Mr Doubler Begins Again Page 12

  ‘But at least those soldiers had some training,’ said Derek, who felt defensive and affronted. Surely if the Colonel was going to appoint himself as their leader, he should be responsible for their shortcomings too? Derek appealed to the Colonel with as much force as he could muster, keen not to be put down with such contempt in front of Olive. But even as he spoke, he wondered who he was defending, himself, the rest of the team or the new chap.

  ‘Quite, quite. Well spoken. Leadership. Always comes down to that. And resources.’ The Colonel shook his head, dismayed by the paucity of both the leadership and resources he had available to him. ‘Got to be off, Olive. Plenty to be done.’

  Olive knew that by prolonging their stay she was prolonging her agony, but the thought of the empty days ahead of her were more terrifying still. The desperation she so despised in herself was there on her face and in her voice, yet she couldn’t stop herself. ‘We must be due another get-together surely? It was Gracie’s turn to host us next, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, shame. Tended to put on a passable spread. Damned shame that won’t be happening.’ The Colonel looked at his watch again, as if the passing of time only added to his regret. Only a minute or two had elapsed since his last glance at the time.

  ‘Perhaps I could host you all here? I’d be very happy to.’ Olive looked hopeful and allowed a tremor of excitement to creep into her voice.

  ‘No need, no need for that at all,’ said the Colonel. Nonetheless he briefly reappraised the space around him as a potential venue and, fixing his attention on the disappointing custard creams, quashed the idea as quickly as it has evolved. ‘New chap is taking it on. Nothing like throwing him in at the deep end.’

  Olive’s face lit up. ‘Oh, at Mirth Farm? Lovely. I’ve always wanted to go up there. The view must be amazing. You can probably see all this land, I expect.’

  ‘Of course, you would be welcome to join us, but don’t put yourself out. It’s a bit of a trek, and I know you’re not a confident driver, so somebody would only have to sort your lift out. Why not wait to see if he’s a stayer? Could be that he doesn’t stick around for more than a week.’

  The trouble with the Colonel, thought Olive begrudgingly, was that he was cruel but usually right. Somebody might well have to give her a lift and then she would be an inconvenience to one of the other volunteers. And it was true that the new man was unproven yet. Her enthusiasm faltered.

  ‘I could go another time,’ she said sadly. And then she remembered some gossip she had heard at the butcher’s quite recently. ‘Though I heard that Mirth Farm is to go up for sale soon. Peele is to buy it apparently.’

  The Colonel stopped his excruciatingly awkward shuffle towards the front door, genuinely interested in something Olive had to say for the first time since he’d arrived. ‘Is that right? Well, Peele is buying up everything, so that’s not a surprise, but Doubler didn’t mention any change of plans. How reliable is your source?’

  ‘It was Ernie who told me, and he knows most of everything that goes on around here. Certainly in the farmers’ circles.’

  ‘Yes, that butcher has a knack for picking up knowledge ahead of the crowd. Mind you, he doesn’t hold onto it for long. He’ll readily wrap a half-pound of sausages in gossip.’

  Olive managed a small smile and knew she had been defeated. ‘I’ll never get up there once Peele owns it. That might well have been my last chance.’

  Derek, exasperated, intervened even though he risked irritating the Colonel.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Olive – I’ll pick you up. Come along to this next one, of course you must. It’s nice to see the whole gang together, and who knows who will be around in a month’s time. I’ve never been more certain that nothing’s certain.’

  Olive looked at Derek and nodded her thanks. She was grateful to him, of course she was. He was kind to look out for her, and he often did, even if it meant standing up to the Colonel. But it was the Colonel whose approval she sought and it was from the Colonel that she really wanted an invitation. She was suddenly irrationally irritated with Derek for stopping the Colonel from extending the invitation himself. Now she had to go with or without his consent. She turned sharply away from Derek, whose kindness still hung in the air.

  ‘Well, Colonel, I suppose that’s that. I shall come with Derek and join you after all. Perhaps then we might have a bit more time to discuss the plans for next year. You’re always in such a rush.’

  ‘Never more than today, I’m afraid. Frightful hurry. Come on, Derek, let’s be off. Enough dilly-dallying.’

