Maestro (2 page)

"One thousand pounds. Whom shall I make it out to?" 

"Guillaume Gillane. G-U-I......." 

"Is that French?" Sara asked as she followed his spelling, letter by letter. 

"Guillaume is. It’s French for William. Gillane is the anglicised version of the Italian." 

Sara handed him the check. 

"Please make sure that I spelled your name correctly." 

"Yes indeed." 

Gillane finished his cup of coffee and got up to leave. 

"Would you like me to check on you from time to time, Sara? There's no 'phone here, unfortunately."  

Sara hesitated before replying.  

"Yes, that may be a good idea. Thank you." 

"Well, I'll be off. Enjoy your stay. Nice walks around here, especially now that the weather has warmed up." 

"I thought I might explore the countryside." 

"Goodbye. I’ll see you soon." 

Gillane walked off abruptly. Sara followed him out of the cottage and watched as he made his way along the path. She wondered why he had not entered that way in the first place. 

Gillane disappeared quickly from her view. Sara sat down on the bench relieved that he had gone. It was too warm to stay lounging outside in the long cotton dressing gown she was wearing. She decided to take a quick bath and drive back into Glymeer to have a proper look around.

Glymeer really was very small. Apart from the grocers she had stopped off at the day before, there was a saddlery, a clothes shop, a post office, a general store, barber and a bakery.  

The few people walking around did not appear to be tourists like her. They greeted each other, stopping to chat and exchange news. When Sara passed by, they looked at her but did not return her smile. Sara observed how alike they all were: stout, average height, fair skinned, freckles and red hair. 

She made it to the end of the street, to the grocer, Ruddy Face, whose name she discovered painted above the door was John Sheeley. Mr. Sheeley did not confront her at the door this time; he was inside weighing and wrapping bacon and pork for a woman customer standing at the counter. 

The woman did not seem to notice Sara at first and continued chattering away. 

"This pork from your farm, John?" 

"Aye. The weather's not been good for breeding this year." 

"Awf. You'll manage as you always do." 

"Three pound forty today Mag. That'll do you will it?"  

Mag nodded. 

"I'll come round later with that for you then." 

Mag loaded up the basket she was carrying and noticed Sara who had been standing silently next to her. Unashamedly, she looked Sara up and down. 

"You visiting us for the day, then?" 

Sara felt intimidated by the huge, florally frocked figure in front of her. Had she been in a similar situation in Central London, she would have ignored the question. Nobody even remembers your face in London. But this was different. This was a small, closed village where a stranger stood out like a sore thumb. 

"No, no. I'm here for a few more days." 

"Where you staying then?" Mag was not letting up. 

"Downswold." 

Mag spun round at an alarming velocity, her eyes fixed on John this time. 

"That Gillane still rent it out then?"  

John fidgeted nervously behind the counter. 

"Do you need change for that then?" he said distractedly, pointing at Mag's basket and forgetting that she wanted to pay him later. 

Mag glared at him and marched off towards the door. 

John took a few seconds to regain his composure once Mag had left. He looked at Sara and asked her very quietly if she needed anything. Too late. Curiosity had already gotten the better of her. 

"Did I say something wrong?" she asked innocently. 

"Nah. She doesn't much like foreign folk." 

John squinted at her. Sara stared back wanting to examine this face more closely, crack the unease she felt around such an unfriendly lot. Nothing doing. John defied her by squinting even harder. He looked very close to pitching her out of his shop. 

"Look!" she almost wailed, "I'll be coming in here off and on for the next few weeks. Do you get fresh supplies every day?"  

The Ruddy Face kept staring. Not breathing, not moving. A pair of hands seemed set to grab her by the neck and squeeze hard.  Finally the Face spoke. 

"A few weeks then. That's a long time to be staying at Downswold." 

"Is there something I should know? Is the place infested with ghosts?" 

The Face did not flinch at the obvious sarcasm. 

"Maybe." 

The stubborn intransigence sounded even louder in the single word he had just uttered. Sara's face clouded over darkly but she stood her ground. 

John Sheeley spoke at last. 

"There were goings-on in that place. Twenty years ago. Villagers don't much like the man who owns it." 

"What sort of goings-on?"  

"A young girl went there and was never seen again." 

"You mean she went to the cottage and no one ever saw her again?" 

"No...I...that Mag who was here, she knows more than me. Look, I've got work to do. What'll you have then?" 

The squint was back. It was pointless pursuing the story. The village was probably rife with gossip and innuendo about everything and everyone. But how much of it could be true? 

"Four of those sausages and another lettuce. The one I bought here yesterday was very nice." 

The complement went unnoticed. The sausages were quickly wrapped. The lettuce bagged. 

"Two pound ten." 

Sara handed over the exact amount. 

"Where's the nearest town, Mr. Sheeley?" 

"Goldarn. Continue past here for six miles."  

"Thank you. Goodbye." 

A drive into Goldarn might be just the thing to clear her head. If the three people she had met so far in Glymeer were representative of the rest of the population, she would do well to avoid the place altogether. 

Chapter Three. 

The map in Sara's car confirmed John Sheeley's directions. Goldarn was six miles away. The route was straightforward enough, cutting through the valley Meer. She could be there in fifteen minutes. 

