Читать книгу Remembrance Day - Brian Aldiss - Страница 9

Midsummer 1986

The car was an orange Hillman which had seen better days. Ray Tebbutt drove it with the kind of care he devoted to most matters, slowing to corner, braking gently to stop, signalling whenever humanly possible. He left the main Fakenham–Cromer road and turned north in third gear. Although the side road was empty of traffic this summer evening, he handled the wheel as cautiously as if in one of the city traffic jams to which he had previously been accustomed.

Clamp Lane was a narrow strip between high banks. History had split it open to the sun like a walnut. Within living memory, the lane had been shaded by elms, their woody topknots havens for birds. The trees were all that remained of extensive forest which had once choked this region of Norfolk before the Enclosures Acts of the previous century had begun a process of denudation. Then Dutch Elm Disease, spread through the importation of cheap foreign timber, had wiped out the last grand sentinels. Three summers and they were gone, and the birds they sheltered gone with them. Clamp Lane was now bathed in impartial summer sun, banal, no longer secret, me-andering between unfrequented wheat fields, easy going for orange Hillmans.

Tebbutt slowed still further where the road sloped into a depression which provided some shelter from the wind for two cottages, solitary in the landscape. Like the landscape, these two Victorian cottages, close yet apart, built for farm labourers, were dominated by the socio-economics of their time. Machinery had superseded the labourers; they and their families were gone long ago, as the birds had gone.

The cottages contemplated each other across the roadway. The building on the left, No. 1, never distinguished for its beauty, was tumbledown, many of its windows broken; it had remained empty for some years, a little too distant from the coast to attract speculative builders. The garden had run riot in a tangle of weeds, while clawed arms of bramble reached up to the bedroom windowsills. Ivy had gained the chimney pot. On the front bank, a wattle fence had collapsed, but marigolds still flowered there, year after year.

The opposite cottage, No. 2, to the right of the lane as Tebbutt approached, presented a more cheerful aspect. Though its original denizens had been packed off, and it had endured years of emptiness, it was now occupied and maintained. Its windows, which were open, shone brightly; all paintwork and guttering were spick and span. Its rather poky aspect had been improved by a small front porch. Its neat little garden, with stone garden seat, was planted out with flowering annuals, while the gravel drive leading to a lean-to garage was weeded and lined with box.

A small black and white cat sat alertly on the sill of one of the upper windows, as if anticipating its master’s arrival.

Turning in at the white gate, Tebbutt brought the car to a gingerly halt in order not to disturb the gravel, and tooted the horn.

A comfortable-looking woman came bustling immediately round the side of the house. Her hair was dyed brown. Over her thin form she wore a handwoven red blouse, jeans, and a pair of sandals, country garb which did not entirely disguise her look of being a displaced townee.

Removing her spectacles from her nose, she kissed Tebbutt on the lips as he emerged from the car.

‘Hello, Ruby love, how’s the day been?’ he asked, squeezing her narrow bottom as he embraced her.

‘Naughty Bolivar caught another bird this morning,’ she said, glancing up accusingly at the cat on the sill. ‘A poor little corpse was waiting for me on the back doorstep when I got home.’

‘Little devil,’ said Tebbutt indulgently. ‘Not another thrush? Bolivar must have killed every thrush in Norfolk by now.’

‘A robin this time,’ replied his wife, linking her arm in his. ‘I warned him that one day a dirty great eagle would fly down and carry him off to be fed to baby eagles.’

‘That should have a tonic effect on his morals.’

Laughing, they went together by the narrow way between fence and garage, and turned in at the back porch.

The porch was built of breezeblock topped by insecure rustic work. It had been added to the main structure by previous occupants of No. 2 Clamp Lane. The Tebbutts had camouflaged the crude wall by nailing a trellis to it and growing a Russian vine up the trellis. The vine had threatened to cover the entire cottage until Ruby took shears to it; now it was regularly clipped.

The kitchen which they entered stretched across the rear of the building, and overlooked farmland. The view from Ruby’s sink was pleasant, but curtailed by rising ground, above which could be seen a line of treetops and one chimney, belonging to the Manor Farm in Field Dalling. The ground floor of the dwelling consisted of kitchen, toilet, a passage doubling as hall, and a front room. This living-room had once been two rooms, a tiny parlour and a smaller dining-room. When newly installed in the cottage, soon after Ray had lost his Birmingham job and they were still optimistic, the Tebbutts had removed a rusty solid-fuel stove and knocked the two rooms into one. The stove they sold for five pounds to a scrap dealer from Swaffham.

‘Cup of tea, love?’ Ruby asked, continuing without awaiting an answer, since she knew what it would be. ‘You look a bit tired.’

Ray sank down on one of the two chairs they had managed to cram in the kitchen beside the small table where most of their meals were eaten. He was a small wiry man in his early fifties. What remained of his hair was dyed black. His bullet-head gave him an aggressive aspect, though the expression on his red-tanned face was amiable. His large feet were crammed into boots which he now proceeded to remove, sighing heavily as he did so. He dropped them on the matting on the floor, paused, then arranged them under the table.

‘That bugger Greg made me dig the upper field all afternoon,’ he said. ‘He’ll never grow anything on it when it’s dug. It’s far too dry under the shade of that line of poplars.’

‘He should get a thingy on it.’ She was four years younger than her husband, but occasionally forgot the names of objects. ‘A mechanical digger.’

‘It’s full of couch-grass. You can’t make any progress.’

Tut-tutting in agreement, she passed him his mug of tea. As he thanked her, she nodded and pointed with elaborate pantomime in the direction of the front room, while silently mouthing the word ‘Mother’.

Tebbutt nodded and smiled and mouthed the words ‘I’m going’ in return. After a noisy sip at his tea, the mug of which carried a picture of a sheep wearing spectacles and the legend ‘I’ve been fleeced’, he rose to his stockinged feet and padded dutifully into the front room.

His mother-in-law sat in a big wicker chair, her chin resting on her chest. A wisp of scanty white hair had fallen over her face. She was a small frail woman in her seventy-fifth year, retaining her position in the chair only by dint of four large colourful cushions which, like sandbags round a beleaguered building, served to bolster her morale.

Although Agnes Silcock gave every appearance of being asleep, she spoke distinctly as Tebbutt approached. ‘Early tonight then, are we?’

‘Excuse my stinking feet, Ma. It’s gone seven. Usual time, thereabouts.’

‘So it is. I must have been wool-gathering.’ She raised her head to observe the clock with the loud tick, an old wind-up relic from better days standing on the mantelpiece, and then let it fall again.

He told her the events of his day, while Ruby stood behind him, listening, in the doorway.

Tebbutt knew that both Agnes and her daughter had a passion for small detail; Agnes had been a jigsaw addict before her eyes had failed her: the accretion of the small pieces, each to be accommodated in one place only in the whole picture, had greatly satisfied her. Ruby had shared this hobby.

But for Tebbutt it was precisely the small accretion of incident which pained him. His day, like all days now, had been passed in manual labour at Yarker’s garden centre. Though he liked to please his mother-in-law, it was with no great pleasure that he recalled its details for her. But to see her listening thirstily to the details of the outer world was rewarding. And it pleased Ruby.

His boss, Greg Yarker, had driven to Hunstanton to collect a consignment of plants, leaving Ray in charge of the centre until noon. Yes, he’d been quite busy. Despite the hot weather and the recession, people were still buying plants. He had sold four nice tamarisks to a woman who said she was from South Creake. Never seen her before. Some people still had money to spend.

‘Don’t know where it comes from,’ Agnes said, with a cackle.

Pauline Yarker had issued forth from her caravan and brought him a coffee at about noon. He had chatted with her for a while.

‘Awful woman,’ Ruby said.

Then he’d shifted bags of peat. Yarker had returned with the plants. He had done a deal over some furniture with some people in Hunstanton who were having to sell up. Yarker was more interested in furniture than plants; he would sell up the centre if anyone would buy. He had brought Tebbutt a pasty for lunch from a new bakery in Hunstanton. So Tebbutt had saved Ruby’s sandwiches and brought them home again. She could fry them up for his supper and that would save the rest of the ham for tomorrow.

‘Raspberries and cream for seconds,’ Ruby promised.

He plodded on with an account of his banal day. The old woman was now fairly lively, her wrinkled face turned to Tebbutt’s. Ruby, smiling, polished her spectacles and adjusted Agnes’s cushions.

‘I need a new pair of corsets,’ Agnes announced, before Tebbutt’s account was done. ‘Can you buy me a pair in Sweeting’s next time you’re over there?’

‘You don’t need corsets, Ma,’ Ruby said from behind the wicker chair. ‘Besides, you’ve only had that pair you’ve got on six months. We can’t afford another pair when it isn’t necessary.’

‘Corsets help my poor old back,’ Agnes said. ‘Ray knows, don’t you, Ray?’

Tebbutt laughed. ‘Corsets aren’t my speciality, Ma. Excuse me, I’m going to get my slippers on and milk the goat. Then it’ll be supper and your bedtime.’

The goat, Tess, was tethered in the back garden in her own enclosure. She had not been the money-saver the Tebbutts had hoped when they had bought her on their arrival at No. 2 Clamp Lane. She needed supplementary feeding over the winter. But it was reassuring not to have to buy milk from a supermarket, and they were fond of the animal. Tebbutt talked soothingly to her as he milked her into a bowl, his capable hands moving gently on her teats.

Ruby Tebbutt never wasted a drop of Tess’s milk. If the milk ever went sour, she would make cheese of it and serve litle round pats of the cheese, grilled, on toast with a sprig of parsley. It was one of her husband’s favourite dishes.

Any surplus milk Ruby took to Fakenham market to sell. Having bought the cottage when house prices were high, even in a relatively cheap region like Norfolk, they now put aside every penny they could to restore their fortunes.

After supper, when Ray had eaten his fried sandwiches, followed by raspberries from the garden, and drunk a mug of tea, Ruby got her mother upstairs to bed. The old lady had all but lost the use of her legs. Fortunately, she was light and amenable, ready to be tucked up between the clean sheets. As yet, she was not incontinent every night. Ray went up in his socks and kissed her goodnight. It was nine o’clock and almost dark in her little room with its sloping roof. By her bedside she had a photograph in a silver frame of her dead husband and her two daughters when they were small.

Downstairs, Ruby and Ray sat together on the sofa, holding hands a little and watching an hour of television. They could not afford a daily newspaper. Wine was one of their luxuries, and they sipped half a tumbler each while watching some news and the weather forecast. At ten, they switched off to prepare for bed. Tebbutt had to rise at six in the morning. Matters had been rather different before he lost his job as a printer. In the mid-eighties, many people were losing their jobs, as he often said, consoling himself.

‘Perhaps we could get Ma a medical corset on the National Health,’ Ruby said, as they were washing up their supper dishes.

‘We’ll ask Dr Fowler on Monday. I’ll see if Bolivar wants to come in.’

Ray looked about the garden, but the cat was nowhere to be seen. The animal could always sleep in the garage.

The stairs were shut off from the living-room, cottage-style, by a door with a latch. Ruby and Ray were about to go upstairs when the phone rang. Ruby’s foot was on the lowest step. She withdrew it, hastily closing the stair door so that her mother would not be roused by the ringing.

‘Who can it be at this time of night?’ she asked.

‘Fuck knows,’ Ray said.

For the Tebbutts, the telephone was a silent, baleful instrument. Certainly, they sometimes received calls from their daughter Jennifer or, even more infrequently, from Ruby’s sister Joyce. But by and large the instrument was used only for emergencies. For reasons of economy, it was rare for the Tebbutts to phone out. And to receive a call at this time of night could only mean bad news of some kind.

Ray crossed to the window where the phone lay on the windowsill. As he lifted the receiver to his ear, he looked out over the garden to the lane and beyond it to the forlorn façade of the cottage opposite, just visible in the light from the living-room.

‘It’s Jean here, Ray,’ said a female voice in his ear, continuing without pause, ‘and I have a little favour to ask you. Mike can’t – you know how he is. I’m sure you won’t mind, and it’s only a little thing, but it’s about the car …’ Her voice trailed away.

