DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 9 Sep 2020

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Today I witnessed an inquest where the cause of death was so lazy the woman basically said it was made up. No one cares, because the guy was a drug addict, as she repeatedly said during her speech. His family did not assist. He died of mysterious causes, found partly decomposed in his flat with a syringe next to his body but no substances either on the syringe or in his body, apart from cannabis. So, of course, the toxicologist made up some nonsense about cannabis-induced cardiac arrhythmia. 

“This case has caused me great difficulties. When you have a suicide, you normally have an intent and an act. Here, we had the intent, but there was no act.”

He apparently left a note saying he was going to god, and his time on earth was up. He was of Arabic descent, but had changed his name to TJ Fuller when he was 16, he was “embarrassed by his name”.

He had started getting different opinions about everything in the past six months, neglecting his friends and was not getting on with people.

The note mentioned “Mr Fuller, the end.” “Ready to die.”

She would not read all of it – out of courtesy.

The case presented great difficulties… a headache, for a clearly unimportant bloke, the way she talked about him, it was callous. It is obvious that if you deal with death on a daily basis, and literally a daily basis, as a coroner, that you will not be particularly moved by anybody’s death. So I don’t take it as an offence against this poor sod that she didn’t give the shadow of a damn.

The real offence lies with the police, the toxicologist, the investigators, and family. The guy was so insignificant that they slapped the laziest possible label on his “partially decomposed” body and got on with it.  (Funny how unknowingly accurate I was in my story of Willy Wurton, huh?)

Clearly, had it been a less drug-addicted, more wealthy man, more people may have perked up at the mysterious circumstances around his death. Here, they were more than eager to consider it drug-related – even if it provably was not. They just did not want to take the extra time. The eyeroll as she described the great difficulties of this case was telling enough.

Thing is, I probably wouldn’t care for the guy either. It is, however, more proof of the shamlike nature of the system itself. The phony bureaucracy which slows everything down and covers it in a veil of acceptability. The truth is we don’t care about all deaths, not everybody is equal, and all the functionaries know it, journalists know it, god knows drug addicts and lower classes know it. I just wish that callousness were not sugar coated in time-wasting exercises for the sake of… of what? Keeping the system going, I suppose. Sigh. Otherwise we might descend into savagery, or would we?

Thought: if an “expert” or doc is “discredited”, what does that mean? By whom?

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DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 8 Sep 2020

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 The sight of roadkill is surprisingly shocking to me. I see these slaughtered creatures, so flattened they are like a detailed painting, in droves each day. In fact the different species whose insides I get the privilege of witnessing on crude display seem to be on the rise. It started with what I think was just a fox last Tuesday and has now, on my sixth day on the job, grown to foxes, badgers, rabbits, a fawn, pigeons, and squirrels.

Possibly the worst one was the rabbit stretched across a solid metre of road, something like a 2D model of the rodent’s intestinal tract.

That is a close tie with the solitary squirrel tail blowing in the wind through the middle of the road.

In other news, I have now observed practices in three different courts. The barristers and clerk in Oxford were having a jolly old time joking between cases, it actually made me kind of maybe want to work in the field. They seem like a solid bunch of smarty pants with a gift for the gab and close interactions with the opposite end of the systemic spectrum. This is a highly interesting domain. I don’t think their laughter and joking was callous, but rather similar to that of a doctor or a nurse. 

They are confronted every day with matters of life and death and, on top of that, humiliation – possibly worse than death? – so they are probably most likely candidates for both empathy and humour. The former is debatable, you might say. I would say that without it, the latter is impossible. So a barrister without a sense of humour is more likely to be callous, uncaring and careerist.
I leave this open to further contemplation. “Sense of humour” itself is an extremely debatable term, because what of the Wall Street lads laughing in the back of a limo caught in a rain of dollar bills, champagne and prostitutes? They probably know a good joke or two as well.

And what of the serious defence lawyer lady working for the accused in the position-of-trust case?

In all her demanding, diabetic glory, she seems a right drag to be around. But her unbelievable persistence in getting what she wants seems, for now, a priceless skill for her job of defending the (potentially) undefendable. Let’s see how the verdict turns out. My point being, the haughty serious types may not be full of humour, or even empathy (who knows what goes on in there), but their commitment to a job immaculately done is a rare and impressive quality indeed. It may portray more integrity than some of the jesters.

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DIARY OF A COURT REPORTER IN COVID TIMES - 3 Sep 2020

My impressions so far.
In my very first week as an observer of the sleaziest parts of everyday modern life, I fell into a court case that happened to make papers all over the world.

Looking over running tables for local courts, I found at least fifteen other cases that stuck out to me as far, far uglier and more shocking. But this was the one that made the cut, because it tickles people’s gossip bones. Everybody is a village numpty more or less deep down.

It’s the case of a woman teacher who, apparently, laid one of her form pupils when he was just turning 16. Putting the legal age of consent aside, the kid was clearly of sound mind when it happened and is not particularly traumatised by the experience which was probably deeply pleasurable for him. I mean, which teenage boy gets to sleep with an experienced 33 year old on the reg? The thrill must have been awesome. For me, just thinking of the day-to-day excitement gives me the chills.

Of course, when you are trying to study and you are infatuated with someone inaccessible whom you happen to have to see every day, that can be a real unhealthy distraction. I recall even at 19, when 33- or 34-year-old T----- would fuck me majestically and then tell me to keep it under wraps and cruelly leave without a kind word, it smarted a little bit. But it toughened me up, wasn’t such a big deal in the grand scheme of life – in fact, some of those memories with him are invaluable to me.

But anyway, this one is quite a bit different. The kid was sixteen and in her class.

I do not get why they make the poor kids say in excruciating detail exactly what they mean by things like “anal” (what do you mean by anal? he put his willy in her bum) and “fingering” (put his fingers inside her. Inside her what? Her vagina). When did children get so adept at sex talk? What are we growing into, as a species? Is it good, maybe? Maybe we were meant to start sex early, considering our age of biological maturity.

Standing outside the court room with the woman a few feet away from me, knowing she knows I’m writing the next salacious story about her that’s going to be the gossip of all the land, was deeply awkward. She behaved very coolly, I must say. Maybe her sharp solicitor has been keeping her spirits up.

The solicitor, phew, there’s a doozy. A heavy woman with nearly thirty years experience, she picks up every tiny detail and turns anybody into a pathological liar if she wants to. I would not want her on my case, though that third boy witness was quite snarky and managed to throw her a little. Her demands for comforts and covid-related hygiene were obnoxious as hell, but I think it’s all a part of the imposing and self-important character.

“I suggest that you lied. I suggest you never slept with her at all.”

Very damning, very cruel to a teenage boy, though they too are notorious for being cruel…

My god, what to think? Whom to believe? It’s like watching a play, only real… With the main character, the centre of all attention, sitting quietly at the back in a glass box, ignored yet intricately scrutinised all at once.

The bumbling prosecutor, chatty and a bit amused by the whole situation, a bit too easygoing. He stumbled over his words I think, one too many times. Eh, why not. He is benevolent.

The chipmunk-faced judge, adorable and formidable. He doesn’t take any nonsense. He has to keep things running to schedule, but he also has to ensure a fair trial. He will pipe in politely – and my god, how polite they are, when they interrupt each other, sometimes I feel Ms Defence Lawyer is on the verge of cursing somebody out but she keeps ultimate respect and calm with the judge no matter what – to clarify anything he did not understand, even if it is basic, just for the jury’s sake. That is what he is for! To make sure the jury understand all in a clean, honest manner.

I befriended the covid cleaner, a nice man from Pakistan who brought me a slice of pizza when I was so hungry. He then became a bit too clingy, saying he’d seen me in a dream and wanted to keep serving me things. Why must my kindness be so gravely misinterpreted? The elite tend to ignore the cleaners, and I treat them just like anybody else. So they like me. Just like children.

...Is that such a demeaning thing to say, when I am the only one actually talking to them and looking them in the eye? Well, it could be argued that I am the one being a phony in this case. But my original perspective honestly was that he was a regular Joe just like any of the big-shot lawyers. It is once I gleaned his pathetic nature that I changed my mind and realised that his attention towards me had indeed been similar to that of a child. So I maintain my high esteem of my own virtue: it is he who proved my good faith in him wrong.

Regardless of such exceptions, I do find janitors and other workers interesting, as they have a very different perspective on things that are happening around us. This cleaner says he delivered food to the now-famous defendant, who lives in the town nearby. A knowing smile suggested that he might have some insight into her character. He can hear the cases from his janitor’s closet, I think I understood him saying. I bet nobody would ever suspect him of anything if he did ever listen in…

Note to self: think about chatting to workers about important people.

