Snake in the Grass Read online

  Her attempts to spice things up had not been appreciated.

  ‘What are you doing? Get off me! Leave my boxers alone! Stop it!’ He had been gruff – rude – had pulled away, glowering like a scolded child.

  ‘I don’t see what your problem is. What have you got against being naked? I am naked, look!’

  ‘It’s cold in here, freezing,’ he had grumbled. ‘You should get central heating.’

  ‘I don’t need central heating. I have a nice cool fire. And if that isn’t enough for you, then let me warm you—’ She had climbed on top of him, let her hands wander as she imagined a femme fatale’s would, but he had pushed her roughly away, had sat up on the sofa hunched over his knees.

  ‘I told you not to touch me.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Down there: don’t touch me down there.’

  As she pulled the blanket up to cover herself, she had begun to resent the fact that he had her at a disadvantage – that she was expected to strip off completely whereas he kept his underwear on, sometimes his T-shirt too, as if he’d popped into a knocking shop for a quickie and it wasn’t worth his while taking his clothes off. She’d begun to point this out to him, keeping it nice and simple so that he would comprehend, but without warning he’d flared up, told her that she was making a fuss over nothing, demanded to know why she had to spoil things when they’d been quite happy going on as they were.

  She didn’t understand men. They obviously saw the world in a different way, lived in a parallel universe. Nigel was the only man she had ever got to know in detail, but was Nigel representative? Were other men really like Nigel? Nigel, like Richard, had been liable to flare up without warning. Like Richard and his underwear, Nigel too had had his little foibles.

  Sitting in one corner of the bus shelter, Lydia wrapped her scarf closer, shivering as she thought of Nigel and his nipples. She knew she ought to be laughing about it but was wary of doing so – even here in the safety of the new bus shelter with Nigel hundreds of miles away, perhaps thousands (he’d always wanted a holiday home in the Med for when the English winter got too much, and now that he’d married into Polly or Molly’s money…).

  She reasoned with herself. Laugh, she said: laugh. Because it had been ludicrous, Nigel and his nipples. ‘These are my control buttons, darling.’ Said with a straight face, as if he’d meant it seriously. Perhaps he had. She wouldn’t have put it past him. ‘These are my control buttons. This one turns me on, and this one sends me into overdrive!’

  But it was no good, she couldn’t find it funny. She remembered only too well the consequences of laughing at Nigel out of turn. (‘Oh darling, darling Lyddie, I’m so sorry, I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, please say you’ll forgive me. You don’t know what it’s like, the effect you have on me, the extremes you drive me to….’) She shrank into the corner, shivering violently, his voice loud in her head, almost real. And was that his aftershave she could smell?

  She sniffed apprehensively – but then breathed deeply, relieved, because all she could smell was new wood: new wood and nothing else. This bus shelter had yet to acquire a tinge of urine or a whiff of vomit. She hugged herself, feeling the cold as she tried to rationalize Nigel out of existence. It was Richard’s unexpected anger that had caused all this, stirring up memories of Nigel. But Richard was completely different to Nigel, much younger, without the build of a rugby player. He smelt differently too, no expensive aftershave like Nigel (no cheap body spray like Dean, either); Richard had a clean and subtle smell, a hint of soap and shampoo, a touch of deodorant, a whisper of sweat, a lingering layer of washing powder (he obviously put far too much powder in his machine, someone should tell him).

  But that someone will not be me, she said, getting up to stamp her feet. Why should she worry about Richard? Why should she think of him at all? She would wash her hands of him. Don’t touch me, indeed!

  ‘Do you think your body is a temple? Do you think I might defile it if I touch it with my unworthy hands?’

  To be fair, he had been apologetic, the flash of anger swiftly fading. ‘I’m sorry, all right? I shouldn’t have shouted.’ (But Nigel too had sounded plausible when he apologized.) ‘Let me make it up to you,’ Richard had continued. ‘Think of your body as a temple. Let me worship it. Lie back and enjoy.’

  Stamping her feet in the bus shelter, Lydia realized that if she truly wanted to be rid of Richard then she should have sent him packing at that point instead of letting him talk her round. Had she always been so compliant and forbearing, or was that Nigel’s doing? She felt a pang at the thought, lamenting the Lydia who might have been, the Lydia who had never met Nigel.