‘Has it gone wrong again?’ Ray asked, signalling with his left hand to Ruby, who stood anxiously by, that everything was all-right-ish. ‘Jean Linwood,’ he whispered, momentarily covering the mouthpiece.

‘It broke down on the A148 and it’s in Stanton’s garage – you know Joe Stanton, I expect.’ The Linwoods always assumed other people knew things.

‘No, I don’t. We always take the Hillman to the garage in Fakenham, where we—’

‘Anyhow, as I was saying, Stanton phoned a couple of hours ago to say the Chrysler’s repaired, and Michael was wondering if you’d kindly drive him over to Melton Constable in the morning on your way to work so that he can pick it up.’

‘Er – well, Jean … I mean, Melton isn’t really on my way to work. In fact it’s in the opposite direction.’

‘It’s not far.’

Silence on the line. Then he said, ‘Er, Jean, what about Mike’s father? Wouldn’t he drive him over?’

He heard the anger in her voice. ‘Noel? We never ask him for anything, not the slightest thing. We’d never hear the end of it. I thought you understood our situation, and how difficult it was.’

‘But in this case …’

‘Oh, OK, Ray, forget it, then. Never mind. We knew you lived near Melton. I just thought you might like to do a friend a favour, but please forget all about it. Poor Michael will just have to go on his bike and it’ll take all morning.’

Ray pulled a face at his wife as he said, ‘Yes, yes, I see that. It’s just that I’ve got to – well, never mind that, of course I’ll drive him over to Melton. Be glad to. You know I’m an early riser – in fact Ruby and I were just going to bed – but I’ll be over to pick Mike up, tell him, at seven thirty. Don’t worry.’

Jean’s voice, which a moment earlier had brimmed with indignation, sounded a note of dismay. ‘Couldn’t make it eight, could you? We aren’t early birds like you and Ruby. Eight or half-past would be better. More civilized.’ Tebbutt had heard her laying down the law on what was civilized before.

Another face to Ruby, who waved her hands in silent mime of caution. Ray scratched the back of his head. ‘Look, Jean, you see, I promised Yarker I’d be there early tomorrow. I want to get on with my work before it’s too bloody hot. I hope you understand?’

The tone of her voice told him she did not entirely understand. ‘There’s no point in leaving at seven thirty, Ray, dear, because Stanton doesn’t open up the garage till nine, if then.’

‘I’m a slow driver, as Mike knows of old.’

‘I wouldn’t have asked, Ray, if I’d thought it was going to be such a hassle.’ Her tone was that of a woman dealing with a difficult man. ‘He’d take a taxi but you know things are a bit tight at present. The boys need new school clothes. Mike’s Auntie April needs looking after. As for Noel – he’s not too well. He’s still looking for a house. Or so he says. Meanwhile we’re stuck with him. So make it eight o’clock then, all right?’

‘I’ll be there,’ Ray said, and put the phone down. ‘Manipulative female,’ he said. Then, ‘Still, I suppose we do owe them a favour.’

Though they would never admit it to each other, the Tebbutts felt disadvantaged by the Linwoods. Michael and Jean Linwood behaved as if they were slightly above everyone else; yet their situation was similar to that of the Tebbutts. Both couples had met with financial misfortune in a cold economic climate; both were struggling to make ends meet; both had an elderly parent living with them. Whereas the Tebbutts had only one daughter, currently working as a public relations officer with a technical development company in Slough, the Linwoods had three youngsters still at home.

‘Trust them to use a garage so far away from their place,’ said Ruby, feelingly. She was well aware of Ray’s warmth for Jean.

There was one considerable difference between the two families, thought Ray Tebbutt at seven fifty-five the next morning, as he drove to Hartisham and turned cautiously into the drive of St Giles House: the Linwoods, for all their poverty, lived in a grand if tumbledown home.

He drew up neatly in front of the substantial brick building, hearing, as he switched off the engine, the Linwood dog bark somewhere at the rear of the house. Then silence fell. Curtains were drawn across the windows of the upper front rooms, where lived Mike Linwood’s rather terrifying father, Noel.

St Giles House had once belonged to Pippet Hall, the manor house of Hartisham. In the difficult days following the Second World War, the Squire family of Pippet Hall had sold it off in dilapidated condition. Successive private owners had patched things up as best they could, but the value of the property had declined. By the early eighties, the house had deteriorated to a point where Michael Linwood was able to afford it – probably with a grudging loan from his father. Tebbutt knew that he was hoping to make a profit by selling off a parcel of land at the rear, thus enabling him to repair the leaky roof, and was engaged in lengthy and so far unsuccessful negotiations to that end with the local council.

When his watch read eight o’clock, Tebbutt got out of the car. The driver’s door needed a good slam to make it shut properly; he left it hanging open in order not to wake anyone. He walked about, biting his lip. He was dressed in what he called his Working-Class Gear, with a denim jacket, bought at a car boot sale, worn over a dark blue shirt. His trousers were of thick donkey-coloured corduroy. As he often remarked to Ruby, he was ‘got up to look like a character from Hardy – one of his minor novels’.

At five past eight, he went round to the Linwoods’ back door. Various pieces of junk Mike had collected lay about in long grass. Washing had remained hanging on a line overnight in their weed-choked garden. In Mike’s old Toyota truck, long defunct, were stored his paints and other necessities of an occasional decorator’s trade.

Both Tebbutt and Linwood, after their displacement to Norfolk, had been forced to take up odd-jobbing. Tebbutt had some small success, and was hoping to save enough to buy into Yarker’s garden business. Linwood was less able to adapt to reduced circumstances; he barely scratched a living working for Sir Thomas and Lady Teresa Squire, the owners of Pippet Hall, or doing part-time jobs for the religious community in Little Walsingham.

Tebbutt knocked quietly, starting the dog barking again. After an interval, the battered door was opened by Alf, smallest of the three Linwood boys. He let Tebbutt in without a word.

The scent of the house hit Tebbutt. He had tried to analyse it before when he and Ruby had been here. Damp dishrags, watercress, and woodlice, with perhaps a hint of the cheap perfume Jean used. Not unexciting.

The house, standing in an exposed position, had for years withstood the cold winds blowing in from the coast. About its interior was a feel of erosion; the draughts of winter, even when copper strips had been tacked round all the doors, had licked at corners, scoured floors, and whistled into every last nook with a flavour of salt.

The six-year-old had been sitting alone in the dark, antiquated kitchen, into which Tebbutt now followed him, looking round hopefully as he did so. The room, as previously, was in utter disarray. He spared a second glance only for a pair of panties hung up to dry on a line. Jean’s, no doubt of it. He thought of what they usually contained.

A heavy black retriever came bounding up, thrusting its blunt nose into Tebbutt’s crotch. ‘Down, Felonious,’ Tebbutt said, pushing the brute away. He refused to pronounce the animal’s real name, which was Thelonius. Too pretentious to be spoken.

And who had named the dog Thelonius? The same person who, on the insubstantial grounds that it would provide them with a good start in life, had insisted on the three boys being christened Alaric, Aldred, and Alfric, overwhelming the boys’ parents, presenting them with such a puzzle of nomenclature that they addressed their own sons as Aye, Bee and Alf respectively: none other than Mike’s father, Noel Roderick Linwood, retired arms dealer with connections in the Middle East.

The scantiness of the kitchen furnishing was emphasized by an oil painting of a younger Noel Roderick Linwood, hanging above the unlit grate. Bearded he stood, stern and bushy of eyebrow, in a double-breasted suit, regarding a palm tree and a much smaller mosque. He clutched a diagram of a fighter plane, an emblem of his profession. A heavy gold frame surrounded him.

This was the presiding spirit of St Giles House, old Noel – at once the saviour and ruination of his son Michael and Michael’s wife and their three boys. Battening on to his progeny, he had more than once saved them from destitution by selling off a painting or a Persian miniature.

Alf observed Tebbutt’s gaze on the portrait. ‘Wanna buy it? That’s Gramps.’

‘I know. I’ve met him.’

The lad snorted. ‘He’s mad. So’s Auntie April. Barking mad. Madness runs in our family. I expect to be round the twist myself before next term.’

‘You shouldn’t think things like that.’

The boy hauled his right leg up on his chair and bit his knee. ‘Do you think loonies are generally religious? Was Christ bonkers, for instance?’

Shortly after the Linwoods had acquired the old house, Noel Roderick Linwood had descended upon them. He was in transit, he said, seeking a house of his own. He would not be staying. He regretted the inconvenience. But if he could borrow the top floor for his treasures, that would be splendid. Couldn’t the boys sleep all together in the breakfast room? Two years later, old Noel, well into his cantankerous seventies, was still searching the county for a house for himself, still burdening Mike and Jean with his presence, his conversation, his complaints.

Ray had heard Jean’s monologues on this subject. Noel had gradually spread like a cancer through the house, taking over attics as well as top floor, and then, in a coup, a little study on the ground floor. He had even entertained old colleagues for days on end in his quarters. Jean had raged. Mike had withdrawn into his shell. Noel had sailed on, untroubled.

In an endeavour to persuade the old man to move, Mike and Jean had arranged a dinner for him the previous month; Ray and Ruby had been invited, together with a local estate agent. Jean had opened up the unused dining-room. Although the ploy had not worked and Noel stayed put in St Giles House, plenty of Bulgarian wine had been served.

Before the meal, Jean had taken Ray’s hand and whispered to him aside, ‘Do be charming to the old blighter. He can be so difficult.’

The old blighter had set himself out to enthral. Tucked into the open neck of Noel’s white flannel shirt was a cerise cravat. That and his untidy white hair gave him a theatrical air. He kissed the hands of the women guests.

With calculating eye, he surveyed the other people gathered round the oak table (since sold). He splashed his soup and grumbled about the beef and discountenanced Jean. But what he did mainly, in a rather argumentative way, frequently resting his left elbow on the table and waving his fork accusingly at Ruby, who sat next to him, or Ray who sat opposite him, was to dilate on his successful career as a military advisor to the Shah of Persia – a fine man by his account – before the disastrous turn of events which had ended in the expulsion of the Shah, leaving him to wander homeless on the face of the earth, while his country was taken over by a bunch of religious Muslim maniacs.

Noel swallowed down wine before repeating the last phrase in case someone had missed it. ‘Religious Muslim maniacs.

‘Not much fun for estate agents,’ he said, braying with laughter, gesturing at the local specimen of the breed.

Ray’s unease during this long discourse, which drove all other conversation from the table, was considerable. He knew little of Iran, and did not greatly like what he knew, but he understood that Noel Roderick Linwood was presenting a prejudiced view of events – the view in fact of a parasite, who had self-confessedly made a fortune selling arms to a despotic leader, at the expense of the leader’s people. That there had been a violent reaction against the Shah’s materialism was hardly surprising.

Since no one round the Linwood table had ever come within dreaming distance of the fortune Noel Linwood had accumulated, everyone listened to his tirade with varying degrees of respect or patience, some nodding or smiling in agreement. Not understanding the situation in Iran, they accepted his boasting for truth. No one disputed that the Ayatollah Khomeini, who had replaced the Shah, represented the greater of two evils. Noel’s claim that Muslim fundamentalism was a threat to the West met with no argument round the table. Instead, the men reached solemnly for their wine glasses. The wine came from the Suhindol region of Bulgaria; they knew no harm of it. The estate agent said he drank it by the crate at home.

Ruby appeared to be enjoying the glimpse of the world beyond Norfolk provided by Noel. To Ray’s mortification, she showed an unexpected understanding of Iran’s internal affairs. ‘They chop off people’s hands in Tehran,’ she said.

‘They amputate the hands of thieves,’ Noel Linwood elaborated, in a schoolmasterly tone, as if correcting a pupil. ‘At the wrist.’ He did not fail to demonstrate the action on himself, smiling fiercely at the company as he did so, showing his too-white teeth. ‘The work is done by a criminal élite who were, under the late Shah, respectable surgeons, many of them trained here in England, at Bart’s and elsewhere.’

Guests expressed their disgust and said it should not be allowed.

‘It’s barbaric!’ exclaimed Ruby, gazing admiringly at her neighbour’s wrist, which he still clutched as if in agony.

Prodding her under the table with his foot, Ray said, ‘Better to have a surgeon do it than a butcher.’