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DIARY OF A RESTAURANT MANAGEMENT TRAINEE

 My many weeks of intensive managerial training at L---- restaurants were how one might imagine a sojourn in the military (culinary division). These involved:

Obtaining and upholding the correct uniform. White shirt – not a seam out of place, not a dash of colour or even black writing on the nape of the neck. Blue jeans. Flat black shoes. Hair up, mask on. No jewelry or ornamentation, bra coordinated with the white shirt. Though it may look like a casual uniform to the outside observer – and that is indeed the reasoning behind the move – it is actually a very strictly regimented one, with waiters coming in early, dressed in their own clothes, to iron their white shirt in the tiny, cramped, cluttered staff room that smells of feet. Hooks on the walls hold layers upon layers of employees’ belongings, nothing protected from theft. 

They enter the arena of the restaurant floor with strict orders about how not to address customers and remove glasses from tables. I will not delve into the intense heat of the summer accumulating droplets of sweat behind the revolting facecloth they are forced to wear throughout service to help the customers feel safe (from the smiling faces of filthy peasant servants?), nor into the impossibility of proper communication with three-quarters of one’s face covered up.

They run sometimes an entire floor of punters with little to no help from the manager who delegates, does a lot of digital paperwork and deals with complaints. Running a section means getting to every table in time before the little patience bar above customers’ heads reaches critical level, juggling and staggering orders to keep the kitchen running smoothly. It means removing clutter from tables (using a delicately balanced tray) as they run to pick up a food order that includes hot, heavy and precarious dishes to balance simultaneously between hands and forearms. 

I had the honour of training under J-----, the company’s “German matron” in the boss’s words, though she be of English descent. She was a gorgeous bleached blonde with a 60s fringe, chin length hair, a button nose and sultry eyes that darted round the floor from underneath mile-long fake eyelashes. Hers was certainly a pristine face to front the business. She told me once that even on her days off she would not feel awake until full make-up had been applied. Her lips were large and handsome, boldly outlined in lipliner and a very precise colour filled in to match the rest of the artwork. But the first thing anybody saw of J----- was her most glorious, shapely and most especially sizeable feature, very clearly displayed in the woman’s choice of classy, tight-fitting vintage jeans.

When J----- contorted her face into theatrical expressions of grief or mirth, she began to look a bit like a drag queen. Vulnerability and despair floated constantly near the surface, which, combined with total competence, gave her great standing in the company as a representative for the waiters who would remain easily manipulable by the bosses. I was utterly shocked to find out that she was thirty-five, with an art degree under her belt and still no idea what to do with herself, and she worked there around sixty hours a week.

The management trio were all of an eerie reptilian ilk. The owner’s version was softest, and most human – or at least, he put it on well enough. He would often wear faded workman’s clothes and boast about the humble grunt work of his lofty role. He would swan into a branch by surprise, sheer authority and grandeur oozing from his every pore, and engage in a breezy chat with lowly employees as the manager on duty soiled himself in the background.

He would often briefly take said manager outside, deliver a dressing down about the lighting levels and the sore victim would return to the floor, cowed, as boss man resumed light banter with the fawning staff. The man was a master of manipulation, effortless calculation in his every move, his every glance, his words both kind and cruel. He was tall, Swiss, wide-set with long grey hair and piercing hazel eyes. His face was oddly nondescript – hard to picture, but instantly recognisable. A slight lisp in his genial English accent added to the illusion of humanity.

The managing director was worst at concealing his reptilian nature. Not only was his approach snappy and often harsh, but his sharp face with its incredibly tight brown skin were immediately reminiscent of the common gecko. Every detail of the tall, svelte, perfectly ironed, ageless man’s skull was visible – down to the gap in his temporal bone. His cold black eyes bulged from sunken sockets, his mouth drew back in a painful smile when necessary, but never when talking to his subordinates. He was creative with his words, and quick to dispel my notions of hierarchy: “no, everybody is equal in this company” - just before roasting the manager on duty for forgetting to make him a coffee in plain sight of everybody in the restaurant.

Hard to backpedal from such a merciless depiction of the man; but I will mention nonetheless that he was far from bad-looking, and his exceptionally authoritative demeanour evoked heavy flirting from the sultry adolescent waitress who, on her way out the door, coyly asked him when she could have her meeting with him. Under my knowing laughter (at the gorgeous girl’s sheer audacity), he reacted without an ounce of awkwardness, keeping the exchange professional while sufficiently acknowledging her advances.

He was the embodiment of the corporate machine, a perfectly kept tool for running every cog in the company down to such vagueries as “conflict management”, “diversity and inclusion”, protocols, policy and procedures. He would adapt his tone – as per every management training programme under the western sun – to whomever he was talking to, in order to get his message across in the most scientifically proven way possible. To me, laid-back pragmatist that I am, he effectively communicated an empathetic reaction to my distaste for checklists and countless, (unpaid) time-consuming online courses, making me fold to his commands like a teaspoon in a tub of ice cream.

I recall the managing director’s family coming in for dinner one day, a tired looking woman sitting across the table as their daughter pranced around on his lap. It was an odd vision, an exhibitionist performance of “classic family man” for all employees to enjoy.

Both the managing director and especially his owner almost hypnotically incite bootlicking behaviour in all those in the vicinity, even customers.

The third and absolutely key piece to the ------- puzzle was the handsome human resources lady. While equally reptilian in appearance to the managing director, she had a natural clumsy charm that gave her that HR edge. She was their secret power, the manipulatrice extraordinaire, the “good cop” - everybody sang her praises for how accommodating and understanding she was. She worded demands and contracts perfectly suited to the business needs while appearing to address employees with genuine compassion. When she made a mistake, such as having me work two, not one, unpaid trial shifts, she apologised emphatically, pretending to beat herself up over the injustice she had caused me – a trick I am no stranger to, but gave her a pass nonetheless.

When I, however, made the mistake of double-booking myself, she sent me a tactfully worded threat of demotion: “perhaps you would like to start with us as a waitress, and finish your management training sometime in future.”

When she or the MD would fail to respond to e-mails, they would keep schtum; should an underpaid manager meanwhile fail to be contactable outside of work hours, may the wrath of the corporate gods smite him.

The deeper I plunge into this strange, award-winning, so-called ethical company, the more misery and stress I discover. Minutes after my earful from the MD about their policy of not putting staff on more than five shifts in a row so they can get adequate rest (so that they don’t trip on a slippery tile because they’re tired, which is part of a risk assessment, which must be recorded, blah-di-blah), I learned from the harassed head waitress that she had had one day off in twelve as equally harassed managers continued to pile work on her petite frame. All seemed satisfied by her sulky reply to their empty question, “how are you?” - “fine”.

The tension is palpable during busy shifts, with waiters sniping at each other behind the scenes while putting on highly convincing displays of warmth to their customers, or “guests” as they are euphemistically called (despite pains taken to ensure rapid table-turning and regular remarks about the size of their wallets).

Clearly these reptilian creatures are highly skilled in hiring intelligent yet obedient staff like myself.

I have not yet mentioned the head chef, who quite literally looks like a combination of Lord Voldemort and an evil Pope Benedict. He, too, is ruthless and evokes dread amongst the staff despite his hearty Liverpudlian origins. I know far less of him aside from: his unrelenting, unsympathetic reaction when I begged to wear my own shoes in the kitchen instead of the mandatory ones that hurt my feet over the fifteen-hour shifts I was made to do for peanuts; word from the other chefs that their work load increases whenever he is on a shift because he is far too important to chip in to the menial tasks. His face is what marked me most, from the very first time I saw him: a large bald head with cold, inset eyes like black holes. There was an almost inhuman aspect to the whole man. He always seemed to slither from room to room, or otherwise be standing unnervingly still.

I can just imagine head chef and boss man out on a market research mission to neighbouring eateries. Had they walked into my pub, I would be utterly fascinated by them, would almost certainly flirt with the owner. As their underling, I have deeper insight but frustratingly little use of my feminine powers. Their ironed shirts emit no musky pheromones. 

In the company environment, all messy aspects of human nature are tucked away into the recesses of the most tightly-run ship I’ve ever seen. They hire based on obedience, character and appearance, this much is clear. The innocent teenage waitresses are key to the company’s image. They are spared most mistreatment as their bubbly nature gives the business a veneer of purity, perkiness; an almost virginal appeal.

It is, without a doubt, a fascinating world to study. The kitchen staff seem happier for they are actually living their chosen career and seem to have chances of progression up the ranks. Many of them are ambitious young (and I mean young) fellows who chop fast and fry hard, learning with adorable enthusiasm from the head chef when he mentors them during a lull in service. They may gruff and moan a little, but it is what they love doing. Unlike the front of house. These guys and girls are all pursuing, or at least dreaming of, something completely different, something better, and so desperately unattainable.

Such observations make me wonder whether I was cut out for this. I have fallen too far down the commie hole, seeing all as exploited individuals and the bosses as, well, reptiles. Perhaps I can not boss around tired waitresses who have never a minute for themselves, particularly the ones with children. Or maybe… maybe it is worth seeing if I can learn this skill. Study the reptilian folk, glean some of their alien ways to gain just that little bit more efficiency in managing my own life.

