The Mysterious Miss Mayhew (12 page)

Back at school, Vasey had looked like an undernourished weasel, complete with sandy hair and overbite. His role had been to stand beside the school bully, supplying encouragement. He’d filled out a lot since then, muscle mainly by the look of it.

Vasey stopped pushing the mower and gave Tom an unfriendly, shifty stare that showed he still harboured a grudge about having his nose rubbed, literally, into the school Tarmac.

Tom knew that he not only had to ignore all signs of hostility, but also fight his own impulse to deliberately wind Vasey up. So he did not ask, ‘This a new skill of yours? Selling and renting properties
and
sweaty lawnmowing?’

‘What do you want?’ Vasey said, as if Tom were trespassing, and turned off the mower with a showy twist of his wrist.

‘I’d like to see Fran. She in here?’ Tom indicated the back door and started to move towards it, but his question was answered by the appearance of Fran carrying a glass and bottle of beer. He did a quick scan of what she was wearing – another of those 1940s-type dresses, no shoes. Her hair was loose. Was it bed-head hair?

She made an ‘Oh’ sound and he waited for her to ask him if he had come round to pee in her garden again.

‘Lovely day,’ he got in before she could speak.

‘Isn’t it?’ she replied with a smile that had a bit too much width to it, as if she was forcing herself to be jolly. Her eyes didn’t look fully engaged with that smile either.

‘That for me, doll?’ Greg walked towards the beer and
Fran’s smile solidified. She held the bottle and the glass out – really held them out, as if she wanted to keep Vasey as far away from her body as possible.

‘You two know each other, I expect?’ she said.

Neither of them answered and she looked quizzically at Tom. He figured that saying, ‘Yes, I know him, he’s the bastard who helped make my brother’s first year at senior school a nightmare,’ was not going to get the visit off to a relaxed start.

Vasey suddenly said, ‘Still running that little magazine?’

Tom let it lie and turned to talk to Fran, but Vasey was speaking again.

‘Suppose you saw in the paper, I’m about to open my second branch? Newcastle.’

Tom let that bit of one-upmanship lie too. He even, when Vasey went on with, ‘Your Rob
still
at Wheatley’s?’ ignored the sneering undercurrent.

‘Yes,’ he simply said, ‘my brother’s done well. Thank you for asking.’

The urge to vomit in his own mouth because he’d been pleasant to Vasey was offset by the satisfaction of seeing the sly bugger realise that his efforts at baiting had failed. Perhaps he’d also heard echoes of the past in Tom’s ‘my brother’ – as in ‘touch my brother one more time and it won’t just be your face I’m smearing over the Tarmac’.

‘Any chance of a chat about the magazine?’ he was able to finally ask Fran.

She led the way to the house and only on the threshold of the kitchen did she turn to Vasey. ‘You’re doing a wonderful job, Greg,’ she called and, by the time they were in the kitchen, the mower had started up again.

Natalie had called the place a ‘dump’, and there
was
a frowsy air to the room. Everything looked shabby, although an effort had been made to brighten things up with jam jars and jugs full of wild flowers. The only plus point was the view over the back garden to the fields beyond and even that was ruined when the figure of Vasey, trudging along with the mower, cut across it.

‘Come through to the sitting room,’ Fran said. ‘It’s no more palatial, but at least it’s away from that noise.’

As he followed her, he noticed a cooling rack bearing two sunken halves of a sandwich cake. ‘Been baking?’ he asked, remembering he was meant to be buttering her up.

‘Yes. I was inspired by the county show, but it’s harder than it looks. Especially in that brute of an oven.’ That earnestness of hers was suddenly lightened by a laugh. ‘Although a bad workman always blames his tools, doesn’t he?’

The sitting room looked over the front garden and the old-fashioned three-piece suite had been pushed back to
make space for a square table in front of the window. On it sat a board and some coloured paper, a ruler and a scalpel. There was more paper piled up in one of the corners of the room. Propped against the legs of the table were a number of box frames and Tom guessed they contained some of the work he’d seen on the website.

‘Would you like to sit?’ she asked, while she perched on the arm of the sofa.

He noticed that she didn’t offer
him
a beer.

‘So …?’ She folded her hands in her lap like a child waiting to be told a story.

