A Bellingford Welcome

10

A Bellingford Welcome

    “This is the nicest one,” explained Rosie, standing in the orange, lemon and green kitchen of Number 11, Moulder’s Way.

    Colin’s wide mouth twitched a little. “Mm.” It being a week-day, and John of course being in at work, Rosie had volunteered to install him in his cottage. By now he had gathered several things about his second cousin John’s second marriage, not the least being, of course, that the fellow was the luckiest man in England—family opinion to the contrary. No, well, Miriam Haworth, John’s mother, had been careful to impress upon Ma and Pa that Rosie was actually a Fellow at London University, not really an actress at all, but that hadn't disguised the lack of keenness. He’d missed a great deal of the kerfuffle, what having been first in Germany and then the Middle East of more recent years, but Ma, who wasn’t especially keen on the Haworth side, had sent him regular gleeful bulletins.

    “Ah—what about a bit of orientation?” he murmured.

    Rosie looked hard at his bad leg. It was out of plaster, though there was still a support bandage on the ankle. He had a walking-stick now, but there was a lot more mobility in the leg, so he was trying not to rely on the stick too much. According to the quacks he healed fast. It didn’t feel like it from his end, though.

    “I have to start using it some time, Rosie.”

    “Um, well, we could just have a cup of tea here. I’ve brought over some stuff for you,” she said as he opened the larder door and found the cupboard was bare. She began to unpack the basket she’d brought. “We didn’t put any supplies in ’cos we didn’t know exactly when you were coming, and ya never know, there might be rats.”

    “Well, not if the cottages are clean and empty, I shouldn’t think, Rosie,” he said weakly.

    “Bullshit! I seen this dokko, see, I think it was actually David Attenborough, and there’s rats everywhere in Britain! And some places, there’s even foxes in the towns!”

    Colin had to swallow. Had she actually said “I seen”? No wonder Miriam Haworth had waxed less than enthusiastic! Reminding himself firmly of the lecture bloody Terence had given him, not to say of all those sick-visits she’d paid—coming up to London specially, in the case of ninety percent of them—he replied nicely: “Yes, foxes are cunning beggars. But you mustn’t try to keep me in cotton-wool, you know. Is there a teashop?”

    “Dimity’s; it’s for them,” she said on a sour note.

    “I’m sorry?”

    “In the High Street, just down from the Superette and the hairdresser’s: it’s for them.”

    “But who are they, Rosie?”

    “Eh? Oh! The wanking retirees, and look out, Moulder’s Way’s got a few.”

    “I see. Well, we won’t go there if you don’t like it.”

    “The cakes are all right but there’s no decent sandwiches and everything’s really overpriced.”

    Did this mean she wanted to go or not? “I think it’ll run to elevenses for two, Rosie,” he ventured.

    “Okay—but it’s your funeral!” she warned, turning for the door.

    “Which way?” he said cautiously as they emerged into Moulder’s Way and Rosie carefully closed the cottage’s creaky gate.

    “Well, if ya go up the road,” she said—he didn’t think he was imagining she was looking warily up to her left as she said it—“that gets you into Harriet Burleigh Street, and if ya keep going up you come out at our end of the High Street. The shops are, um, well, about parallel with where we are, I suppose, only you can’t get straight through.”

    “I see. Well, that’s not far!” he said with a smile.

    She glanced uneasily up the street again. “No. But ya can get to the shops if ya go down the road, too.”

    Given they were at Number 11, there were only half a dozen plots—whether occupied by cottages, ruins, or just plain grass—below them. “Mm?”

    “Like, down the far end, the road meets George Street, then ya gotta go round the loop, that takes ages, only down between Numbers 2 and 4 there’s a sort of track that’s quicker.”

    She’d stopped, so Colin prompted: “Yes?”

    “That gets you through to what used to be the village square before they dammed the stream and all the wells ran dry and this end of the village died the death. Like, ya can’t get a car through, but it is a track, it doesn’t belong to anybody.”

    “A common way, then,” he said, smiling at her.

    “It’s not on the maps, though.”

    “What, not on the county maps?”

    “Nah. Me and Greg, we checked. It is the quick way to the shops, only then you gotta go right up Church Lane. It’s very steep.”

    Colin took a deep breath. “The leg’s fine—not very manoeuvrable, can’t really bend the ankle, but it’s stopped giving me gyp!” he said cheerfully.

    “I thought you’d say that.”

    “No, honestly! Had a few problems with the knee jamming in the early days, but it’s fine, now.” He smiled at her flushed face. “Mountaineering’s out but I’m up for anything else! Come on, show me this track!”

    “Well, okay. The thing is, Rowena Mason lives up your road, at Number 20. She can’t of seen us yet or she’d of shot down here,” she said, looking edgily up the street again, “but she can’t miss us if we walk right past her place.”

    “Right! Down the road we go!” he said, laughing.

    They duly headed down the road, Rosie pointing out that the cottage opposite, Number 10, was Bob Potter’s: he was okay, and Colin was not to mind the five o’clock shadow and the Harley. The track was very well trodden, he could have found it for himself, but Colin didn’t say so. They went along it and emerged into the wilderness of what had once been the village green.

    “Hell,” he said, staring at the bare expanses of clay.

    “Yeah,” agreed Rosie with satisfaction.

    “Did you say some idiot dammed the stream?” he croaked.

    “Yeah. Yonks ago. Just after the First World War. And the idiot in question was John’s great-grandfather. Well, don’t ask me about the geology of it—the water table must be real high hereabouts,” she added casually: Colin blinked, “but the result was, no water down this way. It is reticulated now, but that took about another fifty years. The very old villagers from round your way and up George Street can still remember having to fetch water in a bucket.”

    “I see,” he croaked, staring numbly at what must have once been a nice little Norman church.

    “That belongs to Ms Deane Jennings and Mr Jennings,” she said with horrid satisfaction.

    “I believe you!”

    “See, the villagers reckon that that scaffolding that’s sticking out of it, like where he’s got his great collection of cacti and succulents, that’s holding the whole thing up, not just supporting the mezzanine the architect put in. It used to be aubergine, the turquoise is new.”

    Colin nodded numbly. And what had they done to the big old front door? “Rosie, is that the original door?”

    “Far’s I know, yeah. See, when I first came here it was avocado, or ya might call it eau de nil. But see those giant hinges with the, like, fleur-de-lis on the ends?”

    “Hard to miss them,” he croaked.

    “Yeah. They’re real wrought iron but not original. That distressed-wood look’s new: Ms Deane Jennings decided that aubergine and avocado were out and turquoise and stripped, distressed oak polyurethaned within an inch of its life were in.”

    Colin eyed it longingly. “I wish we could go up and have a closer look.”

    “Come on, then!” She looked at his face. “It’s all right, they’re at work and even if they hadn't of been, we could of lied and said you were admiring what they’ve done to it.” Forthwith she opened the terrifyingly smart wicket gate of 60 Church Lane and marched up its front path. Colin limped after her, doing his damnedest not to let the grin show.

    He was just running his hand admiringly over a piece of very, very old, polyurethaned-within-an-inch-of-its life English oak when it opened.

    “I’m so sorry!” he gasped.

    “It’s all right, ya don’t have to lie, this isn’t her,” said his cousin’s wife quickly. “Gidday, Juliette.”

    “Hullo, Rosie!” beamed the young woman in smart designer jeans and a short-waisted yellow knit top who’d opened the door.

    “This is Colin,” explained Rosie. “This is Juliette Bellinger, Colin: she looks after little Kiefer Deane Jennings. –Hullo, Kiefer!” Sure enough, a little boy could now be glimpsed peeping round the young woman’s legs.

    “Hullo, Colin! So you got here at last!” beamed Juliette.

    “Yes,” said Colin feebly. “Good to meet you, Juliette.” –Trying to pronounce it as Rosie had, with a definite emphasis on the final syllable, though eschewing the “oo” pronunciation of the initial vowel.

    “Come in!” urged Juliette hospitably. “We were just about to have our elevenses, weren’t we, Kiefer?”

    “We’re gonna have jam tarts!” he piped.

    “Well, yes, Belinda had some nice ones in, this morning,” said Juliette on a guilty note.

    “Juliette, at that A,G,E, won’t he D,O,B you in?” replied Rosie in horror.

    “What?” returned Juliette blankly.

    “D,O—Oh! Shit, what do ya say in Pongo? Um…”

    “G,I,V,E you A,W,A,Y?” suggested Colin delicately, his eyes twinkling.

    “Well, not actually, I don’t think,” replied Juliette, going rather red, “’cos he’s a very bri—um, B,R,I,G,H,T little boy and it’s dawned that if he, um, if he did do that, um—”

    “That’d be all she wrote,” supplied Rosie helpfully.

    Juliette smiled and nodded hard. “Come in!” she urged, pushing the giant door further open.

    “We don’t wanna eat up your jam tarts, though,” replied Rosie, hanging back.

    “We could just drink up your tea,” noted Colin.

