Undercurrent (18 page)

And then someone said it was Neil. Or Angela Hulme . . .'

'Ah, c'mon, Linda ...'

'Well, Franny had much more time for her cute little kiddie before Harry got round to running and mumbling, didn't she? All right when he was little, not when he grew. Someone else reckoned it was the poofters, but he never stopped there overnight and it was early on a Sunday morning, wasn't it? But I thought it was some drugged-up weirdo - we've got a few of them, haven't we? - until she said it was her.

And then it all made sense. So I should stop the daft bastard asking questions before someone punches him on the nose, or worse. Stop clenching your fists, will you? You're supposed to relax.'

Small grains of a fine, sandy substance applied to her cheeks eased the remnants of grime from her pores. The effect was soporific. The room was blissfully warm and the world outside distinctly uninviting. Maggie unclenched her fists obediently.

'I can't stop him asking questions,' Maggie said.

'He's a scientist.'

'That's no excuse. Bugger that doorbell. She's early.'

Murmuring in the hall. Laughter. Linda returned.

Maggie rubbed her eyes. The sun-bed whirred into life and there was the sound of disrobing behind the curtain. The facial continued in silence.

You were such fun, Maggie. Once upon a time. Soon, no one will talk to you at all. She counted on her fingers as Linda massaged her neck and shoulders and she made small, appreciative noises. A van rumbled up the narrow street.

Get Henry the keys to her flat. . . Done it.

Get Neil to cooperate and talk to him . . . Reluctant, but I'm working on it.

Get Angela to talk to Henry . . . Impossible. She absolutely refuses. He'll have to try and waylay her himself.

Tell him he can use the internet in the library . . . knows that already, sniffed it out like a dog.

'He's a bit like a dog,' she murmured to Linda as the hydrating mask began to harden round her nose.

'Who? The American?'

'Yes, a lovely big dog with a thick coat and big, soft eyes.'

'Well, I don't know, Maggie, I really don't. You never could pick them. You always picked the dope. What's he doing now, then, while you're not watching?'

'God only knows.'

She saw her coat hanging on the hook behind the door, with one sleeve sticking out, as if making a salute.

It never snows here, or not for long, Maggie had told him. He had opened the window of his room and caught a collection of snowflakes on the sleeve of his black jacket, displayed them to her and said, what do you call this? It had snowed for two hours, which did not make Maggie a reliable informant. She was a comfortable fixture in his room, admiring the tidiness with which he had arranged it, bringing up his breakfast and hers, examining the snowflakes as if they were a rare kind of insect, perching herself on the edge of his silk-clad bed from which all the case papers in
R. v.

Chisholm
had been neatly removed.

The world beyond the house was a dismal contrast, entered reluctantly after prevaricating on the way downstairs and going back twice for gloves. The snow lay, sludgy and unconvincing on the pavements, a nuisance so near the shore, but enough, he heard, to block the roads beyond. Long before his damp footsteps had traversed the quarter-mile between the house and the church. Henry wanted to return, but the inside of the building was moderately warm, to his enormous relief. It looked, from the outside, as if it should be cold. Peter was already there.

'Francesca came here regularly,' he explained, admiring Henry's leather boots, while wishing he had the sense to accept the offer of a pair of Wellingtons.

'Not as a believer, you understand,' the vicar interrupted in his fluting voice, which fitted better inside a warm and empty church than it did round a dinner table. The voice belonged in here; it invited an echo and the enunciation of prayers. The exaggeration of his precise syllables seemed to have a purpose in this space. 'More as a person, quite candidly in search of an insurance policy.

Not for herself, although she did like the ambience, she told me, but for the children.

She bought Tanya Hulme here when she was first adopted and not so long after. Harry as a babe in arms. She was perfectly honest about her motives, she always was.'

'Motives?' Henry queried. He eyed the ornate carving of the pulpit and visualized the priest enjoying his robes.

'Oh come now, Mr Evans, all who seek religious observance have a motive. Membership of a club, perhaps, the opportunity to wear a hat, perhaps, peace and quiet, perhaps; the chance to observe one another and be observed. The chance to spend an hour in a pretty place. And we do try with the flowers, don't we, Peter?'

