Dangerous Thoughts (16 page)

I wasn’t finding the task of shopping without a car nearly as daunting as Jessica had made it sound. The village shop sold just about everything, including the things you can’t get for love or money in London, like narrow black elastic and reels of cotton. Jessica had left most of the decisions to me: something for today’s lunch, she’d said, and then something for the evening meal as well. “Something really nice,” she urged, “just in case Leo might be back, though I don’t suppose he will be. It might easily not be till tomorrow or Friday.” Someone from the hospital was supposed to be calling her, but it hadn’t happened yet, so all she could do was stay by the telephone and hope. Well, all
she
could do. Someone else might have found something more positive to do with the time, such as ringing the hospital herself despite the problems of language and foreign exchanges: but Jessica was Jessica, and changing her nature was no part of my duties as a cooperative guest. Besides, what about that tickle in her throat? She still had it, no worse, but likewise no better, as is the way with tickles in the throat after barely half a day.

Bread. Milk. Sausages. Such little pies as they had in stock, and as many tins of variegated goodies as I felt I could reasonably be expected to lug home in the two shopping bags, one on each arm.

Thus weighed down, I paused outside the shop to consider my route. Straight back along the road would be quickest, but I felt a great yearning to walk alongside the sea, the final gusts of last
night’s gale whipping my hair; and so, despite my load, I turned left, and set off in the direction of the shore.

The tide was far out, and I saw them first when they were still almost half a mile away, three solitary little figures standing out black and tiny in the expanse of empty sand. At this distance I could not see what they were doing, their movements were minuscule, aimless, like those of ants; and it was only after several more minutes of walking along the restless white margin of the ebbing tide that I was able to recognise them with any certainty. Sally’s blonde sweep of hair was tossed by the wind into damp wisps around her bright face; Barnaby was dragging a spade this way and that across the wet sand, bored, making idle patterns while he waited for the grown-ups to
do
something.

And Edwin? He stood a little aside contemplating them both, and I could tell, even at this distance, from the very set of his shoulders, that he was feeling pleased with himself; as if he had scored off something or somebody.

I increased my pace. The shopping bags banged viciously against my thighs as I half-ran towards them.

“Sally!” I cried, as soon as I judged I was within hearing, “what are you
doing
? Daphne’s terribly upset; you ought to …”

I’d judged the distance wrongly.

“
What
?”
she answered, and before I was able to repeat my reprimand, Barnaby had broken away and was racing towards me, the spade swinging at all angles as he ran.

It wasn’t as flattering as it looked. He was merely bored, and I was the nearest thing to a happening that had come his way for many a long minute.

The flailing spade landed on my ankle, edgewise.

“Ouch!” I said. “Didn’t mean to,” he perfunctorily apologised; and then, oppressed by the realisation that one grown-up is just as dull as another when they are intent on their own affairs, he turned and sauntered back to his former companions.

Sally reached out and clutched Edwin’s hand, as if seeking
moral support in the face of my reproaches, which she must have seen were justified.

“Yes, well, I suppose I
should
have left her a note, but I took for granted she’d
know
where I’d gone. I mean, she knew Richard and I had been having a bit of a thing about it; I told her. He was being so funny about not letting me come with him, you see; I don’t know what got into him. I mean, it seemed such a wicked shame, a lovely seaside place like this, and not to take me and Barnaby … We never had a proper holiday this year, you know, with all the to-ings and fro-ings and terrorists and stuff, and so this seemed such a chance … And so in the end we just
came
!”
she finished. “Didn’t we, Barnaby? On the
train
…”

“
Two
trains,” Barnaby corrected her. “An Inter-city and then …”

“And then of course we had to get a taxi,” Sally resumed the narrative, “and I found I hadn’t got enough money. The man wanted another three pounds forty, and so when we got to the hotel Richard had to come down and pay him … It was a pity it had to happen that way … I’d planned to give him a lovely surprise, bursting into his room and giving him a lovely great kiss. It’s difficult, that sort of thing, while you’re paying a taxi.”

