Snake in the Grass Page 8

  It was the Stasi’s fault. This was all her idea. Some traditional entertainment for New Year’s Day, she’d said: putting on something the whole village could enjoy. Ha! Lining her own pockets, more like. Drumming up trade. The squire had been only too pleased to go along with it – which was not really surprising as the squire was also her husband, the landlord of the pub. He was all right, the squire (that was what you called him when you were with the Morris men), but there had to be a screw loose somewhere, getting himself hitched to a woman like the Stasi.

  As he concentrated on the patterns of the dance, Dean was glad to find that this left his overactive imagination with less scope to torment him. He even found it possible to ignore Charley and Ash. What he couldn’t help noticing, however, was that his mother was standing right next to the panther – that they were talking together, smiling, as if they were old friends.

  Talking about what? It made his blood run cold (colder) to think about it.

  Skipping across the car park, he shook his leg with an angry jangle as the music wheezed and bubbled in the icy air. He told himself to be realistic. Whatever it was they were discussing, it wouldn’t be anything to do with his sex life. The panther, of course, was more than capable of bringing the subject up: she was plainly a sex maniac as well as a lunatic. But his mother wouldn’t have been smiling like that if she’d been talking about sex. She would be more likely to die of embarrassment. His mother was the biggest prude in the entire universe.

  All the same, Dean wasn’t entirely reassured. Sex might be out of the window, but they could still be talking about him, discussing him. It wasn’t that he was big-headed or anything: people really did seem to take an unreasonable amount of interest in him, usually to find fault and pin labels such as untidy, difficult, and – most often – odd. OK, so he could be a bit odd at times: he admitted it. But that was just a cunning disguise. He pretended to be a bit of a freak to cover up the fact that he was actually the biggest freak in existence. He was pretending to be pretending that he was a freak: a double bluff. It kept people off the scent.

  He hoped.

  Turning on one foot, waving his handkerchief in the air, Dean found time to regret once more that he’d ever let the panther anywhere near him. He hadn’t had much choice, of course, seeing as she more or less raped him; but he realized with hindsight that he might have put up more of a struggle if he’d known who she was. He’d thought she was a complete stranger but it turned out that everyone knew her: even his sister.

  ‘Lydia Taylor? Of course I know Lydia Taylor. She works at the college and she lives in that little cottage down Well Lane. She hasn’t got a boyfriend, lives on her own. She used to take her dog for walks, a golden retriever, fat and smelly. It licked my hand once. Ugh! But it’s dead now.’ Amanda was a know-all. He detested her. She would be a positive menace when she grew up.

  The dance ended on a loud, rusty note from the harmonium. There was a smattering of polite, if bemused, applause. Dean bowed low. As he held this position, counting to ten, he saw the brown fetlocks of a horse come clip-clopping into his restricted field of vision. The horse came to a stop, scraping the tarmac with a casual sweep of its hoof.

  Slowly Dean straightened up. The rest of the horse came into view: vast flanks the colour and texture of sandpaper; large brown eyes regarding him; rubbery lips curled back over chunky teeth in what looked suspiciously like a sneer. Perched on top of this great brute, silhouetted against the dead grey sky, was a girl in black jodhpurs and a cream polo-neck sweater. Her curly blonde hair had been partly stuffed into a hard hat.

  ‘Hello, Dean. Still doing your Morris dancing, then?’

  Dean grunted. Why did people persist in stating the obvious? Although in Cally’s case, the obvious was about her limit. She had never been, as his mother might have put it, the sharpest knife in the drawer. Talking to Cally had always given him a rich feeling of superiority. Today, though, as he peered up at her, he found he was overcome by a quite different sensation – a sensation he did not care for one little bit. It caused his cheeks to burn and prickly sweat to break out down his back. He felt suffocated by his collar. When had Cally got so grown up? Was it really that long since he’d seen her?

  ‘Ding-dong! Who’s the hottie?’

  Dean looked round. Charley was there, Ash trailing behind him.

  ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend, Morley?’ Ash’s eyes were popping out of his head.

