Closed at Dusk (8 page)

The Friday after he and Faye had been at The Sanctuary and he had helped that funny little boy (‘Strange how you're always so ready to butt into the lives of total strangers,' Faye had said when he caught up with her in the car park), he had dropped her off at her afternoon job at the cottage hospital and gone back to the fabulous gardens. He paid his two pounds at the white wooden kiosk, scooted up the hill and crouched among the overgrown vegetation on the far side of the coppice. He saw a chiff-chaff and heard a willow-warbler's liquid descending song; a pair of wrens were pecking about under some bushes as if they were looking for last year's berries. And then he saw it – a long patch of off-white underparts – only for a moment, so at first he thought he might be mistaken. The little bird flitted back at once among the branches. When he saw the broad chestnut tail, his heart stopped in its tracks and then raced, and he had to swallow to cope with the rush of emotion that filled his throat.

A nightingale. Once the poets' familiar, now among the rarest of birds. Gone, long gone, Juliet's nightingale – ‘Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree' – because modern farming had destroyed most of the thickets and hedgerows. Last year, there were said to be no more than half a dozen pairs in Oxfordshire.

But here was one, and it was his alone.

Because he had to get to the shops before they closed, Frank had crept quietly away so as not to alarm this shyest of birds. He had pranced down the hill with a great grin on his bony mug. By the lake, little groups of visitors were walking, pointing things out to each other, stooping to peer at a label, sitting contentedly on a rustic bench to take in the whole satisfying English scene, with the strong stone house four-square in its idyllic setting.

Two men with a barrow and an assortment of dogs were thinning out iris corms on a bank by the water. The taller one was lanky in old trousers and open blue shirt, the other balder, shorter, stockier, in clothes too clean and towny to be messing about with clumps of wet iris. They did not look like gardeners.

‘Excuse me,' Frank said when he came across a real gardener raking out a shrubbery bed. ‘May I ask who that might be?'

The gardener straightened up and looked. ‘That's Mr Taylor, Mr William Taylor, that is, who lives here, and that other, that's his brother, Matthew Taylor.'

The next day, after Frank had been up to look for the nightingale again, he saw the lanky one in a dinghy on the lake with the little lost boy and a smashing woman, so he could say jauntily, ‘Afternoon, Mr Taylor. Lovely day for a sail,' and swing over the narrow hump-backed bridge as if he were a privileged customer.

Which he was – oh, he was! Little did they know, those three
people in the boat, laughing about nothing and looking up a little surprised when he greeted them so familiarly from the bridge, that he, Frank Pargeter, had been in the undergrowth up there with his binoculars trained on not one but a pair of little brown nightingales darting in and out among the nettles and brambles with leaves and grass in their tiny sharp beaks, and shreds of sheep's wool to line their home.

No one must know. They must not even know he was a bird man. His Leitz binoculars were concealed in the green shoulder bag one of the children had used to take sandwiches to school centuries ago. He could tell no one, not even Roger, his trusted friend, because ornithologists could not always keep a secret, and if the news leaked out, all the twitchers would come to tick it off on their Must list, and you couldn't be safe from the egg thieves – that gang from Southampton who would flog them illegally, or try raising the chicks to sell to sleazy exhibitions in unpleasant pleasure parks.

He certainly would not tell Faye, who wouldn't care anyway. She didn't mind him birdwatching as long as she didn't want the car. Indeed she was glad to have him out of the house, since the thought of him leaving tea bags in the sink and laying out his photographs on the dining-room table was just as irritating to her whether she was at home or not. But she understood nothing of the subtleties of the hobby, and might, with or without malice, let loose a story to one of her cynical pals, entitled, ‘Frank's Obsession'.

The Sanctuary was only twenty minutes away from Frank's scrupulous red-brick house, with a sodium street lamp that glared into the front bedrooms, where he and Faye had brought up their children in fear of the main road, before the motorway rose behind them to deafen them with safety.

