Читать книгу The Old Girls' Network - Judy Leigh - Страница 9

Pauline lay awake that night, wondering if it had been a good idea to welcome Barbara into her home so readily. Of course, they were sisters, family, and Pauline wanted somehow to try to close the gap between them that had stretched over the years. They were both in their seventies now: she’d hoped Barbara would have mellowed. But she might never change.

That evening, she’d made them a delicious dinner, opened a bottle of wine and chatted nostalgically about their childhood. She’d reminisced about their parents, her beloved father, a holiday in Bournemouth, and for a moment she thought the ice was beginning to melt. Then Barbara had said she didn’t like overcooked potatoes; she remembered the weather in Bournemouth had been dismal that week and now, all these years later, look where they were now: both alone and both old.

Pauline clamped her lips together in the darkness: if Barbara became too difficult, she would simply ask her to leave. After all, it was her home. She closed her eyes and dragged her thoughts to the summer. It was always fun in Winsley Green during the summer; cricket matches and dancing and fetes. She smiled and drifted into sleep.

During the early hours the temperature plummeted, and it snowed heavily. When Pauline woke at eight, someone was banging on the front door. She pulled on her dressing gown and padded downstairs. She pushed the door open onto a rigid bank of drifted snow. Shivering, she stared into the bright eyes of Len Chatfield. He had a huge piece of mobile farm machinery parked by her gate, a sort of tractor with a digger at the front.

‘Len?’

He nodded, rubbing his whiskers with a flat hand. ‘Expected snow today. Cleared the path for you. Thought you might need to get your car out, drive into Winsley Green, get groceries. Brought you this. Not much left in the shops.’ He stretched out a stiff arm, clutching a carton of milk. ‘Panic buyers got most of it already, I reckon.’

Pauline smiled and pushed a hand over her hair, still in its clip and dishevelled. ‘You were right about the snow in April.’ They stared at each other for a moment. ‘Well, thanks, Len. That’s thoughtful. How much do I owe you?’

‘Oh, no…’ he began and was cut off by a shrieking voice behind Pauline.

‘For goodness sake, shut the door. It’s like Siberia in here as it is.’

Pauline shrugged. ‘Ah, Len – my sister, Barb—’

Barbara pushed forwards, stood behind her sister, her hands on her hips, and stared at Len, taking in his shabby overcoat, the carton of milk and the digger at the gate.

‘I must say, they go to all sorts of lengths here to do the milk round. Well, come in if you’re going to. Don’t freeze us all to death.’

Len pushed the milk into Pauline’s hand. ‘No. No time. Got work to do. Sheep. Lambs. Digger.’ He turned and shuffled away, his boots making deep prints in the pure snow.

Barbara boomed, ‘How very strange. Why on earth do they make the farmers deliver milk around here? And in cartons too. It’s quite incredible. And he’s cleared the pathway for us. How useful.’

‘He’s a nice man.’ Pauline murmured to herself, watching him clamber into the tractor by the gate. She eased herself to her full height.

‘Right, Barbara. Let’s make a fire in the wood burner, get a good blaze going and have some breakfast.’

The snow stayed for three days. Pauline spent most of the time in the kitchen cooking, humming to herself as she worked while Barbara read a book about hiking in the Lake District. On the fourth day, a Thursday, the soft snow became dirty slush, and life in Winsley Green returned to its normal routine. The shops had bread and milk again in large supplies and cars swished up and down in the roads, their tyres turning sludge into murky water which gurgled down the drains. The skies were bright; the buffeting wind a reminder that winter had stayed too long. Buds pushed out from bark and stems, sticky sap smelling sweet and a golden sheen illuminated fields and trees, promising warmth. It was mid-April and spring had finally arrived.

The Jaguar F-type in British Racing Green was motoring briskly down the M5. Bisto huddled in the passenger seat and glanced at the driver, a smart young man in a peaked cap, frowning, concentrating on the road. He must be in his thirties; clean shaven, a rounded determined chin, fair hair like silken corn sticking out beneath the cap around pink ears. The young man had been very kind, offering him a lift from Swindon to just beyond Taunton, which was as far as he was going.

Swindon. Bisto squeezed his eyes shut and when he opened them, he glanced down at his clothes, mud-stained and unkempt. He hadn’t had a shower in several days and he hoped the young man’s rakish aftershave would conceal his own sweaty stench. Bisto rubbed a grubby hand around his bristly chin, scratching his four-day growth with dirty nails. He pushed fingers through his mane of white curls. He badly needed to use a comb, but he had nothing. No suitcase, no toothbrush, no wallet. He’d lost it all. If only, he thought, and a sigh shuddered from him. It was a lifetime full of ‘if only’… it had all worked out differently to the way he’d hoped.

He shouldn’t have drunk the two pints of Guinness on the ferry from Dublin. He’d been chatting to a pleasant young couple and dozed off. When the steward woke him up, the boat was almost empty and his rucksack was gone, containing his wallet, his rail tickets and the paperwork for the ferry to France. He was lucky that his passport and iPhone had been in the inside pocket of his jacket. He’d texted his son Barney that he’d hitch a ride to the ferry port and then ring him – they’d sort out a ticket from there. But he’d never made it as far as Plymouth.

