CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Fame at last, my turtle dove. You’ve made
the tabloids three days running!”
Horton roared with laughter and passed the
newspaper across the table. Cotter grabbed it and read avidly, soaking up the
headline: KILLER FOUND DEAD AT BEAUTY BLACK SPOT
The article went on to describe the discovery of Cotter’s precious
Ford and the charred remains of a body, presumed to be Cotter, his widow having
identified a wedding ring found in the wreckage. There was a wedding photograph
of Jean and himself that made Cotter want to puke. Yet, he had to smile. They
looked an unlikely couple, and sure enough, they were.
“We’re home and dry, flower, home and dry,” Horton guffawed and
attacked his cornflakes with renewed vigour.
And so it proved to be. One or two people may have remarked that the
vagrant who had set up home in the bus shelter must have moved on but, if they
did, no one took much notice. Horton never spared him another thought.
Occasionally, Cotter would have a nightmare in which the tramp’s face was
pressed against the rear window of the Ford, its expression a stark mix of
terror and accusation as the vehicle plunged over the cliff. He would wake in a
cold sweat, only to let the rhythm of Horton’s breathing lull him back to
sleep.
That first year was an anxious time for both men, especially Cotter.
To his surprise and delight, he found himself slipping into a Sarah Manners
persona as easily as he did her clothes. He truly loved being a woman.
Sometimes they would talk about going abroad and having the operations that
would make his dream come true but, deep down, Cotter always knew it was a pipe
dream. The job was not difficult and he discovered an aptitude for it. His
staff, all female, comprised two part-time library assistants and a part-time
admin assistant. At first, he was
terrified of making some obvious howler that would ensure they caught him out.
So he kept his distance, adopting an air of managerial aloofness while making
every effort to be pleasant. As time went by, he relaxed and they all got along
famously.
Much the same could be said for their role in the village. During
that first year, they rarely went out except to the village shop or, now and
then, to the pub. It took most of that
time for Horton to see to Aunt Phoebe’s affairs and take final possession of
the cottage. He decided to let out the house in Barnet while continuing to
commute daily. “Bricks and mortar, always a sound investment,” he told Cotter.
Horton was surprised by the size of the turnout for Aunt
Phoebe’s funeral. A service was held at the local church, St Stephen’s. All
manner of people sent flowers or wreaths and insisted on shaking him by the
hand while offering condolences. Invariably, they would shower him with
anecdotes about the old girl, none of which quite fitted his own picture of Aunt
Phoebe. A sense of real regret that he hadn’t taken the trouble to get to know
her better continued to nag at him for years.
Their first major crisis occurred when Cotter was taken
ill with excruciating stomach pains one evening. These persisted well into the
next day. “I need to see a doctor,” wailed the patient.
“Tough,” said Horton bluntly, “we can’t risk it.” Cotter nodded,
clutching his stomach and groaning in agony.
They were lucky, and whatever was the matter with Cotter eventually
cleared up of its own accord. In a few days, he was almost his old self again
and Sarah Manners returned to work. The incident, however, gave both men
serious food for thought. There would doubtless be future occasions when Sarah
Manners would need to see a doctor. They discussed, fretted and argued about
the various implications for weeks. Then Horton had a brainwave.
They had been arguing in the kitchen. Horton suddenly disappeared,
returning a few minutes later brandishing a small wad of papers that he spread
on the table. These comprised a somewhat worse for wear birth certificate,
medical card and some minor documents, all in the name of one, Marc Phillips. “Identity
number two for one, Ralph Cotter,” Horton announced with a broad grin, “and
about to get us out of another hole.”
Cotter shivered as the face of the tramp they had
murdered loomed into his consciousness, faded and loomed again, rather like the
Cheshire cat in Lewis Carroll’s famous tale.
A few months later, Marc Phillips became the proud owner of a
cottage in Monk’s Porter. Complete with a convincing and expensive wig that
changed his appearance considerably, Cotter stood to mock attention for
Horton’s inspection. “Will I do?”
“You’ll do. You’ll do very nicely,” said Horton approvingly and both
men roared with laughter. “I don’t know, I’m sure...you weekend city folks with
your country cottages. What are you doing for the countryside, that’s what I
want to know?”