Faye was often busy – bending down four-square from her elephant's rump in the garden, into which beer bottles and
hamburger containers sailed from time to time, or doing afternoons on the hospital switchboard, where she gave the third degree to enquirers from behind the desk in the highly polished entrance hall, a skating rink for dithery old ladies. So Frank was able to come to The Sanctuary often. Sometimes he saw the nightingales, sometimes he didn't. It was getting too expensive to come in by the visitors' entrance, but reconnoitring farther up the hill, he had found a gap in the crumbling boundary wall and a farm track where he could leave the car hidden behind a disused storage shed.

Under pretence of going to a meeting of his local branch of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, he was even able to sneak in here one night, his heart on tiptoe, and lie silently on a bed of bracken to hear the bubbling clicks of the ‘Chook-chook-chook' rise to the intoxicating crescendo, ‘Piu, piu, piu,' as if the bird would never stop. One down for you, Faye, with your church choir and your all-girl hand-bells. Only the male can do this.

One afternoon Frank scrambled over the wall to discover the best treat of all – the male bird with half a worm in its beak, nipping across the open space between two bushes as if there were a sniper in the trees. So the old lady was on her eggs. It was all going according to nature's plan, and Frank's summer was made. Because his hiding place must be twenty or thirty yards away, he would never set eyes on the nest itself. But she was sitting, that was sure. The old man would not be out doing the shopping unless she was employed. You and me both, mate.

It was a bit chilly today and raining on and off, so he stole out of his hide. Too early to collect Faye. He would drop down the hill, heel and toe with elbows going to warm up, and have a reviving cup of tea in Mr William Taylor's delightful tea-room.

He knew the nice comfortable woman with soft brown hair and amber glasses, but not this younger, quicker one with black hair and a dark Mediterranean glance who filled his teapot from the urn.

‘Where's Ruth today?' he asked.

‘Taken a bit of time off, as the weather's made this a slow day. I'm in charge, ha ha.'

Frank put the teapot, milk, a cup and two cakes on his tray and carried it to a table near the counter. There were only a few tables filled. The woman was not busy. When she brought him hot water, she said, ‘Not your first visit here, then?'

‘Oh, no, I come fairly often.'

‘I don't blame you. It's gorgeous, isn't it, the flowers and trees and the whole … the whole …' She sketched the beauties of The Sanctuary with generous gestures of her arms and hands.

‘Oh, yes, I agree.' He liked her wide smile and the high pointy breasts under the immaculate white shirt, about two feet higher than where Faye's were now.

‘And the birds.' She put her head on one side. ‘Even though there's cats about, and I gather there always have been, with a temple raised in their honour, there is birdsong everywhere in the blossoming trees.'

‘Nesting time,' Frank said. ‘The males warning interlopers off their territory.'

‘I don't care if it's a male macho thing.' She gave him a wag of the head, as if he might be guilty of that himself. ‘It's sweet to your ears, just as the garden fills your eyes.'

‘Are you a bird person then?' Frank asked. The RSPB ought to have a secret finger sign, like the Masons.

‘Oh, yes, I am.'

A lesser man might have been tempted to tell her the great secret. Her warm red mouth would stretch even farther
sideways, and her dark eyes would be entranced. But with Frank, it was safe. When he paid she said, ‘See you again, perhaps?' and he replied glibly, ‘Doubtless. I'm studying deciduous trees at the agricultural college, doing a thesis on some of the more exotic variations that have been able to thrive in this part of the country.'

He had worked that up to explain his frequent presence here, if necessary. It was useful to be able to try it out.

Coming to work one day on her bicycle, Jo was passed by a sporty red car with a woman driver, and a small boy in the back seat. The car put on its indicator, slowed, then turned under the wrought iron arch between the stone pillars of The Sanctuary. A small woolly dog was standing on the shelf inside the back window, wagging its tail.

Too early for garden visitors. Must be someone for the house. As Jo rode slowly down the drive between the cande-labras of the chestnut trees, she saw the car circle the gravel space and stop by the front door.

At the turn-off to the stableyard Jo dismounted, wheeled her bicycle to the rearing pony statue and leaned it against the base. Then she stepped quickly along the wall that separated the front of the house from the back entrances and outbuildings. A niche at the end of the wall held an urn of dark pink geraniums. If anyone saw her, she was picking out dead flowers, devoted servant of The Sanctuary that she was.

