The Garden Party (17 page)

‘I think I know where this is going.' Penny Yewdall returned her attention to Sandra Barnes.

‘Yes. So it came to pass that one day the man, the owner of the house, wanted to sell the house so he gave his bit of stuff her marching orders, but said bit of stuff had more about her than the man thought and she said that after all those years, in excess of ten, I believe, she had some moral claim to the property. So it went to court and the jury found in her favour and she became the outright owner of the house.'

‘Nice.' Penny Yewdall pursed her lips. ‘Very nice.'

‘Yes, good for her, I thought,' Sandra Barnes replied. ‘I can well imagine the man being less than pleased, very less than pleased, but my sugar daddy said that the man was an idiot, all he had to have done was to get that woman to sign a rental agreement, give her a rent book and take even just one penny a month, but in the event she lived there permanently as her own and only home so . . .'

‘Squatter's rights?' Yewdall anticipated.

‘Yes, that's what decided that court case, an ancient legal right going back to medieval times. If you live in a property for seven years or more you can claim it as your own. But my sugar daddy was determined that that wasn't going to happen to him, so I got charged a nominal rent but I wasn't bothered; I wouldn't have stayed for seven years anyway. So I paid a quid a month for a lovely flat in Earl's Court, a sitting room, a bedroom, a dining kitchen and a bathroom. The whole building was once a large family home with servants' quarters. I was on the ground floor. All the other flats were occupied by yuppies, really high earners and my “daddy” said I could have a “Tom”, by which he meant a boyfriend, but the “Tom” couldn't visit me there, I had to go to my boyfriend's flat, if I had one. I just had to keep myself available for my sugar daddy every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening.'

‘I see,' Penny Yewdall replied softly. ‘You know, I can understand the attraction of that arrangement for a girl who does not want to get involved . . . clean, safe, comfortable.'

‘Yes, and it was clean and comfortable, always clean, always comfortable and it was safe, safe until the garden party, then it was anything but safe.' Sandra Barnes shook her head slightly. ‘Oh, and I got a three-week holiday in the Canary Islands and also a two-week Easter holiday in Cyprus, all part of the deal. I suppose I looked eye-catching in a bikini in those days. I was taken along to set him off on the beach and in the bar at night, either stretched topless on a beach towel or perched on a stool in a stupidly short skirt, with a bronze, suntanned body; his to show off to the world like a glittering trophy, but I wasn't unhappy; nothing came out of my salary. I was even able to save, not much, but when the time came I had money to return to Chesterfield with. Not bad for a primary school teacher in inner London.'

‘Not bad.' Penny Yewdall glanced at Sandra Barnes with a slight, approving smile. ‘Not bad at all.'

‘And there were other compensations. My man was in his mid-fifties and so the physical demands were less. Sometimes me and Tony – that was his name – me and Tony would return from the restaurant,' Sandra Barnes explained, ‘and clamber into bed, there'd be a little fumbling and groping and then he'd fall asleep. Only when he visited on Fridays did he stay in bed the following morning, or during the school holidays, but usually I was going out the door as prim Miss Barnes, in a very proper three-quarter length skirt, and going to teach infants basic literacy and numeracy, while he was still sleeping off the previous evening's red wine.'

‘How long,' Penny Yewdall asked, ‘were you his mistress?'

‘About a year and a half . . . two Christmases and one and a half summers. We met approaching one Christmas, I remained his mistress until the next Christmas, then it all ended abruptly at the wretched garden party in the middle of the second summer . . . so, yes, about a year and a half.' Sandra Barnes paused. ‘You know, I thought that being a rich man's mistress was the end of my innocence, but the actual end of that was the garden party.' Sandra paused as an elderly male dog walker approached them. The gentleman was dressed in short sleeves, white trousers and a panama hat and was being pulled along, it seemed to Penny Yewdall, by an eager corgi. As he approached, the man doffed his hat and said a cheery, ‘Good afternoon, ladies'.

‘Good afternoon,' Barnes and Yewdall replied simultaneously. Sandra Barnes remained silent for a few moments until she was certain that the elderly dog walker was safely out of earshot. ‘That day . . . it was a Friday in July, early July – he arrived at about six p.m. like he said he would, having told me that we were going to a party.'

‘At six!' Penny Yewdall exclaimed.

