Chapter Five

THERE WAS A man standing with his back to her. He had opened the fridge door and was staring into it. He was wearing corduroy trousers and a very hairy sweater, the sort of clothes that could see off Cape Horn without bother. The dogs, on seeing him, pushed past Hetty, ran up to him and jabbed their noses into the backs of his legs. He jumped, turned, saw Hetty, and made a sound like someone in a film who’d been shot, which he swiftly turned into a string of very bad language.

‘Who the fucking hell are you?’ he demanded hoarsely, after what seemed a long time.

Hetty pulled herself up, trying to feel dignified in her Damart pyjamas. ‘More to the point,’ she said stiffly, ‘who are you?’

But she didn’t need to ask. She knew who he was. He was Conan the Barbarian.

He was tall, wide and crumpled. His rugged features were screwed into a combination of extreme fatigue, irascibility and irritation. He had the tough, roughened look of a man who could wear Shetland wool next to the skin and not itch.

More swearing followed Hetty’s question and she observed how very badly she must have frightened him. ‘Connor Barrabin,’ he said, huskily. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’

‘House-sitting,’ said Hetty.

He gave a sort of grunt, which acknowledged the need for a house-sitter but didn’t actually express enormous gratitude for her giving up her life to look after his inheritance, and turned back to the fridge. ‘So who are you?’ he rasped over his shoulder, bringing out Hetty’s cheese and a couple of tomatoes.

‘Hetty Longden. Marjorie Longden’s daughter. You know? Who left you all those messages.’

He grunted again. It was easy to see how he’d got his nickname – it was his size, his limited vocabulary, and his extreme uncouthness. But then, it was two o’clock in the morning. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any whisky? Some in the car. Can’t face getting it. Got some lurgy. Sore throat.’

It sounded sore. Hetty put down the poker. ‘Samuel’s got some. I’ll get it. I’ve got lemon juice, too.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘I could make you a hot toddy?’ she added reluctantly; reluctant because Alistair had had a bad cold shortly before he’d abandoned her. The thought that he’d hung on to her until his cold was better – she made such good toddies – had crossed her mind.

Conan the Barbarian may have smiled. Or it could just have been a random rearrangement of the stubble-covered creases and folds that surrounded his mouth, though there was a glimpse of white, which was almost definitely a set of teeth. ‘That would be great.’

Hetty went back into the sitting room to get the whisky, her mind racing. The car-boot sale was tomorrow. What should she do? Tell him about it? Let him find out? Spirit him away in a sack and not bring him back until after it was over?

Her reasonable self told her that she should tell him about it. After all, it wasn’t illegal, and it was for a very good cause. But somehow she didn’t think Conan the Barbarian was likely to be overjoyed at the thought of a car-boot sale going on in the grounds of his uncle’s house, not when he’d just got home from the ends of the earth, and had a cold. But was it possible to have a car-boot sale secretly? She thought of the posters, the advertisements, the people, and decided it wasn’t. But she still wasn’t going to tell him about it, not tonight anyway. He might turn violent. She clutched the whisky bottle tightly and returned to the kitchen.

She sat him down at the other end of the table while she poured lemon juice, sugar, a lot of whisky and a splash of water into a pan. While that was heating, she boiled the kettle. Could she make it strong enough to knock him out for twenty-four hours? Or even twelve?

‘Things seem different,’ he croaked, peering around him, his thick hair obscuring his view somewhat. ‘Less cluttered. Have you put some stuff away?’

Hetty gulped, thinking of the boxes and boxes that she and Phyllis had sorted for the sale. ‘Sort of.’ She stirred the contents of the pan to check if the sugar was dissolved.

He grunted again.

Hetty tested the toddy and added a splash more lemon juice and a splash of boiling water. When she was sure it was very nearly boiling, she poured it into a mug. Her mother complained that making them as hot as she did killed all the vitamin C. Hetty claimed that hot toddies did nothing to cure your cold, they just made you feel better. If you wanted vitamin C, you should take pills. She handed Connor his brimming mug and sat down to watch him drink it.