Over the next few days, Cotter registered with a local doctor and
went out of his way to let his neighbours know that the cottage was an
investment as well as the means to taking an occasional country break. They
could not expect to see a lot of Marc Phillips. Their disapproval amused him.
But they were not unfriendly towards him and several said they would keep an
eye on things. “You never can tell,” said one man, “You get all sorts, you
know, even in places like Monk’s Porter. Squatters, they’re the worst. We get our fair share of bad lots just like
you townies do...”
A year to the day of their arrival in Monk’s Tallow,
they celebrated at the Fox and Hounds.
By now, Cotter, as the local librarian, was acquainted with most of
the villagers, even some of the townies who continued arriving in dribs and
drabs to occupy a nearby private housing estate whose owner had sold up and
gone to live abroad, much to the shock-horror and loudly voiced contempt of
many who had farmed the area for generations. The two men let their hair down
and quickly found themselves surrounded by hearty types whose capacity for
sniffing out a free drink for miles annoyed Horton only marginally more than it
amused him. Sarah Manners, though, was the centre of attention.
After the pub, the library beat even the village shop
hands down as an epicentre for local gossip, a room at the back invariable
pre-booked for anything from a poetry evening to Bingo. Sarah Manners,
considered by some to be on the snooty side, ran her little empire like
clockwork. She was friendly without being familiar, efficient without being
officious, professional without being pompous. Slowly but surely, she became
accepted if not exactly liked by the majority of villagers. They were more than
a trifle wary of Horton but tolerated him for her sake. His
heavy build, bald pate and slightly down-turned mouth gave him something of an
intimidating air and people were inclined to nod politely without taking the
association any further. Cotter, on the
other hand, revelled in having what he would often refer to Horton as “a hand
on the tiller” in the affairs of Monk’s Tallow.
It was on this particular evening that the two men
formed a bond of sorts with the Bishops, Sam and Mary. Bishop, not unlike
Horton, was a big man and not very talkative.
Mary always struck the casual observer as being completely the opposite.
She was an attractive, engaging woman who exuded warmth and charm as well as
turning heads wherever she went. She liked Sarah Manners. Like Sarah and Daz,
she and Sam were relative newcomers to the village and Mary knew only too well
that, while token acceptance here was all very well, it remained a far cry from
being made to feel that you belonged.
As the crowd began to thin out and people drifted away
in their various two’s and three’s, the four of them found themselves together
at the bar and moved in on a table whose occupants were about to leave. Sam and
Daz had discovered that they both liked to jog and enjoyed working-out as well
as sharing an interest in Country and Western music. They chatted away almost
animatedly while Cotter tried to ignore the heady fragrance of Mary Bishop’s
perfume as she talked, in a very sexy voice, about this and that. He paid scant
attention. For him, she was the epitome
of all a woman should be…intelligent, feminine and desirable. He began to feel increasingly inadequate. Until now,
his self-confidence had been growing all the time. He had learned to relax and
enjoy being Sarah Manners. Hadn’t he
spent hours practising and perfecting every nuance of body language? Now it hit him like a sledgehammer that he
could never hope to be in the same league as Mary Bishop. At the same time, he
argued with his battered ego, he could and…damn it, he would learn a lot from her. For the moment, though, he was content
to listen, soak up everything about her and be an apt pupil, choosing to
disregard a stirring in his loins as inappropriate, irrelevant and unhelpful.
Instead, he remonstrated jokingly with himself for being jealous.
During the years that followed, Cotter and Horton fell in with
village life and were always glad to return to the cottage after any length of
time away from it. Now and then, Cotter would accompany Horton to London. He
would spend the day shopping and the pair would meet up later for cinema, theatre,
a meal, whatever took their fancy. Sometimes he would go with Mary Bishop and
the two would skylark around like a couple of dizzy schoolgirls.
Always careful to maintain a certain guard, Cotter
nevertheless found himself adopting the Sarah Manners persona almost to the
exclusion of all else. It seemed more and more that he was Sarah
Manners. Ralph Cotter could easily have been a figment of his imagination but
for the inescapable nature of his relationship with Horton. Nothing had changed there. Or had it? He both
feared and adored Daz, trusting him implicitly and relying on him to see them
through no matter what. Yet, hadn’t there been the slightest shift? The more Sarah Manners asserted herself, so
Cotter became a fractionally more self-reliant. He liked to think so anyway. It
added an exiting new dimension to the whole charade, a feeling that he was
learning to take responsibility for his new, female self as well as the old.
