The Shift Key (19 page)

‘No, I’m sure there isn’t.’ But Don was reaching for his wallet and glancing around for the waiter. ‘Nonetheless, for old time’s sake I think I should look in on them before I turn in. Speaking of which, it’s time we settled up. I hadn’t realized how late it’s getting.’

Nor, said Steven and Jenny when they’d checked their watches, had they, either.

Back in Weyharrow Jenny asked to be dropped outside the hotel, where she had left her car, and suggested that she take Steven the last half-mile to the Doctor’s House. Don made no objection; having asked precise directions to the Ellerfords’, he seemed curiously eager to go there right away. After exchanging thanks and good nights, Steven and Jenny dashed into the Mini. It was still raining, though not as hard as earlier.

During the brief ride she said, ‘Do you suppose Don is concerned about those boys because he really was friendly with the Ellerfords in Hong Kong?’

Steven glanced at her. ‘What do you mean? What other reason could there be?’

‘Well, Ursula seems to be just about the only person something funny happened to that he hasn’t yet tracked down
and interviewed. Apart, of course, from poor old Phyllis Knabbe.’ She halted the car outside the Doctor’s House.

‘Oh, maybe I’m just growing prematurely cynical,’ she went on. ‘On the other hand … Well, when I was finally told that Wallace Jantrey was looking for me, I rang madly round all the numbers I could think of here in Weyharrow, and the only person I managed to reach was Moira. She was in Phyllis’s cottage all alone and mourning. But – you know she works Fridays and Saturdays for the Jacksetts?’

‘Did she go back there this afternoon?’ Steven asked. It was all he could think of to say.

‘Apparently yes. She said if she’d been left on her own she’d have gone crazy. Maybe she has, because she told me something very odd. The shop has a fine view of everything that’s going on, doesn’t it?’ – with a gesture in its general direction. ‘When I asked about visiting cars, she said that just after the ambulance took Phyllis away she saw Don’s car – she knew it was his because they’d met when you turned up to look at the … the body …’

‘I remember,’ Steven sighed. ‘He cornered Moira on the landing with a tape-recorder.’

‘Yes. Well, later on she saw him driving out of the village.’

‘He went to the Court and talked to Basil Goodsir. He said so.’

‘Yes, but he also said he spent less than an hour there, and Moira said she didn’t see his car come back.
I
don’t think he came back until he cornered us outside the hotel. Now wouldn’t you expect that if he’d passed the rest of the day around the village, asking people, he’d have heard about Ursula before we told him? Especially since it turned out to be a name he recognized?’

Steven was growing tired. As Don had said, they had spent an improbably long time in the restaurant. He said, more or less at random, ‘Yes, but the boys would have been at school.’

‘You think so?’ she countered. Today? After what happened to their mother?’

‘Well, maybe not … Jenny, I’m sorry. I’m dreadfully tired. And I still have to figure out what I’m going to say at the meeting tomorrow.’

‘I thought Don had solved that problem for you.’

‘Well, he’s certainly given me a line of argument … Thanks for the ride. See you at the meeting?’

‘Yes, of course.’

It was as though she half-expected him to kiss her goodnight, but he wasn’t inclined. He opened the door. She checked him with a touch on his arm.

‘Yes?’

‘I can’t help wondering whether it might not be worth inquiring where Don spent this afternoon. If you see him before I do, ask him, will you? And let me know?’

‘Yes.’ Insincerely thanks to weariness. ‘Yes. Thanks again. Good night.’

His key poised at the lock, Steven glanced back at the green. In the dim glow of the street-lamps the hippies’ tents glimmered, rain-wet, moving to the wind like living creatures under water. But there was scarcely any sound save the wind’s, and even as he looked some of the last remaining lighted windows darkened.

Shivering of a sudden, he retreated indoors.

The rain continued. By midnight, from the tents on the green and from the back of the bus which had been partly converted into bunks, one could hear water splashing in the gutters like a series of miniature brooks. Despite Stick’s efforts, here and there dead leaves gathered in quantities enough to block a drain-grating, and then one heard the sound of micro-waterfalls as it flowed on to seek another.

But it was soothing.

