Hester and Harriet

Hilary Spiers

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781925266818
• eBook ISBN: 9781925268621
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

The gentle humour and relaxed pace make this an enjoyable read. - Daily Mail Sisters Hester and Harriet are reluctantly driving to visit relatives when they come across a young woman hiding with her baby in a bus shelter. Seeing the perfect excuse for returning to their own warm hearth, the pair insist on bringing Daria and Milo home with them. But with the arrival of a sinister stranger looking for a girl with a baby, followed quickly by their cousins' churlish fifteen-year-old son, Ben, who also appears to be seeking sanctuary, Hester and Harriet's carefully crafted peace and quiet quickly begins to fall apart. And, perhaps, that's exactly what they need...

CHAPTER 1

1 NOVEMBER

The invitation reproached them from the mantelshelf.

‘We’ll have to go,’ said Harriet with a mixture of gloom and shame, hand creeping out to the Turkish delight beside her.

The gloom was in anticipation of the inevitable ghastliness of it all; the shame that she was unable to look upon the whole issue more benignly. She was a woman whose personal failings cut deep. Hester, less given to self-flagellation, grunted in agreement as she consulted her knitting pattern. Harriet returned to her jigsaw, painstakingly sifting through the pieces, myopic eyes inches from the box. Further words were unnecessary. The subject had been discussed to death over the years—this would be the fifth—and no permanent solution was ever forthcoming. One year they had pleaded Hester’s sprained ankle, but George had driven over to collect them. Another year the downstairs toilet had fortuitously blocked the night before; phoning to cry off so that they could await the emergency plumber, they thought they had the perfect excuse, only for George to appear within the hour armed with a plunger, a latter-day Galahad to the rescue. Just once—last year, when they had both succumbed to flu—George and Isabelle had failed to winkle them from their fastness; instead they had snuggled down in their hot, tangled beds, creeping downstairs intermittently for Bovril (Hester) and hot chocolate (Harriet). The sisters recalled that Christmas with unalloyed pleasure. Bliss.

‘Oh God, little nasties and gluhwein,’ said Harriet with a moue of disgust; they both shuddered. Last year Isabelle had surpassed herself with the little nasties: undercooked vol-auvents with a grey gloop that might have been mushroom but—horribly—transpired to be shrimps, shrivelled and veiny. Hester, who adored cooking, was convinced her cousin’s wife possessed a sort of perverse genius to be able to produce such monstrosities year after year. She wondered that Isabelle didn’t question the huge quantities of leftover food each time. Perhaps she really believed George’s hearty reassurances: ‘They’ll have had a big breakfast, my darling. And they won’t want to spoil their appetites for Christmas dinner.’ Isabelle seemed blithely unaware of the discarded food secreted in plant pots and behind Christmas cards by all but the hardiest of guests. Hester and Harriet, scraping barely nibbled canapés into the bin, would avoid catching one another’s eyes. Both would think of the wafer-thin smoked salmon and chilled champagne nestling intimately alongside each other in the fridge, the kitchen fragrant with the aroma of Hester’s seeded loaf, still warm from the oven. Each would, with some difficulty, suppress a groan. The horror that was Isabelle’s Christmas dinner still lay ahead. ‘Another gluhwein?’ George would invariably offer, detritus bobbing in the murky jug.

Hester poured them both a Tio Pepe. Sipping hers appreciatively, Harriet said, ‘You never know, perhaps it will snow.’ Their cottage, The Laurels, lay at the end of an unmade road, badly potholed, where ice formed at the slightest provocation and driving in the depths of winter was often excitingly hazardous. Hester snorted, and threw the newspaper at her sister in response. It slithered off Harriet’s lap to lie at her feet, the headline screaming UNSEASONABLY WARM CHRISTMAS IN STORE, SAY FORECASTERS.

They both knocked back their sherries.