    “Yeah, while he gets a good look at the horrors perpetrated upon the Norman architecture!” said Rosie with a sudden loud laugh. “Okay, we’d love to, if you’re sure, Juliette?”

    Juliette was quite sure, so in they went.

    … “That,” said Colin reverently as they emerged to a sunny, quiet, windy Church Lane quite some time later, “was one of the most glorious experiences of my life.”

    “Hah, hah.”

    “Tubular steel everywhere,” he said with relish.

    “Yeah, well, the architect hadda put in something to hold that bloody open-plan bedroom up.”

    “Isn’t it goddawful?” he agreed with a laugh and a shudder. “What in Christ happens when the kid starts to grow up?”

    “Village opinion’s divided on that one,” explained Rosie as they headed slowly up Church Lane. “One, they enclose the fucking mezzanine. Two, they build a loft over the garage, like we’ve got, and banish poor Kiefer to it.”—Colin nodded feelingly: he could just see that! Ms Deane Jennings must be as hard as nails: Juliette had explained that they weren’t to worry about the milk she was using for their tea, it wasn’t “hers”, it was her own.—“Or three—this is the most favoured one—they sell the dump.”

    “Right: move on up to the next upwardly mobile level.”

    “Yeah. Only it probably won’t be round here, unless they build: there aren’t that many places they’d consider big enough. Never mind: meantime they’re bulking up our stats nicely, we haven’t got many female execs! Too far from Portsmouth to be an easy commute, ya see. Mind you, it’s no problem to her, she goes like a bat out of Hell in that Saab of hers.”

    “I see. And Mr Jennings?”

    “Nominally he drives the four-wheel-drive, only she goes over their expenses with a fine-tooth comb and she’s decided it’s a waste of petrol, so now she’s making him take the red-eye. Sorry, they don’t call it that: that’s what we’d say back home. The workers’ bus, it leaves at quarter to seven!” she finished sunnily.

    Colin’s taxi had taken about ninety minutes, including a slight detour down the wrong road. It wasn’t that far as the crow flew, but the road was full of twists and turns and for a large part of the way the surface was terrible. Nevertheless, leaving the village at a quarter to seven— “What time does he start work?” he said numbly.

    “Whenever he gets there, I’d say, Colin. See, their offices are at opposite ends of the town, so if she gave him a lift she’d have to drive right through it and then go back.”

    “I see. Modern marriage, one presumes.”

    “Yep.” She followed his gaze. “That’s nothing, there’s one further up that they’ve had thatched.”

    “Uh-huh. Is the lead-lighter actually resident in the village?”

    “Nope.”

    Colin grinned.

    … “My giddy aunt!” he gulped.

    “Good, isn’t it?” said Rosie proudly.

    “No, it isn’t!” he said with feeling, “Just take me quietly away, please!”

    Grinning, she forged on past the horridly over-restored and heavily thatched 26 Church Lane—the unfortunate little cottage gave the appearance of peering out from under its fringe.

    Further up, on the other side of the road, an elderly gent could be observed getting into a Volvo. Rosie held him back forcibly—though actually, Colin had had no intention of rushing out and hurling himself under it. “Mr Hartley-Fynch,” she explained.

    “Uh-huh.” Mr Hartley-Fynch was quite possibly the worst driver in the world. They watched in awe as the Volvo backed and—No. Backed and—No. Backed and—No. Backed and—Christ! Lumbered into the road and away.

    “He goes down past the village green to the far end of George Street and gets into the High Street that way,” said Rosie in a detached tone.

    “Uh-huh.”

    “He’s given up trying to actually turn.”

    Abruptly Colin Haworth fell all over the horribly trendified upper Church Lane, laughing himself silly.

    John handed him a whisky, his eyes twinkling. “Rosie oriented you, did she, old man?”

    “I’ll say! –Thanks. Here’s to it,” he said, drinking. “Pa’s pleased I’ve reigned my commission, of course,” he admitted with a sigh.

    John nodded: Colin’s father was a country parson—retired now but still as much of a rabid pacifist as he had always been. Colin had followed the much more traditional career path for Haworth males. “You’d have been about due for a desk job anyway, wouldn’t you?”

    “I dare say. Forget it. Is there a taxi service in the village?”

    “What about your car?” replied John blandly.

    “Must you answer a question with a question?” he said irritably. “The car’s in London, being altered, because the damned medicos have told me I’ll never have reliable control over the bloody leg! Added to which, just to put you fully in the picture, bloody Francis Dorning’s told me not to drive until His Gracious Medicalness gives me the all clear! Satisfied?”

    “Not really, old man. Er—Cousin Matthew seems to be under the impression that you haven’t had any more of those blackouts.”

    Colin shrugged. “Nevertheless.”

    John looked at him dubiously but merely said: “To return to your last question but fourteen, there isn’t an official taxi service in the village but there is a taxi, of sorts. Unmetered. Driven by Graham Howell, the local garage owner.” He eyed him blandly. “It’s not for them.”

    Abruptly Colin went into a horrible spluttering fit.

    “I see you’ve been introduced to the concept,” said John blandly.

    “Yes! Don’t set me off again! So would I be entitled to use this chap’s services?”

    “Of course. I’ll ring him. Help yourself to another.” Calmly he got up and used the phone. “Graham would be only too happy,” he reported, “to drive you anywhere at all, and by that I include the whole of southern England. –Managing a garage in Bellingford is damned boring, and he doesn’t get the chance to service most of their cars, they take ’em into Portsmouth, of course.” He sat down again and handed him a scrap of paper. “Work number and private number. Molly Howell will take a message if he’s out with the car.”

    “Thanks,” said Colin, somewhat weakly. “How in God’s name, with your job, not to say—forgive me, old man—your parents, did you escape being one of them?”

    “That’s entirely down to Rosie. I don’t think it ever occurred to her,” he said, the little smile coming and going, “that given, shall we say, the facts of my position and her being not only a newcomer but literally a foreigner, we might well be considered as falling into—”

    “Thought I told you not to set me off again?”

    “Sorry!” he said with a laugh. “No, well, she genuinely loves people, you see. They’d have spotted her if it was just a sociological interest, but it isn’t, by any means.”

    “Mm, I got that. We had elevenses at The Church, Church Lane, as guests of a Mrs Bellinger who works for its owners. Though I have to admit it was her milk.”

    “It would be. I hope it wasn’t damned cream donuts, today?”

    “No. Jam tarts, but we didn’t deprive them.”

    “Good. Any other odd goodies you might just have happened to consume during your healthy walk?”

    “You don’t really want to—You do. Well, uh, we didn’t have Tim with us, if that’s what you’re—”

    “I am trying to watch his diet, too, but no. Go on.”

    “The butcher—Tom Something, is it?”

    “Hopgood,” he said heavily.

    “Right. Hopgood had some home-made sausages. For sale raw—not to them, naturally—but he’d cooked a couple. We were awarded a bit each. Very nice—well, beef and pork mixture with a daring bit of sage added, would be my guess!” he said with a grin.

    “How many did she buy?”

    “Two dozen. Explaining afterwards that she could always freeze them, and Tom’s feelings might have been hurt if she—”

    “Of course,” he said, grinning. “We’ll probably manage to squeeze them into the freezer.”

    Colin nodded obediently.

    John got up. “Come and look.”

    Rather surprised, Colin heaved himself up and followed him out to the kitchen. “Christ!” It was a fair-sized, lean-to kitchen, plenty of room for a heavy, scrubbed table and several chairs, but the enormous white monster took up a considerable amount of its wall space.

    “One of her theatrical friends named it Battersea Power Station,” said John, grinning madly. “They are the norm in Australia, of course. Like to see?”

    Colin nodded, a trifle guiltily. John opened the right-hand compartment—the door was as tall as they were, and rather wider than either of them. The fridge. It held two cartons of milk, a baby’s bottle, full, a tub of marg, an opened tin of jam, a jar of marmalade that had obviously also been opened, and one slice of pizza on a plate. A Royal Doulton plate, he rather thought. Blandly John opened one of the door compartments. Right: and a plastic packet of cheddar. Saying nothing, John closed that door and opened the other. The freezer, quite. Half a dozen packeted cheesecakes, neatly stacked, two large pizzas, and yes, those were the sausages, next to a large bag of frozen peas and another of chips. And, on a shelf all by itself, a misshapen plastic-wrapped package. Ah… Fish?

    “Those are some trout Alan and Daisy sent down,” said John. “The isolation is deliberate. We were up there last year and Rosie didn’t take to them at all. They often send us a few fish, but she hasn’t broken down and classed them as food, yet.”

    Colin swallowed. “Mm.”

    “There are plenty of greens in the garden.”

    “Good,” said Colin numbly, wondering what in God’s name she proposed serving up for dinner.

    “It looks as if we’re out of fish fingers again, I’d better make a note of it.” Colin watched numbly as he produced a pen and a list from his inside pocket and carefully inscribed “Fish fingers” on it. “Like some crisps?” he said with a smile. “Or, if we’re very lucky, small cheesy biscuits?”

