A Fall from Grace (25 page)

“Well done!” said Charlie. “You were spot on.”

“Was I?” said Mrs. Michaels, reddening with pleasure. “Was I really? Well, it was just said to shut her up. Likewise when she asked whether Mr.—sorry, Inspector Costello came from Italy. I said all the Costellos I'd ever known or heard of came from Ireland. I must have sensed there was something there,
some prejudice she'd picked up at school, and I was trying to say, ‘We're all British.' But now we know that Anne had started to terrorize people who only came from down south! Kids! You can't get inside their minds, can you?”

“I don't think I'd want to,” said Felicity.

“Well, no. It was so awful that she'd involved younger kids who wouldn't know any better. I told her she should be ashamed. I blame that drama stream. That horrible play everyone's talking about must have done it. Wouldn't you think that Buckworth man would have had more sense than to pick a play where schoolkids terrorize a new master? He must have a screw loose.”

“Didn't you see it?”

“Well, we did, of course, Anne being in it. But we didn't understand it. Children murdering their teacher and blackmailing the one who took his place. It was above our heads. It just seemed too fantastic. If only we
had
understood, we could have stopped it then.”

“Had her put back into an ordinary stream?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Michaels with an attempt at macho. “Not that there's a chance now—not a hope in hell.”

“I don't think there was a chance then,” said Charlie.

“Maybe not. The only real chance was your dad, Mrs. Peace. He could have set our Anne's mind on a different track. On to writing, not acting. Oh, we are sorry for his death. So sorry. It was a heart attack, wasn't it?”

“That's one of the possibilities,” said Felicity.

The little knot of people began to split up to get more drinks. Charlie too drifted away. So his father-in-law was mourned by two people, even if neither of them had actually known him. And they mourned him for purely selfish reasons, not to say deluded ones: Rupert Coggenhoe was never likely to lead Anne Michaels along the path of creative writing. It didn't have the possibilities for self-advertisement that acting had, for a start. Charlie knew from the conversation that the Michaels had been clued up on the children's gang and the reasons behind their choice of victims, but he wasn't clear whether they knew about the persecution of Ken Warburton and their daughter's likely connection with it. Nor did he think that they had guessed that there lay behind Anne's friendship with Rupert something other than admiration for his literary genius. A few minutes later he saw the Michaels talking to Ken Warburton, apparently without a trace of shame or embarrassment, and this seemed to confirm their ignorance of that strand in Anne's activities. When he got up close to the three he found that the topic of the conversation was the dismal footballing fortunes of Leeds United.

It was while he was fetching himself a second pint that he saw Ben Costello watching him from the other side of the bar. It was a suspicious, keep-off-my-patch sort of gaze. He hailed him cheerily and made a mental note (or rather underlined an earlier one) not to talk to anyone with the slightest connection with the Coggenhoe death. It wasn't easy, but he had a pleasant talk with the vicar, then managed to have a prolonged
swill at his beer and an equally spun-out wiping of the foam from his upper lip close to where Harvey Buckworth was talking to Ken Warburton. Neither of them seemed entirely relaxed.

“There's a lot of mutterings about the drama stream at the moment,” Harvey was saying. “I'm afraid it's going to come up at the end-of-term staff meeting. I hope I'll have your support.”

There was a quaver in his voice, as if he knew he was on a sticky wicket.

“You must be joking,” said Ken Warburton shortly.

Harvey Buckworth spread out his hands theatrically.

“But look—I know you've had a bad experience, and I'm sorry about that. But think of all the wonderful publicity we've had from children being in
Corrie
and
Emmerdale,
and think of some of the public performances we've put on. Magic! They've put the school on the map. Winding up the drama stream would be like cutting off our nose. You must see that.”

“I'm sure you mean well, Harvey. And I know you've done a wonderful job stimulating the talented kids. But so far as I'm concerned you've been a lot less successful in reining in the genies you've released from the bottle.”

