Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
In early spring, the Colonel went down with a bad attack of flu. Apart from a bout of malaria when he'd been serving out in the tropics, his health had always been remarkably good. There had been the usual childhood diseases – measles, chickenpox, mumps, and so on – but he could not remember any of them being as unpleasant as this, not even the malaria.
He lay aching and miserable in his bed at Pond Cottage – the only consolation being that the bedroom window overlooked Frog End village green and he could see the occasional passer-by to cheer his day. Major Cuthbertson, for instance, purposefully striding out in the direction of the Dog and Duck; Mrs Cuthbertson crouched balefully over the wheel of their Escort, bound for her ladies' bridge afternoon; Miss Butler emerging like a timid mouse from Lupin Cottage on the other side of the green; the nice young vicar chugging along in his battered saloon to make his calls; the organist, Miss Hartshorne, on her sit-up-and-beg bicycle, weaving her way towards the church; Philippa Rankin cantering one of her riding school ponies over the grass; Mrs Bentley out with her four dachshunds, their tangled leads encircling her stout legs like ribbons round a maypole.
Life was going on, just as normal, for everyone else while he had been summarily removed from its orbit. He was an outsider: a germ-ridden pariah. Banished beyond the pale.
He turned his head towards the photograph of Laura on the bedside table beside him. There was another much grander studio portrait of her in the sitting room below, as well as the large silver-framed one taken at their wedding, but this simple snapshot was the image that he carried in his heart. He had taken it himself when they had been on honeymoon, many years ago. Laura was wearing a cotton frock, her hair blowing in the breeze and she was smiling at him. No glamorous gown, no studio artifice, no clever lighting, no tricks of the trade. Just Laura, as she had been and how he would always remember her.
If he felt low now with his dose of flu, how much worse must she have felt when she had been fighting her battle against cancer? He had seen her physical suffering plainly enough, but she had kept the rest hidden from him. He had never quite known whether she knew the truth. They had played a game of make-believe, encouraged by the jolly hospital nurses and the friendly young doctors, and it had been played to the very end when she had finally given up the unequal struggle. Let go of her frail grasp on life in the middle of one night when he had been at home in bed asleep and she had been alone.
He shifted his aching legs again and Thursday see-sawed up and down at the end of the bed, clinging on to the eiderdown with his claws. The old cat had given up waiting for the sitting room fire to be lit so that he could take up his usual place at the warm end of the sofa. He had finally made his arthritic way upstairs to the bedroom to settle firmly, instead, on the Colonel's feet. For a bony old moggy, long past his prime, he was surprisingly heavy but no amount of shifting and kicking would dislodge him. Nothing had dislodged him from Pond Cottage either.
He had been named by the former occupant of the cottage, an ancient pensioner, simply because he had first turned up on a Thursday. The stray cat had disappeared when the old man had died, only to reappear on the very day that the Colonel had moved in. Also, on a Thursday. It had seemed pointless to change it – as pointless as it had proved to try to persuade the battle-scarred, flea-ridden, torn-eared creature, to move on elsewhere. Thursday had graciously favoured the Colonel with his permanent presence and that had been that. There were times, he had to admit, when it was not entirely unwelcome; in fact, sometimes he was glad of it.
When Laura had died eleven years ago, he had found living on his own almost unbearable. The loneliness, the terrible silence, the long and empty days had come as a severe shock to him after a lifetime spent always with others. Family, boarding school, the army ... always plenty of company and plenty of useful activity. Retirement and widowhood were uncharted and alien waters, something he had never even thought about or prepared for. There was still his daughter and his son, of course: Alison in her high-powered City job, Marcus with Susan and his two children resettled in Norfolk. They had both wanted him to live close by – either in a service flat in London near Alison, or in an easy-to-run bungalow down the road from Marcus and Susan. Instead, he had gone in stubborn search of a cottage that he and Laura had once seen many years ago when they had been touring on home leave in the West Country. They had stopped at a village pub and sat out on a bench in the sun. Laura had noticed the rose-covered cottage on the other side of the green and said that one day, when he had retired from the army and they had finally come back to live in England, they must find a home just like that. He had forgotten the name of the village but he had driven round and round Dorset lanes in pouring rain until, finally, he had come across the pub and the green and Laura's dream cottage. The roses were not in bloom and either distance had led enchantment to their eyes, or the intervening years had taken a severe toll on the house because it looked in bad shape. But, by a remarkable coincidence, it was for sale. Ignoring rising damp, rotting thatch, death-watch beetle, dirt and decay throughout, he had bought it, together with the half acre of surrounding jungle. He had bought it because of Laura and because he knew that she would have thoroughly approved.