A dessert spoon was pointed across the table in his direction.

‘They’re butchers. You have to understand that, if you’re to understand the first principles of the present intolerable regime. Let me repeat – Muslim extremism, and there’s no other word for it, Muslim extremism has ruined many a good honest English businessman. I tell you, I transferred to Iraq. Saddam Hussein is a man who understands the West.’

Ray, who had had to listen to his daughter’s arguments on the subject, was against the armaments trade; he said no more, recalling Jean’s caution earlier.

At the end of the meal, following coffee, the estate agent was already rising unsteadily from the table. At that juncture, Noel turned beaming to Ruby. Laying a hand on her arm, he said, ‘You and your husband must come and stay with me in my little eyrie for a few days. I could show you some of my treasures from the East, since these two’ – indicating his son and daughter-in-law – ‘aren’t much interested.’

Ray read a look of horror on Mike’s face at this summons and a look of bemused delight on Ruby’s. Before there was any chance of Ruby’s fatal acceptance, before he could stop himself, he leaned across the table and said, ‘Oh, I don’t think you’d like us at close quarters, Mr Linwood. You see – Ruby and I have no manners.’

The old man turned to him, thrusting his neck forward as if to make sure he was hearing correctly. ‘You’re not a barbarian, man, are you?’

‘Our table manners are very obnoxious,’ Ray continued. ‘And we’re dirty. I’m sorry to have to admit it, but we’re dirty. Ruby especially.’

‘Ray!’ she exclaimed, but he pressed on as excitement welled in him. The other guests, about to leave the room, turned to listen in fascination.

‘You see, a few months back we decided to become Muslims, so we’d never agree with your views as expressed this evening … It’s Mecca five times a day. We’re not fanatics – we just hate Christians.’ He rushed on. ‘And in my case – it’s shaming to admit this, Mr Linwood, but in my case it’s a medical problem – an intestinal incontinence. And if I forget to take my pills – help, help, an attack coming on! Goodness, oh – excuse me—’

And with that he rushed from the room, Ruby following.

Outside the house, he had collapsed over the car bonnet, helpless with mirth, while she clouted him about the head, calling him a drunken brute.

‘You stupid bloody liar!’ she yelled.

Thinking over that occasion now, Ray could not repress a smile. The tyrannical old man had steered clear of him since. Mike and Jean, too, had been a while before they saw the joke. After a short stand-off period, Jean had congratulated him on confounding her father-in-law.

Turning his back on Noel’s brooding portrait, Ray checked his watch, vexed that Mike had not put in an appearance.

Alf had returned to a piled bowl of cereal. The boy sat at a bare scrubbed pinewood table, doing major work with both elbows as he spooned the food into his mouth. Near to his hand stood a small radio, transmitting what Tebbutt assumed to be Radio One. Above its blare, Tebbutt asked the lad where his father was.

‘Upstairs, of course. Praying or something boring.’

‘Go and tell him I’m here, will you?’ As he spoke, he leaned forward almost unthinkingly to switch off the noisy radio.

‘Hey, leave that alone, bugger you!’ the boy yelled, with unexpected vigour, and snatched the instrument out of Tebbutt’s reach.

‘Well, bloody well go and tell your father I’m here and waiting for him.’

Taking a look at Tebbutt’s face, Alf slid down from his chair. He went off complaining, carrying cereal bowl and spoon with him. The dog followed, claws clicking on the bare flagstones. After thinking things over for a minute, contemplating the panties, inspecting the unwashed dishes piled in the sink, Tebbutt went to wait outside and stood and breathed in the morning air, gazing towards the roofs of Hartisham.

‘Muslims,’ he said aloud, and laughed. ‘It would make a change …’

Only a few minutes later, Michael Linwood appeared, struggling into a jacket, breathing hard, his eyebrows arched with effort.

‘I thought it was half-past eight,’ he said, whether by way of apology or explanation Tebbutt could not determine.

As they went round to the front of the house to the car, Tebbutt leading, he said, ‘Hop in, Mike, and I’ll try to make up for lost time.’

‘I know what a scorcher you are, Ray.’

Michael Linwood was ten years younger than Tebbutt. He was a small, broad-shouldered man, to whose evident strength was married an incongruous uncertainty of manner. In his well-tanned face, under a pair of furry dark eyebrows, was set a pair of round blue eyes, whose appearance of innocence was not entirely illusory.

He was dressed today in an old shiny suit, about which Tebbutt refrained from making comment.

‘It’s good of you to pick me up,’ Mike said. ‘Charity begins at home. I thought you were very rude to my father when you and Ruby last came round for supper. What did you mean by telling him you were a Muslim?’

‘Let’s not get into that. I was drunk. How’s the work going?’

Mike was silent before answering. ‘I dislike people who make fun of religion, Ray. Please don’t do it again, eh? My father was quite deceived by what you said. It was very hurtful to all concerned.’

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Ray exclaimed.

‘There’s another thing I object to,’ said Mike, eyebrows beginning to work, but he refrained from naming it. Instead, he said, ‘I’m at a spiritual turning point in my life, Ray. Light is dawning. We live in a wicked world … I’m cutting down on my work for Sir Thomas Squire at Pippet Hall. I’m going to work two days a week for the Fathers at the Abbey in Little Walsingham. They need reliable help, which I believe I’m in a position to provide.’

Tebbutt found it difficult to keep his attention on the road. ‘But Tom Squire pays well, over the odds? He’s a generous employer.’

‘Sir Thomas Squire is a very worldly man. Just because the market is difficult, he’s closing down part of the estate – not that that affects me … Doubtless you recall the words of the poet, “The world is too much with us, late and soon”. I prefer the reverential world of the Abbey to Squire’s privileged life.’

‘But will it pay, man?’

In a voice of utter calm, as if he were addressing an aspidistra, Linwood said, ‘You have saved me half a day’s work by playing the Good Samaritan on this journey, and don’t think I’m not grateful. There’s little enough gratitude in the world. We have been friends in adversity … There are considerations other than the material. At the Abbey, I shall clear up after the pilgrims and do whatever else I am called upon to do. I shall assist Father Herbert, who is getting a bit doddery, poor dear fellow. “Groundsman”: that will be my rank and station. “Groundsman”. I appreciate that. It’s a sign. “The man who looks after the ground”. To my ear it has a Biblical sound about it.’

‘So does “pauper”.’ He saw the round blue eyes upon him and regretted his hasty tongue, softening the remark by adding, ‘We’re both paupers, Mike, old lad. We have to earn a crust where we can. I’d have thought Pippet Hall was a good place to work. Better than Yarker’s lousy nursery.’

Tebbutt and Linwood had met at Pippet Hall, the big house in Hartisham, a few miles west of the Walsinghams. Both had been employed by Sir Thomas Squire, redecorating and restoring farm cottages on the estate which the Squires intended to let out to the holiday trade. Even then, he remembered, Mike had undertaken odd jobs without pay for the religious community in Little Walsingham.

As if catching his thoughts, Linwood added, ‘Of course, the salary isn’t much. I don’t know what we’ll do over the winter, but no doubt the Lord will provide. Day by day I become ever more aware of His goodness.’

The reluctant provider in the Linwood household, as far as the Tebbutts were aware, was Mike’s crusty old father, acting as combined saviour and bête noire.

Tebbutt had heard Linwood’s history while working with him at Pippet Hall. Indeed, had heard it more than once.

Like his grandfather and uncles before him, Michael Linwood had started adult life as a modestly prosperous farmer, taking over the farm at an early age when his father suddenly disappeared to do something more exciting. The Linwood farm was near the Rollrights in Oxfordshire. Headstones in the local churchyard displayed many vanished Linwood names.

Mike’s marriage to Jean Lazenby caused a row in both Linwood and Lazenby families. Mike had recounted this part of his story with morbid relish.

The Lazenbys were no farmers. Their money came from sugar. Despite its associations with slavery on West Indian plantations and caries in the teeth of children, sugar had brought a rise in social class for past Lazenby generations. Farming was a little below them.

Jean’s parents had refused to attend the wedding.

Jean had been philosophical. ‘Renegade father, weak mother – what do you expect?’ and the remark had been quoted with pride. Mike’s parents shared not dissimilar qualities.

The Linwood farm at Middle Rollright was comfortable enough. Jean enjoyed playing the role of farmer’s wife. Mike had watched approvingly as his new wife took to baking her own bread and carrying cider to the men who worked on the land with Mike. She tolerated mud. She bottle-fed piglets. She shopped locally. She dressed the part in scarf and wellies by day, and was popular in chintzy frocks at Young Farmers’ parties in the evenings.

‘A dream world for us both,’ Mike had commented, with bitterness.

In the golden haze, he had bought more land. He made deals with a leading fertilizer company which took much of the burden of actual crop-growing off his shoulders. He bought the adjoining run-down Base Bottom Farm for cattle, for what he regarded as a bargain price, although the pasturage was poor and sour. During the seventies, generous subsidies were available for beef farmers.

Disaster came knocking with the eighties. As unemployment mounted, inflation rose, the price of mortgages climbed. EEC agricultural policies ran counter to Mike’s expectations. When he realized how serious were his financial problems, the fertilizer company proved unhelpful. They were closing down one of their factories outside Sheffield. They were off-loading commitments. They wrote threatening letters.

‘Seemed God had it in for me,’ Linwood commented, carelessly enough, as he and Tebbutt slapped emulsion on the cottage walls.

The bank gave him a loan at stiff interest rates which he soon found himself unable to pay off. Smart accountants took to visiting him in smart cars. Someone was making money.

That winter was a bad one. He lost some stock. The bank fore-closed. He sold off Base Bottom Farm at a loss to a London insurance company. Came the following summer and drought, and he threw in his hand. Jean urged him to hang on, but at the last he was even relieved to see the old place go.

At the time the Linwoods were packing up and leaving their ancestors to moulder in the local churchyard, trouble also visited the Lazenbys.

Jean’s father, ‘Artful’ Archie Lazenby, died of a stroke over dinner in his London club. His will presented the family with some unpleasant surprises. Not only had Artful Archie lost most of the last of the sugar money gambling in the Peccadillo, a Mayfair club, but what sums remained were in generous part bestowed on a hitherto unsuspected Miss Dolly Spicer, of Camberwell Villas, London, SE5.

Jean’s mother went into sheltered housing and died of influenza within eight months.

‘How did Jean take all that?’ Tebbutt had asked.

‘Like a trooper. Not a word of mourning. Bit unfeeling, really.’

With no option but to farm again, Michael Linwood moved with trooper-like wife and sons to somewhere where land was cheaper. He settled on Norfolk.

The acres he bought proved difficult to work and were liable to flooding. His heart had gone out of the business. Again he got his sums wrong. Within a twelve-month, he was forced to sell to a scoundrel who swindled him and turned the land into a caravan park.

The shipwrecked family had moved into St Giles House and Linwood had taken up odd-jobbery. Jean had worked in a local dairy until that was taken over by a larger company.

You can’t blame the poor sod for being a bit difficult, Tebbutt thought, mentally reviewing his friend’s history, as they headed for Stanton’s garage.

They had driven in silence for some miles before he dared to ask about the progress of the Linwood boys. Their sons seemed always more a source of anxiety than pleasure to Mike and Jean.

Instead of answering his friend’s question, Mike said, ‘In all our misfortunes, I have surely seen the guiding hand of Our Lord, directing me into His paths. After constant prayer, I can at last see a way to clarify our lives. This is confidential as yet, Ray, but I am thinking of joining the Church of Rome as a lay preacher.’

On reflection, Tebbutt realized he might have thought of something more tactful to say than the question he now blurted out. ‘What did Jean say when you broke the news to her? Crikey, Mike, you can’t earn a living as a lay preacher. You’ve got three kids to support.’

‘Jean said more or less the same thing.’ The blue eyes gazed serenely at the road ahead.

‘I bet she did,’ Tebbutt said. ‘And your father?’

Mike clasped his hands together and trapped them tightly between his knees. ‘We’re not on speaking terms just now, Noel and I. My father is a heathen. When Jean ran upstairs and told him the news, he rushed out of the house roaring profanities. Jean wouldn’t speak to me.’

‘Where did your father go?’

