Gone Feral

  Gone Feral

  Gwen Moffat

  Copyright © Gwen Moffat 2014

  The right of Gwen Moffat to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  First published in the UK by Constable, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd.

  This edition published in 2014 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  Extract from Private Sins by Gwen Moffat

  1

  ‘Look –’ Exasperated, Sophie Daynes tried again: ‘think of him like an injured cat: he comes to your door crying, you’d take him in, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘He’s healthy, he can be charming –’ and any injuries are of his own making, Marjorie Neville thought grimly. Aloud she added, ‘You’re not a doormat.’ It was a warning.

  ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘No. What I mean is –’ Marjorie checked. Don’t interfere, she told herself; you don’t tell your god-daughter that her husband is a freeloader, she’d said enough already, and not for the first time. ‘It was you who likened him to an animal looking for a home,’ she pointed out.

  ‘You never married.’ It was meant as a fact and sounded like a jibe. In full flight Sophie didn’t think to moderate her tone. ‘You don’t know what that kind of bond is like. You’ve never shared a home.’

  ‘I have cats.’

  ‘It’s not the same.’ Of course it wasn’t, Sophie was thinking of shared sex but her godmother’s mind was on companionship.

  ‘We’re back where we started. Forget it. Let me freshen your drink.’ Marjorie poured the Talisker with a lavish hand.

  ‘I’ll be drunk!’

  ‘You’re not driving, girl. And what harm can you come to in my woods – or the neighbours’ come to that? Grizzly bears? Man traps? Now what have I said?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You flinched. This is the Lake District, not the Rockies or the Dark Ages.’

  Sophie shrugged. ‘Well, sprained ankles, a broken leg? You can die of hypothermia at relatively high temperatures. Who’d look after Michael?’ She smiled ruefully.

  Marjorie refused to accept it as a joke. ‘You’re positively neurotic today. What’s eating you?’

  ‘Michael.’ The younger woman stared gloomily at the fells on the far side of the lake. ‘He wants to go to Iraq.’ She sounded like a condemned prisoner.

  ‘To join the Army!’

  ‘As a reporter. It is his job.’ The tone was reproving.

  ‘Er – yes.’ It wasn’t the moment, if it ever was, to point out that he’d left his last newspaper job under a cloud. ‘It’s dangerous,’ Marjorie said.

  ‘That’s what bothers me: the situation there.’

  ‘Don’t worry. What I mean is it’s so dangerous I’m pretty certain that pressmen will be very carefully screened before they’re allowed to go. Michael hasn’t the necessary experience.’

  ‘You reckon. Are you sure? I suppose you’d know.’

  Marjorie wrote short stories nowadays but in her thirties she’d done some freelance journalism. Now she elaborated on just why Michael Daynes wouldn’t make it to Iraq, forbearing to mention that she thought it merely another of his attention-seeking ploys, or indeed that he was blacklisted, information she’d caught on the media grapevine. It had to do with his claiming expenses for reports that he’d concocted at home. Michael maintained to family and friends that he had been unfairly dismissed but he’d made no attempt at redress and since his last job he’d taken time out: writing a book, he said vaguely. It could be competent; his writing, however artificial, was colourful.

  Sophie left after her second whisky, citing supper to prepare, going down the lawn to the wild garden and the woods, and the path that would take her along the lake shore to the Boathouse. From the terrace Marjorie watched her go, a frown deepening to a scowl as she pondered the girl’s situation. Girl? She was a woman in her forties and should be well able to take care of herself – and did except for this one blind spot. Marjorie’s thoughts rambled. Took after her mother, that was the trouble. They’d been at school together: Marjorie and Frances Maynard, friends till the end. Frances had even bought the Boathouse as a holiday retreat, and widowed, retired to live there for the few years left to her before the cancer was diagnosed. She’d been a fierce, passionate woman and here was her only child inheriting those genes and employing them in the wrong direction: passionately in love with a sponger, a Walter Mitty character, and fiercely protective, loyal to a fault despite the flaws. Marjorie, literate if not romantic, thought of Ruth in the alien corn: ‘whither thou goest I will go...’ and the Book of Common Prayer. That had a lot to answer for: till death do us part indeed. She grimaced at the water beyond the spring-green foliage; she’d opt for cats any time: no malice. She cast around and located Sharkey supine in the shade of the oak bench and thought wryly that he wouldn’t miss her if she died tonight. Patchouli would; here she was: walking backwards up the lawn dragging a large rabbit. Marjorie softened to jelly: a dumpy old lady descending her terrace steps to receive a gift most proudly presented by a tortie-and-white queen.

  *

  Sophie moved quietly through the woods, telling herself she was looking for deer but knowing she was watching for what Michael called her stalker. She’d glimpsed him only once – him because who ever heard of women poachers – and that was what she assumed he was: a poacher familiarising himself with the territory in the daylight. The woods were private and full of roe, occasionally red deer too came down off the fell. Michael’s teasing was superficial, in reality he was uneasy about intruders. He had never liked the isolation of the Boathouse; it nestled deep in trees, open only to the water, the mansion it had belonged to razed long ago, its crumbled ruins taken over by wild plants and animals. Michael would put the Boathouse on the market and move to Manchester but Sophie gloried in this shabby Victorian cottage she had inherited. She cherished it like an animal, scraping and painting inside and out, taking cuttings from old rose bushes in the ruins, bringing them home to her garden: new life for neglected beauties. She loved the silence of her home, the fact that you could see no neighbours’ lights at night, only faint pinpricks across the water, and the fairy lights of the steamer passing on summer evenings, chartered for parties, music coming across the lake. Once they were playing Mozart under the moon.

  She didn’t see the stalker this May evening. She had meant to tell Marjorie but had chickened out, aware that her godmother watched her carefully, never actually saying she was neurotic until tonight, not being as close as Michael. They could be right; the fellow was trespassing but he could be a naturalist, a fungus gatherer – no mushrooms in May – a bird watcher then. Michael said she’d make a drama out of a dead pigeon, that she should be writing the book. She might at that, her life was full of little excitements – and now it was spring. Spring was always thrilling, even more so at the moment when, between jobs, she had the weekend free to work in the garden and to go up to the ruins and see how the stoat family were getting on. There’d be time for Michael too, they could take the boat out. There was no hurry, she’d start looking for work on Monday.

  Michael didn’t like her working, he said they should keep goats and hens then they’d have meat and eggs; at the moment all they had was vegetables and fruit in season, they had to buy
meat. But if she ran a small-holding she’d still have to find part-time work, animal feed cost the earth. Michael said goats ate grass and hens could be fed on kitchen scraps; he was a townie, not a clue about country life. Actually she’d been surprised that he should suggest they keep animals, he wasn’t an animal person, even allergic to cats. He never visited Marjorie. It wasn’t only the cats; when she came to the Boathouse, and that was seldom, there was a certain coolness.

  He was sitting on the deck when she approached, coming up the steps from the slip. He was relaxed, a glass in his hand, and she observed him fondly for a moment before he realised she was there. Now turned forty he was starting to show his age, the blond hair thinning, the mouth less full; could men lose their chiselled lips as women do in middle age? But his eyes would always be grey, not fading as blue eyes do. He was at his best when sitting, he’d lost the lissom grace of youth but then: forty-one, Sophie’s heart bled for him. She was forty-five and thought she was in her prime: tough, powerful, not an ounce of fat. To her, hair was something you brushed in the morning and then forgot about, you washed your face when it was sticky. She had good bones but the flesh had sagged and the eyes were too deep in their sockets. She looked what she was: a worker who might be striking if the face filled out. The passionate nature was mostly hidden but at the moment, and after two whiskies, her eyes approved him as she climbed the steps. Flawed, she thought; like I said: an injured cat but I love him, thank God he stays home, I’d kill him if he ran after women.

  He regarded her warily. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘At Marjorie’s.’

  ‘Ha! You’ve been at her Scotch.’

  ‘Malt actually, but how did you guess?’

  ‘You look soft. Hard shell, soft centre. Sit down, take the weight off your feet.’

  He got up stiffly, revealing a bottle by his chair: Glenfiddich, his favourite. She licked her lips, trying to suppress the obvious question. Maybe he’d sold something, she mustn’t ask but it would look odd if she didn’t say anything. Shortly after they were married she’d started to miss the odd pound coin from her purse, or thought she had, then an occasional ten pound note when she’d been to the bank and splurged on shopping and didn’t know how much she should have left. She was careless about money. Had been. Now she never kept more than two notes in her wallet and hid the rest like a squirrel. But Glenfiddich cost the earth. She had never told Marjorie of course but the awareness that her husband was a petty thief affected her relationship with her godmother and made for misunderstanding and confusion, like the silly exchange this evening.

  Michael returned to the deck with a tumbler, a few drops of water in the bottom. He knew how she liked it. ‘How can we run to a single malt?’ she asked, all innocence.

  ‘I sold a story.’

  ‘Oh, that’s great!’ Such relief. ‘Who to?’

  ‘A Norwegian magazine.’

  ‘Really. How did you do that? Don’t you have to go through an agent?’

  ‘I sent it direct.’ He didn’t question her surprise at his success. ‘Sam sells stories to them; he gave me the editor’s name and address.’ Sam Lewthwaite was a newspaper colleague working in Lancaster.

  ‘You’ll have to send them more. What did they pay you?’

  He looked along the shore. ‘There’s a diver off the point, must be from that boat. What? How much did they pay? A hundred.’

  She blinked. ‘It doesn’t sound much.’

  ‘It’s a start.’ He seemed abstracted. She said nothing, pondering his lack of enthusiasm at a sale. He turned to her suddenly; they were sitting side by side, touching, convivial. ‘See your stalker in the woods?’ he asked, grinning.

  She shook her head. ‘He could be quite innocent.’

  ‘No trespassers are innocent.’

  ‘I mean innocent of anything other than trespass, and that’s hardly a major crime.’

  ‘If there are intruders on private property they’re most likely watching houses to see who lives alone, who keeps dogs and so on.’

  ‘Michael, you’re paranoid!’

  ‘Rubbish. I’m sensible, that’s all. And now with the season getting into swing, not that we don’t have a drugs problem any time of the year... Most burglaries are drug-related.’

  ‘At least we have nothing worth stealing.’

  ‘And what happens when they break in and find nothing? They turn on the occupant.’

  ‘We’re becoming obsessed with this,’ Sophie said, a shrill note creeping in. She wasn’t obsessed. ‘This is the Lake District, not Manchester. I’m going for a swim.’

  ‘Don’t go near that diver.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He might be the lookout for your stalker –’ He stopped, catching her furious eye; he’d gone too far and his face lightened. ‘Just joking, love. Go and enjoy your swim. I’ll do a bolognese.’

  She was on her feet but she paused in the doorway, staring back at the lake. The little boat was moored off the point, one figure in it, in a wetsuit. The other diver had disappeared. Sun gilded the water, thrushes were singing their hearts out, the fells slumbered like plump grey cats. It was a gorgeous May evening, for her to be disturbed by a black blob in the water (he had just surfaced) was ridiculous. Paranoia was infectious. She went indoors to change.

  *

  ‘I was wondering about divers…’ Sophie’s tone was suspiciously casual. ‘How far towards the water does the private land extend?’

  ‘Towards the water?’ Marjorie barked, on edge because the call had come just as she’d settled to watch elephants in Namibia. ‘The lake’s public, the banks are private, at least around here. You know that.’

