Mr Golightly’s Holiday. Salley Vickers

Spence did not at first take these words as meant for him. Without an introduction, Mr Golightly had adopted an over-formal mode of address. Hearing himself, he adjusted his style.

      ‘Hey, you, boy under the car, fancy a Coke?’

      This was spoken in a tone which made Johnny shoot out from under the Traveller before he was aware of what he was doing. He lay on the ground, half on his side, squinnying up at Mr Golightly. Sure as fuck the old guy would hand him over to his stepdad, or the social services.

      The sun which had gone behind a cloud reappeared at this moment and casually dropped a ray upon the little earth, transfiguring the upturned face of young Johnny Spence. Mr Golightly swallowed hard and held out a hand.

      ‘There’s Coke in the fridge. If you want biscuits one of us’ll have to go up to the shop.’

      ‘Not me,’ said Johnny Spence. Ignoring the hand he got to his feet. Whatever was going on he wasn’t going to show himself out of school time to that Steve Meadows at the post office, thank you very much!

      ‘Well, if you can manage without…’ It had been Mr Golightly’s theory that the modern child only ate biscuits; but there was bread and Marmite and the Frank Cooper’s marmalade if the boy was hungry. With his still outstretched hand, he touched the boy lightly on his shoulder. ‘Come along inside, why don’t you?’ he suggested.

       7

      ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE STREET TO Spring Cottage, set back from the road and fronted by an ugly, untended garden, was a long low building which bore a painted sun-peeled sign, nutkin’s tearooms. This, despite a further legend which promised ‘Full Devon Cream Teas’, was well on the way to becoming derelict. In fact, the only takers for teas now, cream or any kind, were the brown rats whose scampering depredations had so scared Paula’s mum that she had had to give up her little cleaning job, while those who owned it made up their minds what they were going to do with the blamed place! In the past, the tearooms had provided a useful, if limited, source of income for those residents of Great Calne who were neither retired nor living on social security and consequently barred from able-bodied work. During the holiday season, coachloads of tourists had visited regularly and the people of Great Calne had themselves liked to take an occasional light snack there when the services offered extended to a soup and salad luncheon with choice of white or brown ‘fresh-baked’ bread rolls (delivered twice weekly from Bunn’s Bakery, in nearby Oakburton).

      In those days the tearooms had been run by Patsy and Joanne, a lesbian couple of the old school. They had left Great Calne after there had been talk that Patsy had made a pass at Nicky Pope’s daughter Tessa. Tessa was known to be fanciful, and feeling among the village – after the departure of the two women, who in their quiet way were popular – ran high. It was felt by some that justice would have been better served if Tessa Pope, rather than being offered counselling by the lady vicar, had been smacked hard for her lying ways.

      The tearooms were bought by a retired couple from London, Hugh and Heather Wright, who also took over the name of ‘Nutkins’ for their house at the top of the village. But after Heather ran off with a lecturer in medieval social history – he had come to do research on vanished villages of Dartmoor and vanished instead with Mrs ‘Nutkin’ – Hugh had found consolation with Morning Claxon, a practitioner in crystal healing. A committed campaigner for health foods, she had turned Hugh against cream – indeed against cholesterol of any kind.

      Among the residents of Great Calne, ‘Morning’ was not a name which inspired confidence. The example of Patsy and Joanne had induced tolerance of homosexuality – indeed, sexual proclivities of most varieties were generally accepted – but the village was inclined to be mistrustful of anything ‘hippie’. A name like ‘Morning’ didn’t command sympathy. It had been the devil of a job to get those long-haired squatters out of the rectory, when it was empty all that time after Rector Malcolm died of Parkinson’s. The lager cans and quantities of roll-up butts had become local legend. Morning’s plans to turn the tearooms into an alternative health clinic had attracted suspicion rather than support. And there was the question of the car park, which butted on to Sam Noble’s garden.

      The tearooms car park was placed, somewhat anomalously, up the hill and across the road from the tearooms. It stood behind the village hall bearing a sign TEAROOMS PARKING only and was mostly used by the children of Great Calne when learning to ride their bikes. Sam, a man who read both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph and was well versed in his rights, was adamant that an alternative health centre would bring unacceptable noise levels to the proximity of his bedroom.

      A meeting of the parish council had been called at which Morning had spoken, passionately, of the benefits of Indian head massage. Not properly a resident – she only came down for weekends, when she had Hugh Wright out in the garden all day, getting a dig, people said, at the old wife by having him unearth all the shrubs she had planted – her right to speak was questioned and her words did not carry weight.

      The car park was, in fact, a prime building site. It was Sam’s nightmare that a speculator would buy it and try to engineer a profitable development. While planning permission in the area was granted rarely, there was nothing, Sam knew, that money couldn’t buy. That Indian massage woman was flaky. Even if she had no plans for developing the car park herself, a speculator could easily get hold of her, cross a few palms with silver and then where would their peace and quiet be? No, by far the best plan would be for the village collectively to buy back the tearooms from Hugh Wright; then Sam could oversee the car park.

      To this end, Sam had run a cost-benefit analysis which he had printed out on his computer. He proposed to call on all the village personally and drum up support.

      The Morris Traveller was parked in the front when Sam called on Spring Cottage and banged on the door with the flat of his hand. There was no bell or knocker; when Emily Pope had lived there folk always went round the back; but the new tenant had not been installed long enough for proprieties to be dispensed with.

      Johnny Spence was on his second can of Coke when Sam knocked and Johnny’s reaction was to look for a place to hide. There was a cupboard under the stairs but his eye had hardly found it before Mr Golightly laid a hand again on his shoulder. Placing a finger to his lips, he mouthed conspiratorially, ‘Wait there!’

      Johnny found himself obeying his host who walked with his peculiar silent tread to the hallway.

      Opening the front door took a bit of shoving: the door was used infrequently, and the wood had swollen in the winter damp so that in opening it Mr Golightly almost staggered into the man standing outside.

      ‘Morning there. Sam Noble – we met the other evening up at the Stag.’

      A hand was being proffered, but Mr Golightly was annoyed at having his conversation with Johnny interrupted and his response was lukewarm.

      ‘Yes?’

      He hoped this visit would not form a precedent. He must be careful not to convey an impression that Spring Cottage was a home for social chit-chat.

      ‘Pleased to meet you again. I’m calling about the tearooms.’

      ‘The tearooms?’ Mr Golightly’s face was a disobliging blank. Tea gave him a headache – he rarely touched the stuff.

      ‘All here,’ said Sam, ‘cost-benefit analysis.’ He slapped a furled bundle of papers on the palm of his hand. ‘Scheme for the village. I’d be glad of your views.’

      ‘Ah, yes,’ said Mr Golightly, ambiguously. It was to escape the affairs of the world that he had come to Great Calne. The last thing he wanted was to be involved in local politics – indeed, politics of any kind.

      Johnny Spence, after an initial obedience to Mr Golightly’s directive, had nipped up to the bedroom to check it out. The room didn’t look like a perve’s. Not that Johnny specially cared. That jerk who slept in the caravan all last summer, up in