‘Oh, over to my dotty Auntie April in Blakeney, of course. If only he’d stay there …’

‘I don’t want to interfere, Mike, but how are you all going to eat if you … well, I mean, if you decide to go into the Church?’

‘The Lord will decide, the Lord will provide.’

Tebbutt felt driven to say something in Jean’s defence. He spoke cautiously. ‘The Lord provides best for those who help themselves. Jean must be very anxious as to where the money’s going to come from. I know Ruby would be.’

‘Jean will eventually see the light. We shall manage,’ Linwood said, with infuriating calm. An awful inflexibility in his voice silenced Tebbutt.

It was ten to nine. They were nearing Melton Constable. Tebbutt drove more and more slowly, feeling anger and despair welling up inside him. He stopped the car. Linwood looked at him curiously, raising one of the neat furry eyebrows, saying nothing as Tebbutt turned to him.

‘Mike, the country’s gone down the tubes. You are I are both hard put to earn a crust. But times are bound to get better. Maybe if we clubbed together we could buy out Yarker and make a go of the garden centre. What do you say?’

The reply was slow in coming. Gazing out at the placid countryside, Linwood said, ‘You might like to know I nearly did away with myself when I lost my land here. God intervened through Jean. I knew then I was in sin. In sin, you understand? I no longer wish to operate within an economic system I consider wicked. It’s as simple as that.’

Tebbutt closed his eyes. ‘But you can’t possibly dream of going into the Church with a wife and three kids to support. You must be fucking mad to think of it.’

Linwood’s face grew red. Making a solemn moue which would not have looked out of place above a dog collar, he slowly shook his head and said, ‘You sound just like the rest of them, my friend. I know you mean well. But there is such a thing as conscience, and I am bound to obey mine. We live in a sinful world, but our obligations to God must never be forgotten.’

‘There’s also such a thing as an obligation to your fucking family.’

‘Swearing will do no one any good. I’m not angry with you, Mike, but please will you drive on to the garage. I can’t sit here all day.’

Bottling up his fury, Tebbutt threw the Hillman into first gear and they jerked violently forward. Five minutes later, they rolled into the forecourt of Joe Stanton’s garage. A CLOSED sign swung idly by the pumps and the large double doors of the service station were padlocked. An old blue car stood forlornly on the forecourt with a FOR SALE notice stuck under its windscreen wiper.

‘That’s funny,’ Linwood remarked. ‘I had anticipated seeing the Chrysler standing ready for me out the front. Wait here a minute, will you, Ray?’

He got out of the car and stood about indecisively on the forecourt, arms hanging by his side. Tebbutt was tempted to drive away. Later, he regretted he had not done so. But a feeling of loyalty to his friend kept him where he was, tapping the fingers of his right hand on the steering wheel. After a moment, he tried the radio, hopefully, but it had not functioned for some months.

Joe Stanton’s garage did not inspire confidence in a discerning motorist. First impressions suggested that many cars rolling in here never left. Most had been cannibalized and their wheels removed. Rust, weather, and hooliganism had reduced them to a kind of auto Stalingrad. Long-defunct Stantons had worked a forge on the site. The ramshackle old building had been converted by Stanton’s wife, Marigold, into a shop for the sale of newspapers, bread, milk, Mars bars, and other necessities. But the shop was either too near to or too far out of Melton for it to flourish. It had died by slow degrees, until the ‘Out to Lunch’ sign in the door window became an informal funeral notice. The concrete of the more modern filling station was crumbling in sympathy. The whole place, Tebbutt considered, would qualify for a picture on a ‘Quaint Norfolk’ calendar. November, probably.

Marigold Stanton had retreated to the bungalow behind the garage, where she kept geese in considerable squalor. A handwritten notice on the Four Star pump advertised ‘Gooce Eggs’.

After walking about the forecourt for some while, Linwood made his way through the automobile skeletons to the bungalow. The geese roused a hullabaloo as he disappeared from Tebbutt’s sight.

Tebbutt sat at the wheel of his car, staring at a tin advert for Pratt’s High Test, remembering how life used to be. He watched bees tumbling among the trumpets of a bindweed growing up a telegraph pole. Ruby would be at work by now. She caught the bus into Fakenham every weekday to do a summer job in Mrs Bligh’s cake shop. Agnes would be safe at home with the cat for company.

Ray got out of his car and pottered about the forecourt. He took a look at the car offered for sale. It was a model unknown to him, a Zastava Caribbean, with an Oxfordshire number plate. A faded sticker on the rear window said, ‘I Love Cheri’. On the FOR SALE notice, under the price, Stanton had written WON ONER.

Melancholy increased, Ray went back to sit in his car.

When Linwood reappeared round the side of the old forge, he was accompanied by Stanton. The two men were arguing. Stanton was an untidy, straggling kind of man who walked with a limp and a decided list to starboard. He wore boots, a pair of dungarees and an incongruous checked cap. His chest was bare. He shook his head in time with his rapid slanting walk. Beside Linwood’s rather boneless figure, Stanton appeared an embodiment of energy.

Crossing to the double doors of his shed, he unlocked the padlock, wrenched the doors a few inches open, and elbowed his way inside, to leave Linwood on the forecourt. Linwood appeared to be studying the cracked concrete at his feet.

After looking at his watch, Tebbutt leaned out of the car window and called, ‘Any problems, Mike? Is it repaired?’

His friend looked round slowly, as if previously unaware of Tebbutt’s presence, and said, nodding his head, ‘Hang on a minute, Ray.’ It was not a satisfying response.

A small builder’s lorry drew up at the pumps and tooted. As Stanton emerged from his fortress, the driver of the lorry, leaving his engine running, jumped down from the cab and stretched. He appeared to be on good terms with Stanton, who momentarily stopped scowling.

While Stanton filled the lorry’s tank with Four Star, the driver nonchalantly lit a cigarette, flinging the match down on the ground. Tebbutt watched the two men talking, Stanton gesturing jerkily in the direction of Linwood. Linwood, taking advantage of this diversion, walked rapidly into the garage.

‘’Ere, come on out of there, you!’ Stanton bawled.

Linwood reappeared, looking embarrassed, thrusting his hands into his pockets and immediately pulling them out again.

When the lorry drove off, Stanton walked rather threateningly towards Linwood, gesticulating loosely with both hands, as if he was trying to toss them over either shoulder. Both men went into the garage. Tebbutt sat tight, sighing. Silence reigned on the forecourt.

Very shortly, Linwood emerged again, clutching a piece of paper.

He walked over to the Hillman with an expression of unconcern, to lean through the driver’s window so that his nose was only a few inches from Tebbutt’s.

‘We’ve got a bit of a problem here, Ray. It’s old Joe Stanton, cutting up a bit rough.’

‘I’d gathered that.’

‘Yes. Poor chap used to be pretty trusting. Caught him in a bad mood this morning. He’s repaired the car and it’s fine – good for another eighteen months, he says. He’s had to do more work on it than anticipated. He said something about the rear shock-absorbers, I believe. Replacements needed.’

He showed Tebbutt the piece of paper in his hand, on which a number of items were scrawled in Biro.

‘It’s a bill for three hundred pounds, Ray. Bit of a shock.’ He cleared his throat.

‘Is the car worth it?’

Linwood looked very serious, withdrew the paper, and straightened to tuck it into his pocket, so that when he spoke again Tebbutt could not see his face for the roof of the Hillman.

‘Of course the car’s worth it, Ray. You don’t understand the situation. The problem is, as I say, Stanton’s not in his usual trusting mood. He refuses to allow me credit this time. That wife of his was frankly abusive. I can’t have the car back, he says, until I’ve paid the bill. It makes things rather difficult.’

After considering the situation for a moment, and in particular debating what he should say next, Tebbutt folded his arms behind the wheel and asked, ‘So how do you intend to resolve this dilemma, Mike? Prayer?’

He still could not see Linwood’s head and shoulders from where he sat, but he heard his reply distinctly enough. ‘Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my cheque book along. I was wondering if you’d be kind enough to write him one of your cheques, and I’ll repay you when we get home.’

Opening the car door, Tebbutt climbed slowly out into the sunshine, so that he could look Linwood in the eye. ‘I’m in no position to lend anyone money. I don’t have my cheque book on me, either.’

Smiling, Linwood said, ‘But you do carry a credit card, Ray, I believe?’

Stanton had emerged into the light to stand before his barely opened doors, fists on hips and legs apart, as if prepared to repel all boarders.

‘I ent taking a penny less, neither,’ he shouted. ‘Three hundred quid I want.’

‘Well, you can see it from Stanton’s point of view, in a way,’ Linwood said.

‘Stanton evidently doesn’t expect the Lord to provide,’ Tebbutt said, feelingly.

‘I doubt that he and the Lord are on speaking terms.’ Linwood mitigated the humour with a miserable look, adding, ‘If you could pay with your credit card, Ray, just to get us out of this mess … We can’t stand here all day. I’d be immensely grateful and can repay you within the next couple of days.’

They stood regarding each other until Tebbutt lowered his gaze. Unable to think of a convincing lie, he decided on the truth.

‘Mike, you see Ruby and I have a Visa card just to identify ourselves – for identification of cheques and so on. Nothing else. We never ever charge anything to the account. It’s our rule. That way we don’t get into debt. You know how it is.’

‘Well, charge this sum up now, and I’ll repay you before the end of the month. That’s how those things work, isn’t it? They won’t sting you for interest. Then you stand no chance of “getting into debt”, as you put it. That’s not asking much, is it? We can’t stand here all day.’

Tebbutt pulled an awful face. ‘Well, it is asking quite a lot, to be honest. As I say, we have never had anything on credit. That’s how we live.’

Linwood turned away. ‘I’m sorry. You don’t mind a friend asking you a favour, do you? Very Christian, I must say. I don’t know what to do. I’ll have to phone Jean. I’ll walk into Melton and find a phone, don’t worry. This means another terrible family row … But you’d better get back to work. Thanks for the lift, anyway.’

As he made off towards the road, Stanton called, ‘’Ere, what about my bloody money? I’ll sell your bloody junk heap else.’

It was not in Tebbutt’s nature to let a friend down. ‘Hold on,’ he called. ‘All right, I’ll charge it on my card. You will pay me back at once, won’t you? Otherwise we’ll be in the shit.’

Turning briskly back, Linwood said, ‘Thanks. I’ll let you have the money by the end of the week at the latest. Perhaps you’d like to cope with Stanton – he seems a bit miffed with me this morning.’

While Linwood stood about in the sunshine, Tebbutt penetrated the gloom of the garage and completed the transaction with Stanton, who muttered darkly as he processed the credit card. ‘That there bugger never pay up. Must think as I’m a millionaire. I can’t do the work for narthin’, can I now? ’Sides, these old Chryslers, time they was off the road.’

‘Thank you very much, Mr Stanton,’ said Tebbutt, retrieving his card and pocketing the Visa slip the man gave him. He stood aside as Stanton rolled the garage doors back and drove the car out to the forecourt.

‘Don’t come a-bothering me again,’ Stanton told Linwood, shaking his fist. Linwood, ignoring him, asked Tebbutt for the slip. Tebbutt hung on to it; it was his transaction. Frowning, Linwood jumped into his car and drove off without another word.

‘You got a right one there,’ Stanton said, laughing at Tebbutt’s discomfiture. ‘I notice as you don’t trust him further than what you can throw him, neither.’

‘He’s thinking of entering the Church.’

‘And a fucking good place for him,’ Stanton shouted, as Tebbutt drove away.

On Wednesday, Tebbutt went to work with Yarker as usual. As he rolled into the garden centre, he could see both Yarker and his wife. Greg Yarker was a big, ill-proportioned man in his mid-thirties, vain, uncertain of temper but, in the words of those around, ‘not a bad sort’. ‘Ole Yarker’ll do you a favour,’ his drinking buddies in the Bluebell would say.

At present, Yarker was doing himself a favour, standing in the doorway of his mobile home half-dressed, savouring the morning sun and biting into a huge bread roll from which pieces of bacon dangled. He took both hands to the job. There was little half-hearted about Greg Yarker.

