Before All Else Read online

  A scorched patch of earth, a strange craft disappearing into the disturbed sky, Marcus standing with a suitcase in his hand.

  Trueman is now under the table. He stretches his back legs luxuriantly and releases a fart. Rocket fuel.

  Cecily opens the laptop and powers it up. “Shall we take a look?”

  “Yes. Sorry. Am aware I’ve been going on a bit.”

  “Not at all. It’s good to—”

  “It’s just that, I don’t know, you see people all the time but you don’t really connect.”

  Cecily sees herself with a wad of tissue and an old-fashioned letting dish, mopping Marcus’s tears.

  “It’s absolutely lovely to be sitting here with you.”

  Any small instinct she might have had to tuck in the threads of his fraying cuffs disappears instantly at the thought that Marcus might be enjoying some sort of ‘connection’ at this very moment.

  “Right. Let’s get on.” she says briskly.

  Marcus does not appear to have heard her. Even as the laptop jingles its way into life, he continues to look mournfully across the table at her. “Anyway, tell me about you.”

  Anybody who says, “Anyway, tell me about you,” in Cecily’s experience, has usually only been either drawing breath or been told in some previous socialisation training that it was only polite to let the other person speak. Neither was a terribly promising start to a stimulating two-way conversation. He’d obviously forgotten the Q and A session of the previous evening. And anyway, her terrors were too private and too deeply buried to be lifted immediately into view. It took time, and persuasion, and wine to exhume them.

  “I can show you what I know, which isn’t an awful lot, but it would be a start for you to get going on, and then we can have a look at what we can do to help publicise the summer fair and keep Mr Eveans sweet!” Cecily smiles at him a cheery smile and wishes inwardly that he would just cheer up.

  “Yes. That sounds great. Thank you so much.” He shuffles his chair round to Cecily’s side of the table. Trueman lifts his head and surveys this new proximity. “Any more coffee, by the way?”

  “I’ll make you some. Have a look at this while I put the kettle on.”

  Cecily moves to the sink and turns the tap on full blast. It sprays water everywhere, the force of it seeming to express some of the tension rising within her.

  “I think you’ve got a message.”

  “Sorry.” Cecily turns off the tap. “Can’t hear you.”

  “Think you’ve got a message. And you’ve splashed yourself, by the way.”

  Cecily turns the laptop towards herself, wiping droplets of water from her jumper. Tilly is sending her a private message. “Excuse me a minute. I’ll just reply and then we can get back.”

  Hi Sis. You online? Unusual.

  Hi Tils. Yes. Just about to give a computer lesson. Moi!

  Ha ha. Phone me when you’ve finished.

  Righto x

  x

  Marcus

  While Cecily is fiddling on her computer, he makes his way back into the hallway, easing his way past the recumbent hound. The exposed vertical stud beams partitioning the hallway from the downstairs rooms, blackened and fibrous with age, remind him of the acres and acres of forest cleared for dwellings, for fuel, for pasture over aeons of time. Beams embedded within the walls, some short, some long, some bent, some die straight, seem to represent in their varying angles the slow stages of fall and decline of all organic matter, while yet in their antiquity representing solidity, constancy and a link with the past.

  When Cecily returns with a full pot of coffee and a replenished plate of biscuits, she finds Marcus gazing at the two dragons carved on the corner braces above the arch through to the kitchen. Tiny flecks of paint remain from a revivalist return to Tudor splendour when the creatures spumed red fire and flicked their sour green tails.

  “I don’t really know if they are friend or foe.”

  “Perhaps they cancel each other out,” he offers, looking at the creatures coiled within their confined spaces. “They don’t look too friendly but maybe that’s because they are in some kind of face-off. Perhaps one dragon would be more dangerous, less preoccupied.”

  “Well, as my sister Tilly points out, they are facing sure and certain extinction if their only diet is vestal virgins.”

  Maybe that is it; with no dragons to slay, we turn upon each other.

  Something about Cecily’s house moves Marcus; the age of it, the fabric of it, reaching like a hand deeper into the soil from whence we came, its timber frames symbolising a passing forwards from one man’s rib to the next man’s rib to the next and the next over the generations; the pargeting like the painted ladies of court; the irregular lofty rooms and low-brow rooms and musty cellar, all tiny fragments from the torn documents of history caught in a second of time.

  The long rotation forward and back. The long rotation downward and up.

  Cecily

  The lesson, such as it is, passes well enough, although it is not long before Cecily is confirmed in her suspicion that she is only marginally more au fait with the technology than Marcus. Oh Christ, she thinks, after the lesson appears to have stalled, is he expecting lunch?

  “Right. I think we’ve covered everything. Must get on.”

  “Yes. Yes. Certainly. So good of you to point me in the right direction. If you could let me know which of your contacts might be favourable to adding me as a friend, then we can get a page of our own going. Excellent.” She is pleased to note that he rises a good deal quicker from his seat when under the watchful gaze of her dog than he did last night in the pub.

  Trueman rises too, his gaze fixed steadily on Cecily’s visitor. He tentatively pats the top of the hound’s head with two fingertips and heads down the hall for the front door.

