Murder Most Fab (9 page)

The
village was scandalized. She had always had a reputation for strangeness, but
now she was regarded as little short of a loose-moralled nutcase. The shops
along our modest high street were abuzz with sharp intakes of breath and the
hurried exchange of fresh information, and always fell silent when my mother
and I walked in.

Mother
wasn’t bothered to find herself the subject of village gossip. ‘I always have
been. It’s nothing new. Pardon me for not having a blue rinse and cobwebs
between my legs.’

As a
consequence, I wasn’t bothered either. I knew that my mother was part of
nature, so whatever she was doing must be natural. When the winter cold kicked
in and the marsh was bleak and windy, she enticed men home to do the deed.
‘This is Peter’ she’d say to me, or ‘Meet Bob,’ or ‘Charlie’s come round to
inspect the joists,’ while she pulled some bewildered-looking man into the
sitting room. ‘Why don’t you go and change your library books?’

I was a
bit put out that she didn’t have as much time to spend with me as she used to,
but I was of an age now when I wanted to lock myself away and play records
anyway.

She
applied the same come-one-come-all approach to men as she did to her garden. If
it was green she’d nurture it, if it had feathers she’d feed it and now, if it
wore trousers, she’d show it a good time.

I grew
accustomed to my mother’s menfriends and their frequent visits. I was
fascinated by her never-ending quest and the variety of booty she brought back.
After all, the village was agog and I had a ringside seat. I was even quite
proud. If my mother did something, she did it well.

It was with a curious
synchronicity that my mother’s nymphomania coincided with my own sexual
awakening. But while she was bright and blatant about her activities, puberty
had darkened my private thoughts. They were as salacious as any other teenage
boy’s, but I was confused: was I going through a phase or was I a homo? I
didn’t think about girls sexually. I tried to, but nothing happened as it did
when I thought of boys. Meanwhile hair sprouted in all sorts of places and my
penis grew and grew I locked myself into the toilet several times a day to
check its progress.

Growing
fast, clear-skinned and happy despite, or maybe because of, my secret gay
fantasies, I was a sporty youngster, gregarious and handsome. Inspired by the
outing with my grandmother to the Chinese State Circus and the lithe athlete
who’d caught my eye, I spent what little spare time I had at the athletics club
and found I was particularly good at the horse and the rings. I knew I enjoyed
being among those well-honed young men, and I was aware that I looked forward
to the showers — but I hadn’t yet joined the dots.

I
became best friends with a classmate called Vincent, the curly-haired,
rough-and-ready, yet roguishly good-looking son of a family from Essex. They
lived in a mock-Tudor house in a much-loathed new estate on the outskirts of
the village. His mother —Vincent referred to her as ‘my old lady’ — drove a
sports car while wearing a head scarf with dark glasses, and although he never
said as much, I guessed that his father was spending a few years in prison.
Together we talked about our absent fathers and the responsibility we felt
towards our mothers. Most of all we talked about girls and sex. Or Vincent did.

‘I
can’t wait to shag a bird.’

‘Me
too,’ I said.

‘Beverley
Dean let me feel her tits.’

‘Me
too.’

‘I’m gonna
finger her next time.

‘Me
too.’

‘Do you
want to see a dirty magazine? Look at this bitch. She loves taking it up the
arse.’

‘Me
too,’ I said, then hurriedly corrected myself. ‘I mean, er, wow!’

Vincent
gave me a suspicious look and put away the magazine.

With
his cheeky grin and laddish swagger, Vincent had a starring role in my sexual
fantasies, but although we sometimes stayed at each other’s houses, and my mind
was filled with all sorts of fruity scenarios, I didn’t dare touch him. From
his frequent comments about queers and poofs, I got the distinct impression that
my attentions would be violently rebuffed.

My
heart would sink when he suggested we hang out at the village bus shelter — a mecca
for local teenagers. Vincent would chat up one of the girls, back her against
the graffiti for a snog and a grope. I was so worried my jealousy would show
that I would slouch off home before a girl made a move on me.

By the
time I was sixteen I knew for sure where my feelings lay. I was gay and that
was all there was to it. But how on earth was I going to meet a like-minded lad
while I lived in a quiet Kentish village?

Little
did I realize that an innocent stroll down to the post office one Saturday
morning would answer that question, and awaken enough powerful emotion to last
me a lifetime.

On that sunny spring morning,
I was doing some shopping for my mother at the village post office and I took
the opportunity to buy myself an ice lolly. I lingered outside the post office,
working away at my raspberry Mivvi, idly seeing how much of it I could get into
my mouth without gagging, when my eye was caught by a printed card in the
window. There were plenty of others alongside —mostly scrawled in
near-illegible biro and advertising an old fridge, a car or a cot for sale —
but this one stood out. It was printed on thick cream card with a gold embossed
crest at the top:

Wanted: Enthusiastic youngsters required to work as weekend
gardeners. No experience necessary, training will be provided. Apply the Head
Gardener, Thornchurch House.

My interest was pricked. I
knew a lot about plants from helping my mother. Besides, Thornchurch House was
the oldest and grandest residence in the village. Sitting high above us mere
mortals on a majestic hill, it was painted a pale yellow, had a sweeping drive
leading up to it, and grand pillars on either side of a large, oak double front
door. The Thornchurches had lived there for generations, surrounded by their
ample acreage of farm- and woodland. The current lord and lady were decidedly
aloof, seen once in a while driving through the village in a Land Rover or
Daimler; they never stopped for a chat with anyone. They seemed to think of us
villagers as their inferiors and were so intimidating that if they ever pulled
up outside the post office we would scatter out of their path like the pheasants
they shot in the fields.

