Free Mr Golightly's Holiday by Salley Vickers Page B

global enterprise, relayed by his band of assiduous aides, had been to hand whenever he required it. At a loss, he went to the telephone to ring the office. But hell and damnation, he had forgotten it was Saturday – the day the staff by long tradition took off! He left a curt request for someone to ring him back and dialled up again. This time the ugly noise prefaced an announcement that the ‘server’ did not ‘recognise his name’.
    Mr Golightly was the first to acknowledge that all wayward things are best met with patience. Yet had the Reverend Fisher been present, and reminded her neighbour of the gospel saying ‘In your patience possess ye your souls’, she might have got a dusty response. If you are in the way of presiding over a large empire, or even a small one, it isdisturbing to find an area where your influence is nothing. Mr Golightly was unused to such discouragements and the effect was to make him suddenly famished.
    The visit from Reverend Fisher had taken up the best part of the morning and it was close to lunchtime; he decided to kill two birds and walk up to the Stag and Badger for a pint and a cold sausage, to stay his hunger and work off his wrath.
    Luke Weatherall had also suffered creative frustration that morning. His poem had not advanced; or rather it had advanced by three stanzas but these on rereading had been too patently influenced by the rhythms of Hiawatha. Luke had read Longfellow’s Hiawatha while researching his own narrative poem and had found his head taken over by its insistent rhythms. A trip to the Stag and Badge offered an antidote.
    Mr Golightly and Luke met as they approached the inn; one thing led to another and the older man offered to buy the younger a drink. Luke had provided his first social exchange in Great Calne. Mr Golightly might not have fully recognised the sentiment but what he was feeling was that at a time of insecurity here was a friend.
    Mary Simms remarked, when she popped out the back to have a peek at her hair and touch up her lipstick, that the writer from Spring Cottage was in. She made no mention of Luke; she had plans for him, and no woman worth her salt lets slip her plans about anyone of the opposite sex. But Paula’s negative intuition was fine-tuned.
    ‘That Luke Weatherall in, is he?’
    Paula had her own reasons for asking this. If she could get someone to rent her room she could leave home and move in with Jackson. Looking around, she had lighted upon Luke as the best bet. After all, he would be nearer the village, and the Stag and Badge, and that Lavinia Galsworthy was a fussy cow. Luke ought to be glad to leave her poxy ways and her crappy studio flat!
    Paula’s plan to move in with Jackson was born of determination rather than any warmer emotion. She didn’t like Jackson; rather the reverse. But she had detected Jackson’s desire to be rid of her, and also his fear of her, and the combination made a powerful draw. Years ago, her dad had left her mum, leaving her mum to lean on her. If Paula moved in with Jackson she could get her own back on the lot of them.
    Mary flushed. ‘I didn’t notice.’
    ‘Like fuck, you didn’t!’ said Paula, expertly banging down a sharp steel knife on a cherry tomato. ‘Anyone with half a mind can see you can’t wait to have him up you!’ Mary Simms got on her nerves.
    Luke Weatherall found the tenant of Spring Cottage sympathetic when Luke confided, over a pint of Brewer’s Best, the problem he was having over Hiawatha. Mr Golightly had been growing aware himself of the potential inhibiting influence of another work of art. Was he not finding just such a handicap himself? His dramatic epic, which had made such an impact, acted now as a dismaying block to his new ideawhich, he had begun to worry, might never match the success of the original.
    Luke finished his pint and asked if he could return the compliment. It seemed impolite to refuse. The conversation had brought up thoughts in Mr Golightly of