I have not spoken yet of the little starter chef who made my experience in the kitchen such a joyful one. Little A-------, young ginger fellow at the opposite end of the stick from the head aliens discussed above: sensuousness ran through his every sinew. A------- told me what to do in no uncertain terms, and I talked back constantly. Our lighthearted bickering was a joy, it made the air all but vibrate around us. The electric shock that ran through my loins when he touched my back by surprise with the tips of his fingers must have been clocked by the others in the room, if only subconsciously. 

 My furious flirtations scared him a little, it seems, for I don’t think he was aware of his super power. He was half a head shorter than me, with a big head, bad skin and a beady face. It may not be every day that a girl recognises his electric faculties. We exchanged numbers and very nearly met up, until I chickened out about the following: being a manager and sleeping with a low-level chef; not liking him as much outside of the workplace; his likely age, considering the other two chefs at his level were nineteen.

For what most aroused me was his way of bossing me around: “Come over here, woman, and cut these shallots for me.” “It’s not about the size of the knife, love. You’re just shit at it.” His vulgarity was not as harsh as it looks on paper – it was gentle, even affectionate. He had a low, sultry voice that he did not overuse like so many of the other British lads in the kitchen.

 A man of few words, A------- worked hard, smoked cigarettes, and had tattoos all up and down his arms and probably the rest of his little body too. Lord knows it would fill up quickly with tats that size. He had a blue-eyed wolf’s head on the back of his right hand and it stared at me when he showed me how to prep desserts. He would flirt back by posing with his muscular back to me, arms up against the high shelf of the kitchen surface as he talked to the chef. The definition of his shoulders showed through even the thick white cotton of his uniform and the ink on his exposed forearms rippled over well-formed muscles. 

Sometimes I would kneel to get something from the fridge and intentionally hover a little longer than needed around his crotch level, just to get another hit of that erotic energy. I noticed him gruffly adjusting his parts a couple of times, a gesture I find oddly sexy, though it probably be considered gross and even sleazy by most. Maybe I am an underachiever, but I don’t think my crotch would lie to us.

GUTTER TALK - chapter 7: Could almost live like this

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As predicted, Harriet rudely failed to attend despite the grand written invitation to the lady’s great welcome-home party to herself. The hostess promised to serve Harriet’s favourite dessert, creamy homemade meringue with raspberry coulis – did I mention that at that gathering last time? thought Harriet with alarm. By god, those women are good listeners if nothing else.

Jake had seen it, she knew, for she had found it on the kitchen table upon her return from town on a day out with her urban friends. She was a little bit jolly and went on to tease Jake with the card.

“Oh my, darling, look! You would simply regale yourself with Tammy’s cooking. And how thoughtful, look. My husband is also welcome pop along, she writes, at the bottom, in smallest of lettering. Look Jake, how lucky you are! Clearly the village adores us for all our efforts to fit in. Ah go on, we haven’t seen her in so long. Perhaps Andy beat some sense into her during their time away,” she howled with wicked laughter.

“You’ve clearly had a great time out in the city,” said Jake dryly. To be fair, he did envy Harriet her light-hearted view of human nature. The city folk had nothing at stake in their social life. They could flit from group to group or meet new friends altogether once the old gang got nasty. They were not trapped in a circle of rich layabouts and benign retirees, sprinkled with the occasional bored psychopath. All those characters were diluted in the crowd… a sea of blissful anonymity.

Harriet often reproached him his envy of city life. She, to the contrary, had felt unique, wanted, a reason to get dressed up, during her time in the village. Even the odd conspiracy tickled her and the glorious rolling hills took her breath away every single morning from the window of their matrimonial nest.

She loved the townspeople’s honest interest in animal husbandry, their genuine discussions of the weather. The weather had a real impact here, unlike in the city where it was endlessly discussed to break the ice but never actually changed the course of anybody’s day. In the village, it could turn out a matter of life and death for a farmer’s crops, a young woman’s horses, even for a young child.

One of the town’s eccentrics could easily trace her alcoholism back to the day she opened the car door after stalling in a flooded ford and her toddler son had been viciously flushed away by a merciless wave, fatally bashing his head on a nearby rock. The lady was never the same since, but she maintained a solid reputation through relentless creativity and shameless honesty.

This woman lived in the neighbouring village and Harriet was always disappointed to have so little access to her. This was not the petty type who would indulge in shallow, judgmental gossip round a dinner table in the afternoon with a hateful husband leering at her through his zoo-like glass barrier.

Most village folk were too shy to approach the tragic artist except for Lazy Larry, who had happened to participate in the installation of one of the woman’s great exhibitions and had remained friendly with her ever since. Lazy Larry, despite the name and belly, was a hard worker whenever he did any.

Jake had plenty of time for Larry. He had met him earlier that day during the older man’s afternoon waddle through the countryside, and had him in for a drink. The benevolent fellow knew Jake had been having a hard time and he felt there was great integrity in the boy, who toiled away daily to create the perfect home for a future family.

“How you going, Jake my boy?” Larry had boomed, causing Jake to start upright from his focussed efforts on the paving stones leading to the front porch.

“Oh hey, Larry! Long time no see,” he relaxed visibly upon seeing the friendly face. “It’s going, mate, going mental if I daresay,” Jake said with a grin.

“Good to hear you’re joining the rest of us, then. What’s next for this god-forsaken historical site?”

“It’s looking pretty well now mate, to be fair. A couple more bits here and there, the well water connected to the mains and we’re rolling along smooth as cream.”

“That old thing not connected yet? Oh look Jake, I’m sorry I’ve been busy larding up. I would have been glad to help speed it up for you and angry Andy.”

“Please – don’t even give it a second thought,” Jake waved his hand though his gut clenched bitterly. “I seem to remember Harry saying you told her some folksy legend about that thing, by the way. Some woman ghost in there or something?”

“That’s right, she must be what’s holding him up. Distracting him, like, with her womanly wiles. God knows they’re probably wilier than Tamara’s at this point,” he sniggered.

“Yeah, any bird’s a catch after that sneering viper of his,” Jake grimaced. He was so relieved to have a sympathetic ear to disparage Tamara with. Lazy Larry was a strong supporter of the opposition and nodded his chins emphatically.

“Say what you will of the ghost, but the victim surely can’t be pure legend,” insisted Jake in all his curiosity.

“You’re right there, kid. It was only two landowners ago – that’s fifty years – when one of them got so tangled up in the town’a affairs. I think she was a bookkeeper, found out a bit too much about her neighbours’ dealings. Some say she was thrown in, some say she did herself in as the place and all its ugly dramas got to her, but either way a human most certainly find herself decomposing down that well.”

“Christ almighty. I hope – wonder who… fished it out?” Jake said in a hushed voice.

“Can’t say for certain, but I think it was the son of the next occupant. The police round here have always been a band of jokers anyways, nobody believes a word they say for better or worse -” he raised his eyebrow knowingly at Jake - “but poor Andy’s certainly got some heavy history to be dealing with, working on that thing.”

“Well, if he’d just finish up already he wouldn’t have to anymore,” the landlord snapped.

Lazy Larry chuckled a goodbye and walked off, leaving the young man to simmer down. That filter system will have to be state-of-the-art, if there’s a dead fucking body down there, he thought. Better be ghost-proof at any rate. And I’ve dealt enough with these police for another decade at least, no chance I’m asking them for records on that.

He wandered towards the well-room where Andrew had resumed work after the tea that had been dutifully prepared by Harriet and reluctantly served by Jake in order to keep the precarious peace. The old man had a dour expression on his face and Jake realised he had probably overheard – there was no way of knowing how much – the conversation with Larry a few minutes earlier.

This was definitely the last thing Jake needed: Andrew knowing his precise feelings about his – what had he called her? - sneering viper of a wife. And, sure enough, he did. He had also caught the part about the excruciating pace of his work, though that at least was fair comment.

Upon realising the social doom which awaited him, Jake had simply walked away to wait for his woman to return and tell her they would need to hire someone else to finish up. His hope of ever gelling with the villagers was finished.

His musings about the dead bookie had reached fever pitch when Harriet burst, half-drunk, onto the scene only to mock his dislike of the woman who had made his new life, which was supposed to have been perfectly idyllic, a living hell.

“What do you say, my hot mess? Shall we lighten up their evening?” she was leaning on the counter after a particularly turbulent mis-step. The girl’s pretty head turned to the floor tiles to try and settle the booze-storm inside her skull.

“Maybe you should lie down, my drunken doll. We can talk tomorrow morning.”

