The Woodcutter (41 page)

Meanwhile abroad

Incessant rain was falling, or the frost

Raged bitterly, with keen and silent tooth;

And, interrupting oft that eager game,

From under Esthwaite’s splitting fields of ice

The pent-up air, struggling to free itself,

Gave out to meadow grounds and hills a loud

Protracted yelling, like the noise of wolves

Howling in troops along the Bothnic Main.

William Wordsworth:
The Prelude
(
Book 1
)

1

Johnny Nutbrown was truly a man of the moment, indifferent alike to future fears or past regrets. To him, each day was a box that closed at bedtime. During the night it was taken away, marked
not wanted on voyage,
and stored in some deep dark hold. Thus he never woke to a new day without feeling happy to greet it, and on the odd occasion when returning consciousness brought with it the awareness of some threat serious enough to ripple even his equanimity, the disturbance rarely survived a hearty breakfast.

One that did sometimes stay with him through lunch was the proposed sale of Poynters and the move to California. Toby Estover’s visit had rattled his cage more than he cared to admit, but as the Christmas holiday dragged its grossly inflated length towards New Year it was easy to fall back into his usual insouciance.

Every year the Nutbrowns gave a much-anticipated Hogmanay party and as usual Johnny was the perfect host. Booze, food, entertainment were the best money could buy, while the scag and coke he supplied for the delectation of his most trusted guests was of such a quality that many of them pestered him to learn the source of his supply. But the vagueness that had stood Johnny in such good stead throughout all his life was certainly not going to fail him in this instance. He knew there was a link that led from his supplier to Toby Estover’s client Pavel Nikitin, and that was not a man he cared to irritate.

‘Oh, just a chap I met at some club,’ he said. ‘Harold, I think his name was. Or George. Gosh, look at the time! Everyone into the Great Hall!’

And a few minutes later he was standing on a chair, leading the raucous midnight countdown as though he truly longed to ring out the old and ring in the new, though to tell the truth he’d never seen much reason to distinguish between the last day of December and the first of January.

So when a neighbour sighed, ‘Another great party, Johnny. Hard to believe it will be the last,’ he just looked at the woman blankly till she added, ‘Sorry, I thought Pippa said you’d found a buyer, or at least someone so interested he was paying for a survey.’

‘Ah, that,’ he said without much enthusiasm. ‘Yes, there was some Scottish fellow Pippa thought might be good for the asking price.’

‘That would be very good news,’ said the woman, too tipsy to recognize how this contradicted her recent expression of regret at the possibility of losing her neighbours.

In fact there were mixed feelings but there was no insincerity here. It was the local consensus that the Nutbrowns would have to come down a couple of hundred k at least to make a sale this side of summer. On the other hand, while no one likes to be proved wrong, if by some miracle they did get what they were asking, the implication for all neighbourhood values would more than compensate for the loss of
Schadenfreude.

In the early hours, after speeding the last of their departing guests with affectionate farewells and promises of eternal friendship, the Nutbrowns surveyed the melancholy relics of their passing.

‘Can’t say I’m sorry I shan’t be seeing any of that ghastly crew again,’ said Pippa.

It was part of Pippa’s capacity for disappointment that all social gatherings, including her own, left her with feelings of deep antipathy towards the guests.

‘Let’s go to bed,’ said her husband, ignoring this oblique reference to their possible departure. ‘Hope Mrs P and her crew don’t make too much row.’

This was Mrs Parkin, their cleaner, who traditionally came mob-handed on New Year’s Day to restore order.

‘Can’t lie in too long,’ said Pippa. ‘Need to be up to see Parkin doesn’t skimp. I want the house to be looking its best when Mr Murray comes on the third.’

‘Who?’

‘Murray who’s interested in buying the house. So interested he’s bringing his own surveyor to look the place over this time. I did tell you.’

She hadn’t, but she knew her husband wouldn’t argue the point.

‘Good God,’ he said in some agitation. ‘I thought these Scots spent the first week after Hogmanay in a drunken stupor.’

‘Don’t be racist. And come to bed.’

