by the lady vicar, had been smacked hard for her lying ways.
The tearooms were bought by a retired couple from London, Hugh and Heather Wright, who also took over the name of ‘Nutkins’ for their house at the top of the village. But after Heather ran off with a lecturer in medieval social history – he had come to do research on vanished villages of Dartmoor and vanished instead with Mrs ‘Nutkin’ – Hugh had found consolation with Morning Claxon, a practitioner in crystal healing. A committed campaigner for health foods, she had turned Hugh against cream – indeed against cholesterol of any kind.
Among the residents of Great Calne, ‘Morning’ was not a name which inspired confidence. The example of Patsy and Joanne had induced tolerance of homosexuality – indeed, sexual proclivities of most varieties were generally accepted – but the village was inclined to be mistrustful of anything ‘hippie’. A name like ‘Morning’ didn’t command sympathy. It had been the devil of a job to get those long-haired squatters out of the rectory, when it was empty all that time after Rector Malcolm died of Parkinson’s. The lager cans and quantities of roll-up butts had become local legend. Morning’s plans to turn the tearooms into an alternative health clinic had attracted suspicion rather than support. And there was the question of the car park, which butted on to Sam Noble’s garden.
The tearooms car park was placed, somewhat anomalously, up the hill and across the road from the tearooms. It stood behind the village hall bearing a sign TEAROOMS PARKING only and was mostly used by the children of Great Calne when learning to ride their bikes. Sam, a man who read both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph and was well versed in his rights, was adamant that an alternative health centre would bring unacceptable noise levels to the proximity of his bedroom.
A meeting of the parish council had been called at which Morning had spoken, passionately, of the benefits of Indian head massage. Not properly a resident – she only came down for weekends, when she had Hugh Wright out in the garden all day, getting a dig, people said, at the old wife by having him unearth all the shrubs she had planted – her right to speak was questioned and her words did not carry weight.
The car park was, in fact, a prime building site. It was Sam’s nightmare that a speculator would buy it and try to engineer a profitable development. While planning permission in the area was granted rarely, there was nothing, Sam knew, that money couldn’t buy. That Indian massage woman was flaky. Even if she had no plans for developing the car park herself, a speculator could easily get hold of her, cross a few palms with silver and then where would their peace and quiet be? No, by far the best plan would be for the village collectively to buy back the tearooms from Hugh Wright; then Sam could oversee the car park.
To this end, Sam had run a cost-benefit analysis which he had printed out on his computer. He proposed to call on all the village personally and drum up support.
The Morris Traveller was parked in the front when Sam called on Spring Cottage and banged on the door with the flat of his hand. There was no bell or knocker; when Emily Pope had lived there folk always went round the back; but the new tenant had not been installed long enough for proprieties to be dispensed with.
Johnny Spence was on his second can of Coke when Sam knocked and Johnny’s reaction was to look for a place to hide. There was a cupboard under the stairs but his eye had hardly found it before Mr Golightly laid a hand again on his shoulder. Placing a finger to his lips, he mouthed conspiratorially, ‘Wait there!’
Johnny found himself obeying his host who walked with his peculiar silent tread to the hallway.
Opening the front door took a bit of shoving: the door was used infrequently, and the wood had swollen in the winter damp so that in opening it Mr Golightly almost staggered into the man standing outside.
‘Morning there. Sam Noble – we met the other evening up at the Stag.’
A hand was being proffered, but Mr Golightly was annoyed at having his conversation with Johnny interrupted and his response was lukewarm.
‘Yes?’
He hoped this visit would not form a precedent. He must be careful not to convey an impression that Spring Cottage was a home for social chit-chat.
‘Pleased to meet you again. I’m calling about the tearooms.’
‘The tearooms?’ Mr Golightly’s face was a disobliging blank. Tea gave him a headache – he rarely touched the stuff.
‘All here,’ said Sam, ‘cost-benefit analysis.’ He slapped a furled bundle of papers on the palm of his hand. ‘Scheme for the village. I’d be glad of your views.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr Golightly, ambiguously. It was to escape the affairs of the world that he had come to Great Calne. The last thing he wanted was to be involved in local politics – indeed, politics of any kind.
Johnny Spence, after an initial obedience to Mr Golightly’s directive, had nipped up to the bedroom to check it out. The room didn’t look like a perve’s. Not that Johnny specially cared. That jerk who slept in the caravan all last summer, up in the parking place on the edge of the moor by old Lavinia Galsworthy’s house where you weren’t supposed to park, had tried something on him and Johnny had kneed him in the balls. If this bloke had any ideas Johnny was prepared. But somehow he didn’t give off that kind of feeling.
Mr Golightly’s employees could have told Johnny that to pry undiscovered was a lost cause. The boss had supersubtle powers of observation. It was said that their business rival had once, long ago, worked for him and got himself sacked that way; on the other hand, there were rumours they had fallen out over some woman. Those who knew the boss felt that this last was unlikely – certainly the idea of some inexcusable interference fitted the picture better. When Martha had once, quite innocently, moved some of his archaeological specimens to give them a thorough clean, she had received a dressing down which had led to bad feeling for several weeks. Since then, the boss had tidied his own desk, which, as Martha said, behind his back, meant those nasty old stones, dating back from God knew when, merely gathered more and more dust, which was murder for her asthma.
Mr Golightly, having seen Sam off, looked in the direction of the stairs. If he sensed Johnny’s investigations – and it would be hard to see how he could – he must have decided not to mention it since he merely said, ‘Is there anything I can do for you, before you go?’
The idea of leaving made Johnny’s stomach lurch, like when his mum had gone in for her operation and he’d had to sleep on the sofa over at his Auntie Jean’s. Not that Jean was really his ‘auntie’: she was his mum’s friend from when he was a kid and he and his mum and Auntie Jean lived together over Plymouth way. That time, when his mum was in the hospital, Uncle Glenn, his Auntie Jean’s live-in boyfriend, had driven Johnny in his convertible to see her.
‘Can I have a go in your car?’
Mr Golightly inwardly sighed. What about his writing schedule? But the boy’s hazel eyes looked at him with frank beseechment.
A dart of pain touched Mr Golightly in the upper quarter of his left ribcage. Subduing irritation, he said, ‘Well, we can’t go far but…maybe you could direct me to the nearest place for decent shopping?’
That was easy. Oakburton was three miles down the road and full of all the supermarkets and wine stores anyone could desire. Under Johnny’s guidance, they reached Oakburton in remarkable time, given the age of the Traveller, and soon Johnny was guiding his new acquaintance round Somerfields.
Not that any of the foodstuffs seemed to have had much to do with fields, or with
