Trouble in the Village (Tales from Turnham Malpas) (12 page)
Read Trouble in the Village (Tales from Turnham Malpas) Online
Authors: Rebecca Shaw
‘Must have been someone in while I was at lunch. Went home to eat it with Evie.’
Peter looked hard at him and Tom had difficulty keeping his gaze steady. ‘Mmmmmm. Because, you know, we cannot afford to have a fire started by someone smoking. If it was proved we wouldn’t get a penny on the insurance – these old timbers would go up like kindling. If you catch someone smoking turn them out.’
‘I would, immediately, you can bank on that.’
‘Good. This funeral on Thursday. Everything in order?’
‘Willie’s run through it with me, and I’m all set. Grave dug already.’
‘Good. I’ll get off home for some lunch then.’ Peter got to his feet and, towering over Tom, he looked down at him. Those intense blue eyes of his shook Tom a little; he thought they could see right inside him. God help him if they could. ‘You seem to be doing a good job, Tom. I’m glad you applied, I think we’re going to get on well together. You’ve already got yourself organised and that’s excellent. Evie well?’
‘Yes, thanks.’ Peter went out of the vestry, crossed himself as he passed in front of the altar and left Tom to get back to his polishing. Somehow the swish of Peter’s cassock as he strode down the aisle tugged at Tom’s conscience. All he longed for was to be truthful like Peter was with him, and he couldn’t, not to save his life he couldn’t.
The other matter occupying their idle tongues was where was Don eating? No kitchen, no cooker, no food. They’d speculated on an arrangement between Grandmama and Don, but dismissed that because someone volunteered they’d twice seen him coming out of Willie and Sylvia’s. One or two brave souls had dallied with the idea of asking Jimbo outright but at the last they’d got cold feet. It was
Vera who, in shock at the sight of her kitchen in pieces outside the front door, finally asked him the million-dollar question one afternoon when the rubbish had still not been moved and people were growing tetchy about it. She’d cadged a lift with the man who delivered groceries to the nursing home and to the Store and gone straight in, wedging the door open for him so he could get in and out more easily.
She found Jimbo standing by the till, idly casting an eye over his empire. ‘Seeing, Mr Charter-Plackett, that you know most of what goes on in this village due to the fact you love listening to gossip,’ Jimbo pulled a face at this remark and tried to look innocent of the charge, ‘no good pretending you don’t because you do, can you tell me what’s going on?’
Eyes round with innocence Jimbo took off his boater and smoothed a hand over his bald head. ‘About what?’
Vera gave him a nudge. ‘About my kitchen being out in the road. I’ve been to look. It’s true, it’s just like they’ve said. So? I understand your mother is to blame.’
‘Blame? I wouldn’t say that. Not blame, she’s aided and abetted, yes, I agree.’
‘Well, then, what are they up to?’
Jimbo bent towards her and spoke in a low voice. ‘Don’t know if I should be telling you this, but he’s ordered a new kitchen. Coming at the weekend and Barry Jones, and the electrician and the plumber from the Big House, are spending the weekend fitting it. Under Mother’s supervision, so you know it will be done right.’
Vera was aghast. She drew in a couple of deep breaths while she studied over what he’d said and finally came out
with ‘Ah! But where did he get the money? That’s what I want to know.’
Jimbo shrugged his shoulders. ‘Got to go. Customer.’ And he fled to attend to his business leaving Vera none the wiser.
All his life Don had been virulent about people who bought on credit. Go to hell sure as maybe will all them what borrow money. A sure and certain path to damnation is borrowing. So although he’d appeared to be doing some strange things since she’d left him, borrowing money almost certainly wouldn’t be one of them, because Don had always had a very healthy respect for hell. A terrible suspicion began to dawn on her. Maybe all these years when she’d been scrimping and saving he’d been saving too. Maybe he earned an awful lot more at work then he’d ever let on. She cast her mind back and thought about always getting a proper payslip from the nursing home telling her how much she’d earned, how much the thieving government had taken from her in tax and things, so she knew for certain how much she’d have in her pay packet. But had she ever seen one of Don’s slips? No! She had no more idea how much he earned even after all these years than she had had when they married, and what’s more she’d never thought to question him. Come to that, had she ever seen a bank statement? There’d never been one come through the post, that she knew for certain. In a flash she knew Don wouldn’t trust a bank anyway. So just what had he been keeping from her? How much, and where was it? The lowlife, the stinking rotten lowlife.