Her voice trailed away, and I gathered that the reunion hadn’t been a great success.

“But it’s all right
now
,” she finished. “He’s as pleased as pleased to have me with him, I knew he would be, he always is in the end … Barnaby, why don’t you run on ahead and see if Daddy’s finished showing Jessica all those papers …?”

We were nearing the top of the beach now, and Sally, still swinging Edwin’s hand light-heartedly in her own, was kicking with her bare feet at the dry, powdery sand, carefree as a child.

“What a gorgeous morning!” she cried, tossing her bright head. “It’s like magic, isn’t it, all this sun and wind. Poor Richard! What a shame he’s spending the whole lovely morning indoors with all that silly work!”

He wasn’t, though. By this time, Barnaby, scrambling, slipping and battling his way up the steep sand dune ahead of us, had let out a cry of delight and surprise.

“Daddy!” he shrieked, “Daddy, what you doing? Daddy, get
up
!”

And Daddy (I suppose by now there was no other option) got up. His tall spare figure rose with dignity from the clump of marram grass by which it had been concealed.

Had he been watching us? Or merely resting, enjoying the view? He moved in our direction, awkwardly of course as he negotiated the steep slope of the dune, but when he reached the level surface of the beach, I noticed that his movements were still awkward. His limping was more noticeable than it had been in London, and as he drew near, I could see that his face was pale and strained. He looked almost ill.

However, he said nothing about being in pain — well, he wouldn’t, would he? — and his perfect manners were still in place. He greeted both me and Edwin with punctilious correctness, and soon our ill-assorted little party were setting off together towards the house.

“What those big ducks going to do?” enquired Barnaby, clutching his father’s hand and pulling back as we reached the meadow gate. “I don’t like those big ducks!”

“Geese,” corrected his father, tightening his grip on the child’s hand and pulling him forward. “Come along, Barnaby, they won’t hurt you.”

“They
will
hurt me!” Barnaby balked and pulled back harder than ever. “They’re cross! They’re
saying
that they’re cross!”

And it did indeed sound like that. Ever-hopeful, even though it was hours before their normal feeding-time, the whole flock had gathered in force at our approach, and their greedy, reproachful hissing did indeed sound threatening — especially when it was head-high to the listener as it was to Barnaby.

“No …! No …!” he wailed, but his father — shamed, I
could see, by this public display of pusillanimity by his only son— dragged him forward.

A light tap on the child’s leg from one of the roving beaks was the last straw. Barnaby burst into howls of fear and indignation, while his father, frowning, seemed to decide that the upholding of the family honour was not being best served by a continuance of the battle. He gave up, and allowed the boy to retreat a pace or two.

He was not pleased, however, and reproved the child quite sharply:

“Stop crying, Barnaby! Don’t be so silly! Stop it at once! Big boys don’t cry!”

The large tear-filled blue eyes were raised to the father’s dark and stern ones:

“Big boys
do
cry!
I’
m
a big boy, and
I’m
crying!” he countered, with unassailable logic; and at this fraught moment of father-son relations, Edwin saw fit to intervene.

“I’ll tell you what, Barnaby,” he said, holding out an encouraging hand, “All we have to do is to march slowly through them, saying, very loudly, ‘Geese, geese, let us through! Geese, geese, let us through!’ We have to say it both together while we march — Like this!”

And lo and behold, chanting this mantra at the top of their voices, the two of them tramped through the concourse quite unscathed.

“Again! Again!” shrieked Barnaby, tears dried, his face alight. “Let’s march through them
again,
Edwin!”

And hand in hand, their faces aglow with triumph, the two of them paced back and forth through the flock twice more.

Barnaby was in ecstasy: Edwin hardly less so, visibly preening himself on the fact that he had displayed child-handling skills far superior to those of the boy’s own father.

