Kitabı oxu: «The Little Clock House on the Green»

Chapter 4
Boys and Their Toys
Daniel

As Daniel sped around the leafy lanes with the top down on his absolute pride and joy, Monroe – a Triumph Spitfire in phantom grey, it finally occurred to him why his face was aching.

He was smiling.

Had been for maybe the last fifteen miles or so.

Happy days, he thought. As improvements to his state of mind went, smiling had to be right up there with that first gulp of an IPA beer at the start of a hot summer’s evening.

He shifted gears, pressing down on the accelerator, the dappled sunlight creating fast-moving reflections of the tree-lined country roads in his Wayfarers.

Two hours before, when he’d been grabbing clothes from a cheap freestanding clothes-rail in his studio apartment and shoving them into a leather holdall, he definitely hadn’t been smiling.

He’d been swearing.

Profusely.

He’d actually managed to shock himself at being able to string so many different swear words together. Granted, the sentences had been neither grammatically correct, nor, he was pretty sure, anatomically possible, but the flow of them had brought a certain sense of surprising satisfaction.

Don’t get me wrong – Daniel Westlake wasn’t some advocate for anti-profanity. But when he swore it was usually short and succinct and relating to a mild frustration that he determined to quickly get past – and did.

It had been a really crap year, though.

The crappiest, in fact.

At first, he’d dismissed that sly prickle of awareness… that amorphous inkling, that something at his accountancy firm, West and Westlake, was wrong.

The clients had to be satisfied, the way they kept introducing more business to the firm. The money was coming in and the projections for the following year were great. And he was working sixty/seventy-hour weeks, week in, week out.

Any real time to pause over a feeling, a premonition, a sense of impending doom, whatever you wanted to call it, was nil. Tinkering-with-Monroe time had dwindled to maybe one afternoon a quarter and the only time available to focus on anything other than his accounts was when he was out running.

Daniel loved running. Loved the discipline. Loved the rhythm.

But it had been on one of those early-morning runs – you know, the ones where the sun is just breaking through and the roads are that kind of pre-zombie-apocalypse eerie-quiet, and your mind flits and floats as your feet pound the pavement, that the worry that everything was a little too good at West and Westlake had stretched and yawned, and this time, refused to lie back down, dormant.

Another mile in and the awakening had become a nasty, sweat-inducing growing suspicion that had had him circling back in the direction of his offices at 5am on a Sunday, letting himself in, downloading every single set of accounts, and back at his three-bed penthouse at 2:17am the following morning, had led him to the very conclusive and very shitty discovery that, yes, his scumbag partner, was, to put it bluntly, cooking the books.

The betrayal had felt like a herd of elephants doing Buddha-spins on his chest.

Not least because Daniel and his business partner, Hugo West, had been friends since school.

Good friends. Even though, to be fair, Hugo had always been a bit of a dick.

He was that friend, who, growing up, always had to do everything first. First to climb the tree, first to crack the crass joke in class. First to ace a test. First to get fall-down drunk. First to lose his virginity. First to come up with an idea.

But he had also been the only friend to stand up for, and to stand beside, Daniel, when Daniel’s life had imploded at nineteen.

It was hard to discount that kind of loyalty and then there was the fact that Hugo teamed playing hard with working hard. The hardest. Maybe he’d had to. That need of his to be ahead in everything, probably. But Daniel had always admired his friend’s drive and determination and, in the beginning, where Daniel might have given up on their fledgling accountancy firm, it had been Hugo’s grit that had seen them through that crucial first two years. Hugo who had the guts to go for the big clients straight off. Hugo who helped the company fly so high.

So high and, seemingly, so successfully that Daniel had completely forgotten Hugo’s dick-like tendencies. That was on him – and lesson learned. He’d never make the same mistake.

After the bloody awful court case and the dissolution of their business partnership, Daniel had one priority and one priority only: starting afresh.

The swear-fest, record-breaking packing-gig had been a result of reconfirming that decision after the letter had plopped onto his doormat that morning.

Postmarked from Ford open prison, Hugo obviously hadn’t lasted two weeks into his sentence before ‘reaching out’.

Daniel couldn’t imagine what there was left to say and although opening it would have relieved his curiosity, the letter had sat sealed on the sparse kitchen breakfast bar while he’d consumed bland instant coffee and stared at the offending article, conflicted.

