Snake in the Grass Page 4

  As for Dean’s room, it was a sink of iniquity. One could not see the floor for books, clothes, CDs, trainers. Alien moulds grew and evolved in long-forgotten mugs and beakers and cola cans. The curtains were permanently closed (‘I need my privacy!’), the place was never aired (‘You can’t open the window, it’s freezing out there, are you trying to give me hypothermia!’). There was a certain smell one could never quite put one’s finger on; and the stains! Terrible, insanitary stains on the carpet, the duvet, the mattress….

  Gwen looked through the frosted glass at a distorted view of the grey December afternoon. Her arm fell loosely to her side, the duster hung limp. It would be getting dark soon and she’d done nothing. Nothing. There were simply not enough hours in the day – even fewer this time of year, the weeks telescoping towards Christmas, daylight at a premium. No matter how much she cleaned, scrubbed, dusted, hoovered, polished, the house would never be completely free of dirt. It was a hopeless task. A losing battle. She was like that man, the one who’d tried to stop the tide (What was his name? She must ask Dean.).

  She put her polish and duster aside. As she did so, her eyes alighted on the cupboard under the stairs. Oh Lord! Had she not promised that woman Lydia Taylor that she would look out some of her old paintings? That had been days ago. She had all but forgotten. People would talk. ‘What’s got into Gwen Collier? She is usually so reliable, so helpful.’ Oh, but what was the use? People would talk in any case. ‘There she goes, Gwen Collier, the woman who couldn’t keep hold of her husband. Let’s hope it’s second time lucky, but I’m not holding my breath. She does try, bless her, but some women just can’t cut it….’

  Taking a deep breath, keeping the voices at bay, Gwen concentrated on the task in hand, ferreting out her paintings from under the stairs. They were not quite as awful as she’d remembered. Not good by any means, but neat, ordered, efficient. The thought of putting them on public display was just about bearable – if that was really what Lydia Taylor wanted. Of course, Lydia might simply reject them out of hand. And now that Gwen came to look at them more closely….

  She frowned, inspecting one still life after another. It was rather a limited repertoire. Had she really painted nothing else?

  Crawling on her hands and knees, Gwen poked around at the back of the cupboard. There were no more paintings, just her brushes and paints, and the old second-hand easel she had used. She heaved it all out into the wintry daylight in the hall. An idea began to take hold. One more painting. Something a bit different. She didn’t want people to think that there was nothing to her, that her mind ran on fruit bowls and vases of flowers. She touched the tubes of paint, experienced a frisson of excitement. And here was an unused canvas….

  She set up the easel in the kitchen as she had done in the past. The light was good. There were plenty of objects available to paint. But this time she would eschew still lives. This time she would paint from her imagination!

  The thought excited her, and she looked around guiltily, as if about to engage in something indecent. She stood with her brush poised, waiting for inspiration. But, really: who was she fooling? She had no imagination – did she?

  Only one way to find out.

  She took a deep breath, dipped her brush in paint, reached out, drew back, reached out again, made a tentative mark on the canvas. She stepped away, experienced a sinking feeling as she looked at the mark. It was nothing. A black smudge, that was all.

  But wait. What if…?

  She added some spindly legs, two long feelers, red eyes. Yes! Yes! It was a creepy-crawly! Of course it was! But one was not enough. They never came alone. She would add a second … there … and some more … here … and here….

  Engrossed in her work, the invading hoards took her unawares. She glanced at the kitchen clock, was horrified when she saw what the time was. So late, and she hadn’t given a thought to dinner!

  ‘For God’s sake, Gwen, what’s all this rubbish on the kitchen table?’

  ‘It’s not rubbish, Basil, it’s my painting equipment.’

  Basil sighed. ‘You haven’t started with that again, have you?’

  He regarded her with a pained expression, holding his brief case up as if he was tempted to use it to sweep the table clear. As Gwen hastened to tidy up, trying to bring her thoughts round to dinner, it suddenly occurred to her that she’d spent the last hour in a state of transcendent calm. Time had passed in the blink of an eye, and yet she had not felt anxious about it. It was as if she’d stepped momentarily into another world: a world where there was no rush to get things done, where one could find time to take pleasure in things. She was amazed at how much of the canvas she had covered.

