The Garden Party (16 page)

Later that evening, after he and his wife had shared a perfectly cooked shepherd's pie, helped down by a jug of chilled water, they walked out arm in arm, both by then clothed in casual wear. They walked to the centre of Leytonstone and entered the Assembly Rooms, wherein they sat with a number of other people, a few of whom they recognized and acknowledged in a quiet, friendly manner. At the appointed time the visiting speaker stood and addressed the group, saying, ‘Hello, I am Mary Jane and I am an alcoholic,' whereupon Harry and Kathleen Vicary, along with all the other persons in the room, replied, ‘Hello, Mary Jane.'

After the conclusion of that evening meeting, Harry and Kathleen Vicary walked into a pub and each had a glass of fruit juice and nibbled their way through a packet of dry roasted peanuts. Just because one is an alcoholic, they would often explain, does not mean that one cannot continue to enjoy pub culture, such as quiz nights, and use pubs to escape from the house once in a while. Later still, they folded into each other's arms and both slept a nourishing, trouble-free sleep.

‘I
t really wasn't so very difficult.' Penny Yewdall sipped the very welcome cup of tea which had been warmly pressed into her hand by Sandra Barnes. ‘Not very difficult; quite easy in fact. We just had to follow procedure and be . . . well, a bit persuasive, but I must say the Department of Education of Tower Hamlets, London Borough of, were most fiercely protective of you and of your forwarding address. We had to go right up the top of the management mountain, encountering obstacles as we progressed. It was like climbing Mount Everest by the most difficult route, and when we did get to the top they insisted on phoning us back with the information to ensure that they really were talking to the Metropolitan Police. If they had still refused to let us have your address we would have had to obtain a court order and that would have been quite time-consuming. Even then they could only provide us with your parents' address and phone number.'

‘Yes.' Sandra Barnes showed herself to be the raven-haired woman who had been described, accurately so, thought Penny Yewdall, by Charlie Magg in the agent's room at Brixton Prison. Sandra Barnes had aged little and was still a slender-figured woman of pleasing appearance whose South African accent had not completely vanished. ‘Yes, my mother phoned me this morning and I phoned you immediately. I must say that you have made good time.'

‘I jumped straight on a train; underground to St Pancras, then to Chesterfield . . . taxi here, to your door. I don't think the taxi driver was particularly impressed; it wasn't a long journey.'

‘I can imagine. My husband was a taxi driver before he joined the fire service . . . it was one among the many jobs he had before he settled, and he told me that taxi owners make the good money only on the long journeys. Your driver must have been an owner-operator. An employed driver wouldn't be bothered about the length of any journey; he lifts the same money at the end of the week, no matter what.'

‘Dare say that's true.' Penny Yewdall glanced round Sandra Barnes' home. It was, she noted, a new-build detached house, with three bedrooms overlooking Eastwood Park in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. Within, the house was kept in a neat and tidy and clean manner, though children's toys were heaped in a corner and children's drawings had been attached to the wall. Light was allowed into the living room courtesy of a large front window, and the sense of airiness was heightened by the Barneses clearly favouring light colours for their wallpaper and furnishings. A compact hi-fi system stood on a low table beside the fireplace, upon which stood a small, bronze carriage clock. On the other side of the fireplace stood a modestly sized television set. The room itself smelled of air freshener.

‘So, tell me, I am burning up with curiosity.' Sandra Barnes raised her eyebrows. ‘Why me? What can I do to help the Metropolitan Police?'

‘Well . . .' Penny Yewdall sat forward and placed the cup and saucer she was holding on her lap. ‘How can I explain this? I think they sent me because I am a woman. At least I was when I was under the shower this morning,' Yewdall added with forced good humour.

‘You certainly seem to be one . . . lucky you.' Sandra Barnes smiled. ‘I wouldn't want to be a man and I am so pleased I've got girls, though my husband aches for a son. Being a firefighter he's a very manly man and wants a son to go to rugby matches and cricket matches with. He wants a son to take to the National Railway Museum, the very mention of which makes the girls go “yuk”! So you seem to be the real deal. Mind you, I have met some men who can make a passable woman in a dim light, and I can't help but feel sorry for them. The effort that must go into the disguise, even training their voice, but that's what goes on in those nightclubs in London; heavens, they'd be lynched if they got dressed up like that round here! This part of England can be very intolerant of that sort of thing.'