It was quickly apparent that despite the lateness of the hour Pippa wasn’t ready for sleep. Parties always left her with a residue of nervous energy which would keep her awake all night if she didn’t dissipate it. She stepped out of her clothes, helped her husband out of his, then fell back on the bed, pulling him on top of her.

Johnny’s great virtue as a sexual partner was that he was rarely importunate but when called upon was always ready and able to do exactly what was wanted in the proportions and for the length of time that Pippa wanted it. Five minutes did the trick tonight. After she came, she pushed him off, rolled over and went to sleep. Johnny lay awake a little longer, staring into the darkness, not exactly thinking but aware that there were thoughts in the room that might keep him awake were he foolish enough to think them. Finally he too fell asleep.

The day of Donald Murray’s visit was a perfect selling day. New Year had blown in on a sleet-filled easterly straight from the Steppes, but after two days this had died away to leave clear skies and bright sunshine that touched the property with the delicate skill of a Hollywood lighting engineer, every shadow and every highlight making the director’s point, which was in this case
love me! buy me!

Johnny had opted to head for the golf course. Ignoring the fact that you were selling up was hard when you had a surveyor clunking around the property. He looked up in alarm when the doorbell rang just as they were finishing breakfast.

‘Good God, is that them already?’ he said.

‘They’re not due till ten,’ said Pippa. ‘Probably the post.’

She returned a few moments later bearing the morning mail, which included two identical parcels, about twelve by six by three, addressed one to him and one to her.

They removed the outer brown paper with a synchronicity that would have got them into an Olympic synchronized paper-removing team, only to find themselves confronted by a substantial layer of clear plastic wrapping. This too they removed. Now each of them had something like a shoebox.

Each removed a lid.

‘Now why would anyone want to send me two Gideon Bibles?’ wondered Johnny. ‘What have you got, old girl?’

‘The same
,
’ said Pippa.

‘Seriously weird. What do you think it means?’

‘God and presumably Gideon knows, and I don’t intend wasting time trying to puzzle it out,’ said his wife.

She gathered together all the wrapping and the books, took them out of the kitchen into the utility room where their variously coloured recycling boxes stood, and returned saying, ‘Rubbish to rubbish.’

‘Good girl. I’ll be off then,’ said Nutbrown.

His wife was glad to see him go. Bargaining, she preferred to do alone, and even though she and Donald Murray had agreed a price, she had a feeling there was still a bit of negotiating to be done.

Dead on the stroke of ten, the doorbell rang again and she opened it to see the long spare figure of Mr Murray standing there, smiling down at her. Some way behind him, looking up at the façade of Poynters with the expression of traveller who has stumbled upon the House of Usher moments before its fall, lurked a second man who was summoned forward to be introduced as Duff, the surveyor. Whether this were forename or surname wasn’t clear, but either way, Pippa guessed he too was a Scot.

Her guess was confirmed when in response to her bright, ‘Well, you’ve brought the good weather with you,’ he sniffed the air vigorously as though already scenting damp and dry rot, and said something in an accent so thick it might as well have been the Gaelic.

She glanced at Murray and he interpreted, ‘Is it OK for Duff to have a poke around?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Go anywhere you like.’

They watched as he shuffled off, bent under the weight of a haversack that presumably held the tools of his trade.

‘You brought him all the way down from Scotland, did you?’ she asked wonderingly.

‘Aye. When I’m paying for a service I like to know I’ve got someone I can trust.’

‘It’s your money,’ she said. ‘Now, while he’s doing his job, is there anything you’d like to take a closer look at, Mr Murray?’

He gave her a quizzical smile and she feared for a moment he might lurch into a pass. Not that she had any objection in principle to being the object of a pass – accepted or rejected, it usually established a relationship with her on top. But mixing pleasure with business in Mr Murray’s case would not, she intuited, be a good idea.

Happily she was wrong, or he decided against it.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘A wee trip round the policies again would be nice, to see if it’s all as grand as I remember.’

They did the tour, outside and then in, seeing nothing of Duff but hearing creaks and clanks that suggested he was hard at his task.

They ended up in the kitchen, where she offered to make coffee. He said yes and she asked if he’d like to go through into the living room, but he said no, the kitchen suited him just fine, he always felt it was the centre of a house.

