Before All Else Read online

  Dull as, Marcus thought quietly, but feared to appear disobliging.

  So, he will have to go to the meeting. He will offer the kids a quick cup of tea and beans on toast and hasten them on their way home. Maybe then time for a bit of shut-eye and down to the Red for the 7.30 start.

  As he parks the car alongside Bob’s Garage, Paul and Martha stir and stretch. Paul lets out an impressive two-tone belch while a look of startlement distorts Martha’s face before she realises where she is.

  “Cuppa, anyone?” Paul and Martha resume their places, Paul on the sofa to watch a football match and Martha on a dining chair, elbows hooked behind her around the maidenhair fern on the window sill, as if the previous cultural and gastronomic tour had been but a brief interlude. Already they are staking their claims to their separate pieces of furniture.

  Time is getting on. If they don’t get a wiggle on, he won’t have a chance for a bit of shut-eye before he has to leave again.

  Maybe Martha is thinking the same because she rises from contemplation of her toenails and goes into the kitchen. “Brought some stuff from home for you.” She empties the contents of her many bags onto the kitchen table. Marcus groans inwardly for she has indeed come bearing cast-offs and rejects from the former marital home. “Mum wondered whether you wanted this.” Martha offers a garish plaster of Paris doll, circa 1930 by the look of the cringeworthy greens and yellows. “She wasn’t sure if it was your mum’s or hers but she says she doesn’t want it.” For the life of him, he wouldn’t let her see his rejection. One good tap against the kitchen table when everyone is gone, and the head would come off, sealing its fate forever.

  “Thank you, darling. Very kind. Anything else?”

  Nothing of real practical benefit emerges from the bags other than an asparagus steamer and a pair of secateurs. Might there be a subliminal message in the pair of close-quartered blades? Maybe not. No sign of the Clarice Cliff. It must be assumed that Velda’s claim was the greater.

  The question that burns in his throat is, ‘How’s your mum?’ Or would it be friendlier, less confrontational to ask, ‘How’s Mum? Everything at home alright?’ But, actually, does he really want to know? What could he do if things weren’t ‘alright’? On the day’s evidence, the two of them are doing fine and that should be satisfaction enough.

  “Dad, come and look at these.” Paul cranes his neck over the back of the sofa to call through to the kitchen.

  “What’s that, son?”

  “Photos. Of today.”

  “Budge up then. Get your feet off.” Paul raises himself above the horizontal. Martha comes through from the kitchen and arranges herself along the sofa back. He feels himself touched on all sides. Paul holds the screen up and flicks through the shots of their afternoon. Most are selfies, he explains, and show Paul and Martha grinning and gurning behind his back. They seem particularly amused by a shot of him pointing to the remains of a Neolithic flint mine while Martha, with her forefingers stretching her mouth wide, pulls a monkey face. “Did you pay a blind bit of attention?”

  “Er, of course we did, didn’t we, Mar?”

  “Every word, Dad.”

  “Mmmm. Likely thing.” Neither feels his disapproval too keenly or contritely.

  “I’ll post these so you can have a look at them later. You are on social media, aren’t you, Dad?” Marcus shrugs. “Da-ad. You’re so behind. Get with it. If you ‘friend’ Martha and me, you can keep up with what we’re doing. And we can keep an eye on you too.”

  Marcus rather thinks that being a father is somewhat superior to being a ‘friend’, but indicates grudgingly that he will think about it. It would, after all, plug the gap between their meetings and bring them a little closer to him, virtually, if not actually. He pauses before saying, not without some regret, “Anyway. Sorry to say, but I’ve got to go to a meeting tonight. Er…”

  “Where at?” asks Martha.

  “Just over the road, at the pub. There’s some sort of village fair going on in the summer and it seems beholden upon the more community-minded to join the committee. There’s a retired colonel or some such just moved into the Hall who is showing great munificence by allowing the villagers to use his field. He’s also sending along his sidekick to ‘help out’. Seems that Stan the Man, who runs the local ironmongers, and who was chairman, has taken umbrage over this turn of events and has resigned. At least that’s the official version. Been booted off, more like. Think I’ve just been invited along to represent the silent majority. Could just make you some beans on toast or something before you, I mean, before I go.”