‘Yes,' Sandra Barnes replied, ‘at six. I thought it strange, but I had learned by then that “her indoors” must not ask too many questions and because I had been told that we were going to a party I was well tarted up. I don't mean a ball gown but . . . how shall I put it . . .?'

‘Elegant?' Penny Yewdall suggested.

‘Yes –' Sandra Barnes held eye contact with Penny Yewdall and then looked ahead of her – ‘that's the word, elegant; long skirt, nylons, heels, jewellery . . . all the jewellery I had, just a few cheap bangles really.'

‘I get the image.'

‘Usually,' Sandra Barnes carried on, ‘Tony arrived dressed in the male equivalent, smart suit, highly polished shoes . . . reeking of aftershave. I mean, Tony would never be mistaken for a woman, like we were saying earlier. I mean, he was one hundred percent supercharged testosterone. Good gracious . . . no . . . Tony in drag . . . never. But anyway he arrived in a T-shirt and faded denims.'

‘Dressed down?' Penny Yewdall asked. ‘Would you say dressed down?'

‘Yes.' Sandra Barnes nodded in agreement. ‘That's a good way of putting it. You have that skill, Penny, but yes . . . so . . . I am dressed to kill because he's taking me to a party, wearing all the finery he bought for me, and he is dressed to sloth about the house on a Saturday morning. So I am told to get the fancy kit off and so I do, not happily, because I had dashed home from work and spent an hour getting arrayed for the fray . . . make-up, clothes . . . all that number.'

‘Yes.'

‘So it all came off. Had to wash all the war paint off, put the good clothes away, returned wearing a T-shirt and a pair of jeans I had cut down, quite savagely, into a pair of skimpy shorts, tennis shoes . . . no socks even, I left the socks off as a form of protest. So it's all getting a bit confusing by then . . . so we go out, lock the flat up and there's his blue Porsche, double-parked, and we get in . . . hood down and the first thing I notice is a suitcase behind the seats, so by then alarm bells are beginning to ring a bit softly . . . a bit in the distance, but ringing nonetheless.'

‘I can bet they were,' Penny Yewdall replied.

‘So.' Sandra Barnes took a deep breath. ‘I am thinking what sort of party is this that we leave for it at six p.m.? Mind you, it was nearer seven by the time I had got changed, but so unusually early still, and dressed as we were dressed . . . for a party? Then the suitcase in the back of the Porsche, a change of clothing for him, none for me . . . I mean, just how long is this party going to last?'

‘Indeed.'

‘So this was Tony Sudbury flying his true colours,' Sandra Barnes continued. ‘He had told me he was in the world of finance, so I thought a stockbroker or someone in insurance in the City, but he was flying his true colours that week. He really showed his true self.'

‘It is always the case, eventually,' Penny Yewdall replied, but continued to speak minimally, giving just short responses. It was, she knew, so, so important not to lead Sandra Barnes, though she did allow herself to say, ‘You're going to tell me he was in the criminal sort of financial world?'

‘Yes,' Sandra Barnes replied, ‘in a word, yes. And how. I mean East End organized crime, the whole heavy number, where even he with his convertible Porsche, his properties, and him in his fifties, even then he had to call people “boss” and do what he was told. My eyes were well opened at the party.'

‘Tony Sudbury, you say?' Penny Yewdall made a mental note of the name.

‘Yes, like the area of London, Sudbury-on-Thames.'

‘I know it, or rather know of it, driven through it a few times, quite a pleasant area,' Penny Yewdall commented.

‘I'll take your word for it,' Sandra Barnes replied drily, ‘but that was his name, Tony Sudbury, “Flash” Tony Sudbury. I suppose I should have seen that as an early warning sign but I didn't, I just didn't.'

‘Seen what?' Yewdall queried.

‘His whole Flash Harry attitude . . . loved hard cash, wallet bulging with the stuff. I mean what stockbroker does that? They use credit cards or cheques but Tony used to flash a wad of readies about whenever he could. He even once did that stupid stunt of lighting a cigar with a burning twenty pound note, but very occasionally he did write a cheque and that's how I know his real name was Tony Sudbury. Usually he'd give me cash if I needed something, but once he wrote a cheque for five hundred pounds, told me to buy a watch with it. He thought I needed a watch you see. At least a better watch than the watch I had at the time.' Sandra Barnes paused and looked away from Penny Yewdall.

