A Cotswold Ordeal Read online

  The pony did not take to Hepzibah any more readily than the dog had adjusted to the geese. He took a few arthritic steps backwards and lowered his head. Then he lifted a front hoof and made a stamping motion. A fitter animal might have managed to connect with the spaniel’s head, as Hepzie stupidly stood her ground. Thea’s heart lurched, first with fear, then with anger. ‘Hey!’ she shouted. Both creatures looked at her, and then at each other and decided to abandon their hostilities. Thea did her best to like the pony, despite his behaviour. It would be difficult to nurse him through the next two weeks if she hated him. His main appeal was the colouring, hinted at by the name. ‘Pallo’ was evidently short for ‘palomino’, of which he appeared to be a handsome example. The mane and tail were a creamy white and the body a hue she could only describe as apricot. Despite his obvious age, he was still a beauty. She recalled her grandfather’s scorn for all equines. ‘Brainless beasts,’ he would say. ‘Not an imaginative cell in their bodies.’ He would tell stories of his early years, before the advent of tractors rescued him from the moods and malaises of his working horses. Thea had never questioned his judgement on the topic, having seldom spent more than a few minutes in the presence of a horse in her entire life.

  She took Hepzie on a more extended exploration of the yard and paddock, before retiring to the house for supper. The stable was a free-standing building and they walked around it, admiring the stonework and investigating interesting smells respectively. At the back was a flight of steps running edgeways up the wall, leading to the square opening in the upper storey. It was between the house and the road, with the larger barn opposite, and a pathway running inside the road fence leading to the back of the stable. Thea imagined the games the four children could devise, hiding and chasing around all the buildings. Or were they like others of their generation, obsessed with electronic games and television, and hardly ever venturing outdoors?

  * * *

  There was a warmth to the house that she was increasingly appreciating. These were nice people, she decided, unspoilt by their material fortune. A reconstituted family that had, to all appearances, made a real success of the new situation. Despite their hasty attempts at tidying up, there was evidence everywhere of an openness that was rare in an age of obsession with privacy. Letters were pinned up on a corkboard revealing the state of their finances, the existence of headlice in Year 6, an invitation to some sort of social evening at the Cotswold Club, and a dusty Christmas card from somebody who might have been Kate Winslet, if the signature could be believed. A large framed photo of Desmond, looking outrageously young and handsome and holding some sort of fish in the time-honoured pose of a jubilant angler, was displayed on a small table in a corner of the living room. How refreshing, Thea felt, to be amongst people with no secrets.

  The cat put in a stately appearance promptly at six, and delicately consumed the half-tin of meat Thea provided. He suffered himself to be stroked for a minute or so, before making an equally stately exit, tail held high and eyes straight ahead. Not an indoor cat, Thea concluded.

  She had brought her laptop with her, anticipating long hours in which internet Scrabble or lengthy emails to family and friends would make all the difference. Furthermore, access to webpages had become one of life’s necessities in recent times. You could never really be bored with the internet at your fingertips.

  She was feeling entirely contented and relaxed, the first day having proved less strange and restless than expected. The livestock would all settle down quickly and accept the new woman and dog who’d unaccountably replaced their usual rowdy family.

  The peacocks came as a complete surprise, sometime before six the following morning. Extraordinarily, this detail had been overlooked on the day of arrival, as well as on her preliminary visit in May. The unearthly sound of their cries penetrated a rather pleasant dream causing Thea to sit up in wild alarm, staring round the unfamiliar bedroom for the banshee that was surely right beside the bed.

  Hepzie was cravenly hiding under the duvet. Thea had to haul her out and speak reassuringly before she’d stop quivering. Within minutes, they’d both gone back to sleep, but the noise came again, hauntingly conjuring other worlds. But this time Thea listened with a more relaxed ear. ‘Peacocks!’ she told the dog. ‘That’s all.’

  It took her quite a while to locate the birds when she went in search of them after breakfast. Three large exotic males were roosting in a cherry tree in a corner of the garden. The incongruity was startling. To see such big birds in a tree at all was odd; brightly coloured ones with trailing tail feathers were simply not as nature intended. She stood for several minutes admiring them and wondering why Julia hadn’t told her about them. They seemed docile enough and the vivid blue of their breasts was enough to send any heart soaring. She decided to like them, to permit them their exotic enhancement of her sojourn and forgive them their early-morning cacophony.

  The house was superficially tidy, but the first cupboard Thea opened revealed a hasty bundling-out-of-sight exercise that would inevitably mean that nothing would be found by the owners for the next several months. The small bedroom she’d been allocated belonged to the older daughter, Flora. ‘Too many of us now for a spare room,’ Julia had said. ‘You’ll be all right in here, won’t you?’

  The room’s décor had apparently been executed by the child herself. Dragons were stencilled in shades of orange and blue over two of the walls, in random clusters, while a third wall was completely covered with cut-out pictures of a pop star Thea could not recognise. He was an ill-looking fellow, apt to open his mouth much too wide when confronted by a camera, it seemed. His clothing was minimal and unstylish. Thea rather feared that his face would haunt her for some time to come.