“But you can't blame me for—”

“Oh yes, I can. For most—almost all—of these kids, you've dangled in front of them a fantasy world in which they're going to be fabulously successful and become nationally recognized faces. And in the process you've split the school in two. One small section that's horribly confident and full of themselves and
their own brilliant prospects. And one very large section that is going nowhere and is bitterly resentful. It's not healthy. It's not what I came into education for.”

Charlie raised his eyebrows and moved on. Good for Ken Warburton! Wasn't it Harvey Buckworth who had described him as not the brightest firework in the box? Maybe not, but he sounded like a useful glowing coal in the grate. Harvey was going to learn that.

Charlie came to rest beside Felicity and Belle Costello. There couldn't be anything against him talking to them, could there? The conversation was about women's things—juggling a child and a career, or in Felicity's case two children and two careers. Charlie privately felt that women had it good compared to a policeman trying to work reasonable hours so that he had time to be with his daughter. But he never discussed it in those terms with Felicity.

“I think when Little Fetus is born I'll have to give up my Leeds University teaching,” his wife was saying.

“Do you want to?”

“No, I don't. It's not just the money, though it's a lot more
certain
than money from a mainstream novel. I have no guarantee that they'll want to take any further novels, after all. They'll have an option on the next, which means all power and no commitment. Still, it's really the contact with young people I'll miss.”

“You've got children. You'll have contact with the young.”

“I mean a bit older than four or five. One thing I've been conscious of with this Anne Michaels business is that young people have changed a lot since I was in school.”

“Have they ever! I only hear the gossip—Ben never talks about his work—but it sounds to me as if this drama stuff in the school is producing a breed of teenager in the Westowram area quite out of the ordinary.”

“You're probably right. Do you work? I should know, but I don't.”

“Two days a week at the Citizens Advice Bureau. I love it. Fascinating. But if I was advising you on your problem I'd say what you need is a husband who gives up his demanding—physically and mentally demanding—job for something that brings in enough to live on, and both of you have time to do your own thing, something creative and satisfying. Like Alison and Chris Carlson.”

“Hmm,” said Felicity. “I doubt Charlie's watercolors would bring in much.”

“You've never seen any of my watercolors,” protested Charlie.

“That's how I know they wouldn't bring in much,” said Felicity.

“I just meant something, anything, he'd enjoy doing. Fitness classes, maybe.”

“I've worked in a gym,” said Charlie. “Never again. Narcissism in motion.”

“But even if he were as good as Cotman or Turner,” said Felicity, “I know what you're suggesting wouldn't work. Nothing like that would give Charlie the buzz that police work gives him. I imagine Chris Carlson just meandered into ear, nose and throat work, and can just as well
not
do it. Charlie would be lost.”

“Ben would too. Look at him—he's a fish out of water even at a social event like this.”

Ben was still at the bar, talking to no one but looking and listening. Charlie understood the instinct.

“He's thinking about a case, or about paperwork, or promotion,” he said.

“Don't I know the problem,” said Felicity. Then she added, “But he's always got time for Carola.”

“I suppose Ben would, if we had any. There again, perhaps not. He knew we couldn't have children when we married. I'd had a messy miscarriage with my first husband, and any further pregnancies were out. I've always felt a bit guilty about not wanting children more. If I'm so lukewarm about it, why did I get pregnant in the first place?”

“Have you both settled down well in Westowram?”

“Oh yes! I love it here. It's just about the right size for me, and having Halifax near and Leeds not too far off is ideal. Ben would be happy anywhere where he's got a policing job. He stands around looking glowering and you think he's auditioning for Heathcliff, but he's not unhappy, just thinking about his job.”

“I sometimes think that when Charlie's being sociable that's him doing his job in his way.”

“Don't mind me—dissect me if you want to,” said Charlie.

“So you don't feel you come second to his job?” said Felicity, ignoring her husband.

