Heaven's On Hold Read online

  As he made a note he told himself that it was hardly surprising that a listed property in a prime location should wind up with Border and Cheffins. ‘I’ll probably stroll round and take a look later today. And by the way I’m thinking of coming in tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ said Jackie.

  The moment she’d rung off he picked up Sheltered by Hills and found Orchard Mead in the index. The page reference was marked with a small dash in pencil. He found it, and read that this fifteenth-century cottage was one of the oldest houses in Newton Bury; that it had one of the village’s three remaining wells in the front garden; and that the thatchwork was among the finest to be seen anywhere in the county. There was no photograph, but he was pretty sure from this description that he knew the house.

  A rhythmic rap on the door heralded Lara.

  ‘Excuse me, sorry to disturb.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘Her ladyship’s having a nap, but when she wakes up I thought we might whizz into town and buy one of those activity frames.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘Give me a chance to look around as well.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  ‘So, what I’ll do, I’ll take her bottle and stuff with me and we might have lunch out.’ She must have noticed his fractional hesitation. ‘If you’re not happy with that I don’t mind.’

  ‘No …’ He shook his head. ‘I’m perfectly happy with it. After all, if I weren’t here——’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Lara round the door as she left. ‘If you weren’t here I could have the rough trade in at all hours and you none the wiser.’

  He smiled faintly, but for a second her silly joke resurrected his old misgivings about the situation, and how much of it depended on an act of faith. He was half tempted to call her back, and tell her that he didn’t want her ‘ whizzing’ anywhere in the car with his daughter, and what’s more if he ever suspected – but common sense prevailed.

  A little while later Karen, set-faced, brought him the post and some coffee, placing them on the desk with an unmistakable I-know-what-the-master-likes air.

  ‘Thanks, Karen.’

  ‘I wonder if we could have a word before I go?’

  He leaned back welcomingly. ‘Now, if you like.’

  ‘Later on would be better,’ she said.

  ‘When you’ve finished then.’ He hoped he wasn’t going to have to intercede in some messy domestic altercation. This, he supposed glumly, was what you got for not doing your own dirty work.

  The sight of Gina’s letter, peeping shyly from amongst the junk mail gave him a shock. But not, he found, an unpleasant one. Before opening it he turned it over a few times in his hands, and sniffed it – the cheap lilac paper smelled of her scent, and boiled sweets. He slid his thumb beneath the flap of the envelope, not wanting to tear it.

  ‘Dear Mr Keating,’ he read. ‘I was sorry you were not able to provide me with a reference for my job application, but of course I understand. As expected I didn’t get that job but I am working in a car showroom now and am very happy there. I deal with the general public every day which I enjoy, although I do miss being in the centre of town. How are you? I often think of you and the new baby and wonder how you’re getting on. Please give my best to Mrs Keating, Yours Gina.’

  Touched, he put the letter, with its quaint mix of formality and assumed intimacy, back in the envelope, which he then resealed and tucked in the inside pocket of his briefcase. That way he could pretend even to himself that he hadn’t bothered to read it.

  He was staring into space when the phone rang for the third time.

  ‘David, it’s Lou.’ She sounded harassed. ‘ This is a longshot but is Annet there?’

  ‘No, she’s at work.’

  ‘I tried her there but she hadn’t arrived yet.’

  ‘She wanted to talk to the new nanny so she left late.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter …’ Louise’s tone belied her words, ‘There’s probably no point in worrying her at this stage anyway.’

  ‘Anything I can do?’ he asked warily.

  ‘Not really, bless you David … It’s Mummy.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘She seems to have had some sort of fall.’

  ‘Oh Lord – serious?’

  ‘Not in the sense of any serious injury, no, just a few bruises. But it’s the implications that worry me. It seems to have shaken her marbles a bit. She got to the phone, fortunately, and she’s in hospital as we speak. They’re going to keep her in overnight for observation. I am rather worried about what it portends.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Look, are you quite sure there isn’t something I can do?’