And Richard? For a fraction of a second, I saw such hatred in his eyes as I have never before witnessed. But the look was gone almost before I had registered it, replaced by the usual cool, controlled and dignified demeanour.

And within seconds, Sally had put things even further to rights — whether through loving insight into her husband’s feelings, or simply through a spontaneous overflow of exuberance from her own sunny nature, I could not guess. Whichever it was, she did exactly the right thing: nestling up against Richard as they walked, and changing the subject entirely with a bit of special pleading.

“Darling,” she said, “you know what I’d simply
love
to do while we’re here? Oh, do say we can … You can’t be working
all
the time, now can you?”

The light, the softness that came into the strained, stern face as he looked down at her was lovely to behold.

“What is it, pet?” he asked. “Something within reason, I trust?” And you could tell from the smile in his voice that it would need to be something far outside reason indeed before he would find it in his heart to refuse.

“That wreck,” Sally was explaining eagerly. “That wreck we saw from our hotel window — remember? And you were wondering how it had got there — why they hadn’t done something about it —?”

“Well? And you’ve found out, have you, love?”

“Sort of, yes, at least what I
have
found out is that they run boat trips round it! That woman at our table at breakfast — she says the official trips are over for the season, but she thinks you can still hire a boat and row yourself out. Oh, Richard, do let’s! It would be such fun!”

“Well …” Richard was still smiling, longing to please her, but nevertheless a little cautious. “I’ll have to find out about it. The currents may be very treacherous, you see, round a massive obstacle like that. For anyone who doesn’t know the coast … isn’t familiar with the tides …”

“Oh, darling, don’t be such an old
stick
!
Of
course
it’ll be all right! I mean, they wouldn’t hire out the boats, would they, unless …”

“And another thing, Sally. A lot depends on when Leonard is
due to arrive. That’s the main reason for our being here, to help Jessica with things like driving to the airport. He’ll still be a bit of an invalid, you know, and I’m rather anxious to …”

“Oh, darling,
of
course
.” Sally concurred. “Of course that must come first. But, I mean, he won’t be arriving
all
the
time,
will he? I mean, if he arrives today, then he won’t be arriving tomorrow, will he? And if he’s arriving tomorrow, then this afternoon we could …”

She chattered on, happy and full of plans. Listening to her, I felt a surge of relief. So it would be
Richard
driving Jessica to the airport, not Edwin at all. My anxieties on this score had been quite superfluous.

A few minutes later, we had reached the house, and Jessica, despite her throat (or had it perhaps stopped tickling now, cured by excitement?) was hurrying out to meet us.

“I’ve heard!” she cried. “They’ve telephoned, and his plane should be getting in at 2.55! We’ll just have time for a very quick lunch … Oh, isn’t it exciting? … Oh dear, there’s so much I haven’t done! It’s all so difficult, and Phoebe hasn’t arrived today
at
all
!
She’s so unreliable, that girl, it’s really hardly worth … And I meant to have
such
a nice meal ready for him, his first evening …!”

There followed a distracting few minutes of suggestions and counter-suggestions; arrangements about places, starting times, and whether the Barlows should or should not stay and have lunch here, despite there being only three small pork pies and some celery? And there was the further question; whether Barnaby should be allowed to share in the jaunt to the airport? He would be in the way, Richard maintained; on the other hand, said Sally, he would love to see the planes landing and taking off; and anyway, what else was to be done with him?

This was my cue, I couldn’t help feeling, to offer to baby sit for the afternoon, though with no great enthusiasm. I had already undertaken to contrive some sort of celebration meal for the returning hero, which would almost certainly involve a further
visit to the village shop; to do all this with Barnaby at my heels was a daunting prospect; and so I was greatly relieved when Sally changed tack, apparently quite willingly, and suggested that she herself should stay behind and look after her small son. It would leave more room for Leo, wouldn’t it, in case he needed to put his injured leg up on the back seat.