Andrew had gone a couple of hours ago, with an extremely curt salutation. Jake had not dared to give him the sack then and there, and despised himself not only for this cowardice but for his clumsy display as soon as Larry had granted him the blissful abandon of badmouthing Tamara. The villagers suddenly did not seem so guilty in this whole debacle as he was. They are fools undeniably, and yet I allow myself to be drawn in. I can not even manipulate a septuagenarian hive mind into liking me! No, I cave to their crushing gossip, I avoid them, I bring on more unjust suspicion through my actions. I do not care what they might think if they knew the truth, but this gross misrepresentation insults me beyond belief, traps me like a rat in molasses. They will not rest until I’m done for!

And Harriet, poor Harriet. She could fit in better than I ever could. Ever! Maybe it was my stubborn mother’s fault, and now there’s no way out, where to? Harriet with downplay it all as she always does and stick to this place like a loving tick.

That woman down the well would understand me like nobody else.

She knew the sordid and pathetic lives of these tiny-minded people like the back of her hand. She would sympathise with me better than Harriet ever could, silly, naive Harry, likes to be centre of attention, doesn’t she?… flaunting their generous gifts in my outcast face… the woman of the house, the real lady of the land, she’s down there.

He found himself by the well all of a sudden, delirious.

The shower where Willy Wurton had expired was about three metres to the back of him, through a doorway and a short corridor. Their bedroom stood right above it.

Harriet was busy readying herself for a romantic sparring session with her beloved, whom she assumed was pent-up again. But Jake wasn’t pent up. He was fed up. And he wanted to be master of the village like that woman had been. He needed to share his abject hatred with a sympathetic ear, be it a partly decomposed or spectral one.

Maybe she had not been so pretty as Harriet, he thought in a brief moment of reason. But there was more to life than sex! he reasoned further. There needed to be understanding, sympathy, a shared worldly cynicism. His final thoughts as he plummeted through the darkness were, “the piping looks nearly finished.”

 

 

THE END

GUTTER TALK - chapter 6: Gossip queen takes a holiday

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The weeks after that passed by uneventfully, with the exception (and perhaps for the precise reason) of Tamara and Andrew taking an impromptu holiday to the Antilles. They had, it seemed, found a common language at last.

Aqueous operations at Jake and Harriet’s farm home were still running from the mains, much to Jake’s fury and per Harriet’s resigned expectations. She worked her way through her husband’s tempestuous moods with great dedication and fervour, though they kept the volume away from prying ears, which would be sure to dutifully pass any dropped eaves to Tamara upon her return.

Overall, the village was quite peaceful even for Jake, who found that his mother’s enemy’s cronies dropped most of their suspicious behaviour when the shepherd was away. Some chilliness persisted, but it rather mirrored his own and gave him some amusement when he was in his best of post-coital moods.

The valley he lived in gave him no end of inspiration and pleasure. The glistening sea of green laid freshly cut before the lovers on a glorious morning, the silver ghost of overnight rainfall still in the sky and providing a melancholy backdrop for Jake’s vivid imagination. He felt the sun’s rays strike each individual blade of grass as it forced its way through the rainclouds to reach the couple’s shimmering patch of earth in these English hills.

“I could almost live like this,” he said quietly to himself, startling Harriet somewhat. She said nothing, knowing he had not intended to share his innermost despair so candidly.

She, too, greatly appreciated the heavenly sight before her eyes, but her contemplation was one of simple peace. She saw the high-definition outline of the fluffy trees in bright, tennis-ball green over a dark silver sheet of cloud which only made her wish she had acrylics with her.

Where Jake had spotted an odd, man-shaped shadow standing unnaturally in the nearby stream, Harriet admired the uprooted young oak which had thrust its thickest branch upright through the water in defiance of its untimely fall.

Where Jake observed a panicked vole seeking to escape the gliding buzzards’ all-seeing eyes, Harriet saw an industrious fieldmouse digging around for a perfect home.

In his own way, the sullen man saw the natural beauty of the scene: the constant tug-of-war between good and evil. The glowing greenery never stood out more perfectly than with a chilling thundercloud lurking in the background.

In fact, Jake had to hold in some of the jaw-clenching that oftentimes came with Harriet’s naive expressions of awe. He always pretended to be amused by the girl’s tendency to voice her every sweeping emotion when faced with unutterable (or so it should be) natural beauty, but today it was somehow impossible for him to perform his usual relaxed chuckle and firm embrace. The view was too hostile to merit such wonderment, and he felt she either knew it and was trying to smooth it over, or she was painfully oblivious to the earth’s cruelty even as it so plainly showed itself to them.

If anything, he thought, she should be gasping in horror as the storm cloud approached and swarms of shadowy birds fled the hemisphere with the approach of winter. He gripped her hip harder than usual in a disguised attempt to contain his stress. Harriet turned to him and revealed the top of her breasts in their loose cotton covering by placing her hands on his chest, the fabric drooping away from her skin. She directed her sultriest gaze straight into his tense face, too overwhelmed to suspect what turbulence was rocking his mind.

“I would just love you to take me on top of that green, green hill,” she purred. “Our hill.”

Jake paused to glance at her exposed front, but the sexual urge that would normally have flooded his entire being felt cavernously distant.

“It’s going to rain. Can’t you see?” he spoke through gritted teeth and quickly added, “darling. By the time we made it up there we would be drenched.” And I would be blamed for your subsequent flu by the villagers, he added to himself. “Come in now, Harry. Let’s get warm.”

“But I’m not –” but he had already begun to walk back.

He must be annoyed about something, Harriet speculated, forlorn. Though he did call me Harry, so it can’t be me. Is Tamara coming home soon, I wonder? She adjusted her frock and trotted after her man.

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GUTTER TALK - chapter 5: Half-baked accusations

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Harriet had received a fair few invitations to the mums’ club from various members whom she met on her errands.

“Oh but, you know, I’m not a mum,” she would respond politely. And I wouldn’t be caught dead under your magnifying-glass parties either.

“Darling, it would be a pleasure to have you over anyway. Good to see a fresh face every once in a while! And maybe give you some pointers when you do decide to bring a little baby into the world,” a well-meaning Angela would chirp.

“Well, I’ll give it a think, Angela. Thank you for your kind invitation.”

After such an encounter, the following party would be rife with gossip.

“The poor, secluded thing. ‘Give it a think’, she says – more like ask Jake whether she may leave the house for anything other than buying him tools! Does he think she’s his runner?”

Some days, Harriet would come home with some garish gift or a tin of biscuits from local ladies who considered it their duty to provide her with moral support.

Jake noted that the gestures often correlated with a worsening of his own lot. He observed so many cold faces on his way about town that soon, in his eyes, every closing door was a neighbour rushing to avoid contact.

It was not that Jake cared for any of these people, but he believed in a fair trial, and these silent accusations were anything but. He bristled to think that shopkeepers were probably underserving him or butchers spitting in his cuts of meat before they wrapped them up.

Such were the feelings that accompanied him one morning as he went to the corner shop for Harriet, who was unwell. She liked a particular drink upon such occasions, that her slavic grandmother had accustomed her to: hot milk with melted butter. The dregs Jake had left in the carton after their tea the previous evening would not do, so he set out after an imploring, albeit phlegmy, kiss from his ailing wife.

“Hi there,” he said with a genuine smile upon noticing an unrecognisable face at the counter.

“Hi, sir,” said the spotty young girl uncomfortably, looking round the shop for support. A pang of irritation hit Jake straight in the gut.

“You all right, love?” he inquired in a heroic effort to remain gentle despite his defiance at her unjustified mistrust.

She was, in fact, the shop owner’s adolescent daughter, and it was her third time ever looking after the place on her own. She had no awareness of the drama between the adults of the village, but apprehended every interaction for fear it might cost her father his business. She was also very self-conscious of her awkward appearance. Such a cycle of insecurity can easily spiral into a rather sorry display.

When the girl wanted to say, “I’m great, how are you? How may I help?”, she instead stood dead still as the words sizzled weakly through her head.

Jake grabbed a milk carton and jabbed it more forcefully than either of them expected on the counter, causing the clerk to jump. “That’ll be one pound, sir,” she said tightly. He mumbled a gruff “thanks”, placing the coin in her outstretched hand, and left.

“What’s wrong, Jake my precious?” Harriet felt his internalised rage as soon as he walked in the house and only wished she could assuage it as she knew best, but a persistent cough and sore throat prevented her doing so. She cupped her head in her hands and gave him a languorous kiss instead.

Jake could barely resist her sultry eyes, but could not bear to upset her neither mentally nor physically as she sniffled pathetically in gratitude. He grunted and went off to prepare the oily concoction in the kitchen, taking care not to make any loud noises with cutlery or doors.

Upon his return, Harriet lay docilely naked on the bed, her pale skin even more so in her weakened state. Jake could not wait any longer to ravage her, but not before setting down the mug of hot, buttery milk as far away from the bed as possible.

“Has anybody seen Harriet lately, then?”