  Dean muttered, ‘She’s not my—’ but the girl interrupted.

  ‘I’m Cally.’

  She dazzled them with her smile. Even her smile was different to how Dean remembered it, not a sickly, girly smile any longer. He tried to muster a sneer, but his face seemed paralyzed: he couldn’t even manage to close his mouth.

  ‘Hello, Cally. It’s very, very nice to meet you. My name’s Charley. Oh, and this joker is Ash.’

  ‘Oi, joker yourself, Charles, you fat bastard, innit.’

  The way that Charley and Ash were ogling Cally was getting on his nerves. Dean roused himself from his torpor to inform them that Cally went to an all-girls school, a private school: just to underline that their chances were zero.

  Cally laughed. ‘I don’t go to that school any more. I decided to leave and—’

  ‘You decided?’ said Charley.

  ‘I persuaded Grandma to let me start at the sixth-form college in town.’

  ‘But that’s where we …’ Ash’s eyes grew even bigger and rounder, if that was possible.

  ‘We’ll be happy to show you about the place,’ said Charley eagerly. ‘We know everybody who’s anybody. We can introduce you.’

  Dean was disgusted, watching the pair of them, falling over themselves, tongues hanging out. It was pathetic. If they’d shut their mouths, it would at least stop them drooling. (He should shut his own mouth, come to that. He must look like the village idiot, gaping.)

  ‘I’m sure Dean will take me under his wing,’ said Cally.

  ‘Do you know Morley?’

  ‘I’ve known him for years. We used to play together.’

  ‘Whey-hey, I bet you did!’ Ash jabbed his bony elbow into Dean’s side, his eyebrows jerking up and down.

  ‘What did you play?’ asked Charley, his eyebrows also waggling. ‘Kiss chase?’

  ‘No. Mummies and daddies. Me and Dean and all the other village kids.’

  They were all grinning like idiots, Dean noticed: all except him. Even the horse appeared to be smiling, its lips working back and forth across its teeth in an unpleasant, mocking sort of way.

  It had always been easy to make fun of Cally because she was so thick, so ditzy; because she went to a posh school; because Lady Darkness was her grandmother. But today Dean did not seem to be able to get past the way her jodhpurs clung to her legs, the way her breasts made a bump in her sweater like a shelf (she had not had breasts in the old days). He thought it was unfair of her. She was playing dirty. Not that she was actually doing anything, just sitting there; but it made him feel hot and sticky and breathless.

  He realized that his mouth had dropped open again. He closed it with a snap.

  ‘You don’t want to hang around with Morley,’ Ash was saying. ‘He’s a nerd, innit. He’s got no mates and he’s still a virgin.’

  ‘I am not a virgin!’ Dean hissed.

  ‘So you say.’ Charley grinned up at Cally. ‘Morley claims to have done it, but he won’t tell us who he’s done it with.’

  ‘It don’t count if you do it with yourself!’ Ash guffawed, but suddenly his expression changed as his eyes veered towards the back end of the horse. His lips twisted in revulsion. ‘Ugh! Your horse, man! It just shitted all over the road! That’s so gross!’

  ‘Shut up, Ash, don’t be such an idiot,’ said Charley. ‘It’s what horses do, you moron.’

  Charley was full of himself, as if he was an expert in the defecation habits of horses, as if he was doing horse shit at A level – when really he was so dumb he didn’t ev
en know the difference between England and Britain. Dean ground his teeth, wished he could show Charley up for what he was, wished he could hate Cally, slap her like in the old days when they’d played mummies and daddies. (‘You’ve been a very naughty girl – Daddy is going to smack your bottom.’) But you weren’t meant to hit girls, not when you were grown up and civilized. All the same, he would have liked to do something to her, to push her off her pedestal. The only problem was, you couldn’t do anything – slapping or otherwise – with that great beast watching you. Dean did not trust the horse one little bit.

  Ash nudged him in the ribs again. ‘Morley. That weirdo over there is waving to you.’