It was while all this was being settled that I noticed, for the first time, that Edwin was no longer with us. Had he gone on indoors? Or lagged behind in the meadow? Or …?

I remembered exactly where I had found our car yesterday, and now, as I hurried along the coast road in the hazy afternoon warmth, I was no longer puzzled as to why Edwin had chosen to park it there, and bother to lie about its whereabouts as well. He had been scheming all the time to drive to the airport alone when the time came, to meet Leonard Coburn by himself, before anyone else had a chance to do so. Had he brought the car right up to the house, and parked it in the stable-yard, or in the road just outside, he would have had no chance whatever of driving off unnoticed. Inevitably, Jessica would have joined him; would have assumed, naturally, that giving her a lift was the whole purpose of the expedition.

Exactly as I had expected. Deep tyre-marks were still visible on the sandy verge, but the car was gone.

For a few moments I stood baffled, bathed in the weak sunshine, and trying to work out, from the data available, what Edwin might be planning to do?

I let the scenario wash over me. Edwin, all smiles and handshakes, greeting his erstwhile colleague. What about a drink, old boy, before we set off? A beer? A double whisky? Or do you feel more like a coffee? No, no, you just sit here, I’ll get it …

And then, on the way back from the bar, or from the tea and coffee counter, there would be a small detour past some inconspicuous table where he could set the drinks down and
shake into one of them the ready-crushed Mogadons. Who, among the bustling, self-absorbed passengers was going to notice or care what a total stranger was doing with his tray of drinks?

Not a fatal dose, of course. This is not possible with Mogadon anyway, as is surely well known: well known to Edwin, anyway, so assiduous had been his medical researches of late. Not a fatal dose, then, but enough to make his victim bemused and drowsy, possibly comatose, so that his state on arriving home would endorse one hundred percent Edwin’s carefully planted predictions about the dire effects of concussion. Leonard, of course, would begin to recover at some stage during the evening or night: but who would thereafter give total credence to the assertions of a man who could fall so easily and so unpredictably into a state of semi-consciousness?

Something like that. And what in the world could I do to prevent it? Edwin had had already a good half-hour’s start: there was no way I could catch up with him now even if, miraculously, a hired car should be available at a moment’s notice in this out-of-the-way spot. I could, of course, go back to the house and beg to be taken along with the others in Richard’s car. No one would object, I felt sure.

Here I was brought up short, my colourful scenario falling about my ears. Edwin might indeed reach the airport ahead of the others, but what would he gain by that? It would merely involve him in waiting an extra length of time in the Arrival bay until Leonard’s plane came in, by which time the others would be waiting too, probably standing alongside, and his early, furtive start would have achieved nothing.

Surely, surely, Edwin would have thought of this?

He had. When I reached the house some minutes later, I found an angry, chattering little crowd gathered round Richard’s car, which was parked in the cobbled yard. Our own party were all there, augmented by the freckle-faced Phoebe (who had evidently devised some way of missing school after all), and also by our local historian, Rhoda Fairbrother, of werewolf fame.
Even My Woman was amongst the throng, apparently risen from her bed of sickness for the occasion.

“It’s those lager louts from Milham Bridge!” Rhoda was angrily asserting. “None of
our
lads would do a thing like that! It’s the parents, you know; Milham Bridge is turning into one of those commuting villages, the parents working in London, out of the house till nine o’clock at night, the mothers too. No time for their kids at all. It’s no wonder …”

In the midst of this sociological diagnosis, Richard, crimson-faced, was struggling to change the wheel, receiving minimal help from the surrounding company: not from lack of goodwill, or even of efficiency; rather from a multiplicity of good intentions, each tending to cancel out the other.

“No, Jessica, more to the right. Sally, darling, move
away
! You’re preventing … Now, when I say ‘Three’ … All together …”

The fixing of the spare wheel seemed to be presenting some unforeseen problem. The original one, ferociously slashed, lay in the dust. I watched, anxiously. Time was passing.

