‘Yeah, but —’
The landlord came over, threading his way through the crush. ‘Not in here, George,’ he said in that world-weary, old-boy manner he adopted whenever there was trouble. ‘A quiet wager between friends, okay. But no one’s going to run a book in my pub. An’ you’d better get that thing out of here just in case there is an accident. Never could stand ’em myself.’
The man glanced at Ginny with as much venom as if he’d like to slip the caterpillar down her V-neck. She pressed back as he passed her with the jar clutched in his hand. The caterpillar was moving inside the glass, uncoiling itself.
In the doorway he collided with a couple of teenagers in motorcycling gear. As they entered they were looking back towards the road, yelling out some joking remark to one of their friends, and didn’t see ‘George’ until it was too late. The impact knocked the jar out of his hand and it smashed on the step.
‘Bloody hell! That thing cost me money!’
‘Should look where you’re going, Dad,’ one of them taunted.
The crush around the door scattered. Then curiosity got the better of people and they began to drift back to join in the search for the caterpillar. Sharply-pointed fragments of glass lay around the worn step but there was no trace of the green monster itself.
‘Jack, let’s go somewhere else,’ Ginny muttered uneasily.
That afternoon she’d slipped out to buy a simple long frock in Indian cotton, having nothing to change into because she’d never intended to stay the night, but now with that caterpillar around it made her nervous every time the hem brushed across her feet.
In London at least she’d felt she’d be safe from them; now even that illusion had gone.
She allowed Jack to take her arm and steer her out through a side door. Crossing the street, she could still hear the excited chatter of those who were hunting for it. For everyone’s sake she hoped they’d find it, yet she hated the thought of what might happen when they did.
8
The morning of the All Saints Spring Fête started with a thunder storm. Lesley woke up at about five o’clock, disturbed by the window rattling in the spare room. The rubber wedge must have become dislodged again. As she swung her legs out of bed and felt around for her slippers, a flash of lightning briefly illuminated the bedroom, followed by a close, growling rumble. The storm could not be far away, she thought, though Bernie still lay there dead-out, too deeply asleep to hear anything.
As usual in the morning her foot was numb. She almost fell when she put her weight on it, but with the help of the stick she steadied herself and managed to hobble out into the corridor. The wind was gusty, raising the lino and moaning in the old chimneys, yet not at all cold. An odd spring it had been. More like a hot, humid summer. Everything a lush green, flowers a feast of colour, and fat, lazy insects crawling everywhere.
In the spare room she found the rubber wedge and pressed it in again between the window and the frame, banging it home with the edge of her hand. Another flash of lightning and this time the thunder was closer, more urgent. She dragged a chair across and sat down to watch.
This room would be the best for what she had in mind, she decided. It already had a washbasin, which meant the extra plumbing would not cost too much, and power was no problem. It would make a good little laboratory, if only she could keep the children out.
That stay in hospital had given her time to think. She’d thrown away a career, they had told her when she’d dropped out of university to marry Bernie. Well, that didn’t worry her, not when she saw what careers were doing to some of her friends. But she would like to get down to some real study, for her own sake. If she could get hold of some of these caterpillars…
Do some work on them, perhaps.
Publish a paper: it would be a start.
The next crash of thunder was immediately overhead, as if the house roof were being ripped off. It left her trembling, much as she was fascinated by thunder storms. Heavy rain started simultaneously, pebble-dashing the window panes. And her injured foot had to choose that moment to resume its aching.
‘Mu… mmy…!’
Frankie was awake. Of course.
Lesley grasped her walking stick and with difficulty pulled herself up to go along the corridor to the children’s room. There’d be no getting back to sleep for anybody now.
By six o’clock the rain had stopped; by eight the flooding on the drive had drained away and the gravel surface was dry. It was going to be a gorgeous day after all. If anything, too hot. The girls were dashing about the house, excited by the prospect of the fête. Frankie’s infant school class had been rehearsing their Sherwood Forest play for the past month; now the day had come she was constantly dragging the others into Phuong’s room to admire her Maid Marion dress on its hanger.
Immediately after breakfast, the big kitchen table was cleared ready for sandwich cutting. Lesley had undertaken to run the tea stall long before her ‘accident’ with the caterpillar, and she saw no reason to go back on her word now she was out of hospital. Phuong was there to give her a hand, and Ginny dropped in shortly after nine.
‘Oh, you’ve finished most of them already!’ Her tousled blonde head appeared around the door and she gazed, astonished, at the piles of quartered brown bread sandwiches on their trays. ‘Cheese and chutney… cress… egg… What else d’you need?’
‘That’s only half,’ Lesley informed her cheerfully. ‘Get yourself a knife out of the drawer and start buttering that pile. Oh, it’s a lot of work, but I do enjoy these days!’
‘How’s the foot?’ Ginny asked.
‘A bloody nuisance!’ she declared. ‘You’ve no idea how much slower it is having to do these sandwiches sitting down.’
Ginny was looking better than she’d seen her for weeks, Lesley thought as they worked. A bit more colour in her cheeks since that trip to London. There were times she could be really beautiful — a delicate, petite beauty which she ruined by slopping around in jeans and dark T-shirts. Bernie noticed it too, as she’d observed only yesterday, catching the way he glanced at her. It was high time Ginny made an honest man of Jack, she thought but refrained from commenting.
‘Any coffee going?’ Bernie called out, coming into the kitchen from surgery. ‘Oh hello, Ginny! Had a phone call for you. Jeff Pringle.’
‘There’ll be coffee as soon as you make it,’ Lesley said, pausing to count the sandwiches she’d just completed. ‘And keep your fingers away from those. They’re for the fête.’
‘You’ve got jam on your nose, Les,’ he retorted. ‘Ginny, I told him about the fête. He says he’ll try to come over this afternoon and meet you there.’
Lesley rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. ‘Do we know Jeff Pringle?’
‘That pilot who crashed the holiday jet, or so they all said at the time. All the evidence pointed to pilot error, though the final report exonerated him. The newspapers had a field day.’ As he talked he spooned the coffee powder into the cups. ‘Then you remember that scandal about a cargo of zoo animals from Africa. When the crates were opened, half of them were dead.’
‘That was hardly his fault,’ she recalled, doing one more jam sandwich to make the numbers even. ‘Wasn’t he held up by some military coup, or something? I didn’t know his name was Pringle. Where did you meet him?’
‘His cousin was the other caterpillar victim in hospital.’ He began to pour on the hot water, stirring as the cups filled. ‘You keep an eye on him, Ginny. He’s had a few brushes with Customs and Excise from what I hear. Gets his money from somewhere.’
Ginny looked up from her buttering and pulled a face at Bernie, letting the tip of her tongue appear. ‘Jealous?’