  But now she was back in the real world. She could hear Dean and Amanda bickering in the hallway, no doubt kicking off their shoes and leaving them to trip the unwary; throwing coats and scarves towards the coat rack, missing; dumping bags and satchels willy-nilly. And all the time Gwen was aware of Basil’s eyes roaming round the kitchen, noting that the oven wasn’t on, that the saucepans were still hanging up, that the chopping board looked suspiciously clean.

  ‘I am going up to change,’ he said at length, in what she thought of as his council chamber voice: the real meaning was in the tone rather than the words. In the doorway he paused, looked back. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t wear that apron-thing, Gwen. It makes you look like Mrs Mop.’

  Gwen regarded her husband with disfavour. He was such a hulking brute of a man. Look at those large clumsy hands: nothing artistic or sensitive about them at all. His craggy face was like the crumbling wall of a forsaken castle, his grey, straggly beard like moss rooted in the stones. His beard was only the half of it, too. There was hair all over his bulky, rather flabby, body – hair in which all manner of microscopic organisms might be proliferating. It made one’s flesh crawl, thinking about it. Why was smooth, scraped skin not more fashionable? Those ancient people in Mesopotamia had more sense, they’d had no truck with body hair: she could not think of their name just now, but they’d built lots of cities and made triangular marks on clay tablets. Dean would know who she meant. Dean was clever like that.

  Basil gave a little tut and a last censorious stare, then left the room. Gwen speedily tidied away the last of what Basil had termed her rubbish, seizing as she did so on the fact that it was Tuesday, running down her mental list of Tuesday meals: roast chicken, Irish stew, lasagne. No time for any of those. She needed something quick and easy. She had to produce a meal by sleight of hand.

  Oh Lord! Think, woman, think!

  She glanced out of the window seeking inspiration, straightening her apron as she did so, retying the tapes (Mrs Mop, indeed), only to see Richard pulling up in his grotty car – inviting himself to dinner, no doubt, as he sometimes did. Another mouth to feed. (But she must remember to call dinner supper: Basil preferred supper.)

  Beginning to panic, Gwen saw in her mind’s eye her family as a nest of hatchlings, beaks open, red gullets gaping, squawking, demanding food. She was the hard-pressed mother bird, flying hither and thither in search of something – anything – to give them. But there was nothing: no insects, no seeds or berries, no juicy worms—

  Worms! Of course, that was it! She would do sausages! Sausages and mash! Oh, the relief!

  As she set about peeling potatoes, her panic subsided, was tamped down to manageable proportions. Sausages, mash, peas, onion gravy. That would do nicely; that would keep the greedy hatchlings quiet. With unwonted vindictiveness – startling herself as she chopped up the potatoes – she imagined stuffing mash into the gaping gullets and topping it with a sausage apiece. She smiled without realizing as she slid the potatoes off the chopping board and into boiling water, picturing the baby birds’ eyes bulging with surprise and fear as they choked on the smooth, creamy, buttery mash.

  What a wonderful painting that would make, she thought as she turned on the grill and opened the fridge to get out the sausages. Stabbing each sausage with the point of a knife, she made up
her mind to buy some new canvases next time she was in town. It would give her an incentive to paint. With any luck, she might even recapture that brief moment of calm she had experienced that afternoon.

  She needn’t mention it to Basil. What Basil didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  Richard, with his mouth full, said to Dean, ‘Crashed your car again, have you, you plonker?’

  Having performed miracles in getting the meal onto the table, Gwen found her appetite had deserted her. She picked at her food, waiting for the inevitable squabbling to begin. They couldn’t sit to a meal together without squabbling of some sort.

  ‘What do you mean by again?’ Dean was morose.

  ‘I mean exactly what people usually mean when they say again. Or have you forgotten your little aquaplaning stunt?’

  ‘I suppose you’ve never had an accident in your life?’

  ‘Course not. I’m perfect. Didn’t you know?’ Richard bit into a sausage, grinning.