  The duvet cover was clean and plain, the curtains likewise. The carpet was equally acceptable. In fact, the tidiness was not at all as she remembered from her visit in May. Young Flora, unlike the rest of her family, had gone to a lot of trouble to tuck everything out of sight, leaving no personal items on view. Except for the dragons. There were shelves containing about thirty model dragons, made of porcelain, plastic, metal, wood, paper and other materials. One had actually been knitted. Some were a few inches high, and the largest measured a good two feet from nose to tail.

  ‘Well, it makes a change,’ Thea muttered. ‘Nothing wrong with dragons.’ A closer inspection persuaded her that many of the models had been skilfully made and were far from unattractive.

  Flora was not the daughter obsessed with the welfare of the pony. A glance into Naomi’s room across the landing made this apparent. A large poster of a show jumper in mid-jump met the eye first, followed by a mass of other horse-related objects. A chest of drawers had a jumble of possessions littered on top of it and there were clothes on the chair near the window. Of course, there would be no reason why she should clear it up, since nobody was intending to use it during her absence. Thea wondered whether Flora had resented the need to make her room available.

  For the first time, Thea sat down and asked herself just what the definition of a house-sitter was. This was only her second assignment, and already it proved to be entirely different from the first. In the absence of detailed instructions, she felt both constrained to invent her own job description, and free to do as much or as little as she liked.

  The poultry were to be shut in at night and released in the morning – except for the peacocks, which were evidently free range. The pony required some magical therapy that would maintain life until his devoted owner’s return. The cat, guinea pigs and rabbits had one meal a day, and were otherwise self-sufficient. Burglars were not a worry, it seemed.

  To Thea’s relief, she noticed that Hepzie was cautiously pottering outside, her feathering flowing in the cool breeze. For July the weather was proving sorely defective. Thea caught regular glimpses of the dog from the front window, noting that she kept well away from the muddy patch which was obviously the preferred territory of the geese. A shallow pond was full of thick green slud
ge and bordered with long untidy grass. The birds seemed very attached to it. Thea heartily shared Hepzie’s antipathy to the whole area. Not only was it smelly and gloopy underfoot, it was also determinedly guarded by the incumbents.

  The living room window was broad and high, letting in all available light, and probably a lot of summer heat on a good day. The view extended from the green pond to the right of the main big barn that faced the house, past the front gate and lane beyond, to one corner of the pony’s shed. Everything had been set at the customary odd angle, as if carelessly deposited without any planning, and yet the result was as idyllic a rural homestead as could be imagined.

  Thea set up the laptop on an antique oak table close to the window, and plugged it in to charge the battery.

  She saw the shiny silver car draw up in the gateway, hesitating a moment and then proceeding through the open gate into the yard. She saw the wide-hipped, grey-haired woman get out. A large woman, though light on her feet, she slammed the car door and stood for a moment taking in the house and yard. Thea watched her through the window trying to gauge just how welcome this visitor might be. She was assisted by her dog, who had gone running out of the open front door at the sound of the slamming car door. Two geese were waddling purposefully towards her, too.

  Thea got up and went to show due hospitality. ‘Hello,’ she called, raising her voice to carry from the front door. The woman was not approaching, but simply standing by the car, watching Hepzibah, who was wagging ecstatically from a short distance. When Hepzie wagged, it involved most of her spine, as well as the long undocked tail. Most people instinctively smiled or laughed to see it.

  This woman did neither. ‘It won’t jump up, will it?’ The voice was tight.

  ‘Come here, Heps,’ said Thea, hearing the soppy affection in her own voice. The dog complied easily and Thea bent down to fondle the soft head. ‘Good girl. Watch out for the geese,’ she warned. ‘They’re far worse than the dog.’

  This statement turned out to be false. As if barred by an invisible fence, the geese halted, exchanging muted gurgles, and then diverted their attentions to microscopic morsels of food beneath their feet.

  ‘I don’t think I need worry about them,’ the visitor observed. ‘I take it the Phillipses aren’t here?’

  ‘That’s right. I’m their house-sitter. Why, do you know them?’

  ‘Vaguely. I’m Cecilia Clifton. I live a mile or two away. I’m afraid I’ve got bad news.’

  Thea did not immediately feel any concern. There was only one piece of truly terrible news that could come, now, and this woman could not conceivably be the bearer of it. She did not know Jessica; there was no possibility that harm to Thea’s daughter could be reported through this mouthpiece.

  ‘What?’ she said.

  ‘The cat. Julia’s Siamese. Unless I’m very mistaken, he’s lying dead on the road, two or three hundred yards that way.’ She pointed eastwards.

  ‘Oh Jesus!’ said Thea, feeling suddenly sick. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You’d better go and see for yourself.’

  The woman did not offer to accompany Thea on her unpalatable quest. ‘You can’t miss it,’ she said, before getting back into the car. ‘It’s just around the corner.’

  ‘Can’t you show me?’

  At last a smile flickered on the broad face. ‘I would if I could, but I’m in rather a rush. You’ll be all right.’

  It seemed an odd thing to say. ‘Will I?’ she wondered.