“What about
your
car, Jessica?” I tentatively suggested. “Just this once …?”

She shook her head, miserably. “It’s having its overhaul,” she explained. “Since I can’t drive at the moment, it seemed a good time to …

At last, the wheel was fixed. I looked at my watch. They were bound to be late, but maybe the plane wouldn’t be on time.

In another few minutes, they were on their way, the rest of us standing at the gate, waving, and watching them gather speed along the coast road.

Why hadn’t I done anything? Why hadn’t I warned them of what Edwin was planning to do? Wasn’t this taking wifely loyalty altogether too far? How could I allow Leo’s mental stability to be so unjustly called into question? Well, I wouldn’t allow it, I told myself. Not if it actually happened.

But would it? The scenario I’d conjured up did seem to be the
only one which made sense of the purloining of the pills and of Edwin’s behaviour this afternoon. I felt little doubt that I had assessed his intentions more or less correctly — but would he, in fact, carry out his plan when it came to the point? Or would he ‘get cold feet’ as Richard had so scornfully predicted. Would he muddle it somehow? So far, watching from the side-lines, I had several times witnessed what appeared to be murder plans going off at half-cock. Two attempts to involve Richard in a motoring accident; and then the appropriating of Jason’s boletus to find out if it was poisonous. What, exactly, had he meant to do if it had turned out that this
was
the case? A lunch party of sorts? At home, or at the Barlows’? With fried mushrooms somehow inserted into the menu?

None of these schemes had so far come to anything, nor (it seemed to me) had had any realistic chance of doing so. Was one not drawn to conclude that at some deep and perhaps unconscious level they hadn’t been meant to come to anything? Were they perhaps just as much fantasy as the original fantasy of his non-existent adventures? Just as he had lost his nerve when it came to actually embarking on the dangerous trip with his colleagues, did he also lose his nerve every time one of his murder plans looked as if it might actually work?

Was this why I had been finding it so impossible either to challenge him myself or to warn his potential victims? It was because he hadn’t visibly done anything. He hadn’t even threatened anyone. How can you accuse a man of violent crime when no violent crime has been committed? The only crime I could accuse him of was the crime of Dangerous Thoughts, and this, surely, only counts as a criminal offence under the most tyrannous of dictatorships? Once again, I came to the conclusion that all I could do was to wait on events.
If
Leo seemed to be in any sort of a daze as he climbed from Edwin’s car, then of course I’d …

“Come on, Clare, we’ve made some tea. They won’t get back any the sooner for you standing mooning at the gate, you know!”

Rhoda’s bracing voice recalled me from my uneasy musings, and I joined the others round the kitchen table for what turned out to be a really quite relaxing half-hour of idle chatter. Sally talked about the hotel she and Richard were staying in, with its darling little mobiles just inside the front door. Rhoda talked about the teenage drug scene in villages other than this one: and My Woman talked about her back, and how it wasn’t too bad on the level, it was going up and down stairs that gave her gyp: while Phoebe didn’t talk at all, but got on with the homework she had somehow failed to find a way of missing.

By now, Barnaby’s afternoon rest was coming to an end. The bumps, scrapes, rattles and thuds that had marked its continuance abruptly ceased, and he was now on his way downstairs, singing loudly to himself, and raring to go.

Go where? Well, there was quite a bit of sunshine still left, Sally calculated, so she could take him on the beach for an hour or so. The plane was bound to be late, Richard wouldn’t be back for ages, and if by any chance he
did
turn up, then one of us could tell him he’d find her on the beach. With which carefree assessment of the situation she set off, with Barnaby in her wake, clonking his spade across the cobbles of the stable-yard as they went.