  Dean muttered something that might have been smart arse, but it was drowned out by Amanda asking Richard to pass over the tomato sauce.

  ‘For you, darling, anything.’

  Amanda got on well with Richard. Dean did not. But did Dean get on well with anybody? One could pass it off as the awkward age, but up to now every age had been awkward where Dean was concerned.

  Basil was watching through narrowed eyes as Amanda squeezed tomato sauce onto her plate. ‘Is it really necessary, Amanda, to put so much ketchup on your plate when you know you won’t eat it?’

  ‘Sorry, Mr Collier!’ Pert. Tantalizing. (Where did she get it from?)

  ‘I don’t mean to sound petty, but we have to watch the pennies in the current climate. You never know what emergencies might crop up. Garage bills, for instance.’ Basil cocked an eye at his stepson.

  ‘You should count yourself lucky,’ mumbled Dean. ‘If I’d croaked it, you’d have had a funeral to pay for. But I suppose you’d have preferred that.’

  And so it went on. Gwen stifled a sigh (no point in drawing attention to oneself) and pushed her mash from one side of the plate to the other. Those people who claimed that sitting down to a family meal was one of the pleasures in life obviously did not have a family like hers. Anyway, what was so pleasurable about eating? It was rather nauseating, when one stopped to think about it, Richard talking with his mouth full, Dean shovelling his food down like there was no tomorrow, Basil chomping, Amanda mixing everything up on her plate so that it looked like slop. Eating, thought Gwen, ought to be done in private in a locked room – the same way that one used the lavatory. The very thought of all that chewing and slavering – all that saliva – was enough to put one off for life. And all the gobbets of masticated food sliding stickily down the throat to swill around in the stomach like bobbing effluent in a sea of gastric juices—

  ‘Not hungry, darling?’ Basil’s eagle eyes had focused on her plate.

  ‘No, Basil. Not very.’

  ‘I’ll have your spare sausage, then, if I may.’ He reached over and stabbed it with his fork.

  Gwen collected the plates, feeling worn down by the trauma of a family dinner (sorry, supper). Amanda’s plate, she noted, was daubed with uneaten tomato sauce. Gwen could not decide which was more irritating: Amanda’s profligacy or Basil’s parsimony. Why, in any case, did Amanda have to have tomato sauce with everything? One expected her to have grown out of it by now. Tomato sauce was so … so … Gwen struggled to find the right word. So red. That was it. Tomato sauce was so brutally red. It had quite spoilt the harmonious arrangement on her plate: the ivory mash, the rich brown gravy, the green shock of peas, not to mention the earthy-coloured sausages flecked with charcoal black. It had looked rather nice. A shame to eat it, really….

  Gwen became aware of eight expectant eyes watching her.

  ‘Banana splits for everyone?’ she said brightly, as if she had been planning banana splits for a fortnight at least.

  ‘Not for me,’ Dean grunted. ‘I’ve got practice.’

  ‘Hey ho, hey ho, it’s off to prancing practice we go,’ mocked Richard.

  Amanda laughed, playing up to Richard. (My word, I’m going to have to watch her….)

  ‘Morris dancing,’ sniffed Basil as Dean exited the room. His tone implied that Morris dancing might be considered somewhat sissified.

  Taking the plates through to the kitchen, Gwen told herself that Morris dancing was not sissified, that it was very original of Dean to have taken it up. Morris dancing was traditional, was cultural. Basil did not have time for such things, often complained that listed buildings and conservation areas got in the way of progress. Rinsing tomato sauce off Amanda’s plate, Gwen felt resentful of the way Basil cast aspersions where Dean was concerned without ever bringing his accusations into the open. She knew for a fact that Dean was not that way inclined (those dreadful magazines, hidden under the lining paper of his T-shirt drawer), but it was not a subject one felt comfortable bringing up in conversation. Not that she would have minded if Dean had been homosexual: at least then his bedroom would have been tidy. They were tidy people, homosexuals. They dressed well, too.

