Mr Golightly’s Holiday

Mr Golightly forked out a ten-pound note and they went next door to the Oak Deli. Johnny wandered off, leaving Mr Golightly to buy a brie, some slices of garlic sausage, olive oil, wine vinegar and some stuffed olives. These delicacies in hand, he looked for the small hardware store which, painted in a green gloss, had caught his eye as they drove into the town.

‘Paint’, ‘Timber’, Glass’, ‘Keys’ promised one window, while its twin announced, ‘Gas’, ‘Houseware’, ‘Plumbing’, ‘Fancies’.

Mr Golightly was taken by the idea of ‘Fancies’. He liked the look of this shop and entering felt at once at home among the curious collection of bric-a-brac. Here were dyes, bath plugs, colanders, tea cosies, flour sieves, screws and hooks and brass bolts of all sizes, slug pellets, hot-water bottles, jam covers, lemon squeezers, thermos flasks and hurricane lanterns. In particular there was a milk jug in the likeness of a cow. Mr Golightly lingered a little over the cow but in the end he bought a hot-water bottle with a knitted cover, some clothes pegs, shaped like little wooden people with stiff legs, some electric plugs and a packet of firelighters.

The door of the shop was fitted with an old-fashioned bell which raucously announced the arrival of Johnny. Mr Golightly pointed out the cow. ‘Me mum would like that,’ Johnny observed. ‘Eight pound forty-nine,’ he said, before the elderly man at the till had had time to ring up the items.

‘How did you work that out?’ Mr Golightly asked.

‘Did it in me head.’

‘Did you now,’ said Mr Golightly. He had heard about savage child geniuses and hoped to goodness he hadn’t got one on his hands.

8 (#ulink_f65bd07e-38f2-5dbc-b349-8452379d07e9)

SAM NOBLE HAD BEEN DISAPPOINTED THAT HIS brief conversation with the tenant at Spring Cottage had offered no purchase for the story of the Palme d’Or. The residents of Great Calne had all heard about it – many several times.

The opportunities to repeat the account of his brush with success had diminished over the five years since Sam had moved from London to the village after his divorce from Irene. Sam sometimes regretted parting from Irene. At the time the world had presented itself as his oyster. The separation had occurred after the near miss at Cannes and had been speeded on its way by a temporary association with an air hostess from Malta. But the oyster seemed to have clammed up since, and such pearls as may have been lying in wait remained ungarnered.

It was true that Irene had not been inspiring: she had wittered on, and long before the intervention of the air hostess Sam had ceased to pay her attention. But nowadays he sometimes missed her chattiness, her observations about the garden and whether they should use chemical pesticides on the patio moss, or go for something organic. There were times when he even missed her warm, comfortably ageing body in the bed beside him.

Sleeping alone in the double bed – which, since it had become available for legitimate double occupancy, had remained depressingly single – had eroded Sam’s confidence. He dreamed fitfully about naked women jockeys and woke in the mornings too early. Dr Rhys at the Oakburton surgery had even discussed Prozac with him but, in the end, Sam decided he preferred to go it alone without anything chemical. After all, he still had a brain – or liked to think he did!

Dr Rhys was young and handsome and believed in the Hippocratic oath. That, and his sympathetic manner, meant he got lumbered with all the psychological stuff. He had suggested that maybe Sam might like to ‘talk’ to somebody. But Sam feared the ‘somebody’ might mean the lady vicar, who was training as a counsellor. Everyone knew she had a bee in her bonnet about male sexual performance. She had alarmed George, who dug the graves and helped out down at Folly Farm with the lambing, during bereavement counselling by asking questions which were hardly decent when you thought that his wife of fifty years was barely cold in her grave. And the grave dug lovingly by her grieving husband’s own two hands too! But these days it was all live-in sex and what the lady vicar worryingly referred to as ‘seeing to yourself’, with precious little about the rites of holy matrimony.

Sam had no particular concerns about the Church of England’s attitude to sexual habits, or to anything else for that matter. He had lived most of his working life in Hampstead and was a confirmed social atheist. But he didn’t care to be asked about his morning erections, particularly not by a lady vicar. George, it was rumoured, had been encouraged to plot a graph.

In any case, it was not attentions of that kind he necessarily craved; it was intellectual stimulus. The empty early mornings had produced a new idea for a creative project – a film about sheep dog trials. According to Nicky Pope, this chap who’d moved into Spring Cottage was a writer. He would probably welcome a chance to hear about Sam’s contacts in the film trade.

Mr Golightly’s first day of writing had been a washout. The shopping excursion with Johnny had protracted into lunch. The cottage had been chilly on their return, and the boy, off his own bat, had read, and apparently comprehended, the instruction book for the wood-burning stove. A miracle, Mr Golightly couldn’t help thinking, and far more useful than some he had known. The impossible-looking diagrams had seemingly been clear as daylight to Johnny, who had flicked, switched and adjusted knobs and had even managed to open the firelighters, which were packed so impenetrably that they defeated Mr Golightly. After that it would have been churlish not to offer to share his modest lunch, though, from the way Johnny had wolfed down the rolls, they could have done with the species of miracle which multiplies.