Being gay began to blur into a much larger picture.
If Horton noticed any significant
change in Cotter’s attitude towards him or their ‘situation’ he gave no outward
sign. When they took a holiday to Majorca with the Bishops, he couldn’t help
but notice how it was Ralph rather than Sam who appeared to take exception to
Mary’s constant light hearted flirting with other men. He thought he
understood. Cotter had to keep a certain distance at all times. Pleased that Ralph had become such firm
friends with Mary Bishop, Horton was under no illusion about the strain this
must put on his friend and lover. But they had got away with it so far, so why
not forever?
If anyone had
been looking for Sarah Manners, they had certainly not turned up in Monk’s
Tallow. Horton rarely gave much thought
to the woman they had buried years previously. Ralph was Sarah now. The two
were inseparable, one from the other, clearly distinguishable in his mind’s eye
only when they played bedroom games, eventually letting an act of brute sex
release all their pent-up frustrations. At such times, Horton reflected
approvingly, it had to be as good as it gets. It was as if they entered a third
reality and even had a pet name for it. They called it their animal kingdom. He
chuckled. The image of a mouse balanced on a lion’s paw sprung to mind and the
sound expanded into a low, satisfied belch.
It never occurred to Horton to ask himself whether it
was Sarah or Ralph who was plainly jealous of Mary Bishop.
As their lives in Monk’s Tallow assumed a pleasantly
predictable shape and hue, Horton and Cotter all but forgot their origins.
After a few years, Horton took a job in Brighton, only a few miles away.
Nothing untoward happened to disturb the status quo until the summer of 1998.
They were spending a lazy Sunday in Brighton and had
been browsing The Lanes when a storm that had been threatening to break all day
finally broke cover and the sulphurous skies opened. Horton and Cotter ducked
into the nearest pub and soon got chatting to a couple from Essex who, among
countless others, had driven down for the day. They whiled away a pleasant hour
or so exchanging anecdotes and generally making inconsequential small talk.
Before they knew it, the storm had eased and a broad ray of smoky sunshine was
streaming through the lattice windows like a searchlight.
Belatedly, they introduced themselves and Horton was
about to suggest they meet up again sometime when the man, called Greg, uttered
a peculiar little cry, “Sarah Manners?
Strike me pink if I don’t know that name. I don’t suppose you ever lived
in Edgware?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I hardly knew her myself but a
friend of ours, Ruth Temple, once shared a flat with a Sarah Manners”. He
turned to his wife. “Don’t your remember her telling us once, darling, how the
Manners girl took off one day without a word and no one ever heard from her
again? A queer business if ever there was one. I seem to recall she was a
librarian too.”
“You’re right!” Karen exclaimed with growing
excitement then looked suddenly doubtful. “Well, it was definitely a Sarah
something-or-other. It could easily have been Manners, I suppose.”
“It was Sarah Manners,” Greg Hathaway
repeated firmly.
“If you say so, dear, I’m sure it was.” She
flashed her husband a bright smile.
“Was that you? Did you really run off like
that?” Greg looked direct at the woman opposite. “Not that it’s any of my
business,” he added half-apologetically.
Cotter froze.
“How long ago would that be then?” Horton tried to sound
casual.
“Good lord, it must be getting on for a good twenty
years.”
“Sarah was a teacher in those days, weren’t you,
flower? She got out in the end. Too much
hassle. Being a librarian is heaven by comparison. Isn’t that so, my turtle
dove?” Cotter nodded dumbly. “It’s a
small world but not that small, eh?” Horton managed a dry chuckle.
Greg Hathaway also laughed. “It would be
stretching co-incidence,” he agreed. His
wife, Karen, on the other hand was watching Sarah Manners with growing
curiosity. A haunted expression in the woman’s eyes belied her calm, smiling
exterior. The smile, too, struck Karen as fixed, even false. Was she imagining
it or did the lower lip quiver a fraction?
The notion, such as it was, came into her head and exited in the space
of seconds. Greg was demanding a pen and
some paper. She rummaged in her bag and found both. They exchanged telephone
numbers. The other couple, she thought, seemed less enthusiastic than they had
earlier.
Cotter excused himself and hurried to the Ladies toilet.