  “That’s alright, Dad, we’ll come over to the pub with you, if that’s OK.”

  “Right. Lovely. More tea?”

  Marcus heaves himself off the sofa, disturbing the equilibrium, causing Martha to crash into his vacated place. The children tickle and pinch each other. Their laughter ricochets off the kitchen walls as he puts bread into the toaster and checks the scrubbing brush for maggots. He thinks back to the photos on Paul’s phone. Gluck’s aria, ‘O del mio dolce ardor’, comes into his head. He hums loudly and expressively. It has all been quite splendid.

  There is no time to wash up before they are due at the pub. People are already starting to arrive, moving from the darkness outside into the orange glow within. “Are you sure you want to do this? Won’t be terribly exciting for you.”

  The children hoist on their coats and scamper down the stairs behind him. He feels a bit harried, wary of losing his footing to this herd of two.

  Cecily

  She pays for her drink and leans past other drinkers to place the change in a collection tube for the hospice, the coins making a dull thud with their small drop. She picks up the canister and lays it in her handbag.

  “If I didn’t know, I could have you stopped and searched!”

  Old Bob is standing behind her with a froth-rimed glass in his hand, ready for a refill. “Should be a good forty quid in there. It all makes a difference.” Barry, the barman, appears in front of them.

  “Shift that other canister over here, Barry, would you?” Bob demands. Barry parts the jars of honey-roasted peanuts, chilli almonds and olives and places the empty canister in the centre of the bar. Bob picks it up and inserts it between the cash till and people reaching out for their change. “Come on. Divvy up. Good cause.” Most do. “Good man, Henry. Too long gone.” Cecily squeezes Bob’s arm in tender affection, grateful for the instant of closeness brought by the mention of her Henry’s name.

  Oh no, look who’s here! she murmurs to herself as Mandy pushes her way to the bar. The two women exchange a glance. To Cecily, this woman is as unnatural as a black beetle upon a white breast, a needle in the eye. During Henry’s last week in the hospice, while all stepped back discreetly and tactfully, this monstrous woman danced centre stage like a houri, holding his hand, leaving sandwich wrappers on the visitor’s chair, pink moisturising cream smeared on his feet, the lid unscrewed. What gave her that right? Mandy’s iron-hard look as she stares back at her over the bar gives a mighty impetus to the word spinning round Cecily’s own head: bitch!

  Twice this siren allowed herself to be glimpsed. Once holding Henry’s inert hand. The other, leaving the car park after the dawn phone call that summoned Cecily from her briefest absence to his deathbed.

  Ned could not apologise enough. His utter embarrassment was as fulsome as Cecily’s shock and awe at Mandy’s audacity and disrespect were word-less. She could not blame Ned; he was far too ruddy and robust to have the faintest idea what drove his wife to hijack another woman’s sorrow.

  It’s obvious the woman is unbalanced. Stalking her, since that day they sat opposite each other in the anodyne clinic, each hoping for anonymity in the big town. Except it isn’t stalking exactly. Mandy’s is a persistent, ominous, hostile presence, one she can’t rid herself of. The bruise that never heals. Was it something about the
soft tones, the soft colours of the hospice that resembled the quietness, the professional efficiency of the other place, the clinic? Two doors, two exits, side by side. Both ushering out the dead. But very, very different. One door for those who had a chance of a life, who’d reached full term or at least nearly. The other for those who hadn’t even had that chance.

  It’s an appalling image and one that ambushes Cecily each time she claps eyes on Mandy. She pushes it to the back of her mind and, picking up her drink and notepad, squeezes her way through the crowd before the toothless gums rattle in her ear and the dummy shrieks its obscenities through its dropped jaw.

