ENCROACHMENT
(1 of
2)
by Richard Banks
The first time that Gus came by the
house Ewan was pulling weeds at the top of the garden. There was a muddled
conversation during which Ewan assumed that his visitor had been let through
the house by Maisie. They were expecting a man in to fit some blinds but when
these were mentioned Gus looked as puzzled as Ewan.
“So you’re not from Barlows?” said
Ewan, when a better question would have been, who are you? But that would have
sounded brusque. There was no need for that, the man gave no cause for concern.
Perhaps he was a near neighbour calling in to pay his respects, a retired
gentleman; clearly, he was too old to be fitting blinds. In the time it took him
to take in and briefly process these thoughts his
visitor had turned towards the potatoes in the vegetable patch and was
expressing his opinion that there would be a good crop this year. He
recommended ‘Strong-Grow,’ “best fertiliser by a mile.” That’s when he
introduced himself as Gus and, on Ewan responding with his own name, they shook
hands as though a mutually agreeable bargain had been struck. What that bargain
was Ewan was less than sure but any doubts he had about his visitor were all
but swept away. He had a good feeling about this man. In the context of the
village, he might be a useful man to know.
His assumption that he was a near
neighbour had now acquired a certainty that required no confirmation. This is
what neighbours did out here. In the City, people kept to themselves, but in the
sticks, folks were more welcoming and took the time to look in on a new arrival.
Perhaps he had brought a gift, some flowers that Maisie was busy arranging in a
vase. This deserved a cup of tea and, having ascertained that Gus was partial
to Earl Grey, Ewan returned to the house to alert the chief tea maker to their guest’s
choice of beverage. Strangely there was no sign of Maisie or flowers but the kettle was half full of water
and by the time it was boiled he had set out a jug of milk, two mugs, and a
teapot on a tray. He returned to the top of the garden to find Gus sitting on
the bench they had just bought.
“Shall we give it a few minutes to
brew?” suggested Ewan, trying to remember the etiquette of tea making. Did Earl
Grey require a few minutes extra or was that the other stuff from China? He looked sternly at his watch and decided to
go for four.
“Lived here long?” he asked, meaning
the village. There was no doubting from his speech that Gus was a Suffolk man and always
had been. Nevertheless, the question was a good conversation starter and once
Gus got going he would, no doubt, prove a useful informant on local affairs.
And so it proved. Within ten minutes Ewan found out more about the village than
he ever knew about the London
suburb in which he had previously been living.
“Retired then?” said Gus, evidently
deciding it was Ewan’s time to do some talking. He considered what to say.
Whatever he told him would almost certainly be repeated up and down the
village, but that was OK providing he kept to the stuff he wanted them to know.
The rest of it they would no doubt discover for themselves but by then he would
be on first name terms with everyone who mattered. There were two sides to
every story and when the time came for him to
tell him they would understand that he had not been at fault.
He had got to the point in his
narrative where he had been appointed a Vice
President at Swift Erikson when to his irritation the doorbell rang and being
unanswered – evidently Maisie was still out - he was obliged to abandon his
visitor and let in the man from Barlow’s who having delivered the blind
declared that the fitter was unwell and would phone to make a new appointment.
While this was yet another irritation it at least relieved Ewan of the need to
be in two places at once. He could now resume his life story and bring it up to
date, but by the time he returned to the top of the garden Gus was nowhere to
be seen.
His disappointment was soon overtaken
by puzzlement. How had Gus left when the only way out was past him at the front
door? The mystery deepened when Maisie returned home professing no knowledge of
their visitor.
“Have you been taking your
tablets?” she asked.
He felt insulted she had said that;
even though he didn’t need them anymore he still took two twice a day.
Determined to prove that there was another way into the garden other than by
the front and rear doors he commenced a thorough inspection of the perimeter
fencing, including the wooden gate at the side of the house. Finding the gate
securely bolted, with the additional security of a padlock, and the fencing
firmly attached to concrete posts he concluded that Gus could only have gained
entry by scaling the gate or fence beside it. If this was the case it seemed
that Gus was remarkably fit for an elderly man who made light use of a walking
cane.
Nonetheless there appeared to be no
other explanation until Maisie had what she called a light bulb moment which
Ewan initially dismissed as “poppycock”. “Perhaps,” she said, “this man has a
key to the front door.” While this explained his entry into the house it did
not, said Ewan, account for Gus’s exit while he was
at the front door taking delivery of the blinds. Then, Ewan also had a light
bulb moment. What if Gus had followed him back into the house and, while he was
busy with the blinds, hidden somewhere inside until Barlow’s man had gone and
Ewan back out in the garden. What
was to stop him then leaving through the front door?
“Nothing,” agreed Maisie, and after a
sleepless night they wasted no time in phoning an emergency locksmith who
arrived within the hour to fit new locks, back and front. Secure in the
knowledge that their defences had not only been restored but strengthened by
the installation of a Triple Plus
Locking System their main concern became in persuading it to let them in and
out. A week of anxious readjustment was followed by another week in which the
intrusion of their uninvited visitor dropped down the Richter Scale to an
inconsequential two.
