It all began with Yllka’s moustache. Colin had never noticed it till that evening, eight weeks earlier. Some men, he understood, were turned on by a woman’s facial hair, but in him those faint bristles had produced an alarming and opposite effect, for they had revealed not only that her femininity was incomplete but that she, just like himself, was nothing but a sort of ape.
How he hadn’t noticed it before he still could not tell. Some trick of the restaurant lighting may have been responsible. His sentimental view of her had been destroyed, revealed for what it was: part of the subterfuge mindlessly used on gullible males by DNA in order to secure the furtherance of itself.
Decelerating sections of Sheringham had been passing him by and now the train was coming to a halt. His back was to the engine, assuming there was an engine at both ends. At Cromer the train had pulled in and reversed out, changing the direction of travel. Colin did not like going backwards: there had been too much of that in his life already. But, since there had been only two stops remaining, he had not bothered to change his seat, even though by then the carriage had been all but empty.
The change of direction had annoyed him, because at Norwich he had dragged his case all the way along the platform, planning to be near the front of the train when it arrived, so now he had the same distance to drag it again, made even worse by the weather, because the predicted drizzle was still falling.
It had started somewhere around Wroxham, darkening his mood yet more. What he was doing was a mistake. The next six months would be useless and counter-productive. Had he an ounce of courage he would have faced up to the brothers like a man or, at the very least, sought the aid of the police. Not that Colin had much faith in the state these days, or authority in general, including even the train company, and it was with something like gratitude that he had found the carriage comfortable and the service punctual.
The train came to rest and the doors slid open. He struggled into his heavy backpack, then grabbed hold of his even heavier suitcase and lifted it out on the platform.
The air felt much colder than it had in Bristol; he had never been as far north or, indeed, east as this. He could see no ticket office or a waiting room other than a modestly sized glass shelter at the distant end of the platform. Preceded by the other passengers, he pulled his wayward case towards the shelter, which had of course filled by the time he reached it.
About half an hour remained before the bus was due. Colin kept on, hoping for space in what had looked on Google Street View like a brick-built bus shelter. Failing that, he would wait in a café. According to his researches there were several cafés near by, though he could ill afford what they would charge him.
The end of the platform sloped down to a short roadway which, with a row of five endways-parked cars on the left and the sides of buildings on either hand, was terminated and crossed by a busy road.
It was then that he noticed an attractive – from the rear, at least – young woman waiting to cross, sheltering under a little pink umbrella. She may have been a fellow passenger, alighting from what had become the front of the train, and looked quite out of place among the human wreckage on view. She was slender and not too tall, her dark hair in a style whose name he did not know but found appealing. Most noticeable, perhaps, apart from her figure, was her self-assured and natural posture. Her snowy jeans and lightweight, rose-pink rain-jacket not only fitted her but seemed newly laundered and pressed. A bulky linen shopping bag hung from her right hand.
At a lull in the traffic she started across the carriageway, keeping straight on into Station Approach, towards a tiny park on the left-hand corner and thence the former Sheringham Station. During his preparation for this journey, Colin had read about the Poppy Line, an old railway restored by enthusiasts. A steam locomotive was facing this way, silent and unmoving, perhaps gathering its strength before Easter and the arrival of holidaymakers in bulk.
By the time he was able to cross, the girl had got a fair way ahead. He saw her umbrella disappearing into what had to be the bus shelter.
Though he told himself that her face was bound to be a disappointment, Colin was a sucker for brunettes and, despite everything troubling him, could not suppress a tingle of anticipation that she might be waiting for the very bus he needed to catch. He might even be able to sit near or even beside her – perhaps, even, make her acquaintance!
‘Absolutely not,’ he breathed. What would be the use of that? In the first place he was in no position to ask a girl out to dinner or anywhere else, for he would have no transport at Bubthorpe and, besides, very little money, since his board and lodging were part of his pay. And in the second place, just how masochistic could a young fellow be? Was he a glutton for punishment, he asked himself, as he dragged his thumping and rumbling suitcase along this wet Sheringham pavement? Did he want to leap from the frying-pan into the fire? What other clichés could he dredge up to quash the idea of getting himself embroiled with another female?
