Thirty-Three
Finn had a visitor. ‘Your mum said it was all right to come up. See you’re drawing again and got the baby with you.’ Sam stood awkwardly in the doorway, gazing at Finn who was on his bed, back against the pillows and headboard, sketching Eloise who was perched against his drawn-up knees. Sam never knew how to take Finn nowadays. Finn had not been to The Orchards for ages and he no longer asked after his parents – well, his mother – as he used to. Sam felt he must have offended Finn but Sam didn’t know what he had done.
‘Looks like it, doesn’t it? Sit down then, don’t dawdle in the bloody doorway,’ Finn grunted. As it happened he didn’t have any issues with Sam but he preferred, when he had the time, to be with Eloise and to have her all to himself. It was going to be a horrible wrench leaving her throughout most of each week when he started at the art academy.
‘I’ve managed to get hold of a couple bottles of Coca Cola,’ Sam said, flopping down in the tub chair, which was liberally covered with Finn’s cast-off clothes. ‘It’s handy out on the rounds, you can swap anything for some extra fruit or veg.’
‘Great,’ Finn said, reaching out a hand for the opened drink without tearing his eyes away from his sketch of Eloise shaking her rattle. She made a grab for the bottle. ‘No, no, sweetheart, you can’t have this. You finish off your own bottle.’ Tucking Eloise into the crook of his arm he put her bottle of diluted rose-hip syrup to her eager lips. All three in the bedroom glugged down the drink in their own bottles.
‘I got these as well.’ Sam thrust back his shoulders in pride as he threw three little packets on the bed.
Finn picked them up. ‘Rubber johnnies! What do you want those for?’ He was suddenly contentious. ‘You better not be hoping to get fresh with Jenna. She’s a decent girl.’
‘Course not!’ Sam coloured in guilt but hoped Finn would think he was merely embarrassed. He gathered up his trophies. Jenna was refusing a repeat of their love-making unless they got engaged, but Sam only wanted some fun and sex now, not his future mapped out for him. ‘I’m thinking of looking around, and hopefully the johnnies will come in useful.’
‘Things fizzling out between you and Jenna then?’ Finn looked Sam steadily in the eyes. ‘Tilly says Jenna’s been quiet about you lately.’
‘I like Jenna, but she’s just my first girlfriend. I’m not ready to settle down yet,’ Sam said, mildly desperate. ‘You do understand, Finn? Can you say something, please? You look like a ruddy judge.’
‘Have you told her?’
‘I’ve been trying to but I don’t want to hurt her. She’s a lovely girl but not the girl for me.’
‘She’s going to be hurt, can’t be no other way, but she’ll be more hurt if you keep her wriggling on a line. You chased after her, not the other way round, and you owe it to her to tell her properly and clearly. You’re doing nothing now, why not get over to By The Way and speak to her privately. Don’t be a bastard and keep her hanging on. Girls hope for more than us.’
‘But it’s Saturday, all the kids will be home from school and Denny tends to be in the yard. Jean will invite me inside and I’ll be surrounded by Vercoes.’ Sam cursed himself for it gushed out of him as a pathetic wail.
‘Are you a man or a mouse?’ Finn growled, dumping his drink down with force. ‘Or a chicken-hearted ninny or a nasty bastard?’ Like your shitty father.
‘All right, I’m going.’ Sam sprang up and scooted for the door. ‘See you.’
Sam wasn’t sure if he would try to see Finn again. His parents had for some reason turned against Finn, murmuring that he wasn’t what he seemed. Sam decided he had no clue as to what Finn was really like; he was not a good friend to him anyway, that was certain. Finn was surly and confrontational. It was time to break with him too.
As Sam clattered down the stairs, Finn cuddled Eloise, delighting in her making bubbles on her rosebud lips. ‘Hopefully that’s the last we’ll see of that crummy idiot.’
‘Come down here, old girl – you too, Verity!’ Greg bawled excitedly up the stairs.
