Colours of the South Read online

  “Don’t sit down,” she shouted, “I haven’t cleaned the chairs yet!”

  Worried that the new khaki shorts that he had quickly changed into would be ruined, Gil leapt up and went into the kitchen to look for a cloth. Bridget followed him inside to make the tea.

  “We’ll have to make do with the cake we bought at the supermarket this morning, until I get myself sorted,” said Bridget with a sigh as she cut them both a slice of an impossibly sticky peach and apricot gateau.

  “Don’t worry love, plenty of time over the next six weeks for you to slave over a hot stove!” Gil laughed cheekily as he carried the tea tray out into the warm sunshine. Bridget feigned a slap at his arm and poured them both a large cup of tea.

  “What time do you want to eat this evening?” she asked through a mouthful of gooey confection.

  “No rush, thought I’d have a stroll into the village first to see who’s about, see what’s been happening since we were last here.”

  A wry smile crossed Bridget’s lips. “And would that stroll take you into a bar perhaps?”

  “Couldn’t possibly say, don’t know where I might end up yet.”

  Bridget knew her brother better than he knew himself and she had no doubt that his stroll would eventually take him to a bar, probably at the Hotel Mirabeau in the square, a favoured watering hole of the many ex-pats who lived locally. Gil wasn’t a heavy drinker, one or two beers would be enough for him, but what he really enjoyed was catching up on the latest news and gossip with friends and acquaintances.

  Brother and sister spent a restful couple of hours soaking up the late afternoon sunshine before returning indoors, Gil for a shower and Bridget to get out her duster again. “It’s no good,” she muttered, “I can’t sit looking at that dust all evening.”

  Half an hour later Gil came downstairs sporting another pair of clean shorts, navy ones this time, which he wore with a dark green and white checked short-sleeved shirt.

  “Sure you don’t want to come?” he asked Bridget, searching the dresser for his wallet.

  “No, I’m feeling a bit tired, I think the journey’s caught up with me, I’ll just potter around here. I’ll have a wander in tomorrow though.”

  “OK,” he replied, “I won’t be late, nine do?”

  “That’s fine,” said Bridget, “but I won’t start the steaks until you get back, I know you like yours still mooing!”

  “Looking forward to it already,” said Gil, finally locating his wallet, “don’t forget to give the wine time to breathe.”

  Bridget went to reply that she didn’t need to be reminded, but Gil was already out of the door and bounding down the lane to the village.

  Chapter Three

  Gil and Bridget Honeyman had been born into a comfortable middle-class household in Whytecliffe-on-Sea, a small provincial town on the south coast. Their father, Frederick, had been manager of a local bank and Sylvia, their mother, had been a teacher until Bridget was born fifty-eight years ago. Gil’s arrival two years later completed the family.

  Neither child had been very academic, which came as a surprise and, if they were honest, something of a disappointment to their parents, particularly to Frederick who had had high hopes that Gil would follow him into the world of finance.

  Bridget’s vocation in life was sealed at the age of four, although she didn’t realise it at the time, when she first helped her mother make butterfly cakes for her father’s birthday tea. From that moment on, she was never happier than when she was up to her elbows in flour or dough. As she grew older, her love of cooking grew and by the time she was in her mid-teens, she was already quite an accomplished cook. School was something of a trial for her, apart from domestic science where she shone, and she left school at sixteen with few qualifications.

  Bridget’s school life wasn’t helped by the fact that she was painfully shy and lacked any self-confidence. Added to this, her appearance, like most young girls, was something of an issue too so Bridget soon learned to shun any limelight. Her mouse coloured hair, even though it was quite thick and lustrous, served only to help her to blend even more anonymously into the background. To add to her woes, Bridget’s round face stubbornly refused to lose its scrubbed, shiny appearance, even under a thick coat of make-up, when she was old enough to wear it. Although of only average height, she was “big-boned” as her mother never ceased from telling visitors. Bridget never forgot the mortifying moment when her mother, after several large sherries it has to be said, declared to a roomful of people that Bridget looked as if she came from “good farming stock” rather than the daughter of a bank manager and a teacher. What the offspring of such parents was supposed to look like though, Bridget never discovered. She never really managed to shake off the comparison.

