Authors: Gillian White
At once Donna, with her scarf trailing behind her, began to climb a hill of soft furnishings. Her bootlike slippers were already soaked from their short trek through the garden. Cushions and rugs fell down like scree behind her and she called back over her shoulder, ‘The bleeding Buckpits don’t approve of Chad using the premises for what they call business purposes. They’re saying they never gave permission for it to be used as a business. But the truth of it is they don’t like to see anyone else doing well. They want him out. They’re just bleeding jealous.’
Jealous? Of this? The climb was fairly hazardous, with a very real danger of sinking into the mess of soft furnishings.
‘How long has he lived here?’
‘Oh, years. Ever since he arrived they’ve wanted him out, but he’s got rights on his side, see. If they go to law it’ll cost them an arm and a leg. He and the Buckpits don’t get on. But then, no-one who lives in this valley gets on. It seems like a condition of residence: you have to hate your neighbours.’
‘But people seem to have tried to help Stephen. Mr Horsefield, for example… even Mrs Buckpit…’
‘They only did what they had to. Chad only stays here ’cos he’s an obstinate bastard. He’d be far better off in town with a garage and a market stall. If the Buckpits’d leave him alone he’d go like a shot.’
Over the first mountainous pile and then they reached the floor behind and the going got easier. They reached the narrow passage through a ceiling-high collection of junk. The smell of mould was pungent. Unpleasant outcrops of fungus massed along some of the rivets and frost made elaborate patterns on the insides of the whitewashed windows. All the exertion made them breathless, but Donna managed to pant between breaths, ‘Most of this stuff’s not decent enough to flog, that’s why it’s still here. Every so often Chad has a fire and gets rid of most of the crap. Now where did he put Stephen’s stuff?’
Georgie felt her annoyance growing. Stephen’s belongings were piled high at the furthest end of the carriage, awaiting transportation through the double doors at the end, under the battered exit sign. ‘It would have been easier to come this way but the doors bolt from the inside. The whole thing’s a pain in the arse,’ said Donna, her breath hanging whitely in the stale, dead air. ‘You can never find anything you want in this bloody lot.’
So these were Stephen’s bits and pieces. Perfectly adequate. Nothing fussy, but nothing particularly objectionable either. Georgie sorted through as well as she was able. A nicely scarred pine table which would fetch a bit at auction, a couple of easy chairs and a dresser, an overstressed sofa and a put-you-up that must have been used as a spare bed. The lamps were good ones, a selection of well-worn Turkish rugs which would have done well on Cramer’s stall, a few eye-catching blankets and cushions along with two gigantic vases. With this collection of odds and sods the atmosphere at the cottage would be totally different, and Georgie felt a dull sense of sadness that she would never see it this way. And by not claiming it now, by allowing Cramer to keep the lot, she felt she was handing over something, something precious she needed for herself.
‘Well, whaddya think?’ Donna viewed her activities with a lack of interest and the odd wet sniff. ‘Whaddya gonna do then?’
‘Some of it’s quite nice,’ said Georgie, ‘it won’t sell for peanuts.’
‘It won’t make a bleeding fortune either.’
‘Storing it here’s not going to help.’
‘The TV and the fridge, like the radio and the heaters, will be over there with the rest of the electrics. Chad needs to check them before he takes them out.’
Yes, he probably removes all the plugs to sell separately. ‘Safety conscious, is he?’ asked Georgie sharply.
But Donna began to unfold a chest-high package of blankets. ‘These are some of the pictures, but I think there’s more upstairs in the house. Chad says Stephen never sold them for much, bread-and-butter paintings, he calls them.’
Well, he would say that. She looked at them with interest. None were framed. All were in oils, some so fresh they looked wet. There was no space in the railway carriage to step back for a good impression, and from close up they looked oddly childish, daubed even, with little thought, done on impulse, in a terrible flurry of urgency lest something be overlooked or forgotten, some quick emotion lost in the terrible staleness of life. Staring at them so objectively felt like prying.
Georgie was suddenly too close for comfort.
A little sob jerked in her throat uncontrolled. Why did she think about Angela Hopkins? What aspect of these pictures took her mind straight to that? Donna looked at her curiously.
‘Let’s get them out of here,’ said Georgie quickly, and this proposed plan of action suddenly felt so absolutely urgent that she stifled the urge to hack out a route through the junk in order to let these feelings of Stephen’s get to some space for breath and light.
It was something akin to panic.
‘We can unbolt the doors from here,’ explained Donna, climbing on a rickety pile of kitchen tables to reach the locks.
‘It might have been helpful if Chad had come, too.’ The thought of that surly good-for-nothing stretched out by the fire, toying with his gun while they worked so strenuously out here in the cold to undo his lawless actions, the thought of this drove Georgie wild. So it was then, out of sheer frustration and tiredness, that she suddenly decided, ‘Damn it, and I want the furniture returned, too, put back in the cottage exactly how it was. But I have no intention of doing it myself, that’s up to Chad.’
‘He’ll be well pissed off to hear that,’ remarked Donna matter-of-factly, still puffing, stacking the pictures beside the rusty carriage walls on a piece of cardboard packaging to protect them from the snow. Georgie handed them to her carefully one by one.
‘Well, that’s just too bad I’m afraid. Even if I do decide to sell the cottage immediately, it will look more attractive fully furnished, just as it was, and the buyer should have first option on the contents. I don’t see why I should accept some handout from Chad on the strength of his opinion of its worth. And I certainly won’t let the pictures go.’
‘You’ll have to tell him,’ said Donna uneasily.
‘Oh, I will.’
‘It’ll be a right piss-off for him to have to return all this. For nothing, too,’ added Donna, wiping her nose on her overlong sleeve. ‘Rather you than me.’
‘Maybe it’ll teach him a lesson.’ Georgie climbed down from the carriage doorway and started to count the pictures. ‘There’s twenty here, now let’s go back inside and see what there is upstairs.’
Donna was more uneasy than ever. ‘Oh, please don’t tell him I told you.’
She might be afraid of Chad but Georgie couldn’t care less. ‘I’m sorry, Donna, but I have to. This is my property and I want it back. All of it.’
‘I shouldn’t have sodding said anything,’ wailed the red-nosed waif, her sparkling blue eyes watering badly.
Georgie ignored her. This was between her and Chad. ‘Now, what can I put these pictures in to get them safely home?’
‘There’s the wheelbarrow.’ And Donna eyed the Christmas card, snow-lumpy barrow that stood, unprotected, on the grass. All it lacked was a robin on the handle. ‘If we cleared the muck out, that would do.’
The prospect was all too much. And why the hell should Georgie be slaving outside here in the cold when the man responsible for this nuisance was taking his ease and, no doubt, laughing at her behind his grimy hand. ‘Let’s get them back indoors and think about this later.’
After much toing and froing across the slippery back garden the pictures were finally stacked safely in Chad Cramer’s hallway. By this time the material of Donna’s inadequate slippers was soaked. The girl was pinched and frozen, on the brink of hypothermia, and the small fire in the sitting room would not come close to thawing her put. You couldn’t help but worry about her, she seemed so pitiful. ‘Why don’t you change into something dry?’
‘I’m already wearing three pairs of socks and I haven’t got any more.’
‘Well put some dry shoes on at least.’
‘The ones I’ve got are all soaking wet.’
The girl was a pathetic dead loss. She stared helplessly back at Georgie as if pleading to be cared for and looked after. What was she doing buried away here, living with this coldly dishonest and wicked bugger who didn’t care a jot if she stayed or went? How had she got herself in this mess with nowhere else to go? Georgie led the way back to the sitting room to find Cramer lolling by the fire as they’d left him, but this time his gun was on the floor and now his eyes were closed. He was snoring lightly, mouth open, exposing his yellowed uneven teeth. Georgie had no compunction about waking him up.
‘I have looked over my brother’s belongings.’ She was gratified to see him jump into wakefulness. His ferret eyes narrowed as they focused upon her, and one grimy nail rasped on his bristly chin. ‘And I have decided that I want everything back, put back just how it was, and as quickly as possible.’
‘But there’s nothing frigging worth…’
‘Really? It might be worthless in your eyes, Mr Cramer, but in mine it is all extremely important,’ said Georgie sternly, wondering how he would take this arrogant tone.
‘Ah, that might not be quite so easy,’ he started to say, pulling himself out of sleep, aware he might be losing out.
In their absence Cramer had allowed the fire to die back dingily to a few sad puffs of smoke. ‘I don’t see how returning my rightful possessions could prove more difficult than moving them out in the first place. They’re all stacked up out there quite neatly, apart from the electric gadgets. It would be a simple matter to load them onto the back of a trailer and drive them back over. We are only talking about a few hundred yards after all.’