It was known as the the “flouer” fete where all the gardeners and pastry chefs showed off their growing and decorating skills, putting their creations to the test of external scrutiny and internal strife. It was a beautiful day for it, too – bouquets all on display like crown jewels, glittering under the effect of their masters’ misting bottles and crisp morning sunlight.

On the other side of the event were the chefs, Angela first and foremost with her own child adoptee which Tamara had generously passed on to her as her own workload became too great. She and the little eleven-year-old girl had prepared three miniature wedding-type cakes, each as floral as the last, all undeniable works of art in her eyes.

Other designs included a whipped-cream sheep sponge, a “piebald foal” (or marble loaf, for non-equestrians), and tennis ball cupcakes in honour of the upcoming world tournament.

The event was far more than a simple good-natured competition – it was cutthroat, and the entrants were having none of Tamara’s chit-chat.

Most people’s replies were along the lines of “indeed, one contestant less”, and Tamara’s inflammatory conversation starters blew away in the gentle wind of fierce anticipation as her gardener friends made last-minute adjustments to their great assemblages of flowers.

Clodagh from the neighbouring hamlet uttered a “hmm, not lately” out of politeness, tweaking an astraloemeria.

Tamara had little success with growing things and very little interest in baking them. She made herself busy bustling between observers and creators, holding the room together as she saw it, full of enthusiastic praise for every competitor. She enjoyed discussing her and Andrew’s vegetable patch which had yielded enough for a week of fresh garnishes and salads.

Polite nattering went on until midday when the judges began their rounds of the flowers.

“Harriet Sadler?”

A current of whispers rippled the petals of nearby bouquets as the woman did not speak up. “Harriet Sadler?”

“Where could the poor girl be,” was the general consensus, the mere sight of Tamara shaping the attendees’ thoughts into ugly bruised forms. The seed had been successfully sown, the slightest suspicion amplified to perfection.

Indeed, Jake had failed to call in Harriet’s absence as he sat up sick with worry for her health. No hints of all-important flower competitions entered his mind despite the garish signs that had been on display at the town hall for the past seven weeks.

The subsequent drinks were rife with inspiration.

“Did you hear how he nearly lost it with Arthur’s little daughter at the shop one morning?”

“Ooh no, I’ve not heard that one,” piped up one Sally, a plump young baker with a passion for icing sugar (but never on a Victoria sponge) and human misery.

“He came in for some milk, she told her dad, and well, he was pretty impatient with the girl – she’s only so new to the business of customer service, you see. Arty’d left her on her own while he went to get some change, and Jake, or a ‘tall curly brown young man’ as she so innocently described him, with a quilted jacket and a growly voice, insisted on asking her how she was and slamming coins down on the counter, and all!” Angela was two gin and tonics down and drunk with glory, for she had won both first and third prize for the flour section of the competition thanks to her ingenious use of the child’s name on one of the pastries.

“Oh yes, I’m sure he would love to set another young, fragile creature straight, the brute.”

Cordelia looked on and quietly questioned the rapidfire conclusion these woman seemed to be drawing from Arthur’s hand-me-down story. Surely the girl had just told her father about the one person who had happened to come in while he had left her alone, and surely one can be grumpy early in the morning?

She looked nobody in the eye and could not join in for fear of having the wrong opinion. The harsh descriptor - “brute” - had particularly jolted her, for until that moment there had only been glaring innuendoes.

Harriet had finally decided to come along to one of the all-female gatherings. She had convalesced with all of Jake’s devotion after a couple weeks of heavy coughs and ruthless headaches. She had forgotten what it felt like to be well, and the ensuing giddiness made her crave society. “Perhaps they can be talked round to our side. Perhaps they’re more reasonable than we give them credit for?” she crooned softly into a dour-faced Jake’s unhearing ear.

“Right, and leave me to deal with the woman’s poor bugger of a husband as he comes to drown his sorrows as slowly as possible in my well,” he replied moodily. Harriet gave her beloved a kiss and a lick on the lips, arousing him greatly before swinging her hips out the door.

He stared after her for a solid minute, then made his way to the bathroom.

Round the beautifully stocked lunch table at Tamara’s, Harriet was shyly recounting some mundane story about gardening to test the waters. Every story seemed to go on without a foreseeable end, until the punchline made it clear to any listener that her efforts in following the various details and characters had ultimately been in vain. Harriet could hardly match the length of some of the more weathered ladies’ stories in her own tale of failed begonias, but she appreciated the simple pleasure of benign conversation after so many weeks in isolation.

Angela, it seemed, was the only one with interesting things to say without fear of upsetting the docile balance in the room.

She was animatedly telling the story of her late husband’s emergency mouth-to-beak resuscitation of one of their hens back in the day. Harriet piped up, “wow! My mum always made me paranoid about parasites you could catch from birds.”

She knew as she said it that the seasoned country folks would look down on such a precious attitude, but she chose to bathe in the awkwardness nevertheless.

“You don’t know how many parasites you can get just from living here!” said Angela amiably. “You city folk and your superstitions about germs,” said farmer Kevin’s wife in a rare moment of independent judgement.

“My mum actually grew up in the country, but I get your point, ladies. I agree with you! After all, I did choose to move here,” said Harriet appeasingly.

The atmosphere softened back into muggy gelatin as the ladies eased their way back into the steady hum of mundane chat.

Harriet had no way of knowing what they would say about her after she departed and in the coming days, but from the sheer number of times she had been invited, she guessed her sudden appearance would not fail to generate a buzz through the village. She also supposed that her agreeable nature might win their favour. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched an irate Andrew grab his coat and tool bag – but not before taking a swig from an unmarked bottle on his desk.

He sat in an office separated from the dining room which by a foggy old window instead of a wall. The effect was something like a zoo, though it was hard to tell which side was the animal enclosure.

He had cursed their choice of making his study often to prying eyes ever since they set it up, but in the throes of passionate drunken love, he had assumed he and Tamara would always be dining together and would always crave to see each other even in their quiet moments.

What folly. Now Tamara’s eagle eye watched him through that window whatever he did, adding up his idle hours and accurately predicting his next moves. She felt all her totalitarian attitudes were justified since his fateful swing had toppled her over in the entrance hall decades ago.

The window was so grubby by now that a casual observer would only spot a silhouette on either side and no more, but a silhouette was plenty for Tamara to count sips of scotch in between jobs or pages of the newspaper.

A more significant amount of eyes on him would send him to work without fail, and this was one such occasion.

“Nice to have a day away from the wife, hey?” he noted gruffly as he came in to Jake’s back room where the well stood uncovered and the pump ready for the handyman. Jake had gotten to know the set-up amid so many hours spent watching and counting Andrew’s thieving hours.

The plumbing was nearly ready to go, the filter had been tested, and Jake had convinced himself that the many years of savings on water bills would certainly make up for this excruciating ordeal.

The crumpled man in his tired suit seemed to expect something upon his arrival, which Harriet would typically deliver without request. The men stood for a while in the entrance to the tack room - Jake exasperated, Andrew dulled with scotch and flustered at his host’s inhospitability – before a whimper from the couple’s new dog gave them a welcome respite. Jake firmly believed that a pet’s main purpose was to effortlessly defuse any awkward situation, and little Roger had arrived in the nick of time to beg for food and attention. Little did the owner know that his working guest awaited a similar treatment. “Hey, little guy. We just got him a few weeks ago now,” explained Jake, unsolicited, leaning over to give the young schnauzer a scratch. “Nice and butch but also portable. A funny bugger,” he added.

“So it is,” said Andrew, thrown by the innocent and lovable newcomer.

The pup uttered an expressive “woooo!” at the sight of an intruder. Jake resolved at this moment never to train the dog out of such behaviour, for he clearly had a natural sense for saving his skin when he had nothing to say. Besides, a well-trained dog is supposed to stay away until called upon, and what’s the use of that? No, thought Jake. This howling is just right.

He genuinely failed to hear Andrew’s request for tea over the din of the young dog’s howling. He smiled benignly, hoping the man would soon get to work so he could return to his own.

Rude prat, thought Andrew. Maybe Tamara has got a point.

And he set off to the well, which had already been prepared for his arrival. Wants to hurry me up, does he? For the first time since he started this two-week job about four weeks ago, Andrew made a conscious effort to work slowly.

“Well. I must be getting home to my Jake now,” said Harriet suddenly. She had not the immense stamina for remembering and recounting endless tales of minimal interest that the others possessed in droves. She was worried that Jake had failed to look after his employee, unwittingly arousing one more townsperson’s ire against himself.

Indeed, a vast list of important errands came crashing into her mind as she dozed throughout the latter part of the gathering – all the things she had been unable to do during her illness. “Plus, I’ve been so ill of late, I’ve a real backlog of errands by now.”

“Oh, dear, have you been ill?”

“Yes, terribly so. Could barely breathe through the bronchitis.” She nearly said phlegm but stuck to a more dignified term.