    Colin accepted this offer, reflecting that any nourishment was better than none. John opened the pantry door and produced a large plastic jar with a brightly coloured sticker of something ’orrible on it and a luminous orange screw-top. Inside it were two unopened packets of crisps.

    “John, old man, I’m sorry, but if I don’t ask I’ll go barking mad. Why the jar? Uh—the baby’s not big enough to get into the cupboards, is he?”

    “Certainly not this one, he can’t reach its handle. He does play with the pots and pans in the lower cupboards,” he said, smiling. “No, this isn’t child-proofing, it’s ant-proofing and rodent-proofing. Likewise the refrigerated marmalade.”

    “But—Oh. She did say something about rats, this morning. Is Australia overrun with them, or what?”

    “Well,” he said with a twinkle in the sky-blue eyes much admired by the distaff side, “I rather think it is—or certainly with pests of all kinds, both introduced and native. Poisonous spiders, too; she’ll kill an innocent daddy-long-legs without thinking twice about it. It’s a very much warmer climate, you see, and they don’t get the cold winters that might keep the pests down. The rat theme’s been reinforced by some damned television documentary—right, mentioned that, I see,” he said, as Colin was nodding, “and by a helpful theatrical friend giving her the standard British horror tales about rats in thatch. I know we haven’t got thatch, but nevertheless. But the precautions are very largely not against rats, but against ants. In Australia—I’m not kidding—they invade the houses in plague proportions in summer. I mean it, Colin: plague. The cistern in a guest bathroom in her parents’ house was once discovered to be filled with them. There must have been about five thousand of the buggers. Honestly.”

    “Just—just ordinary ants?”

    “Mm, certainly. Oh, were you thinking of the horror stories of white ants on the documentaries, Colin? They’re no exaggeration, either. No, these were your ordinary common or garden ant.” He smiled. “May Marshall—Rosie’s mum—is very like her in looks, but the plumper, older model; and without the brains, that’s largely her father’s side. One might have expected a fit of screaming hysterics—”

    “Frankly, I think I’d have thrown one!” admitted Colin, shuddering.

    “Quite.” John reached down a pudding bowl from a cupboard and began putting crisps into it. “May coped magnificently. When the family came home that evening there was still a frightful stink of formic acid—Rosie said it lasted for days—but not an ant to be seen, the bathroom windowsill was decorated with three little saucers of ant-killer, and on inspection every windowsill in the house featured a similar little saucer! It was a very dry summer: I think the unfortunate insects might have come inside in search of liquid. It’s a bungalow, but nevertheless, quite an effort. Though one shouldn’t anthropomorphise.”

    “No, quite.”

    “There were no ants the following year: the ant-killer wipes out the nest, they take it back with them, you see. Rosie and May both explained it to me.”

    After a moment Colin got the point. “I see; you mean they don’t anthropomorphise.”

    “No. Pests of all kind are the enemy, and put down ruthlessly. In some areas the bloody farmers shoot kangaroos, would you believe? I admit Rosie doesn’t approve of that, but any lower order receives very little sympathy. When we were in Queensland last year we managed to get away from the damned filming on a couple of occasions and see a bit of the countryside, and we came across a huge flock of well-sized white birds—not the famous cockatoos, but some sort of parrot: what was it?” He frowned over it. “Co—No. Got it! Corellas! Not crested. They were the most magnificent sight, entirely filling a big tree by a river bank, but Rosie frowned and said they were pests: they destroy the crops.”

    “I see,” said Colin limply. “Er—were there any crops, John?”

    John led the way back into the main room. “Oh, yes: Queensland is incredibly fertile: tropical, you see. We’d passed a field of aubergines, further back, but the nearest fields were all pineapples.” He gave him a dry look. “Tough as old boots. The leaves as well as the fruits are covered in spines.”

    Colin swallowed.

    “I don’t really mind the pest-proofing,” he said with a smile, sitting down. “The hot toast more or less counteracts the ice-cold marmalade.”

    “For God’s sake! Put your foot down!”

    John hesitated. Then he said: “You see, I’m trying very hard not to do that, Colin.”

    After a moment Colin flushed darkly. “Sorry,” he growled.

    “Not at all: most of the family have said the same thing. Well, not Terence, he adores her. But certainly Fiona, though she is a fan. But you see, Rosie’s a person in her own right, with a set of values and habits that don’t always coincide with ours, but which are equally valid.”

    “Mm.” After a moment he said with an effort: “Why the fuck did the Navy let you take a shore job?”

    John ate crisps. Then he said evenly: “The Navy let me take a shore job, Colin, because I asked old Kenneth Hammersley to wangle it for me.”

    Colin had gone very red. He stared at him numbly.

    “I am still managing men,” he said tranquilly.

    “John, you ought to be back with Dauntless! Or something even bigger! For Christ’s sake, don’t you want to make admiral?”

    John stared thoughtfully into his empty whisky glass. “Not really, any more. My priorities have changed… I suppose if we were at war, or there was a genuine emergency, not one of George Dubba You’s trumped-up excuses to dominate the fossil fuel arena whilst clouding his failure to catch Bin Laden, I might… There are plenty of other chaps ready, willing and just as able, y’know.”

    “Not just as able, you fool!” said his second cousin angrily.

    “Rubbish,” he said mildly. “I’m thinking seriously about Rosie’s father’s offer to join him in the business—do office manager for a while, then take over from him. Think I did mention it: Jerry Marshall. He’s a very good chap. It won’t be for a while yet, if it comes off. Rosie’s study of the village has got about another three years to run.”

    “Yeah. John,” he said cautiously, “the chap is a bookie, isn’t he?”

    “Yes. He’s heavily into online gambling, now: got a set-up with some like-minded Japanese businessmen.”

    “I suppose they’re very good chaps, too!” he said on a cross note.

    “The one I met certainly was—yes.” John eyed him mockingly. “Mother may not believe it, but Jerry’s a multi-millionaire. Well, he had made his first million before I met Rosie, but the online stuff’s making him very rich indeed.”

    “But—but do you want to get into that sort of business?” he said limply.

    “Why not? The Japanese partners are supplying the expertise on the gambling games, not to say the software, and Jerry’s the expert on the racing side, but when it comes to laying off the biggest bets, that sort of thing, I would need help, obviously. There are several younger fellows he’s thinking of—unfortunately Rosie’s brother’s not interested. But the rest is just management, Colin.”

    “Of a very great deal of money as well as of men, apparently!”

    “Men and women: they employ a large number of female staff.”

    The ladies always had adored John, of course. “You’ll have no trouble, then!” said his cousin on an acid note.

    “I don’t anticipate it, no,” he replied, maddeningly placid. “But the rest’ll be a new challenge.”

    That was pretty much that, then, if he was looking on it as a challenge! Colin made a mental note to steer very, very clear of Admiral Sir Bernard and Miriam, Lady Haworth, for the foreseeable future. –And good God, old Cousin Bernard must be over eighty, now, and John had always been devoted to Miriam, bitch though she was: what if the old boy dropped dead?

    “Have a crisp, and stop brooding,” said John mildly.

    “Uh—thanks,” he said, taking a few. They were salt and vinegar: gaspingly strong, but if there was little prospect of dinner… He ate and drank, aware that John was glancing at him drily. Finally he said: “John, if you go off to Australia, what about your mother?”

    Very, very lightly John replied: “I’m afraid I've decided Mother can stew in her own juice.”

    “What?” he croaked. He’d never heard John criticise his mother in his life!

    “You do know,” said John slowly, “that she’s never set eyes on Matt since the day she found out he wasn’t mine? And she ordered me to disown the poor little chap along with his mother, of course. It didn’t dawn until quite recently that I resent her behaviour like Hell. –I can tell you the very moment it came all over me: Baby Bunting was standing up in his cot upstairs and smiling at me. I must’ve—uh—buried it for the last twenty years. Forget the pop psychology expression, never mind.”

    Colin bit his lip. “Mm.” Matt Haworth would have been about five at the time: old enough to be aware of his grandparents as fixed stars in his tiny universe. John of course had not disowned him, though he had divorced his mother.

    “I think,” said John with his lovely smile, “that Matt might be tempted to come to Australia, too. The lifestyle’s very like the one he’s living in California, and his computer science qualifications should stand him in very good stead if he fancies coming into Jerry’s firm.”

    “Yuh—Uh—Have you talked this over with Rosie?”

    “No, she fancies that she and her father are the only ones ever to have had the notion!” he said with a laugh. “Well, wouldn’t be fair to raise her hopes until I’m more sure, Colin.”

    “Yes. I didn’t really mean— I mean, for God’s sake, old man, Matt is your ex’s boy! I mean, there is your own son to think of.”

    “Good God, are you trying to warn me Rosie’ll be jealous of Matt?”

    “Yes,” said Colin tightly.

    “I see.” He raised his eyebrows at him. “She’s not the Daphne type.”

