A Crowded Coffin(11)

With Sam in mind Harriet peered nosily over the fence at next door’s garden. I wonder if he’ll keep up her vegetable plot, she thought. He’s not a great gardener; Avril was the one who loved doing the designing and planting, but he likes his food so perhaps he’ll make an effort if it means home-grown, organic vegetables.

She sighed happily. It would be like their childhood, she thought, living next-door to each other, semi-detached in this case. However, daydreaming about the past and future brought her back to the present time. The previous evening was still on her mind.

Edith, in spite of her anxiety over her grandfather’s accident, was already beginning to look more relaxed. Harriet had been quite shocked at how strung-up and brittle the girl seemed when they met at the airport the previous afternoon. A few weeks at home should put her right. Her grandparents were as hale and hearty as it was reasonable to expect at their age, in spite of Cousin Walter’s accident. And money, it seemed, was not an issue for Edith at the moment.

‘You know, Grandpa wanted me to have a year or two away before I have to buckle down and start working here, and I was earning fantastic money,’ Edith had confided. ‘I’ve got enough saved to tide me over for a while and besides,’ she hunched her shoulders as Harriet looked sympathetic, ‘you know the score, Harriet. I’m no farmer so the idea is that I take on the job of trying to make the place pay, while the new manager Grandpa’s got starting at Michaelmas – Alan Nichols – runs the actual farm business.’

Yes, Harriet was more relieved about that than she let on. The death of his only son had been a shattering blow for Walter Attlin and he had buried his head in the sand for years. Only his wife’s entreaties, along with Harriet’s persuasions, had eventually made him agree to set up a trust that would give Edith a major share in the place at the age of twenty-five. With her birthday in January, Edith had reached that landmark, so it had only been a matter of time before she came home to take on the task. Harriet sighed, it was a daunting prospect for anyone so young, she thought, but Edith was tougher than she looked and at least the elder Attlins would have company, and if it came to it – protection, with their granddaughter and now Rory both living at Locksley Farm. She frowned for a moment. Rory…. He seemed a nice enough lad and she had noted with some amusement the way he and Edith seemed to have fallen into much the same kind of relationship that Harriet herself had with Sam, working together but with a lot of friendly bickering. There had been that rather odd moment, though, just before Harriet took her leave.

‘I’m knackered,’ Rory had told her and Edith abruptly at about half past nine. ‘I’m sorry, but I really need to get myself to bed if I’m to survive tomorrow.’

Harriet and Edith were about to drop in to say goodnight to Mr and Mrs Attlin and both women turned to look at him curiously as they paused outside the door of the old people’s first-floor sitting room, formerly the best spare bedroom.

‘Of course.’ Edith sounded contrite. ‘I’m sorry, Rory, I tend to get carried away. I did warn you about the bossy Attlin women, didn’t I? Go and grab a decent night’s sleep, you’re beginning to look a bit green round the gills. Shoo.’ She gave him a friendly push. ‘You look as if you’d keel over in a breath of wind. Go to bed.’

He brushed aside her apology and her concern. ‘I’m perfectly all right,’ he snapped. ‘Stop fussing. I had a fever, that’s all, and it still sabotages me sometimes. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Harriet nodded while Edith stared after him as Rory turned on his heel and set off towards his room next to the narrow staircase at the end of the corridor. The two women were just about to open the door in front of them when they heard him exclaim aloud. Turning, they saw him stare, open-mouthed, at a spot on the panelled wall then, after a frozen moment, he shook his head and headed into his bedroom.

Now, Harriet pondered this episode. It hadn’t looked like a spasm of pain, or sudden faintness, so did he see something? she wondered. It was a pretty ancient house, after all. She laughed and shrugged, picking up the slender, half-grown tabby cat who was weaving sinuously between her legs. ‘All right, Dylan, I’ll get you some breakfast instead of imagining ghosts, and you can help me sort out something to wear to the dinner tonight.’

Rory was exploring the garden at the rear of Locksley Farm Place. Somewhere around a quarter to six that morning he had struggled, sweating and terrified, out of a nightmare that was all the more terrifying for being formless. Bodies, definitely; he knew that somewhere behind the mist lay the bodies. Unable to get back to sleep he had tried reading for a while, and then checked his emails, remembering his surprise that Locksley, which seemed to him at the back of beyond, had broadband. It was a relief. It meant he could do most of his remaining paperwork from the house and not have to struggle up and down to London more than he needed. Even the thought of it made him tired, but then, everything made him tired at the moment. And not just tired; he had never felt so close to breaking down as these last few months, with tears threatening to well up at the most unexpected and inconvenient moments. He brushed a hand across his eyes as, right on cue, his eyelids began to prick with unshed tears. Oh, for God’s sake. He shook his head and straightened up. Not here, not now or soon, please God. Not anywhere or any when.