And yet, could he deny that even a glimpse of this one had suggested that youth and hope were not entirely dead in his breast? Could he deny that already the prospect of a hypothetical second chance had raised a faint, pre-dawn glow along the tenebrous horizon of his mood?
Yes. He could. He actually shook his head a little at his own idiocy as he came level with the shelter, which was about twenty-five feet long, its front partly enclosed by a knee-high wall. The interior had been decorated – a pale-blue ceiling and the upper part of the walls yielded to a field of crude poppies, while the rear wall featured a mural of a locomotive much like the one he had just been looking at. This had to be part of the old station, now taken over by the Poppy Line.
The girl had perched on the bench, which was little more than a stingily narrow shelf along the back, high enough so that her legs were straight. Her furled brolly lay on top of the bag cradled in her lap. And yes, he uneasily observed, she was by no means bad-looking. Very pretty, in fact.
She was staring at the concrete floor. Colin got the impression that she was eavesdropping on the other two occupants, a pair of elderly, comfortably built women on her right. Despite her efforts to keep her expression neutral, it seemed she was finding their conversation amusing.
Her brown eyes assessed him briefly and without enthusiasm as he entered. She was extremely pretty, yes, but there was more, far more: the sympathetic set of her features spoke directly to his heart, and he realised to his consternation that he was looking, without question, into the face of the most perfect girl he had ever seen. Perfect for him, that was. In a kind of daze, aware that something profound had just been done to him, Colin made his way to the far end.
He felt not just dazed but shaken. When he had sat down he saw that she was again intent on the gravel-speckled concrete of the floor, almost as if searching there for meaning.
‘I don’t like to coo,’ one of the old ladies was saying, ‘but if you hent got a computer you gen’rally have to. In Tesco’s specially. Never mind about Lloyd’s Pharmacy. Shocking in there, sometimes it is.’ Her accent was one Colin had never heard before, with the faintest terminal rise, a throwback to the days when television had not done so much to erase regional differences, and he soon realised he was listening to a pair of authentic Norfolk natives.
‘I won’t go inter Lloyd’s fie can help it. I’ve never been one for cooing.’
‘It’s British, though, isn’t it?’
‘What, cooing?’
‘Lord help anyone who jumps a coo.’
He risked another glance at the girl’s profile and detected the merest trace of a smile. Afraid that she would notice him looking, he quickly turned away, but a panic-stricken thought that he might be waiting in the wrong place made him blurt out, to the three of them, ‘Excuse me, please, is this the stop for Wells-next-the-Sea?’
The girl said nothing; barely even looked up, but beyond her, the nearer of the ladies, kindly, with glasses, said, ‘You’re all right here, my love. You want the Coasthopper.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Says “CH1” on the … what do you call it?’
‘The display,’ the other one said. ‘The lit-up thing on the front.’
Colin thanked the pair and resumed his silence. He considered taking out his phone but the battery was getting low. Instead he gazed about, at the traffic and passers-by, studiously avoiding looking the girl’s way. Straight ahead, across the road, he could see a second-hand clothing and furniture store called Colour Me, to the right of it the Lotus House Chinese takeaway, then Zahra’s Indian Cuisine offering also, cosmopolitanly, kebabs and pizza; then came a nominally British café. Besides people, cars and vans were constantly passing, some turning into or out of a side-street almost opposite, somewhat to the left.
While pretending to find all this interesting, he was becoming ever more acutely aware of the girl’s presence. It was as if she were generating some sort of field to which he was responding, like it or not, at a cellular level; as if all his mitochondria, or whatever they were, were becoming aligned in one direction, to his right, to the place where she was so neatly and self-containedly waiting for a bus. Not the CH1, he fervently hoped.