  ‘No, no, good heavens, you’ve got your hands full.…’

  ‘The nanny’s here now.’

  He heard Louise heave a huge and slightly shaky sigh. ‘No. I’ve got myself into a quite unnecessary tiz. There really isn’t a panic. As Coral said, it’s not a big crisis, this is the sort of thing that happens with old people on their own. It’s just that Mummy’s always been so sprightly.’

  ‘She has,’ David agreed, feeling remorse for several years’ worth of small, ungenerous jokes at his mother-in-law’s expense. ‘She’s wonderful for her age.’

  ‘It’s so good to talk to you. I feel better, actually. I needed to unload.’

  ‘You’ve got it all on your plate at the moment. Would you like me to give Annet a call and get her to ring you at lunchtime? She’ll want to know anyway.’

  ‘Yes, but not when she’s at work. I’ll catch up with her this evening when there may be something more to report. And Coral can be the voice of calm and reason.’

  Coral’s name reminded him of something. ‘Isn’t it your big day fairly soon?’

  Her voice lightened audibly. ‘Yes, not long. I’m hanging on to that. We’re both so looking forward to it, but this with Mummy has rather come between, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘This too shall pass, Lou,’ he said. ‘And then just think, the four of us will be able to get together and talk babies.’

  ‘David?’ said Louise. ‘You’re a man in a million. If I ever turn from my present course it’ll be you I turn to, and that’s a promise.’

  ‘I’ll hold you to that.’

  David’s thoughts were preoccupied with Marina when at half past eleven Karen’s ‘I’m about to go!’ summoned him into the hall. If he’d been able to leave his sister-in-law a little happier it proved harder to do so with Karen.

  ‘Karen, thank you.’

  ‘Don’t thank me, it’s my job.’

  ‘You said there was something you wanted to discuss.’

  ‘I’ll come to the point, then. Lara’s very messy.’

  ‘You could be right.’

  ‘I mean she’s a nice girl, very jolly and all that, but she leaves a trail of stuff wherever she goes. It doesn’t make my job any easier.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘The thing is when it comes right down to it you pay me to do your cleaning, not hers.’

  ‘Point taken. I’ll have a word. I’m sure she’d be appalled to think she was making life difficult for you.’

  ‘To be honest I’m not fussed what she thinks,’ declared Karen. ‘I want to do a good job for you.’

  Against this subtle blackmail David felt he had no defence but to say: ‘I know, and we really appreciate all that you do, Karen. You leave it with me.’

  When she’d gone he stood in the hall and breathed in the peace of the empty house. Before going out he retrieved Gina King’s letter from his briefcase and slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt.

  On leaving the house he first walked across Gardener’s Lane to the opposite corner and stood by the lamppost looking back towards Bay Court. The window of the main bedroom appeared surprisingly close. Anyone standing in the window, as he had so often of late, would be as clear and distinct as a framed portrait.…

  As he walked on he thought of Ma
rina and her fall. It was hard to predict how Annet (whom he had decided he would call at lunchtime) would react to this news. He feared a whirl of fearsome, largely futile, activity intended to assuage the guilt that was a fellow traveller in all his wife’s dealings with her mother. His own view was that nothing much could be done while Marina was in hospital, but that there was a strong case for visiting her when she got home and taking the emotional temperature. He was sure that it was Marina’s mental rather than her physical state that would be the issue here. If she had in any sense persuaded herself that the time had come for her daughters to take up the reins, then Louise and Annet would be left very little choice in the matter. Respectfully, he realised that he himself had been let off lightly in this department. His parents had both died relatively young, in their late sixties, his father of a heart attack and his mother two years after from what was referred to even by the doctor as a broken heart. She had simply turned her face to the wall, and faded away. At the time he and Tim had been devastated, but having since seen the years of terrible emotional attrition, resentment and remorse which attended the long deterioration of other people’s parents, he was glad of it. Apart from anything else it meant that he retained a memory of them as whole, vigorous people in their prime, not rendered pathetic and querulous by the indignities of extreme old age.