“I
know
I come second. It doesn't worry me. Liberates me, in a way. Someone asked me the other day if we were thinking of moving, and I got quite wild,
thinking he'd applied for a job somewhere else without consulting me. That really would cause World War Three! I don't settle in a new place or new job easily, but I have done here now, and so here I'm staying. But it was all a misunderstanding. They meant were we moving house in Slepton, and I could tell them we aren't.”

“I think we're roughly the same. We all want to jog along pretty much as we are now,” said Felicity. Honesty forced her to add, “Only, my father's death will ease the financial pressures on us—pretty much remove them, in fact.”

“And instead of them we'll have the pressures on you to make your second novel even better than your first,” said Charlie.

Felicity nodded, smiling.

“I regard those as the pleasantest kind of pressures there could be.”

“For
you.
What about the baby, who screams because he's unchanged, Carola, who's screaming because you won't let her have a puppy, me, who is screaming because there's nothing in the fridge to eat when I get home?”

“You all have your different ways of getting your views across, including the baby when he or she comes,” said Felicity. “Oh, is Desmond going to make a speech?”

It seemed he was. The vicar had just said a few words of introduction without being able to enforce silence, and now Desmond was getting up and enforcing it without doing anything at all except standing
there. That was what being a stage actor did for you, thought Charlie.

When all the talking had stopped Desmond began.

“This is quite unexpected, and really quite unnecessary too. But I am delighted, because it gives me a chance to express my thanks for all the friendship and welcome you have given me in Slepton over the years. Why should that be said now? I'm not leaving, am I? Well, no, I'm not. Nevertheless it does seem as if I shall only be among you occasionally in the months—maybe years—ahead. You will be surprised to hear (as surprised as my agent was) that offers have been streaming in for me since my much-agonized-over reappearance on ‘the boards,' as we in the profession say, and I am now choosing among . . .”

And so he went on. It didn't sound like an extempore speech. Charlie felt pressure building up in his bladder, and since he was in the far reaches of the pub, with many heads and bodies between him and the speaker, he ducked down and slipped out toward the corridor and the gents'. He loved Desmond, but he didn't love thespian mannerisms and clichés.

When he pushed open the door marked with a figure in trousers (as if that separated the sexes these days!) his first thought was that he had made a mistake. Sitting on the radiator, looking fresh and tempting, was Anne Michaels. The only thing about her that was not inviting was her eyes—steely, daggerlike flashes sent in Charlie's direction.

“Seeing how the other half pees?” he asked politely.

“That's right. You could call it research.”

She looked at him challengingly. Charlie was tempted to go and pee at the urinal. She wouldn't be seeing anything she hadn't already seen a great number of. But he thought it would do no good to his image at police headquarters, at least in the upper echelons, if it got out, so he went into a cubicle and shut the door.

“What's wrong? Ashamed of it?” came Anne Michaels's voice, the vulgarity of the question contrasting with her already actressy tones.

“Not at all. Quite satisfied, actually,” shouted Charlie back. When the stream lessened and ran out he pulled the flush and went out into the open part of the lavatory.

“So what is this research for?” he asked, running water into the basin.

“A French play—a one-acter.
Le Pissoir.
By a dramatist you wouldn't have heard of called Ionesco.”

Charlie shook the water from his hands.

“Sounds as if he was born in the United Nations building, but actually Romanian, I believe, who left the country during the war and became a French citizen. I don't recall a play called
Le Pissoir,
though.”

“Unpublished,” said Anne, quick as a flash. “An early work.” She blinked with beguiling innocence at him. “I suppose you've heard of him from your wife. Or from your father-in-law.”

“Don't bother to flutter your eyelids at me, love. No, I don't think Rupert was an expert on Romanian-French dramatists. He regarded anything even vaguely avant-garde as pretentious rubbish. He was not an adventurous writer, as you would have found out if you'd
known him for longer.”