Arms and the Women (24 page)

'How nice to find you both in such high spirits,' he said. 'I thought you might have come to blows over who should bear most responsibility for yesterday's fiasco.'

'Patrick, please!' said Daphne. 'We've got that sorted.'

'Oh yes? And?'

Ellie said, 'I freely accept complete responsibility, despite the fact that what actually happened to Daphne was her own silly fault.'

Aldermann considered this as he poured the coffee.

As he handed a cup to Ellie, he smiled. It was a good smile. His normal expression was an unexpressive blank, brown eyes observing you neutrally from an oval face whose complete regularity of feature enhanced the sense of a mask. Another kind of man, realizing how attractive and juvenating his smile was, might have used it more often and more calculatingly, but Aldermann was the least self-conscious man Ellie knew. She wasn't sure how much she liked him, not because she knew anything about him to dislike, but simply because he gave so little away. People with something to conceal often reveal themselves negatively through the way they wish to be seen, but Patrick was simply . . . Patrick. A man for whom life had seemed to arrange itself with the natural beauty and perfect proportions of this garden. Except, of course, that this garden owed most of its beauty and lay-out to the working brain and working hand of its owner. Which made you wonder about his life . . .

'You're right, of course,' he said. 'She has this fond belief that danger can't touch her, or that if it does, the gods will protect her by turning her into a bush.'

'Well, you've turned her into a flower,' said Ellie. 'Pity you weren't around yesterday to spray some sense into her.'

It was a light-hearted joke at Daphne's expense but her husband seemed to take it seriously.

'Yes. A pity. But I'm around now.'

'Which you shouldn't be,' said Daphne. 'You should be on your way to Amsterdam. For heaven's sake, I'm not under threat. It was, as you two moral philosophers keep banging on, my own stupid fault that I put myself in the way of this thug who, having got me out his way, can't have any more interest in me, can he?'

'He may still have an interest in Ellie,' said Aldermann. 'At least I assume Peter thinks so from the presence of that young man lurking behind the
Zephirine Drouhin.'

Ellie followed his gaze down the garden to an eight-foot- high pillar covered with carmine-pink blooms, through which the shape of DC Bowler was just discernable.

'Shall I ask him up for a cup of coffee?' said Daphne.

'No!' said Ellie, irritated. 'I'll tell him to sod off.'

'Why not let him be?' said Aldermann. 'He's doing no harm and can come to none.
Zephirine
has a glorious scent and no thorns. So what does Peter think is going on, Ellie?'

'I can't go into details,' said Ellie virtuously. 'Except he thinks the danger's probably over now. My minder down there in the rose bush is more for Peter's peace of mind than my protection.'

'Exactly the reason you're hanging around here, Patrick,' said Daphne. 'It's a typical male control thing.
Your
feelings masquerading as
our
fault.'

'Bravo,' laughed Ellie. 'You've been reading one of those books I loaned you.'

'Don't be silly. You lot think you invented female insight the way kids think they invented sex. It's been around a lot longer than Germaine Greer, if that's possible. Ellie, help me get it into his head that just because I got a bang on the nose doesn't mean I have ceased to be able to stay in my own house by myself.'

'Well,' said Ellie. 'I can see how you might be concerned, Patrick. Frankly I don't know how you can bear to let anyone so completely headstrong and so totally unreliable out of your sight for a moment. But isn't the solution obvious? Take her to the conference with you.'

'Oh, he's tried that,' said Daphne. 'And I'd go if it was anywhere but Holland! I feel so depressed there, mentally and geographically. Only fish and crustaceans were created to exist below sea level. The thought that only some small child's finger is preventing a tidal wave from the North Sea gushing all over me is more than I can bear. But wait. I feel an idea coming on. There is a Plan B. This involves me going away to stay somewhere safe with someone sound. Patrick's preferred candidate is my cousin Joyce in Harrogate. I would prefer the bed of the North Sea to the company of my cousin Joyce in Harrogate. On the other hand, Ellie, you are someone sound whose company I
could
bear, for a little while at least. As for somewhere safe, David and his chums are abandoning the comforts of the bothy today for the more character-building terrain of a camp site in the Trossachs. Why don't we head out there for a few days, Rosie too, of course, and solve both our husbands' problems by looking after each other?'

So, thought Ellie, must Marie Antoinette have sounded as she put forward her solution to the bread-shortage crisis. And so looked too, probably, except maybe for the nose bandage; but certainly the same shining eyes, the same delighted smile, the same exudation of exultation, which probably made the feyer members of the French court a little warm under the collar, were on show here.

She left it to Patrick to point out the major flaw in the proposition, viz, that when stung by a wasp, you do not achieve safety by running away with the jam-pot. When he didn't speak, she put it down to natural spousal reluctance to hurl the first stone and said, 'Daph, that's great, except for one thing. It's me these lunatics are interested in, not you. Safest thing for you is to keep as far away from me as possible.'

'There you go again,' said Daphne. 'Me, me, me all the time.'

Ellie looked at Patrick for the delayed support.

Instead, after another long moment's reflection, he said, 'Nosebleed, as you know, is about fifty miles away on the coast.'

'Nosebleed?' echoed Ellie, trying to interpret this as an obscure and untypically discourteous reference to Daphne's injury.

'Yes. Our cottage. Nosebleed Cottage. That's its name.'

'Good Lord. Charming.'

Patrick smiled and said, 'Don't let it put you off. It's a local name for the common yarrow,
Achillea millefolium.'

'Achillea
? As in Achilles?' said Ellie, suddenly thinking of her story.

'That's right. Yarrow is a potent medicinal plant and has magical properties too, though the distinction is often blurred. Hang on a moment.'

He went through the window into the house.