‘Something bothers you?' Penny Yewdall enquired gently.

‘Yes . . .' Sandra Barnes replied slowly, ‘can I tell you something, Penny?'

‘Of course.'

‘I stole from him. I felt so guilty and I still feel so guilty . . . but now what could have happened to me haunts me.'

Penny Yewdall remained silent.

‘That cheque he gave me to buy a watch. I cashed it . . . I paid it into my bank account. You see, despite the lifestyle, the flat in Earl's Court, the dinners, a man with a Porsche, I didn't have a lot of money behind me. So I bought a nice-looking watch from a charity shop, and bought a new strap for it just hoping he wouldn't want to see the presentation case or look at the guarantee.'

‘Oh . . .' Penny Yewdall raised her eyebrows.

‘“Oh” is right,' Sandra Barnes breathed deeply. ‘The worst I thought could happen is that he'd give me the heave-ho and trade me in for another sugar baby, but at the time I thought he was a man in the field of city finance, not a villain in the world of gangster finance. You don't steal from an East End blagger and get away with it. If I lived at all it would be with broken arms and legs . . . the risk . . . I was skating over thin ice there. I realize now that the Tony I was dealing with would have cut up rough, so the guilt is now compounded with the fear of what I could easily have invited on myself. A sense of my life being spared . . .'

‘Yes, many of us have those experiences, the scythe of the Grim Reaper passing within a hair's breadth of one's life. It leaves you hearing an echo saying, “I'll get you next time, don't worry . . . I'll get you on the way back”,' Penny Yewdall commented as a male jogger in a tracksuit jogged up from behind them and passed them.

‘Yes, it feels like that, like a fatal car crash that didn't happen by dint of a split second or a fraction of an inch . . . but the memory stays and haunts you.'

The two women fell silent for a few moments then Sandra Barnes continued. ‘So we're in the Porsche driving through central London. We drive north and Tony, he's done this journey before, I could tell; he knew where we were going all right. So we leave London on the A1, the Great North Road, as it is sometimes called.'

‘Yes, I know the road,' Penny Yewdall replied.

‘So we drive up the A1 and we turn off at Biggleswade, the Biggleswade exit. I remember that was the turning because the name has always amused me, such a funny-sounding name and it also reminded me of the Biggles books for boys written by Captain W. E. Johns . . .
Flying Officer Biggles
and titles like that. My older brother used to read them and leave them lying about the house, much to my father's annoyance, because he was ex navy, my father, he liked good order, everything in its place.'

‘I can imagine his annoyance.' Penny Yewdall smiled.

‘So we came off at the Biggleswade exit and followed the signs for Bedford, but we never got as far as Bedford because we turned off the main road and drove along country lanes for a while.'

‘Good. This will help us.'

‘It will?'

‘Yes,' Penny Yewdall explained, ‘we must locate the house in question, it's essential that we do that.'

‘I see.' Sandra Barnes looked down at the pathway upon which she and Penny Yewdall walked.

‘I don't think that I can help you there, not the precise location,' Sandra Barnes was apologetic. ‘I doubt I could find it again especially because I now think that Tony drove a deliberately complicated long way round from the main road to the house as if to get me disorientated. When we left the house the return journey to the main road seemed to take only a few minutes. So getting me lost was clearly all part of the plan, along with a change of clothes for him but not for me.'

‘I see. We'll find the house. We knew it was in Bedfordshire and we have contacted the Beds. Constabulary,' Penny Yewdall explained. ‘We'll pick their brains. It certainly sounds like the sort of house they'll know about. It was a new build we understand with a roof of red tile?'

‘Oh, it was a real nest of vipers, the police will know about it, all right.' A note of anger crept into Sandra Barnes' voice and was clearly noted by Penny Yewdall. ‘And, yes, that is a good description . . . new build, red tiles, set back, well set back from the road. There were not a lot of grounds in front of the house but at the back it was huge, mainly lawn, but there was a swimming pool and a barbecue area with tables and seats round the burner. Dare say the swimming pool was a bit optimistic for the UK but that was a hot summer, like I said, and so it got used that week . . . in more ways than one. There was a second pool inside the house, that was more sensible, a heated pool and you could swim in there when there's two feet of snow on the other side of a pane of glass.'