Their apparent ingratitude was made all the worse, at least in Harriet’s slightly kindlier eyes, by the fact that George and Isabelle were such good people. Good people, kind people. Salt of the earth. Do anything for you. George, a loss adjuster, had clearly missed his vocation as a vicar. Isabelle taught children with behavioural difficulties, volunteered for the Samaritans once a week, mentored recovering drug addicts and was chair of their parish council. They were assiduous in helping elderly neighbours, doing their shopping or ferrying them to hospital appointments; they mowed the verges that rightly were the responsibility of the council because ‘it kept the village tidy’; they stepped up to every conceivable plate. The sisters had often mused that George and Isabelle might well be the blueprints for the Big Society, whatever that was. Generous and big-hearted, the couple were unfailingly solicitous of their widowed cousins; from the moment Hester and Harriet had so unwisely bought a cottage in the next village, George and Isabelle had decided that they need never want for company. They assumed that two sisters in late middle age (or so they liked to think of themselves), both released from the constraints of childless marriages within a few months of each other, must of necessity be prey to loneliness and isolation. So, benevolently but relentlessly, they tried to incorporate the pair into their chaotic household, issuing frequent invitations to Sunday lunch, to drinks parties and, of course, their Christmas Day gathering. Lovely, kind, thoughtful people. And so crushingly, toe-curlingly boring.

‘Why does everyone assume we need looking after?’ grumbled Hester. ‘All we need is a bit of peace and quiet.’ She saw Harriet’s hand hovering over the Turkish delight again, sighed inwardly, but for once forbore to comment.

‘All we need,’ muttered Harriet, easing the edge of a cloud into place in her jigsaw, ‘is a miracle.’

CHAPTER 2

25 DECEMBER

Christmas Day dawns mockingly bright. The sisters call greetings along the corridor to each other, then return to their favourite activities, Hester back into the thriller she had so unwillingly put aside last night, Harriet sinking again into her pillow for a celebratory snooze. By half past eleven, unable any longer to put off the inevitable, they are showered and standing in front of the long mirror in the hall.

‘How do I look?’ says Harriet.

‘Dowdy,’ says Hester.

‘Excellent,’ says her sister. This year, they have decided to see if they can appear so shabby and unkempt that their hosts will finally decide that—duty notwithstanding—they ought not to expose their friends and neighbours to their indigent and faintly repellent relations any longer.

‘You’ve a far worse cardigan than that,’ says Hester. ‘The one you do the gardening in?’

Harriet struggles into a mud-coloured cardigan belonging to her late husband, a garment now bereft of buttons and sporting a multitude of moth holes. The sisters regard it for some moments.

‘Trying too hard,’ says Hester, shaking her head.

Reluctantly, Harriet reverts to the bobbly cable knit. ‘Slippers?’ she suggests.

‘We’re going for eccentric, not doolally,’ snaps Hester.

She marches into the kitchen and flings open the fridge to gaze longingly at the Serrano ham, the Roquefort, the pressed partridge terrine. Her mouth floods with saliva. Grimly, she closes the door.

Harriet places a hand on her shoulder. ‘Five hours,’ she says. ‘We can last five hours, can’t we?’ This year, they have decided that in addition to the batty old women routine they will eschew any alcoholic fortification until the ordeal is over. ‘Pleasure delayed …’ says Harriet and reaches for the car keys. ‘Come on, let’s get it over with.’

The car rattles and jounces down the lane. ‘Your hair looks a bit tidy,’ says Hester, ruffling Harriet’s grey helmet. Harriet returns the compliment and the car weaves drunkenly from side to side as the sisters shriek with mock alarm. They are beginning to enjoy themselves in spite of what lies ahead. Harriet is secretly relieved that Hester has not repeated last year’s experiment: a sizeable glass—or two—of whisky before they set out. The stiffener coupled with the inescapable gluhwein on an empty stomach had exacerbated Hester’s customary acerbity so that within ten minutes she was berating some inoffensive tax inspector on the iniquities of double fuel duty. George had led her quietly away and deposited her in the spare bedroom, where she had promptly fallen asleep, leaving Harriet to spend the next few hours apologising for her and wrestling unaided with a mountainous portion of leathery turkey. A few days later, Isabelle had stuffed a leaflet through their door—Do You Have a Problem with Alcohol? We Can Help!!!—and crept away. The sisters had been offended less by the leaflet’s sentiments than by its use of multiple exclamation marks.