  Stamping her feet harder to get the circulation going, she also stamped out thoughts of Richard, memories of Nigel. If she didn’t get a move on, the meeting would be over before she got there. Not that she was keen to be there: it was just that she needed to keep an eye on things. If wrecking the entire project was out of the question, then she could at least keep it under control, make sure it impinged on her time as little as possible.

  She set off down the hill.

  In the pub, the lunchtime rush was over, the lounge bar all but empty. Gwen was buying drinks, the landlord serving. At a table near the fire sat Sandra, the Stasi and Dick Emery. Lydia joined Gwen at the bar and asked for a gin and tonic.

  Waggling her eyebrows in the direction of the vicar, she said in an undertone, ‘What is Dick Emery doing here?’

  ‘We really shouldn’t call him that,’ murmured Gwen, handing the landlord a twenty pound note. ‘His name is Reverend Harker.’

  ‘But what’s he doing here?’

  ‘He’s joined the committee. Imelda Darkley rang me—’

  ‘Lady Darkley? What’s it to do with her?’

  Gwen looked shifty as she accepted her change. ‘Imelda felt that as the exhibition is a village event, one of the village movers and shakers should be on the committee. She is far too busy herself—’

  ‘And so she nominated Dick Emery?’

  ‘I really couldn’t put her off.’ Gwen was apologetic.

  Lydia felt a sense of despair as she took her place at the table. The exhibition was beginning to take on a life of its own.

  ‘Well, ladies.’ Dick Emery smiled, displaying his prominent teeth. ‘Shall we call the meeting to order?’

  To call them ladies was somehow faintly disparaging, Lydia felt – especially as the vicar was the most feminine one amongst them (with the possible exception of Gwen). She took a sip of her gin and tonic and watched the Stasi take an unladylike swig of her pint of lager.

  The meeting got under way. Nothing was decided. No one could guess how many (or how few) exhibits they would have. Lydia tentatively promised St George. Gwen ventured to say that she might have one or two pieces. The landlady chipped in with morsels of gossip.

  Proceedings were drawing to a close when, unexpectedly, Richard walked in. He didn’t look round, went straight to the bar, began to laugh and joke with the landlord. Lydia felt herself bristling all over like a cat. She reached for the last of her gin and tonic as Sandra got to her feet, pulling on her coat.

  ‘Well, there’s my boyfriend come to pick me up.’

  Lydia, caught in the process of swallowing her final mouthful, spluttered, choked, sprayed gin and tonic across the table. Dick Emery recoiled, his lips drawing back over his big teeth like a horse’s in his surprise.

  ‘Miss Taylor! I say! Are you quite all right?’

  The Stasi, unfazed, laughed her nasal laugh. ‘Choke up chicken, ha ha ha! I’ll get a cloth, shall I?’

  ‘So sorry … went down the wrong way … so very sorry….’ Out of the corner of her eye, Lydia saw Sandra greet Richard with a kiss on the cheek, put her arm round him. Richard put his arm round her, began to stroke her hair just as he’d stroked Lydia’s the day after Boxing Day.

  What had Sandra said? Her boyfriend!

  There had to be some mistake. It couldn’t be the real Richard. Di
d he have a doppelganger? But if so, then the doppelganger was wearing the same hoody, the same grubby jeans that Richard had been wearing at the cottage earlier. The same boxer shorts, too, presumably: the ones he’d refused to take off.

  This was no doppelganger, Lydia told herself. There could only be one Richard. He must be the new boyfriend Sandra had been so excited about in the run-up to Christmas. And Sandra – the penny finally dropped – Sandra must be the Sandra Hays who had so disgusted Dean by being won over by Richard’s vodka jelly at that unfortunate party.

  A little group was now leaving the pub, chatting and laughing: Gwen, Dick Emery, Sandra, Richard. The last to leave, Richard glanced behind him. For a split second, Lydia met his eye. There was no jack-the-lad grin. He might have even looked a little sheepish, but before she could make up her mind about this, he was gone. The outside door banged shut.

  The landlady had collected the empties, wiped the table and now paused, looking round speculatively.

  ‘Well,’ she said, as if unimpressed by what she saw, ‘I might as well have another lager.’