‘Well … do you remember I told you about Charlie Coburg?’

‘The gentleman who used to do nature drawings and notes for you?’

‘Ye-es,’ he said, trying not to stumble over Charlie being called a
gentleman
. ‘And I think I told you that we haven’t been able to find a replacement for him? Which is a big shame because our readers loved his stuff. The countryside plays a huge part in people’s lives round here, so a magazine without a proper nod to the wildlife feels out of balance.’

‘Very nicely put,’ she said and then frowned and tilted her head. The noise of the mower had suddenly got louder, as if Vasey had also moved to the front of the bungalow.

Tom tried to ignore it. ‘Anyway, I remembered seeing you come out of the art shop with all this paper and so I had a dig around on the Internet and saw your pictures.’ He was having to raise his voice over the sound of the mower. ‘Is it pictures or sculptures? Sorry, I don’t know how to describe them.’

Vasey walked past the window and turned and peered in. It would have been comical if it wasn’t getting in the way of Tom’s mission.

Tom got up and walked over to the box frames. ‘May I?’

Fran nodded, and as he bent to pick one up he saw she had turned her face back towards the window. It looked as if she was sucking in both her cheeks.

The frame he was holding contained a paper sculpture of a fox, the different shades of paper cut and layered so beautifully that you felt you could reach through the glass and stroke fur. The snout had a delicate fold to suggest the skull underneath and the thinnest of tendrils were whiskers. The fox was standing in a forest where the trees and even the brambles were cut from paper. Tom could imagine disappearing into the picture. To get such intricacy and depth from something that had started out flat seemed incredible to him.

‘This really is beautiful,’ he said.

‘Thank you.’ A tone in her voice made him turn and he
saw that she was beaming. Her eyes were definitely caught up in this smile.

He put the fox back and picked up a grey seal in an even greyer sea. The markings on its skin, the ripples of the water, all done in paper. There was a rock with tiny limpets off to the seal’s left; the grey sea bleeding into the many blues of a horizon off to its right.

Even the readers who usually flicked past the nature pages would stop and linger over this.

Tom ignored yet another reconnaissance trip by Vasey and said, tentatively, ‘I know you’ve done work for magazines before, so I was wondering—’

‘No. Absolutely not.’

The sharpness of that response made him blink. ‘No? Just like that? Before you’ve even heard what I was going to ask?’

‘You were going to see if I’d produce something for your magazine?’

‘Yes, but—’

‘There you are then.’

‘Can I just ask why?’

‘Not really.’ She paused as the noise of the mower stopped. ‘I’m sorry that I can’t help you and your readers, but it would be … difficult.’

‘Because we’ve had some sticky conversations?’

‘Literally,’ she said, looking at his shirt.

Yup, she was starting to irritate him again. He tried to remember that he was an editor desperate to solve a problem.

‘Look, you wouldn’t be working with me,’ he said, ‘it would be our Creative Director, Felix …’

Tom trailed off as Vasey had appeared in the doorway, flicking some grass cuttings from his arm. He might as well have been wearing a T-shirt with
I am checking up on you
written across it. Tom tried to find the fact that Vasey considered him a threat amusing. Until Vasey said, ‘How long did you work in London, then?’

‘About twelve years.’ Tom knew where this was leading.

Vasey nodded. ‘Travelled all over, didn’t you? Where did you live?’

‘Yes, I did travel all over. And Fulham. That was the last place I lived.’

‘Good part?’

Tom nodded and waited.

‘Divorced yet?’ Vasey jabbed at him.

‘Not quite. Takes time.’

There was a snort from Vasey. ‘Wouldn’t know,’ he said and, with a smile, left the room again.

A few moments later, the sound of the mower started up once more.

‘Oh, really!’ Fran crossed to the table and looked out of the window. ‘Such an annoying man. Look, shall we go through to the kitchen? It’s so hard to hear oneself talk in here.’

So, she
was
just playing Vasey for what she could get. Good luck with that.

In the kitchen, Tom had one last try at persuading her, ending with, ‘And Mrs Mawson would see it as a huge favour.’

‘Oh?’

‘Definitely. She’s Charlie’s daughter – you probably weren’t aware of that.’

Fran was looking over at the cakes on the cooling rack.