  He continued round the back of the village, on the opposite side from All Saints and the river. This took him via Green Lane Cottages, formerly the infamous Moon and Stars hostelry, and he slowed down to try and identify the conservatory where the bread oven had been. But since all three cottages now had conservatories of varying degrees of grandeur he was none the wiser.

  He passed the school playground, currently swarming with mixed infants on their midday break. A few came to the brick wall and hoisted themselves up to lean on the top. A little girl with Baby Spice bunches called out.

  ‘Hello, Mr Man! Hello Mr Man!’ and then they all started doing it. Rather embarrassed by the shouting, he went over to them.

  ‘Hello. What are you doing?’

  ‘Leaning on the wall,’ explained one of the small boys with the blank air of one who couldn’t quite believe he’d been asked such a stupid question.

  ‘Had your lunch?’

  ‘Yes!’ they all chorused.

  ‘And was it nice?’

  ‘Yes!’ It seemed to be developing into a game, and David felt quite proud of his own success.

  ‘What did you have?’

  ‘Packed lunch! Packed lunch!’ they shouted, well away now.

  ‘So the others are still inside are they?’

  ‘Yes!’ they shouted, and this time the Baby Spice girl added: ‘School dinners don’t come out till after.’

  David made a mental note to repeat this wonderfully opaque observation to Annet.

  ‘I see. Well, lucky you. So what was in your packed lunch then?’

  This line of questioning proved a mistake, because it prompted each of them simultaneously to embark on a detailed inventory of the contents of his or her lunch box. David, smiling bemusedly, sensed things beginning to get out of control, and was rather relieved to see a fierce young teacher in a long skirt and ankle boots steaming across the playground towards them.

  ‘Get down off there at once please. What’s going on?’ she demanded, hauling her charges peremptorily off the wall and glaring at David.

  ‘I’m sorry, I asked them about lunch. It wasn’t their fault.’

  ‘I dare say. Go on off you go.’ She shooed the children away and then turned back to him, bristling with the authority invested in her. ‘They’re not supposed to speak to strangers.’

  ‘Of course.’ He was mortified. ‘I do apologise.’

  ‘Do you have a child at the school?’

  ‘No …’ He felt too humiliated even to embark on an explanation. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘If you did,’ said the young teacher tartly, ‘you’d appreciate why we have this rule and why we enforce it rigorously.’

  ‘I perfectly understand.’

  ‘Good. Excuse me I have to ring the bell.’

  As he walked away, smarting, the bell clanged imperiously behind him. Ask not for whom the bell tolls … So he had been taken for a potential child-abductor. It occurred to him that if he’d only had Freya with him in the pram, or had met someone that he knew outside the school, this appalling scene would not, could not, have taken place. The perfect rightness of the young teacher’s case did nothing to soften the cruel injustice of her suspicions.

  He was still miserably chewing this over when he reached Orchard Mead. By the look of the narrow lane he suspected it had been given its present name in the sixties, just before the publication of Sheltered by Hills, and around the time of the small modern development that clustered on its corners. He remembered now that the only other time he had been up here was when the charity for the homeless had asked him to distribute envelopes for voluntary contributions around the village, a humble but time-consuming task which he had since avoided.

  Orchard End was well-named – the lane came to a full-stop at its gate. The well and the thatch were just as described, and a coven of stooped apple trees clustered crookedly around the garden path. But there was plenty of evidence of discreet modernisation. A rustic sign declaring ‘private drive’ marked the route to a detached double garage to the left of the house and the outside plasterwork was in mint condition. A dark red Citroen estate was parked outside the garage with the tailgate up, to reveal one or two supermarket carriers in the boot. As David stood there a black Labrador burst from the open back door of the house and charged the fence, leaping up and down and barking so frenziedly that he stepped sharply backwards. When a smartly dressed woman emerged from the house and ran across to restrain the dog, David felt like a felon for the second time that day.

