The Art of Standing Still (2 page)

‘It's just that I miss you.'

‘Oh, you miss me, do you? You wouldn't be missing me if you'd stayed. How's that tart you left me for?'

Silence.

‘Have you been drinking?'

More silence . . . except for his irregular breathing. It sounded as if he was crying.

‘Jems . . . I'm all on my own here.'

‘Good. Then you know what it feels like.' Jemma pressed the off button and threw the phone back into her bag. She flopped down on her bed, no nearer sleep than before.

So, he was all alone? Well poor him!

ON REFLECTION, JEMMA DECIDED THE NEXT MORNING, DRIED COW PATS WERE
definitely preferable to fresh ones. She wiped her heel on a tuft of grass and picked her way, with increased care, through the field towards the makeshift arena.

She should not have sacrificed practicality for fashion. Had she thought deeply enough about it, she would have realised the hazards associated with a ‘cow-pat throwing contest' would be of a bovine residual nature. If anyone had asked her advice on what to wear, she would have recommended Wellington boots every time. And she would have done well to heed her own advice. But Jemma preferred giving advice to taking it. Anyway, it was too late now. She hadn't time to go home and change. The contest was in full swing and she didn't dare miss a throw.

She caught a glimpse of Saffy Walton, the photographer, zooming in on a grinning man who was holding a bovine pancake aloft as if it were the World Cup. Being on an assignment with Saffy Walton was rather like being trailed by a slightly bewildered gerbil. Oh well, it was going to be one of those days.

Jemma checked her bag – notebook and pen; handheld recording machine, though she preferred shorthand; bottle of mineral water (still, not sparkling), and the note. The note from Richard that she found on her table in the galley last week. The one that she had read over and over, but the words still seemed to say he was leaving and not coming back. It was written on a piece of paper torn from an envelope. Surely two and a half years deserved at least a piece of narrow ruled, if not vellum. She stuffed the crumpled scrap to the bottom of the bag. Then he had the nerve to phone her last night!

‘Come on girl, you've got a job to do.' She waved a fly from her face and set off smartly across the field – as quickly as her impractical footwear would permit.

Jemma believed in self-motivation. If she told herself she could do something often enough, she would come to believe her own words. And it seemed to be working. So far she had spent only an hour on the phone to Lou, alternately sobbing and shouting, another hour stuffing Richard's belongings into several black sacks while listening to breaking-up songs on a late-night radio station, and had, this morning, after several fitful nights' sleep, gone shopping.

The taupe-suede kitten-heel boots were a bribe to herself, like chocolate to follow nasty medicine. They had called to her from the shop window – and they went beautifully with her soft beige corduroy skirt. They had cost nearly half a week's wages, but she could surely justify the expense. She had worn them to prove she was over Richard. It didn't seem to be working.

To her irritation, she noticed that Saffy was wearing sensible green Wellingtons with her baggy jumper and jeans. Her corn-stalk hair was sticking up in all directions. She looked as if she had just crawled out of a barn. Typical local paper! Jemma never quite fitted in with that image – she just wasn't a tweed-cap, green-gilet-wearing country hack. To her, the job with the
Monksford Gazette
was merely a stage, a step, a tread on the stairway to the national dailies.

The realization, however, that the darling little suede boots were infinitely more suited to the paved serenity of ‘Fleet Street' than a field somewhere southeast of Monksford, just served to make Jemma more irked. Only the thought that Richard would have hated them stopped her taking them off, stuffing them into her bag, and carrying on in her socks. That and the fresh cow pats.

‘And the winner of the under eighteens with a throw of three metres, twenty-four is Harry Denholm,' crackled the public address
system. ‘If the next contestants for the freestyle throw – the over fifties – would please step up to the mark.'

The grass in the arena had been flattened by the people of Monksford who had turned out in force to support the event. It was wise to keep in with the locals, so Jemma nodded a greeting to those she recognised. Who knows when the next town scandal or piece of juicy gossip might find its way to her?