Peter was arranging stems of winter foliage in a tall vase, standing back to gauge the effect, nodding.

The church was Victorian antiquity, heavy rather than refined, but the pews were polished and the kneelers lovingly sewn. 'I'm quite sure if we didn't she might have gone to the Methodists for the sake of better hymns, but she wanted the children to get used to the idea. To gain the blessing of God in case there was one, she told me. Let them reject it later if they wanted, she said, but not on the basis of ignorance I quite understood. If I insisted on believers, I'd never have a congregation at all.'

'So now I know what she did on Sunday morning...'

'What
we
did,' Peter interrupted.

'But it doesn't help me much with her problems,' Henry continued, earnestly. 'I mean if you were her priest, in whatever form, and Harry was a parishioner, why didn't she come to you for help? You didn't do much, did you?'

The priest and Peter exchanged a glance of resignation.

Two persons, noticing in unison how Henry was not diplomatic in the posing of questions.

'I did help. I put her in touch with people who cared deeply. She'd no family left, you see; when you're conceived by relatively elderly parents as she was, you tend to lose them. I found her these two ' he nodded in Peter's direction - 'to help with Harry, but there was nothing I could do about the darker reaches of the night. Nothing. I couldn't make her invoke the aid of a God in whom she didn't believe. In any event, help wasn't the problem.'

He sat heavily on one of the highly polished pews, curled one hand round the carved pommel and stroked it. His hand was dry and chapped, grazed with rough work, which Henry found endearing. Peter and Timothy had hands like that; so, he imagined, did Christ's disciples. It gave the vicar credibility, removed him further from the alternative image of the dilettante, dinner party guest with a fistful of wine. Henry waited. The priest continued to stroke the wood, as if it were a magic lamp, able to produce words.

'The problem was that she was such a good person. Is, or was, I don't know, but good. By which I mean blessed with a natural virtue which requires no outside nourishment. She wasn't good out of fear of the consequences; she was simply good. She had a quick tongue, all right, but she was incapable of harbouring malice. She could complain, but she couldn't retain a mean thought or harbour resentment, not to save her life. She had a unique capacity for nurturing others. Loving them, you might say. And if it weren't heretical, I'd say she could teach a Christian God a thing or two about forgiveness and generosity. She didn't need to pray for them.'

Peter coughed, embarrassed by the oratory. Henry winced. 'So what's the problem with that?'

The vicar heaved himself upright and clasped his hands in the lap of his cassock. It was not a dapper garment, and slightly grubby.

'A person blessed with a singular and natural goodness and great sensitivity, especially if matched with a handsome face and physical agility, is a draw for the weak and the lame. For the wicked and the afflicted, as well as the needy. They become indispensable. But they also repel, Mr Evans. Virtue is difficult to endure. People resent the bright spotlight of pure goodness. It makes them feel deficient.

Which is why,' he added, 'I myself make a good vicar.' He grinned and Henry warmed to him again.

'My flaws and my boredom level are all too apparent.

I lack the charisma of goodness, you see. The blessing and the curse of it. Nobody gets angry with me when I haven't got the time. They did with Francesca.'

Peter stepped down off the small ladder he had mounted to reach the vase behind the pulpit. His movements were noisy, his sighs gusty.

'This arrangement doesn't work,' he said. 'Won't last in this awful heat.' It was an overambitious arrangement of holly and laurel, wobbling. Henry adjusted his spectacles and nodded.

'Yeah, it's crap,' he said. He turned back to the priest.

'So it was goodness that made her spend so much time and energy on Tanya Hulme and her mother.

They were a pretty inseparable foursome, I gather.

Was that goodness? And who was it good for?'

'Ah, that. That, I think, was simply love. She fell in love with the child. And it was good for a highly strung, beautiful little girl who needed a bottomless pit of unreserved love to make up for the damage done to her. If you'd seen that terrified little savage, your heart would have gone out to her, too.'

" 'Does she come to church now?'