“Is that why your gorgeous flowers were not at the show the other day?” asked innocent Sally, as very near-audible alarm bells chimed through the parlour.

“Oh, my god! I was certain that was next week! I would have warned the organisers otherwise,” gasped Harriet. “Who won first prize then?”

Pleasantly diverted, thought Tamara coldly as the ladies tittered round the departing girl, loading her up with gifts mostly in the form of baked goods.

Tamara sent her on her way with a bouquet of light pick peonies from ther garden and a warm, understanding smile. Harriet set off to help Jake cope with the woman’s gruff husband, wondering whether he had made any progress whatsoever during her time in the lioness pit.

Clearly, he had not.

Nonetheless, Harriet brought a tray of biscuits and milky tea precisely the way he liked it, immediately upon her return and before even greeting her husband.

Andrew accepted the peace offering with grace, or so he thought.

The soft, curly-haired young woman felt he had sulked up the air in the well room so heavily, the tension between him and Jake was almost tangible.

“Jake! I practically needed a cleaver to slice through the atmosphere between the well room and your study. What did you do?”

Jake was genuinely oblivious as he grabbed her by the delicate waist and kissed her with intent.

“Hmmm, my darling,” she could feel that familiar pheromone tingling through her nose and loins as it simmered its way down through his own. He had been under understandable stress since she had fallen ill and left him to fend for himself with the antipathic villagers.

“You’ll be pleased to know I got them on our side, my sweet!” exclaimed the girl innocently, presenting all the gifts she had been bestowed at the little party. Jake turned cold.

“Oh, I’ll bet they loved you, my doll.”

“And what do you mean to say by that tone, Jake?”

“Only that any shift of the already heavily skewed balance in your favour, darling, is one step closer to that blunt blow from behind that awaits me on my way home one fateful night,” he answered in a frightfully calm voice, pushing aside the gateaux and dainty bouquets she had strewn across his desk.

“You needn’t be so dark about it, my beautiful, intellectual man,” Harriet implored, searching desperately to turn his anger to lust, something she could much better deal with. “I mean, if they like me, they’ll believe me when I speak well of you.”

“They’ll only believe what they want to believe. They’ll think I’ve coerced you somehow, my angel cake,” - his voice dripping with sarcasm - “and why is that blasted old geezer making such a racket in the kitchen instead of finishing my hateful, cursed well?!”

Andy was munching happily on Harriet’s peace offering of tea and biscuits which she had immediately rushed to serve him.

The girl noted her husband’s proprietary use of pronoun for the well as opposed to the kitchen, which in his mind was very much theirs just like the rest of the house and land. Clearly, the well had become a personal affair for the poor man. She scurried to the kitchen to nudge Andy back into work mode.

Though the ladies had not known how to address the matter of Harriet’s forced subservience to her face, they certainly knew how to discuss it in painstaking detail befitting a aspiring screenwriter.

Tamara basked in the humid air of gossiping, tea-drinking mouths. The air was electric: the droplets of saliva in each damning syllable proved the perfect conductor for the well-oiled machine of all-female conversation. It was a perfect storm of unfounded accusations and condescensions, almost all borne of the deeply unsettled, dissatisfied soul long ago bereft of any love or passion. The more hopeful younger ones would then promptly parrot the sentiments, their minds like endless linoleum hallways.

This was the kind of daytime party any self-respecting housewife could only dream of hosting. The long-elusive subject of the whole village’s conversation had finally made an appearance, then left early, with so much time remaining to dissect her every word, every move, even blemishes on her skin. For, although it was seen as rather low to criticise a fellow lady’s appearance outright, in the context of potential conjugal abuse, every small bruise and imperfection or bit of botched make-up was fair game. This part of the chatter was particularly savoured by the younger ones in the room, whose looks recent childbirth had somewhat despoiled and, unbeknownst to them, set them on the same path as the frumpy former beauties they so looked up to. Their husbands felt the change far more acutely than they themselves did, and so canapes and cake continued to fuel the conversation.

“I do hope all our gifts don’t get her into trouble,” chirped Clodagh disingenuously, for she knew it was bin night and on her way home past the Sadlers’ place she would certainly spare a keen glance to the contents of Jake and Harriet’s waste.

“Oh, goodness Clodagh! That’s a good point. I never thought of it,” gasped Angela sweetly. “He will think he’s losing her to us, and I won’t be surprised if we never saw her among us any more.”

This would provide a delicious rationale for Harriet’s certain refusals to partake in any upcoming social gatherings, for what other reason could there possibly be to turn down their invaluable company? Unless, of course, the girl was unforgivably rude, an idea they simply refused to entertain.

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GUTTER TALK - chapter 4: The well

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As it turned out, Andrew was the go-to man for all things plumbing. He had cleaned and set up a fair few wells in his time living in the country.

Jake and Harriet had just about finished their work on the courtyard. The large pink house overlooked two great lawns, three barns where they planned to house chickens for Jake and a couple of ponies for Harriet, and the trailer with its fatal unprotected ramp. Months of work had resulted in three fully-seeded lawns, barns scraped clean and a fancy new (used) tractor for trailer-tipping and field jobs. Their log burner and vegetable patch made them dead near self-sufficient. The last piece of the perfect puzzle was the adaptation of the well, so they would no longer need to pay for water.

Jake and Andrew had had very little to do with one another over the years. He thought Andrew seemed a sound bloke and sympathised with his plight of having to live with Tamara. Andrew, meanwhile, who had as little as possible to do with his wife and her friends, did not know the unpleasant experience she had imposed decades ago upon the man who had just hired him.

After they discussed the work that needed to be done, they sat in the kitchen shooting the breeze.

“How’s the wife, then?” asked Jake.

“Oh you know. I do my thing, she does hers,” was Andrew’s noncommittal reply.

“Ah yes, what’s her thing these days? Stirred up and trouble lately?” asked Jake, foolishly.

“What’s that about my wife, mate?” Jake sensed his neck hair bristle in response to that of his interlocutor across the table.

“Oh Andy, I’m sorry. I didn’t realised you two were on good – you know – anyway, I’m sorry, I just had some trouble with her is all.”

Though Andrew could barely speak a word to his wife without punching an imaginary wall, she was still the woman he was shackled to, and values were values.

He stood and said, “I’ll see you in a few days, once I’ve got all the parts to begin work.”

Jake behaved as politely as possible, but the goodbye was cold as the dead fawn in his field at the edge of the forest.

“Will you ever learn to keep your gob shut, you verbally incontinent fool!” he said to himself once Andrew had shut the door from the other side. He went and hastily covered up the manhole, not before casting a glance down seventy metres of ancient water which gleamed up at him menacingly.

“Would you believe the police service around here?”
Tamara was chittering away at her regular mums and nans meet-up. The farmer’s wife, still very impressed with the woman’s impeccable social manipulation skills, mouthed a hasty assent with her hazel eyes wide open. Cordelia rolled hers and said nothing. She had had some interactions with the lady of Sadler Farm on various occasions, all of them pleasant. She did not believe Tamara’s accusations for a second, but God was it convenient to have somewhere safe to leave the two-year-old free of charge throughout the week – aside from the occasional obligation of showing her face at one of the dreaded socials.

Just keep quiet, stay polite, and all will glide over you. She was saving up for a house since her partner had left her with the child and a rented cottage she dearly hoped to make her own one day. The owner had assured her he would sell it off “soon”, but in the meantime still gladly took the rent money every month. Cordelia tried nightly to keep her mind off the fact that she could have nearly paid it off by now, had the subhuman twat stuck to his word back when she and her ex-partner had taken it on. Well, I suppose we would have had that added nightmare when we split up, she rationalised in her darkest hours.

And so Cordelia waited, worked and saved, all her working hours going into plans for the future. The injustices of today carried out against others dissolved in the pool of her own struggles. She sent warm thoughts to lovely Harriet and loving Jake, and shook her head in silent dissent when Tamara stoked the conspiratorial fire in this warm which warmed the room filled with children and soft toys.

The other mothers joined in exuberantly, though, seemingly thrilled at the idea of a battered wife. What else could it possibly be? None of them had been seen to by any man in weeks, months, some even years. The thought of enjoyable or loud love-making never entered their righteous minds.

Cordelia, who had been out of the village and messed around a bit of late, had her own suspicions as to what that bruise on the base of Harriet’s neck might have been, but God forbid she pep up about her own improprieties in this circle. The thrashing sounds allegedly overheard by Kevin the meteorologist as he stumbled past the Sadler property late one night, Cordelia also attributed to something a little more complex than simple battery. But she kept silent.

Andrew sat darkly in his armchair while Tamara played with the children in the next room. He could see into the women’s gathering but could not hear a word – this was preferable. She’s a good woman at heart, he tried to think to himself, loyally, in defiance of Jake’s recent attack of her character.

She may be a harpie, but she’s my harpie, God damn it, he affirmed to himself, taking one more sip of his strong lemonade. I already look a twat. How much more of one will I be if my wife’s integrity is questioned?