‘North, Midlands, South . . . small towns are all the same in my experience. Intolerant as you say, but . . .' Penny Yewdall relaxed backwards into the sofa on which she sat. ‘I'm pleased you see me as another woman. I am the genuine article.'

‘So.' Sandra Barnes also relaxed in the armchair which she occupied, ‘So, this is girl talk, is that what you're saying to me?'

‘Probably.' Penny Yewdall once again glanced discreetly round the room. ‘But it's probably more grown-woman talk . . . but, yes, that's what I am saying, and you are not under suspicion, because if you were then there would be two of us, but, yes, it's woman to woman time . . . if you don't mind.'

‘Do you know, I think that I know why you are here. I think that I can guess why you have travelled such a distance to see me, and have done so out of the blue like this.' Sandra Barnes looked up at her ceiling.

‘Oh?' Penny Yewdall queried. ‘Being what?'

‘The garden party,' Sandra Barnes replied after a pause, ‘it can only be about that, about a garden party once held in a fairly isolated part of rural Bedfordshire; it has to be about that. Is it?' Sandra Barnes lowered her eyes and looked at Penny Yewdall. ‘Is it about that so-called party?'

‘Yes.' Penny Yewdall nodded her head slowly. ‘Yes, it's about that . . . as you say, the “so-called” garden party. It did not sound to be much of a party.'

‘I knew people would start talking, eventually, and I knew it would return to haunt me. I just knew it wouldn't go away and stay away. I mean, it couldn't. How could it stay buried?' Sandra Barnes leaned forward and placed her cup of tea on the glass top of the coffee table which stood in front of the chairs and settee. ‘That sort of thing just cannot remain buried.'

‘So, tell me about the party,' Penny Yewdall pressed gently. ‘I have to tell you that it's important that you tell me, Sandra. I can call you Sandra?'

‘Yes.' Sandra Barnes nodded and smiled. ‘Please do.'

‘I am Penny.'

‘Penny . . . nice name.'

‘Penelope on my birth certificate, but I have been Penny for so long that Penelope would seem strange.' She paused. ‘But you have to tell me. I cannot lead you by my questions.'

‘I see. I dare say you must not, cannot put words in my mouth.'

‘And I will not do so,' Yewdall added. ‘So, Sandra, in your own time . . .'

‘How to begin . . .' Sandra Barnes seemed to scan the cream-coloured carpet for the answer. ‘Well, what I can say in the first instance is that it wasn't what I would call a party, not a garden party in the real sense of the term. If my daughters ever come home and say that they have been invited to a garden party, I promise you that I will feel very uneasy; the term has that resonance with me now. I dare say it always will.'

‘Interesting that you call it a garden party. It wasn't a house party?'

‘It was in and out of the house, but being the summer of that year and a hot summer at that, it was mostly outside, and what you will be interested in happened on the lawn and in the swimming pool. So I have come to think of it as the garden party.'

‘Fair enough, the garden party it is.'

‘The men ate out mostly, as well, by the barbecue area . . . and drank outside.'

‘Again, fair enough.'

Sandra Barnes paused as if thinking, as if mustering courage, then she said, ‘Look, Penny, one woman to another, I value my house . . . my home, nothing immoral has ever happened in this house. It's a family home. It's a sanctuary . . . it's akin to a sacred place for me.'

‘I fully understand,' Penny Yewdall replied, ‘fully understand.'

‘I don't ever want to talk about the garden party in this house. Even just talking about that week would seem to contaminate my house; it would seem to violate it.'

‘So can you suggest where we should go?' Penny Yewdall asked.

‘The park –' Sandra Barnes pointed in the direction of the front of her house – ‘it's just across the road. We can walk in the park; it's a lovely day.'

‘Yes.' Penny Yewdall beamed. ‘A day like this; a walk in the park . . . and walking is good for talking. You know, I have noticed that for some reason two people talk more freely when they are walking than when they are sitting together in a room. So, yes, admirable suggestion.' She stood.