They turn on to the main road and start to make their way through Pellington village. The narrow street is bumper to bumper with parked cars on both sides, the numbers swelled by visitors and relations. The same thought strikes them: are these festively decorated houses filled with other mean-spirited, ungrateful people just like them, also dreading the enforced jollity, the badly-cooked food, the ill-chosen wines? The thoughts remain unvoiced. Instead, Harriet says, ‘Let’s hope Ben is through that phase of his.’

Hester nods. Interaction between them and the boy is virtually non-existent, given his tendency to hunch perpetually over his mobile, texting furiously, stopping only to refuel or complain about his parents’ latest transgression. Neither will easily forget their nephew’s (strictly their second cousin, they know) explosion of rage two years earlier when he was given the wrong Ex-Box or Wee-Wee or whatever it was called. The appalled silence that greeted his eruption was only broken when he threw the offending item to the floor and ran from the room, swearing. ‘Another Celebration?’ George had asked, holding out the box of sweets with a shaking hand, while Isabelle dabbed at her eyes. They don’t want a repeat of that.

By the village shop, they are forced to back up and reverse into a perilously small gap to allow a huge four-by-four to squeeze by. Reversing is not Harriet’s strong point and it takes her several attempts. The driver, grim-faced with holiday cheer, surges away without any acknowledgement. Harriet winds down the window and yells, ‘Not at all! Our pleasure! You moron!’, just as the verger hurries around the corner on his way to St Peter’s. The sisters, conscious that it has been many months since they have set foot in church, give a hurried wave, mouth ‘Happy Christmas’ and, as Harriet accelerates away, dissolve into snorts of mirth.

They are forced to a halt again on the edge of the village as a car careers out of an imposing or pretentious (depending on your taste) gateway, engine gunning, and roars up the hill.

‘Peace on earth at the Wilsons’ as per,’ says Hester, with a little frisson of excitement. She secretly finds Teddy Wilson strangely attractive, despite his rackety reputation. It affords Harriet no little private amusement that her otherwise rather forbidding sister should entertain such tendresse for so shameless a reprobate, especially as she herself is wholly immune to his louche charms. It has occurred to her before that the answer to the attraction may lie in Hester’s marriage to such a dull old stick as Gordon. Good old Gordon. Solid (if not stolid), utterly dependable and—oh goodness—so predictable. Harriet had marvelled at his patience and relentless good humour over the years, especially when his wife was at her most prickly. And, true to form, Gordon had died as he had lived: quickly and quietly of a particularly aggressive but mercifully mostly pain-free cancer that had carried him off in five short weeks. If only her poor Jim had been so lucky: his protracted battle with emphysema had been torture for him to endure and her to watch. Sitting opposite her as he fought for breath in those last few terrible days, Hester had said across his wasted body, pinioned by starchy hospital sheets, ‘They put animals down,’ and, hurt as Harriet had been by her sister’s bluntness, in her heart she had felt the same. Her grief, when he finally succumbed and slipped away, had been tempered with huge, guilty relief.

She comes back to the present to find Hester twisting around in her seat as the Wilsons’ house disappears from view, saying, ‘She’ll be at the Dubonnet before he’s changed into second. Should we …?’ She gestures vaguely back towards the house from where they almost imagine they can hear Molly Wilson sobbing.

‘Best not interfere,’ says Harriet, trying to find first gear, suspecting that Hester’s apparent concern owes more to schadenfreude than genuine compassion. ‘Don’t you just love Christmas?’

The car jumps forward and judders onwards. Fifty yards or so outside the village, they pass the disused bus shelter. Hester glances into the gloom, in case old Finbar the tramp is in there. We’ll pop down with some mince pies when we get back, she thinks. It’s become a Christmas tradition that goes a tiny way to assuage their joint if faint shame at their lack of neighbourliness. Besides, Finbar is always so appreciative. And a can or two, the old devil.

But Finbar isn’t in there. There’s just a bundle of …

‘For heaven’s sake, Harry!’ She is catapulted forward, the seatbelt biting into her bony shoulder.

The car stalls, shuddering. There is a faint scorched electrical smell.

‘Sorry, sorry,’ says Harriet irritably, turning the key and trying various gears. ‘I think it slipped into second somehow.’

