Strangeways to Oldham (7 page)

‘Only if you ride it first, so that I can see it's not wild and dangerous, as it was when you tried it out before.'

‘Of course I'll demonstrate,' she assured him, pleased to be able to demonstrate how proficient she had become at controlling the bloody-minded contraption in so short a time. ‘I'll give you a performance, explain everything, then you can have a go – and if you wear Daddy's old crash helmet, we should be prepared, in the event of a mishap.'

Hugo didn't like the sound of this last bit, but he was game to try it out, and nodded in agreement before his hostess went on, not waiting for a spoken answer from him.

‘Six o'clock, and time for a bit of a belter, I think, don't you, Hugo?' This was another rhetorical question, and Hugo wisely recognised it and remained silent. He'd have to get used to those rhetorical doo-dahs again. ‘Where's that Beau … Oh, there you are! I didn't hear you come in.
Quelle surprise
! Now, pass the tray to Hugo first as he's a guest, then I'll have mine. Thank you very much, Beauchamp.'

As the manservant left the room, he was heard to mutter, ‘And my name's pronounced Beecham!'

Chapter Seven

Hugo was delighted, on waking on Tuesday morning, to find that the weather had taken a turn for the worse, and rain was falling relentlessly from a leaden sky. ‘Hoorah!' he thought. Now he wouldn't have to have a go on that three-wheeled machine from hell. Manda would have to let him off, because of the weather. There was nothing even
she
could do about that.

Lady Amanda did try to persuade Hugo that they could manage perfectly well if she attached an umbrella to the back of the thing, but Hugo was having none of it. ‘The wind's getting up,' he pointed out to her, ‘and if the brolly gets caught by a gust, I'm going to look like ET, flying on that thing, or Mary Poppins in the Tour de France, heaven forbid.'

‘You win, Chummy. We'll have to postpone it till after the funeral now,' she conceded with bad grace, ‘But there's nothing stopping us having a few games of cards, and then we can have a quiet read until lunchtime.'

This suited Hugo's ambitions perfectly, and they played a few rounds of gin rummy, before putting away the playing cards. Hugo then settled down with his newspaper, while Lady Amanda sat at a small table, her hands occasionally darting forward to write something on a piece of paper resting on the table in front of her.

Hugo was quite happily absorbed in his reading, but was disturbed, every minute or so, by a cry of ‘Aha', or ‘Of course, how stupid of me'.

‘What on earth are you up to, old girl?' he asked a trifle querulously.

‘Crossword, old stick,' she replied, without looking up.

‘But you haven't got a paper?' he observed, logically.

‘People put them through the door for me. Cut from their newspapers. They know how addicted I am, and this way I get crosswords from a good cross-section of the papers. Good, eh? Did you know that the French word for a paperclip is “trombone”? Super clue!'

‘Perhaps you could moderate your ejaculations, Manda, old girl,' he suggested. ‘Keep losing my thread, with you yelling all over the place.'

‘Sorry, I'll try to keep it down, but it's just so exciting when I solve a particularly tricky cryptic clue. I'll try just to wave my fist in the air, in future, so as not to disturb your reading.'

Which she did, but Hugo could see it out of the corner of his eye, and found it just as distracting as her yells of triumph had been. Finally, he gave up, placed the open newspaper over his face, and dozed off to sleep. If he was sleeping, at least her raised fists of triumph couldn't disturb his dreams.

After a very satisfying half-hour's nap, Hugo woke up refreshed, and asked, apropos of nothing in particular, ‘So you never married either, old girl?'

Lady Amanda looked up from her crossword, and prepared her answer. ‘No, Hugo. Of course, I danced with all and sundry during my coming-out year, but, after one disastrous incident, I only ever took one walk in the garden, during a ball.'

‘What happened to put you off, old thing?' Hugo was interested now.

‘Some boy or other – I can't remember who he was, now – took me outside for a walk by moonlight, and the bounder grabbed me round the waist and kissed me full on the mouth, and actually stuck his tongue down my throat. I was so disgusted I threw up in a rose bush, so I never went for a “walk” again. Gardens contain too many dangerous things, like shrubberies and summer-houses. I really can't be doing with anything wet and sticky, unless it's called “pudding”.

‘What about you, Hugo? I never fell for that old rot about not taking the chance on having your name lengthened again. That sort of tosh simply won't wash with me. That was a load of old cow poo; a load of doggy-doodles. Out with it! What was the real reason?'

‘Same sort of thing, really. I was taken outside by a girl, and she kissed me, and put my hand … somewhere about her person, and I nearly passed out. I'm with you on that one.