  In any case, she said to herself as she stacked plates in the dishwasher, it was not just Dean. Basil cast aspersions about everyone. He simply couldn’t help it; it was the way he was made. One could blame God or fate or the stars, or whoever it was that arranged such things. (Nobody, perhaps? But that seemed to Gwen unlikely. There was probably a cosmic version of Basil: a chief executive of the universe.)

  Making the banana splits, Gwen found herself distracted by the different colours and textures of the bananas and the ice cream – although different shades would be a better description than different colours, ivory and pearl compared to the improbable white of the aerosol cream. Could one produce a painting of banana splits – or sausage and mash for that matter? Would it be considered frivolous – making fun of the serious business of art? One hesitated to venture into hallowed territory; but if it was merely for one’s own satisfaction – and surely one would never have the courage to show them to anyone – where was the harm?

  She shook the canister of hundreds-and-thousands, watched as the coloured strands rained down on the banana splits: so small and yet so vivid, so many bright colours, astonishingly different to the white of the cream. And the way they started to blur and smudge, seeping into the whipped cream as it began to sag and deflate: it was extraordinary! Why had she never noticed—

  ‘Are those banana splits ready yet, darling?’ Basil’s rumbling voice came floating through from the dining room.

  ‘On my way, darling!’

  Gwen fixed a bright smile on her face as she picked up the banana splits.

  Trekking round a packed Waitrose, shying away from admonishing reminders of Christmas, Gwen put her state of mind to the test by walking down the aisle where the cleaning products were stacked. She reached the far end with her trolley still empty. Did this mean that her obsessive urge to clean – which lately had threatened to take over – was now under control? One could only hope….

  She paused, tempted to grab hold of one of the shelves to stop herself being swept away by the hustle and bustle, the headlong stampede towards Christmas. Like a mirage, a golden haven of calm, she thought of the peace she had felt when starting her new picture the other day. If only she could reach that place again.

  She was nursing a wild idea in her head, a hare-brained scheme: she would ditch all her old paintings and produce a new series of canvases for Lydia Taylor’s Exhibition. The thought made her tingle all over; but would she dare to do it? Would she dare? And even if she dared, how would she find the time?

  There was one way of buying time which, wicked woman that she was, she had decided to investigate here and now, in the chaos of pre-Christmas Waitrose when she might bump into someone she knew at any moment. Her heart in her mouth, she scuttled sideways like a crab, dragging her trolley with her. She managed to reach the freezer section undetected.

&
nbsp; Taking pot luck, she reached into a freezer and pulled out – what? Frozen chips. She hesitated, the frozen packet making her fingers numb. Did she have the nerve? Basil refused to eat anything but ‘real’ chips. He liked food cooked ‘properly’. But Gwen had heard that frozen chips were so advanced these days that one could hardly tell the difference. And look! Not just frozen chips! Frozen roast potatoes, frozen Yorkshire puddings, frozen veg – whole meals, too. All she needed was to pluck up courage, take advantage of these conjuring tricks, and then—

  ‘Frozen pizzas, Gwen? Not quite in your line, I would have thought.’

  The imperious voice made Gwen jump. The box she’d been inspecting – reading the instructions – dropped out of her hands to land face-up on top of the bag of frozen chips in her trolley: damning evidence of her intended deception. Guilt-ridden, she looked round and found herself face to face with Imelda, otherwise known as Lady Darkley of Overbourne Hall. Tall and imposing, with improbably black hair (she must, after all, be well into her sixties), Imelda Darkley looked strikingly shabby in her tweeds and flat shoes. It was a shabbiness few people could aspire to: it did not come cheap. Some people referred to Lady Darkley as a village ‘character’. Others used less flattering descriptions.

  ‘I’m glad I’ve bumped into you, Gwen. I wanted a quick word. We were considering – I have decided, that is – to co-opt you onto the parish council. When old Smithson retires in May we shall have a spare seat. I know he’s cried wolf before over this retirement business, but I’ve run out of patience with him this time: he has to go.’

  Gwen sought protection, placing the ramparts of her trolley between herself and Imelda Darkley. ‘I don’t think I could … I mean, I don’t know anything about … and I’m … I’m far too busy.’