Authors: Jane Lovering
Slightly Foxed (6 page)
I sat behind the driver, trying not to catch his eye in the
mirror, and stared out of the window as the bus ground its
way out of Exeter towards the countryside, passing places I'd
known so well seventeen years ago. The seedy newsagent's
shop was still there, on the corner by the roundabout, where
I'd first met Alasdair. Over there was the restaurant he'd
taken me to on our first date. He'd walked me back to my
tiny room, tried to kiss me goodnight and I'd got the
impression that my response had somewhat taken him by
surprise. He hadn't left until the next morning. From the
continued apologising, I gathered that nicely brought up,
young Scots boys didn't do what we'd spent the night doing
without some kind of formal agreement signed in triplicate.
I deliberately turned my head away and focussed on the
image of the bus driver's reflection. He had a bead of dried
snot stuck to the edge of one nostril and the disgust which
this engendered in me managed to carry me past most of my
one-time haunts, past all the memories which I so reluctantly
bore. There was only one time I looked. Deliberately I forced
my eyes across the crowded buildings towards the site which,
in my time, had been a rough plot of land, vaguely green with
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nettles and goose grass and strewn with various impermanent
forms of dwelling. These, and the scabby thorny hedging, had
now been replaced by an expanse of tarmac ramping into a
multistorey car park.
I knew I shouldn't have come back. Some memories were
too fragile, too delicate, for return visits. My remembrance of
the last night I'd spent here was gone, crushed beneath a
casually parked black Mercedes.
As we got farther out of town, the memories dried up.
Down lanes which grew narrower and narrower, we chugged,
like that last drop of cholesterol down a clogged artery, until
we pulled up finally in a tiny hamlet. "This is you, love." The
bus driver flicked his head at me and I disembarked, pleased
to note that this civic act had finally dislodged the
excrescence from his nose.
I slumped down on a convenient bank beside the road and
rummaged through my bag, unearthing Theo in the process. I
resisted the urge to clasp him to my sweaty bosom, laying
him down on the grass instead. As I did so I noticed a
protruding edge of card which I'd been using as a bookmark.
It was Isabelle Logan's card, the one she'd handed me back in
Webbe's. I grovelled once more in my bag and found Simon's
mobile, which he'd lent me under protest, and dialled Isabelle
Logan.
"I think you're about a mile and a half from Charlton. If
you walk on into the town, I can pick you up from there.
There's a little tea shop in the marketplace, if you go in I'll
come and find you. Oh, and Mrs. Hunter—"
"Ms.," I said wearily.
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"Thank you
so
much for bringing the book. You could have
posted it."
"Don't mention it." I resolved to hide Simon's HobNobs
when I got back.
"Well, you must come for dinner. I would invite you to stay
overnight but we've a full house at the moment."
"It's okay. I'll stay in town. Don't worry." I hung up and
hauled myself to my feet, feeling unpleasantly clammy.
Charlton Hawsell was surprisingly pleasant. In the
marketplace, the one tea shop was easy to find. I sat down at
a window seat with a cup of coffee and a scone, and
wondered how Florence was getting on. It was the French
exam this afternoon. I hoped she'd revised. Apart from
singing
Frere Jacques
at primary school, I'd never heard
Florrie utter a word of the language.
The street was busy. As I stared aimlessly ahead, a
maroon Land Rover jerked to a halt in front of the tea shop
and a man got out, leaping lightly down onto the cobbles
before dashing across the road into a shop opposite.
I nearly dropped my cup, all thoughts of exams gone.
Surely...
Leaving my scone untouched, I hastily shoved a fiver
under my saucer and fled for the door. I would probably have
been more circumspect if the fiver hadn't been part of my
expenses. Once out on the pavement, I pretended to look in
shop windows, keeping the reflection of the Land Rover in
sight until I saw the man returning, carrying a heavy sack
hoisted up on one shoulder. I watched as he opened the back
of the Land Rover and threw the sack inside.
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I moved in, turning so that I could see him properly as he
got into the driver's seat. His eyes travelled around, checking
the road behind him. Then, with the merest flick of his
indicator, he was gone, leaving me standing breathless, pink
in the face again.
Theo Wood.
No, of
course
it wasn't, not Theo Wood, but someone who
looked very, very much like him. Raggier haired and more
stubbled than Theo, and wearing glasses, but still very,
very
much like him. So much like him that my heart had risen into
my throat. Perhaps this was one of those places where incest
and inbreeding meant that the locals only had three faces to
go around. I hazarded a quick look up and down the street to
check, but there seemed to be the normal mix of dumpy and
dull, hawk nosed and handsome. Then—he must be some
kind of throwback, great-grandson or some such?
I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so reckless.
Sweeping my rucksack off my back, I galloped across the
road and dived through the dark, narrow doorway he'd
entered without even noticing the kind of merchandise on
display.
"Can I help you, m'dear?" A friendly voice in the gloom,
and a man popped up from behind a counter, carrying what
appeared to be a saddle. In fact, my surroundings indicated
that this was a shop which sold saddles. They festooned the
walls like large fungi, assorted leather straps hung from
brackets and large paper sacks of horse feed were piled high
in all visible corners. The shopkeeper turned and hung his
burden up on another wall-mounting.
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"The man who came in here just now. He bought a big
sack of something."
"Oh ah." Unmoved the man polished idly at some leather
with his sleeve.
"Do you know who he is?"
