Chapter Two: In the Pink
We came to the country for the headlines.
In our local paper in London, the prostitute who threw herself out of the window of a burning building, torched by her pimp, only made the third page. Here in rural Hertfordshire, the cover story the week we moved was, ‘Llama Escapes from Petting Zoo.’ My husband’s favourite was a confrontation between a senior citizen and the bin men over too many bottles in her recycling box. But the headline today in Great Marston’s Weekly Recorder came as a bit of a shock – or at least it did to my mother-in-law Vivian, who had swept up the paper on her way in to breakfast.
“My God. It’s Pinky!” she shrieked, unfolding the paper in front of her.
“What the hell’s Pinky?” Guy enquired, in his lovely, drawly voice, made even more drawly after a night on the single malt (and the odd fag, I’ll wager).
“We used to call him Pinky,” Vivian answered, in sepulchral tones.
“Not good news, then?” I supplied cheerily, from my post at the kitchen sink, washing up the breakfast things. Vivian may live in her own ‘grannex’, but she likes to sit majestically at the head of our worn and scratched oak table in the kitchen for most meals and, indeed, for many cups of tea during the course of the day. I have become inured to it, in the manner of a reluctant owner adopting a determined cat. The downside to living in two million quids’ worth of Georgian rectory is dealing with the former chatelaine. When Vivian suggested we take on the rectory and she would retire gracefully to a converted barn in the extensive grounds, it seemed like a dream ticket to the countryside. With a baby on the way in a one-bedroom flat in the east end, we’d seized it with both hands. Every now and then, we felt like shoving it back, but the return to Murder Mile kind of put us off.
“Isn’t he that disgraced minister bloke?” Guy hauled his corduroyed behind over to his mother’s side of the table and began reading over her shoulder.
“Colourful local MP, Montague Durdin, was found hanged in his £1.2 million, five-bedroom farmhouse last night at eight p.m. Police were called to the property in Little Marston after reports of a disturbance and found Mr Durdin, sixty-eight, hanging from – “
“Stop! I can’t bear it! Poor, poor, Pinky!” Vivian wailed.
“I didn’t know you knew him that well,” I said, rather surprised by Vivian’s reaction. I pinged off my trusty Marigolds (the house lacked a dishwasher and we hadn’t got round to installing one in this first phase of the renovations; let’s face it, we hadn’t got the cash) and turned towards her, beginning to feel concerned. Viv starred in the local pantomime most years and most days, she starred in some production of her own. However, those were real tears sliding down her flawlessly made-up face.
“I thought he was just an old acquaintance of Dad’s,” Guy agreed, “He usually pops in to open the summer fete if he’s around.”
“We used to be good friends, many years ago, before I met your father. And now he’s been killed!”
“Well it says here he hung himself with his wife’s scarf,” Guy pointed out.
“He wasn’t the type to kill himself!” cried Vivian, “It must have been murder!”
“What do the Old Bill say?” I asked Guy, drying my hands and scooping Rory up from his wooden high chair, where he was patiently wrestling with a tough bit of crumpet and ignoring the emotional meltdown taking place above his head.
“’The possibility of suspicious circumstances has not been ruled out’”, he read aloud.
“I told you!” Vivian closed the newspaper with an emphatic waft.
“Hang about,” Guy swept it off the table and carried on reading, “Why did you call him Pinky?”
“Drink, darling, I need a drink,” Vivian was grasping the edge of the table like a sea-sickness sufferer and groping her way along to the sideboard.
“Hair of the dog, darling?” I murmured. Guy had crawled in during the early hours of the morning, looking a bit peaky after a night spent reliving old digs (or whatever it is archaeologists talk about when they get together) at a pub in Cambridge.
“We called him Pinky,” Vivian announced, pouring herself a large brandy, “Because he was the most fearful commie at university.”
“Monty Durdin, pillar of the Conservative party, a communist?” I was astounded. Rory grabbed a hank of my hair and pulled for some attention, so I yowled loudly.