Every
Sunday Lady Thornchurch was to be seen in church, sitting in the pew reserved
for the family, and giving off the cold, heartless air of the fervently
religious. After the service, she shook hands curtly with the vicar but never
lingered, although some of the more aspirational village ladies bobbed
hopefully into her line of vision, trying to engage her attention. She wore a
fur coat — a mortal sin to my mother, who hissed whenever Hilary Thornchurch’s
name was mentioned. Lord Thornchurch was never seen in church but he once
opened the village fête, and was a tall, stately, handsome man, as one would
expect a lord to be, but brusque and standoffish.

There
were two Thornchurch offspring, a son and a daughter, but they were not allowed
to play with the village children and seemed to have been away at
boarding-school since they were about five. They were posh and mysterious.
Regina, the eldest, was now working in London at a Mayfair art gallery, and
Timothy was finishing his A levels at Eton.

I read
the card in the post-office window again. Here was an opportunity to get a
glimpse inside the closed aristocratic world that lay behind the huge
wrought-iron gates, and it appealed to me. Some pocket money would be welcome
too, and I rather fancied the idea of myself as a son of the sod, sowing seed
in the fertile earth.

I
finished my lolly, dropped the stick into the bin and decided that I would
write to the head gardener that very day.

Before long I was
interviewed for the position, and the Sunday after that, I was set to weeding
the flowerbeds adjoining the stables. It was a fresh, late-spring morning and I
was chopping away dead daffodil leaves when I heard someone approaching. I
stood up, secateurs in hand, and turned round.

I saw a
tall, beautiful boy with curly blond hair, piercing blue eyes and full lips.
His eyes flickered as he looked me up and down. ‘Hello. I’m Timothy Thornchurch,’
he said. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m
Johnny,’ I said. ‘I’m gardening.’

He
hadn’t needed to say who he was — I already knew. I’d seen him once or twice,
sometimes as a shaggy mop of blond hair in the back of a speeding Daimler, and
once larking with his pals by the canal during the annual village raft race. He
was fit and muscular, and I’d admired him from afar but never thought of
talking to him. After all, I was a simple country lad and he was a sophisticated
public-school boy, boarding at Eton in term-time and shut away in the grandeur
of Thornchurch House during the holidays. Although we were almost the same age
and hailed from the same place, I had barely given him a second thought. Before
now I had never looked into his eyes. Even if I had, he was way beyond my reach
— not that I was reaching.

Now he
stood in front of me in all his patrician glory. We stood five yards apart but
remained motionless and stared for an inordinate amount of time. Then, almost
unconsciously, I imitated one of my mother’s flirtatious little tricks: I
licked my lips, pushed out my chest and half smiled. A moment later, Timothy
said carelessly, ‘See you around, perhaps, Johnny,’ and walked off.

I
returned to my work and started to hum with excitement. Delightful chills were
thrilling me all over. He was the most desirable thing I’d ever laid eyes.
Steady on, I thought. Timothy Thornchurch wouldn’t be interested in me in a
million years. After all, I was a nobody, someone employed to weed the garden —
and not the whole garden at that. This wasn’t
Lady Chatterley’s Lover,
I
reminded myself.

But a
few hours later, as I was walking down the poplar-lined driveway on my way
home, he pulled up in a battered Land Rover. ‘Do you live in the village,
Johnny?’ he said, with a grin. ‘Hop in, I’ll give you a lift.’

‘Thanks.
I live in Cherry Lane.’ I climbed in next to him, and we roared off down the
drive.

Over
the sound of the engine Timothy said, ‘I’m going to check the sheep on the
knoll. Do you mind if we go up there first? Then I’ll take you home.’

‘That’d
be great,’ I said, trying not to sound too enthusiastic. The idea of spending time
with this beautiful boy enthralled me and sent quivers of pleasurable
anticipation right through me. ‘Sheep are … lovely, aren’t they?’

He gave
me a bemused sideways look. ‘I don’t know if “lovely” is the word. One got her
head stuck in a fence the other day. They’re too stupid to pull backwards.’

‘You’d
think Mother Nature would tell them to do that,’ I said, anxious to agree with
him.

‘No
fences in the wild, I suppose,’ he said. His voice was posh, and with a
languid, confident drawl that I guessed must come from his school. My own
accent wasn’t as rural as it might have been — my grandmother’s influence — so
I didn’t feel awkward. Besides, Timothy was friendly enough.

I had
the curious tingling feeling that something was about to happen, though I couldn’t
guess what it might be.

He
parked on the grass verge of a narrow country lane where the trees formed a
green canopy overhead. We got out of the Land Rover, climbed over a stile and
made our way across several fields.

‘All
this is ours,’ Timothy said, with a careless wave. ‘I don’t know where the
boundary is but it’s pretty much as far as you can see.’

‘Goodness.’
I tried to imagine what it must feel like to own everything within sight, but
it felt too strange. How could anyone own hedges and trees, fieldmice, clouds
and the wind? I knew what he meant — the land itself— but he seemed to imply
that every last thing on it belonged to his family and I didn’t see how that
was possible.