A young woman with shoulder-length, bright brown hair, wearing a short white skirt and orange top, was reaching into the car for bags. The dog jumped out and ran up the steps and barked. The little boy got out and started after it. The woman called to him, holding out a small bag, but he went on up the steps and put his puny weight against one of the great double doors of the fortress and went inside. The woman threw the
soft bag up to the top of the steps, shut the door of the car and turned to follow him. Round the open front door came the head and shoulders of William Taylor. The bright-haired woman looked up with a radiant smile of greeting.

Tessa Taylor! The old vile pain of hatred surged up from deep within to flood Jo's battered heart and pound in her brain so dizzyingly that she had to lean against the flower urn for support.

Jo had seen Tessa's picture once in a magazine, with Rex at a party, half naked at the top, silky black trousers clinging to every curve and crevice. As Mr Taylor came down to take her bag, she kissed him on or near the mouth, and bounced up the steps and through the door, her bottom wagging the pleated skirt from side to side.

Dirty tramp. Now that the first agonizing moment was past, now that Jo had seen her at last, the turmoil was calmed and the steep breathless rise in her expectation of waiting was halted. Plenty of time now. Now was when it all began.

She turned away from the geranium urn and wheeled her bicycle across the courtyard, head up, the thick rubber soles of her white working shoes springing on the cobbles.

She did not see tarty Miss Tessa any more that day. Ruth talked about her and the boy Rob while they were getting the teas ready, as she relayed to Jo any news of family or friends coming and going, like a daily newspaper. When Jo went up to get the last batch of baking out of the oven, she saw the child with his grandmother in the kitchen –
Rex's child
.

‘Hullo, Jo,' Dorothy Taylor said. ‘Something smells good.'

‘Bath buns.' Jo bent to lift the old dark trays out of the Aga.

‘Look, Rob, here's a new friend.' The boy's grandmother pulled him gently from behind her, where he had taken refuge from this stranger. ‘This is Mrs Kennedy, who's working with Ruth in the tea-room.'

‘Oh, he can call me Jo, like everyone else. Would you like a hot bun, Rob?'

He nodded, and she put a Bath bun on the table, where he and Dorothy were making a salad. He was a thin child, long-legged in short shorts, forelock of dark hair hiding his cautious eyes. Not his father's eyes. Not that look of bold, world-conquering amusement. But the perfectly drawn wing of eyebrow had been passed on, giving his small face an unchildlike definition.

That evening in her small cottage two miles away, Jo went upstairs to review herself in the mirror behind the cupboard door.

Perfect. In the unlikely event that any of these people or their friends had ever seen her before, they would not recognize her. Even Rex might not know her, if he came here, which she had gathered from Ruth he never did.

‘Right, Marigold,' she said to her reflection, then dropped the Jo-speak that came so chummily through the stretched smile, and let her face and voice fall back to her own quiet, unstressed style. ‘You're all right.' Jo's eyes looked back at Marigold through the dark tinted contact lenses that she had told the optician were needed for a film part. If her eyes had been born coal black like a Hardy heroine, instead of that washed-out sandy green, her life might have been different.

She took off the pretty bucolic uniform and threw it down the stairs to wash. If the fine weather held, tomorrow would be a busy last Saturday in June, and she must always be good Jo, spotless and perfect, the tea-room treasure. She removed the firmly padded bra, pulled a cotton sweatshirt over her modest breasts, and took off her bracelets and the large white and gold ear-rings: daisies, to match the flowered skirt. Marigold had usually worn small gold or pearl studs, but the whole costume jewellery department could be a playground for Josephine.

Downstairs, she poured a glass of wine, and went out into
the tangled garden between her cottage and the Richardsons' patchy 1920s bungalow, where they cooked fish and bred Siamese cats. Most evenings she hacked away at the jungle with a sickle Mr Richardson had lent her. Gradually the sodden ruins of a grass plot were emerging from the undergrowth that slothful tenants had allowed to lay siege to Bramble Bank. Soon she would borrow a mower and cut the chickweed and plantains and mosses down to something that resembled a lawn, in case any of the Taylors demeaned themselves enough to pay a call on good old Jo.