Once inside the cubicle, he bolted the door, sat down and broke into a frantic
sweat. After mopping his face with an inadequate handkerchief and taking
several deep breaths, he began to feel slightly better. He’d forgotten he ever
knew Ruth Temple’s name until it slid, like a snake in the grass, off Greg
Hathaway’s tongue. So what, he
argued? It meant nothing, he told
himself over and over, nothing at all. Besides, hadn’t Daz quickly put the
geezer right? He had to hand it to Daz,
and no mistake. It was a stroke of genius, that, about being a teacher.
A full fifteen minutes had lapsed before Cotter recovered
sufficient self-control to quit the cubicle, shakily re-apply his makeup at a
long wall mirror and make his way back to the bar.
“Are you alright?” Karen Hathaway looked and sounded
genuinely concerned. “I was all for sending out a search party but Darren here
has been telling us you’ve got the runs.
Believe me, I sympathize. It happened to me only last week. There are so many viruses about these days. I
dare say they’re pouring through that hole in the ozone layer like nobody’s
business!”
Everyone laughed, much the way people do when no one is
entirely sure whether someone has said something funny or not.
Not long afterwards, after much hand shaking and earnest
promises to stay in touch, the two couples went their separate ways.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Karen Hathaway
turned to her husband. “Didn’t you find that a bid odd, the way Sarah dashed
off to the loo like that when you mentioned Ruth’s name?”
“Not really.” He shrugged. “You heard. The poor woman’s
caught a bug or something. Let’s face
it, if you’ve got the runs you have to run.” He laughed, grabbed an arm and
chivvied her into the doorway of a quaint looking antique shop. Karen needed no
persuasion but, all the same, made a mental note to mention their encounter to
Ruth Temple the next time she saw her.
Back at the car, Cotter was on the verge of another
panic attack. The hatchback had been
replaced years ago with a handsome Jaguar that Cotter would have said was
classy and Horton privately considered a trifle vulgar.
“Pull yourself together, woman!” Horton snapped,
“Whatever you’re imagining, it’s all in your head so forget it. It was bound to
happen one day. I think we handled it pretty well, considering.”
“You were brilliant!” Cotter sniffed between gasps. He
was close to tears.
“Trust me,” He slid a hand inside Cotter’s thigh and
squeezed, “They’ll think no more about it.”
“Suppose they tell the Temple woman?” Cotter wailed,
“They have our phone number!”
Horton grinned. “Silly me went and wrote it down wrong,
didn’t I?”
“You’re incredible, Daz!” Cotter checked the burst of
hysterical laughter that rose in his throat and began to relax.
“You nearly let me down there, flower.” Horton sounded
stern and Cotter’s pounding heart missed a beat.
“Sorry Daz,” said Cotter in a small voice.
“You will be, my turtle dove, you will be,” Horton
promised, “and you’ll be even sorrier once I get you home, you can be sure of
that.” He flung his companion a knowing smile, recognizing the light in
Cotter’s eyes for what it was, an unsubtle mix of fearful, gleeful
anticipation.
...........................
As it happened, Karen Hathaway did not see Ruth Temple for several
months. They literally bumped into one another in an Oxford Street store and
hastened to the nearest coffee shop. After a much-enjoyed exchange of news and
gossip, Karen was about to take her leave in the doorway and head off in the
opposite direction when she suddenly remembered Sarah Manners. “Oh, I nearly
forgot...”
Ruth listened intently. “Can you describe her?” Karen
did her best. “It doesn’t sound like the Sarah I used to know,” she commented,
“although that was some twenty years ago and people change...”
The more Ruth appeared to be considering the prospect,
the more she began to exhibit signs of distress. Karen almost wished she had
kept quiet. “Greg hardly knew your Sarah, of course. He only met her
once, I believe. And it’s not an uncommon name, I suppose,” she added trying to
be helpful. “I wouldn’t have mentioned it except, well, it was a bit odd the
way she dashed off like that. Mind you, Greg says I have an over-active
imagination at the best of times.” She giggled. “Look, Ruth, I must dash. See
you again soon, yes?” and was soon swept out of sight by a motley crowd surging
along the pavement.