His children, naturally, had not approved. Alison had thought he was making a bad financial mistake and Marcus that he was losing his mind. They were probably both right. It had cost a small fortune to make the cottage habitable – to rethatch the roof, strip out hideous modern additions, uncover the ancient inglenook fireplace, expose beams, repair, replaster, repaint, rewire, re-plumb, put in central heating and equip the kitchen.
And when it was finally ready and he had moved in, he had found the demons of loneliness lying in wait for him. It was easier to keep them at bay during the day, when he could get out and about, but when he sat alone in his wing-back tapestry chair by the fireside in the evening, whisky in hand, they came sidling forth to mock him.
He had been lucky, though, because help was at hand. The inhabitants of Frog End had gradually co-opted him into their lives. He had been made treasurer of the summer garden fête committee – a job passed on with alacrity by Major Cuthbertson, and which, naturally, nobody else had wanted. He had begun to meet people and to be asked to help out in other ways – cutting the churchyard grass, collecting for worthy charities, driving patients to and from hospital appointments in Dorchester, manning stalls at jumble sales, and so on.
The village might look about as lively as a stagnant pond, but beneath the surface there was plenty going on. For instance, there had been two murders within the space of a year which was somewhat unusual, to say the least. The much-disliked Lady Swynford of Frog End Manor, had been smothered with a pillow right in the middle of the summer fête, and a famous, if ageing, actress who had come to live in one of the new luxury flats at The Hall had been electrocuted in her bath on New Year's Eve. The Colonel had been caught up unwittingly in both cases, carried out his own private investigations and reached the truth. And, of course, nobody who lived next door to Naomi Grimshaw could ever feel completely alone. He remembered the first evening when she had appeared in his sitting room doorway, dressed in a purple tracksuit and white running shoes, her short grey hair bluntly trimmed like the new thatch on his roof. A self-styled widow, she had in reality been divorced from her husband many years before he had died. But, as she had shrewdly pointed out, widows and widowers were awarded far more sympathy and status points than divorcees. Especially widowers, like himself, who were always useful to make up the numbers.
Naomi had introduced him to gardening. Something, she had quite rightly said, must be done about the jungle surrounding his cottage. He had seen and admired the garden of her Pear Tree Cottage beyond the old stone wall that divided their properties. A place of natural beauty where plants seemed to have planted themselves, cascading and drifting as in some soft-focused Impressionist painting. No regimented beds, no garish hues, no sharp edges. He knew even less about gardening than he did about art, but he knew what he liked.
Encouraged and inspired, the Colonel had rolled up his shirt sleeves and Done Something. Jacob, the strong and simple-minded labourer from the Manor had been persuaded to help during his time off and, under Naomi's stick-waving, enthusiastic direction, the jungle had gradually been cleared. The stinging nettles and the weeds, the tangled brambles and the overgrown shrubs had been carted away, together with hundreds of rusty tin cans.
To start him off, Naomi had given him a lavender cutting and plants that she'd raised from seeds germinating on her cottage windowsills and in the lean-to greenhouse. She had also lent him several well-thumbed gardening books and told him to choose the rest himself so that it would be his garden – his own creation. He had never so much as lifted a trowel in his life and could scarcely tell a daisy from a daffodil, but he began to learn. He could never hope to emulate Naomi's enchanted plot but, by the end of the first year, his garden was making quiet progress and the pond which had been rediscovered in the great clear-out had attracted all kinds of residents and passing visitors – snails, newts, dragonflies, water beetles and boatmen, a grass snake, thirsty hedgehogs and birds and even Thursday, who much preferred the pond or puddles to his nice clean water bowl in the kitchen. Most satisfactorily of all, given the name of the village, it had become home to a frog.
In the afternoon, the Colonel dozed until he became aware of heavy footsteps on the stairs and a slight shaking of the walls. A rap on the bedroom door and Naomi's face appeared round its edge.
'Come to make sure you're still alive, Hugh.'
The rest of her stomped into the room, radiating health and vigour. Her puce-coloured tracksuit hurt his eyes; he closed them again.
'That's the spirit! You'll soon be up and about.'
Sickbed sympathy, he realized, was not Naomi's strong suit. She had probably never had a day's illness in her life.
He opened his eyes halfway and croaked, 'Nice of you to come, Naomi.'
'I've brought you something,' she told him and thrust the plastic bowl that she was carrying under his nose. 'Chicken soup. Jewish mothers always swear by it. Apparently it cures everything. I'll heat it up for you.'
'Not just now, thank you.'
'You must eat, Hugh. Build up your strength.'
'I will,' he promised. 'Later.'
'Not sure I trust you. Men are hopeless at looking after themselves. Useless at being ill. Cecil always thought he was dying.'
'Cecil?'