  Marcus

  Marcus buys drinks for himself, Paul and Martha, and looks around in case he might offer a drink to anyone else. From the corner of the pub, the meeting is called to order and people drift from the bar to squeeze themselves onto the banquettes and chairs in the corner. Marcus finds himself next to the lady from the house opposite, the note-taker for these proceedings. On her other side, a tall young man with curly blonde hair with whom she shares a packet of crisps. Paul and Martha sit near to but not part of the group. Paul has two pints in front of him and is pouring one pint down his throat without, apparently, the intervention of a swallow reflex. Chain drinking.

  “Good evening. My name is Cecily.”

  Marcus draws his attention back from Paul’s thirst and shakes her hand.

  “Marcus. I live above the deli. Just moved in a few weeks ago.”

  “Yes, I know. I live opposite.”

  Marcus just holds on to the words, “I know. I’ve seen you,” before they spill out of his mouth. He nods enthusiastically instead. Presumably the person sitting in the large wheel-backed chair, a few feet away, determinedly apart from the surrounding hubbub, demarcated by an open laptop and three phones on the table in front of him, is the Colonel’s sidekick, co-opted to manage this rabble and present a glossy image of the village to the world.

  Madge had been hopping between outrage and barely suppressed excitement when he’d called into the post office a week or so back to pay his newspaper bill. “Have you heard? Have you heard what’s happened?” The question had evidently been a rhetorical one for she barely allowed him the time to compose his face into one that conveyed even the slightest bit of interest before she was off again. “Bloody disgrace, I call it. Stan the Man’s chaired that summer fair committee for donkey’s. Shoved him off they have. Without so much as a by your leave.”

  Marcus waited with a crisp ten-pound note valleyed around his outstretched forefinger, hoping that it might arrest the flow of Madge’s voluble indignation long enough to pay his paper bill and exit. ‘By your leave’, an old-fashioned courtesy that was not, it seemed, to be extended to him; he would just have to stop and listen to this tale of woe undiminished despite being oft-repeated.

  “I said to Bill, and to Doreen, and Mrs Turnbull, for all that’s she’s as deaf as a post. I said to them, ‘That’s no way to treat a man of standing. Stan’s been the Man forever.’”

  Marcus tutted sympathetically. It would seem that this parvenu of a Colonel had been throwing his weight around. Just because he’d bought up Haughton Hall.

  “Bill said he’d heard that the feudal rights that went with the Manor extended to more than the estate and the millstream and a few town fields, if you know what I mean. I told him not to be so filthy.”

  Marcus stood patiently while the Colonel’s plans were trumpeted from the inexpertly drawn lines of lipstick on Madge’s mouth until the doorbell pinged for the next customer. He seized his chance.

  “Must dash. Bye.”

  Despite some disaffection in the village over the replacement of the ancien régime, it seems that most had decided to swerve any revolt and just go along with things for a quiet life, despite Madge’s fervent outrage.

  Nothing quiet about this chappie’s outfit though, Marcus observes, his jacket resembling more one of Velda’s macramé creations than anything practical and serviceable enough to offer protection from a squally easterly breeze. A high-browed baseball cap sits atop his chiselled face. Or at least Marcus assumes that the face of someone confident enough to wear string would have to be chiselled, a fact masked by an abundance of Squirrel Nutkin facial hair.

  “Nice to have you on board,” Cecily leans in to him and whispers sotto voce. Marcus turns to her and grins, allowing his eyes to briefly sweep over her face. Big fringe, dark eyelashes. She draws her hair away from her cheek, revealing elaborate earrings. He wonders whether she is one of Velda’s crew.

  “Right, everyone. Let’s get this show on the road. I’d like to introduce myself. Chris Eveans. Spelt E-V-E-A-N-S,” he emphasises, “pronounced Evans, as in Good Evans.”

  The tightly packed committee blinks, in unison. No one laughs although one or two allow themselves a tight smirk. “As you all know, Major Welding has kindly contracted my services to this village of…er…er…”

  “Bullenden,” someone pipes up from the other end of the table.

  “Er…yes…Bullenden. Thank you for that. In order to maximise our social mapping and create a buzz around…er…er…Bullenden, as it were.”