So too was the fact that a ritual had been performed, even though, ideally, it should have taken place out of doors, perhaps in the clearing Cedric had led them to last summer, which certainly had the air of an enchanted spot: enclosed on all sides, yet wide open to the welkin. Whether or not it was the true site of the ancient pagan temple – and ever since he came down from the trip he’d been on at the time, Chris had had suspicions on that score, though it hadn’t stopped him liking Cedric – no one could deny that it was the
kind
of place the Old Believers would have felt was holy. Like Delphi, Rhoda was fond of saying, though not of course on anything like the same scale. She had hitchhiked to Greece once, long ago, and insisted that nobody could stand on that hillside and not at once conclude this was a proper place to meet the gods.

Even on the strength of postcard pictures, Chris was prepared to take her word.

But most soothing of all was the knowledge that the rain would discourage any local people who might have planned to descend on the visitors by night and tear their tents down.

Even the babes-in-arms slept well.

*

The strangeness that had overtaken Weyharrow was passing from the minds of its inhabitants like – as so many of them had said – the memory of a dream.

Cuddled close to Sheila, for the night was cool, Stick thought of his illusory conviction that her kids were boys, that they had seemed to share. On the brink of sleep, he murmured in her ear, ‘I’m glad they’re not.’

‘What?’ – drowsily amid the tangle of her hair.

‘Not boys. Hilary and Sam. Makes me think of the kid who didn’t like bananas.’

‘What?’

The kid who said “I’m glad I don’t like bananas.” You don’t know that one?’

Muzzily: ‘No … Why was he glad about it?’

‘ “Because if I did I’d eat them, and they’re horrid!”’

‘Oh, Stick …! Did you have to wake me up to tell me that?’

‘No. Just to say how much I prefer figs. Sleep well.’

But there were some places where the dream had left a deeper trace.

The lights stayed on late in the Ellerford house. Paul and Harold had been glad to seize an excuse for missing school, and for a while they had kept up a mutual front of feigned bravado. There was food in the house, and they found money in their mother’s purse; also there was the key to the drinks cabinet, and by afternoon they were making a kind of celebration of Ursula’s departure, saying what a lousy mother she had always been, forever telling them they must do this, or mustn’t do that, or she couldn’t afford to let them have the other – when bloody yobs and oiks from all around, off the farms for God’s sake, were getting motorbikes and home computers and flashy clothes and summer holidays in places where the girls went topless!

But, subconsciously, they had both been expecting that
somebody would come along and take them in charge. Not until darkness fell did they truly realize:

We’ve got to manage by ourselves,

It was Harold who said awkwardly, ‘I suppose we’d better let somebody know.’

‘What?’ Paul had been investigating the liquor even more enthusiastically than his brother, and the stock of cigarettes as well, that Ursula kept solely for guests, having herself given up smoking in order to economize after Ted’s death.

‘Well, money, for example. We can’t last on what was in her purse. And we ought to visit her in – in hospital.’

Thanks to a call from Mrs Weaper, they knew about her transfer from Chapminster to Hatterbridge. They also knew, as did all the children in the village, that Hatterbridge was where they sent ‘the mental ones’.

Paul’s speech was slurring and his face was pale as he drew on the latest of too many cigarettes.

‘If she wants to see us she can send a bloody taxi!’ was his answer.

Harold sat down, clasping an empty glass in both hands. He said, not looking at his brother, ‘She’s not in any state for that, you know.’

‘Then it’s her own bloody fault!’ Paul shouted, and in the same moment set his own glass on a nearby table, tried to stab out his cigarette in an adjacent ashtray – but missed, so Harold had to retrieve it smouldering from the carpet – and fled. Shortly after, there were loud retching noises from the bathroom.

Stupid ass!

Waiting, passively watching the television that had been on all evening, Harold realized it was cold in here. They had lit a fire earlier, but it was dying. He moved to put more coal on, and found the scuttle empty.

The coal-bin was in the back yard, and rain was pelting at
the windows.

Very slowly it began to dawn on him how much he and Paul had taken for granted.

After throwing up, Paul collapsed, groaning, on his bed, and shortly fell asleep. Harold, sighing, turned off the TV and started to clean up. Tomorrow, he resolved while rinsing the plates they’d eaten a makeshift supper from, things were going to be different. Paul was going to have to pull his weight –

The doorbell rang.