  Bridget never felt that she fitted in at school, largely because she saw herself as neither pretty enough nor clever enough to hold sway with the class “in crowd”. Consequently, she never found it easy to make friends, although she was lucky enough to have one close friend in whom she could confide and be at ease with. She had little interest in fashion either and although she had inherited her mother’s love of opera and classical music, she pretended to really “dig” the latest pop music. But like most young adolescents, Bridget wanted desperately to fit in so spent her formative years pretending to be someone she wasn’t. Fortunately, she came to realise in her mid-teens that trying to be someone else still didn’t make her popular so she might as well drop the pretence and be herself. From that time on, she was more at ease with herself and for the first time in her life looked to the future with enthusiasm and hope rather than with fear and dread.

  The next few years in Bridget’s life would be the happiest she would know for some time. Since she had reconciled herself to the fact that she would never be clever, she was neither surprised nor disappointed to end her education with only four CSEs. Unfortunately, her parents didn’t share her complacency and her father made no attempt to hide his feelings of disappointment in her, so much so that their relationship was never quite the same again.

  When she was fifteen, Bridget started working on Saturdays and during school holidays at the Regent, Whyteclffe’s grandest hotel, on the promenade. Although her first duties were no more than those of a general dogsbody, washing up, peeling potatoes and occasionally waiting on tables if the restaurant was particularly busy, Bridget loved every second of it. She was a quick learner and was constantly pestering the full-time staff to teach her new skills. She was soon adept at silver service and her easy-going manner made her popular with both staff and customers. But it was when she was allowed to watch the Regent’s Swiss pastry chef at work that she really came alive. Bridget had never seen anything like the works of confectionary art, which to Bridget they undoubtedly were, that Roland produced day after day. She was in seventh heaven on the rare occasions that time allowed him to supervise her own attempts at the craft. Spurred on by his genius, Bridget was determined to be as good as Roland one day. She didn’t have long to wait. Roland’s assistant, Terry, a local boy, although competent, had neither the passion nor the natural flair for cooking that Bridget had. When he rang in sick on the day that the local Chamber of Commerce were holding their annual dinner, always a very grand, prestigious affair for the Regent, Roland had no hesitation in asking Bridget to, “show me what you can do ma petite!” She didn’t let him down. Her tarte-tatins, pavlovas and crèmes brulées were almost as good as his own. After the meal was over, Bridget and Roland almost burst with pride over their combined success so when the job of full-time assistant pastry chef came up a month later, there was only ever going to be one candidate. Bridget had no hesitation in leaving school, only telling her parents when it was too late for the school to take her back.

  Bridget soon settled into the hectic routine at the Regent. Despite the deterioration in her relationship with her father, she still got on well with her mother and would think nothing of helping her in the kitchen, even after a long shift. However,
her mother was concerned that outside of cooking, there was very little else in Bridget’s life, although her daughter didn’t seem to share her concern. Bridget’s best friend at school had stayed on to do A levels and went on to university and, inevitably, they eventually lost touch. Sylvia became increasingly concerned as the years passed by that her only daughter was lonely and that she had never had a boyfriend. “Don’t fuss Mum!” Bridget would say, “There’ll be plenty of time for boys.” But secretly, Bridget shared her mother’s worries and the old insecurities and anxieties about her looks rose to the surface once more. There were a few casual dates with local boys but when they turned out to be nothing more, Bridget resigned herself to spinsterhood, at the tender age of twenty-five. Out of the blue one morning she announced at breakfast, with enough melodrama to rival a consumptive Victorian heroine, that, “romance has passed me by so I shall dedicate myself to my work.” It was all her parents could do not to laugh, but secretly, Sylvia was already in the throes of planning a campaign to introduce some “eligible young men” into her daughter’s life. She would never get the chance however as the tragedy that would change all of their lives for ever, was, literally, just around the corner.