  It was the squire, gathering them all together for the final dance. Dean knew that their performance was supposed to finish on the dot of twelve, when the Stasi would throw open the pub doors with a flourish. Woe betide her husband if he messed up her big moment.

  The music began wheezing and swirling round the car park. Dean took his place in the group. On balance, it seemed the safest place to be. Danger beset him on all sides: his mother, the panther, Charley and Ash, Cally, not to mention that perfidious horse. What was the point of horses anyway? (He began slowly circling round, his handkerchief at the ready.) Horses were surplus to requirements in this day and age; they ought to be abolished.

  All the same, he was surprised to feel a pang of disappointment when, halfway through the dance, he saw Cally jab her heel into the horse’s sandpaper flank to clip-clop away up the High Street.

  As Cally rode off, a tiny figure came darting between the onlookers, clutching a bucket and a spade. It was Mrs Pole, who lived opposite the pub: a bird-like, twittery widow of indeterminate age. Dean watched in amazement out of the corner of his eye as she began shovelling horse dung into her bucket.

  He rolled his eyes as he turned a circle on the car park. He was surrounded by lunatics. And people had the nerve to call him odd!

  TEN

  GWEN HESITATED OUTSIDE the pub door, her hand almost but not quite touching the handle. She could never quite rid herself of the idea that it was somehow improper for a respectable woman to go into a pub on her own. Basil disapproved of pubs altogether. Town pubs, he said, ought to be transformed into bars on the continental style, with waiter service and no riff-raff. Village pubs, on the other hand – unless they could be put on a sound financial footing – should be shut down and redeveloped. Their own village pub, he opined, could be bulldozed (there was, after all, very little left of the original seventeenth-century building, it was hardly worth bothering English Heritage about) and three or four new houses (or desirable residences, as he called them) could be built on the same plot. Villages, he perorated, must move with the times.

  Gwen shook her head to clear it. It was high time, she told herself, that she stopped taking so much notice of what Basil thought. She was quite entitled to go into a pub if she wanted to, even if that pub was not on a sound financial footing. It was a free country. (‘Nothing in this life is free, Gwen, not even fresh air. Don’t you think there is a price to be paid for keeping all those millions of acres of unproductive rain forest?’) One day soon, she said to herself, I shall put my foot down, give Basil a piece of my mind.

  It was just a question of finding the right moment.

  She pulled the handle down firmly and opened the door.

  Lydia seemed very pleased to see her; but then any interruption would be welcome, Gwen reflected as she took off her coat and unwound her scarf, if one was trapped alone in a room with the landlady, as Lydia was. The landlady was in full flow, standing in front of the fire, shifting her weight from one leg to the other then back again.

  ‘I was just saying, Gwen, that Lydia would look quite pretty if she had her hair done properly. She’s got a very noticeable face. Don’t you think she’s got a noticeable face?’

  ‘Oh?’ Gwen was never quite sure what to say to the landlady who carried on as if she was one’s closest friend when one actually knew very little about her.

  ‘Now then, Gwen,’ the landlady continued, ‘what’s this I hear about you joining the parish council?’

  ‘Oh, I—’ Gwen, caught off guard, quickly gathered her thoughts. ‘Nothing’s actually been decided—’

  ‘That’s not what I heard. It’s all settled, I heard. You’ll be taking Mr Smithson’s place.’

  Gwen was reminded of a rumour she had heard that people sometimes referred to the landlady as the Stasi behind her back. One might have been forgiven for thinking it rather an apt nickname. The landlady did appear to know everyone’s business. She could also be tactless at times, even a little crass, but she was only young when all was said and done (mid twenties?) and she was doing her best to keep the pub afloat in difficult times. One had to make allowances.

  Even so, Gwen thought with a sigh, one wished that Imelda Darkley had picked on someone else for the parish council. One really did prefer to keep one’s head down, not to be thrust into the public eye.

