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  ‘It’s most good of you.’ He slammed the door, revved the engine and raised a hand in farewell. ‘See you later!’

  The green Fiat spluttered on its way, and I loped noisomely after it, with a light heart.

  As I turned the corner into our road there were Brenda and Baba enjoying their regular tête-à-tête on the corner by my house. Seeing me coming they stood well back as if I were a bull elephant instead of a nine-and-a-half-stone housewife.

  ‘Morning!’ I trumpeted obligingly. I was a friend to all the world now, and it especially behoved me to be civil to Brenda if I wished her to stand in loco parentis while I attended the Buchfest.

  ‘Harriet, you make us all feel guilty,’ tinkled Baba. She was lying in her teeth, of course. Baba was a tiny, trim, immaculate woman with a bijou, immaculate home, and two seraphic little boys with neat hair and shiny shoes. Her husband travelled in Scotch tape. Their house, garden and garage were in such a state of intensive maintenance that they seemed not just to have kept deterioration at bay but to have put themselves in credit for the next fifty years. And yet Baba and Clive continued to knock through, sand down and do up, to mow, hoe, edge, weed and plant, to wash and vacuum their family saloon and rake their gravel sweep. On the days the dustcart came round, Baba put out one black plastic bag, caught at the top with the length of wire supplied for the purpose. I generally put out three or four such bags, two of which would have been breached by Fluffy in the small hours to expose the tell-tale necks of wine bottles like the heads of vultures gathering at a kill. By their rubbish shall ye know them.

  I stopped, and Spot put his nose up Baba’s Country Casuals skirt.

  ‘Whoopsadaisy,’ said Baba.

  ‘He likes you,’ I said. I wondered if they could smell my special aura, and moved in a bit closer. ‘How was your mother, Brenda?’

  Brenda grimaced. ‘Between her and Trevor I feel stifled, you know?’

  ‘Ah, poor Bren,’ commiserated Baba. I reflected that it would take a lot more than the stringy forms of Trevor and his bat-like parent to stifle Brenda, puffed out as she was with the hot and heady rhetoric of the women’s movement.

  ‘Pity she isn’t with you today,’ said Baba, ‘I’m having a little coffee morning in aid of the Young Wives.’

  ‘Yes … shame,’ said Brenda.

  Baba turned to me. ‘How about you, Harriet? Nice cup of coffee and some hazelnut gateau abut ten forty-five?’

  Fortunately for my eternal soul I was able to answer with absolute truthfulness: ‘Actually I’m expecting someone this morning.’

  Baba treated me to a cutesy little smile. ‘Lucky for some!’ she twittered like the bird-brain she was. I pictured the inside of Baba’s head like the front garden of a seaside boarding house: very miniature, laid out in tiny raised flowerbeds and dainty gravel paths, picked out with shells and gnomes, adorned with filigree trellises and teensy wooden haywains filled with dinky flowers. As anal and repressed a landscape as you could wish to see.

  ‘Yes, I’d better get back,’ I said, feeding her her next cue, ‘ or he’ll catch me in the shower.’

  As I jogged off I heard Baba’s piping laugh. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing, eh, Bren?’

  In fact I had ample time to shower, change, and describe Richard Hawkhurst on horseback before Spot launched into his mega-wuff for total strangers and I saw the transport of delight parked by my front gate. I waited for Dr Ghikas to knock, and then allowed a further thirty seconds of exquisite anticipatory tension to elapse before I opened the door.

  He stood with his tweed hat in his hands, smiling serenely at me over Spot’s hysterically bouncing head. A pair of dark glasses peeped from the breast pocket of his light grey Norfolk jacket.

  ‘Hallo,’ I said. ‘Sorry about the dog.’

  ‘He’s only doing his job.’

  ‘I suppose so. Do come on in and he’ll calm down.’ I closed the door after him. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘That sounds wonderful—are you sure I’m not disturbing you?’

  ‘No, not at all, I’m due for a break.’

  ‘In that case—’ He placed his hat on the hall table, smoothed his hair and followed me into the kitchen. Fluffy was eviscerating a vole near the back door, and I opened the door and booted out both cat and cadaver in one seamless movement.

  ‘Pets!’ I cried. ‘What can you do?’ The buggers had really let me down.