Johnny had left just after four and by the time Mr Golightly had washed up and checked his e-mails again, dealt with a question from Muriel – it was shocking what the government took you for VAT these days – it was far too late to begin a day’s work. Instead, he strolled up to the Stag and Badger, where he adroitly avoided conversation with Sam Noble by helping out the young poet in the woolly hat again with his crossword.

Mr Golightly was a crossword addict, a passion he shared with Muriel at the office and over the years he had fallen into the habit of doing The Times crossword with her. One reason for reading the dictionary was to pick up unusual vocabulary which might crop up, since it is well known that crossword setters are of the tribe of fiends. It had once been put to him that in the beginning was the word, and although in his own view things were both simpler and more complicated than that, it was a theory he had sympathy for.

Long ago Mr Golightly had discovered the principle of synchronicity, the law of meaningful coincidence, and it was following its signs in his business practices which was perhaps responsible for their general success. So he was not too surprised when four down in The Times read, ‘a deprived adolescence provides succour (6)’.

‘Uberty!’ said Mr Golightly, blatantly disregarding Luke’s chance to have a shot at the clue.

Luckily, Luke was not competitive. ‘What’s that? Never heard of it.’

But at that moment a thickset young man with a loud jacket, exuding a smell of aftershave, equally loud, made his way towards the bar.

‘Evening. Wolford, Brian Wolford.’ The man held out a well-cushioned hand. Perhaps it was the overpowering smell of the aftershave but Mr Golightly withheld his own. Rather deliberately he picked up his pint mug.

‘Golightly,’ he said. ‘You know Mr Weatherall?’

‘You’re the writer chappie,’ said Wolford, ignoring Luke. He made it sound like an accusation.

‘My friend is a writer too,’ said Mr Golightly, distinctly.

But Luke was more interested in the crossword clue. ‘So what’s it mean, then?’

‘Funny thing’, said Wolford, ‘I work up at the prison yonder. You come across some pretty weird stuff there. I’ve often thought of writing a book about it. Might drop round your place and have a natter. We’ve all got a novel in us, right?’

‘Uberty?’ Mr Golightly said, pointedly addressing only Luke. ‘It’s the milk of human kindness,’ he explained, a trifle vaingloriously.

The next morning saw Mr Golightly more than ever determined to get the soap opera under way. Staring out of the window for inspiration he saw the horse, Samson, standing four-square in the greensward. Columns of fine rain were blowing in misty battalions across the fields. A kestrel, resting magisterially on pillows of air, circled above the low-falling rain. Kingdom of daylight’s dapple-drawn dawn falcon…Mr Golightly found he was suddenly overcome by a need for coffee.

But, maddeningly, he had forgotten that the boy had finished off all the milk yesterday.

Up at the shop the bearded Steve said, with evident satisfaction, ‘Out of milk, I’m afraid, even the long-life. Got soya, though, that do you? Weather’s all right for those as has webbed feet.’

Mr Golightly did not care for soya in his coffee. He bought a small tin of evaporated milk and returned glumly down the hill. Yesterday’s buoyancy had deserted him. The unwritten soap opera had become an unresponsive lover, one who resists the most ardent attentions.

Coffee with evaporated milk did not improve his mood but, nevertheless, by 10 a.m. Mr Golightly was once again seated at the gateleg table. Better check the e-mails in case there was something at the office…

Three messages, heralded by their zippy musical accompaniment, materialised in the ‘Inbox’. One from Muriel, to do with one of the many unpaid accounts they were increasingly having to hassle for, one from a firm selling timeshares in Spain – Mr Golightly paused to wonder how ‘time’, which was indivisible, could conceivably be ‘shared’ – and one from yesterday’s anonymous correspondent:

hath the rain a father?

it asked.

Mr Golightly did not know what to think. He was too unpractised in the art of e-mail to be able to decipher any clue to the questioner’s identity, and while he didn’t want to reveal that he was the victim of an anonymous correspondent perhaps an e-mail to Mike was called for. He thought a moment then tapped out:

‘Dear Mike,

If someone e-mails me how do I know who they are?

And how do I reply to them?’

He pondered a moment more and then concluded:

‘Yours ever, Golightly’.

Mr Golightly had never had occasion to write to Mike before, or any of the office staff. It made him realise how little he really knew about ordinary channels of communication. Alone in Spring Cottage, with no one by to protect or defend him, he experienced an unfamiliar sense of vulnerability.

The marching columns of rain had dissolved into a uniform drizzle and Mr Golightly thought he might stretch his legs before starting work. The River Dart was flowing into hills covered today by a modest décolleté of mist and seagulls had winged their way inland suggesting rough weather out at sea. The air was laden with moisture, but Mr Golightly had spent much of his existence under sun-parched skies and the cool wash of English country air was a welcome balm.

He stood with the mild wetness anointing his face. He had to admit it, he was rattled: not merely by the fact of the phantom e-mailer but by the nature of the message. The references to fatherhood and the coincidence of the rain gave the impression that his unknown correspondent was peering at him knowingly – a feeling that challenged his usual security.

Back inside, the ‘Inbox’ announced that he had received another e-mail. Opening it, he read:

boss,

scroll down and you’ll see name of sender and address – bring cursor to ‘reply’ box, click and space for message will appear – compose message then click on ‘send’ – simple!

cheers, mox