  The woman turned the key in the ignition and then seemed to reconsider. Without turning the engine off, she leaned out of the window. ‘Listen – I’ll be free after lunch. I’ll come back then and we can have a talk, if you like. It must feel rather odd, being alone in a strange house. And you won’t have bargained for dealing with a dead cat.’

  Thea was rueful. ‘No. But I can hardly complain about any of the other aspects, can I? I knew what it would be like. And I’ve got the dog.’

  ‘So shall I come back or not?’

  Thea looked into the greenish eyes that awaited her reply, seeming to say it wouldn’t much matter either way. If Thea declined the offer, she felt there’d be no hard feelings. ‘Yes, do,’ she said. ‘I’ll have coffee on.’

  * * *

  The cat’s body was limp and muddy and still not quite cold, the pelvic area crushed. Thea slid it into the plastic carrier bag she’d equipped herself with before walking down the lane. The creature’s lips were drawn back in a rictus of suffering that filled Thea with pity and rage and rank despair. ‘Carnage,’ she muttered to herself. The word embraced a bitter pun she had been aware of since her husband had been slaughtered in a road accident. Human or animal, to die at the wheels of a motor vehicle was to pay a sacrificial price accepted almost calmly by the population at large.

  ‘Now what?’ Thea asked Hepzibah, who was as always only a few yards away. ‘Better get you off the road, before you’re splattered as well. Come on.’

  But before they’d got any distance there was a voice calling from a gateway further down the lane. ‘Hello! Has something happened?’

  The gateway opened into a modest cottage garden with low-growing plants and a scrap of lawn. Behind it stood a classic Cotswold dwelling in the usual pale stone, flanked by trees.

  A young woman stepped out into the lane, and Thea stayed her ground. ‘I’m the Phillipses’ house-sitter,’ she said, raising her voice to cover the distance. ‘I’m afraid I’m off to a bad start. Poor Milo’s been run over. It must have happened only a short time ago – he’s still a bit warm.’

  The reaction was dramatic. Covering the ground between them at a run, her mouth widened in a sob, the woman positively shrieked. ‘Oh God, no! Let me see. Oh!’

  ‘You must be Frannie,’ Thea guessed. ‘Julia said he visited you a lot.’

  ‘Yes, yes, Frannie Craven. Oh Lord, this is terrible. What’s Robert going to say? He’ll think it’s all my fault. Poor Milo. I can’t bear to look at him!’

  Thea had opened the carrier bag to reveal the contents. Frannie reared back in horror. ‘How did you find him?’

  ‘A woman called Cecilia Something came to tell me.’

  ‘Bloody cars. Nothing’s safe, is it. You’d think on a quiet little road like this…’

  ‘Right. But you know – cats do dart out at just the wrong moment.’ Why am I defending the motorist, she demanded of herself.

  Frannie was not swayed. ‘Have you ever killed a cat?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Neither have I. It’s bad driving, I don’t care what you say.’

  ‘So why will Robert think it’s your fault?’

  Frannie clasped her hands together and jittered on the spot. ‘He says I shouldn’t encourage him to come over to us. He doesn’t like cats much. And the boys! They’ll be devastated.’ Her wide blue eyes gazed into Thea’s. She was blonde and slight and about thirty. Just the sort to have a bossy husband, Thea noted to herself.

  ‘Boys? You mean yours?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Frannie put a hand over her mouth. ‘I haven’t got any.’

  ‘Julia’s two Harrys, then?’

  ‘Actually…well, yes, that’s right. The boys love Milo. He’s a sort of mascot to them.’

  ‘Well, it’s done now. I’d better bury him, I suppose.’

  ‘You can’t. Not without asking Julia where she wants him. They’re away for a fortnight, aren’t they?’

  Thea nodded. ‘Maybe I could put him in a freezer or something.’

  ‘In with the food?’

  She wasn’t at all sure she liked this Frannie. The overwrought responses to everything she said were beginning to irritate.

  ‘I expect I could clear a compartment. And wrap him up well.’ Absently she reached into the bag and stroked the dense creamy fur. It had been a very beautiful cat. She turned to go when a man came out of the house and walked towards them, his face framing intense curiosity.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Oh, Robert. Thi
s lady’s the one Julia’s hired to look after their house. I’m sorry – I don’t know your name? She’s just found Milo, look. He’s been run over.’

  ‘My name’s Thea Osborne. I only arrived yesterday. This isn’t a very good start, is it.’

  Robert was a lot older than his wife. He looked to be in his early forties. He did not seem the least bit distressed at the death of the cat. In fact, Thea noted, he almost shrugged.

  ‘We’ll be late, Fran, if you don’t get a move on.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ Frannie threw Thea a glance full of helpless excuse. He’s a man, how can I withstand his instructions? ‘We’re going to see Robert’s mother today and he likes to make an early start,’ she explained. ‘Even though it’s only a few miles away.’

  ‘Well, nice to meet you,’ Thea said.

  ‘And I’m terribly sorry about poor Milo.’

  ‘Oh, well, at least it’s not the pony,’ Thea said, without really thinking.

  ‘Don’t count your chickens,’ said Robert with a slight snicker that put Thea completely off him.