"Ah."
"Well, could you tell me?" Strain made my voice a little
shrill. The man looked at me suspiciously.
"Ah. That's Mr. Forrester. Charlton Hawsell stud."
Well, I knew he was good looking but— "
Is
he?"
"No, m'dear. He
owns
Charlton Hawsell Stud. Got the best
Welsh stallions this side of the Brecon Beacons, so they say."
Horses. I might have known there would be horses
involved somewhere. Ever since Florrie had learned to ride
aged seven, my life had been blighted by the damn things.
Then Alasdair had bought her a pony of her own, a terrifying
orange thing which hurtled around seemingly uncontrollably.
Happily, since she'd outgrown Dylan and sold him to a friend's
younger sister, she had discovered the delights of
manipulating boys instead. My weekends had been a lot more
peaceful as a result. Or at least, differently worrying.
"Ms. Hunter! Alys!" It was Isabelle Logan, waving at me
from the driver's seat of a Volvo Estate.
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Beercroft Farmhouse proved rather disappointing. No
whitewashed cob walls, no roses around doors overlooking a
yard full of cackling hens, just a concrete cube at the end of a
muddy lane. It looked like a council house on an exchange
visit. The kitchen in which we sat contained not much more
than a balding carpet, an enormous Aga which made curious
bubbling sounds, and a bench table and chairs which seemed
to have been appropriated from a local picnic spot.
"Would you like some tea?"
"No thanks. To tell you the truth, Mrs. Logan, I could have
handed you the book and gone, you really didn't have to give
me dinner." To tell even more of the truth, I would rather
have stayed in Charlton Hawsell and tried to catch another
glimpse of the Stallion Man.
"No, I wouldn't hear of it! You've come all this way, the
least I can do is feed you. I'll run you back to your hotel later.
Have you booked in anywhere yet?"
"No. Didn't have time."
"Well. The Star should have a room. I'll give them a ring in
a bit, if you like."
The door opened and two men came in, identical except
for years. Both square, sandy and freckled, both similarly
booted and both smelling like pickled manure. They stumped
across the kitchen without acknowledging either Isabelle or
me and vanished through the opposite door, muttering darkly
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about "the AI man". It was like living through an episode of
League of Gentlemen
.
"My husband and son," Isabelle explained.
I refrained from saying, "Who's the other man?" because I
was afraid she wouldn't see the joke. "Here. Before I forget."
I held Theo out. "It must be awful to find you've inherited
something and then found it's been sold by mistake."
"Inherited?" she said. Simultaneously the door opened
again, and the man I'd seen that afternoon walked into the
kitchen. He muttered, "Little buggers jumped out," and
walked through, taking the same path as the other two men.
I stared after him, mouth open.
"Ah," said Isabelle Logan, the woman with the corridor
house. "Um."
"That's—" I started, still staring at the far door. "It is, isn't
it? He's considerably less dead than he should be."
"Oh dear." She dropped her head into her hands. "Oh God.
Come into the study." Isabelle opened another door and led
me into a tiny book-lined room. "I don't want him to overhear
us. He gets very sensitive about things." Sensitive? Looking
like that
and
sensitive? Bloody hell. She poured two glasses of
whisky and handed me one. "That man—Theo Wood. His
name is really Leo. He's my brother. Are you sure you want to
hear this?"
It was a little like being told that Johnny Depp was moving
in next door and was notorious for running out of sugar. My
dream man was no longer a dream but a real, striding-about-
in-my-vicinity human being. "Yes please." I took a mouthful
of alcohol against it being a story I wasn't going to like.
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"It was Leo's thirty-fifth. He'd had a rough year, what with
his wife..." She tailed off.
Of course there'd have to be a bloody wife in there
somewhere.
"...and he's just so
frustrating
. Always scribble scribble at
those damn poems, never letting anyone see or read them.
Always like it, even as a child. He's got books full of them at
home you know. So, I sort of
crept
into his attic and chose a
selection, and got them privately published at a little place in
Exeter. Of course, knowing how shy Leo is, I thought if I
made up this dead poet and pretended that
he'd
written the
poems only his family would know who he really was, you
see."
Leo Forrester. Theo Wood. Dear God, did this woman have
no imagination?
"I gave one copy to our parents, and one to our uncle who
lived over in Topsham, then one copy to Leo for his birthday.
Well, he—"
I had a brief, scary flash into the mind of a shy, poetic
type forced to face the realities of his words becoming public
property. "He wasn't very happy?"
"Er. No. He didn't mind
too
much about the copies I'd
given away, but he made me give him the other hundred. I
was going to give them to the bookshop in Charlton, but Leo
didn't want—anyway. Our uncle died six months ago. I just
didn't think, got a house-clearance firm in to get rid of
everything, but Leo asked me what had happened to the
book. He made such a fuss, I
had
to get it back."
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"Okay." I slowly drained my glass. "So I guess it's
probably best if I don't mention that I've read it."
Isabelle's eyes widened. "Hell, I'd never thought of that.
Look, if he asks, well, not that he's likely to but, you know.
Can we say you're an old schoolfriend who's popped in on her
way past?"
Past? From where to where? On a tour of obscure
backwaters which haven't featured anywhere since the
Domesday Book writers rode through and thought,
Oh, go on
then, might as well use up this ink?
"How are you going to explain the return of the book?"
She'd got up and was heading back into the kitchen. I