Vera stood in the middle of the Store so carried away with her thought processes that she didn’t realise she was in
everyone’s way. Someone bumped into her and apologised. She moved her bag to the other hand and felt the hardness of the cottage key as it banged against her leg. The message it gave travelled from her leg up to her head. She looked up at the lovely old clock Jimbo had on the wall behind the till. The beautiful shapely brass hands were saying half past four. Don ’ud be another half an hour before he got home. The key was in her bag as her leg had just witnessed, that huge key more fit for a castle than a cottage. Here was her golden opportunity to find out. Vera marched home, heart beating fast, too fast, but she didn’t care: she had to find out before he got back.
She glanced quickly up and down Church Lane: the only living creatures in sight were Jimmy’s geese waiting outside the Rectory. Vera swiftly put the key in the lock, turned it and disappeared inside. The sight which met her eyes horrified her. Every inch of space was taken up with the contents of her kitchen shelves. Only one chair was free, and that was placed directly in front of the telly. She smiled grimly to herself. Typical. Under the mattress was the usual place for people of Don’s kind to hide things. She climbed the tiny twisting stairs; on every step some item was laid which Don should have put away in the bedroom but which had never got further than the stairs.
The bed was unmade and it looked as though the sheets had not been changed since she’d last slept in it. She wrinkled her nose with distaste, but pressed on with her quest.
Lifting up one side of the feather mattress she splayed her fingers and patted as far as she could under it, spreading her arms as wide as possible, but found nothing. She went round
to his side of the bed, the one nearest the window, and did the same. Her fingers closed on a fat envelope. Inside were loads and loads of banknotes. Vera pulled them out. They were all fifty-pound notes. Neatly bundled with pages torn from an exercise book and fastened with sticky tape. Feverishly she made a hasty calculation. Over seven thousand pounds! Sweat rushed from every pore. The shock of it! So where had he kept all this lot when she lived at home? Certainly not in the bed. She’d have noticed. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was the deception. Making her use all the money she’d earned to keep them and contributing as little as he could, so he could save. But she couldn’t understand how
much
he’d managed to save. What really hurt was the thought that she could have had the new kitchen years ago.
The throb-throb of his motorcycle engine sounded outside. He was back from work. Vera raced down the stairs, picked up the first thing which came to hand, which by chance was the very cast-iron pan she’d hit him with the day she left, and charged outside.
Don, his back to her innocently unaware of his fate, was calmly immobilising his bike and still wearing his crash helmet, so he didn’t hear her breathing heavily behind him. Despite her anger she knew it would be pointless hitting him whilst he still wore his helmet, so she bided her time.
Don, having read outside a bank somewhere that helmets should be removed before entering the premises, always took his off before going in the house. His leathers creaked as he turned. If she hadn’t been so furious with him she’d have burst out laughing at the expression on his face when
he saw her standing there, the pan held in both hands, raised ready for attack.
‘Vera!’
‘You thieving little runt! I’ve found yer money! That nice little hoard you thought you’d keep for yourself. All that money and me living in poverty! Where’ve you been keeping it? Eh? Tell me that!’
‘I haven’t been keeping it! Let me tell yer! Just listen!’
But she wouldn’t. She aimed a great swipe at him and, with memories of the last time she’d hit him with that same pan, Don dropped his helmet and started to run with Vera in pursuit. Jimmy’s geese, still grouped around the Rectory door in the hope that the children would be coming out to feed them, began honking loudly and followed in a stream behind the two of them, half flying half running in pursuit. Neither Don nor Vera was as fit as they would have liked and Don, hampered by the weight and the restriction of his motorcycle leathers, lumbered awkwardly past Jimmy’s cottage and round the Green, with Vera shrieking the worst words she knew as she chased him. Fortunately she’d never learned really bad ones, so when the the children came out of the Rectory and Jimbo’s four poured out of their house and the early birds at the Royal Oak came out to see the fun they didn’t need to cover their ears. By the time they reached the Store every customer was out cheering in Stocks Row to see them go by.