  Gil’s early life followed a path not that dissimilar to his sister’s. Coincidentally, his epiphany moment also came at the age of four when he was given a toy garage complete with breakdown truck and four implausibly brightly coloured cars for his birthday. From then on, cars and how to fix them, was all that seemed to interest him. He would beg his father to let him sit behind the wheel of the family’s Rover in the garage, and, with Frederick next to him in the passenger seat, would “drive” them to far flung locations and back. Like Bridget, he didn’t shine at school, although he was quite good with figures, “There’s banking in that boy’s veins, you mark my words,” his father would proudly claim. Sylvia put it down to the daily number games she played with both children when they were young, but she never let on to Frederick.

  It was a popular misconception that “Gil” was short for “Gilbert”, after all it had been his father’s middle name. He had in fact, at Sylvia’s insistence, been named after Gillespie Carew, a Hollywood star much adored by his mother at the time. When he was very small, he couldn’t pronounce his first name and when he was a bit older, he hated it, so Gil he became. He grew into a tall, skinny boy, “wiry” as his mother preferred to call it, and he soon towered over his big sister. His hair was darker and curlier than Bridget’s and by the time they were both in their early teens, they were physically as unalike as any pair of siblings could be. Where Bridget was shy and unsure, Gil was confident, cocky almost, and where she was happy to spend time indoors cooking, he was never happier than when he was outside. He did all of the usual things that boys of his age do, he got into scrapes when his football broke a neighbour’s window and he broke a wrist falling from an apple tree on a scrumping expedition with his “gang” when he was nine, much to his father’s disapproval. Unlike Bridget, Gil enjoyed school, not because he was particularly able but because he was a popular boy and thrived in a crowd.

  Gil followed in his sister’s footsteps and took a Saturday job, cleaning cars at Dave King Motors. Dave King was something of a local big-wig, a larger-than-life character whose showroom was always full of glossy, expensive “motors”, as he called them. Gil was in his element and had soon persuaded the mechanics to let him watch or help out by fetching and carrying. He left school with a fairly respectable five O levels and walked straight into an apprenticeship at the garage.

  Newly qualified and already aiming for the senior mechanic’s job, Gil soon caught the eye of Dave King’s younger daughter, Pamela. Pamela had never had a full-time job, thanks to her ability to twist her father around her little finger and a generous allowance which allowed her to focus on the important things in life, fashion, make-up, pop-music and boys. What Pamela wanted, she usually got and her increasingly extravagant demands wisely set Dave thinking that what his daughter needed was a job. Pamela’s reaction was exactly as her father had anticipated and she did what she always did until she got her own way; she sulked. Unable to deal with the atmosphere at home, Dave came up with a compromise; Pamela could work on the garage’s books part-time, leaving the rest of the time free to do as she pleased. Pamela reluctantly agreed as even she knew when she was beaten. She was a bright girl and it didn’t take her long to work out that working for her father would be a far easier option than working for someone else so it wasn’t an entirely unwillingly Pamela who began her first day at work, aged nineteen.

  Pamela had of course been a frequent visitor to the garage as she grew up, not least to flirt with the mechanics. Acknowledging that messing with the boss’s daughter wasn’t the best career move, most of them weren’t brave enough to flirt back, except Gil. He would tease her unmercifully about her “little rich girl” lifestyle and for reasons he could only guess at, he got away with it. Onlookers would have said that it was because he stood up to her and gave as good as he got. Soon, Gil and Pamela were spending lunch times in her office or would walk into town and eat together at one of the many seafront cafes. After a whirlwind courtship that surprised everyone in its speed and intensity, Gil and Pamela got married.

  Dave generously gave the newlyweds the deposit for a little house on the new Cliffside estate and took them shopping for furniture so that his “little girl” would be as comfortable as she had been at home. Life for Gil was as perfect as it could be until one day just over a year later he came home to find a note from Pamela saying that she had left him for a sales rep with a Porsche, or a “flash-git motor” as Gil put it. His world fell apart and Dave too was shocked to the core as he had looked on Gil as a friend as well as a son-in-law. Mercifully, or unmercifully, depending on Gil’s mood, there were no children so resolving to have nothing more to do with women, he threw himself into his work, uncannily like his sister.