His work on the well suffered greatly from these bitter thoughts. Furthermore, neighbour Angela’s gentle enquiries as to the well-being of “poor Harriet” set him even more firmly against the man of Sadler Farm. How can the bloke call himself a man and not sort out these rumours, if there’s no truth to them? At this point, Andrew’s own sins were but a cobweb in his mind – ancient, irrelevant.

Harriet was indeed the sweetest and gentlest character he had ever met and could not abide by the idea of anybody mistreating her.

His work suffered, and so did Jake’s sanity. Why, oh why had he agreed to pay the man by the hour as opposed to the full job? Nearly one thousand pounds in materials already disappeared down the proverbial four-hundred-year-old drain, and now this excruciatingly slow plumber whom he dared not cross for fear of setting one more denizen against himself.

Although Andrew was not technically working slowly on purpose, he wasn’t trying his hardest on purpose either. Filter parts were taking weeks to arrive in the mail, but he came over to work on some connecting pipes in the meantime, knowing at the back of his mind that it would take some undoing once the filters came in.
It was through no particular ill will but general gruffness and reluctance to go home where his wife hosted ever more frequent get-togethers where he was certainly not welcome – although it was never explicitly stated. Nothing ever was.

Tamara would often say that his mere presence within a hundred-metre radius cast a shadow over any pleasant gathering. Cordelia always considered this a rather ill-fitting description for their weekly meet-ups. 

 

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GUTTER TALK - chapter 3: Investigations

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Police did turn up the next morning, and Jake was astonished at the coroner’s efficiency. He opened the door rather confidently only to find himself cuffed and carried away to the local department.

“She won’t talk while he’s there,” the anonymous informant had said on the phone. So the officers took him away.

“We’ve received reports of domestic violence at your address – numerous statements in fact,” said the investigator to Jake who was rubbing his wrists in the interrogation room.

He said again and again it was all hogwash, and could they please refrain from upsetting his beloved wife when they interrogated her about it.

“We heard that she would not dare speak against you.”

“Well that’s convenient,” snorted Jake.

“Please do not interrupt. You seem to have a bad rap in your community,” said the police chief.

“A community of venomous idiots! By god, my poor wife has just moved in to this bloody village and already so many issues. How will I look for recommending we settle there?!”

“You’re also due a visit regarding the untimely death of your farm hand, I take it?”

“Yes. Great timing for a wonderful succession of events,” said Jake dryly, resigning himself fully to the situation.

“We’ve no need for cheek here, Mr Sadler,” said the investigator quietly.

“No. Of course it’s not your fault I’m here. What good has cheek ever done anybody anyway? Go on, then. List the charges and let me sift through the nonsense, chief. I know you see plenty of us blokes every day, so I suppose it’s no use insisting on my innocence, though I really could not possibly be more innocent.”

“They say they have seen your wife with a bruise on her left shoulder, and another time round her left wrist.”

“Rough sex, officer.”

The chief was momentarily silenced.

“They say she looked away towards you when somebody remarked upon it, and did not explain it further.”

“She’s a timid girl, sir, unlikely to discuss our bedroom habits with the locals. Which is why I hope and ask again that your qualified men are treating her sensitively at this moment.”

“I dare say you are terribly confident, Mr Sadler.”

“My wife and I are dearly devoted to each other and I have no doubt whatever in my mind that she will support me under even the most strenuous interrogations. In fact I think she will be bewildered by the accusations.”

Jake put his head to his palms and added, “while we’re here, sir, why don’t we cover the whole farm hand disaster?”

“That’s… not my department, I’m afraid, sir.”

Again, this transition to “sir”, noted Jake.

He suppressed the inner boilings of anti-bureaucratic sentiment and said:

“Could you take down a statement, perhaps, and pass it on? Could you bring someone else in? I implore you, officer. It has been weighing on me for over a week. I need to put this accident behind me, take whatever punishment I deserve for not immediately taking out workplace accident insurance on the guy, and move on with my life.” Start perhaps by murdering the neighbours, he thought loudly.

The domestic violence investigator was moved by the man’s recent misfortunes, but refrained from trusting him too soon.

“How do you explain screams emitting from your property last night?”

“Rough sex, officer.”

No shame, no gain, thought the chief. Fair play.

“We’ll have to corroborate with with the lady’s version of events before we let you off, Mr Sadler. As for your farm hand, the relevant department is out of office at the moment. They’re due to see you tomorrow. You can wait and see if they have any time for you today but it could be a while.”
“No,” sighed Jake. “I need to see Harry – that’s Harriet. My wife. Poor girl, she’ll be so worried.”

The lovers reconvened in distress that evening, shocked at their neighbours’ behaviour and wondering whether their misfortunes would ever let up or would they have to move elsewhere. Jake felt horribly guilty for bringing Harriet into such a fraught environment, and so soon after their marriage. It was supposed to be perfect and yet their hazy dream life had been shaken apart in a matter of days.

Harriet’s questioning had cleared Jake of suspicion, as expected, though the wound cut deep. She was mortified that anybody should have heard her intimate noises and described them as “screams from a medieval torture chamber”. She was disgusted that her sexual bruises that been so keenly observed and misconstrued. Now everybody would know what those noises and injuries had been. So much for absolute freedom in a seemingly isolated haven of natural beauty! Clearly the elderly couple next door still had extremely sharp hearing, though their house stood nearly two hundred metres away.

“Darling, we’ll soundproof the bedroom. It does face their yard after all. We’ll make a few adjustments, have a couple of unpleasant conversations, and join Andy in his excursions outside town if we want to socialise!” Jake breathed reassuringly in her fretting ear.

“Oh but Jake, we shouldn’t have to start our life here as outcasts, we shouldn’t!” she cried.

“I’m joking darling. It will blow over. Besides, we can not give up now on all this work, all this glorious land.”

They had walked out to their little triangular field, one of two that had come with the house. The summer sun lay low in the sky and rippled its rays through the woodland at the borders. The freshly mown grass glistening in clean patterns created the image of an expansive green sea. The rays caught each blade with incredible definition so it really did look like ripples. Harriet could almost see them undulate, perhaps in the wind, perhaps in her mind. She stopped suddenly to look at a tiny black toad, the smallest anybody could have ever seen.

“It’s lost! How did it even avoid the mower’s blades!” she chirped, suddenly joyful. It hopped in the waves of green with difficulty.

“Why don’t we set it free in the stream?” said Jake, picking up the little creature. “Would you like to do it?”

Harriet put out her hands and with deep concentration in her face, took the tiny thing – it broke her heart with its sheer helplessness – she trudged through the heavy grass to the stream at the other end.

The creature hopped inside her palms from one hand to the other, getting lost in the creases of her creamy skin. It had subtle ridges on its skin just like a toad, only in unutterably delicate miniature. One small muscle movement could crush it, and the thought sunk her heart.

Jake came up behind her as she played with the frog by the very edge of the stream, worried that it might drown if she put it straight in. It seemed to walk away from the water when she put it on the edge. Jake picked up the rock it sat on and put that in a shallow section, from which point the frog, or toad, dove in and climbed among the wet rocks out of their sight. The two lovers looked at each other and at their unspeakably beautiful setting. Gold light bathed the clearing with its trickling stream amid the chirping of birds and crickets. The sea of grass behind them gleamed in sharp focus. Even flies looked like glitterbugs in the early evening light.

“I couldn’t bear to leave this behind, Jake. If I ever do feel down, I’ll come back here, even in the dark of night, and all will be well.”

“I wonder if that frog is going to grow any bigger,” said Jake absent-mindedly.

Harriet grasped his shoulders, kissing his grim, thoughtful face. He pulled her hair from the back, kissing her exposed throat. It really is all too beautiful to leave behind, he thought. Though he was used to it since early childhood, the country still had him firmly under its spell and now it had Harriet also.

The death of Willy Wurton had temporarily tarnished their home, but these fields and woods were untouchable by petty human affairs. Frogs, birds, flies and rabbits were king here, Jake and Harriet mere visitors to their land.

No, they would stay. They would enjoy their life here, no matter what the snooping fools thought of it.

The neighbours had already wasted the police department’s time with baseless accusations. The interrogations had ended with jovial jesting on all sides as Harriet served her investigator tea and cakes while Jake described Tamara’s odd fascination with neighbours’ children since his younger days.

“There’s always a batty one,” the officer had said good-naturedly. “It’s a pity she decided to turn them all on you Mr Sadler, though they clearly have a lot of care in their hearts for your lovely wife.”

“Care!” Jake nearly spat his tea in derision. “Care. All she wants is to sow misery, set wives against husbands, children against their mothers. I’ve no pity for that horrible woman,” in fact, I pity her husband, he added in thought, as it would not go down well to support a known wife-beater in this particular situation. The officer, noisily crunching on a biscuit, had not quite made out Jake’s last angry remark and felt too awkward to ask again. He nodded so vacantly Harriet had to stifle a giggle having observed the whole exchange.

