The Mysterious Miss Mayhew (2 page)

‘Oh God, tell me, you didn’t run through every word you know?’ Tom moved so he could look at his brother without the sun shining in his eyes.

‘Nah. You’d have been proud of us. Well, of Kath. She just said, “They’re testicles. All male mammals have them.” Hattie seemed happy with that and we moved on.’

‘No doubt it’s gone into her memory bank to be hooked out at some inappropriate moment. But thanks.’

‘No bother.’

They watched the crowd for a while.

‘Bloody busy,’ Rob said as if it was a novel observation. ‘You got to schmooze anybody later? Hand out the magazine?’

‘Hey, I’m the editor, not the delivery boy. And no, no schmoozing. Mrs Mawson’s hired some promotion people. “Let us, Tom,” she said, “keep the show for pleasure and the day for families”.’

‘Very good. Closed my eyes there for a minute and thought it was her.’

‘Yeah. I’m the spitting double. Speaking of which.’ He pointed at the stain on his shirt. ‘Llama didn’t like the way …’

His attention was taken by a woman whose primary thought when she got dressed that morning had obviously been, ‘To hell with chafing, you can never have your shorts cut too high or too tight.’

‘The sights you see when you haven’t got your gun,’ Rob said and whistled softly.

Tom waited.

‘Speaking of hot women.’ Rob’s tone was a study in innocence.

‘Here we go,’ Tom said, struggling to hide his irritation.

‘You remember Suzie, that woman who works with Kath?’

Tom crossed his arms. ‘No.’

‘Yeah you do. Well she’s single again.’

‘Leave it, Rob.’

‘Hate to see you in limbo, mate.’ Rob’s tone was sincere, and that made it worse.

‘I’m not in limbo—’

‘Had any contact from her, recently? I mean since that parcel?’

His brother rarely uttered the name ‘Steph’, as though if he didn’t name her, Tom’s wife would fade away.

‘It’ll get sorted,’ Tom said, firmly. ‘And stop trying to fix me up with someone. I’ve only just recovered from the shit storm that was the last blind date you lured me into.’

Rob looked so sheepish Tom could have entered him in the show.

‘That wasn’t me,’ he said. ‘I never liked that woman.’

‘Yeah, but it was me who had to put up with her necking best part of two bottles of wine and then, when I had to drive her all the way back to Carlisle, her trying to grab my penis.’

‘Some men would pay for that.’

‘I’m not interested, Rob. Work, Hattie and not beating my brother to death with his own blow-up hammer keep me really, really busy.’

Rob put the hammer behind his back, but carried on, all at a gallop, ‘Look, I know you’re not after anything permanent … but sex … we all need it. You’ll wear out your wrist.’

Tom hoped his expression conveyed that, this time, a line had definitely been crossed. Being endlessly grateful that his family helped him juggle work and Hattie didn’t mean he had to let them into every part of his life.

‘If you don’t stop talking …’ Tom began, but there was Hattie running towards them and he had seconds to take off his sunglasses and brace himself before she connected with him. He saw how her fishtail plait was fraying, how the shirt was out of her shorts and her socks sagging. She had a bag of cinder toffee clutched to her chest and she was chewing and trying to talk at the same time.

‘They …’ chew, chew, ‘they tickle them …’ More chewing.

‘Hats, finish what’s in your mouth,’ he said, getting down to her level and trying not to kneel in anything nasty. ‘I’ll have a go at putting you back together.’

Kath was making her slower way towards him and he saw her raise the back of her wrist to one of her cheeks and then the other, as if she could blot away the heat.

‘Sorry took so long. A right queue.’

Rob was by her side. ‘Not feeling dizzy or anything?’

‘No, love. Could do with a sit-down, though.’

Hattie, toffee-free, powered up again. ‘They had tickling sticks,’ she was saying, tugging at him so hard that he had to put a hand on the grass to stop from toppling over.

He looked to Kath for an explanation.

‘The guys leading the cattle have these metal sticks and tickling them on the belly makes the animals stand still. Means they can show them off better.’

‘Ah. Right. We should get one for you, Hats.’ He tickled her with his fingers instead, till she danced away from him. ‘And, Kath, thanks for the …’ he mouthed the last bit, ‘biology lesson.’

Hattie came within range again. ‘Want a piece of cinder?’

He barely got out, ‘Only if you haven’t sucked it first,’ before the hard edges of a piece of toffee made contact with his lips.