'My late husband. The one I divorced – remember. He went off with his secretary. I bet she didn't lift a finger when he was ill. Serve the old bugger right.' She glanced at the lump of black and tan fur at the end of the eiderdown. 'I see Thursday's managed to make himself comfortable, as usual. Do you want me to get rid of him for you?' Thursday's eyes opened to gleaming slits.
'No, no. He's all right.'
'Of course, he is. He's a cat. They're always all right.' She looked down at him uncertainly. 'I must say you do look a bit ropey, Hugh. Shall I ask Tom to call?'
'Heavens, no.' He liked young Tom Harvey very much but doctors in general were best avoided. Doctors stood for illness and suffering and death, and for facing things you didn't want to face or even think about.
The grandfather clock's silvery chimes downstairs reached his ears. Six chimes. A Pavlovian call.
'Would you like a drink, Naomi?'
'I wouldn't say no.' She never did. 'How about you?'
'For once, I don't feel like it. You'll have to get it yourself, I'm afraid. Do you mind?'
'Not a bit.'
She knew where everything was – the whisky decanter on the silver tray in the sitting room, the glasses in the cupboard. No ice required and just a splash of tap water. She was back upstairs in no time and sitting in the bedroom chair, raising her glass.
'Cheers, Hugh. Hope you'll be feeling better soon.'
They had drunk many a glass of Chivas Regal together. An evening ritual begun when she had first called on him the day he had moved in. After a full and frank discussion of whatever was news or current gossip or of any interest at all, Naomi would return to her cottage and her two Jack Russell terriers and the Colonel, left alone with Thursday, would watch a television programme – if there was anything to watch – or listen to the radio or play his old Gilbert and Sullivan records.
He said croakily, 'I'm rather worried about the garden. Things will be getting out of hand.'
'Nothing that can't be dealt with, all in good time. I had a peek over the wall this morning and everything seems perfectly happy.'
'What about the lily of the valley?'
'Flowering away. Lucky you got the giant kind. The others always seem to get lost.'
He had done so at Naomi's particular suggestion but, generously, she hadn't reminded him of the fact.
'Any sign of the bluebells?'
'Lots of them. They'll all be coming out when you do.'
He said anxiously, 'The hellebores?'
They were one of his favourites. Bashful blooms that hung their heads and hid their delicate beauty. He had planted them near the kitchen door where they were under his eye and he could see them better. For all their shyness, they were one of the first plants of the year to brave the cold.
'Don't worry about them. They're tough as anything.'
Ruth Swynford – the daughter of the late and unlamented Lady Swynford – had given him the hellebore plants as a present and he treasured them. On her mother's unfortunate death, Ruth had inherited the Manor and stayed in Frog End instead of returning to work in London. With help and encouragement from Naomi, she had taken on the neglected Manor gardens, restoring them gradually to their former glory, as well as starting a small business selling plants. She had also become engaged to Tom Harvey, the local doctor, though not without a good deal of persuasion and patience on his part. Village gossip had it that Ruth had been having an affair with a married man in London for years.
He said, 'Any date set for the wedding yet?'
'Some time in the summer, Ruth says. She's being very cagey at the moment. I hope she's not going to duck out.'
Tom Harvey would almost certainly make an excellent husband, and they seemed to make a perfect young couple, but what if the magic ingredient necessary for a successful marriage was somehow lacking? Maybe Ruth was still in love with the married man in London?
'It would be a great shame if she did.'
'Not to mention a big disappointment in the village. They're all planning what to wear for the wedding. I saw Mrs Cuthbertson trying on a hat in Dorchester the other day – all pink tulle and feathers and the size of a dustbin lid.'
His imagination failed him. The major's wife's hats were usually the sensible country kind, made to withstand the elements and to stay in place in gale force winds.
'It could be just a small wedding.'
'No chance of that. Everybody will expect to be invited. Ruth's the squiress.'
'Everybody?'
'Everybody. And we haven't had a decent wedding in years so it'll be a good excuse to tog up. I hope you can still get into your morning suit, Hugh.'
'I doubt it.'
He had no idea even where it was – probably among the things he'd consigned to the cottage loft. The last time he had worn morning dress had been at Marcus's and Susan's wedding, when Laura had still been alive. He could remember singing Love Divine, all loves excelling and praying to God that, for his son's sake, Susan wouldn't grow into anything resembling her mother.
'By the way, Naomi, there was something I wanted to ask you.'
'Fire away.'
'It's something I've been thinking about ... but I wanted to ask your opinion first.'
'Well, spit it out, Hugh. I'm all ears.'
'Would you have any objection if I bought a garden shed – to go where the old privy was? I don't think you'd be able to see it from your side.'
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Dry Bones"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Margaret Mayhew.
Excerpted by permission of Severn House Publishers Limited.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
