The Honey Trap

It was a chocolate-box place, its single street winding like a snail’s shell, turning inwards to the Norman church. Frederick explained.

‘Until the early ’fifties the village was almost entirely owned by the Edens, surrounded by the Eden Court fields and pastures, dominated by a single family. Inheritance tax and a diminution of the vigour of the Eden bloodline resulted in the sale of the estate, the remnants of a dynasty now being represented by the two remaining Misses Eden.’

Rowan was intrigued. ‘What happened to them?’

‘Cressy and Blanche? Still living in the village, of course. At the Lodge opposite my cottage across the Green. They must be seventyish now. Blanche, the younger one, is a bit peculiar. She doesn’t get out and about much but Cressida still runs Mayerton. She’s a JP, churchwarden, school governor: the lot!’ he chortled. ‘To be fair, though, Cressida keeps the wheels turning. If it hadn’t been for the Edens, the developers would have mopped up Mayerton long ago. The local planning officer goes in fear and trembling of Cressida Eden.’

At Frederick’s direction the van stopped on the Green and he stiffly climbed out. Rowan joined him, standing at the edge of the circle of houses, lost in contemplation, for once her energy stalled. Aran shouted from the van, feeling like a hostage, chained by the blasted plaster cast. Rowan, jerked back to reality, waved Frederick ahead to open up and laughingly set about releasing their prisoner.

In fact, it was no laughing matter. Aran complained loud and long, a tirade falling on deaf ears, Rowan seemingly immune to the vituperation which had reduced even the male nurses at the Darwin to despair.

Frederick quickly recovered, the comfort of his own things about him renewing the joy of having friends to stay. A bachelor life was all very well but lonely, sometimes a little lonely.

Melrose Cottage was very old, thatched and with low beams—dark as pickled walnuts—spanning the sitting-room, drawing the eye to an inglenook in which the fire stood ready laid with logs and screws of paper. He applied a match, the magical transformation of flames leaping in the hearth enlivening the walls with dancing shadows, greeting the grotesque figure of Aran in his kilt, his arm looped round Rowan’s shoulder, framed in the doorway like a Victorian oleograph of a wounded Highlander home from the wars. In the confined space, the combined struggles of Rowan and Frederick to manœuvre him on to the sofa dislodged the phone. It slipped off the hook. Aran was the only one to notice and kept mum. Telephones as far as he was concerned only brought bad news.

Rowan unloaded the van, parked it at the back and, closing the door on the dusk, found herself enfolded in the overblown roses of Frederick’s enormous couch, toasting her toes. She patted his arm, saying, ‘Frederick, this is just marvellous. How long have you lived here?’

‘Oh, years on and off. Only permanently since I retired. Before that it was my weekend place, an escape from the Ministry.’

‘A bolthole like this only an hour or so from London. You clever old sod.’ Aran was impressed, his glimpse of the tiny hamlet a reminder of so much he had forgotten jetting between London and Rome, Rome and Venice, Florence and New York. Were there really hideaways like this huddled all over England, just waiting for the B roads to be swept aside like coy draperies?

‘How about some tea?’

Frederick, all consternation, offered to dash over to Ron’s. ‘The village sub-post-office,’ he explained. ‘It stays open till seven. You can get anything at Ron’s—videos, weedkiller, stamps, not to mention the off licence, of course.’

‘You mean you can buy booze at the post office and when that shuts the pub opens?’ Aran laughed. ‘O, country life, where is thy sting?’

Rowan pushed Frederick ahead and did her habitual stock-take of the kitchen. Recalling the cache discovered in Aran’s fridge, she patted the roll of banknotes in her pocket, wondering if there would be a right moment to confess. She shrugged. It would have to be the right moment: Aran’s temper was likely to evaporate into a red mist at the merest spark the way he was feeling after the bumpy ride from London.

‘I’ll go to the shop,’ she offered. ‘You’ll need some bread, milk and things for breakfast.’ Waving aside Frederick’s proffered notes she said, ‘We’ll use Simon’s petrol money.’

She left the two men secretly mulling over the strange enchantment the girl seemed to weave about her: an indefinable charm, unforced and unconsidered. ‘A honeypot,’ Aran concluded. ‘I’ve never come across one of those before!’ Delighted to have put his finger on it, he relaxed in the sepia warmth of Frederick’s cottage.

They had tea and muffins by the fire. Rowan had also prised some home-cured ham from Ron’s private supply he kept under the counter for his special customers, and some brown rolls which she warmed in the Aga and spread with butter flavoured with a hint of mustard.

