slowly, still light at half past nine, albeit cloudy. The gecko eggs slumbered peacefully, their heedless parents marginally more active when Thea went to inspect them. She caught the quick movement of one, at the top of its tank, just before it froze halfway behind a large palmate leaf, the clever camouflage unsuccessful once she had seen it move. Where did geckoes come from, she wondered. How long did they live? She had blurry memories of reading about them sitting above windows inside houses in hot climes, waiting for flies to come their way. A sort of tropical version of Dickens’ cricket on the hearth; something people regarded as benign, even rather auspicious. But quite how it evolved from there to a British craze for owning them as pets was obscure. As far as she could see, they were singularly unrewarding.

She thought about Donny, bracketing him with the geckoes as another element of her responsibilities.
Would he appreciate her introducing him to Drew, forcing him to confront the reality of his own grave? She acknowledged that the poodle-owning Philippe had already sown a few seeds of doubt, despite her indignation at his attitude. But she clung to the idea that arranging a meeting between Drew and Donny would be an interesting experiment for both men – even possibly therapeutic for Donny if Drew could manage to be as sensitive and understanding as she believed him to be. If the old man backed off, muttering that he really wasn’t quite ready for anything so concrete, then he might relax into enjoying the summer and forgetting about his bleak future.

Except he had already seemed pretty relaxed. Thea’s first impression of him as a man who relished life felt rock solid. She would never have charged him with self-pity, despite the terrible story about his daughter, and his own limitations, and Philippe’s unfeeling accusations. With difficulty she recalled what Harriet had told her. There was a lady friend called Edwina. Why hadn’t she, or the daughter, not helped to settle the matter of his funeral already? Did they refuse to discuss anything to do with death and dying, as many people did? Were they relentlessly, mindlessly, jolly when all the poor man wanted was to clarify the arrangements for something that was sure to happen eventually? Did they laugh it all away and change the subject? What did they think about the living will and its implication that Donny would wish to die at home,
with their full cooperation? Had he perhaps gone so far as to appeal to them for assistance in committing suicide, when he felt the time had come, only to meet with frozen faces and a determined change of subject?

The questions came and went, the answers all pending further contact with the man himself. Thea found them absorbing, in a way she had not felt absorbed for some time past. Death had touched her many times in the last three years, until it seemed it was following her around, stalking her like a persistent admirer. Repeatedly she had promised herself that it would not happen again, only to be foiled. And now, here it was again in a different guise, intriguing in a new way. A man who both did and did not want to die, who did and did not want to
live
. It felt like being shown a window onto something rare and vital, where she might be able to contribute, thanks to her ability to face up to more reality than most people could.

She went to bed, eagerly looking forward to her next encounter with the sick old man.