His first sip caused a lot more facial action. Hetty could almost feel the toddy searing its way down, like molten lava. Then he made the same sort of satisfied groan that Alistair had made when he was content. Something else about him reminded her of Alistair, though it wasn’t easy to see what it was. He was much more coarsely made, larger, not at all handsome, and, at the moment, extremely unkempt. But he had all of Alistair’s arrogance. Hetty forced herself to remember that he was in pain, had probably been travelling for hours, and that she ought to refrain from hitting him with the poker. She didn’t want to antagonize him.

‘Have you come from far?’ she asked, after several scalding sips had had time to do their work.

‘Turkmenistan.’

Hetty was none the wiser. ‘Oh. My mother tried hard to contact you.’

He nodded. ‘Why I’m here.’

‘I’ve been here four weeks.’

‘Good for you.’

‘I mean,’ said Hetty, annoyed, ‘you didn’t come immediately.’

‘No.’

‘Well, why not?’ Hetty was quite prepared to accept his reasons, but he should at least give them to her.

‘Turkmenistan’s a long way away. Communications not good. Contract to finish.’

‘Oh.’

‘Look.’ Hetty watched him make an effort to talk in whole sentences. ‘Which bedroom are you in? I need to sleep. Can’t remember when I last slept in a bed.’

‘Well, which bedroom would you prefer? Uncle Samuel’s? I could put some sheets on in no time.’ She didn’t really want to explain that she’d been sleeping on the sofa with the dogs, who were now snoring loudly in front of the stove.

‘Fine. I’ll get my bag in from the car.’

Hetty forced herself not to feel frightened at the thought of going upstairs in the dark on her own, wishing she could turn on all the lights. She picked up the torch Peter had lent her, and faced her fears.

Actually she found herself feeling perfectly calm burrowing about in the linen cupboard for sheets. She and Phyllis had been through the cupboard pretty thoroughly looking for things to cover tables with, so she knew where all the good linen was. Uncle Samuel still had blankets and eiderdowns instead of duvets on his bed, which made things harder.

‘Why don’t any of the damn lights work?’ demanded Connor, thumping up the stairs.

The bed was nearly made by this time. Seeing it, Connor forgot about the lights and flung himself down in all his clothes.

‘The wiring’s unsafe,’ said Hetty. ‘There could have been a fire at any moment.’

‘Oh shit!’ In the torchlight, Hetty could see him close his eyes, as if in pain. ‘I knew this bloody hell-hole should be pulled down.’

Hetty harrumphed her disapproval. ‘You don’t mind if I take the torch, do you?’

His eyes were closed, his mouth was open, and his chest rose and fell rhythmically. With a sigh, she took off his shoes, covered him with the blankets, and went quickly back down the stairs.

Back in the welcoming light of the kitchen, Hetty felt wide awake. It didn’t take much thought to conclude that a hot toddy for herself was a good idea. She made it nearly as strong as she had for Conan the Barbarian, and while she sipped she considered the situation. Even with reality blurred by hot whisky and lemon, things didn’t look good.

Did he, or did he not, know about his uncle’s loan? What would he do when, half-way through the following morning, he woke from his sick-bed to discover a car-boot sale in full cry in his uncle’s backyard? Would he throw her, neck and crop, into the proverbial street, possibly suing her for misuse of relative’s property en passant? Which would not only be hugely embarrassing, but also a terrific waste. The village had put an enormous amount of hard work into the car-boot sale, and tomorrow they would put in even more. For it all to be ruined by Samuel’s wicked heir would turn farce into tragedy. But, try as she might, Hetty couldn’t see what on earth she could do to prevent this potential calamity, short of slipping her nocturnal intruder a Mickey Finn.

‘And where do you get them at this time of night in the middle of the country?’ Hetty asked Clovis, who was confused, and thought it was breakfast time. He looked at her blankly, rightly regarding her question as rhetorical.

Hetty doled out a minimal amount of cat food and realized that she desperately didn’t want to leave Courtbridge House – not now that she had committed herself, and most of the village, to its rehabilitation. But if Connor Whatever-it-was asked her to leave, what could she do? The house was his responsibility, after all. She was only there because he hadn’t been able to look after it. She had no right to stay if he didn’t want her to.