Try as she might, Ruth was unable to shrug
off the incident her friend had recounted with such vigour and no small air of
melodrama. While she didn’t need to remind herself that Karen Hathaway was
prone to histrionics, the seeds of curiosity had been sown. She soon found herself wondering whether she
should write to James. An image of James Morrissey came, unbidden, into her
head. Ruth sighed. Even after all these years, it still hurt to recall the way
he had dumped her for that shallow bitch, Sarah Manners.
Ruth bit her lip, remembering. Contrary to
general opinion, she and Sarah Manners were never bosom pals, merely flatmates.
They had got along reasonably well together, chiefly because neither could
afford to pay rent on their own. Their tenuous friendship, however, barely survived
Sarah’s betrayal with James Morrissey. He had called to see Ruth one evening
and forgotten it was her night for an evening class in Art History at the local
polytechnic. She had returned to find the pair of them canoodling on the sofa.
After that, it was tacitly understood that James was now with Sarah and she,
Ruth, might as well take a running jump for all either showed they cared. She
bit her lip again and caused a spot of blood.
Had they really no idea how devastated she had been? Oh, she appeared to
make light of the situation and pretend it was no big deal. But her heart was
broken.
When she came home from a short holiday with
friends and found Sarah gone, Ruth’s immediate reaction had been one of sheer
relief. Then she remembered how they were already behind with the rent,
panicked and went to call James. There was no reply, just a ringing tone. Then
she remembered he was working abroad for a few weeks. (How could she have
forgotten?) She promptly called her sister and asked to speak to her niece,
Julie. Although barely into her teens at
the time, Julie has been mature for her age. Ruth not only enjoyed the girl’s
company but had also discovered, on various occasions that, unlike her mother, she
was gifted with a very sympathetic ear.
Julie Simpson had been as mystified as her
aunt. Most of Sarah’s clothes were gone as well as her passport and other
important documents that she always kept in a box on her dressing table. There
was a typewritten note neatly placed in Ruth’s typewriter. It read simply,
‘Sorry’ and was signed ‘Sarah’, also typed.
“How can she do this? Apart from the rent
she owes, poor James will be distraught. He’s completely infatuated with her,” Ruth
confided to friends, including her niece. Everyone delighted in speculating, of course.
But no one came up with any answers.
Now, Ruth found pen and paper, sat down at a
table by the window in her bedroom and started to write, ‘Dear James...” She
paused. How could she raise his hopes like this? He still had feelings for Sarah. Didn’t she
know only too well, even after all this time? And it had to be a blind alley,
surely? Karen Hathaway’s description could have fitted just about anyone. She
ran her tongue across her lip and tasted the salty wetness of her own blood.
She put the pen down and tore the sheet of paper into neat halves before
getting up and ambling, pensively, into another room.
For a while she tried to read then watch
television. But she could not settle. Sarah Manners was everywhere. She’d had
an affected way of speaking, Ruth recalled, not to mention appalling dress
sense and a passion for Country and Western music played as loudly as
possible. Certainly, Sarah was no one’s
model of a librarian. As far as Ruth knew, she only ever read sloppy romances
although she had scraped a degree in English Literature. “Why a librarian?” she
had once asked her flatmate directly.
“It’s all I could come up with after
university,” Sarah confessed. “…and why not?
It has to be a doddle, let’s face it. Besides, I remember a tutor saying
how a library is a microcosm of contemporary society. So don’t knock it, okay?”
she chided while trying, without success, to keep a straight face.
Years on, Ruth cocked an ear and fancied she
could still hear Sarah’s peal of laughter.
How could she forget that sound? It had always reminded her of a pig
squealing. James, though, once likened it to the music of angels. Both took
offence when she had launched into fits of laughter.
Ruth sighed. It was never a good idea to
hark back to times one would prefer to forget. Not for want of trying, she had
never been able to dump Sarah Manners in some far corner of her mind and forget
about her. She could picture her old flatmate now as clearly as if she were in
the same room, fawning over people whenever she was out to make an impression
or, more likely, needed a favour. Everything about Sarah had irritated her no
end. Her untidiness had taken some putting up with, to put it mildly, as had
her obsession with food contents. Sarah would devour the small print on every
label.
Ruth sighed again. It was all so long ago
and, to be fair, she’d probably have been a food neurotic herself if she’d had
to contend with Sarah’s allergy to nuts.
She returned to the bedroom, sat down and
wrote, ‘Dear James...’
To be continued