  Marcus glances round the table. Mr Eveans’s words must be as incomprehensible to the rest of the committee as they are to him; even Cecily’s pen is still.

  “So, I think it might be appropriate if we go round the table, as an ice-breaker exercise, telling everyone our names, a little about ourselves and perhaps mentioning something that is unique. Unique to you. A thing perhaps or a possession or an ambition; something that no one else has. So, who would like to start?”

  Inevitably no one volunteers. Instead, to a certain amount of grumbling and chair-scraping, half of the putative committee break away and edge towards the bar. Perhaps there is a revolt after all.

  “Ridiculous. Lived in the village all my life. Why do we need to do a bloody ice-breaker exercise, whatever one of those is?”

  “If we don’t know what makes each of us unique by now, then we never will.”

  “I’m not telling my secrets to no one.”

  During the exodus, embarrassed as he is for Mr WhateverHisNameWas, Marcus wonders if he could signal Paul to fetch him another pint of beer, his glass being devoid now even of froth. Paul’s attention, however, is being held firm by the women’s national football team at large on the TV screen. He leans forward to try and catch Martha’s eye but she is stuck fast to the side of the young man who had been sharing Cecily’s crisps. She looks animated.

  Eveans glances across at the breakaway group, brow furrowed crossly. Cecily turns to her left to pat the young man on the knee and gesture him to be quiet or to go and be noisy elsewhere. With a degree of knee-knocking, he and Martha choose the latter option. The remaining members of the committee busy themselves with writing their names onto labels and sticking them onto their lapels.

  A loud laugh rises from the bar. “Spelled P-O-N-C-E, more like.” Oh dear, frets Marcus. It is beginning to look rather that Stanley from Hammer and Tongs had a better way of dealing with the local crowd than this rather effete-looking strip from up London.

  “Right. Well, I think I understand your concerns, ladies and gentlemen, but before reporting back to Major Welding, I would like to make some progress with the agenda at hand. If we could turn to Item One…” Marcus is relieved that the young chappie seems to have finally got his hands on the reins and is making some headway.

  An uncomfortably full sensation makes itself known to him. Oh no, that old trouble again. Warning sign. Ten minutes and counting to find the Gents. To his increasing chagrin, there is no way on God’s earth that he can exit now, given that the committee has been massively culled to five members strong. Bad enough the young ones had broken off like a melting iceberg. Another inappropriate image, as he weights his knee down with his left hand to stop it jiggling in desperation. Fancy Pants Chris would totall
y throw his dolly out of the pram if he excused himself now. Trapped!

  Distraction. What could he distract himself with? He glances at Cecily’s pad. Her pen is busy fashioning emoticons that jump and giggle their way across the ruled lines of the page. What is he doing here anyway? Hardly been in the village ten minutes and here he is squashed between two locals attending a disorganised meeting about some event that is likely to go off like a damp squib overseen by a clothes horse that has escaped from London Fashion Week.

  “Item Two on the agenda. Conveniences.” Marcus groans inwardly. Nothing like the image of a row of Portaloos to make one’s own situation more desperate.

  Mercifully, the agenda items are dealt with swiftly. Within fifteen minutes, Any Other Business looms. Marcus’s attention is taken by watching Paul swallow his third pint, oblivious to the oppositional conflicts taking place within his father – a dry throat and a full bladder.

  With a start, Marcus realises he has become the object of Eveans’s focussed intent. “Just wondering if there was anything Mr Blatt would like to contribute.” Chris Eveans looks at the unfurling label on his jacket with, is it menace, in his eye? Has he marked him down as an interloper, a spy? Good Lord. It looks as if he is being called upon for a bright idea. Had he inadvertently called attention to himself by shuffling around in increasing discomfort at his over-loaded bladder? Marcus picks up the empty glass in front of him and seeks inspiration within it.

  “Er.”

  The row of faces look at him.

  “Um.”

  Cecily sits poised with pen in hand.

  “We-ell.”

  The ladies reach for their handbags, the men into their jacket pockets.

  Eveans stares resolutely at Marcus. The meeting cannot be called to an end until Marcus has come up with a good idea.