    Colin sighed. His ex had been a jealous, nagging, selfish, spiteful bitch. Spectacularly pretty, however. “No, I can see that. But any woman might be jealous in the circumstances.”

    “That’s a point. She’s certainly very protective of Baby Bunting’s interests…” Smiling, he told him the story of Rosie’s fury, in spite of her professed indifference to Haworth traditions, when his mother had failed to send the family cradle over for the new arrival. Colin wasn’t surprised by the picture it presented of either woman. “I’ll watch out for it,” finished John. “But there’s over twenty years between them, and the business is big enough for both of them. Besides, we don’t know what he might want to do, twenty years down the track, do we?”

    “N—Oh! The baby! No, of course not.”

    “No. Uh—Time’s marching on,” he said, looking at his watch.

    Colin had been feeling that for a while. Rosie had disappeared next-door to Yvonne’s to fetch Baby Bunting some time back. “Sorry, what was that?”

    “I said,” said John, making a wry face, “that I have a norful feeling that Rosie may be trying to persuade Yvonne to come over and socialise. With you, old man.”

    “Soci— Oh!”

    “Mm. She went into quite a tizz when Terence and Bob Cummings were down for a weekend and Yvonne refused point-blank to join us for lunch.” He grinned. “It was another lot of trout from Alan and Daisy, as a matter of fact! –Terence and I officiated, Rosie doesn’t do whole fish.” He looked at Colin’s face. “It’s not that she doesn’t grasp the bloody English class distinctions, Colin; she does; but she’s firmly convinced they ought to be ignored. It hadn’t dawned on her at that stage that it cuts both ways, and that Yvonne might not be up for breaking down the class barriers.”

    “Yes,” said Colin limply. “I see.” After a moment he added: “Was that ‘bloody’ meant to qualify the ‘English’ or the ‘class distinctions’?”

    John made a face at him. “Both.”

    “You’ve got more in common than the family thinks, then,” admitted Colin.

    “Yes.” John got up and went to the phone. “Though by and large they don’t think, do they?” he said. “It’s all received ideas and what we’ve always done. –Excuse me, I’ll haul Rosie back, my tummy’s rumbling.”

    Colin grimaced. He supposed he could take that one unto himself! Though he hadn’t thought, really, that he was as bad as the rest of them.

    Rosie surfaced in a few minutes, carrying the baby, very flushed. “She won’t come to tea!”

    “No, darling, I thought not: it’s the Terence and Bob do all over again, isn’t it? Come on, give him to me. Give Dada a kiss, Baby Bunting!” He kissed his rosy cheek. “Mm, you smell good! –Rosie, sweetheart, you’ve got a horrible big black splodge on your lovely pink top, did you realise?”

    Rosie looked down at it. “This isn’t a splodge, is it, Baby Bunting?”

    “Taters!” he cried. “We done taters!”

    Colin looked dubiously at his father but John made no attempt to correct his offspring’s appalling grammar.

    “Taters, Baby Bunting? Has Mummy got a tater on her titty, then?”

    “Big taters!” he cried.

    “Not as such,” explained Rosie: “it’s a potato-cut—yes, Baby Bunting, you and Von-Von done taters! What is it, Baby Bunting? It’s a bi-ig…”

    “Tater! Big tater!”

    “Yeah, okay, big tater, clever boy! S,T,A,R,” she said to the room generally. “So-called, Yvonne’s not much of hand at the art and craft—better than me, but.” She looked at Colin’s face. “Sorry, Colin, that was the redundant Australian terminal ‘but’. Forms part of the vernacular of the lowest echelons of the hoi polloi, and he doesn’t like my using it—no.”

    For more than one reason, Colin’s jaw had now sagged.

    “Give over, you ’orrible woman,” said John mildly. “What sort of colouring matter did Yvonne use for the big taters?”—“Big taters!”—“Yes, Baby Bunting, big taters! –Constitutes conversation when you’re two, Colin,” he explained. “Well?”

    “She said it was edible, so I think it was food dye, John. It looked bluer in the saucer.”

    “It’ll have interacted with the dye in the top and it’ll be there forever!” he noted fatalistically. “Not that the male half is positively objecting, are we, Baby Bunting? Mummy’s got a lovely big tater on her lovely big titty! –Thought what to have for tea? –Dinner, to youse Poms,” he said nastily over his shoulder.

    Colin had been nearly overset by the “big titty”—which he had very little doubt had been partly aimed at him. Well, so would he, in John’s shoes, the jammy bastard! He bit his lip, trying not to snigger.

    “Not really,” she said cheerfully. “Fish fingers?”

    “We’re out of them: have you and Greg been having them for lunch?”

    “Must of,” she said cheerfully. “Fancy pizza? Any chips left? Frozen peas?”

    “Froh peas! Froh peas!”

    “He has them sieved,” said John to Colin’s dropped jaw. “Because you’re part of the family, aren’t you, Baby Bunting? Yes, you! Yes, you! Boo! –What about those sausages you got off Hopgood, Rosie?” he said over the offspring’s pleased gurgles.

    “I put them in the freezer, I think.”

    “I know. I could get them out.”

    “You’ll have to cook them: I can’t do Pommy sausages,” she warned.

    “Fine. –Basically the same as Aussie sausages, Colin. I’ve never seen her do those, but possibly she ruins them, too.”

    “See, we did go home to Oz for our honeymoon and then again last year, when I was filming The Captain’s Daughter, but we stayed with Mum, and she won’t let me cook. And in Adelaide we stayed with Aunty Kate and in Perth with Aunty Julia, ditto. It isn’t me,” Rosie said placidly: “they won’t let their daughters near their ruddy stoves, either. Interesting, in its awful way. They seem to feel invalidated if they can’t fulfil their domestic rôle. Any map of their psyches’d be real hideous, ya gotta admit it.”

    “Yes,” said John on a firm note. “Sausages, chips and a nice green salad, then?”

    “Goodoh,” agreed Rosie placidly.

    “I’ll wash these hands—yes, I can see it’s mostly dye—and put him in his highchair. Can you nip out and pick me a nice lettuce?”—Rosie had gone very red, Colin saw with astonishment.—“Darling, I’m so sorry, I honestly wasn’t getting at you!” gasped John.

    “Um, no. Sorry, John: treating you like the rest of ruddy humanity: ’course ya weren’t! The thing is, Colin,” she said, suddenly awarding him her brilliant smile—Colin damn nearly staggered, though admittedly he was favouring the bad leg—“I volunteered to get a lettuce the other day and I picked a cabbage by mistake. It wasn’t a very big one and it didn’t have those curly leaves, ya see. Only turns out there’s more than one variety out there.”

    “I see; so you don’t grow our boring English vegetables at home, then, Rosie?”

    “Nah, they do, only I’m not good at telling leafy green ones,” she said on a glum note. “It’s okay, you can laugh. –Oy, and siddown, for Pete’s sake, what are you doing, standing up like a ruddy gent? That’s potty!”

    Weakly Colin sank back onto the old leather sofa that John had had all his adult life. There had been a frightful to-do when the last glamorous bitch in the said life—at least he thought she’d been the last, Terence’s gossip was usually pretty reliable—had tried to force him to get rid of it. He hadn’t really thought, after those sick-visits, that Rosie was that sort, but he was bloody glad to have it confirmed.

    Colin opened his new front door blearily, expecting it to be Rosie, but no: she’d sent a deputy. A shortish, thin, dark chap with a beat-up old green lorry. Jack Powell.

    “But I—I really don’t need a load of cane furniture,” he said limply to him.

    “Going begging,” repeated Jack Powell stolidly. “Don’t need any firewood, I s’pose?”

    It now dawned that this was John’s wood man and therefore—at least according to Terence, and he didn’t think the bugger had been pulling his leg, that time—one of Rosie’s closest personal friends. “I will do, yes. Thanks very much, Mr Powell.”

    “Right, I’ll get onto it. Garden dug over, anything like that?” he added hopefully.

    “I— Look, can you do carpentry?”

    “Sure. Anything ya like.”

    “Then come in, please.” Colin led him inside. “See that staircase?”

    “Looks all right.”

    “It is all right, but I’ve got a gammy leg and I’m having the Devil’s own job hauling myself up and down it!” said Colin, rather too loudly.

    Jack Powell sucked his teeth. “Thought ya might, yeah. Didn’t occur to her, of course, or she wouldn’t’ve been so keen on you taking the cottage. And John’s bloody busy—never thought of it, obviously.”

    “That or believed the load of codswallop I gave him about being a fit as a flea,” said Colin very sourly indeed.

    “Might of. Pigs might fly. Uh—look, the only thing that’d make it better for you ’ud be to rip it out, start it further forward, put in a landing. Sorry. Though if ya want me to, I can give John a quote—”

    John was of course refusing to let Colin pay any rent. “No, don’t do that! Thanks, anyway. I suppose you’d better bring the cane stuff in.”

    Obligingly Mr Powell brought the cane furniture in. “Lateral thinking,” he then said.