‘Go on, Vera. Give him it!’
‘Run, Don! Run!’
‘Now, Vera! Give it up! The poor chap!’
‘What’s he done?’
Running and shouting at the same time meant Vera was
panting heavily as they passed the school, and by the time they reached their cottage again she was completely out of breath.
‘The money! You rotten dog! The money! You thieving, lying hound!’ She lunged at him yet again with the pan but he had just enough breath left to dodge out of her way. ‘All that money!!’ They both looked at the open cottage door, at each other, shouted, ‘The money!’ in unison and tried to squeeze through the door together. The geese, still in a state of extreme excitement, were pecking at Don’s legs as they tried to join the crush at the door so Don paused to kick at them and consequently Vera won. As she clambered up the stairs, on her hands and knees, too exhausted to walk upright, she made up her mind that half that money at least belonged to her.
Don almost had a heart-attack when he saw all the notes laid out on the bed. At the top of his voice he shouted, ‘You daft beggar! Leaving the house unlocked and all this money about! If you’d just stop to listen.’ He gasped for breath and sank on to the eiderdown, his head down, heaving great gulps of air into his lungs. Vera collapsed into the Lloyd Loom chair that had been so dear to his mother’s heart and began to laugh. Quietly at first and then more and more hysterically until tears began running down her face and she sobbed. Sobbed for her lost years, for her yearning for a better life, for being married to a man who loved her so little.
‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, Vera. I meant to tell yer.’
‘Shut up! Shut up!’
‘If you’d just calm –’
They heard a voice downstairs. ‘Hello! Hello! It’s Peter from the Rectory. Is everything all right?’
Don hastily pushed the money under the mattress and called out, ‘Coming down, won’t be a minute.’
When he reached the bottom of the stairs Don said, ‘Vera’s been a bit upset.’
‘I guessed. Is she feeling better now?’
‘She will in a bit. It’s a misunderstanding, and she doesn’t want to hear.’
‘I see. Would she like a lift home?’
‘That’s all right, I’ll take her.’
Peter raised his eyebrows.
‘Well, perhaps not.’
‘I’ll take her. Tell her come to the Rectory and knock when she wants to go and I’ll drive her.’
‘Thanks.’ Don looked up at him, hesitated a moment wondering whether to confide his troubles to him and decided this wasn’t the time.
‘You’ve blotted your copybook, I think, Don.’
‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘Tell Vera I’ll take her as soon as she’s ready. I’m working at home the rest of the day.’
Peter glanced round the little living room, looked long and hard at Don and left. Don sat down on the empty chair in front of the TV and switched on. Damn me! if it wasn’t one of those home-improvement programmes. He switched it off and flung the remote control into the farthest corner. It clattered to the floor behind the Be-Ro recipe books stacked on top of his mother’s green enamel casserole dishes and it took Don a whole week to find it.
He couldn’t remember feeling so low. The exhilaration
of smashing the kitchen to smithereens had long since passed and now Vera was so wild with him she’d probably never speak to him again. He’d been in a mess for some time but this beat all. If only she’d listen to what he had to say.
He heard her footsteps coming down the stairs. She arrived at the bottom and he turned to speak. For a brief moment his heart swelled with a loving thought. ‘The Rector’ull take you home, he says. Will yer let me explain? Please.’
Without addressing another word to him Vera left and crossed the road to the Rectory. Caroline answered her knock, swiftly closing the door behind her because of Topsy.
‘Come in, Vera. Peter’s on the phone, he shouldn’t be long now. There’s tea in the pot. Would you care for a cup?’
Vera nodded.
‘We’re in the kitchen.’
Alex and Beth were still finishing their meal. Alex shouted, ‘Hello, Mrs Wright! You didn’t catch Mr Wright then?’
Caroline hushed him, but Vera didn’t seem to notice his question. Caroline sat her in the rocking chair beside the Aga, and handed her a cup of tea.
‘Sugar?’
Vera shook her head.
The children found her silence unnerving, and soon asked to be excused. Caroline sat at the table finishing her pudding. Feeling the need to express her sympathy she said, ‘I’m sorry you’re having such trouble.’