  ‘Let me….’ Lydia jumped up, quite willing to buy the Stasi a lager if it gave her the opportunity to order a double gin at the same time. She needed it. Her head was spinning.

  ‘Let’s go through to the bar,’ said the landlady. ‘It’s a bit quiet in here.’

  Quiet was exactly what Lydia wanted, but she did not have the wherewithal to argue. The world had been knocked out of kilter; it was like standing on the deck of a ship in a gale. It was all she could do to keep her balance.

  In the public bar only a few lunchtime stragglers remained at this time in the afternoon. Old George was prominent amongst them, holding court in his seat by the window, fulminating against the council (what had Basil done now?). The landlady perched herself on the edge of the skittles table, her feet dangling (she was short in stature as well as amply proportioned). Lydia took the seat set into the wall by the fireplace, out of the way.

  She sipped her gin and tonic, unable to concentrate on what George was saying (even the Stasi found it difficult to get a word in when Old George had had a few). All she could think about was Richard and Sandra, Sandra and Richard, Richard, Richard, Richard. How, Lydia asked herself, could I have been so stupid?

  Very easily, her mother would have said. (Where was the old bat today?)

  Lydia rallied, the gin working its magic. I am not in the wrong, she told herself. It is Richard who is at fault. I acted in good faith. All I am guilty of is getting carried away. Love, of course, doesn’t enter into it, but I was beguiled by the idea that he liked me, wanted me. I should have known that he was just using me. How ironic that Dean, of all people, was right all along: Richard is a bastard.

  Feeling the cold and shivering as she had shivered in the bus shelter, Lydia stretched her booted feet towards the fire. Ice cubes rattled in her glass: her hand was shaking. What made it all so much worse was that she liked Sandra, she had wanted it to work out for the girl, this paragon of a boyfriend. I might have known, thought Lydia, that it was too good to be true. Perhaps Nigel was not such an aberration after all.

  Would it be possible to warn Sandra in some way, drop a hint?

  Not very well, Lydia admitted. Not without dropping herself in it at the same time.

  The worst of it was, St George was ruined now. The painting would have to be scrapped. It had been produced under false pretences. How could one in all honesty depict the triumph of Youth over Age when Youth turned out to be a spineless, double-dealing, degenerate—

  ‘Are you all right, missus?’ Lydia surfaced from her thoughts to find George peering at her through his alcoholic haze. ‘You’re away with the fairies over there in the corner.’

  All eyes turned to look at her. For a second she felt horribly exposed, as if the onlookers could see inside her – could see the patched-up, glued-together state of her, clinging on by her fingertips. But then, thankfully, there came an interruption from outside: the clip-clop sound of a horse being ridden along the High Street. George turned in his seat to watch. Lydia from her place by the fire could not see out of the window.

  ‘It’s that girl from Overblown Manor,’ said George. (It was a village joke to refer to Lady Darkley’s home at Overbourne Hall as Overblown Manor/Manner.) ‘Two farthings short of a penny, that one. Takes after her mother. Takes after her grandmother, too, for that matter. Look at her, nose in the air.’

  ‘Her name is Cally. She goes to boarding school.’ The Stasi, of course, knew all the details. ‘Her mother was – let’s say – somewhat eccentric. Oh, look! Her horse has just done its business all over the road, ha ha ha!’

  ‘I’ll have that for my garden!’ cried George, getting unsteadily to his feet. ‘Good bit of manure, that.’

  He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket, grabbed the coal shovel from by the fire. There was a draught of cold air as he left the bar. Flames leapt up in the grate to die down again into an orange glow.

  ‘He’ll have to be quick.’ The landlady was leaning across from her position on the skittles table to watch the goings-on outside. ‘Mrs Pole has just turned up with a bucket and spade.’

  Lydia was drawn from her seat by the fire to stand by the window. Out in the middle of the street, the horse’s excrement was gently steaming on the newly surfaced road. Old George, wobbling slightly, was standing over it, his plastic bag in one hand, the coal shovel in the other. Facing him was the bird-like figure of Mrs Pole with a bucket and spade.

  ‘A funny one, that Mrs Pole,’ said the Stasi. ‘Won’t be seen dead in the pub, but she doesn’t mind scraping horse’s doings off the—’

  Lydia interrupted, a spurt of laughter bursting out of her as if from nowhere. ‘Drawn spades at twenty paces!’

