The Flaxborough Crab f-6 Page 5

  “Isn’t that lovely?” loudly inquired Miss Pollock of the company at large. For some reason or other, she had moved to a vacant seat on the other side of the gangway. A few of the women obediently murmured assent. Old Mrs Crunkinghorn got out her handkerchief in preparation for a bout of her congestion.

  Through Pennick village the coach rolled, and on towards Hambourne. Heat shimmered in patches on the straight stretch of road ahead like sheets of water that evaporated before one reached them. Inside the coach, speculation concerning the gift of the brewery was renewed. Most were inclined to accept its non-appearance as proof of the folly of believing in miracles, but this did not prevent other theories being offered. The wildest, and therefore the most attractive, attributed the party’s loss to the secret thirst of Alderman Winge himself.

  Unaware of this calumny, the alderman swung round in his seat, beamed at his detractors, and called: “Now then, ladies and gentlemen, what about a sing-song?”

  “What about our beer?” retorted somebody at the back.

  The alderman’s smile remained undimmed.

  “Daisy, Daisy—how about that one, eh? Right, then. Dai-ai-see, Dai-ai-see...” He made measured, encouraging motions with his raised arm. “That’s fine—Give me your a-answer, do-oo...”

  “I’m half cra-a-azy, all for the love of you-oo...”

  Thus, in a curdling contralto that somehow was as unlikely as the sentiment it expressed, did Miss Pollock give loyal support. No one else did.

  “Ah, well,” said Alderman Winge, “perhaps it’s a little early for us all to be in voice, eh? Never mind. What about a round or two of I Spy? Now wait a moment... I spy with my little eye...something beginning with...” He glanced inquisitively around the coach.

  “With B for beer,” came again the voice of the hidden malcontent.

  “No, no...wait a minute... Something that begins with C,” announced the alderman, serenely.

  The passengers cast dubious looks at where they thought Alderman Winge had detected his object. They saw nothing significant. Only old Mrs Crunkinghorn made any response.

  “Cow?” she suggested, staring straight at Miss Pollock.

  Ten minutes later, the coach passed through North Gosby and descended into the greenery of Gosby Vale.

  The old reservoir was at the end of a narrow lane, about half a mile from the main road. It was a natural lake, bordered on three sides by woods. The fourth side was a grass-covered embankment, steeply shelved to the water but declining much more gradually to the meadowland it protected and with which it now seemed merged.

  It was in this meadow that the party was intended to receive the benefits of sunshine, fresh air and rural peace.

  The coach drew up on a patch of concrete where once a pumping station had stood. Alderman Winge, Miss Pollock and the helpers climbed out to be ready with support for the less agile members of the party.

  Slowly, the coach emptied. A case of food and a crate of lemonade were disinterred and carried to a shady spot at the edge of the meadow. The ale was left where it was.

  Alderman Winge ran a benevolent eye over the assembly, most of whom seemed at a loss to know what they were expected to enjoy first. He set example by thrusting his head back and ecstatically sucking in a chestful of air, which, after four or five seconds, he discharged as if it had been an entire chapter of Ecclesiastes.

  Miss Pollock took a more modest helping. She pronounced it to be “like wine!” (“How would she know?” muttered old Mrs Crunkinghorn to a neighbour.)

  A few experimental sniffs having failed to convince anybody that breathing alone was going to make the day memorable, the Darbys and Joans began to wander off in small groups.

  “That’s right!” Miss Pollock called after them. “Go and pick some nice flowers, all of you. We’ll have the naming competition straight after lunch.”

  Some flowers were, in fact, picked—mainly by those who had conceived the notion that participation in the meal would be made conditional upon fulfilment of Miss Pollock’s command.

  The others occupied themselves in a variety of ways. Some sought refuge in the nearby woods for a quiet smoke. Most of the women got as far as they could from the platoon of helpers milling round the picnic basket and sat in the long grass to knit and gossip. The anglers in the party instinctively drew together to climb the bank and gaze for two silent hours into the deep, weed-streaked water of the reservoir. One man, who still remembered a country upbringing, spent the morning stalking a pheasant which he managed eventually to grab, execute, and stow away under his coat.

  All were rallied shortly after mid-day by the admonitory hoots of Miss Pollock. Food, or, as Alderman Winge preferred to express it, ‘our little feast’, was ready.

  The sun was high now and by the time the meal was over a pleasant apathy had settled upon almost all the company. One or two removed their overcoats. Sleep seemed a very good idea.

  But not to Miss Pollock.

  Clapping her hands to jerk the somnolent back to the business of being made happy, she announced that the flower naming competition would be held forthwith.

  “Some of you” (there was the tiniest reproving emphasis on the ‘some’) “have collected lots of absolutely lovely flowers, and we must see now—mustn’t we?—how many of them you can name. Now then, I’ll hold up each of these nice little flowers in turn, and I want you to call out its name. Mr Winge is going to keep the score—aren’t you, Mr Winge?—so that we shall know who gets the most right. Ready, everybody? Now here’s an easy one for a start.”

  She held aloft a dandelion.

  “That’s naught but a poor little piss-a-bed,” declared old Mrs Crunkinghorn promptly and with disdain.