The urge to stare at her, to feast his eyes and gather more information – was she wearing a wedding ring? she was bound to be! – was becoming overwhelming, but he made himself think yet again of Yllka, of the sawn-off shotgun, of the debacle in the square and his hair’s-breadth escape from death. He made himself think of the way their last evening had ended, of her bitter reproof and the grotesque distortion of her tear-stained features. Was not this girl’s upper lip also, when seen in the appropriate light, unlikely to be glabrous? Might she also turn out to be bonkers? In any case a young woman as desirable as that was certainly taken by now. Did her other half too have a taste for extreme and irrational violence; might he too be an Albanian steeped in an atavistic tradition of honour and blood-feuds? Did he too have brothers and did they own shotguns, sawn off or otherwise? How many Albanians were there in Norfolk? Impossible to guess: their numbers were burgeoning and they seemed to be everywhere.
A middle-aged couple entered the shelter and occupied the space on the bench between Colin and the girl, for which he was grateful.
He felt more tired than ever, having been awake since five. Besides which, he had been sleeping badly for weeks. The Z-bed in the Lankesters’ flat was far from comfortable but, more importantly, there had been and still was too much on his mind. Despite fears for his luggage, he had managed to doze off for a while on the Bath to Paddington leg, and he had also snatched a few minutes between Liverpool Street and Norwich.
Perched here, in this brick shelter in this bustling seaside town, he realised his exhaustion had caught up with him. The last thing he wanted to do was board a bus, two buses, actually, and be driven umpteen miles along the coast. Or perhaps he wanted even less to be faced with all the unfamiliarity that lay in store. What he craved was his own bed in his own little flat, but he had not dared to set foot there for nearly a month.
More prospective passengers arrived, and he saw from his watch that the bus was due in twelve minutes. By the time it arrived, a yellow single-decker, a dozen or so people had gathered. Those on the bench arose, including the girl, which meant that she also was for the CH1. Colin’s heart sank, though not without giving an involuntary leap on the way down. He shouldered his backpack yet again and grasped the handle of his roll-along case.
Several people got off, each one thanking the driver. Those about to get on had formed an orderly and even courteous coo. Male pensioners, with a gracious sweep of the hand, indicated their reluctance to board ahead of equally elderly females. The girl too hung back, perhaps conscious of her youth and agility, so that she was the last but one aboard, just in front of Colin. This close to her he became aware of her fragrance and could admire without restraint the vitality and abundance of her hair.
He was unable to overhear which destination she wanted; she swiped a card, received her ticket, and moved aside.
Feeling dizzy once more, Colin said, ‘Wells-next-the-Sea, please,’ and swiped his own card. ‘What should I do with my luggage?’
The driver was a man of about forty, noticeably stubbled, with blond eyelashes, thinning fair hair and a capacious paunch straining the fabric of his sweater. He pointed over his left shoulder. ‘On the rack, sir. Either one. Or both.’
Then Colin saw that the girl was no more than three feet away. She had hoisted herself into a single seat at the very front, raised up, just rear of the door. This protected her from being sat next to and gave her a view through the windscreen. She caught Colin looking at her and averted her eyes.
He knew then that she had divined all his thoughts about her and regarded them as a negligible part of the cargo of lechery that surely burdened her wherever she went. And he knew that those thoughts were not reciprocated in the least. Matters might have been different had he been setting out in a Ferrari; or not. He would never know, because he had perforce to sit somewhere further back and, long before they reached the town of Wells-next-the-Sea, she would have alighted in some chocolate-box village and returned to the wisteria-clad cottage she shared with the jammy sod who had snagged her.
Having heaved his case onto the right-hand rack, behind the driver’s partition, Colin dumped the backpack on the other, just behind the girl, found himself a pair of vacant seats in the middle of the bus, on the off side, and slid into the one by the window. The driver had considerately been waiting for this and drew away at last.