    “What?” said Colin dully.

    “Lateral thinking. Sleep down ’ere. I’ll bring the bed down.”

    “That’s very kind, but the lavatory’s up there.”

    Mr Powell scratched his chin. “Ye-ah… How bloody often do ya need to go, though?”

    “As bloody often as any other fellow!”

    “Right, so that bullet that got your hip”—he looked hard at it—“never did no internal injuries, then?”

    Colin gave in. “No. Just rattled around chipping bits of bone away and finally lodged in the joint.”

    “Nasty. We-ell… The sink? Mind you, my mum just about killed my dad when she caught ’im doing it, but there’s just you ’ere.”

    “Piss in the sink?” croaked Colin.

    “Why not? I would say, go behind a bush, you got enough of them out the back, there—needs clearing,” he noted by the by—“but that’d be the day Ma Mason’d choose to call on yer!”

    “Quite! Well, theoretically it’s a damn good idea, but I’m afraid my early training would be too strong: either I’d never manage to squeeze out a drop”—Jack Powell just grinned—“or I’d suffer agonies of guilt over it.”

    “Yeah. Well, just a thought. ’Ow bad is it?”

    “Comes and goes. Funnily enough climbing the stairs is easier than coming down. Can’t bend the joints properly, and if I come down hard on that foot—” He stopped.

    “’Urts like ’Ell—right,” said Mr Powell sympathetically. “Thought so. Rosie never spotted it, of course. Took you up Church Lane, did she?”

    “Mm. The track is convenient,” he said weakly.

    He sniffed. “Something like that. She means well, though!” he said with a grin. “I tell ya what: I know a bloke that can let you have one of those chemical toilets! Park it in your laundry!”

    “Uh—that’d be ideal,” admitted Colin. “But you mustn’t go to any bother.”

    “Shit, it’s no bother! Ern’ll be pleased to get the custom! And in the meantime, I’ll pop up to old Jim Parker’s, borrow his old po for yer. ’E’s only in Harriet Burleigh Street, won’t take me half a minute.”

    “Uh—that’s the next street up, isn’t it?”

    “Yeah, that’s it. Old Jim’s at Number 16, nice little cottage with a pink rambler over its front porch. –Mermaid fountain in the front garden,” he elaborated. “See you in a mo’, then.”

    “Thanks very much, Mr Powell, it’s very good of you.”

    “No sweat, Colonel Haworth,” he said, ambling out.

    Too late, Colin reflected he should have told the man to call him Colin. Bugger.

    There was no off-licence, and since both John and Rosie—oh, and Rupy, come to think of it—had warned him off the pub, a strangely ersatz affair of fake half-timbering, he’d brought some essential supplies down with him. He looked at his watch, confirmed it was a damn sight later than he’d thunk, and fetched a couple of bottles and glasses.

    Mr Powell was soon back with both the po and old Mr Parker, a wizened little man with very bright blue eyes. Hurriedly Colin sorted out the question of first names and they all sat down to a beer. Then Jack manhandled the bed down—it was only a single one, though Colin wasn’t in much doubt he’d have tackled a double one all by himself, too—under old Jim’s supervision. Then they all had another beer, accompanied by a great deal of information from Jim about the personal histories of the inhabitants, past and present, of Moulder’s Way. Then they finished the beer. Then it seemed about time for lunch but alas, Colin had to admit that he’d been going to have a salad. Old Jim condemned that as rabbit food, and Jack didn’t look as if he disagreed with him. Did he have any taters? Wrenching his mind off the subject of titties—it must be the beer on top of half a mug of dust, he wasn’t usually that bad—Colin admitted he hadn’t. Together Jim and Jack inspected his cupboards. Was this all? Well, they’d better go on back to Jim’s, he had plenty of frozen chips!

    Oh, God. This would doubtless entail getting into the cab of Jack’s lorry, and Colin didn’t think he could bend the bloody leg sufficiently to— Before he could so much as begin to utter the thought, old Jim had whisked the sturdy kitchen steps outside and was positioning them at the back of the little truck; meantime Jack was letting the flap down.

    “My Norm, ’e was in the fucking Falklands with the Captain,” Jim explained by the by, as Jack put a very firm hand under Colin’s elbow and assisted him up.

    “Yes?” he said weakly, as Jack leapt up and helped him to lower himself to a sitting position. “Thanks, Jack.”

    “Before ’e ’ad Dauntless,” elaborated Jim.

    “Oh! With John!”

    “Yes,” agreed the old man, clambering up.

    “I see. My chaps and I were out there, too—pretty nasty do,” he said cautiously.

    “You said it! They ’ad the little boat out and them fucking Argentine lot, they shot them to blazes. Norm wasn’t as lucky as you, lost the leg. Went real funny when ’e come ’ome, eh, Jack?”

    “That’s right,” agreed Jack, putting the flap up.

    “Yeah. Re’abilitation, I don’t think!” said the old man loudly, spitting—fortunately to leeward. “The Captain, ’e was real good to ’im. Norm said ’e’d ’ad a bellyful of it round ’ere, so the Captain, ’e found ’im a job up in Scotland—temp’ry, like—with a family what their dad, ’e’d copped it in the same fucking show, and the mum, she couldn’t cope because there was three under five and anyroad, like Rosie says, why should she bloody cope? Nice little corner shop, it was. What it didn’t turn out like you might expect, ’cos Norm, ’e ended up marrying ’er aunty!” he revealed, suddenly breaking into sniggers.

    “I see,” said Colin with a grin.

    “Yeah. Well, she’s a nice woman, Jeannie. Mind you, she ’ad four grown kids already, but if that’s what ’e wanted, why not? They come back ’ere and bought a corner shop over in Gosport—doing quite well, good situation, no flaming supermarkets too near.”

    “That’s right,” agreed Jack, popping the steps neatly into the back with them and ambling off to the front of the truck.

    “Yeah…” said the old man reflectively. “Funny ’ow things turn out… My Rachel, she was real pleased when Norm went into the Navy, ’cos we weren’t at war and she thought it’d be a nice cushy billet… Oh, well. Never lived to see ’im lose the leg, s’pose there’s a silver lining there, somewheres. Which talking of supermarkets, you might tell Rosie as there was another of them zoot-suits down the fucking pub, making notes and taking snaps and asking about vacant lots.”

    “Uh—yes. Well, you could tell her yourself,” said Colin a trifle weakly. “Uh—talking of pubs, Jim—”

    “I was only buying a few bottles there!” he said quickly.

    “Mm. Er—is there something wrong with the place?”

    Old Mr Parker gave a terrific sniff. “Well, you seen it, Colin! No, well, it’s for them.”

    Taken completely unawares, Colin damn nearly choked. Jim was ratifying this statement with much pejorative, indeed probably actionable detail about the git that ran the place… Oh, got it, the old pub had been pulled down some years back and this dump erected for the delectation of the gentrified—that was, them. No workclothes in the bars—quite. If you wanted a drink, the Workingmen’s Club was the place to go!

    Oh, God. Where did John drink? Colin looked at him numbly.

    “Officially ya need to be a member, but any member can sign you in. The Captain, ’e sometimes drinks there. Rosie likes it,” he told him kindly.

    “I see. I might see you there, then, Jim,” said Colin very weakly indeed.

    “Yeah. ’Ere we are. You ’ang on, I’ll just put them steps down for yer. There ain’t no shame in it,” he said sternly, letting the flap down and scrambling down.

    No. So Colin kept telling himself. But he did, he had to admit it, feel better about it.

    It was a very windy day but Anna wandered out into the back garden anyway: she needed a break. You could smell the sea, it was lovely. She looked dubiously at the tree with the funny fruit. Maybe they were some sort of English plums?  She reached for one—

    “Don’t!” shouted a loud voice.

    Anna gasped and spun round guiltily. A man with red-gold hair and beard was leaning out of the kitchen window of the next-door cottage.

    “That’s a medlar!” he shouted.

    Was she meddling, was that what he meant? Anna looked at him in bewilderment.

    “Hang on!” he shouted. His head disappeared. Then he came out of his back door and came over to the low hedge that separated the gardens.

    “Don’t eat them: they’re medlars,” he said, smiling.

    “What?”

    “Unknown to the Australian side, are they? Well, they’re not that common here, either. It’s a medlar tree.”

    “Is—is it a joke?” she faltered.

    “Eh? Oh! No, no, meddle all you like!” Grinning, he explained what medlars were.

    “Oh,” she said weakly as the sun came through a break in the clouds and struck golden gleams from the short, curly wisps on his head and cheeks. There was a bit of silver in there, too, he was very paintable. Not handsome, really, but paintable. “Um, I see, you can’t eat them straight off the tree.”

    “No, that’s right. Or not until they’re brown.” He looked up at them. “Shouldn’t be long.”

    He had that skin that could look red, but it wasn’t really red, it was because it was so fine and pale. You could almost see the blood under it. There was gold hair on his forearms. If she painted him, she might put him sideways, hugging his knees, there’d be the contrast of the shapes and textures… But he probably couldn’t sit like that, Rosie said his bad leg was very stiff.