‘We danced together at a ball once, didn't we?'

‘I do believe we did. And at one time, I had a tiny crush on you, Hugo – when you used to visit, in the school holidays. ‘

‘Never!'

‘I did. And then I took that ill-fated “walk” in the garden, and I decided I was finished with the opposite sex. Everything's so untidy and undignified in human relationships, and I didn't want to have any part in that sort of thing.'

‘Good for you, Manda. I felt absolutely the same about it. Changing the subject somewhat – we've got so much to catch up on, haven't we? Did you have a good time at school? I didn't. I was always being bullied for being, what they call nowadays, a bit of a wimp.'

‘Oh, I had a shocking time. I was sent somewhere up north, to be educated along with the lumpen daughters of the aristocratic sod – and right sods they were too – please excuse my language.'

‘Don't mention it,' remarked Hugo politely.

‘Horrible little beasts they were. Always going on about their ponies, and the gymkhanas they'd ridden in. And when they found out where I came from, they gave me no peace. Separated Belchester into “Belch” and “ester”, and from then on, I was known as Windy Esther. Sadistic little sods they were. Children can be so cruel! It was such a relief to come home for the holidays, to some civilised company.'

‘I notice you don't use much of the house, nowadays, do you, Manda?'

‘Most of it's locked up; the furniture all dust-sheeted. Why?'

‘Well, I wonder you don't open it to the public. It'd give you a real purpose in life, and it would bring in a few extra shekels.'

‘I've thought about it from time to time, but it all seems a bit too much like hard work.'

‘Well, there are two of us, now. Maybe it's something we can organise together.'

‘Not until you've had all your treatment and are a bit more mobile, Hugo. If we tried it now, I'd be the one doing all the running around, and you'd be almost chair-bound.'

‘True, but it's something to consider for the future, what?'

‘Maybe!'

After luncheon, they donned their wet weather gear, to venture out to visit Enid Tweedie, to see if she'd managed to gather any useful information with reference to identifying old Reggie's mystery visitor. Rain still fell from the sky in torrents, and Lady Amanda rather hoped that it would clear up before the morrow, for there was nothing more likely to induce a deep depression, than standing by a muddy graveside in the rain, forced to contemplate one's own mortality.

The home smelt of boiled Brussels sprouts today, or at least, that's what Lady Amanda hoped it was! They found Enid sitting in an armchair by the window of her room, engrossed in a ladies magazine of the trashier type, and she put it down reluctantly, at their arrival.

First things first: ‘How are you, Enid? Good, good! And who's looking after your mother while you're in here? Come to mention it, who looks after her during your frequent stays in hospital?'

‘She goes to my sister down near the college,' Enid replied, and then to avoid further questioning about her domestic arrangements, added, ‘And Mrs Next-Door feeds the cat.'

‘So your house is empty, then?'

‘That's right.'

‘Better give me the keys, so I can check you haven't been burgled. We wouldn't want you coming out of here and finding your house ransacked, now would we?'

‘Good idea, Lady Amanda. They're in my handbag. I'll just get them for you.'

While she scrabbled around in her handbag looking for her keys, Lady Amanda whispered to Hugo, ‘If I can get into her house, at least I can give it a good airing – throw all the windows and doors open, when the weather's a bit better. What with her old mother and the cat, the house simply reeks of ‘wee wee' and old pussy.'

Transferring the unexpectedly large bunch of keys into her own handbag, Lady Amanda enquired, ‘Have you had a chance to talk to that Nurse Plunkett yet?'

‘What a very nice young lady she is!' stated Enid, with a happy smile. ‘Always has time to stop and chat; not like some of the others, who are always rushing off to do something or other.'

‘What have you learned?'

‘That she works for Edwards's Nursing Services, and she's pretty fed-up with being placed here on her own. Quite often the nurses are on temporary contract in couples or threesomes, when it's for a hospital, but Matron here wouldn't hear of having to pay for a second nurse, so she only took the one.'

‘That's all very nice to know, but we're trying to place that chap who posed as Reggie's nephew, not extract her woes and troubles from her.'

‘I do realise that, and I was just setting the scene, before I got to the interesting bit,' Enid replied, a trifle sniffily. ‘She did say that she'd spotted one of the other agency workers here, when she came to look round the place and be interviewed, but he hadn't seen her. She assumed he was visiting someone, as he was carrying a bunch of flowers.'

‘Aha!' exclaimed Lady Amanda. ‘Does she know his name?'