‘So, early lunch?’ Rob asked. ‘Something roasted that failed to get a rosette? Hey, wonder what llama tastes like?’

Kath patted his stomach affectionately. ‘Even you couldn’t eat a whole one.’

Rob gave her bump some gentle attention in return and Tom got to his feet. He disentangled the last bits of toffee from his back teeth.

‘Come on, Hats, we’ll go bail Granny out of Home Baking Hell. Meet you two in the beer tent, fifteen, twenty minutes’ time?’

Hattie was off and running and Tom just had a moment to fling a wave behind him and hear his brother’s, ‘See if you can get the Rev. George to break cover and join us.’

Tom called to Hattie not to get too far ahead and tried to ignore how scratchy he felt. Most of the time he was able to gloss over the way his life had gone in a loop and not a straight line upwards. But Rob’s assumption that he understood Tom’s needs completely made him feel as if he wasn’t just going over the same old ground again, but that he’d never been away. He was growing into the landscape.

‘Slow coach,’ he shouted, running past Hattie and giving her plait a swipe. Her skipping and bouncing speeded up before she back-tracked to look at a stall selling garden tools. She studied a hat someone had dropped. She talked to a dog.

He watched her sparking out energy, socks falling down once more, and wondered what sex Kath’s baby would be. He was betting on a boy, which would please Hattie who didn’t have much truck with girls. She particularly didn’t like ones who looked as if they’d been ironed along with their clothes, or who already owned their own handbags. Give her a boy who could fart though and she was in heaven.

He hoped she’d grow out of that.

They made good progress until they reached the Cumberland & Westmorland Wrestling ring. Tom thought it looked like crabs trying to fight; the low-holds, the shuffling round and round. In the centre of the ring were two teenage lads, dressed in vests and shorts.

The guy commentating sounded almost poetical. ‘And Rich here wrestles out of Rothbury.’

An ‘Oooh’ from the crowd and one of the boys was on his knees and then up again to shake hands.

And now there was someone tapping Tom on the shoulder, a guy from the furniture store who was one of their biggest advertisers. He obviously wanted to talk business, so Tom tuned out the wrestling and soon they were discussing whether Tom would be interested in doing a four-page spread to celebrate the store’s tenth anniversary. Tom heard the last bout of wrestling finish and a new one
begin before he said, tactfully, ‘Perhaps something smaller?’ but the cheering from the crowd was making it hard for him to get his point across. There was laughing too. Tom turned to check on Hattie.

No Hattie!
Clammy, disembowelling fear got hold of him. He quickly scanned the crowds. She could be anywhere. But she wouldn’t leave the ground, would she? His breathing was suddenly all over the place. ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he gabbled. ‘Got to go—’

‘Yeah. Think you better,’ Furniture Man agreed. ‘Before that lad gets hurt.’

It made no sense to Tom until he turned and looked into the wrestling ring.

CHAPTER 3

‘But you always say ladies can do anything,’ Hattie grumbled as he hustled her away.

‘I know I do, but you can’t just barge in because one of the boys didn’t turn up to fight.’

Tom thought about the way she’d been clasping that poor teenager. It had been like a koala attacking a tree. Her grip had been so firm, Tom had had difficulty prising her off.

‘Look, I’m not angry,’ he said, slowing down. ‘It’s just you need to be entered for these things properly—’

‘So next year I can do that? Can I? Can I?’

He was backed into a parenting cul de sac. ‘Maybe. We’ll see.’

‘Yes!’ She punched the air before telling him how she was going to flatten the opposition. He didn’t doubt it. At least one lad would see her name on the programme and decide to take up a less dangerous sport. Like running with the bulls at Pamplona.

Would it be an easier life with a demure little girl? He’d never know, he’d got a paint-chipper, as his mother put it.

They were nearly at the entrance to the Home Crafts marquee when Tom spotted the distinctive white hair that belonged to the Rev. George. He was balanced on a shooting stick.

‘Hello, George,’ Tom said, ‘we’re about to collect Mum and go for lunch. Like to join us?’

George looked as uncomfortable as if he was sitting on the wrong end of his stick. ‘Most kind,’ he said, his hand worrying away at his clerical collar, ‘but I … I was just leaving.’

‘Why doesn’t Granny’s friend want to eat with us?’ Hattie asked, in a not very whispery whisper as they passed out of the sunshine and into the tent.