  Olive went ahead to open the door for them, smiling a brave smile as the Colonel pushed past and waving softly to Derek. She shut the door behind them both and, leaning heavily on the closed door, squeezed her eyes tightly shut to stop the tears forming.

  Chapter 15

  Doubler’s optimism was continuing to flourish, bolstered by his regular conversations with Mrs Millwood and the curious intimacy that the telephone had brought to their relationship. He had enjoyed a perfect morning. He’d made a round of the farm, his binoculars slung on one shoulder, noticing details he’d never stopped to examine before. Spring was already fighting the elements, wresting itself through the hard ground, bursting out in small frenzies of noisy clamour. Doubler usually only focused on his potato crop, discounting all other signs of life as irrelevant to his cause, but his heart was full of a renewed energy that perfectly matched the deadened hedgerows’ determination to flourish once more.

  On his way back to the house, Doubler popped into the distillery and stood in the half-light for a minute or two, breathing in the scent of the darkness. Enlivened by his morning’s walk, an unbidden thought popped into his mind, first as an idle whim but almost immediately evolving into something the shape of a plan, with definitive edges and weight to its structure. Closing the door behind him, he switched on the light and crossed in front of the distillation equipment to the storeroom beyond. In there, against the far wall, were half a dozen ancient oak barrels, darkened with the stains of their past use. He moved some boxes aside and examined them more closely, running his thumb across a hoop and pressing his nose to the cask, inhaling deeply. The heady amalgam of wood sugars and toasted char was still there, preserved within the staves.

  ‘Barley,’ he said, addressing them. ‘I wonder.’ He stayed there for a few more minutes, allowing the thought to develop further before carefully locking up behind him and crossing the yard, stopping only briefly to gesture towards the security camera with a confident thumbs-up as he passed.

  He had taken his time this morning, so he had barely brewed a pot of tea before the phone rang. He left it, stewing, beside the Aga and hurried to the hall.

  ‘So, where were we?’ Mrs Millwood asked as he put the receiver to his ear.

  With an indulgent sigh of happiness, Doubler leant against the wall, steadying himself for a lengthy conversation.

  ‘We’d got to the bottom of the Colonel,’ said Doubler, ticking off the volunteers from a mental list.

  ‘That, Mr Doubler, is not an image I want to dwell on.’

  Doubler chuckled. ‘And we’ve had our fill of Paula the flirt.’

  ‘Well, quite. We’ve said all that needs to be said about Paula the flirt. So it’s time to tell you about Mabel.’

  ‘Is she a terrible flirt, too?’

  ‘Oh no. Mabel is far too busy fixing the world’s problems to flirt.’

  ‘So she’s a bit of a do-gooder, is she?’

  ‘Oh my goodness, yes. They invented the term for her. And to make her even more insufferable, she always has an answer.’

  Constantly wary of criticism, desperate for praise and vigilant for either from Mrs Millwood, Doubler felt a jolt of concern. He always had an answer: he’d been told that enough times in the past. But he always assumed that was a statement of fact, not a criticism. ‘Like me, you mean? I think you’ve accused me of that, haven’t you?’

  ‘No. You only have the answer to the things you kno
w. The things about which you are very certain. She has an answer to everything. There is literally nothing she doesn’t know.’

  ‘Literally?’

  ‘I mean it as the word intends. Literally. She knows something about everything and she normally has personal experience, so she can relate to any issue imaginable. Her uncle or her brother or her neighbour or someone always had the exact same thing but worse, so she knows exactly what you’re talking about.’

  ‘She’s an empathizer.’

  ‘Worse. She’s a compulsive empathizer.’

  ‘She sounds like a hoot!’