The weather had been awful – drifting snow, blizzards, intense cold. He’d waited ages for a lift from Manchester, been dropped not far from Birmingham. It was then he’d slipped over on the ice into a mound of mud and slush, ripped his jeans and become soaking wet. Two hours later, a lorry bound for London picked him up and he realised he’d miss the ferry, so he’d asked to be dropped off at Swindon.

He’d stopped in Swindon to see Randeep. They’d worked there together twenty years ago, but as usual Bisto had lost touch, put things off, not sent a card or a text for – how many years? Too many. It wasn’t that he didn’t care – he did, but memories brought so much pain with them. Then suddenly he was filled with an urge to see his brother-in-law, to hug him, to see the familiar smile and to ask for help. He’d hoped Randeep and his wife would be at the same address; when he knocked, Ruchi had answered the door and not even recognised him.

Bisto sighed. How would she have known it was him? He was bedraggled, dishevelled, old. Ruchi, always so beautiful, her eyes shining, told him that Randeep had died five months ago. Bisto had cried there and then, wept bitter tears for Randeep and for his other loss, the funeral in Dublin last week, still too raw in his throat and chest to speak about or to comprehend.

Ruchi had asked him to come in; she’d offered a meal and he should have asked for a bath and to borrow an old coat of Randeep’s. But he couldn’t. He was sad and miserable, and he was too filthy and unkempt to go into their house and tread his soiled boots on the plush carpet. It didn’t seem right after so many years of forgetfulness and besides, it brought the pain of Nisha’s death back again. He still thought of his wife, every day, and it had been years now since she had passed.

Bisto had mumbled that he’d be in touch soon and turned away. That night he’d slept in the bitter cold under a tree near a service station. He’d thought he deserved no better. Damp with dew and shivering, ice in his beard, he’d been offered a lift as far as Taunton by the kind man in the Jaguar who was buying petrol.

A gentle voice brought Bisto from his thoughts. ‘… and we’re nearly there now. I’ll drop you in the main street, shall I?’

Bisto nodded. ‘Fine, yes. That would be fine.’

The young man kept his eyes on the road. ‘And how will you get to Plymouth? To the ferry? You have a place in France, you say?’

Bisto wiped his grubby face on his grubbier sleeve, noticing the dirt engrained in the fabric of his jacket and the fabric of his skin. ‘Yes, I have a place in the Loire. My son is there. Sure, if I hadn’t lost my wallet and tickets…’

The young man slowed the car, stopping by an old village hall. ‘This is as far as I go now. I live at the end of that long drive.’

‘Well, okay – thanks, then.’ Bisto grabbed the door handle, then as an afterthought he held out his hand to the young man, who was instantly dismayed at the sight of the grime embedded in the lines of his palm. The young man took his hand and squeezed it.

‘Nice to meet you, Mr—?’

‘Mulligan.’ Bisto pulled his hand away. ‘Bisto Mulligan.’

The man met his eyes with sparkling blue ones. ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that you lost your wallet, Mr Mulligan. It sounds as if you’ve had a horrendous time in Dublin.’

Bisto scrutinised the open expression and he knew the man didn’t believe him. ‘I lost the wallet and my luggage and tickets on the ferry to Liverpool.’

The young man gave a cheery smile. ‘Well, I hope you won’t mind if I offer you something. May the luck of the Irish be with you and with me too. Here you are.’ He tugged off his cap, ruffled a hand through the silky blond thatch and took out his wallet, fingering two twenties and pushing them into Bisto’s hand.

‘God bless you,’ Bisto mumbled, a saying that owed more to the Catholic priests of his Dublin schooldays than his own faith.

‘I hope it will help you get back home. There’s a number eleven bus across the road which will take you to the station at Taunton.’ The young man smiled again, a charming grin, boyish and good-natured. ‘I’m Hugo Garrett, by the way.’

‘Pleased to meet you. And very many thanks to you indeed, Hugo, for your generosity.’

Bisto slithered from the Jaguar, watched it glide away, and waved his hand towards the fading throaty sounds of the engine. His hand held two notes. Forty pounds. He could afford a ticket for a bus, and maybe a train, even a sandwich. He turned to cross the road and a sign caught his eye, swinging in the wind on the side of a large white house with a thatched roof. The sign showed a picture of a cartoon sheep, all smiling face and curly wool, holding up a pint of beer. The sign proclaimed the place was called the Sheep Dip Inn. He rubbed a hand to his eyes. The last few days had been some of the worst of his life. Bisto screwed the twenty pound notes in his fist and muttered beneath his breath.

‘The hell with it. I fancy a quick gargle. A fool and his money are soon parted, eh, Bisto?’

