Chapter and Hearse (24 page)

‘Who?' he asked suspiciously.

‘Goethe. A German poet.' Marion waved an arm over the valley. ‘He said that no one could look at the view for more than fifteen minutes.'

‘Did he?' Michael Boness sounded baffled. ‘You do know these trees could get to more than a hundred feet if they're not trimmed?'

‘Really? Do take care, won't you?' said Marion solicitously. ‘You wouldn't want to fall off a ladder…'

‘I'm not going to fall off a ladder,' he said crossly, ‘because I'm not going to trim them.'

‘Ah, then you won't need to worry about falling, will you?' she said.

*   *   *

She duly recounted the conversation to her sister, Jean, over the telephone that evening. ‘Poor man,' she laughed. ‘He doesn't know what to make of me.'

‘Poor nothing,' snorted Jean. ‘He's waiting for you to go down on bended knee and beg him to cut the leylandii down so that you can have your lovely view back.'

‘He's going to be disappointed, then,' said Marion Carstairs. ‘I will ask him, of course, but not just yet.'

‘So how are your Christmas trees coming along?' asked her sister.

‘Slowly but well,' said Marion. ‘Another twelve months should see them just right.'

‘And his leylandii?'

‘Just wrong,' said Marion. ‘For him, I mean. Fomes spreads underground along the roots at about a yard a year.'

‘I'm very happy to hear it…' She stopped. ‘But, Marion, won't it look very odd if the whole of his hedge is attacked by it at once?'

‘Ah,' said Marion mysteriously, ‘I've thought of that. And about what to do if he gets on to someone about the fomes, as I'm sure he will.'

‘I hope you have. After all, dear, fungi – what did you say the Latin name for fomes was?'

‘Heterobasidin annosum…'

‘Even ones with outlandish names like – er – that don't usually travel in straight lines – and you know that, even if Mike Boness doesn't.'

‘Ah,' she said, ‘don't forget that the source of the infection – the old tree stumps – is in a straight line too.'

‘But surely you don't want him ever to know that that's where it's come from.'

‘No, of course not. That's why I had the stumps out and the ground grassed over … Nobody will know they were ever there and as sure as eggs Michael Boness isn't going to tell anyone.'

‘Why not?'

‘For one thing, when he's had it spelled out to him, his estate agent won't like to hear what his client has been up to.'

‘Go on…'

‘But it could be argued,' Marion said cogently, ‘that recently planted trees such as his leylandii are unusually susceptible to that sort of infestation.'

‘I do hope,' said Jean piously, ‘that you don't have to argue anything.'

*   *   *

The next winter passed. This Christmas-tide the church choir sang the carol ‘The Holly and the Ivy' at the front door of the Croft. When the choir came to the line ‘When they are both full-grown' Michael Boness managed not to meet Marion Carstairs's eye.

*   *   *

It was high summer when Marion started to see early signs of disease in the leylandii hedge, which was now both thick and tall. That was when Marion first asked Mike Boness if he would consider lowering his trees so that she could have her view back.

‘I thought you'd ask one day,' he said, grinning unpleasantly. ‘All that talk about not minding what you looked at was hot air.'

‘It's making my sitting room quite dark too,' she said meekly.

‘That's your problem,' he said.

‘Oh, dear.' Marion gave what she hoped was a womanly sigh. ‘I really don't know what to do next.'

‘You can't do anything,' he said roughly. ‘It's my hedge, not yours. I can plant it wherever I like and let it get as high as I like, and neither you nor anyone else can stop me, no matter what you say.'

‘But…'

‘And,' he added, ‘since you've probably already thought about asking him, neither can your solicitor. They're clever, all right, but not that clever.'

‘No.' She sighed again. ‘I suppose not…'

‘So you might as well save your breath and your money.'

‘And that's your last word, is it?' she asked.

Mike Boness paused and seemed to consider this. ‘Well,' he drawled eventually, ‘I dare say I could buy the Toft back from you if I had a mind to.'

‘Buy it back?'

‘That's if you were prepared to agree to my price, of course.'

‘You mean you would really like to have it back again?'