Colin was beginning to perceive that social norms here were rather different from those in London, or Bristol, which is where he had started his journey this morning. The exception was the disdain visited on him by the girl, but he had already forgiven her for that. She could not help looking as she did, any more than he could help being a prey to his hormones, and beauty could be regarded as a sort of handicap: after a while even the most sincere flattery becomes irksome, if not obnoxious.
Her bag, once again cradled on her lap, looked as if it might contain books. If so, he was half expecting her to take one out and read it, but she just sat there watching the view ahead. Her right hand only was visible, so he still could not determine whether she was wearing an engagement or wedding ring.
He turned away yet again, not wishing his interest in her to be observed by other passengers.
It was hard to see clearly through the wetted grime on his window. The bus negotiated a narrow bridge, came to what he took to be the coast road, and turned right. It soon left the town and its golf course behind. The view now was mostly of broad, arable fields delineated by trim hedges. Colin had always thought of Norfolk as table-flat, but it wasn’t in these parts: there were definite hills and vales, though modest. Coming to a gentle summit, he saw a distant strip of grey, grim sea, the same he had glimpsed from the train.
On open stretches of road the bus rattled and jolted along at speed. Most of the bus stops passed by unheeded, but at the approach to one, in a nameless village, the bell rang. Above the windscreen a sign lit up: Bus Stopping. Colin had again, surreptitiously, been studying the girl and half hoped, half feared, that it was she who had rung the bell, but no. A very old man alighted, spryly enough, and the bus moved on.
The local vernacular architecture was new to him. Flint cobbles faced most of the walls; roofs tended to be finished with dull-orange pantiles. Many of the houses and cottages appeared to be Georgian, though plenty were not.
The coast road was in places narrow, occasionally very narrow and twisting besides, and he became impressed by the driver’s skill and patience. A duck pond went by. The view to the right now was of extensive marshland, with what looked like a shingle ridge in the distance, beyond which had to be the sea.
To keep his mind off the girl, Colin read all the notices. These seats were reserved for the disabled; you must neither smoke nor distract the driver; this was the emergency exit. He mentally corrected the errors in grammar and spelling, but even as he did so his eyes kept returning to her, for she was still there, immovable in her seat, coming into a place called Morston, and then also at the next village, its name unnoticed, where the road narrowed even more.
There were no footways here. Between high flint walls the bus met a big lorry heading east. The crisis was solved by expert co-operation: the side of the lorry passed exceedingly close to Colin’s window.
Somehow that made him feel better. Perhaps he had been fated to land like this in the middle of nowhere, to abandon his thesis and the academic life. Perhaps it would all turn out to the good. The brothers, unable to locate him, might eventually give up and turn their attention to the next suitor who had ‘dishonoured’ their sister, which was to say, treated her with at least as much respect as was usual in a modern British love-affair.
The girl was still in her seat when the bus arrived in Wells-next-the-Sea, its terminus. This bus company operated only part of the way, so he had to change here for Bubthorpe. She got down before anyone else. So that he would not obstruct them with his luggage, Colin let all the others leave before him. As he passed the driver he followed the local custom by saying, ‘Thank you.’
‘Have a good one.’
‘And you. The King’s Lynn bus, please. Where does it go from?’
‘Just here.’
‘Thanks.’
She was waiting for that one too.
* * *
Rosalind was beginning to wonder whether her prospective visitor had got lost, for he was already half an hour late. Then Gildersleeve tapped, as obsequiously as ever, on the sitting room door and entered.
‘Yes?’ Rosalind said, looking up from the latest issue of The World of Interiors.
He came further into the room. ‘There is a gentleman to see you, madam. Mr Beardsley.’
‘I’m expecting him. Show him in, and then bring tea and biscuits. And some of those fairy cakes.’
‘Very good, madam.’ Gildersleeve slowly turned, and in his creaking fashion made his way out into the private reception hall, so called to distinguish it from the much grander reception hall in the body of the house.