    “Like to come in and get drunk with me, new Australian cousin?” he said, grinning widely.

    Anna of course had had only limited experience of the male sex but she knew enough to recognise he was already drunk. Or at least very full of beer, in fact he had a beer bottle in one hand. “No,” she said firmly.

    “You look very like Rosie,” he said, grinning again. “The older model. None the worse for that. I like the hair long.” He held up the bottle. “Pardon me, I’m rather pissed. I’m Colin Haworth. Think you must be Anna?”

    “Yes.”

    “We didn’t meet when I came down for Jamaica, but I heard all about your bikini!”

    “I was painting,” said Anna, reddening.

    He just grinned. He had very light grey eyes—luminous eyes, it would be almost impossible to get that in paint, like the time she’d tried to paint a live fish and Bruce had said she’d be better off eating it—and his lashes were the same pale gold as the fur on his arms. She’d always thought she loathed that look, but it made of Colin Haworth a poem in shades of gold, white and pink, the lips just touched with carmine. He wasn’t pretty, at all: his nose was rather blunt and flattened. He was, however, overpoweringly attractive in a distinctly animal way and she was never gonna catch that in paint if she tried for a hundred years…

    “Anything up?” said Colin uneasily.

    “I’ll never be able to paint you,” she replied in tones of the utmost gloom.

    “Eh?” he croaked.

    She goggled at him in horror. “I didn’t mean to say that! It just came out!”

    “Why should you want to paint me?” said Colin, very feebly indeed.

    “I don’t know, I don’t usually do figures. You’ve got very interesting colours and shapes. And your mouth and eyes are kind of… luminous.”

    Luminous? The woman was barmy!

    “I’d never be able to catch it in paint anyway: it’s as if your, um, organism, the blood and everything, is very close to the surface.”

    Ugh, that was ’orribly close to what the rest of the world tended to describe as “sensual”, wasn’t it? He eyed her warily. He didn’t fancy being the object of a crush by a barmy older woman. The deluded Moyra Pearson—though most unlike Anna in looks, more your overripe peach type—had conceived of that sort of crush in the wake of what he’d been silly enough to imagine was one dirty weekend, and it had been the Devil’s own job to shake her off. Come to think of it, she had used the dread word “sensual.” Colin didn’t really think he was more sensual than the average red-blooded chap, but…

    “Something like a big jellyfish,” she said detachedly.

    Colin’s ears rang. “What?” he croaked.

    “I’ve only seen one in a tank. Well, a live one, I’ve seen dead ones on the beach.”

    “I’m so glad I don’t look like a dead one!” he said acidly.

    “Um, sorry. I wasn’t speaking personally. It’s just your colours and shapes.”

    Was it? Funnily enough it all felt personal to him! “That’s good,” he said feebly.

    “If I was you I’d go and have a lie-down, because I think Rosie’s expecting you for tea. Thank you for telling me about the medlars,” she added, suddenly turning on her heel and vanishing into the house.

    Colin retreated slowly, scratching the beard.

    Jars and jars of mayonnaise… Half the mayonnaise in England, by the look of it! Um, well, probably the Heinz one would be okay, though he was quite sure it wouldn’t be the same… Damn, Mr Heinz seemed to have added to his 57 varieties over the last forty years, ’cos there was more than one kind here! Um, well, potato salad definitely wasn’t coleslaw, so, um…

    “Can I help you, Colonel Haworth?” asked a friendly voice.

    “Thanks awfully, Mrs Stout,“ he replied, smiling at Bellingford’s village shopkeeper. She was a woman of perhaps his own age, with short, light brown curls, a pleasant face and average figure, and in short, as unlike the dreaded Mrs James from the village shop of his childhood as could possibly be imagined! Mrs James had been at least six foot tall, terrifically gaunt, and always dressed entirely in black. With a voice like a sergeant-major’s and the mo’ to match. “Um, I was thinking of making some potato salad.”

    “Of course; while the weather’s still nice!” she beamed. “I can let you have some nice potatoes. We don’t really stock fresh veggies,”—Colin had already noticed that: no wonder John had instituted a vegetable garden!—“but we usually have potatoes and onions.”

    “Oh, good. Um, there seem to be more sorts of mayonnaise available than there were in Doddsy’s day,” he said lamely. “Um, sorry, Mrs Stout: she was the old woman who looked after us when I was a kid. Ma and Pa were away a lot—heavily into demos: protests against the bomb and nuclear power, and the closing of the coal mines, and the war in Vietnam, and for— Uh, well, hard to think of any stuff they were for, back in those days.”

    “Gay rights?” she suggested brightly. “Our Terry went on a demo for that, in his last year at school. His father got quite worried, but it was only a stage, of course!”

    “Yes, of course,” said Colin, smiling at her. “Ma and Pa are all for that these days, but back then… Think it was for Lady Chatterley’s Lover, as a matter of fact!”

    “Terry had to read that at school—that was in his last year, too. He said it was feeble.”

    “On the whole, I’d agree with him!” replied Colin with a laugh. “Anyway, Doddsy made the most miraculous potato salad. She put tiny pieces of sweet gherkin—”

    “I’ll get you some!” she beamed, dashing off between the shelves. “Here!” she gasped.

    “Thanks very much, Mrs Stout. Um, and the thing is, uh, this may sound silly, but Doddsy never used actual mayonnaise. She always used Heinz salad—“

    “Salad cream!” she cried. “Fancy that! I always put that in my potato salad!”

    “It’s miles nicer, isn’t it?” said Colin, grinning like anything. “Um, only the thing is, you seem to be out—”

    “There’s miles more out the back! Hang on!” she gasped, disappearing.

    After that everything in the garden was rosy, and they were “Belinda” and “Colin” and Belinda wrote out her recipe for him so as he couldn’t possibly go wrong. And remember: watch the potatoes like a hawk!

    Faithfully promising to do so, Colin exited the Superette with his bottle of salad cream, his jar of gherkins, his two pounds of potatoes, the toilet paper and milk which had really been the object of the exercise, and a pound of sliced ham, which Belinda had assured him would go perfectly with the potato salad.

    He had taken the coward’s way to the shop, going up Moulder’s Way and into Harriet Burleigh Street, which led off it at an angle, just managing not be an actual extension of the street: it must have been quite an effort on the part of whoever had laid out Bellingford to make two streets instead of one long one. Or possibly they had been rival road-makers: one starting at the top of the hill, one at the bottom? Outside on the pavement he hesitated. But he really couldn’t face the ’orribly steep Church Lane: each foot came down with such a jolt— Resignedly he hoisted the shopping and set off up the slope of the High Street to where it met the top of Harriet Burleigh Street.

    Inside the Superette Belinda leaned on her counter, and shook her head. “Limping dreadfully,” she murmured. “Oh, dear!”

    R&R in Bellingford was certainly not demanding. The weather was holding, so he was spending quite a lot of time just sitting in one of the cane chairs provided by Jack in his pocket-handkerchief of a front garden. Well, not just sitting; sitting and drinking, to be strictly accurate. Every so often old Jim Parker from Harriet Burleigh Street, or Bob Potter from over the road at Number 10, or Jack himself came and helped him do it. He might do a bit more today, if the hip was up to it: it had given him bloody gyp last night, kept him awake for ages, the bloody painkillers hadn't worked. Yawning, he wandered into the kitchen, boiled the jug, poured the water on the dust, added milk to it and worked up the strength to wander back into the bed-sitting room with the mug and stare blankly out the—

    Oh, shit! So much for the weather holding! It had clearly poured during the night, and not only had he left the cane chairs out—they would dry, but after all, they weren’t his—he’d also left Rupy’s blasted felt pineapple out there! The fucking thing was actually a tea-cosy but Rupy had decided it was just the thing to make Colin’s garden more Jamaica-like. He staggered outside. Ugh! Soaked. But at least the vile greens of the topknot—three shades—hadn’t run horribly into the vile yellow, brown and orange of the main section. (Obviously made by a direct descendant of the vision-impaired cretin who’d decorated his kitchen in the Sixties.) All overlapping, er, flaps, bit like, er, shingles? Quite clever, really, in its vile way. Would wringing it out…? Uh, no, on the whole he didn’t think so, because although that might get the water out, it would then be ’orribly crushed and so, alas, would Rupy be.

    Press it under a heavy weight? But what? There were no heavy weights in his cottage. Except him. Uh—stand on it? Sacrifice a dry towel, fold it up in it and then stand on that?

    No, wait: there was Rosie coming up the road! Phew! First he’d get the worst of the wet out of it by standing on it—with the towel, yes—and then he’d swear her to eternal secrecy and get her to shove the thing in her drier! And, um—get her to iron the creases out? Though with his luck, Rupy would arrive for the weekend when she was doing it. Well, possibly the Potters sold irons and if not, Graham Howell would always drive him into Portsmouth! He went and leaned on his gate, waiting for her, smiling.