  As the stand-off continued outside, Lydia was astonished to find more and more laughter hiccoughing out of her. Soon she was hooting, tears running down her face. The landlady turned away from the window to watch her, a bemused expression on her face, as if she was missing out on something.

  If only she knew, thought Lydia: and the thought made her laugh all the more.

  FOURTEEN

  SLUMPED IN A low chair in the common room, beset by drizzling music and mindless chatter, grey light seeping through wide rather grimy windows, Dean watched as Sandra came in through the open doorway to stand poised, looking round.

  It was funny how you could go off people, he thought, as Sandra caught sight of him (and Charley and Ash) and began making her way across the room. Once upon a time – as much as a month ago – he had thought Sandra the epitome of beauty. But now: now you could almost see Richard’s grubby paw-prints all over her. And what about those freckles? How had he ever convinced himself that he liked freckles? (Cally didn’t have freckles.)

  His former feelings for Sandra had been very primitive, Dean reasoned. He had idolized her the way pagans idolize a totem pole or … or the sun. They are ignorant of the true nature of their gods. The sun, for instance, is not a divine being. It is a fiery ball of hydrogen with a surface temperature of five thousand degrees. Dean knew this. He also now knew about girls – what girls were really like, their surface temperature and everything. They were no longer a mystery to him, since the panther had … had….

  Whatever.

  He was not sure how he felt about Sandra now. He felt sorry for her, he supposed, having Richard as a boyfriend. She ought to have known better than to get entangled with someone like Richard, but perhaps she couldn’t help herself. Girls were like that, running after the meatheads, not sophisticated enough to appreciate more refined attributes such as a superior brain, a wealth of knowledge, intelligence. Poor Sandra. She had no idea that Richard was a sort of reverse King Midas: everything he touched turned to shit.

  ‘Hello, boys.’ Sandra looked down at them. ‘Budge up, Ash. Let me sit down.’

  ‘How do, Sandra.’ Charley had his cool-as-fuck face on. ‘Haven’t seen you around much lately.’

  �
�I’ve been too busy.’

  ‘Busy doing what?’

  ‘This and that.’ She smiled: a dreamy smile.

  Busy with Richard was what she meant, thought Dean. How deluded could you get?

  ‘I’m helping to organize an exhibition,’ she added.

  Charley raised a cool-as-fuck eyebrow. ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘It’s an art exhibition but for ordinary people. Anyone can have a go. I might enter a couple of my collages.’

  ‘Art is a pile of pants,’ said Charley. ‘Isn’t that right, Ash?’

  He waited for Ash to concur, but Ash had fallen into a trance, mesmerized by Sandra’s proximity and the fact that she was rocking back and forth and wiggling about so that her knee kept brushing against his thigh. You could almost see the sparks coming off him.

  ‘That’s just the sort of comment I’d expect from you, Charley,’ said Sandra.

  ‘That’s a slur on my character, that is.’

  ‘What character is that, then, Charley?’ said Sandra pertly before turning towards Dean, her knee scraping all along Ash’s thigh as she did so. Ash’s eyes bulged. He looked like he was about to pass out.

  ‘Are you entering anything in the exhibition, Dean?’

  ‘Dunno.’ Dean gave her a superior look. He wasn’t gullible like Ash: she couldn’t cast a spell over him any longer.

  ‘You should give it a go. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘Morley’s not an artist. He’s a geek.’

  ‘Don’t be so horrible, Charley. He’s not a geek, are you, Dean?’

  The way she looked at him, like he was deserving of charity or something, made him want to yell out, Why are you lying, Sandra? You know I’m the biggest geek that ever lived! But he didn’t say anything. Merely shrugged.

  From his side-on perspective, Dean could see that Charley’s eyes kept sliding down, distending as they took in the sight of Sandra’s blouse stretched tight across her breasts. Charley could get away with doing things like that because girls mistook his cool-as-fuck face for butter-wouldn’t-melt. He had a sort of angelic, unblemished look about him. Nobody would ever guess what a pervert he was; whereas with Ash it was written all over him. Ash, in fact, was a borderline freak. Dean might have even felt a certain comradeship with him – had Ash not bluetoothed photos all round the college of Dean in his Morris gear.