Swallowing down the last gulp of coffee it had met the choking anger rising up, making Daniel realise there was no room for misplaced loyalty. After what Hugo had done, he was now in the category of forever-dead-to-him dick.

End of.

So after the swearing and the packing, Daniel had written ‘Not at this address’ across the front of the letter and tossed it into the first postbox he’d come across after leaving London.

Driving with no particular destination in mind had eased that grinding knot in his stomach, but now, as he down-shifted to hit an approaching bend in the road, Daniel realised he could hear a grinding noise above the roar of the engine. The smile on his face disappeared. That noise wasn’t a grinding stomach-ulcer noise. That noise was Monroe-speak for ‘Um, Houston, we have a problem’.

He nursed the car around the corner and felt the engine slow even as he tried to accelerate out of it. ‘Come on Monroe – you can’t fail me now, not in the middle of–’ he twisted his head to try and catch what the signpost he had driven past had read, but was too late. ‘Nowhere,’ he said, not too upset to discover he had no idea where he was.

It had been the whole point.

Get in the car and drive.

Get away from London.

Away from the last year.

And end up somewhere where he could think.

But thinking of any sort was put on hold the instant he saw the woman with the long, incredible legs, hauling a suitcase out of the back of a taxi.

You didn’t see a soul for miles and then, POW, some Diana Prince goddess was standing at the side of the road in front of a row of stone cottages.

The thought of stopping and offering help – of getting a chance to meet this gorgeous woman was enough to put the smile back on his face. He was just starting to slow when Monroe chose to emit a put-put-puttering noise.

‘Christ, Monroe – not cool,’ he muttered and got an over-way-too-quickly impression of huge eyes as Wonder Woman’s head popped out from the boot of the taxi to check on the strange noise.

Time slowed. But not in a hero-walking-down-the-road-slow-mo-movie way – more in a let’s-get-a-full-look-at-the-idiot-who-doesn’t-know-how-to-drive-a-classic-car kind of a way.

Daniel actually found himself hunkering down in his seat as he brought his arm up to rest on the window frame so that his hand could shield his face from her inquisitive gaze.

Bunny-hopping past a beautiful woman in his beloved Triumph Spitfire was definitely not how he’d imagined his fresh start beginning.

Neither was sounding like he couldn’t find a gear if his life depended on it.

All ability to appear cool having disappeared out of Monroe’s exhaust pipe, Daniel opted not to stop after all. Wonder Woman looked like she had everything under control and he… didn’t.

His gaze shifted to his rear-view mirror, where he allowed himself one last look at her, before concentrating on not driving into the hedge.

Thankfully a few yards further and the narrow country lane opened out so that on his right was a large village green with some sort of stately-home affair at the end of it and on his left were yet more stone cottages, this time with roses rambling up them.

As he sputtered through the picture-postcard-perfect village a few choice words came to mind. Should’ve checked the oil before leaving London, shouldn’t he? He usually did, but today he’d done what he assumed all people did when attempting an impromptu getaway from life in their classic car. He’d glanced dutifully up at the sky, noted the lack of rain clouds, chucked his holdall onto the passenger seat of the car, hopped in and revved the engine. Tearing out of London as fast as the speed limit permitted.

Giving up before he did irreparable damage, Daniel steered safely towards the thick hedgerow on the other side of the green. He cut the engine and hopped out of the car. At the edge of the green a proud wrought-iron sign twisted into the form of a row of trees read: Welcome to Whispers Wood.

He’d never heard of it. With a sigh he wandered back up the road in the opposite direction from which he’d come until he found another signpost which read: Whispers Wood 1/4 mile, Whispers Ford 2 miles.

He hadn’t heard of Whispers Ford either and now wished he’d been paying attention when he’d driven through the last town.

Which village would have a garage?

A cow mooed, making him jump. Daniel turned around and looked at the field of cows beyond the hedgerow. One of the cows had its head poking over what he considered to be – although he wasn’t exactly an expert – an insubstantial fence-line, considering how big cows were close-up. The cow was looking at him like it had initiated conversation. Daniel found himself holding his hands up to placate as he backed carefully away a couple of steps. The cow watched him with a sort of doleful look on its face before it mooed again.

Since the cow was so talkative Daniel held his hands back out. ‘Garage?’ he asked. ‘That way,’ he pointed left. ‘Or,’ he pointed right, ‘That way?’