  “Let me get the door. It sticks.” Marcus stands on the doormat, his notebook clutched to his chest, his gaze sweeping over the pictures lining the stairwell, the oak console table, stroking the fringe of the kilim with the toe of his shoe. Is he going to say something? She desperately hopes not as it would possibly be of an embarrassing nature. Anyway, she wants to chat to Tilly. “OK. Good luck.”

  “Thanks. I know where you are if I need you.”

  “Indeed.”

  Finally, he squeezes himself through the gap of the part-opened front door. “I’ll be off.”

  “Yes. Indeed. Off you go.”

  “Cheerio.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  Oh for goodness’ sake, she thinks, just go. She watches as Marcus makes his way down the steps to the pavement. He turns and waves once more like a departing lover. She pretends not to see and closes the front door on him. She settles Trueman and dials Tilly’s number.

  “Hi, Tils. You still there?”

  “Hi, Cecily. Yes.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Really worried about Lizzie.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “It’s that vile piece of work she is living with.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Told you before things were not going well.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He says he’s leaving.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “No, except he’s claiming what amounts to half her earnings.”

  “How come?”

  “You know we set up the kennels for them?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, legally he can claim half the earnings. Less costs.”

  “But he doesn’t do anything!”

  “I know. Lizzie, poor child, has been working her socks off, setting up the business. She’s really beginning to make a go of it. And she’s at college part-time.”

  “How can he claim anything?”

  “He says it’s h
is right because his name’s on the paperwork.”

  “But you’ve said he just sits on his worthless arse all day…”

  “Faffing on the computer. Lizzie thinks he’s sold her college books, some jewellery and bits and pieces.”

  “Joking!”

  “No. And another thing. He’s claiming some of the good will in the business.”

  “What a total scrote. Can’t you just tell him to eff off?”

  “No! Says he’s entitled. Sits in that caravan. Squatting. Smug git. Lizzie gets up at five thirty every morning. She feeds the dogs, cleans out the cages, takes them for walks, pets them, then she’s on her way to college. Same again when she gets home. Then she’ll start to get the caravan tidied, clothes washed, tea made and cleared up. Then she goes and sorts the animals again. It’s a sixteen-hour day and it’s supposed to be a partnership.”

  “Hasn’t he any shame?”

  “No, and poor Lizzie’s in pieces. Sleeps at home now. Feels like he’s won. Makes my flesh creep.”

  “What does Edmund say?”

  “Not really told him. He’d go ballistic.”

  “Sounds like somebody should go ballistic with him.”

  “Probably. He’s the sort of person who backchats women but runs scared of men.”

  “Well, why don’t you tell Edmund?”

  “’Cos I don’t want to upset him. He’s got enough worries with the business. He thinks they’ve just had a spat and will get over it.”

  “Even so, you shouldn’t be dealing with this on your own.”

  “If I told Edmund, he’d probably march him out with his arm up his back.”

  “Good.”

  “Then, knowing the little fuckwit, there’d be repercussions.”

  “Like what?”

  “Sudden outbreak of fire. Burglary. Slashed tyres. Dog nobbled.”

  “Surely not!”

  “Wouldn’t want to risk it. Got to get rid of him somehow though. Poor Lizzie. He’s a liability. Keeps leaving the gas on in the van. The one time she was late at college, she asked him to feed the dogs, and he got it all wrong. Vomit and squits for three days. Three escaped.”

  “Useless prat. What did Lizzie see in him?”

  “Goodness knows. But now he’s in, it’s bloody hard to get him out.”

  “Oh, Tils. Bet you can’t bear to look at him.”

  “Makes my flesh creep. Inside I turn into this screaming harridan. Want to knock his block off. Squeeze his little pips till he squeals.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Anything I do would come back tenfold. He’s a bully. He’d take it out on Liz.”

  “Don’t know what to say.”

  “Do you know what I think it is? He’s one of those blokes who are better-looking than they deserve to be.”

  “Mother always said everybody got the face they deserved.”

  “Think she was talking about beauty regimes, not bone structure. He goes for the Easy Rider look. Well, he used to. Now when he puts a pair of jeans on, it’s his idea of dressing up. He just slobs around in these orange sports shorts and cut-away vests. Comes a time in a man’s life when he should put those away.”

  “Yeah, when they get underarm hair!”

  “Eeeww! It’s probably crawling.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Not even sure he wears boxers.”

  “Ew. Ew. Ew.”

  “Mind you, he’s getting to that point when there’s a bit too much belly fat. His chin wobbles. Even his knees are sagging.”

  “You paint a gross picture.”

  “He is gross.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Pay him off.”

  “You can’t!”

  “Nothing else for it. I just hope one day he’ll get his comeuppance.”

  “No use hoping for a miracle.”

  “No, he’ll lie and cheat and shag and manipulate and exploit his way through life.”

  “Karma.”

  “What karma?”

  “Well, one day maybe he’ll get duped, ripped off, done over, his heart broken, his bank account emptied, dreams destroyed.”

  “And crabs. I really want him to have crabs.”

  “And crabs! At the very least.”