‘I think,’ Tom went on, ‘she finds it painful to see Charlie’s work every month when he’s no longer around.’

He really had to watch these lies; that wasn’t even a white one.

Fran was still staring at the sad-looking cakes and it seemed to be making her sad too.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said, finally. ‘It wouldn’t be wise.’

‘Wise?’ he asked and then couldn’t help adding some swear words as the noise of the mower grew louder again. Vasey had obviously discovered they had moved from the sitting room.

‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ Fran said, closing the back door.
‘Not only an annoying man, but such a difficult one to get rid of.’

‘Perhaps you should have thought about that before you invited him round to cut your lawn,’ Tom shot back, the discontent at her point-blank refusal to help him finally spilling over. ‘Now he’s going to want some kind of payment.’

He opened the back door again, even as her, ‘I did not invite him round, he just turned up,’ bounced off his back.

He kept on walking, watching Vasey travel the width of the lawn. When Vasey spotted that Fran and Tom had emerged, he changed his route to get closer.

‘Are you listening to me?’ Fran was behind Tom. ‘He just turned up. Un. In. Vited. And why wouldn’t I ask him to cut the lawn? It should have been done before I moved in. Goodness me! I’m surprised at your suggesting that making a simple request to mow a lawn is asking for trouble. I had no idea you’d be one of
those
men. Not a very nice message to be sending your own daughter.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said slowly, turning to face her. He felt he was being told off by someone much older than he was. That back was as straight as an ironing board.

‘It seems to me,’ she started again, ‘you’re peddling that sexist rubbish about a woman being the one at fault if a man decides to make a nuisance of himself.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

Vasey had stopped and looked as if he was trying to work out what was going on.

‘What
did
you mean, then?’ Fran asked. ‘And, before you answer, can I just point out that you have, yourself, turned up uninvited, too. Is that also my fault?’

‘Now hold on. First, I resent being lumped together with all those prats who think just because a woman accepts a drink, or dresses in a certain way, it’s an invitation to … to …’ Looking down into her face he was unable to say the word ‘sex’. It was too fresh, like something just picked off a tree.

He tried a different approach, ‘And stop acting as if this has just dropped on you out of the sky. Haven’t you tried to manipulate Vasey to get your rent reduced?’ He shook his head like an irritating know-it-all because he figured it would annoy her even more. ‘Well, you have no idea who you’re dealing with. Vasey sees a weakness and exploits it. You’ve poked a wasps’ nest and now you’re moaning that the wasps are trying to sting you.’ He wasn’t quite sure that was the analogy he wanted, but it certainly stirred
her
up.

‘I see.’ She waved a hand towards Vasey. ‘So, if they find my dismembered body tomorrow, it will be my own fault?’

‘Dismembered body?’ He laughed. ‘Oh he’s not likely to
dismember you. Not unless you decide it’s less horrendous to throw yourself under the lawnmower than him.’

The sound of the mower died. Fran closed her mouth and there was a shift of her eyes towards Vasey.

‘Well, it’s been a pleasure as always,’ Tom said. ‘Hope you have a good plan B.’ He walked away, ignoring Vasey lumbering in his direction and skirted back round the bungalow and to his car. He felt the rush of heat as he opened the door and gave it a couple of minutes for everything to cool.

He still wasn’t getting in the car. Should he really leave her on her own with Vasey? The guy was a bully, he treated women like a Neanderthal.

Not his problem.

He fast-forwarded the years and saw Hattie walking home one night by the side of the road, nobody kind bothering to stop, just leaving her for the psychopath to scoop up.

It was his problem. Every good man’s problem.

With a sigh he closed the car door again and retraced his route to the back garden. Nobody about. He went towards the door and heard Vasey grunting. A groan. Fran’s voice, urgent, a pleading tone.

And that was it, all the anger still sloshing around from 1995 was sending him charging through the door, hurtling
through the kitchen, screaming, ‘LEAVE HER ALONE, YOU GREAT BIG FUCKING BULLY …’

Two faces looked up at him, expressions astonished. And then they turned back to what they had been doing before he careered in on them.

It took a moment for Tom to work out that Vasey was lying flat on his back, mouth an open clench. Fran, kneeling by his side, appeared to be trying to persuade him to sit up. ‘Come on, lean on me.’