Rosalind had met Mr Beardsley once before, at Gawkrodger Associates’ offices in Norwich. He was exceptionally ingratiating, even for one in his line of business, and no more than thirty, wearing today a well-tailored lounge suit, dark grey, in a costly worsted cloth. He reeked not only of greed but aftershave or something like it, and his mousy hair had been larded with some sort of gel that made it almost spiky. The pallor of his complexion spoke of a life spent under artificial light.
Having apologised for his lateness, blaming his satnav, Beardsley obeyed her unspoken instruction to seat himself in an armchair next to an occasional table on which a cup and saucer could be set. He reached down, opened his briefcase, and drew out a prospectus.
‘This is the final version, as agreed,’ he said, handing it to her.
Rosalind put on her spectacles again to examine the document, a single piece of glossy card, folded down the middle to A4. It described the scheme in glowing terms and bore a plan of the proposed development as well as an aerial photograph of Knapp’s Field and part of the village. She did her best again to restrain a cynical smile as she re-read the part about ‘working with local people’. The areas for housing had purposely been left blank, so that the mooted number of dwellings could not be ascertained.
A copy was to be sent at the beginning of April to every household in the village. ‘We’ve booked the Village Hall for the eleventh,’ he said. ‘A Tuesday. Two of our best people will be there, and we’ll have an exhibition demonstrating other Fallowfield projects in East Anglia.’
‘You must expect a hostile reception, if indeed you get one at all. Most of them will boycott you.’
‘We understand that. But we need to get as many on board as we can before the Parish Council meeting on the fourteenth. It’s bound to be on the agenda. Anyhow, we’ll put the pre-planning application in late on the same day so they don’t get wind of it till the following week. No point hanging about.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I asked to see you this afternoon, Mrs Catton-Bullinger, not only to bring you the prospectus, but also because Fallowfield are minded to increase the number. As the landowner and someone in tune with the village, they would like your input on that.’
‘My input is that we should build as many as we can get away with. I thought they said no more than thirty-five would pass the planners, so they’d ask for fifty and come down.’
‘They’re now thinking forty and fifty-seven.’
‘Fifty-seven? That’s far too steep. They’ll dismiss the whole thing out of hand.’
‘We are of the same view. Another three is all the site will bear, given the location and the current climate.’
‘They’re the developers and you’re the planning consultants, Mr Beardsley. I leave it to your collective better judgement. Although after the last couple of times …’
‘If I may remind you, those applications were made by other firms. We and Fallowfield have a more, what shall we say, synergistic approach?’ Beardsley paused. ‘There’s something else I have to raise with you.’
‘Oh?’
‘Those other applications have queered the pitch, so to speak. The District Council may even reject the pre-planning application as soon as the consultation period is over. There’s not much research they’ll need to do. They can just repurpose the other rejections. And we aren’t at all happy about the pre-existing level of hostility in the village.’
‘Neither am I.’
‘They seem exceptionally well organised. Their leader is a retired solicitor and knows his stuff.’
‘Mr Partridge.’
‘Indeed. We’ve managed to get hold of some of the circulars they sent round last time. I don’t think we can count on much apathy from the population at large. We can expect lots of objection letters, and that of course would be reflected in the deliberations of the Planning Committee. Fallowfield are wondering what the view of the Parish Council will be. As you know, it carries weight with the District Council and can to some extent counteract the objections of what we can portray as a vocal and unreasonable minority.’
‘As a matter of fact the chairman of the Parish Council is in hot water at the moment. Misuse of parish funds may be involved, in the form of overpriced and untendered-for contracts handed out to his friends and family. Mr Gowan will be lucky to avoid prosecution. His case is before the District Council. They may send it on to the DPP. At the very least he is likely to be debarred from public office for five years.’
‘Is there a replacement?’
‘Mr Broadribb is the vice chairman.’
‘And?’
‘He may be just as flexible.’
‘Ah,’ said Beardsley.
He looked up: the door had swung back and Gildersleeve incrementally appeared, bent over a trolley.