  ‘I’m very fond of cats,’ said Dr Ghikas. ‘We have one at home. Unfortunately, Nature red in tooth and claw, and so on … you can’t change them.’

  ‘You’re so right.’ I filled the kettle. ‘Your book’s there, on the table, I do hope what I’ve put is okay.’

  He glanced at it. ‘Marvellous. She’ll be thrilled to bits.’

  At that moment the phone rang, and I said ‘Excuse me,’ and went into the sitting room to answer it.

  It was Tristan, anxious to impress upon me just how ‘taken’ Vince Priddoe had been with me, and how enormously they were all looking forward to seeing me at the Buchfest.

  Because Dr Ghikas might be listening, I was not as brief with Tristan as I might otherwise have been.

  ‘Of course I do appreciate the importance of the Buchfest,’ I said loftily. ‘But I am loth to take too much time away from The Remembrance Tree at present. I feel it’s important, a much bigger undertaking than anything else I’ve written.’

  Tristan must have been quite flabbergasted by all this which was, for me, a nearly unprecedented stream of unsolicited comments. There was a short, wary silence on the other end, before he said weakly: ‘You are coming, though—aren’t you?’

  ‘I shall certainly try. In the meantime, you will see that wretched watch comes off the cover of LDG, won’t you? And I’d like to see the display material when it’s ready.’

  ‘Of course, no problem.’ Was I mistaken, or did I detect a new note of respect in Tristan’s voice? ‘And please—we all of us here appreciate that writing comes first.’

  I replaced the receiver with a profound sense of satisfaction. For the preceding few minutes, and for the basest possible motive, I had been the cool, authoritative, demanding lady writer of my fantasies.

  Back in the kitchen, Dr Ghikas was perusing my noticeboard with his hands in his pockets. As I poured coffee, he said over his shoulder: ‘ I see your son is a footballer.’

  ‘Oh yes, his world revolves around it.’

  ‘Mine used to at one time. I’m still a keen soccer fan.’

  ‘Really?’ I handed him his coffee. ‘Do you actually play?’

  He shook his head. ‘ I’ve had a bit of cartilage trouble in recent years. But I still go to good matches whenever I can. Who does your son support?’

  ‘Ipswich.’

  ‘I’ve got a season ticket for Ipswich,’ said Dr Ghikas. He sipped his coffee and I crossed my legs. ‘Perhaps he’d like to come along with me some time.’

  ‘What a simply terrific offer,’ I enthused. Now was not the moment to worry whether Gareth, inflamed by the posh seats at Ipswich Town, might besmirch the Blair escutcheon and wreck my chances with the doctor. ‘I’m sure he’d love to.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do then.’

  We sat down at the table. He riffled through LDG, giving me an opportunity to admire again those luxuriant lashes.

  I began to speak, made a noise like a rusty hinge, and cleared my throat.

  Dr Ghikas looked up. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I was going to say—I’ll give your mother a copy of my new one when that comes out. If she truly enjoys them.’

  ‘Oh, she does. And she does like to have a hardback, it’s so much more satisfying.’

  I could see Anna Ghikas in my mind’s eye—a little dumpy, grey-haired figure in black, her face set in lines of profound and disapproving reserve, like the women I’d seen on our last holiday on Rhodes. But what of the Ghikas menage in Basset Parva? That was much harder to imagine. Did Constantine live with his mother, or she with him? Or ha
d I just assumed they lived together?

  Dr Ghikas was still riffling. ‘They call you a romantic novelist, but it’s pretty racy stuff,’ he commented admiringly.

  This reminder threw my picture of the tubby Hellenic matriarch somewhat out of focus.

  ‘A certain amount of humping is de rigueur, I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘I do hope your mother doesn’t find them too risqué.’

  ‘Too risqué?’ He laughed, revealing white, slightly crooked teeth, and an engaging cleft—it was too virile for a dimple—in his right cheek. ‘Absolutely not. And anyway, as you obviously know, humping, as you put it, becomes perfectly acceptable the moment you dress it in period costume.’

  I was conscious of a breakthrough having been made. I had, as it were, broken the loose talk barrier with Constantine Ghikas and had not found him wanting. He had revealed the unsuspected streak of asperity in his nature, like the dash of lemon juice, chilli or Tabasco which turns a delicious but bland dish into a taste experience.