  “Great. Good to know. Anyway, gotta go. Vet’s on her way.”

  “Hey, Tils. Hang in there. It will get sorted. Promise.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  *

  After the sugar and caffeine overload, Cecily is too wired for lunch. She drifts into the back garden and starts to make a mental list of jobs that need doing before summer arrives in full. Last year’s bulbs, stored in a box in the greenhouse, poke naked little claws out in hopefulness. It would be kinder, if a little futile, to plant them rather than leave them even though it is so late in the season. A cobweb catches her hair as she leaves the mugginess of the glass house. She flaps at it with both hands but it inveigles itself into her hair, dusty ends blowing up her nose. A sense of panic grips her heart.

  She weeps for Lizzie. Her young dreams of love shattered. So young and so perfect. Her life pulled out of orbit by an encounter with a dark star. From now on, when she hears a sad love song, she will stand still to listen to the lyrics rather than singing lustily and melodramatically into her hairbrush. She’ll find it that bit harder to trust the next guy. There will be a wistfulness where once there was innocence and joy.

  She weeps for Tilly. Seeing her young daughter crushed under the weight of her first bad choice. The slender reeds of first love, generosity, hope torn from their roots. A verse from Serge Gainsbourg comes to mind:

  Car c’est lui qui vous baise

  C’est celui qui vous baise

  A l’aise

  And so it goes.

  And so it goes.

  You just get fucked over.

  So easily.

  *

  She kicks over a rotten log. Tiny white snail eggs cluster in its crevices. They will hatch in the warm weather and make their slimy way over to the young lettuces she had yet to plant. They would fatten on them and then begin their slow and stately copulation to make more eggs, hunkering down in the sides of the planters under the soil level.

  Each shiny egg bears the face of niece’s despoiler. She picks up the log and throws it into the hen pen. “Here you are, chuck chucks.” As an act of murder, it is clean and neat and disposes of the evidence. Today’s eggs, tomorrow’s eggs.

  What would Henry do? How would he sort this situation out? No doubt about it he would remove the little runt from out of their lives. And make sure he never came back again. He would bring the smile back to Lizzie’s face and joy back into her life. But just how he would do this is impossible to answer. Back then, Henry in their lives, was a golden time. Nothing seemed to go wrong that Henry couldn’t fix. Difficulties and conundrums and dilemmas abounded before and since. How come Henry just managed to sort things out? Everything he did and said and thought was a mystery to her. The workings of his mind, his logic, his understanding, were all foreign to her. But it all mapped to reality. And it all worked. She was just in awe of him. Her love for him was based on shock and awe.

  And since? Survival without Henry is a hand-to-mouth affair, a stumbling in the dark, a bright light behind her throwing her shadow forward into multiple directions.

  The Cat

  Just how did curiosity kill the cat? Who can say? This fable, this exemplary tale, has been reinvented over generations immemorial. Differing each and every time, the nature of the misdeed, the scolding and punishment best suited to the misdeed, the consequences of the misdeed, the remorse and the tears. But the central fact remains. It was curiosity that did for the cat.

  Maybe in these enlightened times, it is no lo
nger appropriate or necessary to underline the morality of a tale by the demise of the feline. Maybe it suffices simply to punish the cat in some way appropriate to the misdeed, thereby illustrating that it is the behaviour of the cat, not the cat itself, that is disapproved of. So we can be reassured that the cat in this story will come to no harm but will, by dint of curiosity, have a major part to play in its unfolding.

  The cat arrives with no name, no known provenance and simply jumps, unseen, out of the back of the builder’s van.

  Eric, the builder in this tale, not the cat, walks into the deli, hungrily eyeing the stilton, port and venison pies. He’d worked through his lunch break on the last job and there is a low-grade ache in his belly that jumps to high intensity at the intricate aromas in the shop. Luigi comes round from behind the counter and grips Eric’s shoulder like an old friend. “Come. Come. I’ll show you the damage.” In the small courtyard at the back, Luigi points to the downpipe. It is broken like a knee injury at a rugby match.

  The cat pauses at the door to the deli but knows that entrance would be denied – on many levels – so continues to pad along the High Street towards the Town Field. For there she will find small rodents for food, green water and a part-concealed, ancient space where she may give birth to and shelter her kittens.

  10

  Ned and the Village Contingent

  Maybe Mandy is right. Maybe it is time to buy a new van. Well, of course it is time to buy a new van. That time came and went months ago. “Easy enough to say, but tell me where the money’s supposed to come from!” he snaps as she tugs at the precariously attached bumper. “Don’t do that!”

  “It wouldn’t matter if you didn’t drive everywhere like a bleedin’ maniac. Look at it. It’s a wreck! You terrorise half the town and nigh-on obliterate the other half who don’t get out of your way in time.”

  Ned pulls with all his body weight on the sliding door. It is still an inch off closing. He heaves and wrenches. No reason why it shouldn’t shut. Was fine last night when he had loaded up all the equipment needed for today’s field clearance. He curses mightily under his breath at the syncopated sound of spades, barrows, hoes and strimmers sliding inside the van, jamming the mechanism still further.