Not for the first time, Hester regrets not learning to drive. Surely it can’t be that difficult? Harriet’s driving, always slightly unreliable, seems to be deteriorating. The car coughs into life, just as a faint noise erupts beside her: a cross between a cry and a whine. A cat? She peers into the darkness of the shelter as Harriet grinds the gearstick forward and starts to pull away. The noise recurs.

‘Hang on, Harriet,’ cries Hester. ‘Pull in a minute, would you?’

The car drifts to a halt. ‘What now?’

Hester reaches for the door handle. ‘I just thought I heard … there’s something in the shelter. I’ll nip back and—’

But—rather as Hester had hoped she would not—Harriet has thrown the car into reverse and is steering an erratic path back towards the bus stop. Two cars pass them, horns blaring. Harriet really ought to try turning around or, at the very least, use her mirrors when she reverses, Hester thinks. They draw level with the shelter; Hester clambers out and approaches the heap on the seat. It’s not big or smelly enough to be Finbar. She is nearly upon it and about to give it a poke when she hears the odd sound again. She’s certain now: it’s a cat mewing, or a kitten. And then the heap suddenly moves. A pale hand emerges from what she now sees to be a thin blanket, and yanks it higher over what she surmises is a head.

‘Hello?’ she says.

The body jerks even further back, cowering in the corner.

By now Harriet has joined her, oblivious to the irate drivers weaving around the car, abandoned a good yard from the kerb. Hester holds out both hands in a gesture of bewilderment and looks to her sister for guidance. Harriet reaches past her and, before Hester can stop her, gives the bundle a shake. ‘Hello? Everything all right?’

For a moment, nothing happens. The women stand irresolutely half in and half out of the shelter, staring at the heap. Then the hand creeps out again and this time slowly pulls down the blanket until two terrified eyes appear, then a trembling mouth. As the blanket slithers off the shoulders, another face, tiny and crumpled, emerges blinking into the chill December air.

‘Please,’ says the girl. ‘No trouble.’

The baby’s tongue peeps out cautiously.

‘Trouble?’ says Harriet, transfixed. ‘No … we thought … are you all right?’

‘All right, yes,’ says the girl, holding the baby to her chest and cradling its head tenderly. ‘Is permitted?’ She sweeps her free hand around the shelter.

‘What, to wait for a bus?’ says Hester.

‘Bus! Yes!’ says the girl hurriedly. ‘I wait for bus.’

‘Right …’ says Hester doubtfully. ‘But the actual bus stop is just up the hill.’ She looks across to Harriet and raises an enquiring eyebrow. Harriet shrugs and shakes her head, then says.

‘We could give you a lift to the next village.’

‘No, I … thank you. Bus is better. Thank you.’ The girl smiles weakly and looks away as if to signal there is no more to be said.

‘Well, if you’re sure …’ Harriet retreats towards the car and, reluctantly, Hester follows. They are about to climb back in when the same thought strikes them. As one, they return to the shelter, this time a united front that will not be gainsaid.

‘There are no buses on Christmas Day.’

The girl looks up at them, cornered, biting her lip; the baby picks up her anxiety and starts to grizzle feebly. There’s talk of taxis, of a friend who might give her a lift, but they can tell it’s all lies. She levers herself up and now they see how thin she is, how inadequate her cl...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• CONTENTS
• CHAPTER 1
• CHAPTER 2
• CHAPTER 3
• CHAPTER 4
• CHAPTER 5
• CHAPTER 6
• CHAPTER 7
• CHAPTER 8
• CHAPTER 9
• CHAPTER 10
• CHAPTER 11
• CHAPTER 12
• CHAPTER 13
• CHAPTER 14
• CHAPTER 15
• CHAPTER 16
• CHAPTER 17
• CHAPTER 18
• CHAPTER 19
• CHAPTER 20
• CHAPTER 21
• CHAPTER 22
• CHAPTER 23
• CHAPTER 24
• CHAPTER 25
• CHAPTER 26
• CHAPTER 27
• CHAPTER 28
• CHAPTER 29
• CHAPTER 30
• CHAPTER 31
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR