I found a side door that seemed to lead to a passage and into a kitchen. A fitted oak kitchen, of course. It must have had a cooker and a fridge and all that sort of thing, I suppose, but they weren’t in any form that I recognised.
Was this the home of some mate of Welsh Border’s, I wondered. It could easily be some business contact of his, a well-heeled property developer or other low-life he’d got in deep with through the council. There’s always the stink of corruption hanging around those town halls, if you ask me. And this place certainly smelled of something not right.
A window in the garage was low enough for me to peer through. It was empty, but there was plenty of space for a couple of cars, and dark patches on the floor indicated that something normally stood there — presumably the German motor that was still in Metal Jacket’s workshop. I ought to decide what to do with that very soon.
At the back of the house were manicured lawns, mature trees — and an actual tennis court. It was all properly maintained and marked out, with the net still up and everything. It looked like something Tim Henman might have got disqualified from after bouncing a shot off the ball girl’s head. So who called round here to play tennis? The neighbours, a few business chums, the teenage daughter’s boyfriend in his flannels and straw boater? I found I was picturing the cast from a Noel Coward play, which always makes me feel nauseous.
But near the trees was another building that made me stop and stare. It looked at first like any old barn, built of ancient, crumbling stone. Then I looked again, and it registered on me that it was circular. It was about twenty feet high, and near the top were a whole series of holes built into the stonework. I wanted to wander over and peer closer to be sure. But I felt pretty confident that this was a medieval dovecote, sitting right here in the grounds of a house in this rich gits’ village.
Of course, this had been a farmhouse at some time, belonging no doubt to the manor down the road. Somehow this dovecote had got left behind and neglected over the years. I had a dim recollection of Lisa telling me that there were just three circular medieval dovecotes in Nottinghamshire, and they were all further south in the county. Well, never mind — it looked genuine to me, and that was enough.
Now I could imagine the farmworkers toiling across the fields to harvest their crops and tend their animals. Old buildings do this to me. I go all sort of dreamy, just like after I’ve had sex. Must be an illness or something. Lisa says I’m sensitive, but what does she know?
There was a movement beyond the yew hedge. A hat appeared — one of those white canvass hats, squashed and floppy like the hat on a Sunday cricketer who’s been to the bar during the tea break. I thought I knew the face that would be under a hat like that, and I wasn’t wrong. It was that Neighbourhood Watch face you get in these places, red and suspicious and constantly teetering on the edge of a heart attack. A rich gits’ version of Welsh Border, no less.
The bloke stared over the hedge at me. Somewhere behind him would be a wife, hovering near the phone, ready to ring the cops. ‘Hello, hello, come quick, it’s an emergency. Working class oiks are walking up our neighbours’ path. The estate agents told us there was a by-law against the working classes. We wouldn’t have retired here otherwise.’
I only needed to put one foot wrong and I’d be a statistic at the next meeting of the Police Liaison Sub-committee. Another number logged in the book by the eagle-eyed busybodies of West Laneton. I’d be long gone by the time the police arrived in a place like this, of course. They’d have our registration number, but that wasn’t what worried me. I didn’t want them alerting Perella and his friends at this stage.
Luckily, I had a handy pen in my top pocket and a notebook in my hand.
“Good morning, sir. We’re doing some work in the area, and we’ve had a job cancelled this morning, so we have some materials available. My boss has authorised me to offer householders in the area the chance to have their drives re-surfaced at a very reasonable price. It’ll just be a few pounds for the lads. I wonder if you’d be interested, sir?”
Mr Neighbourhood Watch had me weighed up now. He looked smug and satisfied. He knew how to deal with people like me, all right.
“We don’t do business with cowboys like you round here,” he said. “We know all about your shoddy tricks. You might as well clear off. Nobody will have anything to do with you.”
“The cost is very reasonable, and I couldn’t help noticing that one or two of the drives here need a bit of patching up.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Fair enough, sir. But I wonder if you could suggest anybody else in this road who might be interested?”
“If you’re not out of here in thirty seconds, I’ll call the police!”
That was exactly what I wanted, of course — to be out of there. Neighbourhood Watch Man makes me uncomfortable. It’s like coming face to face with some lumbering prehistoric creature, which will die out soon, but might just step on you in the meantime.
I hurried back to the car, conscious as always of being an alien in a foreign land. I had the wrong clothes and the wrong accent. My hands were probably the wrong shape, made for carrying a useful tool instead of a tennis racquet. If there were border controls, I’d never have got through.
There are different degrees of foreign, of course. These folk are low-grade foreign, just your basic bundle of incomprehension and resentment. I reserve the real aversion for nuclear-grade foreigners, like the French.
You’ve heard of twinning, haven’t you? Medensworth is twinned with some poncy village in Brittany, where they nick our fish and burn our lamb and blockade our lorries. Every year a bunch of our school kids go over there to be insulted and shrugged at. Then the Froggies send their kids on a return visit to sneer at our houses and turn their noses up at our food and our M & S sweaters. This is all done for the sake of understanding, of course. Entente bleedin’ cordiale isn’t in it. If what they’ve got is European culture, give me Coronation Street and egg and chips any time.
And then there’s the Germans. Did you know they subsidise their coal mining industry by four billion pounds a year? That’s forty thousand pounds per miner. No wonder they can dump shit-cheap anthracite on us. It’s anthracite now, but what next? Meanwhile, our own pits are closing. Nottinghamshire had twelve coal mines left in 1992, when Heseltine got in on the act and seven of them went. That’s nine thousand jobs, nine thousand men on the dole. Later, when the electricity generators discovered gas and cheap German imports, the rest began to shut.
When it comes to twinning, I’ve got a better idea. Why not twin Medensworth with one of these rich gits’ villages, like West Laneton? No need to trek across the Channel to be insulted — you could get the experience right here. And they’re two different cultures all right. Shit, these rich kids would get a shock if they had to walk home down First Avenue to a grey council house with a resin toad over the door.
When I got back to the car, Slow hadn’t moved. He was staring at the village churchyard, trying to figure out how the sundial worked when there wasn’t any sun.
We drove by the church and looked at some more big houses. Each was in its own grounds, set back from the road, with carriage lamps and magnolia trees. The only magnolia you ever see on the Forest Estate is the colour of the paintwork that goes with woodchip. Here, even the ‘For Sale’ signs had to be different. Every one claimed to be advertising a ‘Home of Distinction’.