Leanne instantly bought a yacht, to sit idle in her minuscule garden. It never sailed.
Day Two, she bought an ostrich farm in Devonshire, never went to see it. That first weekend she shopped like a maniac, ran London's prestigious stores ragged. We made love in her bedroom among seventy-one new hats. Oxford Street sent two huge pantechnicon trucks full of new shoes. She bought three stone fountains for conservatories she didn't have, bought motor cars she couldn't drive. As for clothes, they arrived in roomfuls.
This, note, was my meticulous Leanne, who once sternly asked me to leave for dropping my teaspoon. And the same Leanne who wrote to the Home Secretary whenever the post girl came later than six-forty a.m. 'Standards, Lovejoy,' she'd say primly, 'must not fall.' She even said it in bed.
Three months, she'd spent up. I tried to stem the spending tide, and failed. Penniless, Leanne sat in her tiny thatched cottage among her purchases, on her face a look of utter rapture. A remote cousin hurtled in to dispose of the loot. Leanne smiled on, replete. By autumn she was back to her pernicketty self, scolding village shopkeepers for dusty shelves. I still see her, by precise arrangement. She embroiders samplers for me, two hundred stitches each afternoon. I sell them every Lady Day. My point is, I'd have staked my all on Leanne investing every groat of her lottery windfall, and following the Stock Exchange indices on the TV noon bulletin with graphs pinned on her parlour wall. I could imagine other winners going instant fruitbowl, but Leanne? Never.
See what I mean? I get things wrong.
'Hello, Lovejoy.'
I leapt with a squawk. 'You scared me stiff.' I calmed sweatily. 'Hello, Mort.'
He looked crestfallen. We stood looking over the fields to the sea. I didn't know quite what to say. Well, you don't.
'This is where I got your dad wrong,' I said, starting where my thoughts had left off. 'It was the only time Arthur ever shouted at me. I'd only cursed, said it was a horrible place.'
'You fell in the mud.'
'I didn't see you. Were you there too?'
Wind ruffled his hair. 'I hide. I like being among trees. I like here, not just because Dad guarded it so. Because.' Mort pointed.
I peered along his arm. Nothing. 'What?'
'The oxlip. See it? Primula elatior.' He meant a little flower. 'It's not the false oxlip, which is only a cowslip- primrose hybrid. The true oxlip is East Anglian, grows in ancient woodland.'
'Does it really!' I cleared my throat, edgy. The lad wanted to tell me about frigging daffodils, fine. But why meet miles from anywhere on a windy shore?
'The oxlip is rare in hedges,' was his next winner.
'Goodness gracious.' Whatever next?
'It spreads about one stride a year, into modern woodlands that are less than four hundred years old.'
I thought, here I am wanting ways to kill - no, I mean restrain - the homicidal Gluck, and I get the biography of a frond?
'The small-leaved lime's my favourite.' I looked at the floor's greenery. 'No, Lovejoy,' he said patiently. 'Mesolithic wildwood trees. They mark ancient woodland. Also rare in hedges.'
'Rare in hedges!' I repeated, impressed. I was frantic to say something to the lad. This was his special treat, hungering for somebody on his side, telling me this junk. 'Rare like the, er…' Jesus, what was it, primrose?
'Oxlip.' I almost fainted with relief. 'There is the occasional hedgerow of solid small-leaved lime trees. Shelley in Suffolk has one. But it's only the remaining edge of an ancient Mesolithic woodland.'
'Well, it would be,' I exclaimed, trying like mad. Is this how women feel, anxious to say the right thing when some bloke's wittering about carburettors and Gregorian chant harmonics?
'And it's where Grampa is,' he ended.
That shut me up. Grampa? Uneasy, I looked about. We were some distance from the vineyard where Arthur was buried. No headstones among these trees.
Behind us the wooded slope shielded the bend of the river. It was soporific, as all countryside. Cows, a couple of anglers, fields beyond the trees. Facing, the downward slope to the gleaming muddy shore and the North Sea. To the far right, a low headland, houses, a small factory thing with a chimney stub. Left, more trees. This was where Arthur dreamed of cutting his canal, until something had stopped him. Maybe Grampa's grave? I brightened. A link at last? In the distance there was one huge solid tree. I glanced a question.
'Yes, that's Dad's mulberry. King James wanted everybody to grow them, bring the silk industry. Wrong mulberry, of course.'
Silly old King James, then. They say he was a pillock. 'Er, your grandfather?'
'Yes.' He didn't point. 'He's in the sand.'
I wanted to ask why the hell did Arthur bury his dad in the sands of the seashore, but couldn't. There's all sorts of barmy protocol for asking if you want sugar or biscuits, but we've none for essentials.
'Grampa's in his aeroplane.' Mort looked so sad. 'It got shot. He managed to keep it flying, and reached home.'
A small lugger jibed, reaching for the headland. I watched it. In the distance, a low tanker smudged the horizon. I worked out chronology, wartime, dogfights, fighters on old newsreels.
Mort was speaking. 'The old canal locks are a league up-river. Here's the narrowest gap from the river to the estuary.'
So if anybody wanted to link the canal - read the entire inland waterways - with the river and the sea, they'd have to cut through the woodland where we were standing. As if he scanned my mind he added, 'Only two furlongs, Lovejoy.'