Meanwhile, Pauline Yarker – ‘Ah, she’ll do you a favour too,’ they said, and cackled – was trundling down the pathway between the clematis section and the roses, hugging to herself a plush-covered armchair almost as rotund as she was. Pauline was a big old gel, as they said, strong, and quite a match for her husband. She was carrying the armchair down to the black-painted store where their better furniture was kept. The Yarkers’ trade in secondhand furniture supplemented their income from the garden centre.

Half-way along the path, Pauline set the chair down and subsided into it for a breather. As he locked the Hillman, Tebbutt heard Yarker shout something at his wife. She shouted back. They both burst into raucous laughter. Yarker crammed the rest of his bacon roll into his mouth with the flat of his hand.

‘Morning, Greg.’

‘Look at her,’ Yarker said, with a derisive gesture, by way of response. His eyes, dark and in-dwelling – almost as if he had some sense, thought Tebbutt – were set in a knobbly face blue with shaving and crimson with exposure to the elements and alcohol. His hair, cut by his wife, stood out here and there in tufts, giving him a ferocious appearance which his manner did not belie. ‘Lazy as they come, our Pauline.’

‘What do you want me to do today?’

‘I tell you what, Ray,’ Yarker said, stepping down from his perch and taking up a blue and white banded mug of tea in one fist. ‘When I thinks of how that little bugger Clenchwarden … Well, I could kill him. And her.’ He took a drag of tea before repeating, ‘Little bugger …’

‘He was a little bugger,’ Tebbutt agreed. ‘Still, it’s over now – I wouldn’t think about it.’ The little bugger referred to was Georgie Clenchwarden, the previous occupant of Ray’s job, who had been caught making advances to Mrs Yarker, or possibly vice versa. Ray took the frequent references to Georgie as a personal warning, as though Yarker believed his wife’s virtue, if any remained, was under constant threat. He had no intention of trespassing.

Yarker ordered him to get on preparing the rough ground under a line of poplars marking the northern boundary of the property. After a while, he came over with a second spade to help with the work. Hiring a mechanical digger did not appeal to his pocket.

The dark uncordial Norfolk soil yielded flinty stone and bricks cozened so long under the earth they emerged like rough old fossil tongues. These the men chucked aside into a metal wheelbarrow. Their work was punctuated by a succession of clangs, bangs, and tinkles as the debris hit the target on the path behind them, at which they often aimed without looking. But the biggest obstacle was the roots of the tall poplars, which sometimes had to be attacked with a little tree-saw kept handy for the purpose. Grubbing and digging went by turns.

Greg Yarker straightened up, making his spade bite down into the earth to give him a little support as he rested on it.

‘My back ent so good today,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave you to it, Ray. I’ve got to go see a lady about some furniture Dereham way.’

As he stalked off, Tebbutt returned to the digging, working more slowly now, at his own pace. Although he had heard about Yarker’s back before, he held no brief against the man; he was grateful for the job. Five minutes later, he looked round at the sound of an engine, in time to see Yarker driving off in his old van in the direction of Dereham.

Within minutes, the door of the mobile home opened, and Pauline Yarker emerged into the light of day, smoking a cigarette, resplendent in a pink candlewick dressing-gown. Tebbutt straightened up and eased his back as she approached. He smiled and bade her good morning.

‘Don’t know what’s good about it,’ she said. ‘I’m having trouble opening a tin of peaches, Ray. Would you give me a hand a moment?’

‘Which hand do you want?’

She looked at him straight. ‘You can use both hands if you fancy it,’ she said. Then she smiled. They both laughed as he followed her to the caravan. He thought to himself, she may not be very lovely, but she’s willing. Luckily I can control myself.

The mobile home was an ancient model, once yellow, now patched with white flowers of damp. A toilet stood like a sentry box near the front step. Since it was situated in the middle of the garden centre, privacy had been attempted; a square trellis surrounded caravan and thunderbox, up which several varieties of clematis grew. Bees tumbled and buzzed amid the blossom. A dog kennel, now empty, stood to one side of the step. An irregularly shaped nameplate had been tacked against the door, evidence of Pauline Yarker’s sense of humour: ‘Fakenham Castle’.

‘Come on in, love,’ she said to Tebbutt. The whole caravan creaked as she grasped both sides of the doorway and heaved herself in, large and jolly. He looked with some awe at her rear view as he followed. She had a well-developed bosom which she knew no harm in displaying. Born shortly after the end of the war, she had recently taken to dyeing her hair. ‘You’re as young as you act, that’s what I say,’ she was fond of repeating, and the male customers of the Bluebell, where they met on most Saturday evenings, agreed vociferously.

‘Ah, and I’m going to act as young as I feel,’ she’d add, with an arch look at her husband. Many of the men fancied her, with her big tits and her complaisant humour.

But Tebbutt took the tin-opener and opened her can of peaches without being molested. They understood one another. She liked flirting with her husband’s new employee, but it went no further; the flirtation was a part of her humour; it would be difficult to determine whether she knew another way to behave towards men.

Her little radio was playing music of a dated kind to be heard only during mid-morning on a local station.

‘Have a beer while you’re about it, while the old bugger’s away,’ she said, patting a patch of bunk beside her, encouraging him much as she might have encouraged a dog. He showed her his soil-stained hands as warning and sank down gratefully beside her.

‘Those bloody roots …’ he said.

The beer, which he drank from the can, was produced from her little fridge. The chill of it trickled luxuriously down his throat. ‘Not a lot is ever going to grow in that ground even when we’ve cleared it,’ he told her. ‘It’s too near the trees. I told Greg as much.’

‘He never listens to a thing you say, he don’t. Where are you going for your holiday this year?’ Plainly she was not interested in her husband’s business.

‘I don’t reckon we can afford a holiday this summer, Pauline. We’re broke. I’ve got to renovate the back porch.’

‘I may go to Yarmouth on me own. I know a nice little hotel on the front, ever so posh, has a Jacuzzi and everything.’ Her plump arms briefly sketched the shape of a Jacuzzi for the benefit of those who had never visited Great Yarmouth. ‘Why don’t you come with me?’

‘Don’t think Ruby would like it.’

‘She hasn’t got much meat on her, though, your missus.’

When he was getting ready to go, he gave her a light kiss. Pauline did not attempt to follow it up, though she made grateful cooing noises. At heart, she was a decent woman and he did, after a fashion, owe his job to her.

She pinched his buttocks and gave him a juicy wink. He nodded and went back to his digging.

Arriving home tired after seven that evening, his first question to Ruby was whether Mike Linwood had come round with the money.

Ruby said no, and looked rather tight about the lips. She had heard the whole story from her husband the evening before, and secretly blamed him for being weak enough to lend money to anyone. Her moods being transparent to him, he perceived this without her uttering a word.

‘You’ll have to go to Hartisham to get it back,’ she said now, lighting one of her rare cigarettes. ‘You’ve got us in a real doo-dah. Supposing he refuses to pay us back?’

‘Don’t be silly. ’Course he’ll pay us back. Mike’s no crook. Besides, you know how that household works. Difficult though his father is, he bales them out in a crisis. Jean told me once that he’s got a heap of loot stashed away in those rooms of his – stuff he acquired in the Middle East. Every now and again he flogs something off in the London auctions.’

‘When did Jean tell you that?’

‘Ages ago. She told you, too.’

‘No, she didn’t. I don’t remember.’

‘You’re getting forgetful.’

The evening passed rather silently. Like the silence, the sum of money owed seemed to grow and smother them. It was a sin, a squandering. It represented the amount they might hope to set aside for Christmas for themselves and Jenny, Ray’s wages for three weeks, earned by the sweat dripping into Yarker’s arid soil. He could no longer believe he had been credulous enough to pay Stanton’s repair bill.

That night, he lay next to Ruby in the double bed, listening to her quiet breathing, wondering what he should do. Ruby always slept well. Owls cried about the chimney tops of the ruinous cottage opposite, a partridge croaked in the hedgerow. Still she slept. From across the landing came the downy snore of his mother-in-law; they never closed her door at night in case she should need something.

Agnes in her little wooden room became woven into his anxieties. Fond though he was of the old lady, who represented herself as having had a fairly dashing past, she was in her present decrepitude a burden, one more factor requiring attention every day, like a goat with no yield. Yet, meanly, they made a tiny increment of money from her: Agnes wanted little, corsets apart – another of her sudden whims, easily deflected – and a tithe of her old-age pension flowed weekly into the shallow family coffers.

He tried to shut the stale thoughts out. Come on, cocker, Mike’s a friend and he’s got a job. He’ll pay up. Sure to. Jean will insist, won’t she?

After a while, Ray sat up in bed, staring at the dim curtained square of their window. He hated to think that he, in his fifties, should be dependent on a few coppers from his mother-in-law’s pension; that he and Ruby now lived so near penury they could not afford a daily paper; that she should have to work part-time in a shop, leaving her old ma alone in the cottage; and, above all, that he should be worth so little on the labour market.

They were caught in the poverty trap. They had come to Norfolk from Birmingham because property was cheap in East Anglia, not realizing that jobs would also be scarce, and wages in consequence low.

In only a few hours he would be obliged to get up and go back to those bloody poplars.

Perhaps he had always been a failure. His thoughts trailed back to the palmy days in Birmingham with the Parchment Printing Company. Parchment had been founded by his uncle, Allen Tebbutt. When Allen had died prematurely, Ray had taken over, and greatly extended the company, which had gone public. He had then lost control of the company in a famous boardroom battle, but stayed on in an executive post. The company had weathered technological change well, installing new plant in 1979, mainly because of impressive new orders from one firm, Summpools. Summpools was a rapidly expanding firm of swimming-pool installers. They owned a subsidiary, Summserve, specializing in conservatories and house extensions. Both companies wanted expensive coloured literature. It all looked fine at a time when conservatories were suddenly fashionable.

Both Summpools and Summserve were owned by a man called Cracknell Summerfield, known familiarly as Charlie. Charlie was Ray’s contact, which greatly improved his standing with Parchment. Charlie owned a large manor house near Iver and Heathrow, which Ray Tebbutt once visited for a conference. He was impressed by what he saw. Only weeks later, Cracknell Summerfield went bankrupt with debts totalling £24 million, almost £6 million of which was owed to the Parchment Printing Company. With unemployment mounting and the country undergoing one of its regular recessions, Parchment was forced into liquidation. Ray and many others were thrown out of work.

Cracknell Summerfield sold up his manor house to a yuppie from the city, one of a new breed. After his wife left him for a sacked Summpools salesman, he started up other companies, selling double-glazing and replacement windows. Ruby stayed with Ray when they too were forced to sell up their home; taking their daughter Jennifer, they moved to Norfolk. Ray often asked himself why hadn’t he joined that rascal Charlie? He could have been rich by now.

Born to sink. Born to be a sucker …

When greyness seeped like dust round the bedroom curtains, he rose and crept barefoot downstairs. He had been one of three million unemployed. In a way he was lucky to find a job; they did get by and, after all, the countryside was lovely, at least in summer.

That lie about being a Muslim … well, it would make a change …

He sneaked carefully through the door closing off the stairwell, in case the cunning Bolivar was on the other side, awaiting a chance to rush upstairs and jump on Agnes’s bed. But the cat was nowhere to be seen.

He stood in the kitchen. Could he afford an extra cup of tea at this early hour? Don’t be self-indulgent, he told himself, letting himself out into the garden. The honeysuckle by the back door smelt like something from a picturebook childhood. He wandered up the path and went to see Tess, grazing peacefully. She looked up, shook her ears, and went back to her nibbling.

He returned to the cottage, and to an aroma of last night’s fried potatoes lingering in the passageway. In the front room, he stretched out wearily on the sofa, and was immediately asleep. Then Bolivar jumped up on his stomach.

Ruby went to work as usual on the Wednesday morning. Her habit was to cycle from home an hour later than her husband, after she had organized her mother. She concealed her bicycle in a hedge near the main road, caught the bus on the main road, and was in Mrs Bligh’s cake shop by nine fifteen, in time to pull down the awning over the shop window and put the wooden sign saying CAKES out on the pavement.

Mrs Bligh herself turned up laden with two heavy wicker baskets shortly after half-past nine, before the baker delivered. She set them down on the counter, gasping. ‘Heaven helps them as helps themselves but not all that bloody much,’ she said.