And why on earth would he want her to? She’d sold some of his uncle’s ugly but valuable antiques, the Clarice Cliff urn being the ugliest and most precious. And she planned to sell an awful lot of other stuff to raise money to restore the house that he wanted to turn into a theme park anyway. It was unlikely she would be his first choice of house guest.

Gradually, however, the toddy began to kick in, and Hetty accepted that there was no point in trying to make a plan when she had no idea of what might happen. ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ she told the dogs as she summoned them, picked up her drink, and retired to bed.

When she awoke, barely three hours later, she hurried into her clothes in a panic, terrified that the first car would arrive at the very moment that Conan the Barbarian appeared downstairs. By the time she had washed, let the dogs out, and made a cup of tea, she discovered it was only six o’clock.

Her first priority was Connor. Thinking it best to confront him armed, she made him a cup of tea and took it upstairs. The sound of snoring issued from his room, confirming that he was still asleep. Reassured, she went in and put the tea down. It didn’t seem likely that he’d drink it.

He was lying on his back, still dressed, but with the bedclothes strewn about him. He didn’t hear her enter, and when she placed a tentative hand on his forehead he didn’t stir. He felt terribly hot. If it wasn’t for the sale she might have called a doctor. As it was, she had more important things to think about than poorly cousins-many-times-removed. However, she decided he’d be more comfortable – and therefore less likely to wake – if she could get him out of his clothes.

He weighed a ton. At first it seemed as if she would never be able to drag his cords from under him. As she tugged and heaved she realized how deeply asleep he was. It might mean he was seriously ill but, more importantly, it might ensure his keeping to his room for the whole day. When at last he was naked, but for his boxer shorts, she made the bed over him and tucked him in firmly. Not because she cared if he lived or died, she told herself, but because she wanted him out of the way.

She went downstairs and put three soluble aspirin into a glass of orange juice. Three were unlikely to kill him – he was the size of an ox – but it might take three to keep him comatose for the required length of time. Fluids were a good idea too, not just because he had a temperature, but also because he would be less likely to wake from being thirsty. Back in his room, she made a determined effort to rouse him.

‘Drink this!’ she shouted into his ear. ‘It’ll make you better!’ She put an arm behind his shoulders and dragged him upright.

Conan the Barbarian, who had begun to return to consciousness, scowled at Hetty and then at the glass. ‘I’m fine,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘You’re not fine. You’ve got a temperature. Drink this!’

Fortunately for Hetty, he was too weak to fight for long and soon opened his mouth to let her tip the spiked orange juice into him. She wiped his mouth with the sheet.

‘Well done.’ She spoke more gently now, soothing him back to sleep. ‘You just stay here. I’ll be up to see you later.’

She brought up a glass of water and more aspirin, which she left by his bed. But there was no sign of him waking. He lay on his side now, no longer snoring, and seemed cooler. Satisfied that her nursing had done some good, and reasonably confident that he would stay safely asleep for most of the day at least, she left him.

Caroline had told her the cars and vans would arrive early, well before the ten o’clock start advertised. She wasn’t really expecting them at eight in the morning, but it was then that the first ex-Post Office van drove into the yard, eager to claim the best site and the best bargains.

Fortunately, Hetty had already put up trestle tables, borrowed by Mrs Hempstead from the village hall, all along one wall, so the Brownie and WI stalls would be in pole position. Peter had wanted to help her put them up last night. Thank goodness she’d refused, or Conan the Barbarian would have had to crash through them to put his car away.

Seeing the dealers get out of their cars, Hetty prayed that, for once in her life, Caroline would be punctual.

‘Mornin’, love, where’s your mum?’ asked a pony-tailed, earringed, tattooed man with a substantial beer belly.

Hetty reached a personal Rubicon. She could either blush and stammer and apologize for not being older, or more experienced, or even just for breathing, or she could give back as good as she got. A month ago she would have slunk back into the house with some excuse. Not any more.

‘At home asleep, I hope. Where’s yours?’ She grinned broadly. ‘It’s good you’ve come early. You can get the best site. Tell your mates to park next to you.’