  ‘Sorry … he’s perfectly harmless but a bit overenthusiastic. Bad dog Pluto, basket – I said BASKET!’ She pointed, arm extended, in the direction of the house and the dog ambled off. It didn’t actually go inside, David noticed, but at least it wasn’t jumping for his throat.

  ‘Sorry …’ said the woman again. He put her in her late thirties, capable but harassed. ‘Did you want my mother?’

  ‘Is that Mrs Townsend?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I wasn’t intending to disturb anyone as a matter of fact. I’m David Keating of Border and Cheffins Country Properties.’

  ‘I’m Sue Bentham.’

  ‘How do you do. By the way, I live in the village – I was so sorry to hear about your father.’

  She gave him a surprised, hopeful look. ‘ Did you know him then?’

  ‘No—’ He almost wished to qualify this, but checked himself. ‘No, only by reputation.’

  ‘He touched a lot of people’s lives.’

  ‘How is your mother?’ he asked.

  ‘Very bad.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry.’ He let this lie respectfully for a second, before going on: ‘You obviously know that your mother’s just placed the house with us, and I believe Mr Macky’s coming to see you.’

  ‘That’s right, tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m not here to pre-empt his visit in any way. I’m having a few days off and thought I’d refresh my memory of where your house was.’

  ‘You were doing a recce,’ said Mrs Bentham. ‘No, no, that’s fine … Do you want to come in? Mother’s having a zizz.’

  ‘I won’t, thank you, I’ll leave you in peace.’ He gazed around. ‘It is lovely, I must say, your mother’s going to be sad to leave it.’

  ‘I don’t know …’ mused Mrs Bentham, and then added: ‘ Not as sad as you might imagine, I think she feels she has to move on.’

  David tapped the top of the gate. I’ll let you get your shopping in.’ He extended his hand. ‘It was nice to meet you, albeit under such sad circumstances. I’ll be in touch from the office tomorrow after Alasdair’s been, and we’ll get things moving.’

  On the wa
y back down the lane he could have kicked himself for the way he’d spoken to her, so smooth, so – there was no other word for it – fatuous. Thinking of Robert Townsend’s widow sleeping off another grain of grief on this sunny afternoon reminded him again of Marina. Annet considered her own mother’s grieving to have been a charade, but one never knew.

  Not wanting to appear a vulture for the third time that day, he avoided the school on the way back. At Bay Court the Metro had returned, and when he opened the door he could hear snickery pop music playing on the radio in the kitchen. In fairness to Lara this was switched off the moment he appeared in the doorway. She was sitting at the table, holding Freya, with a half-eaten sandwich and an open newspaper on the table in front of her. The empty formula bottle stood on the draining board.

  ‘Hi!’ she said. ‘ Excuse me carrying on, but I didn’t know how long you’d be.’

  ‘I think we have to operate as free agents, don’t you? As a matter of fact you seem to be so on top of things, I thought I might go into the office tomorrow. You can always ring me if you need to.’

  ‘Sounds good to me. Now …’ she hoisted Freya on to her shoulder and massaged her back, ‘how are we doing …?’

  She seemed, David thought, a little subdued. ‘May I?’ he aked, holding out his arms for Freya.

  ‘She’s all yours, literally.’

  He took his daughter and held her in front of him for a moment.

  ‘She holds her head well, doesn’t she?’ commented Lara.

  ‘You’d know more about that than me, I think.’

  ‘She’s a strong girl.’

  He liked that. And it was true, he could feel it. Already Freya was bigger and more active, her arms and legs were getting solid. As if reading his thoughts, she smiled at him.

  ‘Ah, she recognises her dad,’ said Lara. ‘By the way,’ she added, taking her plate to the sink, ‘sorry if I upset Karen.’

  ‘If you did,’ he said carefully, ‘we all realise it was nothing intentional.’ He was relieved in a way that she had saved him the embarrassment of raising the subject. ‘Karen’s not used to having someone else around – I mean someone who’s also got a job to do.’