  ‘Suppose they found something. Who owns it?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well, what are divers looking for? This isn’t the sea with interesting rock formations and fish and things. What are they after in a lake? There’s two off the point now.’

  ‘Can’t be, there’s no access. They’re illegal. Call the cops.’

  ‘They’ve got a boat.’

  ‘Then they’re not illegal, they’ve come along from an access point.’ On the screen, muted, cumbersome elephants slithered down a sandbank; on the opposite side of a shallow river crocodiles shifted nervously. Sophie was rambling on… The camera focused on a tiny elephant, surely not long born, the cameraman panned to an enormous croc. ‘…So vulnerable,’ Sophie was saying, ‘they can see our lights, yours too – from the other side. All they have to do is launch a little boat at night, no one would know. And burglaries go wrong. Anything could happen.’

  ‘Sophie, have you been drinking – since you left here?’

  She heard a giggle. ‘Not that much. Michael had a bottle of Glenfiddich.’ Quickly, forestalling unwelcome comment: ‘He sold a story. Isn’t that great?’

  ‘Good.’ Marjorie’s relief was heartfelt but directed at the screen as the crocodiles backed off in the face of a towering matriarch. ‘Where’d he sell it?’ she asked, once a professional, always – ‘And how much?’ Wondering what kind of price a blacklisted writer could command.

  ‘It was to a Norwegian magazine and they pay, they paid a hundred. He says the price will go up in time.’

  ‘I would hope so. If that’s Hjemmets I’ve sent them the odd story myself.’ She didn’t add that she’d take nothing less than three hundred. And Michael wouldn’t be blacklisted in Norway. Or was this a ploy and he was paving the way for a jaunt to Scandinavia? But Michael didn’t have the money for foreign travel, in fact he didn’t have the cash for single malt… Marjorie brought the conversation to an end, dismissing her god-daughter’s notion of forays across the lake as melodrama, making scant effort to mask her derision. They were used to each other and she appreciated that Sophie often turned to her deliberately because she was pragmatic and scornful of flights of fancy, or fantasy. And here, this evening, Marjorie was less concerned with divers close to the shore on this side of the lake than with Michael’s claim to have bought e
xpensive whisky out of the meagre proceeds of a sale to a Norwegian magazine. It didn’t ring true.

  The Red Baron came in the kitchen, sat down, glared at her and howled for food. She glared back. Despite the long hair, somewhere in his disreputable ancestry (like the others he was a Rescue cat) there had been a Burmese or a Siamese, something ethnic; he had a voice like a stag belling. Absently she reached for the Go-Cat, thinking that Michael was devious, the Norwegian rigmarole could be just that: an elaborate screen to cover the acquisition of enough cash for a bottle of single malt. ‘She should look in her wallet,’ she told the Baron, ‘count her notes. I wonder now, does she always know where her credit cards are? I trust that fellow as far as I’d trust a crocodile.’

  She went back over the recent conversation. Was the girl really worried about divers or nocturnal villains from across the water, or was she fretting over some problem with her own husband? She grunted, angry with herself, it wasn’t her business. She’d feed the cats, go back to watching television and forget the telephone call. It could be no more than idle chat, how people kept in touch nowadays. In touch? Sophie had been here only this afternoon… She went out to the terrace, wondering where Sharkey and Patchouli were, calling, reminding herself that there was nothing here to hurt a cat: no traps, the relationship with foxes was mutually circumspect… and here they came prancing up the lawn. She’d gut the rabbit tomorrow, must remember to bury the skin, she’d learned her lesson the first time she’d presented a skin to Sharkey and he’d taken it to bed with him. Her bed. She observed them critically as they crouched over their food bowls, then returned to the sitting room, but the elephants had given way to a game show. She stood at the window and the question came back like a nagging terrier, intensified. If Sophie rang to chat what was the purpose of the chat? Michael? Money? I’ll go to the Boathouse in the morning, she thought; the girl rang for a reason and if there was a coded message there I didn’t get it. I shall tomorrow.