  ‘Well, rather surprisingly, she’s actually quite a useful person to have around sometimes because the truth of the matter is, she really does know all these people and she has had all this relevant experience. And if it sounds implausible that a woman whose whole life has been spent in a benign market town should be quite so well endowed with knowledge and experience, then I think I know why.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she makes absolutely everything her business. She’s in people’s houses at a whiff of scandal or intrigue. “Let me pop in and make us a cup of tea, shall I?” Code for “Tell me everything you know while it’s still fresh in all its gory detail.” Then she takes her newly harvested gossip and she drip-feeds it to her circle at her own pace. She’s the self-appointed disperser of scandal and human tragedy. “Now, that’s very interesting that your son-inlaw got caught in bed with the interior designer, but don’t go telling everyone – they’ll only gossip,” she’ll say. And then the next week someone will say, “Oh, I’m thinking of booking that nice Dionne the interior designer,” and she’ll drop her voice to a whisper and say, “I wouldn’t if I were you . . .” and you’re left wondering whether it’s the curtains or the character you should be concerned about. But you won’t get the full story, not until you’ve got some gossip of your own that’s worthy of a trade.’

  ‘I’m going to mind my manners around her . . . As you know, I’m nervous enough of fuelling the tittle-tattle already.’

  ‘What’s interesting, though, Mr Doubler, is that people do sort of open up to her. Even though they know she’s in everyone else’s business, too. It’s like she hypnotizes them and then extracts their darkest secrets.’

  ‘But you say she has her uses?’

  ‘Oh heavens, yes. Someone drops a cat off, trying to be a bit discreet, saying it belonged to a deceased neighbour. Most of us will just take the cat and get them to sign the disclaimer, but Mabel will have them crying into a handkerchief within minutes. It’s quite an impressive skill. And it’s never the neighbour’s cat, you know. Normally it’s the subject of a bitter custody battle.’

  ‘I had no idea there was so much going on in that Portakabin. Perhaps I got off lightly with my Mrs Mitchell incident.’

  ‘That poor Mrs Mitchell,’ replied Mrs Millwood passionately. ‘As far as I can tell, no one has ever worked out what makes that woman tick. She’s a genuine enigma. Cruel to animals, no doubt about it – what she did to that donkey was just shocking – and yet there’s something that seems to make it almost forgivable. I just can’t put my finger on it. We’ve all tried talking to her, but she’s got a poisonous tongue on her. Maxwell says she cannot safely be engaged in conversation.’

  Doubler tried to imagine the Colonel engaging anyone in conversation. ‘Maxwell is an army man. I’m not sure conversation is one of his specialisms.’

  Mrs Millwood sighed. ‘You might be right, I suppose. I know he has our best interests at heart, but I can’t help wondering if a different approach might uncover a quite different Mrs Mitchell.’

  ‘What sort of approach did you have in mind, Mrs M? One where I arm myself with a cattle prod?’

  ‘No. Actually, quite the opposite. I think we’re probably all guilty of responding to cruelty with more cruelty. We don’t like what we see, so we’re quick to judge, and blinded by our righteous indignation, we believe our own response is appropriate. But maybe we just don’t ask the right questions.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘What if Mrs Mitchell’s cruelty to the donkey is a response to cruelty she’s been shown? What if she’s responding to cruelty with cruelty? And then, jumping to conclusions, we do the same to her, and so the cycle continues? What if somebody then sees us being cruel to her and they then judge us and treat us with cruelty? Cruelty could spread like a disease, couldn’t it?’

  ‘Like a human blight!’ agreed Doubler enthusiastically, understanding exactly how cruelty might spread. ‘If you don’t stop it in its tracks, it will spread from the leaves to the stems, from the stems to the tubers, from the tubers to the soil, Mrs M.’

  ‘Exactly. And back again, Mr Doubler. From the soil to the seeds.’

  Doubler spent a moment contemplating blight in its perpetual motion of destruction. He’d spent most of his adult life thinking about how to break that cycle, but the remedies he had to hand weren’t suitable for Mrs Mitchell. ‘I understand potatoes, Mrs M. I think I’m possibly in a unique position to comment on their diseases. But I’m less experienced with people. How do we stop the cruelty disease spreading?’

  ‘Perhaps we could interrupt the cycle with kindness?’ Mrs Millwood suggested.

  Doubler frowned as he pictured it and then shook his head. ‘Kindness? It wouldn’t work with potatoes, Mrs M.’

  ‘There’s nobody kinder to potatoes than you, Mr Doubler. If you showed yourself as much kindness as you show your potatoes, you’d be a substantially happier man.’

  Doubler filed this thought away for later inspection, asking instead, ‘Have you tried responding to Mrs Mitchell with kindness yourself?’