Jake was busy recalling a screaming match between his mother and Tamara after the woman had been denied access to the boy for after-school activities she hosted at her home with all the other mothers and children. Jake’s mother, Rosemary, could not stand Tamara and had refused to come along.

She had then made the misjudgement of mowing her lawn on a Sunday morning during the service, which had irritated Tamara deeply. “How much disrespect can you possibly have for our little village? I understand that you think you’re better than us all, but to disrupt the service like that, well it’s just embarrassing for everybody,” she had said tersely, standing at the door. Jake was playing on the couch in the living room directly behind Rosemary, and he stopped to listen.

“I am sorry for the bad timing. I had no intention of causing any disturbance to the service,” - she actively refrained from saying “your” service, which would indeed have seemed superior – and then, “is that all?”

“Is that all?” shrieked Tamara, stoked to a rage. “You have made no attempt to integrate into our community! We have had enough of you arrogant city folk, spitting on our very existence while profiting off our toil! You don’t know the things we do for you, for everybody… where do you suppose all your lovely bottled milk comes from? Our farmers are up before dawn, milking every day, or else their cows will die. And who ploughs the snow in winter from the roads? And your precious chard?!” She had watched Jake’s mother unload a shopping trip of rainbow chard from the local grocery a week ago. “We have been here for decades, centuries even. What has your city culture ever done for us?”

“Mrs. Fowler, I don’t need this. I find it disturbing that you watch me unload my groceries in such detail. I have apologied for my disrespectful behaviour, and I’ve nothing more to say to you.”

But Tamara was not ready to retreat. Her husband had left to get drunk immediately after the service and she knew he would return in one of his less agreeable moods - church never agreed with him – so she was raring for a fight. Rosemary sensed this.

“Mrs Fowler,” she affirmed sternly. “Have you been drinking? Why won’t you leave? You want my son this badly?” her voice trembled slightly at the wilful confrontation. The nerve that had been longing to be touched, had been snapped.

“Your son! You keep him away from our children in your ivory tower. What, you think we will make him ill? Pervert him? What kind of mother are you, has your husband abandoned you for your cold heart?”

“Just because I give you and your buddies nothing to gossip about, you despise me. You wish my son would come over and dish out some dirt, well, dream on. He’s not entering your sordid little circle of hyena women and neither am I. At least their fathers have some sense,” she said through gritted teeth, jaws flexing like Jake’s would so many years later, and mimed a slap up the back of an invisible head. She closed the door in Tamara’s shocked face and went calmly to join Jake who played alone with his toys every day.

“Why don’t you go and play in the garden, darling. I saw some rabbits out there earlier, you know. Could you find their hole for me?”

And so Jake had embarked on one more of his many solo adventures, having absorbed every word of the unfortunate exchange at the door without realising it until that day by the fire in his own home in the very same little town.

The young man’s antagonist now had a tuft of silver hair remaining from her luscious black locks of yore. It was neatly arranged into a bun and a set of black thick-rimmed glasses sat atop her thin-ridged nose. It was a rather lovely face, unmistakeably reminiscent of former beauty.

Andrew had picked her up at the little baking goods shop where she had worked part-time while studying to become a midwife. He had been on a drunken rampage through the village at the time. In her innocence she had fallen for the brute – he put on a good show when he needed to, and he certainly did need to when he landed in a quaint little shop full of fragile baking supplies and a cute young woman at the counter. Their romance lasted all of six weeks before marriage eroded the delusion in record time. At once Andrew realised he could barely stand to hear her talk, while she would not have any part of his tall, flabby body anywhere near her. This was hardly fertile ground for establishing a family, so Tamara began to adopt the village children by strategically befriending their mothers, having them around on a regular basis, offering to babysit, and before long her central position in the village was secured.

All she wanted was to make her mark on future generations, if God would not permit her to raise her own from scratch. After Andrew struck her once in an explosion of anger, she knew there was never to be any child brought up in that household. The grief was soon buried under the bustle of organising mothering groups and activities for all the nippers except for elusive little Jake, whom she so pitied for his lonely upbringing.

She would never be able to befriend Rosemary, and Jake was doomed to play with rabbit holes and stag beetles. He loved the company of local chickens, too – he would crouch by the fence of neighbouring broods and watch the hens gossip throughout the day, giggling to himself as they kicked at the dust.

Harriet was amusing the officer with spooky stories she had heard from the locals. The two newlyweds had a seventy-metre deep, four-hundred-year-old well inside their home concealed under a modern manhole in the old tack room which connected the stables with the courtyard.

They had long debated processing the water to make it drinkable and asked around town for advice. This had led to some disturbing stories from long-time residents.

“Oh, that old thing? They didn’t tell you about that when you was buying the house did they, or you could have knocked off a chunk of the price I’m sure. Always ask for backstory, always,” one jolly geezer had said to her. Upon her refusal to entertain his mockery, the local man proceeded to describe the story, as it went:

“They say a family lived here back around a century ago. Good honest people, they kept the land well, in fact they’d taken it over from a right disaster of a farmer before them who’d drunk himself silly.

“The well was outdoors back then and they used it every day to get water for the milking herd. One day, they sent their little fella of about thirteen to get the bucket and – get this – he hauled up a skeleton! Half the skin still on, mind you. Well preserved down there in the cold. He was traumatised for life, of course. Not something you’d like to see, really. I heard it from the boy’s sister’s son meself.

“He went on to become as drunk as the farmer before them when he inherited the place, being the only boy in the family. Ran it into the grounds you know today.”

Harriet had just finished off the horror story when Jake startled himself out of his stupor of reminiscence.

“Apologies, officer. I’ve just thought of something. Any chance you might take down my statement regarding the accident we had here the other day, take that load off my mind?”

“Accident, you say?” asked the policeman, still shaken from Harriet’s tales.

“Yeah,” said Jake, and he explained his conversation with the coroner and the ensuing exchange at the police station earlier that day.

“Well sir, I’m afraid workplace accidents ain’t in my line of duty,” - Jake bristled - “Cor, mighty unfortunate you two lovebirds have been here, ain’t you? Maybe there’s something to that rude gentleman’s story, as regards the place being a bit rough,” he said sympathetically.

“We certainly will not be dealing with the ghosts in that well ourselves!” Harriet said brightly. “We will hire a plumber-cum-exorcist, of course. Plenty of them around.”

Jake lovingly, and somewhat heatedly, clasped his wife by the waist from where he sat. She gracefully stopped herself stumbling from the sudden movement, and settled sideways on the armrest. “Thanks anyway, officer. I’ll await the relevant, er, department.”

Their new acquaintance chuckled nervously, bowed to them with a raise of the cap which he recovered on his way out, and departed.

“Sex-crazed maniacs,” chortled the officer, who was called Paul, to his colleague John who had interrogated the suspect.

“I know, right? Enough to make your neighbours phone in? Blimey, he must be doing something right,” said John. “She was a looker, I suppose?”

“Oh, rarely see one like it. So timid, too. Desperate to get her man off the hook – but also desperate to stay discreet. I got the message, anyway. She’s no battered wife. Poor pair’s got enough on their plate now with these elderly vultures on their backs.”

“You say that. But who knows if the fella ain’t offed his farm hand?”

“Seems pretty unlikely, considering the mountain of work to do on that property, seems he’d need all the help he can get. Then again, maybe the guy was a dud, and the landlord has a temper,” mused Paul with a good-natured shrug.

“He’s more likely to off his neighbours at this rate, I’d say,” John said solemnly. “That woman calling up with all her phony witness statements. Clearly a troublemaker.”

Over the following days, Jake got off with a thousand-pound fine for failing to insure himself against workplace accidents and Willy Wurton was never to be heard of again.

His ashes were thrown in an unmarked grave outside town with those of the latest nameless nursing-home casualties.

Andrew was making his drunken way home that day after a night in the hedges. He stopped to heave himself over the cemetery gates while council undertakers did they tragic deeds for the local unknowns.

“What’s that you’re doing then?” asked Andrew in a gravelly voice thick with smoke. The undertaker explained under his breath, and Andrew headed home, duly depressed.

“Did you know what they do to some people who die?” he slurred at Tamara upon entering the hallway.

Tamara coldly instructed him to take off his muddy shoes, and said: “they bury them. In an unmarked grave.” Kind of like what I'd do to you, darling, were the words that whistled through her mind as she glowered at her life partner.

“They don’t even barely bother to separate ‘em! Say you die at the same time’s some bloke from the care home, well, your ashes and his ashes are all down there all mixed up together!” he blurted in childish horror.

“Then you go to hell as an amalgamation of the two.”

“Amalgamamala – why hell?”

Because you will go to hell, her mind screamed in his face. Could I think it any louder, you thick drunk?

 

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