  Gwen took a seat and the barmaid brought the drinks over (‘It’s not as if she’s got anything else to do, ha ha ha!’). Quite a pretty girl, the barmaid, thought Gwen: sandy haired, freckled, open faced. One could get away with calling the barmaid pretty, but the landlady had used the word just now of Lydia – she would look quite pretty if she had her hair done – and it didn’t seem to fit. Pretty was such a pliant word. Lydia was not a pliant person. Striking would be nearer the mark, Gwen decided, stealing a glance at the younger woman. Yes, striking was much more like it, with those high cheekbones and a pale face framed by wavy black hair (a little tousled, one must admit).

  Sipping her tonic water, Gwen glanced at Lydia again. Was it merely imagination, or was there something different about her today? More animation in the face, more of a sparkle in the eyes, perhaps? She had nice eyes – striking eyes. But her hair…. The landlady was right about her hair. And not just her hair. The way she dressed might have been described as somewhat quirky. That high-collared, cream-coloured blouse was not too bad, but worn with a man’s patterned waistcoat: what was she thinking? One had heard it said that Lydia had been seen in charity shops in town – buying, not donating. One might venture to say that Lydia was bohemian, but one was never sure if that was an entirely nice thing to say about someone one liked.

  And I do – Gwen admitted, surprising herself – rather like her. It’s not often I feel so at ease in the company of another woman.

  Gwen blinked; realized that she had not been paying attention. She was getting into bad habits, allowing her mind to wander. The problem was, Basil did tend to go on a bit and one did tend to lose the thread. If one was not careful, one would find that one had stopped listening altogether: to anyone, ever.

  Trying to get the gist of the conversation, Gwen realized that Lydia was explaining in a rather apologetic way that the landlady had offered to join their committee and that they couldn’t very well – with volunteers being so thin on the ground – refuse. Nobody else was going to show up for the meeting, it seemed.

  ‘Why don’t we have Sandra on the committee too?’ the landlady suggested. ‘She’s quite clever. You’re quite clever, aren’t you, Sandra? She’s doing art at college.’

  ‘I’m doing English literature and—’

  ‘Art, literature: same thing,’ said the landlady. ‘At least, literature is arty even if it’s not art. I’ll just go and call my husband down. He can watch the bar and Sandra can join our meeting.’

  She moseyed towards the inner door.

  ‘Clever,’ murmured Lydia as the landlady disappeared. ‘That’ll save on an evening’s wages.’

  ‘Oh. Do you really think that is what she…?’

  Lydia smiled.

  Does she think me naïve, or is she making a joke? Gwen felt it best to change the subject. ‘How is your painting coming along, Lydia?’

  ‘I’ve rediscovered my muse.’ The puzzling smile continued to play on Lydia’s lips. ‘Richard has been a help.’

&nb
sp; ‘Oh?’ (In what way could Richard help in the matter of art? Surely as a life model he just, well, stood there?)

  ‘I thought the Morris men might make a good subject for my next piece,’ Lydia continued. ‘Their performance on New Year’s Day was rather enthralling.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose it was.’ (Dean, enthralling?)

  ‘What about you, Gwen? Anything in the offing?’

  ‘Well….’ Gwen hesitated to say that just recently Basil had been more amenable about the matter of painting. It would make her sound rather feeble, as if she needed Basil’s permission, as if Basil pushed her around. Basil didn’t push. He was more like a sheep dog, steering one in the direction he wanted. ‘Ever since you spoke to Basil on Boxing Day—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He has raised no objection if I….’ (‘Since when have I forbidden you to do anything, Gwen? Where do people get such ideas?’ ‘I really couldn’t say, Basil. It’s only a turn of phrase, I expect. I shouldn’t worry about it.’ ‘But I do worry. A man in my position has to consider his public image. I never forbid anyone from doing anything. I discuss, I argue, I reason. Of course you must paint if you want to. It is what you want, I suppose?’ ‘Well….’)

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ said Lydia.

  ‘Of course, yes, but …’

  The conversation lapsed. Gwen glanced at the clock. They had been sitting here for – what? twenty minutes? – and nothing had been accomplished. She hated wasting time. And there were dishes in the kitchen at home, dishes from dinner (supper) that she had neglected in order to come to this meeting. Would Basil notice?