‘Mr Nutbrown no’ around?’ he asked.

‘No. Business, I’m afraid,’ she lied.

‘So you’re left to deal with the sale, eh? Lucky man, to have such a capable wife,’ he said.

He sounded as if he meant it.

She said, ‘Would Mr Duff like a cup, do you think?’

‘Duff’s not a coffee man,’ he said. ‘Irn-Bru, with a whisky chaser. But never on the job. He’s a man who likes to focus. He’d really hate it if he missed anything that came up later.’

‘I hope he’s not going to find much that need come up at all,’ she said, a touch acidly.

He gave her that quizzical look again, then said, ‘You needn’t fear I’m setting up to stiff you, Mrs Nutbrown. Me, I’d rather be buying a house the way we do it in Scotland: I make an offer, you accept it, we shake hands and the thing’s done. On the other hand, a wee reduction would be nice. Still, we’ve all got to live, even estate agents, eh? How much are Skinners charging you? Five per cent?’

‘Six,’ she said.

He whistled.

‘They live up to their name. Six per cent’s a mighty chunk of money once you get into the six-figure bracket.’

Here it comes, she thought. This was the kind of pass she’d been ready for ever since she met Murray.

She said, ‘Would you like a slice of cake?’

He looked at the lemon drizzle sponge she’d set on the table.

‘In a minute maybe,’ he said. ‘Talking of Skinners, what kind of agreement do you have with them anyway?’

‘The kind I can easily terminate,’ she said. ‘I made sure of that when they told me their charges. They in return made sure they drew my attention to the fact that the terms of the agreement would hold even after termination if ultimately I sold the house to anyone they’d introduced.’

‘Aye, that’s normal practice,’ he said. ‘Else why would anyone ever pay the sharks, eh? On the other hand, suspecting and proving are very different things, as the minister said when he got caught coming out of the massage parlour.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, like the minister, I may have been a bit vague with my details when I made the appointment. And I did it on the phone, so I never actually met anyone from Skinners face to face. Also, for tax purposes, if we did reach an accord, Mrs Nutbrown, I’d probably do it through a wee holding company I use from time to time.’

He looked at her expectantly.

She said, ‘Are you ready for that slice of cake now, Mr Murray?’

‘Oh, I am,’ he said. ‘I am.’

2

It was the second week of January before Alva Ozigbo got back to London.

Her father’s relapse had been serious but he had survived.

‘The good thing,’ his second-in-command had told her, ‘is that perhaps now Ike will stop thinking he knows best and trying to treat himself.’

‘I shouldn’t bet on it,’ said Alva.

By the time the New Year came, the prognosis was once again optimistic, but this time Elvira put no faith in it and Alva had realized there was no way she could leave her mother till she too had recovered from the shock. Early in the New Year Ike was pronounced fit enough to return home, but only if he had full-time nursing care. When he reacted angrily to this, Alva spoke to him severely.

‘Stop being such a diva and think of Mum for a change,’ she commanded. Then she softened her tone as she added, ‘Anyway, give it a few days, and it will probably be Elvira who bumps the nurse.’

Which was more or less what happened, with Elvira assuring the nurse, a laid-back Oldham lass called Maggie Marley, that she was more than capable of managing her husband’s health regime.

‘Fair enough,’ said Nurse Marley. ‘But I’ll still call round every other day just to check up, OK?’

Ike regarded this as a major victory.

‘Who’s a clever little psychiatrist then?’ he said. ‘So what now, Miss Motivator?’

‘I leave you two to it,’ said Alva. ‘And God help you both!’

She’d been doing what she could by phone and Internet to reorganize her own work, but of course all her patient contact had to be either postponed or reallocated, both of which options were far from satisfactory. Her interest in Wolf Hadda’s case was shelved completely. During this period leaving her mother to make another Cumbrian visit hadn’t been an option, even if she’d wanted to. She’d phoned Luke Hollins to explain her situation, told him that it was her unofficial opinion that Hadda was no danger to anyone, but of course if the vicar had any further cause for concern, he must take whatever steps he thought appropriate, and implied without spelling it out that her own involvement in the case was over unless it were officially revived.