  ‘That’s quite true, I’m afraid.’

  He closed LDG. ‘Time I was off.’ He rose, unfurling his length from the kitchen chair like a banner saying ‘Eat Me’. I licked the condensation from my coffee from my upper lip.

  ‘Thank you so much for the coffee, and for signing the book.’

  Rather belatedly—I had been mesmerised by the very un-English snakeskin belt which he wore beneath the Norfolk jacket—I sprang to my feet. My God, he was going, the book was signed! Short of developing a chronic but non-disfiguring complaint and becoming a kind of bucolic Dame aux Camelias I could think of no way of getting to see him again. My own doctor was Donleavy, Grand Master of the Cervical Smear, and to change would be too obvious.

  I watched, my brain whirring, as he put on his hat—what a seductive action that is, in the hands of the right person. Constantine Ghikas was that person. He slapped his Herbert Johnson titfer atop his head with Runyonesque élan, the brim shading his eyes, the crown cleft just so, like his cheek when he smiled. Lies rose readily to my lips and fluttered forth to settle on him like a net.

  ‘I’m determined not to get dull while my husband’s away this year,’ (better to clear the air of that one), ‘ I’m planning a dinner party, would you like to come?’

  ‘How very kind. When is that?’

  More whirring and clicking. ‘Saturday week. Not at all formal. Just a bunch of friends.’

  ‘It sounds delightful, I’ll definitely try and make it.’

  This was a bit vague for my taste; nothing short of total commitment would do. ‘I might drop a proper invitation through your letter box,’ I said. ‘Whereabouts are you exactly?’

  ‘Oh—’ he felt in his inside breast pocket and handed me a card!

  ‘Lovely, thanks.’

  I saw him out. As he closed the gate behind him—and he amassed brownie points for actually activating the latch so that It remained closed—he asked: ‘How is Mr O’Connell, by the way?’

  For a second I was unable to match this august handle with Declan. When I did I realised I hadn’t a clue how Declan was. So I lied in my teeth. ‘A bit sore, but on the mend, I believe.’

  ‘It’s odd, isn’t it,’ mused Constantine Ghikas, ‘as strong as an ox but simply wilted at the sight of the needle. I’ve heard about people like that but I’ve never actually come across one before.’

  I smiled knowingly. ‘Declan is an original in all kinds of ways.’

  ‘A good worker, though, of the old school, I dare say?’

  ‘Yes—yes, I suppose he is.’ Now was not the moment to launch into my no-holds-barred dissertation on Declan’s short-comings.

  ‘Goodbye then, and thanks again.’ He doffed the hat briefly, climbed into the Fiat and made a getaway worthy of Starsky and Hutch. His driving bore all the hallmarks of the medical practitioner—it was fast, jerky, impatient and bloody dangerous. As I watched the car disappear from view I reflected that some forms of antisocial behaviour, such as illegible handwriting and reckless driving, were perfectly acceptable in a doctor. What a pity that screwing married female patients wasn’t one of them.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Fupbore for the lads,’ opined Robbo Makepeace. ‘That’s what we’re here for. And the day we stop providing that is the day we should all pack up and go home.’

  ‘The thing is though, Robbo,’ said Eric Chittenden, who aside from his other pastoral duties was secretary of Tomahawks YFC, ‘we also exist to maintain a high standard of football in the area, and if we can’t do that I’m not sure I see the point. Quite honestly.’

  ‘This is true,’ agreed Trevor Tunnel. ‘The Under Fourteens have been played off the park the last three Sundays, and if they lose their manager …’ Here a pregnant pause. ‘ No way.’ A shake of the head. ‘ No way.’

  ‘If I may intervene again,’ said chairman Robbo, ‘we are getting away from the central issue here. We are getting sidetracked.’

  We all nodded. The Toms committee was always getting sidetracked. It was habitually to be found, wandering aimlessly, up shit creek without a paddle.

  Tonight we were at least quorate. There were eight of us attending the extraordinary meeting of which Robbo had warned me at King’s Cross the week before. Gathered in the umbrageous chill of the pavilion annexe were Robbo, Trevor, Eric and myself; plus the Atkins, Stan and Nita; unhappy Tanya Lowe, who belonged to things in order to escape her family; and Brian Jolliffe, until now manager of the Under Fourteens, whose resignation was the ‘central issue’ to which the chairman had just referred. We were a polyglot group, representative of church, laiety, farming, commerce, the arts (roughly speaking) and egomania. Of all these factions the last was the most significant since it was contained to some degree in all the others. The Toms committee would not have recognised a dispassionate debate if it had jumped up and blacked their eyes.