‘Only if the price was right, naturally.' He sniffed. ‘It's not worth anything like what you gave for it, I can tell you.'

‘Really?' she said.

‘Not without the view.'

‘I suppose you're right.'

He waved an arm over the valley. ‘But with it … then, that's different, isn't it?'

‘Very,' said Marion Carstairs drily.

‘Think about it,' he said.

‘I will,' she promised.

‘Mind you, I won't pay a lot.' He twisted his lips. ‘But you're not going to get too many people willing to take the Toft off your hands now.'

‘Not without the view,' she conceded gravely.

*   *   *

She was highly amused, though, when she described the encounter to her sister. ‘What? No, we didn't talk money. It's a bit soon.'

‘Soon for what?' enquired Jean.

‘My Christmas trees. I'm waiting for the valuable seasonal trade, remember…'

‘Of course.'

‘And for the damage from the fomes to be quite apparent.'

*   *   *

Marion Carstairs was all sympathy the next time she saw Mike Boness. ‘Your poor hedge, Mr Boness. It has got something nasty, hasn't it? I do hope you weren't hoping to use it for timber.'

‘I've got an expert coming to see it,' he said thickly, ‘and if he tells me that it's anything you've done to it, then I'll be taking the matter further.'

‘Me?' protested Marion. ‘I haven't been near your hedge.'

‘He's a proper tree specialist.'

‘Just what you need,' she said.

‘He'll know, and then watch out.'

‘If I've done anything,' she corrected him.

‘We'll see about that,' he said, storming away, red-faced. ‘For my money, you'll be hearing more about this.'

*   *   *

Marion watched the arboriculturist come and go from behind her bedroom curtain. The one thing she didn't want at this stage was to be recognized. She was pleased, though, to see the expert look long and hard over the fence into her garden and then go over to peer equally hard at and dig round the remains of a felled birch tree on Mike Boness's land. That was after he had taken some samples of soil and of a fungus that had made its appearance on some of the leylandii roots. He took a core sample too from the stem of one of the dying leylandii trees.

*   *   *

‘A textbook examination,' she reported to her sister, metaphorically rubbing her hands. ‘Any minute now he'll be telling Boness about the fomes and that the spore could have come from that old birch of his. Birches are very susceptible to fomes too.'

‘Like leylandii and Christmas trees,' observed her sister happily.

‘Exactly. Now, I think our time has come … How much did you say you and Paul lost when you sold the house back to Boness, Jean?'

The sum of money named by Jean Mullen formed the basis of a claim by Marion Carstairs, the retired professor of plant biology at the Toft, against Michael Boness, the owner of the Croft, for damage to a substantial crop of
Picea abies
– otherwise known as Christmas tree – by a fungus called fomes, caught from his leylandii trees.

It was successful.

And without coming to court either.

A Soldier of the Queen

Private Saffery was quite surprised at the extent of his own fear. Nothing he had ever experienced in his time in the army so far had been quite as frightening as this. He shivered, clutched his gun even more tightly and nerved himself to a total and unnatural stillness.

Worst of all was the waiting.

His ordeal had begun on the Friday morning when the next week's roster had been pinned up in the barracks which were presently being occupied by the 2nd Battalion of the East Calleshire Regiment.

‘Sentry duty?' said his oppo, Mike Clarkson. ‘Nothing to it, mate. Did my stint last month and not a thing happened.'

‘As I remember,' Saffery remarked sturdily, ‘you didn't enjoy it and said so quite a lot.'

‘No … Well, not at the time, maybe,' agreed Clarkson. ‘But it was all right afterwards.'

‘So's having a baby, my mother says,' retorted Saffery.

‘I wouldn't know about that,' conceded Clarkson, ‘but all I can say, Kev, is that though I admit sentry duty is no picnic at the time, it's no problem after you've done it once. Honest.'

‘Like having a baby, I suppose,' said Kevin Saffery, who at the time hadn't known all that much about either process.

He did now.

About the preparations for sentry duty, anyway. And just at this moment Private Kevin Saffery heartily wished it was already afterwards for him too, just like it was for Mike Clarkson.