    She had a little boy with her. Must be Jack Powell’s grandson, Gareth: almost as great a fan, in his fuddled pre-pubic way, as Jack himself. …Was it? They got nearer. The little boy was pointing. Colin waved uncertainly. That was a delightful apricot suit, it must be R— No, it wasn’t, it was Molly! He waved, grinning.

    “Gidday, Colin!” gasped Micky, arriving at Colin’s gate considerably in advance of his mother.

    “Hullo, ’ullo, ’ullo! Welcome back to Bellingford, Micky!”

    “Thanks. Is this your cottage now?” he asked keenly.

    “That’s right. Hullo, Molly,” he said, grinning.

    “Hi, Colin.”

    “See!” cried Micky shrilly. “I toleja that was the shortcut!”

    “Yes, all right: you were right all along.”

    Colin watched as Micky raced up Number 9’s front path and knocked. thunderously. Nothing. “We can try shouting, she may just be painting, but I’d say she’s out.” He went out his own gate and up Number 9’s front path. “HOY! ANNA!”

    Nothing. “Did you let her know you were coming?”

    “She’s not on the phone, but I left a message with Rosie,” said Molly uncertainly.

    “See, Aunty Susan, she’s like, Miss Walsingham, she’s neat, she hadda come down this way anyway, she hadda go over and see her niece!” explained Micky clearly.

    “My boss,” murmured Molly.

    “Of course, yes; how’s the job going, Molly?” he asked nicely.

    “Good, thanks,” she said with her lovely smile.

    “So Miss Walsingham dropped you off, Micky?”

    “That’s it!” he beamed. “And we come over on the bus.”

    Bellingford had two buses. One collected the workers in the morning. The other brought them home from Portsmouth in the evening. “What bus?”

    “He means the bus from Southampton,” said his mother. “It only went to Portsmouth. Then we had to get a taxi.”

    “Yeah, ’course!” he said, astounded that this had not been self-evident.

    “Uh—yes.” Colin looked at his watch. Jesus! They’d have had the time for it, yes. “Well, come on in, and have a cuppa. I think Anna’s probably only at the shops.”

    “Thanks, Colin,” said Molly, smiling. “I’d love a cup of tea.”

    Colin, quite frankly, could have stood there and basked in that lovely smile for the rest of the morn—uh, afternoon.

    In his sitting-room he admitted feebly: “That cane sofa’s incredibly uncomfortable, you’d better not sit on it.”

    Micky tried it immediately. “It’s okay!”

    “It is if your bottom’s the right size for sitting on a narrow shelf. A narrow unyielding shelf,” said Colin drily. “Take the armchair, Molly: I can sit on the bed.”

    “Have you only just got up?” demanded Micky keenly, spotting the thrown-back unzipped sleeping bag and the crumpled navy sheets.

    “Yes,” he said heavily.

    “Honestly, Micky!” protested his mother.

    “What?” he said defensively.

    “That was very rude!”

    “No, it’s the elephant’s child at that age,” murmured Colin.

    “Yes!” she said with a laugh.

    “What elephant’s child? I’m not!” Micky was crying.

    “’Satiable curiosity. Haven’t you ever heard of the elephant’s child and the great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo River?”

    “No,” he said blankly.

    “Well, come and see if there’s anything in my kitchen you can eat and I’ll tell you all about him. –The bathroom’s upstairs, Molly, if you’d like to use it. Oh—and in a cupboard at the end of the upstairs hall you’ll find a mountain of dark navy linen on loan from John. Help yourself to a clean towel.”

    “Thanks,” she said, smiling, and going.

    Colin barely repressed a sigh. All that, and not a fusser. Luverly.

    In the kitchen Micky tried to open the fridge before washing the filthy paws but Colin was on top of that one. Then it was: “Heck! You haven’t got much!” but Colin merely agreed.

    “Well, cheese sandwiches or bacon sandwiches?”

    “I’ve never had bacon in sandwiches,” he admitted.

    “Oh. Well, if you like bacon and you like sandwiches, I think you’ll like them.”

    “Righto,” he agreed comfortably. “Hey, neato!” he approved as Colin lit the gas grill. “Aunty Susan, she’s got a gas stove. She doesn’t use it much, she mostly uses the microwave. She does neato lasagna. I can do it, ’s’easy!!”

    –Vainglory. Colin smiled.

    “That looks wonderful!” said Molly with a laugh when they bore it in. “But you shouldn’t have bothered!”

    “It’s his lunch as well as his breakfast, see, so he thought it could be our lunch as well! Might as well, eh, Colin?”

    “Might as well,” he agreed. “Not watching your weight, I hope?”

    Molly smiled. “I probably ought to. But actually, I’ve never been able to afford to. –Micky, is that tea?”

    “It’s only weak! I can have it!” he said aggressively.

    “All right. But don’t waste it. And it’ll be hot,” she warned.

    “Sorry, have I put my foot in it?” asked Colin.

    Molly looked from his neutral face to Micky’s defiant one. “I don’t think I’d better ask whose idea it was for him to have it.”

    “No, don’t: us chaps have a code about that sort of stuff,” said Colin smoothly.

    Her eyes twinkled. “Mm. –It’s all right, can’t you see he’s trying to say he’s not a dobber?” she said to her son.

    He relaxed. “Aw. Yeah.” And gagged himself with a giant mouthful of bacon sandwich.

    “Would that be that the noun from the verb to D,O,B?” asked Colin primly.

    “Dob,” translated Micky thickly.

    “Yes,” agreed Molly. “Of course. Don’t tell me you don’t say it, in England?”

    Hmm. Luverly but not nearly as bright as Rosie. Or as quick-witted. Colin smiled nicely and explained the English vernacular synonyms for the word “dob”. Neither of them believed for an instant that “peach” could be used in that way.

    There was one sandwich left on the plate. Micky’s little paw reached for it.

    “Don’t take the last sandwich, Micky, it isn’t polite,” said Molly. “Offer it to Colin.”

    He scowled, but said: “Wouldja like it?”

    “No, thanks, old man,” said Colin politely.

    “He says that,” explained Micky. “Now can I have it?”

    “No, now you offer it to your mother,” said Colin firmly, beginning to wonder how much discipline she’d managed to give the kid. Not that he wasn’t a nice little boy.

    “You don’t want it, do ya, Mum?”

    Colin removed the plate. “No. ‘Would you like the last sandwich, Mum?’”

    Micky’s thin, freckled face was dismayed and desperate. “I said that!”

    “You didn’t,” replied Colin flatly. “You implied she didn’t want it, indicating that you expected her to say no, she didn’t. That was both rude and greedy.”

    “It was not!” he cried, turning scarlet.

    “Actually it was, Micky. But I realise you didn’t mean it to be,” said Molly calmly. “The thing is, Colin, it’s a miracle if Australian kids of that age have any manners at all. I’ve never met one that was capable of putting manners before their stomach.”

    “What about care for their mother?” he replied, his nostrils flickering.

    Help! thought Molly. What a tartar! Well, went with the red hair, no doubt. “Mothers aren’t people! Now tell me you’ve got kids of your own!”

    “Well, no.”

    “No. –It’s all right, Micky, I don’t want the sandwich: you can have it. But it wouldn’t hurt you to learn some manners. Even Aunty Susan said you were a greedy little oaf.”

    “She didn’t mean it!” he snapped, glaring.

    “Not really, but I think she meant you to take the hint. Go on, have it.”

    He took it, but growled: “Maybe we could share it.”

    “I’ll just have a bite,” said Molly, smiling.

    “Yeah!” He held it out to her.

    Gravely she took a bite, chewed and swallowed. “Thanks, Micky.”

    “No sweat!” he said, stuffing most of the rest of it in his gob.

    Colin got up and gathered up the tray and the crockery. “Come and give me a hand, Molly.”

    Molly followed him silently.

    “Sorry,” he said in the kitchen, grimacing. “Too used to ordering my chaps about, I suppose. Never had to deal with anything his age before, really.”

    “No. Well, Micky isn’t a soldier. But that wasn’t too bad, you just came on a bit strong for him. I do know his manners are appalling. But I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally wrong with him. He is only nine.”

    “Yes. I’m really sorry for opening my big mouth, Molly.”

    “That’s all right. Were you one of those English boys that got sent to a public school when you were very little?”

    “More or less. We lived near a cathedral town when I was a kid—my father’s a parson—and I went to the cathedral school: boy soprano,” he admitted, grinning. “Never think it to look at me now, would you?”

    Molly wouldn’t, no: actually he looked a bit of a tough.

    When they went back into the sitting-room Micky was playing with some electronic toy. “Micky, could you do something for me?” Colin asked.

    “What?” he said warily.

    “Well—uh—outside in the garden there’s a, um, very wet tea-cosy. I left it out overnight. Um, it’s in the shape of a pineapple. Made of felt. It’s absolutely sodden.”

    “Did it rain? It didn’t rain in London.”