He was halfway to the door in high excitement when he realized he was dripping detergent suds on the carpet. A wave of embarrassment overcame him. He had been indoctrinated with very clear ideas of what a
man
did and what a
woman
did. Cooking was all right; weren’t all the greatest chefs male? But it wasn’t manly to arrive at the door looking like a housewife!

He retreated to the kitchen and dried his hands and rolled his sleeves down. The bell rang again.

But then, all of a sudden, he realized he desperately needed to pee. It must have been the effect of running water into the sink …

Visions of greeting a caller with his thighs clamped together horrified his tipsy mind. He rushed upstairs to the bathroom. When he dashed back down and flung open the door there was no sign of anybody, except a car he didn’t recognize starting up and driving off.

He ran out, waving, but he was too late.

That night, for the first time since he was a little boy, he wept into his pillow.

Moira O’Pheale was weeping, too, though for a different reason.

She was infinitely grateful to the Jacksetts for letting her finish her day’s work at their shop. Even if it meant enduring
the curiosity of the customers, she needed some kind of distraction. But at closing time she had had to fend off their sympathy in order to be allowed to return to the cottage.

Where she sat in darkness, writhing with self-contempt, hoping against hope that the parson wouldn’t drop in, or the doctor, or Jerry Blocket, or
anybody.

When the phone rang she tried to ignore it, found she couldn’t, and eventually answered, sighing. The caller was Jenny Severance. To Moira’s immense relief she found herself required to talk about a stranger, the reporter from the
Globe.
She became almost loquacious, and Jenny uttered a flood of thanks when she rang off.

A little cheered, Moira allowed herself to answer the phone a second time, even though she was preparing to warm her supper – a canned steak pie. This time, though, it wasn’t Jenny.

‘Mrs O’Pheale, you don’t know me,’ said a man’s voice. ‘But I heard the dreadful news about Miss Knabbe.’

Christ. More bloody sympathy. Haven’t I had enough?

‘Are you there?’

‘Yes’ – in a dull tone.

‘I thought I should convey my condolences … Oh, my name is Ralph Haggledon. Of Mortis and Haggledon?’

‘Oh, yes.’ During the two years she had lived here Moira had often posted letters to Phyllis’s lawyer, whose office was in Chapminster. He took care of all her affairs, including the exiguous income from the investments her parents had bequeathed.

‘Well … I hope I’m not talking out of turn, because traditionally one should wait until after the funeral to publicize the contents of a will. But I did feel I ought to let you know: there is no risk of your being displaced from your current residence.’

For a long moment Moira stood like a wax dummy,
phone in hand. She husked at last, ‘You can’t possibly mean …’

‘I think you’re ahead of me.’ There was a dry chuckle at the far end of the line.

‘She never left me the cottage?’

‘As I said, Mrs O’Pheale, you’re ahead of me. Let me just say that if in the future you feel the need for professional advice –’

‘Oh Christ. Oh my God. You’re trying to tell me that she left me everything.’

Her mouth was dry, her hands were shaking, her vision blurred. Swaying, she had to lean against the wall.

‘Miss Knabbe had no close relatives and no direct heirs. So it can’t have been entirely unexpected –’

You bastard. You’re a smooth-talking bastard like my Declan! What you mean is: you’ve been taking a cut from managing Phyllis’s money and you don’t want to lose a penny of it now it’s passed to me …!

You want your foot in the bloody door, don’t you?

‘Excuse me?’ – in a frosty tone.

In horror Moira realized she had uttered the last sentence aloud.

She drew a deep breath, thought it over, and came to the conclusion that she’d been quite right to say it.

‘I said,’ she repeated more clearly, ‘you want your foot in the bloody door, don’t you? Well, don’t hold your breath! I could give the bloody lot to charity!’

And slammed down the phone.

When she eventually ate her supper, it was salt with falling tears.

Tim Wamble slept well. After the loss of that side of beef this morning-which, even if it hadn’t been retained as evidence, would have been spoiled by partial thawing – there hadn’t been enough in the hotel’s freezer to feed all the people who
had suddenly decided they ought to pop over to Weyharrow for dinner and find out what was behind these extraordinary rumours. Not many of them had been satisfied on that score, but a good few had gone away telling Nigel Mender that his chef was a marvel because of the way he’d been able to cope at such short notice.