They quizzed her about her various jobs and managed to extract a few nuggets. Rowan admitted to a peripatetic childhood, trailing her mother through Europe and America, educated in fits and starts. ‘Though finally, when the size of her cuckoo of a daughter became a handicap, my beautiful parent sensibly dumped me in a Swiss school where I learned to cook.’ After that, mother and daughter had crossed paths rarely, it seemed. Rowan had taken jobs from time to time. ‘Mostly Cordon Bleu gigs, directors’ lunches and such,’ she admitted, ‘but sometimes with a family, skiing chalets, that sort of thing …’

She went off to add water to the pot and Frederick lit his pipe.

Aran waved a packet of cigarettes, ‘You don’t mind?’

‘With all this woodsmoke,’ Frederick laughed, ‘the walls are addicted to fug.’

‘What a relief.’ Aran’s confinement in the Darwin had taken its toll and he enthusiastically puffed at the first cigarette in days. ‘Tell me more about the Edens,’ he prompted.

‘A paternalistic lot. Not landed gentry,’ Frederick assured him, ‘but rich enough to be dictatorial. Cressy has made bitter enemies in this village because of her attitude. George Camelford for a start.’

‘Who’s he?’ Rowan refilled the cups and added a log to the fire.

‘He bought Eden Court. You may have heard of him: Aden, a big noise in the transport industry, container lorries, you know. See them all over Europe. A camel logo. Quite eyecatching.’

‘Go on,’ Aran persisted. ‘Don’t tell me there’s a dark side to this idyllic spot: a blood feud with the new robber baron turning the peasants out in the snow.’

Frederick looked puzzled, never entirely at ease with Aran’s jokes.

‘Well, George Camelford’s been here a number of years, bought the place from some jack-in-the-box who tried to run it on a shoestring when Cressy and Blanche had to sell up. Uses Eden Court as his country seat, one might say. Good chap, absolutely no side to him, no side at all. Often in the Boar’s Head at weekends. Done a lot for this village one way and another.’

‘Talking of the Boar’s Head, how about a round or two after supper?’

‘Supper!’ Rowan echoed incredulously.

‘Well, a sandwich then,’ Aran conceded. ‘I need to keep my strength up.’

‘Sounds an excellent idea to me,’ Frederick agreed. ‘You’ll enjoy the pub—we could get a snack there. They do a good plate of sausage and mash.’

Rowan gaped. ‘After that wonderful lunch? Sacrilege! By the way, where’s the doings, Frederick? I need to freshen up.’ She stepped back, catching her head a glancing blow on the low beam of the inglenook. ‘Whoops! I’d forgotten that.’ She grinned, leaning against the wall, rubbing her head.

Frederick beckoned her into the passage and proudly gave a mini-tour. All the rooms seemed to connect: the front door went straight into the sitting-room and, opening a latched door, he led the way up a precipitous and curving stairway to the double bedroom above. It had its own bathroom, presumably fashioned from the communicating second bedroom. He went back downstairs. Rowan glanced round Frederick’s bedroom, cosy and inviting, warmed by the flue from the fireside below. Upstairs the windows were small, fringed by the overhanging thatch and, bending to look outside, Rowan could still make out the blurred outlines of flowers in a walled garden.

Downstairs Frederick explained to her that the kitchen had been the original smithy and out of this he had also contrived a small guest room with its own modern French hip bath in the bathroom. Rowan chortled over the shot-off tub, deep and relaxing, the first she had seen apart from Parisian hotel rooms.

‘It was the only sort of bath to fit in this small space,’ Frederick explained, ‘and because the cottage is listed I couldn’t extend.’

‘It’s beautiful.’ Rowan loved Melrose Cottage. Thick walls which had absorbed centuries of rain and sunshine stood squarely on the Green, its dignity underlying the importance of the village blacksmith. Rowan ruefully compared the slick stylishness of Aran’s London flat and wondered how he would endure convalescence in this rural backwater. He had discovered the TV and the doom-laden toll of the nine o’clock news announced itself in the next room.

Unself-consciously she checked the contents of Frederick’s larder and faced him with a wicked eye. ‘Well, Freddie dear, you’re not going to starve, either of you. Shall we go over to the pub for a quick noggin before I get the train?’

‘The train?’

He followed her back into the sitting-room. Aran looked up from the screen.

‘Yes, of course. The train. If you ring for a taxi I can pick up something from Oxford at a pinch. It’s been a long day but all good things come to an end.’

‘I’ll check the timetable.’ The old man hurried out of the room. Aran, reclining on the huge sofa, was absorbed in the news, his kilt spread about him.

Perched on the arm of the sofa, Rowan became caught up in a news flash of a rabies scare at a kennels near Dover. She tensed, stung by the dire warning of the man from the veterinary association. Frederick stepped in front of the set, unaware of her intense concentration and launched into a welter of train times and connections.

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