  Miss Pollock looked taken aback. “Well, actually, I would have thought...”

  “That’s what that is,” Mrs Crunkinghorn affirmed. “A poor little piss-a...”

  “Yes, the old country name, I expect. Ah, now what’s this next one, I wonder?”

  In her hand was a straggle of stalk from which hung several diminutive white bells.

  “Tickle-titty,” said Mrs Crunkinghorn, without hesitation. “That’s what that is, my old duck.”

  Hastily, Miss Pollock put it down and selected what she was sure was a perfectly innocent wood anemone.

  Again, Mrs Crunkinghorn’s was the sole responding voice.

  “Poke-me-Gently. Very good for green-sickness, my mother always reckoned.”

  On to the discard pile went the specimen of Poke-me-Gently. Raising another flower—a lank, brownish-yellow affair—Miss Pollock deliberately avoided the leading contestant’s eye and looked appealingly to the further part of her audience.

  “Now, what about some of you other ladies? Wouldn’t you like to have a try?”

  “Old Man’s Vomit,” snapped the omniscient Mrs Crunkinghorn. “You don’t want to hold that too near your dress, me dear.”

  Miss Pollock looked at Alderman Winge, inwardly urging him to declare the competition won and over, but all he did was rub his hands and say to Mrs Crunkinghorn: “My, my! I can see that you have been a botanist in your time, dear lady!”

  “I’ve had me ups and downs,” confirmed Mrs Crunkinghorn, with a leer.

  By now thoroughly apprehensive, Miss Pollock displayed flower number five.

  “Haahrr... Purple Lechery!” Mrs Crunkinghorn showed that when it came to hand rubbing she was the equal of any alderman.

  “Now, dear,” Miss Pollock said to her, “I think you have had a very fair innings, don’t you? You really must be a good sport and let the others have a chance. It won’t be a proper competition if only one lady takes part, will it?”

  Having made another selection, Miss Pollock held it up in such a way that her hand shielded it from Mrs Crunkinghorn’s view. The flower was tubular and of an unsavoury pink, mottled with green: it looked like a tiny bloodshot cucumber.

  Nearly a minute went by.

  “Come along,” said Miss Pollock. “Isn’t anyone goi
ng to have a guess?”

  A stolid silence.

  Miss Pollock’s arm grew tired. She transferred the flower to her other hand. For one instant, it was in unrestricted view.

  A caw of gleeful recognition, and Mrs Crunkinghorn scored yet again.

  “Squire Stinkfinger!” she cried, then hugged herself in a transport of chucklesome reminiscence.

  “I-I don’t think th-that...” stammered Miss Pollock, her face much the same colour as the flower she had just tossed disgustedly to the ground. “Perhaps now we, we should...” Without thinking, she seized another piece of flora and began twisting it in her fingers. “Perhaps...”

  “Maids in a Sweat!” Mrs Crunkinghorn’s final triumphant identification rang out like the game-stopping call of a Bingo victor.

  She wagged a bony finger at Miss Pollock.

  “Never you put none o’ that under your pillow, me old duck! Goorrh! Not unless you want some o’ what you ain’t never ’ad!”

  To the rescue at last came Alderman Winge. He raised his arms in an all-embracing gesture and announced that what they needed more than anything else at that moment was a jolly good game to settle their meal. Hide-and-Seek, no less. The ladies would hide (as they always did, ha-ha) and the gentlemen would seek. He looked at his watch.

  “Five minutes’ start for the fair sex, eh? Right, off you go, ladies!”

  He beckoned Miss Pollock and lowered his voice.

  “Some of the dear old souls are just a little slow to get into the swing of things. I think it’s rather up to us to give them a lead. If you, dear lady, would be good enough to go over into that little thicket yonder, I shall wait here a few minutes and then pretend to look for you. Would you do that? Capital!”

  Miss Pollock nodded and set off. Alderman Winge ostentatiously covered his eyes with his hands and bayed encouragement to the stowly dispersing and reluctant Joans. Four remained where they were on the ground. They appeared to be asleep.

  After five minutes, Mr Winge uncovered his eyes and signalled the old men to depart in pursuit. Grumpily they lumbered away towards the trees. Mr Winge, affecting uncertainty, began a zig-zag course that would take him to Miss Pollock’s hiding place.

  The abandoned sleepers buzzed and snorted contentedly in the sun. One was Mrs Crunkinghorn. As soon as she judged it safe to abandon her strategem, she sat up, made herself comfortable, and got on with her knitting.

  The helpers were in the coach, enjoying cups of tea that they had brewed privately on a paraffin stove. With them was the driver. No one else was in sight, although an occasional distant squeal of surprise indicated where some at least of the hiders and seekers were entering belatedly into the spirit of the game. Of the two organizers, there was no sign.

  Mrs Crunkinghorn’s knitting needles clattered on. She felt pleased with herself, with the sunshine she had been allowed at last to enjoy in peace, and with the bees that hummed in the clover flowers about her. Her thoughts strayed into other fields in other, far-off times when she was a girl at Moldham Marsh. Moldham... Like lookin’ fer maiden’eads at Moldham—that’s what they used to say when anything was rare or difficult. Aye, and no wonder... She rocked over her knitting and gave a ghostly little cackle in tribute to lads who were dodderers now, or dust...