A tall man with neatly cropped dark hair and a t-shirt which proclaimed it was BEER O’ CLOCK was wiping glasses behind the bar. He was probably in his forties. He was talking to an attractive woman of the same age, her hair in a long chestnut plait, wearing a dark shirt and denim dungarees. The man had an accent Bisto couldn’t recognise. He leaned on the bar and caught sight of himself in the long mirror behind it, a short scruffy man in his mid-seventies, his white hair thick and curling over the collar of a putrid blue jacket. Bisto knew he looked like a vagrant. He snorted softly to himself: he was a vagrant right now. There was no other word for him, except perhaps tramp. Or drifter. He wiped his nose; the nostrils were damp and his fingers came away wet.

The man behind the bar turned to the woman. ‘Justina?’

Bisto scrutinised his own face in the mirror again. His eyes were shining, circled with dark rings, from the cold and the lack of sleep. He had an uneven grizzled beard. His breath tasted funny in his own mouth. The woman leaned forward against the bar, languid and sleepy.

‘What can I get you?’

Bisto noticed she had a slight accent, similar to the man’s, but he couldn’t place it. ‘I’ll have a half of your Murphy’s.’

The woman shrugged and selected a clean glass from above her head. The man was watching him carefully.

‘Are you just passing through, friend?’

‘Well, you’d be about right,’ Bisto nodded. ‘I have a château in France. I’m on my way there now. I just thought I’d stop for a quick one before I’m off again.’

The man raised an eyebrow; he clearly thought Bisto wasn’t telling the truth and Bisto wasn’t surprised. He glanced down at himself, unkempt and dirty. He groaned – his outside appearance was nothing to how dreadful he was feeling inside. The woman handed over the beer. Bisto grasped his glass and made his way over to a dark corner, making himself comfortable in his seat before he supped the top from the Murphy’s.

He gazed around the bar. There were two people seated separately. One was a young man with neat dark hair and a full beard, sitting on a stool sipping coffee. The other was a woman with long grey curly hair, perched over a laptop, a glass of red wine on the table. She wore little round glasses and tapped the keys delicately. Bisto thought she looked like a studious fairy. He nodded over to her.

‘Hello,’ he murmured. ‘Are you writing poems?’

She shook her fluffy hair and turned piercing grey eyes on him, quizzically, like a Siamese cat. ‘It’s a novel, actually.’

‘A novel, is it?’ Bisto sipped his beer. ‘And are you famous? Have I heard of you?’

‘You may have.’ She wriggled in her seat, a sort of provocative curling of her body. ‘I’m editing my next bestseller. I’m Tilly Hardy.’

‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Tilly. I’m Bisto Mulligan.’

‘Bisto? That’s an unusual name.’

Bisto chuckled. ‘I was always sniffing up at my mammy’s cooking when I was a snapper, a face like the kiddies in the gravy advert. She gave me the nickname herself.’ For a moment, he became pensive, then he tipped the glass to his mouth. ‘Can I get a lady writer a drink, Tilly?’

She made a face. ‘I’m just a writer and no, thanks. This Shiraz will last me. I have just this one passionate scene to edit and then I’m finished and off home.’

Bisto stood up, plucking his glass from the table. ‘This didn’t last me five minutes. I’d better slow down.’ He ambled to the bar, plonking his empty glass in front of the barman. ‘Same again, will you, friend?’

The barman remembered what he had ordered, pouring Murphy’s without a word. Bisto caught the eye of the dark-haired bearded man seated on the stool, finishing his coffee. Bisto leaned over and called out, his voice too loud. ‘Can I fill your cup for you with another one of the same?’

The dark-haired man shook his head. ‘Thanks, no. I’m on my way back to work in a moment. I just popped over for a quick shot of caffeine.’

Bisto lifted his glass. ‘Sláinte.’ He glugged a mouthful and smacked his lips. It was warm and homely in the bar. ‘So, you’re on your lunch break? What is it that you do?’

The bearded man drained the dregs from his cup. ‘I’m a GP. I share the local practice with my wife.’

‘Doctor, eh?’ Bisto’s eyes twinkled. ‘You sure I can’t buy you a scoop? It can’t be easy, the both of yous being doctors in one house.’

The man met his eyes, his own a little misty, then slid down from the stool and picked up his bag. ‘Thanks, no. It’ll be just me soon. My wife’s about to go on maternity leave.’

Bisto sipped his Murphy’s. ‘Ah, a kiddie on the way eh? Oh, that’s grand. I remember when I … ah.’ He gazed into the murky swirl of his glass.

Bisto watched the bearded doctor walk away and a feeling of sadness stuck in his throat. He turned back to the barman with the cropped hair, wondering where the pretty woman with the chestnut plait had disappeared to. Then he lifted his glass carefully and slunk back to his seat in the shadowy corner. The novelist Tilly Hardy had gone. He thought about the last few weeks in Dublin, and everything that had happened. He’d been smartly dressed then, he’d had money, but he’d carried a heavy pain in his heart that still hadn’t left him. He finished the last mouthful of beer, taking a long draught and enjoying the taste of bitterness on his tongue.