Eastwood Park in Chesterfield, Penny Yewdall found, was a modest park, a flat area of grass with football and cricket pitches and a gaily painted swing park for the amusement of infants. It was surrounded by green-painted, round-topped railings and a concrete path wound round the inside perimeter. Nineteenth-century housing surrounded the park on three sides; the fourth side was occupied by twentieth-century houses, one of which was the home of Sandra Barnes. As Penny Yewdall and Sandra Barnes entered the park by a gate adjacent to Sandra Barnes' house, they saw, to their relief, it being midweek, that the park was sparsely occupied.

‘So, what can I tell you?' Sandra Barnes fell into step with Penny Yewdall and walked sufficiently close to her that occasionally their shoulders touched.

Yewdall glanced around her noting the red-bricked houses under black-tiled rooves of northern England. ‘As I said, Sandra, in your own words and time.'

‘Ah, yes.' Sandra Barnes nodded. ‘You can't lead me with your questions. Well, we were all duped, all cheated, all of us. All the women that is; all except one older woman who knew what was going on. She was there to keep us in line, but at least we lived to tell the tale, at least there is that to be thankful for. At least we survived with nothing more than emotional scarring.'

‘Survived?' Penny Yewdall echoed. ‘Others didn't?'

‘No . . . I'll tell you,' Sandra Barnes replied, ‘you see, I was what you would call a mistress. I was a rich man's plaything. I dare say that I sold my body but I never stood on a street corner, though most of the women at the garden party were street girls . . . but you can't live in London on a primary school teacher's salary, so you have to do something other than teaching if you are going to survive. It's difficult for unmarried schoolmistresses to survive up here where the cost of living is less, but in London it's impossible. So I allowed myself to be bought and I am not proud of it. It is a regret. I have to live with it and I do regret it. But I went with another girl to a club, she was a poorly paid low-grade civil servant I knew who had a sugar daddy, and the club is where sugar babies and sugar daddies went to meet each other, to check each other out, looking for a “click”. I went a few times and eventually I got a proposition which I found interesting. He was decorative and wasn't posh, working-class background the same as me, but he'd made something of himself in the world of finance . . . so he said.'

‘So he said.' Penny Yewdall smiled.

‘Yes, so he said,' Sandra Barnes sighed. ‘Well, I did say that we were duped and for me that was the beginning. Anyway, arrangements differ from couple to couple but my “daddy” installed me in a flat he owned in Earl's Court. I mean, no wonder it's called “kangaroo canyon”.'

‘So I believe.'

‘I mean,' Sandra Barnes continued, ‘all those young Australians taking a gap year to visit the mother country and all they wanted to do was stick together and drink Foster's lager. I mean, what's the point of them travelling to the other side of the planet just to be with each other all the time and drink Australian beer?'

‘Search me.' Penny Yewdall grinned. ‘But they're born upside down so they probably don't think logically.'

Sandra Barnes laughed. ‘I wish I had thought like that at the time, it would have helped me to make sense of it all.' She paused for a few seconds. ‘So there I was paying a peppercorn rent of just one pound a month.'

Yewdall gasped. ‘That is peppercorn, for London that is peppercorn.'

‘I know, but he was clever . . . shrewd, shrewd is the word I think I would use to describe him. By paying a rent, no matter how small, and recording it in a rent book, and by getting me to sign a rental agreement he ensured that my status in the eyes of the law was always that of tenant.'

‘Shrewd, as you say,' Yewdall said.

‘Yes,' Sandra Barnes replied, ‘you see, he told me once of a story; a true story. A man owned a second home, unknown to his wife, and he installed a mistress in the second home whom he'd visit when he felt the need for a little horizontal relaxation, all unknown by his wife.'

‘Of course.' Penny Yewdall's eye was caught by a youth of perhaps fourteen years walking slowly in the park. ‘I mean the wife is always the last to find out anything.'

‘Indeed. He also allowed the mistress to live in the house so as to sit it, as it were, keeping the burglars out, but no money was exchanged. She got rent-free living in exchange for her services and he got a house-sitting service for nothing, and this arrangement went on for some years,' Sandra Barnes explained. ‘Like, a lot of years.'