Daphne said, 'Haven't you learnt never to express an interest in any form of vegetation when Patrick's around, not even if you're eating it?'

'Shut up. I am interested.'

Patrick returned, bearing tomes of various size and antiquity. He leafed through what looked the most ancient.

'Here we are. Gerard's
Herball,
1597. "The plant
Achillea
is thought to be the very same wherewith Achilles cured the wounds of his soldiers." And Grigson in his
Englishman's Flora
cites Apuleius Platonicus's
Herbarium.
"It is said that Achilles the chieftain found it and he with this same wort healed them who were stricken and wounded with iron." So, a kind of Homeric Savlon.'

'As Achilles seemed to spend the best part of his life running around, wounding people, I imagine he had plenty of opportunity to try it out,' said Ellie. 'That's medicine. You mentioned magic before too.'

'Oh yes. Powerful for or against evil, says Grigson. And he quotes from Hurlstone Jackson's
Celtic Miscellany
a translation of a Gaelic incantation to accompany the plucking of yarrow. I have Jackson's slightly modified 1971 version here. You read it, Ellie. It's for a woman.'

He handed her a Penguin paperback with his finger laid against the passage.

Ellie read, hesitantly at first, but in a strengthening voice as the words caught her imagination.

'I will pick the smooth yarrow that my figure may be more elegant, that my lips may be warmer, that my voice may be more cheerful; may my voice be like a sunbeam, may my lips be like the juice of the strawberries. May I be an island in the sea, may I be a hill on the land, may I be a star when the moon wanes, may I be a staff to the weak one: I shall wound every man, no man shall wound me.'

The air seemed to grow heavier and warmer and more richly scented in the silence after she spoke and she felt close to fainting till Daphne broke the spell by saying, 'That was really beautiful, Ellie. Patrick, why isn't our garden full of yarrow?'

'Because here it would be a weed,' said Aldermann firmly.

'But there's a lot of it at Nosebleed, is there?' said Ellie, recovering.

'Indeed. But there's a lot of it on most uncultivated ground. I expect the cottage got its name originally because some early occupant was a healer. Or a witch.'

'Yes, but why call it Nosebleed - the plant, I mean?' asked Ellie.

'Grigson says if you put the leaves up your nose, they can make it bleed, which is a way of finding out if your love is true.
Yarroway, yarroway, bear a white blow. If my love love me, my nose will bleed now.'

Ellie thought, well, I shan't need to try that, and smiled.

Patrick smiled back, but made no irritating enquiry as to the source of her amusement. He was good at that, not at all pushy, content to let people - and things - come to him.

Daphne said, 'Nose-bleeding is a rather insensitive subject for you two to be going on about in view of my condition, don't you think?'

'Sorry,' said Ellie. 'But clearly I was never going to get any of this fascinating information from you. Thank you, Patrick.'

Patrick said, 'My pleasure. I don't know why, but I assumed you would know all about the cottage, perhaps even have visited it.'

Ellie said, 'No, I know nothing about it, except that Daphne refers to it as the bothy, which makes it sound like some rural slum. I didn't even realize till yesterday that in fact you bought it off my good friend, Feenie Macallum.'

She said this to preempt any snidery about Feenie, though to the best of her recollection, she'd never heard Patrick Aldermann say anything unpleasant about anyone.

Daphne snorted at the name and winced as her nose reacted badly.

'Weren't you about to make some point about the cottage before you got diverted, dear?' she said.

'Was I? Oh yes. I was going to say that, despite its distance, I believe the Axness area falls within the purlieu of the Mid-Yorkshire Force? In other words, if you did spend some time there, it would be no problem for Peter to maintain a supervisory programme?'

'You mean, set someone to watch over me? Well, yes, I suppose so. But, Patrick, this is silly . . .'

'Why?' he said. 'In view of what's happened over the past two days, I'd be surprised if Peter hadn't already considered the possibility of removing you and Rosie to a place of safety.'

'Well, yes, he did say something, but - '

'There you are then,' said Aldermann who, despite his quiet and unassertive manner, was somehow very good at inserting his words into the apparently unbroken speech flows of other people. 'And the fact that you've never been there before would make it even less likely that anyone could get a lead on where you'd gone, in the unlikely event that anyone should attempt to get such a lead, I mean.'

'Perhaps, but I think you're missing the point. Like I just said, it's having me around that could be dangerous to Daphne.'

'Forgive me, Ellie; not having you around Daphne is one thing - though I should point out it was your choice to visit us this morning - '

He smiled the smile at her, but it didn't take away the faint sting.

'- but not having Daphne around you is quite another matter. I know you may find it surprising that in some matters I know my wife rather better than you know your friend, but what is preventing me from catching my plane today isn't any suspicion that as soon as I leave, kamikaze terrorists will come spilling across the lawn, it's the certainty that Daphne would be heading to your side as fast as she could, frightened you might enjoy the next episode of your adventure without her company.'

He looked from Daphne to Ellie and back again. They were silent, whether from amazement or indignation they hadn't yet made up their minds.

'Therefore if I am to go to my conference, and I don't disguise that missing it would be a blow, I should feel happier if the pair of you were safely stowed somewhere these people couldn't possibly know about, under the aegis of a police escort, than I would be relying on any assurance my wife or indeed your good self might offer of avoiding each other's company.'

This was more packed with insults than a philanthropist's Christmas pudding with silver three pennies.

Ellie opened her mouth to spit out retaliation, but Daphne was quicker.

'Oh good. That's settled then,' she said brightly. 'Nosebleed, here we come. Ellie, darling, when can you be ready?'

xviii

the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la!

Kelly Cornelius lay in her hot foaming bath and closed her eyes.