Damned if the cow didn’t bow its head as if to say, yes there was a garage, before it then swung its head to the left before turning around and ignoring him.

Countryfile hadn’t exactly been part of Daniel’s ‘on demand’ viewing schedule so he had no idea whether it was possible to get pied by a cow, but just in case he was going to take cow-conversing with a giant pinch of salt.

Of course, he could always wander back through the village, to where he’d seen Wonder Woman, and ask her if there was a garage and mechanic he could trust Monroe to, but let’s face it, being that asking for directions wasn’t part of a man’s make-up, he was never going to ask a human who could actually judge him.

He took out his phone and Googled.

Bingo.

It looked as if a garage was one of the few facilities Whispers Wood did have.

With a last glance to check the cow was on the right side of the fence, or at least the one the other side of him, Daniel strode off down the lane to try and locate Ted’s Garage.

‘So, when you say it could be the gearbox or the transmission…?’ Daniel asked.

‘I mean it could be the gearbox or the transmission,’ Ted, the portly overall-wearing, mechanic, repeated. ‘Won’t know until I look at it proper. Need me to tow it in for you?’

Daniel wasn’t sure. The tow truck parked up on the verge looked as if it had seen better days. Monroe would probably take one look at it and refuse.

‘No, don’t worry,’ Daniel replied. ‘I think I can get it here without doing too much more damage.’ It could only be three hundred yards or so up the gentle incline to the garage. If he put it to Monroe nicely, he was pretty sure she’d oblige instead of suffering the indignity of a tow.

Twenty minutes later, Ted was staring at the car appreciatively. ‘Well, now, it’s not every day I get to see one of these.’

‘Do you think you’ll be able to find out what the problem is?’

‘I reckon it’ll be a pleasure. If it is the gearbox, though, I’m going to need to order the part special. Not going to be cheap. Might take a few days.’

This past year anger seemed to have top dog status in Daniel’s emotional repertoire and now he waited for it to pipe up. He was a lot relieved and a little surprised when it failed to rise up to bite.

Must be the country air.

‘I don’t suppose there’s anywhere to stay in Whispers Wood?’ he asked.

‘There is,’ Ted answered, giving Daniel an assessing look. ‘Have to say, you look like you’d be more comfortable in the posh hotel in Whispers Ford.’

‘I’m happy to stay here in the village.’

‘Yeah?’

Ted didn’t look convinced, but Daniel was hardly going to tell a stranger about to get intimate with Monroe that despite the shirt on his back being a slim fit, double-cuff from Burberry he was pretty much broke, bar his seed money for starting again. ‘Well, then,’ Ted continued, ‘you should try Sheila Somersby’s B&B. It’s about a ten minute walk, on the outskirts of the village, but I know she has a couple of vacancies at the moment.’

‘Thanks. What’s her number? I’ll phone her now while you’re looking Monroe over.’

‘Monroe?’ Ted turned in the direction of Daniel’s stare, his expression suddenly clearing and becoming warm. ‘As in Marilyn?’

‘Hadn’t actually meant to say that out loud,’ Daniel admitted. Not that there was anything wrong with naming your car. Just, maybe, not out loud! And maybe not Marilyn if you ever wanted to get girls into it.

‘Don’t you worry, Mr…?’

Daniel hesitated and hated himself for doing so. He’d worked hard for years to be able to give his surname without worrying. Telling himself he wasn’t going to let Hugo take that from him as well, he cleared his throat and held out his hand, ‘Westlake. Daniel Westlake.’

‘Well, don’t you worry, Mr Westlake,’ Ted said shaking his hand. ‘I’ll take care of your Marilyn Monroe. I’ll even warm my hands up first,’ he added with a wink.

Daniel smiled. He got out his phone to ring the woman who owned the B&B and ten minutes later he had a room booked and a promise from Ted he’d phone as soon as he knew what was wrong with the car.

Following the lane back down to the village, Daniel stopped, his gaze taking in the lush green grass surrounded by a foot-high chain link fence, with a building at one end and the stone cottages at the other. To the left was what looked like woods and to the right a small parade of shops.

So this was Whispers Wood.

It looked nice.

Pleasant.

Soothing.

A good enough place to hole up and think about where the hell he went from here.