Even so, his friend Private Clarkson had been more encouraging than some of his other mates. They seemed inclined to regard a turn of sentry duty in this day and age, let alone in this place, as something of an initiation rite.

‘After which I'll be a real soldier, I suppose,' Kevin had said bitterly in response to this. He came from an old army family where the expression ‘being a real soldier' didn't just mean not crying when you grazed your knee falling off your bike. It meant the same as ‘being blooded' in other fields – notably the hunting ones – as well as most probably literally becoming ‘bloodied' into the bargain.

‘Well, you'll be different anyway,' Clarkson had mumbled inarticulately. ‘And you'll feel different somehow. Bit difficult to explain…'

Now, out of the barracks and – except for one other soldier in sight – to all intents and purposes entirely on his own, Kevin Saffery knew what Clarkson had meant. He shivered again. And not from cold.

‘Watch out for the kids,' Clarkson had warned him too. ‘They're worse than the adults. Much worse.'

It was something Private Saffery had already heard on all sides and he had said so.

‘When I have kids,' said Private Clarkson feelingly, ‘I shall lock 'em up indoors when they're not in school. All the time.'

On the other hand, Private Milligan's advice had been strictly practical. ‘When you see them getting ready to shoot…'

‘Yes?' he had asked urgently.

‘Freeze, man, freeze, or you'll never hear the end of it.'

‘Thanks a lot, mate.'

For nothing, he nearly added. Not being able to keep absolutely still was the one thing Private Kevin Saffery feared most of all.

As usual, the Corporal had managed to be his customary nasty little self at the same time as being strictly practical. ‘Your main problem, all of you lot,' he had said, when addressing the next week's roster of raw duty men in the barrack room, ‘will be cramp. Simple but painful. And sleeping with corks in your bed like your granny does won't help.'

There was a dutiful snigger.

‘The 'uman body,' he went on, ‘wasn't meant for keeping really still for as long as you've got to do it for.' He sneered. ‘Now, if you was cats it would come easy. But you're not cats, are you?' He glared at them. ‘Well, are you cats?'

‘No, Corporal,' they had chorused. Kevin had heard some reservation about this on his left, but fortunately the words ‘It's that ginger torn from next door' and a veiled reference to an overseas cathouse had not reached the Corporal. There would have been trouble if they had.

Big trouble.

‘Cats can watch mice for hours without twitching a whisker,' declared the little corporal, ‘and if I catch any of you shower twitching whiskers while you're on sentry go you're on a charge. Understood?'

‘Understood,' they had all echoed dutifully, murder in their hearts. The name of the murder was ‘fragging' and Private Saffery had learned the word at his grandfather's knee.

‘Saw a bit of it done once,' the old man had once told him, still too much of an old soldier and thus too wise to say right out whether or not he'd been the one to do it. ‘On the road to Mersa Matruh.'

‘But what is it, Grandad?' a younger and more innocent Kevin had wanted to know. He'd been of an age then when new words – especially the dubious-sounding ones which his grandfather used – were suddenly interesting. He'd only just been clouted by his mother for saying ‘frigging' and to a lad of his age the word ‘fragging' seemed deliciously dangerous-sounding too.

‘Dangerous?' his grandfather had growled. ‘Of course it was dangerous. To both sides, you might say.'

‘But what does “fragging” mean, Grandad?'

Any resemblance of the tableau the two of them made, talking at his grandfather's gate, to the famous picture of little Peterkin asking old Kaspar about a certain famous victory at Blenheim was purely coincidental.

‘Theoretically,' said old grandfather Saffery, a faraway look in his rheumy eyes, ‘fragging is when you kill the man who leads you into danger in war.'

‘Yes, but what is it really?' The word ‘theoretically' was one that a young Kevin already knew and did not like. ‘Can't you give me a frinstance, Grandad? Please…'

The old man had gone on staring into the distance. ‘It's when you take the opportunity to shoot some bastard of a Corporal in the back of his head on the only occasion when you've got half a chance of doing it without being caught in the act – which is when you're going into action behind him. Now, be off with you, boy, before it happens to you.'