‘I think he’s trying to pretend he isn’t Granny’s friend. Well, not her special friend.’ Tom squeezed her hand. ‘But don’t ask Granny about it, Hats. OK?’

It pained him to say that because Rob and he were desperate to know what was going on and perhaps Hattie’s way of simply asking the same question over and over again might be more effective than their own efforts.

George seemed to be popping up more and more regularly at the same social events as his mother. Yet both he and Tom’s mother pretended nothing was going on. And,
if they were an item, how did that work? His mother had never had any truck with religion, an attitude that had hardened when his father had dropped dead while out jogging, having decided to take more care of his health. If God existed, she had said, he had a bloody cruel sense of humour. Only eight years old at the time, Tom had agreed.

Inside the tent, it was cooler and much less crowded. Hattie and he had already paid it one visit to see how her entry for ‘Vegetable Wildlife, age group five to seven years’ had gone down. To Tom it looked as if a potato had been cloned violently with a courgette, but Hattie had been gutted that her ‘Shark Attacking a Whale’ had been beaten to the top prizes by a porcupine, a lion and a badger.

His mother was standing with the other ladies who made up the baked goods’ judging panel. What they had been judging was displayed on trestle tables that ran along one side of the tent.

Although he had known most of the panel’s individual members since he was a boy, collectively they unnerved him. He felt they were assessing and marking him:
Attractive appearance but rather a stodgy middle
. And, possibly, his parenting style:
Needs to be firmer to avoid collapse
.

‘Had a good wander, love?’ his mother asked, and then, ‘What’s that on your shirt?’

‘Something that came out of a llama.’ He made sure he
had her directly in his sights. ‘And guess what? I saw George outside and invited him to lunch, but he’s off somewhere else.’

‘George?’
Evasive shift of eyes
. ‘Oh, he was here? Hattie, could you get that bag for me?’
Yup, definitely diversionary tactics
.

He gave up. ‘So, how’s it gone, the judging?’

His mother tutted. ‘That
Great British Bake Off
has a lot to answer for. Record entry this year and some you wouldn’t give to your dog. We’ve had the marks of cooling racks clearly visible on items; artificial colourings …’

Tom tried to look shocked.

‘And we’ve also had … No, Hattie, the blue bag. Yes, that’s it. We’ve also had … an incident. That Mrs Egremont. Only class she hasn’t won is ham and egg pie on a saucer and she’s querying our marks for it.’ His mother was sounding ever more indignant. ‘She’s only asking for a recount. We’ve told her “No”. So now it’s a stand about.’

‘Do you mean stand-off?’

‘Yes, a stand-off.’ His mother’s gaze drifted past his shoulder and he turned to see Mrs Egremont stationed near the contentious pie. A terrier of a woman, she might just go for your ankles if you annoyed her.

‘Nasty,’ he agreed, quietly. ‘But come on, it’s lunchtime.’

His mother was hunting in her bag. ‘I’ll be two minutes.
I need to warn the Secretary of the Show there might be a formal complaint. Right, pen, paper …’

He knew she’d be more than two minutes, so when Hattie asked if she could go and have a look around, he let her. He scanned the marquee for anything of interest and saw a woman bending to inspect the plates on the first trestle table of baked goods. Her distinctive grey-blonde hair looked good against the faded mauves and pinks of her summer dress. Nice touch putting the grey suede bag and sandals with it too.

Being married to Steph had left him with an interest in fashion that he rarely voiced to his own family. Rob, whose greatest accolade was ‘That’s a nice dress, Kath’, would certainly rip the piss out of him.

He spent a few seconds wondering in which European capital Steph was currently matching underfed models with overpriced accessories, and then pushed her away again.

The woman was looking towards the judging panel, but they were still in a huddle, so she turned back to the scones, frowning. Another glance around and she caught his eye. She was much younger than he’d first thought. Must be the hair that had wrong-footed him.

‘Excuse me,’ she said.

He was bored and she didn’t look dangerous, so he wandered over. It was only when he arrived that he realised
he’d put his hand over the stain on his shirt. Awkward. It looked as if he was about to take the pledge of allegiance, but if he moved it away again, she would see he had tried to hide the llama spit.

‘I’m sorry to be a pain,’ she said, ‘but do you know anything about these scones?’ Her delivery was clipped, but not unfriendly. There was a glance at, and then away from, the hand marooned on his shirt.