Despite her late breakfast, Sara was hungry again. She ran into the bakery across the road from the unfriendly grocer and bought herself a ploughman's lunch: cheese and chutney wrapped in white bread. The staff in the bakery squinted and stared. Sara took the sandwich back to the car to eat, away from prying eyes. 

Once over Cumbers Bridge, she put her foot down hard on the accelerator. She passed Downswold and five minutes later, came to the Meer valley. On either side of her, the hills stretched out forever. Millions of years ago, a giant river had run through the valley. Today, the flattened hills were covered in wheat and bright yellow rapeseed. 

The road began to wind perilously and Sara slowed the car down. Just in time. A hundred yards on, she was confronted by a flock of sheep, packed tightly across the road. Fifteen maybe twenty sheep in all but there was no room for them and the car. 

Sara turned the engine off. She heard a whistle followed by "Go on then, go on then." The sheep jostled over to her side of the car, pushed along by a black and white collie, too absorbed to notice her. An elderly man, a farmer, came up last holding a long stick. He tilted his cap at Sara but did not return her smile. 

Seven minutes later, Sara was in Goldarn. Ten times bigger than Glymeer but the same cobbled streets and ancient stone buildings. The shape of the town was different though. The streets appeared to run from East to West converging into a sort of Italian or French type "place" or square where one would normally expect to see fountains and statues. Instead of historical ornaments, ten or twelve stone islands filled with flowers had been positioned strategically around the square with enough room between them for cars to park. Around each island, cars fanned out like giant petals of a sunflower. 

Sara parked her car. She would need a map of Goldarn or maybe she could just go exploring. Another idea came into her head. A month was a long time. She didn't like walking or even the countryside. And there was little else she could think of doing, out here in the sticks. Public records, archives, that sort of thing. She could do a little digging of her own. That way, hopefully, the hours and the days would pass quickly. 

Sara locked the car and surveyed the square. Many of the cars parked around the flowers were new. People going about their business were dressed for the warm weather - not fashionable but neat in appearance. The women wore flat leather sandals to brave the uneven cobblestones. 

A young woman, standing not far from Sara, was busy chiding a crying toddler. 

"Stop crying, Paul! You can't have it and that's that!" 

Sara interrupted her. 

"Excuse me." 

The woman looked startled. 

"Be quiet!" she shouted at the child who continued screaming his head off, then to Sara: "Yes?"  

"Can you tell me if there's a public library here. Somewhere where they keep the town's records?" 

The child was tugging at its mother's arm, screaming even more loudly, furious by now at being ignored. In between scowling at the child and at Sara, the woman managed to respond. 

"A library? There's a building that has books and things. Over there, near the Police station." 

She pointed across the square in the direction of a National Lottery sign. Not waiting to be thanked, she dragged the child away. 

Indeed the police station was next door to a newsagent, home of the Lottery sign. On the other side of the police station, Sara saw a sign saying TOWN HALL.  Sara pushed open the heavy wooden door. The smell of musty old books and dust confirmed she was in the right place. An ugly metal desk faced the door. A woman sat behind it, hair drawn back tightly into a schoolmistress chignon. She was wearing thin rimmed reading glasses which as she moved her head up and down, inspecting the newcomer, made her eyes look far too big for her head. 

"Can I help you?" enquired the woman, eyelids flickering. 

"Do you keep records here from twenty years ago?" Sara asked politely, approaching the desk. 

"Many more than that. Eighty-five years."

The eyelids performed an even more intense routine. 

"May I have a look?" 

"At WHAT precisely?" 

"The LOCAL PAPERS from twenty years ago. PLEASE!"

Sara heard herself shout. 

"Do you know how to use MICROFICHE?" 

"I'LL LEARN." 

Satisfied that she had intimidated Sara sufficiently, the little woman got up from behind the ugly desk. 

"Come with me."  

No more than the size of a ten year old, the prim little thing walked stiffly ahead. She led Sara to a dimly lit corner of the room surrounded by dark wood cabinets. She bent down slightly and pulled out a shelf, the type of shelf an artist would keep his drawings in. 

"1968, December. The next drawer would be November. The next October and so on." 

She walked away towards her desk, no doubt eager to torture the next visitor. 

Sara fiddled with the machine for reading microfiche and decided she would start in January instead of December. 

Nothing much happened apparently in January 1968. The local paper, the
Goldarn Voice
, was mostly filled with news of the exceptionally harsh winter. "FOUR FEET SNOW ON NEW YEARS EVE" read the headline on 01 January. No international news - nothing on American civil rights or the Viet Nam War. Local births and deaths were listed meticulously although an obituary page was notably absent. The local "news" was barely enough to fill the twelve pages of the paper. There were some interesting recipes, which alleviated Sara's boredom, for culinary treats like Cloutie dumpling and Cock-a-leekie. 

In March, a young girl disappeared. Sarah Lunn, twenty-one years old of Glymeer, had not been seen for two days. Since the twelfth of March. Sarah's family were asking for information about their daughter's whereabouts. 

A record snowfall of six feet was recorded on the same day. Farmers would be facing bankruptcy if the spring didn't quickly set in. The heavy snowfall and Sarah's disappearance were not recorded in the paper until the fourteenth. Two days. 

The fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth - nothing about Sarah. Nothing in April, May, June, July - just news of the glorious summer. August 23rd "MISSING GIRL CASE CLOSED". Inspector Jay, Chief of Police, issues a statement. No evidence to suggest the girl had come to any harm. He feels obliged to close the case.