It appeared that all the great and good of the town had gathered to watch desiccated cow dung being tossed into orbit. It served to prove what Jemma had long suspected – that not much happens in the town of Monksford.

There seemed to be a lull in the proceedings – that, or maybe there was never more excitement than this – so Jemma headed towards the tea tent for a coffee. She yawned. Perhaps the caffeine would cancel the effects of her sleepless night. Tired and grumpy was not the best frame of mind to attend this event full of fragrant local colour.

‘Bound to be that disgusting instant stuff,' she muttered to herself, trying to avoid the potholes and muddy places on the grass. A short woman with ginger hair came out of the entrance to the tent and almost bumped into Jemma, slopping her tea on Jemma's boots.

‘Watch out!' Jemma shouted. She was about to let rip with a tirade of choice words when she noticed the woman was wearing a dog collar.

‘Oh, I'm so sorry.' The woman said as she started to mop at Jemma's feet with a paper serviette.

‘Ruined! And they cost me a fortune,' Jemma said. The boots, like her day, seemed doomed.

‘I can't apologise enough. I'll pay to have them cleaned. Make sure you send me the bill.'

‘I will.' As if a few pounds would make her feel any better.

The woman wrote her address on a scrap of paper, and Jemma took it. ‘Reverend Ruth Wells,' it read and gave the address of the vicarage. To her amazement the woman smiled.

Jemma did her best to smile back, ‘Thanks – no, really. It is kind of you.' She thrust the paper into her pocket and went into the tea tent. She was pleasantly surprised to find a pot of percolated coffee sitting on a warmer and a large jug of fresh creamy milk. A jolly caricature of a farmer's wife with a flowery frock and a terrible perm served her cheerfully.

She took her coffee and found a seat outside the tent. The tables were covered in blue-and-white checked cloths, each with a china vase holding a posy of wild flowers. The sun was warm on her face and the coffee tasted heavenly. Farmers with chocolate éclairs shared anecdotes with ladies with large-brimmed hats and strings of pearls who delicately nibbled their clotted-cream scones.

Jemma looked around. A young policewoman in uniform stood by the entrance to the tent, sipping from a blue-and-white striped china mug. Should she say anything about the nocturnal shenanigans by the river? A group of teenage boys swaggered past. Jemma remembered their photographs on the
Gazette's
‘Shop a Yob' page. They ‘accidentally' bumped into the policewoman, slopping her tea. She yelled in protest, and the group ran off, with the policewoman in pursuit. Jemma's heart beat a little faster at the whiff of a newsworthy story. She jumped up, leaving her half-finished coffee on the table, and scrabbled in her handbag to find her notebook.

She squinted in the brilliant sunshine outside the marquee. The WPC stood at the gate with her hands on her hips as the lads sauntered up the lane, turning around to shout the occasional curse.

She returned her notebook to her bag. ‘Youths Spill Constable's Tea' would make a lousy headline.

Jemma made her way back to the arena, passing women in flowing summer dresses, twin-sets and pearls, and hats that would not be out of place at Ascot.

At least she wasn't the only one to commit a fashion crime. A woman in a short tight skirt, high heels, and enough foundation on her face to plaster a wall caught Jemma's eye. She tottered around on the arm of a middle-aged man who was wearing a dark business suit. Her pencilled eyebrows zigzagged in irritation as she stumbled over the rough grass. She clung to his arm like a lifebelt. Sweating profusely, he scowled in the September sunshine, and then paused to wipe the sweat from his coarse face. Jemma recognised them as Councillor Alistair and Mrs Amanda Fry. As she took them in she made a mental note: visits to farms – no short skirts, no pinstriped suits, and definitely no kitten heels.

At last, someone to interview! Her heels embedded themselves in the soft turf as she half ran, half staggered, towards a pen where Fry and his wife were admiring a large Jersey cow.