Bridget Bligh was a self-contained lady in her forties, generally to be seen in a black Guernsey sweater and denim skirt.

The cake shop specialized in a line of Cornish pasties and sausage rolls which sold briskly at this hour. As Mrs Bligh said on numerous occasions, ‘Fakenham folk are funny eaters.’ The lady herself retired into a back room to prepare a range of sandwiches which would be on sale from ten thirty onwards.

Ruby had always liked Bridget for her sense of humour. Once when she had asked her why she had left the North of England to come to Fakenham, of all places, Bridget had pressed hands to bosom and said it was to forget.

‘To forget what?’ Ruby asked.

‘I’ve forgotten,’ Bridget said. Ruby had often repeated the joke, even when she suspected Bridget had borrowed it from a TV comedy. Perhaps the joke also expressed something unconfiding in Mrs Bligh’s nature. She had a grown-up son, Teddy, who worked in the shop on occasions, but nothing was ever heard of husbands or lovers. For this reserve, Ruby had much respect.

At ten minutes to eleven, about the time when Bridget produced cups of coffee, Ruby glanced out of the window and saw, further down the street, a man she recognized. It was Noel Linwood, white hair stirring in a slight breeze. He had climbed slowly from his ancient car and was gesticulating to someone sitting in the passenger seat; Ruby could just make out a female with a shock of black hair.

Whatever Noel Linwood’s exhortations, they failed, for he slammed the car door and began to walk, shoulders hunched, along the street towards the shop. The sight of that curious mottled face brought a feeling of panic to Ruby and she rushed into the back kitchen, clutching Mrs Bligh.

‘It’s that old chap, Noel Linwood. I think he’s coming in here. Please go and serve in the shop – I can’t face him. Ray told him we were Muslims …’

Bridget surveyed her coolly. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a relation, dear.’ But she went into the shop as requested.

A minute later, the door opened, the bell tinged, and Noel Linwood marched in, showing his large teeth in a smile.

‘Good morning, Mr Linwood, and what can I do you for? Cream horns are nice today.’ Ruby cowered behind the refrigerator as she heard Bridget’s pert voice. Most of the traders in Fakenham knew the elder Linwood, and his reputation for being in the money; although there were dissenters who, having seen the dilapidated house in Hartisham, claimed he hadn’t two brass farthings to rub together.

Noel looked about him short-sightedly, came to some sort of decision, and said, ‘I’ve got my sister in the car. Give me a dozen cream horns. Got to feed the bitch.’

When Bridget had arranged the cream horns in a cake-box and he was paying, he said in a sharp tone, ‘So where is Mrs Tebbutt? I understood she worked here. Is my information correct?’

‘No, dear,’ Bridget said, handing over his change. ‘There’s no such person works here. Oh, hang about, though. Would it be Ruby Tebbutt you’re asking after? Rum-looking little woman? Yes, she did used to work here, that’s true. Not no more. Can I pass on a message for you?’

‘Certainly not.’ He stood by the door, nursing his box of cream horns. A female assistant from the nearby chemist came in, bought a sandwich and left. Still Noel Linwood hesitated on the threshold.

Bridget leaned over the counter and spoke in a confidential way. ‘I don’t know if this Ruby Tebbutt is a friend of yours? Tell you what, frankly it was men. Men all over the show, like nobody’s business … Once she turned Muslim there was no stopping her. I mean, you’d think at her age … Well, what was I to do? I’m sorry, but if you keep a cake shop, you’ve a reputation to keep up, so it was Off she went …’

The elder Linwood regarded her with some distrust. ‘I met such cases during a long career in the Middle East. However …’

Giving her a savage frown, he left, slamming the shop door behind him. From the vantage point of her window, Mrs Bligh watched him return to his venerable car, parked on double yellow lines. It appeared that as he climbed into the driver’s seat, he and his passenger started an energetic dispute. Then the car pulled away in a series of jerks.

Ruby burst forth from the kitchen, stifling her laughter in a handkerchief.

‘How dare you?! “Rum-looking” – look who’s talking. As for my reputation … You’re as bad as Ray.’

The two women had a good laugh together, controlling themselves only when the next customer entered the shop.

‘Wonder what on earth he wanted,’ Ruby said later, over their cups of coffee. ‘But you didn’t have to make up that crazy story …’

And the more Ruby thought about it, the more she worried. The mere sight of Noel’s approach had triggered all the fears awakened by Ray’s problem at the garage two days ago. Her first notion was that he had been coming to complain – perhaps to say that they should not have lent his irresponsible son money.

On reflection, and increasingly as the morning wore on, she cursed herself for hiding from him. Who knows, perhaps Noel had come in to repay the debt. It was not inconceivable that the old boy would regard it as a social slur to be beholden to people like the Tebbutts.

Or he might have intended to drop in a message from Jean. Jean counted as a kind of friend. The Tebbutts had few enough friends in their exile in this strange part of the world. Possibly Jean was angry with Mike for imposing on Ray; it seemed likely.

And another thing. Bridget’s joking deception might have unpleasant repercussions. If Jean were told that she, Ruby, had been sacked because of affairs with men, that rather strait-laced lady might not wish to associate with the Tebbutts any more – might, indeed, even use this false knowledge as an excuse not to pay back the three hundred pounds.

It was a worried Ruby who caught the bus and dragged her old bicycle out of the hedge that evening. As she cycled home to put the kettle on, she said aloud, free-wheeling down the lane, ‘Ray’s going to be mad at me.’

Their back garden was one of her refuges. After she had dealt with her mother, Ruby went out into the sunshine.

July was almost over and the raspberries were coming on so fast she could not resist, as she passed along the row of canes, reaching under the netting to pick a few fruits. In case the overripe ones, cushiony crimson under sheltering leaves, fell at a touch into the grass and spoiled, she kept her other hand cupped below the clusters. As the fruits eased away, they left little mottled white noses behind on their stems.

Savouring the sweet fruit, she unlatched the gate into the goat’s enclosure. She was bringing the animal the tribute of a stale slice of bread. Tess had a soothing effect on her jangled nerves. She loved the lines of the nanny, its bumps, its curves, its sharp angles. She stroked its white coat lovingly. The goat looked interestedly at her with its inhuman eyes. It knew Ruby meant well.

As she entered the back porch, the phone rang.

She thought immediately that Ray must have run into trouble. But it was their daughter Jennifer on the line.

Jennifer’s voice was always a delight to Ruby, so clear was it, so calm and untroubled, so – what was the word Jenny would have used? – together. Today there was a trace of excitement in that clear voice. Jenny was driving up to Norfolk for the weekend with a young man.

‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ Ruby said, looking hastily round the living-room and thinking how shabby it was. Bolivar had sharpened his claws on everything in sight. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll introduce him when we meet, Mum,’ said the clear voice, possibly with a trace of mockery. ‘He happens to be foreign.’

‘Coloured?’ Ruby asked, and could have kicked herself for letting the word slip out. So unsophisticated of her.

‘Not very coloured. He’s a Czech – from Prague, you know? We are going to stay on the coast, so we shan’t be a burden to you, but we’ll look in for tea on Sunday on our way, if that suits. How’s Father?’

‘Well, Jenny, he’s very upset just at present—’

‘I am sorry, give him my love. See you Sunday.’ And the clear voice was replaced by a dismal whirring tone. Ruby put the receiver down, frowning.

Czech? She’d have to give the cottage a bloody good clean before Sunday. Czech. Presumably he would speak a bit of English since, as far as she knew, Jennifer spoke no Czech. If only the window-cleaner would buck up and come. She’d have to get in another pint of milk. Chocolate biscuits, of course. Perhaps she should bake a cake.

Ruby started to go round in circles, slowly, lighting a ciggy as she did so.

Czech? What on earth did Czechs eat on Sunday afternoons? Ginger biscuits? Something savoury? Perhaps she could ask Bridget Bligh, whose sister had once been married to a Finn. She didn’t want to let her daughter down. It wasn’t as if they saw her all that often these days.

‘I shall get the palpitations,’ she told herself. She went out to the garden to finish her cigarette in the company of Tess and Bolivar.

Friday came. The hot anti-cyclonic weather continued. Ray Tebbutt was working as usual in the garden centre. At lunchtime, he sat under the poplars, resting in their shade and eating a pasty from Mrs Bligh’s shop which Ruby had provided for him.

Gregory Yarker came over, grinning under the brim of his hat, his deep-set eyes in shadow. He was wearing Wellington boots, jeans, and a tattered old multi-coloured pullover his wife had knitted. ‘His looks are against him,’ Tebbutt always loyally proclaimed.

Yarker plonked himself down on the bank beside Tebbutt, saying, ‘How’re you going on? You’ve got something on your mind, that I know. Your wife hasn’t left you, has she?’

‘Nothing like that,’ said Tebbutt, laughing at the idea.

‘’Cos if so, I’ve got a nice piece of crumpet lined up over in Swaffham.’

‘No, no. Thanks all the same.’

‘I shall have to see to her myself, no doubt of it. What’s up with you, then, Ray? It’s nothing catching, I hope.’

Ray took a swig from his can of Vimto. ‘It’s nothing catching, Greg. It’s just I’ve been a bloody fool. I lent someone some money and he isn’t inclined to give it back.’

‘Ah.’ A pause. ‘Perhaps we could creep up on him one dark night and sort of incline him.’

‘It’s an idea.’

‘Do I happen to know this fly gent?’

Letting a little more of the liquid run down his throat, Tebbutt decided to tell his boss everything. Yarker listened intently, sucking a long grass from the hedge behind him.

‘Pity you was carrying that credit card,’ he commented, when Tebbutt finished. ‘They’re a trick of the banks to get you in their power. If you’ve got money, carry it round in fivers. If you haven’t got money, go round with empty pockets. You’re a townee, that’s your problem.’

‘I love the way you blunt countrymen see everything in black and white. What if you’ve got too much money?’

‘Get married.’

‘Or buy a pig?’

‘I’d like to see this bugger Linwood’s eye in black and white. He got you over a barrel proper, didn’t he? Tell you what, go and confront him tomorrer, that’s Saturday, demand your rightful money back, and tell him if he don’t hand it over by Monday we’ll beat him up. That’s straightforward, isn’t it? He should understand that.’

He stretched himself out on the dry ground, hands clasped at the back of his head, satisfied with his own plan.

Tebbutt tried to explain his latest thoughts. ‘I’m afraid the poor sod may not have the three hundred to give back. That’s what I’m afraid of. Having worked with him, I know his problems. If I press him, it may only get him in trouble with his father. I was wondering if it wasn’t better to go and have a word with his bank manager. I know he banks—’

‘What? I must have been falling into a light doze here. I thought for a moment as you uttered the dreadful words “bank manager”. No, you’ve got to have it out with the bugger straight. No other party involved.’

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘’Corse I am, boy, and don’t you never doubt it. Now, time’s up. I ent paying you to lie about drinking Coke. See if you can make an impression on this here soil, and I’ll give some thought to your problem.’

‘Thank you, Uncle Greg.’ He sat where he was for a moment, listening to the second-rate music issuing from Pauline’s radio before returning to his work.

On Saturday mornings in season, Ruby worked and Ray did not. He drove her into Fakenham to the cake shop, keeping the car to a crawl, to the annoyance of other drivers, so that they could talk over anew the problem of the debt. He had hoped for a cheque from Linwood in the morning’s post. It had not arrived.

‘You’ll have to go over to Hartisham and confront him,’ Ruby said. ‘It’s our money. We’ve got every right to get it back. But keep that goon Yarker out of this. You don’t want to be had up for GBH.’ She laughed.

‘Supposing he’s even now preparing to drive over to us and return the money. He did say he’d pay it back by the weekend. Then he’d be offended if I showed up there this morning. It would look as if we didn’t trust him.’

‘We don’t trust him.’

Agnes had been let in on their problem over breakfast since they could not keep it to themselves. Agnes had her own indignant opinion.

‘What you should do, Ray, is get on to your bank and cancel the payment. Don’t let it go through. Three hundred pounds is three hundred pounds, I mean to say. It was a year’s wages when I was a young girl.’

He frowned. ‘Forget about Victorian times. This is now.’

Agnes said no more, withdrawing hurt from the discussion.