He thought he would meet Gus again in
the village, on neutral territory, when another conversation would no doubt
make sense of their first meeting. If there was a logical explanation to what
happened he certainly wanted to hear it. But Gus was nowhere to be seen and
when Ewan mentioned his name at the Wheatsheaf no one there, from the publican
to the village postman, knew anyone of that name. Perhaps, he thought, it was
the tablets at fault. From now on he would only take them once a day. No one
would know but him. He needed to rely on his own good sense not the quackery of
doctors in league with the pharmaceutical industry.
Three days into his new regime the
sight of a crow strutting towards the garden arch alerted him to another
movement. Through a border of tall headed Delphiniums, he glimpsed two green
boots lift off the ground and come to rest on the wickerwork table in front of
the bench. Then a gust of wind made a gap in them and he saw the whole picture,
what he was hoping not to see: Gus, sitting on the bench, dressed in the same
hat and jacket as before. There were a few moments of confusion verging on
panic as Ewan attempted to open the garden door before finding it locked and
the key in the kitchen along with the other keys to the house. He arrived there
unsure which one he needed. Was it number eighteen? He decided it was, and on
applying it to the lock felt the door jolt and then open. He charged out, running for the first time in years, but
to his horror, the only sign of Gus was a sliver of dark soil on the table from
one of his boots.
But how had he got away so quickly?
Even taking into consideration the delay in opening the door there was little
time for Gus to make his escape, unless, maybe, he hadn’t. There was a shed against the back fence, perhaps he was
in there? He flung open the door letting in the light that swept away the darkness inside. For good
measure, he switched on the strip light, but no one was there. His disappointment or relief, he wasn’t quite sure which,
was quickly replaced by panic. The back door was open. He could be in the house!
Lord knows what he might be up to. He rushed back slamming
the door shut and slipping the key into his trouser pocket.
Armed with a poker from the fireplace,
he carefully searched each room finding everything in order, nothing missing,
nothing out of place. He needed a Scotch but knowing this was something they no
longer kept settled for a cup of tea. He had just boiled the kettle when the
clicking of a key in front door informed him that Maisie had returned from the
shops and was attempting to let herself in. Her pleasure in eventually doing so
was all but erased by Ewan’s agitated account of Gus’s latest intrusion.
“There he was,” he said, “sitting on
the bench, feet up on the table, smoking one of my Havana’s,” This last detail he remembered for
the first time. He felt cold, almost in shock. So Gus had been in the
house! Thank goodness he had only taken a cigar or was it more? He looked into
the silver plate box where they were kept. Three light, he thought, maybe four.
Maisie was her usual calming self. “It
would,” she said, “all be better once they had a cup of tea. Was it Twinings in
the pot?” He confirmed that it was.
“What could be better,” she said,
“Twinings was as good as a tonic.” As usual, Maisie had saved the day;
she often did, he wondered what he would do without her.
Another week passed in which the police
eventually arrived, departing as soon as they established that nothing had been
stolen. They did, however, leave a leaflet about home security, particularly
the conspicuous fitting of burglar alarms. The locksmith was re-engaged and
took much pleasure in fitting his top-of-the-range alarm which he proudly
claimed would be loudly audible to everyone in the village. In this, he was as
good as his word and although the Securosiren X2 never knowingly repelled a
burglar it could always be relied on to burst into noisy protest whenever
anyone passed by on the pavement.
The Police returned at the urging of
local residents and it was agreed that in exchange for the alarm being disconnected
they would make the capture of Gus their number one priority. As Ewan’s
description of him went little beyond him being an old chap in a tweed jacket
there was no shortage of suspects who were paraded up and down the High Street
while Ewan observed them from a first-floor window in the Parish Hall.
Rumour spread that Gus was not just an
intruder; if the Police wanted him that badly he must surely be a terrorist or
a deranged serial killer. Urged to pick out someone, anyone, to allay
public anxiety Ewan eventually chose old Mr Cummings who was confined to a cell
in the Police station until he could be persuaded to lie low at his daughter’s
house in the next county.
The world had gone mad, or was it just
the village? In a place where nothing much happened, it was, perhaps, inevitable that when something did go wrong local residents
would be more troubled than they had reason to be. He, Ewan, had allowed
himself to be drawn into this mindset, to lose all sense of perspective. After
all, what was he afraid of: a man, six or seven years older than himself, who
had twice ventured into his garden with no obvious intent to do harm? Indeed on
the only occasion they had actually met they had got on well. As for the manner
of his coming and going there was surely a logical explanation that, when
known, would blow away all his concerns. The best thing to happen would be for
them to meet again in the garden, to sort things out, once and for all.
(To be continued)
Copyright Richard Banks
