Guilt Trip Page 6

  I’d better leave as I came in – very quietly indeed. And if anyone spotted me I could pretend to be slipping in – a message for Griff or something. As I edged towards the door, however, I noticed Griff doing something that definitely wasn’t in the script. He was rubbing a spot in his chest, as if it really troubled him, and he reached for an indigestion tablet. The tablet didn’t seem to be doing any good, either: his face said he was in pain as he rubbed again. In an instant, I had him suffering with terminal stomach cancer. I almost called out. But, like the guy fielding his bogies, he was unaware of my presence. So I couldn’t simply ask him over supper what was up – not without admitting what I’d been up to.

  The rain had given way to watery sunshine, but I’d been so long eavesdropping in the theatre that there wasn’t time now to go car-hunting. Too restless to go back to the van – still with its tyres intact and still free to move – I headed off for a walk around the estate, dodging puddles and stepping over stuff someone should have cleared up ages ago: half pallets, swathes of bubble wrap, the inevitable supermarket carrier-bags. It would never have been a beautiful area, but it offended me to see a place in the middle of the countryside looking as tatty as this. In fact, I grabbed a polythene sack that had once held animal feed – though we were a long way from anything four legged unless it was being smoked – and stowed as much rubbish as I could cram inside.

  ‘Proper little Goody-Two-Shoes, aren’t you?’

  It was hard to tell the attitude of the speaker. He wasn’t the gorgeous bloke I’d hoped to see, just a weather-beaten man of about fifty, baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, wearing overalls spattered with sawdust.

  ‘Point me to a vacant bin,’ I suggested.

  He jerked a curly thumb towards the side of what looked like a derelict Nissen hut. In your dreams. Out in the open or nowhere for me, after that nasty sense of being watched I’d had the other night. After a mutual shrug, we went our separate ways, not, on my part, with the feeling that we’d be friends for life. I found a skip near the oast and was about to drop my spoils into it. But it was full of wood, and I didn’t want to spoil the recycling value. Only as I thought such a virtuous thought did I register what sort of wood it was: oak and mahogany. Nothing recognizable – just odds and ends. However, this time I smelt not cheese or smoke, but a large rat.

  I was ready to reach in and investigate further when I remembered that sense of being watched. Felt it again, actually. If I’d looked round furtively, it would have been a very bad move. So I pretended I’d got some problem with my foot and retied my trainer. Then I carried on walking, still carrying the rubbish.

  Thank goodness I found something to walk towards. Those must be the dressing rooms Griff had complained about. He was right about their inconvenience and right about the yard – it still had slippery signs of the previous users. And a hint of a smell. Griff must have wanted the role very much to put up with this.

  There was no sign of anyone.

  I turned suddenly, as if I were playing Grandmother’s Footsteps. Yes, although against the sun it was hard to see who it was, someone was standing next to our van. And it wasn’t Griff, let out early for good behaviour, but that guy with the lovely eyes. Once again he melted away behind the oast complex, but I was left with one very clear impression – he very much preferred my room to my company.

  I counted sixty elephants, then followed. He almost seemed to be heading for the dressing rooms, but at the last moment he veered off past a pile of rubble and old beams ripe for a bonfire and disappeared. I padded after him. Why not? Anyone could go for a walk. But when I saw him and Overalls Man together, having a conversation neither of them seemed to be enjoying, to judge from the quite violent gestures, I stopped dead, taking cover behind the dressing room block. It was too far to hear what they were saying, of course. But from the way they both pointed, I had a feeling they might have been talking about me.

  There were voices behind me. The rehearsal was over. I slipped back towards the cars and was in the van when Griff appeared, most unusually for him, laying down the law to a woman in her late forties who didn’t like what she heard. I leaned across to open the passenger door, which put an end to the argument.

  Wrong. Griff got in, but was silent and huffy. He’d obviously wanted the last word. At last, possibly hoping I didn’t notice him chomp another Gaviscon tablet, he launched into an account of his afternoon, starting with the woman I’d seen him with. It turned out that in addition to her small part, she’d offered to look after costume and make-up but didn’t have a clue where to get the one or how to apply the other.

  ‘Just in case you think I’m blowing things out of proportion, other people in the company have had cause to speak to her too. Talking during rehearsal, not paying attention to direction, arguing with Emilia—’

  ‘You mean you don’t?’

  ‘Oh, some of her ideas are so OTT. But she’s the one in charge, angel heart, so if I remonstrate, I try to do so in private.’

  ‘I bet she doesn’t like even that.’

  ‘A bit of an autocrat is our Emilia – always was, I suppose. But she was beautiful when she was young, truly beautiful, and could simply play on her looks to get her own way. I sometimes think that beauty can be a two-edged sword. When it goes off as you age, you still try to play your old tricks and all they do is irritate people.’ He glanced at me. ‘You’re pretty, my love, and I know you turn heads wherever you go, but part of the reason for that is the energy you give off. I’m afraid, much as I love you, I can’t say your bones are as good as hers.’

  ‘Sounds as if that’s a good thing.’

  Perhaps he hadn’t heard. ‘Even languid, even in repose, Emilia . . . she was as lovely as a Greek statue. Heavens, when they come to write her obit, they’ll need a couple of paragraphs just to list the men with whom she’s been associated. Or rather more.’

  ‘Any pistols at dawn?’ I asked idly.

  ‘Oh, indeed. And there may be more. Gerald, the man with the injured Range Rover, locks horns with Denis, the nearest we have to a juve lead, every time they speak. If only they could manage such dramatic skills in fiction as in real life . . .’

  ‘It’s weird,’ I told him, when I could get a word in edgeways. ‘Your words say you’re bored and wish you’d never got involved. But – apart from when you’re slagging off your colleagues – your voice says you’re having a whale of a time. Which should I listen to?’

  ‘Both, dear one. I love the acting, but, alas, not the Company – most of whom couldn’t act their way out of a paper bag. Learning lines is a terrible fag, as I’m sure you’ll have gathered from the hours you’ve spent with me, but most people have had their parts longer than I and are still glued to the text. How they’ll fare – how we’ll all fare – when we’re told to work without scripts, I dread to think. No prompt, of course. As for props . . . Thank goodness I could provide some things of my own, but I truly cannot be responsible, as I told Emilia, for equipping everyone, nor for making sure everything is in the right place at the right time.’

  ‘Tell you what,’ I said, trying to sound grudging, ‘if Morris is in Budapest or wherever next weekend, I could come and help out a bit. If you don’t think anyone would mind.’

  ‘Mind! They’d fall on your neck, angel heart.’

  He slipped into a bit of a doze. He’d forgotten to ask me what I’d been up to, and this didn’t seem the moment to tell him.

  SEVEN

  Tuesday saw us going off to a house sale in Hastings. The house, overlooking the town, was at the top of a long flight of steps, which soon had my fellow dealers moaning about their knees. My own pulse was racing, not with the exercise, but at the sight of Griff clutching at his chest as if trying to undo a belt round the ribs and then reaching for a stomach tablet. Stomach indeed.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ he gasped.

  ‘Calling an ambulance.’

  ‘No! No, please don’t fuss. I shall be fine,’ he gasped, proving qu
ite clearly that he wasn’t. ‘Just let me catch my breath.’ He tugged at his shirt as if it was too tight.

  I took his arm and, elbowing aside someone too busy with his Blackberry to notice, thrust him into a chair. Refusing an emergency ambulance was one thing, but I’d have him at the doctor’s tonight even if I had to tie him up and carry him.

  Or would I? My phone call, made from the top of the offending steps, wasn’t promising.

  ‘Dr Chapman’s on holiday till next week,’ the receptionist told me. It sounded like the new one, not the one who gave Griff tomato plants in exchange for geranium cuttings.

  ‘I know. But isn’t Dr Baker available?’

  ‘Mr Tripp is Dr Chapman’s patient.’

  ‘He’s been to both doctors,’ I said truthfully.

  ‘But he’s registered with Dr Chapman. And it’s practice policy for patients to see their own doctor.’

  ‘But I told you at the start, this is urgent. Mr Tripp’s having severe chest pains after exercise.’

  ‘I can give him an appointment at eleven ten next Thursday.’

  ‘You can give him an appointment tonight,’ I said, definitely not yelling. ‘With Dr Baker,’ I added, in case she hadn’t got it.

  Her sigh practically blew my ear from the phone. ‘You don’t understand, do you?’

  No, I bloody didn’t. But Griff had taught me that icy calm sometimes worked best. ‘I understand that you’re telling me that a man in his seventies with chest pains can’t be seen for a week. I hope I don’t have to repeat this conversation to the coroner. Or would you like to find Mr Tripp an appointment this evening?’

  She did like.

  I wish I hadn’t spoiled everything by bursting into tears when I’d fixed it. Mopping up and hiding the worst evidence meant I missed a couple of lots I’d really wanted to bid for. But that gave me time for a proper mooch round, checking out other lots I’d never have dreamed of touching, not even with the proverbial bargepole. At last I slipped in beside Griff and took his hand.

  ‘Are you well enough to hang on just a few minutes longer? I want lot three hundred and seventy-three.’

  ‘A bedroom suite, angel heart? That disgusting fifties bedroom suite?’

  ‘The same. Actually, if I bid it might make folk think it’s worth having. I’ll get Big Dave to do it. He owes me a favour, after all. Don’t move till I’ve paid our debts. Then I’ll bring the van round for you.’

  ‘I’m not an invalid!’ But he handed over the paperwork I’d need without a squeak.

  Dave was happy to take the roll of notes I pressed into his hand and, since he was hanging on for the garden tools, right at the end, didn’t mind bidding for me. He earned a kiss when he promised to load it on to his pickup truck and bring it back to Bredeham for us on his way home to Herne Bay. And then I was more than happy to leave: watching me from the far side of the room was none other than the guy who’d run the treen stall back at the Mondiale in Hythe. And he didn’t seem any keener on me than he had then.

  ‘All this fuss over a touch of indigestion!’ Griff moaned as I settled him in his favourite chair and brought him a glass with some aspirin dissolved in it. Whether it would do him any good, I hadn’t a clue, but maybe it wouldn’t do any harm – unless it really was indigestion, of course.

  ‘You’re worth making a fuss over. Anyway, you’re seeing Dr Baker this evening. Five thirty. OK?’ I shot him a sideways look. ‘If you don’t promise to tell him the truth, the whole truth, etc, I shall come with you myself.’ When he didn’t protest, I added, ‘Do you want me to? I’ll certainly run you down there if you don’t feel well enough to walk.’ His silence was frightening. ‘Are there any other symptoms you have to tell him about?’

  He sighed. ‘Don’t nag, Evelina.’

  Evelina! He’d only once called me that when I was being truly vile. So now I was scared. And terrified, when he agreed to have a nap before he set out.

  ‘What on earth made you buy a load of crap like this?’ Dave demanded. His pickup sat in our yard, looking embarrassed by its load. ‘Here’s your cash – it only set you back a fiver.’

  ‘One man’s crap is another man’s collectible,’ I reminded him with a grin, pocketing the notes without even checking.

  ‘Collectible! I don’t know that I’d even house my hens in it!’

  ‘You’ve got hens and they’d like a home? They can have this!’

  Arms akimbo, he stared. ‘You spend a fiver on something and want to give it away? Been too long in the sun, Lina?’

  ‘Give me a hand up, will you? Thanks. This is what I wanted, not the poor, ugly stained wood.’ Standing in the back of the pickup, I opened the door with a flourish.

  He was tall enough to peer inside without having to do my gymnastics. ‘Clothes!’ His voice oozed disgust.

  ‘Yes, clothes. A load of fifties and sixties clothes. Retro’s big at the moment, Dave. And I might not want to sell them all – I like wearing them myself.’

  He pulled a face. ‘I know. I’ve seen them, and very pretty they are, some of them. Don’t do anything for me, mind – they make you look like some doll Griff’s dressed up. You’re young, and you’ve got a nice figure. You should be dressing young.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. I grabbed armfuls, with the hangers, and passed them down. ‘There. You can have the rest for your hens.’

  ‘Might want to check the dressing table drawers, too, while you’re at it. Unless you mean that for my chooks, too.’

  Although I was fairly sure he was joking, I did check – nothing. But then I turned back to the wardrobe and its big long drawer. It was held down with one of the many ropes Dave had used. He looked at his watch as I tugged.

  ‘Don’t want to embarrass your hens, Dave.’

  For the first time he was less than gracious, chuntering under his breath. And then he had to jump up on the truck with me to yank the drawer free. A load of paper slipped out into the body of the wardrobe. Old Vogue and Butterick dress pattern envelopes! I squealed with pleasure at seeing them and fury at having them disappear in front of my nose.

  Even Dave couldn’t reach them all. ‘Tell you what, Lina, I’ll bundle everything else up and drop it by next time I’m down this way. How would that be?’

  He obviously wanted to be on his way, and it was time I shunted Griff down to the surgery.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I made myself lie. ‘But don’t let the hens anywhere near, will you?’

  ‘You’re a right funny one,’ he said, making one last sweep and coming up with a few more. ‘First you buy a potty, and then you collect paper fit for nothing except to wipe your arse on. But each to his own, that’s what I always say. And it may not be chooks, Lina – this lot’ll do well starting my wood-burning stove, if it’s all the same to you.’

  ‘So long as you get the Bakelite handles and knobs off – Mary Penney might make a bob or two on those.’

  ‘You sure you weren’t born in Yorkshire, lass?’

  ‘You mean I’m as tight as a tick? I just don’t like wasting anything, Dave, and that’s the truth.’

  Griff insisted he could walk to the surgery and got quite angry when I argued. In fact, he wasn’t happy about my part in the whole business, so I resolved to stay out of the way, lip buttoned, till he wanted to talk to me. Making any start on preparing supper was a no-no – he regarded that job as his, and I only helped by invitation. But there were emails to check, the china he’d bought to wash – and when I’d done all that there was the huge treat, which I’d saved up, like a bar of chocolate, of sorting through the dresses I’d acquired.

  As you’d guess from the paper patterns, some of the dresses were home-made – not that this meant they were any poorer in quality. But there were some Marshall and Snelgrove’s own lines, a sixties Mary Quant to die for, and even some Rayne shoes. Heaven. Pity they were way too large for me. I hung the garments up to air in the big cupboard in the shop with others I wasn’t sure whether to keep or sell on. All
of them, even those in my size. Was Dave right? Did wearing vintage clothes make me look odd? No one had ever questioned my appearance before. Well, jeans and top or trousers and top were pretty well uniform for women my age, weren’t they? And I only wore vintage on special occasions. I must ask Morris when I next Skyped him. I could even put one of the dresses on. But my joy in them had gone.

  Maybe it was because however much I tried to occupy myself I was really listening for Griff’s return, which drove all thought of them out of my mind.

  ‘Tests!’ I squeaked as I passed him a glass of wine.

  ‘Oh, you know what they say about Dr Baker – he’d even test head lice to make sure they’re nits. And he’s given me some pills and a little spray.’

  ‘What sort of tests?’

  ‘Oh, things down at the surgery . . . He said he’d get the nurse to contact me with an appointment.’

  The nurse. That didn’t sound too bad, then. I’d had visions of his being whipped off in a private ambulance to Harley Street, courtesy of Aidan’s millions. But I mustn’t sneer. Aidan loved him as much as I did. I didn’t think he should be kept in the dark if Griff was ill. I knew he had a lot to bear at the moment, but loving and being loved gave rights as well as responsibilities. Maybe, just maybe, at the back of my mind lurked the thought that he might insist on immediate, private treatment, and that if he did I’d be eternally grateful.

  I was sure that, left to himself, Griff would say nothing. Not to him or to anyone. Should I grass him up?

  Before I could make any sort of decision, the office phone rang. I scuttled to answer it. There was a long pause before anyone spoke, and I was just about to deal with nuisance callers in my usual way – a piercing whistle – when a man spoke.

  ‘Charles Montaigne, Ms Townend. Or may I call you Lina? I was just hoping you might have reconsidered my proposal.’

  ‘I don’t remember any proposal,’ I said. There’d been hints, but nothing concrete. I took a breath. ‘Why don’t you put it in writing, and I’ll give it some thought.’