  There were other women of course but Gil was determined that no-one would get close to him again and none of his relationships lasted more than a few months. He worked harder and harder but found it increasingly difficult to carry on at the garage where there were reminders of Pamela everywhere. His ambition had always been to have his own business one day but he didn’t have nearly enough put by, even though he was now living back home with his parents. Fate was soon to step in however and hand him a solution, but at a terrible cost.

  On the following Christmas Eve, Frederick Honeyman was knocked down and killed by a hitting-and-run driver while on his way home from work. The bank had closed at midday for the holidays and Frederick had been crossing the road when a dark coloured car that, according to eye witnesses “came from nowhere” hit him full on. Death was instantaneous and in the ensuing chaos, no-one noticed the car’s number plate. There were even differing accounts of the colour of the car. No, it was definitely dark blue, said one witness while another swore it was red. When extensive police enquiries produced no leads, Gil made his own enquiries, through his many contacts in the motor trade, hoping that one of them might have carried out an urgent repair over Christmas, but nothing came of it. After three months of exhaustive enquiries which had produced absolutely nothing, the family were left to come to terms with the fact that the driver might never be found.

  After the funeral, Sylvia took to her bed and was never the same again. Her face was permanently etched in a look of disbelief and horror, the terrible moment when she was told of her husband’s death frozen in time for all to see. She rocked herself back and fore, constantly asking herself or anyone who would listen, why was he there, why was he there? Frederick had been a creature of habit and had taken the same route to and from the bank every day since he started there over twenty years ago. It was only a ten-minute walk from their home on the Esplanade so unless the weather was very bad, Frederick never took the car, preferring to catch some bracing sea air. Puzzlingly though, he had been nowhere near home when he was struck down. Even allowing for a deviation to buy ciga
rettes or peppermints, he had been hopelessly addicted to both, Frederick shouldn’t have been anywhere near Fareham Place, which was nothing more than a narrow little street of terraced houses on the eastern edge of the town. Besides, Gil pointed out, there was a handful of shops he could have called in far nearer the bank, so the mystery remained.

  Whilst doing their best to reassure Sylvia that there were a hundred perfectly logical reasons why Frederick was in Fareham Place on that day, Gil and Bridget began to wonder if indeed there was something suspicious about their father’s last journey. Although her mind was in turmoil, Sylvia was no fool and she became increasingly convinced that something was being kept from her. Gil and Bridget tried everything to convince their mother that this wasn’t the case. They suggested that the most likely explanation was that Frederick was probably looking for a last-minute Christmas present, and had simply taken a wrong turning. Deep down, they both knew that this was highly implausible and what’s more, Sylvia knew it too. Like most men of his generation, Frederick left most of the Christmas shopping to his wife, including buying the “children’s” presents. He would of course buy Sylvia’s present himself, but being the most organised of men, always had his gift bought well before Christmas. He always waited until Christmas Eve though to wrap his presents, feeling that this was his contribution to the festivities.

  There was of course an elephant in the room, which both Gil and Bridget had acknowledged privately but couldn’t or wouldn’t bring themselves to speak of to the other. Had their father been having an affair? Gil would have been ashamed to admit that this was one of the first notions that popped into his head when he had discovered where his father had been killed, after all other explanations had been ruled out. If he had discussed it with his sister however he may have taken some comfort to learn that she too had been harbouring similar thoughts. Or maybe it would just have made things worse. Like most people, the sex life of parents or offspring is a strictly no-go area and Gil and Bridget were no different. After reading a magazine article at the hairdresser’s on how to spot a “cheating partner” Bridget had been racking her brains for signs that her father had been seeing another woman. True, he had occasionally worked late at the bank, but he always had a perfectly plausible explanation, such as a forthcoming audit. But what if the “other woman” was a bank employee? Bridget struggled to recall if there had been any changes in her father’s appearance that might indicate he was suddenly making a special effort, but she drew a blank. Any further thoughts were quickly shut down as she found it almost impossible to see Frederick as anything other than her father. For Bridget, this was the end of the matter, whatever secrets her father may have held, another woman wasn’t one of them. Any thoughts to the contrary were pushed to the farthest corners of her mind. For the time being at least.