The man, an experienced dealer, and in the habit of eating girls like Hetty in between pints of beer, was a little taken aback. ‘You in charge, then?’

‘Yup. I’ll be round for the money later. Oh, look, here’s another lot. Quick, or they’ll take your place.’

The sight of several more vans filled with stuff that appears regularly at car-boot sales, changing owner from time to time, made the man hurry back to park neatly and start unloading.

Phyllis Hempstead arrived shortly after this. She bustled up to Hetty, full of energy. ‘I say, we’ve got a grand day for it, haven’t we? And all those vans already!’

‘I know! It’s amazing, isn’t it?’ There was no point, Hetty decided, in telling Phyllis about Connor’s arrival. She couldn’t do anything about it any more than Hetty could. There was no point in them both being worried sick.

Once during the morning, in between directing Brownies and WI members to their allotted spaces, taking money, and seeing Peter’s friend with the cider press had a good spot, Hetty dashed upstairs to visit her patient.

He was showing signs of waking when she got there so, terrified he might come round completely, she fought with the foil wrappings of three more aspirins, tipped them into the water, and virtually forced the liquid down his throat. ‘This’ll make you feel much better.’ She rubbed her hand across his forehead. ‘You’ve still got a bit of a temperature.’ She had no idea if he had or hadn’t, but her mother had always said this to her when she was little, and it sounded caring.

Connor grunted. He still looked terrible. There were dark circles under his eyes, fierce gold stubble covered the lower part of his face, and his lips looked dry.

‘I’ll be up to see you again later. There’s water if you want it, but don’t, whatever you do, get out of bed.’

Guiltily she fled, before he could ask about the unaccustomed noise, resolving to find time to get some more aspirin.

The car-boot sale was a huge success. Buyers and sellers flocked to it, partly from nosiness, and partly because they assumed that as the setting was stately the junk would be also.

‘They came here for antiques, and they got chipped china,’ Hetty said somewhat ruefully to Mrs Hempstead, when she had a moment.

‘Never mind why they came – they came. And some of the china’s very nice. If not actually antique.’

Her spirits flagged only when five o’clock came and there were still a few buyers haggling over the price of some hideous handmade pottery on Mrs Hempstead’s stall. But eventually even Phyllis packed up and went home, handing Hetty a bag full of notes and change before she went.

‘Well done, dear. You’ve done extremely well.’

‘It was you, Mrs – Phyllis. Sorting all that china and getting your friends to help.’

‘Didn’t mean that, so much. I meant well done for grasping the nettle like you have. You’re plucky and brave. A lot of girls would have run home and said they couldn’t cope. You didn’t.’

Hetty was touched. And pleased. And while Mrs Hempstead was pleased too, she thought she should tell her about Connor. But Hetty couldn’t bring herself to. She was too tired, and Mrs Hempstead would no doubt expect her to poison Connor as he slept. Plucky and brave she might be, but neither her pluckiness nor her loyalty to Courtbridge House extended to murder.

‘I couldn’t have done any of it without you, Phyllis, you and your friends.’

‘Nonsense child! We’ve enjoyed ourselves!’ Mrs Hempstead went off, string bags bulging with bargains.

Caroline and Jack, who left soon afterwards, had tried very hard to persuade Hetty to join them in the pub. If it hadn’t been for Connor, a time bomb in human form, Hetty would have gone. It took a lot of precious energy to convince Caroline she wanted to stay at home.

After checking on her patient, who was now sleeping soundly without the aid of analgesics, Hetty sat down at the kitchen table to count the money. She had enough to pay Caroline’s pet electrician who was due to redo the wiring tomorrow, and almost enough to pay for the fire extinguishers, on order, and due to arrive later in the week. ‘Good eh?’ she said to Clovis. He mewed, giving her a whiff of halitosis powerful enough to kill a canary.

Hetty cleared up the kitchen carefully, getting rid of all hints that any commercial undertaking had gone on. It was unlikely she could remove all traces of the car-boot sale, but there was no point in rubbing Connor’s nose in it.