  ‘I’ve talked to the Colonel about it, but he says we’ll only get caught in friendly fire.’

  Doubler could hear the frustration in Mrs Millwood’s voice and wanted to banish it as much as he’d ever wanted to banish the blight from Mirth Farm. ‘I will certainly give it a try, Mrs M. I can’t imagine getting another chance to speak to her myself – I doubt she’ll be back for the donkey on my watch – but I’ll keep the idea up my sleeve. And in the meantime, you’d advise me to avoid Mabel, do you think? Not get hypnotized by her?’

  ‘I don’t think you have anything she wants. So feel free to mingle.’

  ‘I’m quite offended. I have plenty of dark secrets, I’m up to my ears in intrigue, and I’ve got more than my fair share of skeletons in my closet.’

  ‘But she doesn’t know that. And besides, you rarely trade in speculation. You’re a fact merchant these days.’

  ‘A fat merchant?’ Doubler looked down at the way he was leaning against the wall and drew himself a little taller, breathing in and checking he could draw his stomach with him.

  ‘A fact merchant. Fact.’

  Doubler was perplexed. ‘I am?’

  ‘You deal in facts. You only speak when you know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Ahh,’ Doubler agreed. ‘That’s probably true. I’m not a big fan of speculation. Terrible waste of time and energy. And often I’ve found it to be a huge source of grief and unnecessary anguish.’

  ‘Yes, I don’t imagine you’re much of a speculator. You’re exactly as I described, a fact merchant.’

  ‘Most gossip is merely somebody else’s speculation.’

  ‘And most speculation is merely someone else’s gossip,’ countered Mrs Millwood.

  ‘So I’m of no use to her now, but what if Mabel got a whiff of my shady double life?’

  ‘It’s not going to happen. You’re a closed book. Nobody will think you have anything remotely interesting to contribute.’

  ‘But I do! I have interesting views on many interesting subjects,’ Doubler exclaimed, partly in jest, but also with a desire to be held in slightly higher esteem by Mrs Millwood, who might just have described him as boring.

  ‘You don’t have views; you barely have opinions. You assume when you speak that not only do you speak the truth but you speak everyone else
’s version of the truth.’

  ‘That’s because I will have spent a great deal of time considering the options and will only offer an opinion when I am absolutely certain of its veracity.’

  ‘You are a very certain man.’

  ‘But I wasn’t, was I? There was a time when I knew nothing. At least, I’d bumbled happily along and then, post-Marie, my world flipped and the people closest to me, the only significant people I had in my life as such, behaved with such unexpectedness that I felt unable to be certain of anything.’

  Doubler considered this some more, while Mrs Millwood waited patiently, allowing him to recall and give name to the heartbreak. ‘Climbing out of the dark chasm was a rebirth. By the time I was able to function, I had made myself forget everything I had ever known because, really, the memories I had of my pre-Marie or my post-Marie life were no longer reliable. I could not count upon them as a true reflection of things past.’

  ‘Because you didn’t see it coming?’

  ‘No, I didn’t see it coming. It meant that everything before was a lie and that every happy memory was incorrectly recorded.’

  ‘And when you climbed out of the chasm? What happened then?’

  ‘Well, I was in the chasm for a while, wasn’t I? By the time I came out, I had pretty much erased those memories. I was like a newborn baby. And from then I just dealt with certainty. This potato is better than that one. There’s no opinion, no subjectivity. I had scientific data to back it up.’

  ‘So now you’re a closed book, which has its advantages. Nothing for Mabel to extract.’

  ‘I don’t know how I feel about that. I think you’re making me sound rather dull.’

  ‘Who wants to be interesting? Nothing good ever came from interesting. You should be satisfied with dull but good. I’d certainly settle for that.’

  Doubler would have liked to have put the conversation on hold while he decided what she meant by that. Did she mean she would settle for those qualities within herself, or did she mean she’d settle down with somebody able to demonstrate those qualities? But there was no time to interrogate the meaning further, no time to push her for clarification. Mrs Millwood was already continuing at her usual rapid pace. ‘And besides, dull is good if you want to protect yourself from the likes of Mabel.’