It’s no fun stuck in this chair. He ought to understand that. Your bottom goes numb after a bit. Of course I hark back to the old days. I was properly alive then. It’s very rude of him. I reckon it was because of his way of behaving that Jenny ran off and joined the CND. She couldn’t stand her father any more.

Still, all families have their differences, I suppose. I was lucky. Good husband, nice couple of girls, Ruby and Joyce. Well, Joyce was nice till she married that builder. All through the war, I was terrified Bill was going to be killed, him being at sea, but he came through safely. Never torpedoed.

First thing I ever remember was the war. I’d be, let’s see, about seven. That was the Great War … And I was asleep when there was this terrific bang. I remember sitting up in bed. We were living down in Southampton then, of course. I got up and went through to Mum’s room and the far wall was missing. There was the sky and our garden where the wall used to be, and the early morning sun shining in. Mum and Dad were sitting up in bed looking surprised. And what I thought was … sounds silly now … ‘How beautiful!’ I was clutching my golliwog.

So we went to live with Auntie Flo down the road from us. Poor old Auntie Flo, I liked her. She was fun. It would be 1917. Yes, that’s it, because she had lost Uncle Herbert the year before, fighting in France, so there was plenty of room in her house. I was as proud as punch, telling the kids at school as we’d been bombed out.

Years later, perhaps that was after I married Bill, Mum heard me telling someone we’d been bombed out when I was a kid, and she corrected me, saying it was a gas main blew up and not a German bomb at all. But I always somehow connected it with the Germans. The entire wall, gone like that, and the sun shining in, lighting up the room …

Bill and I had a lot of fun … Purser on a P & O liner, so he was away a lot of the time, and I pretty well brought up Ruby and Joyce on my own. But when he came home, well, we always had parties and presents. The thirties … Looking back, I reckon they were the best time of my life. Somehow, after the war, the second one, Bill wasn’t quite the same. He used to be very depressed at times … I suppose we were getting older by then …

Ruby was always our pet. We ought to have made more of Joyce, but she was more difficult. I suppose she’s paying us back now by never having me to stay with her and her husband in their posh house in Norwich … Still, things could be worse. It’s quite nice here, and Ray really isn’t such a bad chap. At least Ruby likes him, and that’s half the battle …

Although Ray had dismissed Agnes’s remark over breakfast, he took her advice and went to his bank.

He always felt apologetic in the bank. Even the modest Fakenham branch oppressed him with its pretence that money was easy to acquire, easy to spend. He looked at the posters on the wall, offering him huge loans so that he could buy a new car or house, or take a holiday in Bermuda; immune to such seductions, Ray nevertheless felt that he was the only man banking here who could not afford to take advantage of such offers.

It had to be said, however, that none of the other customers looked particularly rich, though some wore suits and ties. I’m glad that someone’s keeping up the country’s standards, he told himself and, slightly amused, went up to one of the girls behind the counter. She explained to him in some detail why it was impossible for the manager to interfere with any credit card transaction, which did not go through the bank but through a central accounting system in Northampton.

Was she sympathetic or condescending? he asked himself, returning to the comfortable anonymity of the streets. The little bitch had probably just come off a training course in Purley or somewhere.

He drove slowly out of town and along the road to Hartisham but stopped before reaching East Barsham. Other traffic roared by as he pulled up in the gateway to a field.

By the side of the road a phone-booth stood knee-deep in cowparsley and alexanders. From it he could ring Mike. It would save him the embarrassment of a personal encounter. He sat for a while, thinking over what he would say. As he walked back to the booth, he could hear Mike’s voice clearly in his head. Oh, hello, Ray. I’m sorry you had to ring me. Jean and I were just going to pop over to see you and Ruby – you know Jean has always had a bit of a crush on you. Yes, I’ve got the money, of course. I had a slight problem or I’d have been in touch sooner. We’ll be over in about an hour, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for getting me out of a hole. You know what an awkward cuss Joe Stanton is – trusts no one.

The Linwood number was ringing. It was Jean who answered.

Immediately she spoke, the sound of her voice, the intonations she used, conjured up her face, her figure, and the way she stood. Ray saw in inner vision her dark old kitchen with the portrait of her father-in-law above the grate, and Jean with her dark hair about her cheeks. He also heard the change in her voice when he announced himself.

‘Oh, Jean, hello. How are you? Could I speak to Mike?’

‘Mike’s still over at Pippet Hall. What exactly do you want?’

‘Well, it’s something really between the two of us.’

Her tone was unyielding. ‘It’s about the money, is it?’

‘Jean, it’s about the three hundred quid I lent Mike at the beginning of the week, and I didn’t want to bother you—’

‘I’ve got quite enough problems here, Ray, thanks very much, without being pestered for money just now.’

‘Look, Jean, it’s not a case of—’

In the same undisturbed voice, she cut in, saying, ‘Michael will repay you that money next week, OK? Does that satisfy you, because right now we’re involved with the suicide at Pippet Hall. Goodbye.’

Suicide? Tebbutt said to himself, as he replaced the receiver. What was the cheeky woman on about? Inventing excuses not to pay, rather as he had invented excuses not to stay with Noel Linwood; but at least he’d been drunk on that occasion. What a misery! She was lying – well, forced to lie, of course, because the Linwoods were dirt poor and still keeping up a middle-class façade. Bloody suicide, indeed: ‘bankruptcy’ was the word she was looking for.

Ray took a walk in the field to try and calm down. The sheep moved grudgingly out of his way, as if, he thought, they too had borrowed money from him.

He could write a book about being poor, except that it would be so awful that no one would read it. The poor would not read it. They could not afford to read, they had an increasing contempt for reading, being slaves to the video machine; in any case, they knew all about the miserable subject. The rich would not read it. Why? Because being rich they did not want to know. And why should they?

Every day, almost every hour, brought a humiliation unknown to solvency. He did not want to have that conversation with Jean. Moreover, looked at coolly, the situation was such that she probably did not want to have that conversation with him. She liked him, and maybe more than that, though not a word on the subject had ever passed between them. She too was in bad financial straits, poor dear.

He did not want to be walking about this field, trudging through sheep shit. He did not want to be wearing these clothes – in particular, not these boots and these trousers. He did not want to be wearing his patched underclothes. He would not want to eat whatever it was he was going to have to eat for lunch (nor did he want to call it ‘dinner’, as did most of the people with whom he associated). He did not want his poor wife to work in a cake shop, a sign of genteel poverty if ever there was one.

This evening, he would most probably go out and get pissed at the Bluebell. He did not particularly want to do that, but there was little else to do in North Norfolk on a Saturday night if you had not got two pence to rub together.

When he had walked round the field three times, he went back to his car. He did not want to be driving this clapped-out old Hillman.

What he really wanted was a brand-spanking-new red BMW from the dealer in Norwich. He would whizz over in his sporting clothes to see the Linwoods in their eroded old house in Hartisham. Mike would be out, taking holy orders or something they could laugh about. Noel and the boys would be out of sight. Jean would be there on her own. And he’d say, as he put his arm round her waist, Sorry about this morning. Just testing. Look, forget about that three hundred. Have it as a present. And now you and I are going to scud down to Brighton for a dirty weekend.

That Saturday evening he went as usual to get pissed at the Bluebell. As he left home, Ruby kissed him tenderly and said at the gate, ‘Don’t have too many, darling. Remember Jenny’s coming with her Czech boyfriend tomorrow, and we’ve got lots to do to get ready.’

He always left the car at home and walked to the Bluebell. It was four miles to Langham, but he preferred to walk both ways rather than drive after he had downed a few pints. His mood was cheerful. You generally had a laugh in the Bluebell. True, the company was not exactly out of the top drawer, but they often had good raunchy tales to tell. The incidence of adultery and grosser sexual offences must be higher in Norfolk than anywhere, if the tales they told were to be believed.

As he came to the crossroads and turned right, he overtook old Charlie Craske hobbling in the same direction.

‘Rain’s holding off still,’ Tebbutt said.

Charlie squinted up at him. ‘What you think about Tom Squire’s fruit-packing business failing, then?’ he asked, more in the way of a statement than a question. ‘It’s a bugger, ent it?’

‘What’s that then?’

‘Well, it’s a bugger, ent it?’

Entering the Bluebell, where several drinkers had already gathered, Tebbutt found that the same state of gloom, and the same opinion that it was a bugger, prevailed. They were eager enough to divulge the bad news to Tebbutt, on the principle that there was always enough misery to be shared.

Sir Thomas Squire at Hartisham had an orchard and a fruit-packing business on his grounds. It had rated as a small local success in the late seventies, to be written up in the local papers, shown on Anglian TV. Squire had extended the business and packed for a number of Norfolk fruit-growers. There was even a rumour at one time that he might build a private rail-link from Pippet Hall to Norwich Thorpe BR station. But imports of fruit from the European Community had cut into the trade. Local growers were undersold by the French, Spanish, and Italians.

After losing money for two years, Squire had closed the enterprise down. Ten men had lost their jobs.

A man named Burton, who sometimes brought tame ferrets to the pub, said, ‘That weren’t no reason for young Lamb to go and hang himself, to my mind. Blokes have been kicked out of jobs before this.’ He laughed. ‘It’s always happening to the likes of us.’

‘Very like being sacked crushed his hopes,’ someone remarked. ‘Don’t forget young Lamb were on the verge of matrimony.’

‘Which is a form of suicide,’ old Wilkes remarked slyly. Everyone laughed.

‘What’s this about suicide?’ Tebbutt asked, suddenly recalling Jean Linwood’s remark over the phone.

‘They say Tom Squire found him himself, barely cold, hanging there from a metal beam in the store, among all the crates. Just this morning, it was. A terrible thing to do to yourself, and this young girl he was about to marry from over North Walsham way.’

They all put on solemn Sunday faces and shook their heads before taking another drink.

The landlady, who had been polishing glasses and listening behind the bar, said in her smoky voice, ‘You gentlemen want to get your story straight. As I was told by someone who knows, Mr Billy Lamb did not kill himself because he lost his job. He didn’t even know he was to be declared redundant.’

Her statement was immediately challenged, but she went on unperturbed, resting her fists on her counter as if prepared to take them all on in physical combat if necessary. ‘Reason he done what he did was because the girl, Margy Sulston, who once worked for my cousin at the Ostrich, threw him over. Margy’s quite a decent girl – no chicken, mind you – and as I understand it she couldn’t put up with some of Mr Lamb’s obnoxious habits.’

‘Such as?’ Craske asked.

‘I’m not one to gossip,’ said the landlady with finality, turning away to polish another glass.

To ease himself into the company, which had not yet settled down properly, Tebbutt went over to the counter and bought everyone a round of bitter. They all drank it, except for old Craske, who was reckoned strange for sticking to cider, and Georgie Clenchwarden, who preferred ginger beer shandy.

Swallowing their pints, the company cheered up and began to tell stories of the unfortunate Billy Lamb. The only man there who knew him at all was Pete Norton, a dark-complexioned brickie and plasterer in his forties who worked for a Fakenham builder. He was soon holding them spellbound with details of Lamb’s sex life.

‘There’s a girl works in Boots as I took out a time or two. She’d been with Billy Lamb when he was working in the DIY. She reckoned as he had a problem. Some problem it was too. Seemed Billy was keen enough to get it in but he couldn’t stand the sight of women.’

They all roared with laughter, agreeing he certainly had a problem.

‘So what he done, he borrowed a sheet of hardboard out the DIY, and he’d stick that between them, so’s he could just see her legs and twot, and the rest of her was covered. Bit like screwing a fence, if you ask me.’

This revelation caused much discussion, some debating how long a girl would put up with such treatment, others dismissing the story as a complete fabrication, though later agreeing that nothing to do with sex could be either believed or disbelieved. Only Georgie Clenchwarden, reputed lover of Pauline Yarker, said nothing, sitting back on his bench with his shandy, smiling and listening over the top of his glass.

The Bluebell was a curious pub, with a collection of ornamental shoes on display upstairs. Tebbutt felt himself to be something of a curio in this company, displaced rather like the old shoes.

He took a certain interest in the hollow-chested young Georgie Clenchwarden, whose reported exploits with Mrs Yarker had earned him the sack. This crestfallen lad, who squirmed when he caught Tebbutt’s eye on him, lived over in Saxlingham with a decrepit aunt.