  Suddenly, the old woman perked up her head. Who, she asked herself, was that—scrawking like a guinea-hen? She sat straight and shaded her eyes with one hand while she peered across the meadow in the direction of the scream.

  A figure emerged from a copse at the far corner of the meadow. It was that of a small, dumpy woman. She pelted like mad out of the trees, arms pumping, knees high. Mrs Crunkinghorn stared admiringly.

  Seconds later, there broke from the same cover a taller, lankier runner—a man. His limbs flailed loosely and he seemed to have trouble in keeping his balance, but he was covering the ground at no less a rate than his quarry. In one hand he clutched a strip of what looked like dark cloth that fluttered behind him in the slipstream.

  The woman raced across the grass for twenty or thirty yards, the man gaining noticeably He reached out, almost touched her; but then she veered and began to run at a tangent up the slope of the reservoir. By the time she reached the top, the distance between them had increased by a couple of yards.

  Still no one else had appeared to witness the chase. Mrs Crunkinghorn felt a sense of privilege.

  The figures now were silhouetted against the sky, and the watcher had a clear picture of the drama’s startlingly odd end.

  The man had no sooner levelled into pursuit along the top of the embankment than his body seemed to turn on its own axis, quite independently of the legs. Considerably inconvenienced by this lack of co-ordination, the legs, though still pounding along, began first to knock against each other and then to swing out at increasingly wild angles.

  It seemed to Mrs Crunkinghorn that the man was actually running sideways.

  But soon he was not running at all. The legs having become hopelessly entangled with each other, he stumbled and cart-heeled on to his head, then toppled, quite slowly, over the farther edge of the embankment.

  Mrs Crunkinghorn was too far off to hear the splash.

  Chapter Six

  Miss Pollock heard it, though. She stopped running and turned. What she saw made her scream, but not quite as loudly as she had screamed before. She remained where she was just long enough to get wind for another sprint, then she set off down the bank towards the coach, frantically waving one arm.

  Three minutes later, a group of intrigued but helpless people stood on the brink of the reservoir, staring down at the submerged features of Alderman Steven Winge.

  The body was only about a foot below the surface. It undulated very, very slowly, as if lazily flexing and relaxing in the cool luxury of effortless suspension. Mr Winge looked remote, certainly, but not dead. His eyes were wide open and he was smiling as usual. One hand still grasped its trophy of torn cloth, a black pennant drifting down to mingle with fronds of weed.

  One of the helpers glanced surreptitiously at the rent in Miss Pollock’s dress.

  The coach driver was the first to speak.

  “I’ll get off to a phone. You’d better stay where you are.”

  He went down the banking at a half run. At the bottom, he shouted over his shoulder:

  “And don’t try and do anything—you’ll only fall in yourselves.”

  The pensioners were beginning to straggle back in twos and threes, attracted by the sounds of crisis. The word spread that something dreadful had happened to Mr Winge. The old men and women toiled up the bank to see for themselves.

  The body neither sank nor rose. It did not shift perceptibly in any direction at all. It seemed set for ever in dim, green jelly.

  “What ’yer doin’ down there, Mr Winge?” quavered potty old Mrs Baxter.

  Shocked, the others shushed her. Yet they, too, found it a little hard to think of a man dead who could continue to smile with such patent self-congratulation.

  Soon after three o’clock, there sounded faintly through the trees the double candy-trumpet notes of an approaching fire tender. It emerged from the lane, scarlet, strident, splendid; drove at undiminished speed across the meadow, and rocked to a halt at the top of the banking.

  Four firemen in unbuttoned tunics and shiny black thigh boots climbed out and unshipped ropes and straps and what looked like enormous fishing hooks. Carrying their gear, they pushed courteously but firmly past the watchers.

  A police car drew up below, closely followed by an ambulance.

  The firemen’s task did not take long. When the retrieved body had been laid to drain for a few minutes and then stretcher-borne to the ambulance, they neatly re-coiled their ropes, smoked a cigarette apiece, and drove back to town.

  One of the two policemen, in deference to those parts of Miss Pollock displayed through the tear in her dress, ushered her to the car.

  The other officer went round asking questions. He received the eager
undertaking of the sole witness—Mrs Crunkinghorn—to accompany him back to the police station and there describe what had happened.

  At ten minutes to four, a procession set off on the return journey to Flaxborough.

  It was led by the ambulance. Then came the coach carrying the Darbys and Joans and the helpers and the crate of light ale, unbroached and all but forgotten. In the police car behind, one officer had shifted to the back seat in the company of Miss Pollock so that Mrs Crunkinghorn might enjoy the high spot of her outing—a silent but triumphant homecoming beside the driver.

  On reaching town, the three vehicles broke formation and went their separate ways, the ambulance to the mortuary at the General Hospital, the coach to its occupants’ club in Trent Street, and the car to police headquarters, where Inspector Purbright and the Coroner’s Officer, Sergeant William Malley, were waiting to see what they could make of the stories of its passengers.