He showed no sign of waking, however, so Hetty eventually went to bed herself, glad to be spared any awkward explanations or confrontations.

She went up to see him again first thing in the morning, but he was still asleep, though he had drunk the water and taken more aspirin. Bored of waiting for the Sword of Damocles to fall, she decided to walk across the fields to Peter’s to thank him for his help, to tell him about Connor, and to ask him to give her breakfast.

It was a truly lovely morning – the sort of early spring day when people tell each other, ‘This is summer, better make the most of it.’ Primroses were starting to appear in the hedgerows, and a green fuzz was beginning to blur the outlines of trees. The dogs seemed to feel the vibrance in the air, and frolicked about, woofing and rolling each other over. Hetty got soaked to the thigh as she kicked up dew with her wellingtons. The beauty of it all caught her by the throat. She didn’t want to leave it and go back to London or, worse somehow, the quasi-country where her parents lived. Nor did she want to think about these ancient fields being torn up to be replaced by manufactured fun-machines, made of metal and plastic, instead of living things.

She wouldn’t let it happen she decided, and turned her mind to thoughts of bacon, brown toast and coffee, trusting that Peter would have them. He was sure to. He was so reliable.

It occurred to her, as she raised her hand to knock on his back door, that perhaps she was using Peter just like – well, not just like, but in the same way morally – Alistair had used her. She rejected the notion as she knocked. Peter liked helping people.

‘Hi, Peter. Am I too early for you?’

Peter looked attractively ruffled. He’d obviously just come out of the shower; his hair was wet, and he hadn’t got a shirt on under his jumper.

‘Er, no. Well, a bit. Are you all right?’

‘Fine. I’ve got some news. I thought I might beg breakfast off you.’

‘Come in. I’ll just go up and finish getting dressed.’

‘So.’ Peter had ground coffee, sliced mushrooms, and was now laying slices of bacon under the grill. ‘What’s this news?’

‘Conan the Barbarian’s come.’

Peter turned, a rasher of bacon hanging off his knife. ‘What?’

‘In the middle of Friday night. He turned up. He must have got all my mother’s messages at last.’

‘You mean, while there was all that commotion, with the car-boot sale, Samuel’s heir was upstairs somewhere?’

It did sound bizarre. ‘Yes. Fortunately he’s ill and he slept through it.’

‘Good God! Does that mean you’ll go home?’ Peter put the last slice of bacon under the grill and moved the kettle on to the hot part of the Aga. He seemed worried.

Hetty shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I really hope not.’

‘And is he going to start turning Courtbridge House into a funfair?’

Hetty shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Two o’clock in the morning isn’t a good time to ask those sorts of questions.’

‘What’s he doing now?’ A couple of tomatoes joined the bacon on the grill.

‘Still sleeping off flu and jet lag, I hope. But really, until he wakes up, I won’t know anything. And I’ve got one of Caroline’s men coming to do the wiring this afternoon.’

‘On a Sunday?’

She nodded. ‘He’s moonlighting – or Sunday-afternooning.’

He didn’t smile. ‘What will you do if the Barbarian asks you to leave? I’m just asking because if he does,’ he went on quickly, ‘you’d be more than welcome – to move in here with me. Spare room or my room. One egg or two?’ he added to cover his embarrassment.

‘That’s really, really kind of you. And, I must admit, running to you was my first thought.’

Peter put down the eggshells. ‘Was it?’

Hetty realized he’d got hold of more stick than she’d intended to offer. ‘I mean, I knew – I felt I knew – that if I was really in trouble, you’d take me in.’

‘You don’t have to be in any kind of trouble for me to take you in, Hetty.’

Hetty licked her lips and made a big effort to look directly at him. ‘I know, Peter. You’re very kind. I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ She was trying to be honest but she realized that every word she uttered was leading him further in a direction she had no immediate intention of going. ‘I’m nowhere near ready for a new relationship yet. But if I was, you’d be the first – I mean . . .’ She didn’t know what she meant, so she shut up.

Peter regarded her for a long time. Then got a plate out of the warming oven and put her breakfast on it.

‘Thank you,’ said Hetty, gratefully.