    “Must have been just local. The thing is, Rosie’s friend Rupy gave it to me—”

    “Is it a joke?” asked Molly, her eyes twinkling.

    “Yes, it’s a Jamaica pineapple. But all the same, he won’t want to hear I was stupid enough to leave it out all night.”

    “I’ll get it!” cried Micky

    “No—hang on. Could you wrap it in a towel and then jump on it a bit to get the worst of the water out? The towels are in the big cupboard upstairs, at the end of the passage.”

    “No sweat!” Eagerly Micky dashed out.

    “He may ruin it,” noted Molly detachedly, going out.

    “We can but pray,” agreed Colin sedately, following her.

    In the garden Micky wrapped the putrid pineapple tenderly in the towel. He then jumped on it. And jumped on it. And jumped—

    “I think that’s probably done it,” said Colin feebly at last.

    “Yeah!” he panted, inspecting the remains.

    “The towel’s wet, anyway,” said Molly with a smile.

    Micky was palpating the pineapple. “It isn’t dry,” he admitted sadly.

    “No, but now we’ll have a reasonable chance of drying it out properly. You’ve made a tremendous difference to it: thanks, Micky.”

    “No worries!” he replied proudly.

    Molly picked it up gingerly. “Ugh, isn’t it hideous?”

    “Yes. Even worse when it’s dry: that yellow tends to glow. Well—pin it on the line?”

    They did that.

    “The trick now,” said Molly as the pineapple just hung there limply, “is not to go and forget it again tonight.”

    “Yeah!” choked Micky, falling all over the back garden clutching his tummy ecstatically.

    “Exactly!” admitted Colin, grinning. “Would you like to phone Rosie?”

    Molly would, so they went inside and did that. “She says to come on over, and Anna’ll be back this evening. I didn’t get most of it: who’s Fiona?”

    “John’s sister. Managing middle-aged female of the affluent leisured classes. She seems to have taken Anna up—found her a gallery that’ll exhibit her paintings.”

    “I see. Rosie said Anna’s gone up to her place—she did mention her pictures.”

    “Oh—right. Well, John and Rosie will have a spare key to Number 9. Where’s your luggage, by the way?”

    “We left it up at the hotel: the man said there wasn’t a taxi and I wasn’t absolutely sure how far we’d have to walk.”

    Colin passed his hand over his forehead. “The bastard. Old Jim Parker’s tales weren’t apocryphal, after all! –There is a taxi, Molly, but the publican is the sworn enemy of all the villagers. The taxi is run by the local garage owner, who’s just round the corner from the bloody pub: he’s a villager, you see. I hope the prick didn’t make you pay for the privilege of storing your bags?”

    Molly bit her lip “Not exactly. He said he couldn’t offer the service unless we were customers, so I bought a couple of soft drinks and a bag of chips for Micky.”

    “Well, that’s par for the course, I’m afraid. –Come on, I’ll take you over to Miller’s Bay.”

    Molly wasn’t sure she wanted him to. He’d been very kind, in spite of trying to treat Micky like a soldier and expecting him to have the manners of a little upper-class English boy in a cap and blazer, but… Well, in the first place he was English, and with an accent like that he was probably used to a life just as chillingly up-market as Lucas Roberts’s, that she now knew she’d never be able to stand. And though he was awfully attractive, though not strictly speaking handsome, like Lucas, and a forceful and dynamic personality, he wasn’t really her type. Fortunately Micky was already crying: “Heck, I know the way!”

    “Of course we know the way. You mustn’t come, Colin: you shouldn’t be doing too much with that leg,” she said on a firm note.

    Right. He didn’t argue, he rather thought that was modified rapture on both sides. Well—just as well. She was pretty obviously a more conventional creature than Rosie and, never mind the glamorous film-star boyfriend—Where the Hell was he, by the way? Leaving her to get herself and her little boy across southern England, apparently! Well, never mind that, there was the added complication of Terence’s having fallen for her. Added to which, though the flesh was willing in parts, that blasted ’ip wasn’t, particularly. He gave in, went and fetched a bottle of beer, and stretched out at full length on the bed with it.

    He’d forgotten he was out of painkillers and he didn’t even have any aspirins, shit! He went next-door. Anna was home and had some Panadol, thank God.

    She watched anxiously as he downed four of the things. “Um, there’s a nice taxi man who could drive you into Portsmouth if you need to go to the chemist’s, Colin,” she said, going very red.

    Colin made a face. “I’ll have to get him to: used up all my painkillers. The doc told me not to be a stiff-upper-lipped idiot, but I’ve been trying not to rely— Oh, well. Idiot.”

    “Yes. It’s not your fault. Um, if you need any shopping done, I could do it.”

    “No! Thanks very much, but I’m not that much of a crock. Need to keep exercising the leg, in fact. Um,” he said, swallowing, as it dawned why she was looking at the jellyfish so sadly, “maybe you could show me some of your paintings, Anna? And, uh, we could think about whether you really want to paint me.”

    Her face lit up like Christmas.

    In the studio she said: “I’ve done quite a few cottage pictures. They went really quickly. This is Mrs Mason’s cottage. She’s just clipped all the roses.”

    Number 20—yeah. He knew it well. Ignoring Rosie’s warning and going up Moulder’s Way had got him precisely what he deserved. Up to and including elevenses while Rowena Mason forced him to admit what decorations he’d got and gave him a dissertation on greenfly. Though it had been a lovely fruitcake, true.

    He gulped. The restored cottage itself was in the background, quite small, and all round the outside of the picture, like a frame, were the woman’s bloody standard roses. Mixed pale pink and pale yellow. But the main part of the picture was a very large Mrs Mason in her peacock blue afternoon dress and high heels with a pair of giant snippers about to do exactly what one could only speculate to a very large standard rose—pink and yellow, nice touch—with in the middle of it a miniature lawn with old John Mason moving it, very tiny.

    “Anna,” he croaked, “what’s she about to do with those shears?”

    “She’s going to tidy it up, of course,” replied the artist mildly.

    Colin broke down and laughed until he cried.

    “Jim Parker laughed himself sick, too. But it isn’t really meant to be that funny.”

    “Not ’alf!” he gasped, mopping his eyes. “Come on, show us another one!”

    The second one was Bob Potter’s place: Number 10, over the road. Bob himself was lovingly rendered in his leathers on his Harley in the foreground. Colin might have said, as a large as life and twice as natural, but having met the burly Bob, he knew he was. The cottage was behind him, looking exactly as dingy as it did in real life, but over it floated a giant pink bra-shaped cloud. Colin managed: “It was a blue one hanging in the window yesterday!” and went into another fit.

    Smiling, Anna said: “You’ve met Yvonne, haven’t you?”

    Golly, what was coming? But it was quite a straightforward portrait, though in the same naïve style: just showing Yvonne in front of her cottage with her little purple car beside her, about the size of Georgia’s corgi. She was in the scarlet beach outfit she’d worn for Colin’s memorable Jamaica. Yvonne in Jamaica with Car and Cottage: exactly.

    “It’s going to be her Christmas present,” said Anna.

    “She’ll love it, Anna!”

    “Thanks,” she said, going very pink. “Um, these aren’t my serious stuff, of course.”

    Uh-huh. “I see. So which style did you want to do me in?”

    “That’d be a serious one. Big.”

    “Right.” Colin eyed the very big one propped against a wall with a giant cloth over it.

    “It’s not finished, but you can look,” said the artist generously, removing the cloth.

    Colin’s jaw dropped. Not that he fancied himself as knowing anything about art, but gosh!

    “It’s Mr Parker,” she said as the silence lengthened.

    Well, yes, you could have said it was old Jim Parker holding a rake. Like you could have said Whistler’s Mother was a portrait of the artist’s mum!

    “I like his wrinkles,” said Anna in a vague voice, looking up at it.

    Colin nodded, as it finally penetrated to his thick-witted head—had blasted Francis Dorning fiddled with it, when he got in there with his knife and relieved the pressure?—that she was incapable of expressing what she did or why, but she could most certainly paint. “It’s terrific. I’d be really honoured to have you paint me, Anna.”

    “Oh, good! In the nude?”

    Help! Oh, why the Hell not? “If you like. Um, but my left side’s pretty chewed up.”

    “No. Like this,” she said, scrambling up onto the cloth-covered table that, it now dawned, was the model’s stand. She sat with her right side to him, holding her knee.

    “Yeah, think I can manage that. Uh—might have to rest fairly often. Not totally superb at sitting on hard surfaces, yet. Or any prolonged sitting, really.”

    “Would you be all right with a cushion and lots of rests?” she asked anxiously.

    “Yes.”

    “Good. But I won’t start the pose, yet. I’ll need to do some preliminary sketches,” she said, looking hard at his beard.

    “Uh—want me to get this off?”

    “No, don’t!”

    Very well, he wouldn’t. “Uh—well, when would you want to start sketching, Anna?”

    “Could it be tomorrow?” she said on a pleading note.

    So be it. “Why not?” Colin agreed.