When Rosalind had got rid of Gawkrodger’s man she felt no optimism for the success of the scheme. The weather reflected her mood: although the drizzle had ceased a while ago, the sky was still grey. The drab view from the window, across the lawns to the twelve empty chalets, reminded her that the miseries of another season were about to begin.
The slender hope she had invested in Mr Beardsley and his principals was her only bulwark against eventual ruin. Her husband had refused to listen to her advice so persistently and for so long that she no longer even bothered to lecture him about Knapp’s Field.
As if summoned by the very negativity of her thoughts, Mungo inopportunely put his head round the door. ‘Has he gone?’
‘Yes. All you had to do was look out of your office window and you’d have seen that his car was no longer there.’
‘What car?’
‘The one he must have come in. From Norwich.’
‘Oh, he came from Norwich, did he?’ Mungo glanced with displeasure at Beardsley’s empty cup and side-plate, for Beardsley had occupied ‘his’ chair. As if to make the point, he sat down on the sofa, directly facing Rosalind. ‘I wasn’t in the office.’
There was no reply to that worth making.
‘So what is the upshot?’
‘The prospectus will be going out now, and the pre-planner goes in on the fourteenth of next month. Fallowfield want more houses. Three more, we thought, was possible.’
He frowned. ‘Really, my dear, you know as well as I do what’s going to happen. It’ll be turned down like the others, and we’ll be in even worse odour than before.’
‘There is a chink of light. I understand that Broadribb is likely to be the new chairman.’
‘Who?’
‘Maurice Broadribb. The timber merchant. At East Rudford. You know. Broadribb’s. On the industrial estate.’
‘He’s already the chairman, surely, if that is his business.’
‘The chairman of the Parish Council. He is already the vice chairman.’
‘Does he live in the village, then?’
‘Of course he lives in the bloody village, Mungo.’
‘And what about him?’
‘I’m pretty sure he’s amenable to persuasion.’
Mungo grunted, then got up and yanked the bell-pull. A few of the housekeeping staff had already reported for duty, but it was again Gildersleeve who appeared. Mungo ordered tea for himself – Rosalind wanted no more – and when Gildersleeve had departed he said, ‘Do you happen to know where Benny’s got to?’
‘No idea. Unless they’re running today.’
‘I do wish that boy would attend more to his duties.’
This was another subject Rosalind was tired of. Benedict would no more make a suitable manager than Mungo himself. Indeed, he would almost certainly be worse. As for Mungo’s other child, Rosalind grudgingly conceded that she had the makings of a manager, were she to have had the slightest interest in the family concern. Instead she sat at her computer all day long writing romantic fiction which, it had to be said, seemed profitable, for she had just bought herself a new car and, unlike Benedict, refused to take a penny of the allowance Mungo kept offering her.
Rosalind was uncomfortably aware that her dislike of her stepdaughter owed something to jealousy. Beyond that, the two of them were chalk and cheese. One of Rosalind’s many desires was that the wretched girl should leave home and go to live, for preference, on another continent, if not another planet. That was looking increasingly unlikely, for she showed no more interest in men than she did in the administration of the Pines.
‘Perhaps,’ Mungo said, ‘Amy will know where he is.’
‘Amy has gone out for the day.’
‘Where to?’
‘I cannot say. I saw her walking up the drive first thing this morning. Where she went after that is a subject for speculation. London, I would guess.’
‘Oh. What does she do there?’
‘You’re her father. You ought to know. Shopping in Bond Street, no doubt. God knows how much she spends on herself. She’s always wearing something new, and as for her shoes … I had no idea that the trash she spews out could make so much money.’
‘She’s a very successful author,’ Mungo said weakly.
Rosalind snorted.
‘I say, I do wish you wouldn’t speak about her in that fashion. Amy is my own flesh and blood, after all.’
‘Your daughter, Mungo, is nothing but a self-absorbed little hussy, and the sooner you realise that the better.’