“It’s not that unbelievable,” Guy said, “What did Churchill say? If you’re not a socialist at twenty you have no heart and if you’re not a conservative at forty, you’ve got no brain’, or something like that.”
“Well I’m not a conservative and I’m not far off forty,” I huffed. I swear Vivian narrowed her eyes at me at this, although she must know. For heaven’s sakes, my father’s a retired shop steward, and, to her lingering disapproval, I speak fluent Estuary. I do, of course, make many a disparaging aside about wealth and privilege whilst enjoying not a lot of the former, but a great deal of the latter. But hey, I have my issues, and it’s not my fault I fell in love with a gorgeous hippy-looking archaeologist on a Greek beach who turned out to be super-posh.
“Monty changed, of course he did. He grew up, like the rest of us. But he was a passionate man, and he was so committed to the cause at the time. He even went to Russia, I remember, just after he was sent down.”
“What, he was chucked out?” Guy asked.
“I started seeing your father in the Michaelmas term and that was it,” Vivian turned a little misty-eyed at whatever memories she was reliving. Then again, it could have been the cooking brandy taking effect.
“You went out with Durdin?” I asked incredulously. Monty Durdin, former Chancellor, Big Tory Beast and also, apparently, university drop-out and my mother-in-law’s ex. The mental images thrown up almost required that I hit the booze as well, in order to block them out.
“Well, we had a sort of thing,” Vivian shook herself like a wet dog, as if to throw off unwelcome thoughts. “Oh, it’s so terrible! I can’t believe it.”
“Bloody hell, is that why Dad wouldn’t have him in the house? I thought it was to do with the exchange rate mechanism!” gasped Guy.
“Listen, kid,” I whispered into Rory’s ear, “Go play with your trike on the patio and I’ll be with you in five,” I liberated my squirming child through the side door and turned to take in more of the unusual breakfast scene.
“Muriel’s going to be here soon,” I announced, “Shouldn’t we-?”
“Clean up?” supplied Guy.
I moved the brandy bottle out of Vivian’s reach, nodding at him and mouthing ‘Do something!’
“Look, mum, I’ve got to get to work and, apparently, Muriel’s coming in today to clean. Jo’s here,” he looked to me for confirmation. Of course I was. Where else would I be with a child, a stricken mother-in-law, a high-maintenance cleaning lady and a band of builders to support?
“But you were out all night!” exclaimed Vivian.
“Self-inflicted damage, stiff upper lip, it’s only a couple of departmental meetings to snooze through and I’ll knock off early,” Guy rattled off, sounding much like his grandfather during the Battle of Britain, I imagine. I cast a glimpse outside to check on Rory who was shouting “Pow! Pow!” at the crows. Another chip off the old block.
“I’ll be around,” I said sympathetically, “Perhaps we can have another cup of tea and then you can go back to the barn for a lie down.”
“I haven’t got time for a lie down!” Vivian retorted, necking the last of her pick-me-up, “I need to ring Barbara and see what anyone’s doing for poor Juliet.” Guy raised an interrogative eyebrow.
“Monty’s wife. They used her scarf, the barbarians!”
“Hang about, mum, we don’t know what’s happened. There’ll be police crawling all over the place, the last thing she’ll need is people turning up today, especially now it’s in the papers. Just leave it for a day or two.”
Vivian looked mutinous before agreeing to go ‘home’ to the back garden and take a paracetomol for her headache.
Rather unwisely, I switched on the radio and we caught the last few minutes of an interview with Durdin himself, recorded only two days earlier.
“Why should we believe you, Minister?” the interviewer was saying. “With respect” (which meant of course, with no respect whatsoever), “You haven’t exactly been squeaky clean yourself. The scandal has touched you as well as the Home Office.”
“I hardly call a few cigars a scandal,” scoffed Monty. And with that, it would seem, he’d hung himself.