‘We’re busy, Greg,’ Dorrie called down from the landing. ‘Verity is about to try on the wedding dress. I take it your exuberance has something to do with the phone call just now?’
Greg pounded up the stairs like a man half his age. ‘Certainly was. That was a reporter I was speaking to, not one from the local rags but a top national. They’ve got word of how quickly the community here rallied together and built the new hall. They want to cover it, come down with a photographer and make a big thing of it as an encouragement to the whole country. They want to interview the main organizers and speak to the children who will officially open the hall. Said if we want to rethink it they could organize a VIP to help open the hall. They suggested a member of the Guinea Pig Club, a badly burnt war hero, as we’re not interested in dignitaries and film stars. Just think of that, what an honour! What’s the betting the next phone call will be from the venerable Mistress of the Manor organizing an urgent committee meeting?’
Greg was right in a way. The telephone rang almost immediately from Petherton but it was from Honoria, not Esther. She asked to speak to Dorrie.
‘Dorrie, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. Esther hasn’t been well for the last few days. She’s been having terrible stomach pains and I’ve been staying with her. She collapsed this morning. I’m so worried I’m driving her up to Harley Street without delay. Somebody or other rang a little while ago about the village hall but I fielded him over to Greg’s capable hands. Sorry I can’t stay and chat, have to get on. I’ll ring you from London.’
Before Dorrie could say how sorry she was about the news, Honoria said goodbye and cut off the call.
‘Problems?’ Greg asked.
‘What is it, Aunt Dor?’ Verity said. ‘You look upset.’
‘I’m taken aback. That was Honoria. It seems Mrs Mitchelmore is seriously ill and Honoria is about to take her up to London to see a top specialist,’ Dorrie explained. She wasn’t really surprised. She was pretty certain this sudden onset of illness of Esther’s, who hadn’t been seen out and about for a while, was a cover story. Through Dorrie’s disclosure to Honoria, she was being faced with the prospect of her first marriage becoming known. Esther would be invited to Verity and Jack’s wedding, and if not before, she would be bound to meet Camilla who might spill the beans. But why be so worried about it? From a scrap of paper, two people had apparently somehow discovered ‘the truth about Chester’, had tried blackmail and had been put to death for it – the most extreme measures for Esther or Honoria or both of them to take (if they really had) over a case of domestic violence? Esther had been a widow when she married Sedgewick Mitchelmore, all decent and above board; no bigamy. It would be painful but not crushingly humiliating to become known as a battered wife. But Esther had suffered an even more painful event. One of the most excruciatingly painful things to happen to a woman, Dorrie knew, was to lose her child. Esther’s husband had viciously beaten her child out of her body. She might have been able to live with her husband beating her but perhaps not with him being responsible for the death of her child. Could Esther have wanted revenge? It was understandable. Could she have killed Chester by design or perhaps unintentionally in heartbreak or temper? Had Chester really died in a motorbike crash? Had the crash been faked? Dorrie would never know for certain; she had no intention of looking into the man’s death. She might have been silly in believing Esther was really a man, but she felt it was not fanciful to wonder if the facts pointed to Neville Stevens, a sneak thief, discovering some sort of evidence that Esther had murdered Chester. That he had told his lover Mary Rawling, that together they had made a blackmail bid, all leading to Honoria, through her dubious connections, to hire a professional assassin. It seemed a likely explanation to Dorrie for the manner of the couple’s deaths, rather than them falling foul of a black-market gang.
Now it seemed to Dorrie that the sisters had been concocting a story to enable them to slip away from the village, probably by Esther declaring she would spend a healing winter abroad with Honoria, and neither would come back. By the time Camilla came down for the wedding the lady of Petherton would not be important enough for Camilla to seek gossip about. The reporter for the national newspaper had shunted the sisters’ plans urgently forward, in a different direction.
Dorrie expected she would hear from Honoria quite soon but she doubted (and hoped, of course, not wanting Esther to be really ill) that Esther would have gone anywhere near Harley Street.