Donna, still with chattering teeth, trailed into the room behind her. The man was a bully and Georgie could sense the girl’s nervousness.
‘I’ll have to see what can be done,’ he growled ungraciously, and his eyes whisked over her, mean with temper.
But Georgie remained standing there glaring down on him. ‘I want the job done today, Mr Cramer, while I’m around to supervise.’
He smiled then, a thin-lipped smile full of pleasure. ‘That won’t be possible, I’m afraid. It’ll be bleeding dark in a minute.’
Georgie drew herself up, hands on her hips. ‘If the contents of Furze Pen Cottage are not returned to me today, and all of them, then I shall report them missing to the police at Bovey Tracey in the morning.’
Cramer pulled himself as high as he could from the depths of his unsavoury chair. His eyes darted over Georgie, testing for sincerity. ‘That’s being bloody stupid, that’s well over the top.’
‘That might well be. Good,’ said Georgie. ‘Just so long as you realize that. And there must be more pictures than the few I saw outside. I know that Stephen was prolific, there must be more paintings about somewhere. The police, no doubt, could also help me solve that small problem, Mr Cramer.’
She could feel that poor Donna, behind her, was holding her breath with tension. There would be all hell to pay if Chad discovered her gaff. But Georgie could not spare the girl, if necessary she would say what she knew and she would insist on searching upstairs. Cold, tired and irritated now beyond endurance by the attitude of this surly scoundrel, Georgie had taken enough. She was not prepared to play his games, or be intimidated by the man, by his size or by his insolence; she was sure he enjoyed abusing women. Georgie, with no intention of coming to live here in Wooton-Coney, didn’t give a damn if she fell foul of this disagreeable neighbour or not.
Luckily she was not forced to betray Donna’s thoughtless indiscretion because, unsettled by the word ‘police’ and speaking with lazy indifference, Cramer said, ‘You’d better show her the rest of the rubbish if she’s so bleeding determined.’ So they left the room to Donna’s palpable relief, and the girl led the way up the twisting stairs to the freezing cold of the bedrooms.
Stephen’s paintings were stacked in piles, up-ended along walls, balanced against broken tea chests, in a bleak, distempered bedroom with nothing else in it save packing cases and cardboard boxes. There must have been fifty pictures in all. With Donna’s help Georgie counted, and some were good, very good.
‘You stood up to him back there. That’s daft. He can be wicked, can Cramer. And he carries grudges about for years.’ She sounded like a weak old woman, tired, dulled and defeated.
‘What do you suggest I do? Let him get away with it? He’s a bully, Donna. There are lots of men like him, leftovers from the old days. Dinosaurs, really. And some can be flesh-eaters, can’t they?’ But Donna, blinking blankly, looked as though she couldn’t possibly be held responsible for anything that happened in the whole of her life.
‘He wasn’t a monster when I first knew him.’
‘No,’ Georgie smiled. ‘They never are. But I can’t see Cramer as a Mr Wonderful.’ Out of her habit of caring, perhaps, or because she was merely interested, Georgie asked, exasperated, ‘How did you get mixed up with him, Donna?’
‘He’s OK most of the time. And it’s a home.’ There was little expression in the girl’s voice.
Georgie looked round her and crossed her arms against the bleakness she saw. ‘Not much of a home. Not many comforts to write home about.’
Donna brightened and looked through the cracked window into the gloomy daylight. ‘I might go this summer. I’ve been thinking of pissing off out of here for a while now. I’ve just got to wait till the time is right.’
Georgie knew she wouldn’t go in the summer. She wouldn’t go in the spring or in the autumn either. Donna would not leave Cramer until he decided to chuck her out and move on to the next sad cow, and even then the lamentable Donna would probably beg to return. Georgie had seen too many Donnas in her day, damn the job, it soured too much of the world. Too many victims to remember and far too many to count.
And yet Gail Hopkins had not been a Donna, she was far too sparky for that, and Ray Hopkins had not, on the surface, in spite of his gruff hostility towards the social services, been a Chad Cramer either. How easy it is to set up stereotypes just because it is simpler, no, to hell with it, let’s be honest, without stereotypes nobody could survive. At the end of the day it is simply a way of sorting the unacceptable, the unspeakable, out.