'Oh dear me, no. I don't think her mother wants any influence on the child other than her own. She may be right: consistency's the thing.'

Peter's arrangement overbalanced with a crash.

Henry moved to help him pick up the pieces.

'I think these should have stayed on the tree,' Peter said ruefully.

'Yeah, perhaps.' Henry patted him on the shoulder, realizing as he did so that it was the first time he had touched him. Peter grinned broadly.

'There you are,' he said. 'We don't bite. Are you going to be in for supper? Only we're having a musical evening.'

'Perhaps not,' Henry said, 'But thanks.'

No one had ever mastered the challenge of heating the castle. It was entirely natural that no one should; it was not designed to be heated, or even to be pristine clean, Neil remembered as he retrieved a flying polythene bag from the legs of a cannon and hurried back inside. The billets of the common soldiers would never have been clean; the kitchens might well have stunk. Where the desire for comfort had intruded into the quarters occupied by the officers of the military, there would have been tapestries and hangings to forestall the draughts. There remained a couple of fine wood-panelled rooms, superior ranks for the use of.

The painted panels bore portraits or photographs of heavily be-whiskered wardens of the keep from 1800 until the last was made redundant.

Chisholm's was not only the last face, but the only one without facial hair and with the temerity to smile. Bad idea to banish living accommodation from the central keep, Neil thought, although he could see it was ridiculously expensive to maintain, but the lack of a family living at the heart of a fortress garrison encouraged the proliferation of ghosts, who could wander round these sombre rooms and make obscene gestures at portraits of the masters. Up yours, wardens of the keep; we rule now.

The castle was officially closed for the day; he was here, checking stock for the next, sorting the postcards and guidebooks, making it neat in preparation for his own day off and, although he was absorbed in the tasks, he was anxious. There were better things to do beyond these heavy walls. 'Get laid,' he said to himself.
For ever
.

The weekend had been brilliant; she was gorgeous and the future worried him extremely.

Viagra. The doctor said he was only allowed enough for three or four experiments; after that, the cost was private and amounted to a small fortune. Would his stupid, uncooperative prick decide after a while that his body had cracked the code and behave all by itself? Would he have to increase the amount? Would he even have enough for a week? Where would he find a supply now his life was unimaginable without it? Would he lose his girl like he lost his wife?

He collected three packets of peanuts, dismissing the slight guilt at failing to check downstairs and risk being late; why should he? Mustn't be late for Tanya.

Angela would kill him. He hurried over the drawbridge, pulling the hood of his anorak over his head.

There was a posse of people, huddled by the notice at the entrance.

'Excuse me, are you open?'

Neil put his face close and breathed salty breath.

'No, mate. Closed for exorcism

He had enough Viagra pills for tomorrow, maybe a couple more times and that was all.

Maggie faced her shiny clean face away from the sea and walked towards the back of the town. Slush melting on pavements and the sky leaden. She loved it.

She wished she had no purpose other than to walk. She reached the humpbacked bridge which traversed the railway line. The train rumbling from the distance looked like the Toytown Express and she paused on the high point to feel it pass beneath her feet, the bridge trembling slightly as the engine slowed. There was a view from the bridge of the park and the town, peacefully calm and pacified by snow. The restlessness in her died. She did not want to be on the train out of here. There was really nowhere else to go and no one would know her when she got there. Life was remarkably consistent.

Snow had settled in the park next to the gym club.

Indoor activities had been abandoned In favour of the novelty and kids were outside. Snow had settled on the grass; it layered the bushes on the borders. A snowman had grown in the middle of the space, rapidly built into a round trunk of a body and the semblance of a head too small in proportion.

Someone had provided a carrot to make a nose on an otherwise featureless face; there were gloves on the hands folded over the fat torso, but no ears or eyes to give the head expression. The omissions were under loud debate, while Tanya Hulme, lissom and chestnut haired, hung back from the surrounding crowd. Skinny legs poked out of an overpuffed jacket and led to enormous, black trainer-clad feet which kicked the snow. The best-dressed kid in town and no one wanted to know her.