‘She can't remember, for the moment, but said if I was really interested, she'd phone one of her colleagues, and find out for me. It seems he was employed six months or so ago, to nurse an elderly gentleman in his home, but that contract ended, and he's had to move on since then.'

‘Aha!' Lady Amanda exclaimed again. ‘That's the bunny! I'm sure about it now.'

‘How can you be?' asked Hugo, doubtfully. ‘You've only got one tiny bit of information.'

‘By using the old noggin, Hugo. This chap nurses Reggie, gets him to change his will, then Reggie has to move here. Our chappie then starts to call in on him, to make sure he hasn't been lucid enough to change his will again, and then, for some currently unknown reason, bumps him off. There!'

‘There's a lot of conjecture in there, Manda. Mind out! You might get your fingers burnt, if you try accusing an innocent man of murder.'

‘Piffle!' she replied. ‘I know I'm right! I can feel it in my water.'

‘There's a visitor's loo just across the corridor,' they were informed by Enid, ‘should you feel the need.'

After their now habitual cocktails, and dinner, Lady Amanda started to look shifty, and began fidgeting in an altogether embarrassed way that Hugo did not at all understand. ‘Whatever's got into you, old thing?' he asked, concerned. ‘You look as if all the hounds of hell are after you.'

‘I have to do something tonight – with Beauchamp,' she explained, looking terribly uncomfortable.

There was a pause, and then Hugo exclaimed, ‘Oh, not that, surely? And with Beauchamp? But you said earlier …' His voice trailed off.

Pulling herself into a very upright position, and assuming a haughty expression, Lady Amanda replied, ‘Hugo, wash your mouth out with soap and water. I can read your mind, and it's positively pornographic. It's nothing like that, I can assure you.'

With a jaundiced eye, Hugo retorted, ‘Well, what is it then, if it's “nothing like that”?'

Walking towards him and leaning over – a movement which both startled and alarmed him, she pointed at her head and said, ‘Being a man, you probably haven't noticed anything amiss, but my hair is turning from blonde to grey, from the roots out.' Here, she lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘I have my roots dyed once a month. Can't afford the hairdresser, so Beauchamp does it for me. Much cheaper that way, and it stops all the nosy parkers talking about how my hair isn't its natural colour.
Comprende, senor
?'

‘Oh, got you, old girl!' exclaimed Hugo in complete understanding. ‘So there is a chink in your armour after all, then?'

‘Not so much a chink, as the merest speck of vanity. Now, I'm off upstairs to the bathroom with Beauchamp, and I'll probably not come down again, so sleep well, old stick.'

‘Same to you, Manda.'

‘And remember – not a word to a soul about this, Hugo. I'm relying on your discretion.'

‘I'm loyal to the end, old friend,' he said, saluting her as she left the room.

Lady Amanda left the room and stumped off upstairs to meet her fate. Stopping in her bedroom, she stripped to the waist, and hurriedly wrapped her upper half in large, camouflaging towels, held together with old-fashioned wooden clothes pegs, before presenting herself in the bathroom.

The bathroom itself was so old-fashioned that it had become, now, high fashion again, with its cast iron roll-top bath with lion's feet and ‘telephone' hand-shower attachment. The ceramic sink was oblong, with cut corners, and still had the original taps, and the lavatory was the high cistern flush-type, decorated with blue leaves and flowers, and a bumble bee in the pan for the gentlemen to aim at.

In fact, a photograph of it would not have looked out of place in any home-design magazine. Lady Amanda, of course, realised this, and had stopped moaning about renewing the old suite a couple of years ago, when she realised just how trendy her bathroom was.

Beauchamp had everything laid out, and she took her seat in the chair he had provided, with her usual trepidation. Although Beauchamp had been providing this service for several years now, she still felt (and indeed was) naked under the towels, in the presence of a man, and she was very unnerved, every time her roots had to be coloured.

Beauchamp was the soul of discretion, of course – she had no worries on that front. It was just the sensation of nakedness, which she knew was stupid. She was naked under her clothes in his presence every day, and just considered herself decently attired – but this – this just felt different, and made her very uneasy, as if the towels were transparent, or even invisible, leaving her top half exposed for him to ogle.

‘Silly old trout!' she muttered to herself, and gave Beauchamp permission to go ahead and apply the stinking stuff to her roots with the harsh-bristled root-brush. Later, when it was dry and combed again, all these negative feelings would be as if they had never existed, but, for an hour or so, every month, she felt like a threatened virgin, and there was no ‘again' about it.