Tebbutt had wondered idly how so insignificant a youth as Georgie could bear a resonant name like Clenchwarden, guessing the family had come down in the world, much as he had himself; this he later found to be the case. In the eighteenth century, the Clenchwardens had owned a large house and estate the other side of Hartisham. Captain Toby Clenchwarden had been a compulsive gambler. One night, playing cards with a group of cronies that included a novelist and pamphleteer, he had staked his mansion on a hand at brag – and lost. The novelist won.

After which, Clenchwarden had ridden his mare back to Hartisham at dawn and roused his wife – so it was reported – with the cheering words, ‘Get up, you sloven, it’s the poorhouse for you today!’

The novelist had taken over on the following morning. The two men, so the story went, shook hands at the gates, one going, one coming.

Since then, it seemed, the Clenchwardens had never lived more than a stone’s throw from the poorhouse.

The company at the Bluebell was three or four pints along the way when in came Yarker with Pauline. Yarker had abandoned his Wellingtons for a pair of trainers – his way of smartening up. Pauline dressed in a common way, in a tight red satin dress which the men admired; as the men often agreed among themselves, she was welcome as the lone female in their group because she had good big tits on her. Pinned over these assets was a white carnation from the garden centre. She wore large bronze earrings made in an obscure country which rattled when she laughed.

Yarker bought them all a round of beer and sat down next to Tebbutt. Clenchwarden sank back on his bench, unwilling to catch his ex-employee’s eye, and tried to drown himself in his shandy.

‘I done well this afternoon,’ Yarker told his employee, genially. ‘Bought a whole load of furniture off of an old girl Dereham way who didn’t know no better. Drove it round to a mate of mine in King’s Lynn and sold it all for ten times as much. Well, eight or nine. Not bad for one afternoon, hey, bor?’

‘Who was that then, Greg?’ asked Burton.

‘Woman name of Fox, whistles when she talks, looks at you out of one eye, keeps an old dog who smells like a bit of used toilet paper.’

The ferret man laughed heartily. ‘That’s my missus’s aunt, Dot Fox. Funny thing happened to her some years back when she was married. She used to live over Happisburgh way, woke up one morning and found her back garden had fallen over the cliff. Apparently she’d been drinking so heavy the night before, she slept through one of the worst storms on the coast for twenty years. What was funny, was her husband Bert had gone out in his nightshirt to see to the chickens, what they kept in the garden shed, and he went over the cliff edge with the rest of ’em. Three in the morning, it was.’

Everyone present roared with laughter. The ferret man followed up his success with a postscript. ‘They found Bert washed up on Mundesley beach a week later, they did, still wearing his nightshirt. Old Dot Fox kept that nightshirt for years as a souvenir. She’s probably still got it, ’less you bought it off her, Greg.’

More laughter, and more drink called for.

Yarker said to Tebbutt, when they were comfortable, ‘You know that line of poplars where you been digging this week? Me and Pauline been thinking. They’re getting on a bit, must be ninety year old, and poplars don’t last that long. We reckon they best come down.’

Tebbutt frowned. ‘They look all right to me. They aren’t that old, are they?’

‘Ah, I can see the notion ent very poplar with you,’ Pauline said, leaning revealingly forward and bursting with laughter at her pun. Soon the whole table was laughing and making puns about trees. I knew a gell but she was a bit of a beech. I ent going to die yet ’cause I ent made no willow.

It was quite an uproarious evening. The suicide was soon forgotten.

Old Craske was unfolding a familiar tale about how, when he was a lad, he had seen a naked woman run through the village with a dog on a lead, and maybe it was a ghost or maybe it wasn’t.

Tebbutt felt an impulse like lust blossom in him. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he announced to the company. ‘When I was in Birmingham, I knew a man by the name of Cracknell Summerfield. A real rough diamond. He made a packet of money at one time or another. I used to go down to this place near London, near Heathrow, where he gave lavish dinners for his clients.

‘Cracknell dealt in swimming pools in a big way. Mind, this was before the Obnoxious Eighties. This time I was down at his place, he was negotiating a deal with some Kuwaitis. There were three of them to dinner, very polite in lounge suits. They were going to finance hotels, Cracknell was going to build the pools and do the landscaping. I was going to print all the prospectuses and brochures. There was also a pretty young duchess there.’

‘Now comes the sexy bit,’ said Yarker, winking.

‘The duchess had a contract to supply all the internal decor of these Kuwaiti hotels. Worth millions. She’d begun the evening very off-hand with everyone, but we’d all had a lot of champagne. She was on Cracknell’s right. His wife was on his other side.’

Am I to go on with this lie? Tebbutt asked himself, but already he heard his own voice continuing the tale.

‘At the end of the meal, Cracknell suddenly turns to the duchess and says, “Show us your quim”, just like that. Instead, she jumps up, pulls off her clothes, every last stitch, and climbs up on the table. There she dances a fandango among the plates, naked as the day she was born, and a sight more attractive.’

Mutterings all round from the company, until Pauline asked, ‘What did the Kuwaitis do?’

‘Oh, they all thought it was a normal part of English home life.’

‘You Brummies had a rare old time,’ Yarker said, enviously.

After closing time, the drinkers staggered into the night air. Langham lay about them, quiet and serious, with the great stone shoulder of the church looming darkly nearby. They stood outside the pub, in no hurry to say goodnight to each other.

Offering to give Tebbutt a lift home, Yarker flung a heavy arm round his shoulders and propelled him in the direction of his car. He ignored Tebbutt’s protestations that he preferred to walk. As soon as her husband’s back was turned, Pauline Yarker grabbed young Georgie Clenchwarden and planted a big kiss on his lips.

The drink had given the lad courage. Returning the kiss, he grabbed as much of her as he could. Someone cheered. In the dark, lit only by the light from the pub windows, in the middle of the road, the two danced slowly together. The others made way for them, muttering encouragingly. ‘Git in there, Georgie boy, it’s yer birthday!’ Slowly they gyrated, while Pauline sang ‘I am Sailing’ into Clenchwarden’s ear.

Turning at the car, Yarker saw what was happening. A kind of war cry escaped him. He rushed forward. Warned by the roar, Clenchwarden let go of Pauline and started to run in the direction of Blakeney, yelling for help as he did so. Burton, the ferret man, with a wit quicker than anyone would have attributed to him, started up his stinking motorbike and ran it between Yarker and his quarry. A swearing match started. The landlady appeared and begged them to be quiet. Tebbutt took the opportunity to escape.

He marched home in a cheerful frame of mind. Though darkness had fallen, the ambience of a summer’s sunset lingered, with a legacy of honeysuckle fragrance. Bats wheeled about the church where, in a few hours, a congregation would be gathering. A harmony of slight noises rose everywhere, from farm and field, comprising the orchestral silence of a Norfolk night. By the entrance to a lane, he halted to urinate under a tree, listening to a leaf fall within the circumference of the branches. He plucked another leaf, pricking himself in so doing. Holding it woozily before his eyes, he made out its sharp outline, with a green heart rimmed by yellow; without being able to determine the colours, he could distinguish their difference. It was a leaf of variegated holly.

‘That’s right, that’s the ticket,’ he said aloud, ponderously. ‘That’s life right enough. Variegated. Very variegated.’

He was impressed by his own wit, and sober enough to stand for a minute listening to the night about him. Even at this distance from the coast, the presence of the sea could be felt, calming, chastening.

That story of the dancing duchess, he reflected, had been an invention to make his past life seem more exciting than it was – to others, but to himself above all. The truth was, Parchment had always been a slog. His uncle had seen to it he was underpaid. He knew Cracknell Summerfield, but no dancing duchesses. Well, you had to make what you could of the moment, and no harm had been done.

Truth was, he rather despised the company in the Bluebell, and despised himself for going there so regularly.

When you think about it, they’re always running down women. What’s the matter with them? Is that just an English thing? Or maybe none of them have had my luck in finding a Ruby in their lives.

It’s impossible to see how things will get better for us. I’m not likely to find a better job. Not at my age.

But at least I’ve got Ruby …

I suppose some would say I’ve made a mess of my life, seeing the family business go bankrupt; the economic climate was mainly to blame for that, but I realize I shouldn’t have trusted the word of a liar and a crook. There were danger signs. I ignored them. I was dazzled by all his money …

Perhaps I’m attracted to liars. I hated being told always to tell the truth when I was a kid because I could see even then how adults were terrible liars and dissemblers.

Still, you can’t say life’s a complete cock-up, he told himself complacently as he slouched down the country road, listening to the echo of his own steps. I had the savvy to marry Ruby.

Shows I know what’s what. First time I set eyes on her. That day she came into the works I was in a bad temper – can’t remember what about now. She brought those samples over from Dickinson’s. I hardly glanced at her and made some crappy remark about the colours. And she answered me so nicely, not at all put out.

So then I looked up. There she was. Neat and bright and slender. So slender, and with a playful air I still catch in her sometimes. You couldn’t really say it was love at first sight, but certainly I took a shine to her there and then. Escorted her to the door, in fact. She was wearing sandals. Watched her going down Bridge Street, thought – oh, what a real darling of a girl she was. I remember it so well, standing at that door. It had been raining; the pavements shone.

Those first impressions have never left me, never have. I was going with Peggy Barnes at the time – let’s see, of course that was the year I traded in my old Triumph for my first car – but I slung her up. In a rather rotten way, sad to tell. Unfeeling sod, I was. It was Ruby awoke tender feelings in me. Maybe the blokes at the Bluebell never had anything like that.

By ringing Ruby’s firm, I got her name. Ruby Silcock. She was engaged to a chap in the tax office, what was his name?, but she agreed to have a milk shake with me in the lunch hour.

Time I’d got to the bottom of that glass, I knew I was mad about her – I didn’t tell her so, of course. Not then. Didn’t want to scare her.

He peered back into the past, recalling how he’d been late back to work that afternoon, so that his uncle had grumbled.

Then we were meeting again. Then she let me take her to the Saturday hop. Oh, to feel that body against mine, to look into her eyes, to move with her!

There was always something restrained about Ruby. Withdrawn, do I mean? Not sexually, mentally. Still is. Not a chatterbox, a blabberer, not like Peggy Barnes, thank God. A girl who can keep a confidence.

Nearly home. You did well then, matey. Not such a ditherer in that instance.

I walked on a sea of thistledown when I found she had a little warmth for me. Happy in a hundred ways. My mind and heart were full of her like being crammed with flowers. Oh, yes, Ruby, darling … how you haunted me, possessed me!

She rang me one day – we’d known each other about three weeks – to say she’d broken off her engagement. Alex was his name. She never told me then how she did it or what happened. It was just off.

Oh, the passion of those days! Me, whose idea of foreplay was to drag my pants down – I was a fast learner. You could never feel that way twice in a lifetime, could you? I sometimes think it’s all gone, then back it comes. We lived in a dream, didn’t know ourselves.

Amazing how it’s lasted. Oh, when I saw her naked … I could have eaten scrambled egg out of her darling armpits.

Well. Ruby, love, pissed though I am, I have to say you make my life worth while. You’re my religion. The Bible.

It wasn’t all lovey-dovey. Christ, was I a fool! When I first met her younger sister, Joyce, I kidded myself I fancied her more. Some kind of madness, just because she was the snappy dresser. Silly bugger. Ruby caught me kissing her. What a row we had! She gave me such a clout! Naturally I was all bull and rubbish, all the time thinking I’d shat on my chips as far as she was concerned. Women know how to stage-manage these things.

That’s long enough ago. We soon made it up. Then when Jenny was coming along, we decided we’d better get married. Just as well. Without a contract, she’d have left me, the way Cracknell Summerfield’s wife left him …

What’m I saying? ’S balls. She’d never do anything like that. Too loyal – it’s part of not being a blabbermouth. She’s a good ’un, is Ruby, a real good ’un. Better missus than any of that lot have got. I don’t think I could face life without her.

I wonder how long it is since we went to a dance? ‘Softly, Softly, Come to Me’ – that was our tune.

He attempted to sing the song aloud, but had forgotten the words, could only remember ‘… and open up my heart.’