‘Jemma Durham,
Monksford
. . .'

‘I know who you are.'

Jemma thrust her hand out to the man, who shook it reluctantly. ‘Excuse me, Councillor Fry, can you tell me why the council overturned the previous decision not to build a road through Monksford farmland?'

‘No comment,' Fry snapped.

‘Well, in view of local and national protests and evidence from environmental groups . . .' Jemma pressed.

‘I said, “No comment.” '

Fry strode past her and steered his faltering wife towards the exit. Jemma couldn't help wondering if Amanda Fry's unsteadiness was entirely due to her footwear.

She shrugged and tucked her notebook back into her bag. Opportunities are there to be seized. Too bad if they slip out of your grasp.

She located the man she assumed to be Bram Griffin, the organiser of the event, leaning on a gate. She picked a path across the field, skirting round the cow pats and narrowly avoiding the gossip-laden attentions of Mrs Grimsby-Johnson and her Bell Ringers Social Group.

Bram Griffin was wearing a green gilet and wellies. Rather incongruously he was also wearing a large white cowboy hat. She suppressed a grin. He looked like
Horse and Hound
meets the Village People.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Griffin.' She held out her hand, hoping this time for a friendlier response. ‘Jemma Durham,
Monksford
Gazette
.'

‘Delighted, Miss Durham. Are you enjoying the contest?'

‘I can truly say I've never attended anything quite as – ' she searched for the right word ‘ – extraordinary.'

Bram Griffin beamed with delight. ‘Of course you know the best technique to get the cow pat to go the farthest?'

Jemma shook her head. She didn't know, and she didn't wish to know.

He told her anyway. ‘You see, you got to lick your fingers first . . .'

Jemma shuddered and pretended to write it down.

Saffy scuttled over and started to set up her monopod. ‘Why can't she get a proper one with three legs?' muttered Jemma. ‘Excuse me, Saffy. I haven't finished.'

‘Oh, oh . . . I'm sorry!' Saffy fumbled with her lens cap. ‘I'll . . . er . . . come back when you're . . . um . . . done.'

She dropped the lens cap and went down on her knees, still clutching her monopod in one hand, and fumbled in the grass. Bram Griffin looked heavenward as if checking for signs of rain that might spoil his white Stetson, then shuffled his feet, replacing a clod of earth with the rubber heel of his boot. Jemma sighed. Poor Saffy, clumsy, socially inept, and what a start in life when your parents decide to land you with the name Saffron Walton. Jemma quickly dismissed the thought that Saffy's parents might once have spent a night of abandon in North Essex.

Jemma said, ‘Let me hold that,' and took the camera.

‘Oh, thank you,' Saffy said. ‘Just one moment, I'll be out of your way.' She snapped the muddy lens cap back in place, a few blades of grass poking out like flower petals. Finally, she tucked her monopod under one arm and scuttled off to find someone else to annoy.

‘Mr Griffin,' Jemma cooed. ‘I'm so sorry for that interruption. Now if I might ask you where you
got the idea for a cow-pat throwing contest . . .'

Monksford Gazette

Thursday September 8

A PAT ON THE BACK FOR LOCAL FARMER

By Jemma Durham

A
local farmer has found an unusual use for the by-products of the 200 plus dairy cattle on his farm – a cow-pat throwing competition. Bram Griffin, 55, welcomed the public to his Monksford farm last Saturday to compete for the £100 prize and a Golden Cow Pat trophy.

The cow pats are dried in the sun, then thrown, the winner being the person who tosses the cow pat the farthest.

‘I got the idea during a trip to Oklahoma last year. After all, we have enough of the raw material lying around,' Mr Griffin said.

‘There are several techniques, including throwing it like a Frisbee and pitching it like a cricket ball.'

The event also benefited local children's hospice charity, raising over £300 from entry fees and a charity auction.

Mr Griffin said, ‘It was a great way to have fun and do some good in the community at the same time.'