  The Reverend Eric Chittenden was a bluff, handsome man who had received the call late in life. For twenty years he had successfully sold electronic components, and he now used the skills thus acquired on behalf of the Almighty. George, I recalled, had always mistrusted him, claiming that Eric’s popularist style was the mark of what he termed a ‘moral lightweight’. But George was alone in this. The regular congregation of St Cuthbert’s in Basset Magna had doubled since Eric’s incumbency, and even diehards who were still gagging on Series Three did not blench when the rector wore a safari suit to the church fete, nor when he took the previous night’s episode of ‘ Dallas’ as the basis for his sermon. He was universally popular, and this for simply doing as he pleased.

  The fact that Eric was secretary, and not chairman, of the Tomahawks, was significant. Splendid fellow though he was, ‘fupbore’was generally recognised to be the preserve of the working man, and the YFC’s supremo was expected to have a social standing commensurate with the task. Other village activities might be run by the landed gentry and the silicone chip brigade on the principle of noblesse oblige. But fupbore was for the lads.

  Besides being chairman of the Toms, Robbo was scoutmaster of the 2nd Basset Troop, and his wife Glynis was Akela of the cubs. I had no idea what Robbo did for a living. Whatever it was it was quite secondary to his role of involved and responsible member of the community. One of the highlights of his year was Remembrance Sunday when, in full quasi-military rig he strutted round the village at the head of a straggling squad of embarrassed teenagers, bawling unnecessarily at them to halt by the war memorial for the Act of Remembrance. So powerfully did this particular juju work on the susceptible Robbo that for a full two minutes his shoulders almost met behind his neck, his knuckles glinted whitely and his Adam’s apple lurched up and down like a drunk trying to stand.

  Glynis had a firmer grip on reality. As Akela she would detail her lieutenant, Baloo, to march at the front of the cubs, while she brought up the rear, moustaches quivering, lanyard bouncing, trefoil glittering like a malign supernumerary eye on the tie which traversed her bust. The great twin pockets of her uniform gave th
e impression that at any moment the buttons might fly open, the pocket flaps rise, and the muzzles of two laser guns appear, to rake the sniggering rank and file with withering fire.

  Her sphere of influence did not end with the cubs. Glynis’s name was spoken with awe wherever two or three were gathered together in the name of the scouting movement, be they the humblest brownies or the loftiest of Queen’s Scouts. And we all knew that when the subject of the Toms’ summer disco came up on the agenda, Robbo would volunteer his spouse as a bouncer, and would not be refused.

  Trevor Tunnel was the hapless manager of the Under Tens, possibly the least sought-after task in the club. Stoically he escorted his rabble of nine-year-olds around the county, exhorting them to get their act together, begging their sheepish parents to support them, standing hunched and dejected on the touchline as all eleven players moved up and down the pitch like a swarm of red and white bees. Occasionally the Under Tens lost sight of the opposition striker altogether in the crush, and tackled each other by mistake, with scant regard for the rule book or even the dictates of common decency.

  To keep Trevor in his place we assured him, often, that his was an important, nay a sacred, task. To him had fallen the stewardship of future Tomahawks stars. He, Trevor, was the custodian of infant talent, and no one else could hold a candle to him in this regard.

  Privately, I thought of Stan and Nita Atkins as the Nutkins. Squirrelish, they were—little busy, sandy, chattering people who might run up your trouser leg when you weren’t looking just to see if your knickers were clean. Under them the Under Twelves were enjoying a period of unprecedented success. They and they alone had got the tricky and time-consuming business of team managership sewn up, what with their camper-van, their cost-price confectionary and orange juice (Stan worked for a supermarket chain) and their nauseating partiality. ‘They’re lovely boys,’ Nita would opine winsomely, and while the rest of us might squirm we had to allow that her attitude got results. The Under Twelves were the pampered darlings of the club, trained to a near-robotic perfection, and enjoying the high morale maintained by the Nutkins’ many incentives. Stan and Nita had no children themselves, which explained a good deal.