Too many cooks were by now gathering to spoil the coq au vin which I’d planned for Leo’s home-coming. It was Rhoda who had come to our rescue in the first place, fetching chicken pieces out of her deepfreeze, and this of course entitled her to interfere in a big way with my plans for cooking it.
No,
she said, leaning across me, marinading them in the wine and bay leaves before cooking wasn’t at all necessary, she never bothered with it herself. And why only bay leaves? Surely mixed herbs would give more flavour? And the onions should go in
whole,
not chopped like that.

And My Woman wasn’t much better. Naturally enough, she felt herself to have long-established rights over this kitchen, and to every utensil I touched, every pan I reached for, she would
say: “No, no, Mrs Coburn always uses
this
one.” The problem was compounded by the fact that I didn’t know if she was officially back at work, being paid by the hour for hanging about like this, or whether she was just filling in time in order not to miss the excitement of Mr Coburn’s return, with his leg in plaster, or so she’d heard and whatever else. In any case, it wasn’t for
me
to say Well, thank you very much, I think that’ll be all.

The dispute about the chopping and the non-chopping of the onions had just about reached deadlock. It was no longer any use for me just to give in about it, because by now the two of them, Rhoda and My Woman, had established entrenched positions one on each side of the great divide. And so it came about that I felt nothing but relief when the telephone interrupted our preparations. I abandoned the battle-front with alacrity. Let the best chef win.

A lightening strike of air-controllers at some distant airport. Leonard’s departure indefinitely delayed. Nothing for it but to come straight back, and wait for further information.

Richard’s cool, clipped voice down the telephone gave nothing away of what he was feeling; but obviously he must be considerably put-out and concerned. It came to me that Sally really must be here to greet him when he arrived back, disappointed and on edge. For him to be greeted merely by the casual message that he’d find her on the beach didn’t seem a good idea at all.

Come to that, I’d expected them back before now myself. The sun was gone, a chill wind had come up, and clouds were gathering.

*

At first, as I came down the dunes on to the beach, the place seemed totally deserted. As far as I could see in each direction there was nothing but a grey-brown waste of sand, gleaming wetly where the grey waves rolled in, whipped by the wind into spiralling twists of foam.

And then I saw them. Far out on the heaving water, close alongside the wreck. The little boat was tossing and heaving perilously, and the two figures within it leaned and swayed this way and that as they desperately plied their oars. Well, it looked desperate from here, but maybe they knew what they were doing? Edwin has never been what you could call a rowing man, but on our occasional boating trips on holiday, he had always seemed to acquit himself well enough. Until, that is, Jason became old enough to take one of the oars, after which these trips became a nightmare of shouts and scoldings, with Jason, ceaselessly reprimanded, becoming sullen and nervous and beginning actually to do the wrong thing, his steering all to pieces, the boat spinning out of control.

But of course it wouldn’t be like that with Sally. Whatever
she
might be doing wrong out in that pitching little craft would be smilingly forgiven — unless, of course, they actually
were
in danger? In which case …

My heart lurched. Barnaby …? Was
he
there, with them? Had they ventured to take him, too, on this scatterbrained jaunt? I remembered what Richard had said this morning about the possible danger from currents, the powerful underflow around the wreck. Had it right now got them in its grip, dragging them relentlessly — whither? To their deaths, sucked unstoppably beneath those huge, rotting timbers?

Over the rolling expanse of intervening water I could just distinguish their voices, which at first had so blended with the cries of the gulls and the swirl of the hurrying surf that they had not registered on my hearing. Even now I could not hear what they were saying, nor even the tone of voice, whether of panic or enjoyment. Except, suddenly, Barnaby’s voice, shrill and unmistakeable across the racing water:

“Again, Edwin!” I fancied I heard him shriek. “Again! Again!”

So it was all just fun after all? An amusing little adventure, no cause for panic? Or was it just Barnaby who was unaware of any
cause for panic? For his sake, were they repressing signs of terrible fear?

The repressing of feelings was not characteristic of Sally; and Edwin, though he did try when it was to his advantage, was no good at it. So perhaps they
were
all right? And now, at last, I began to breathe more freely. The distance between me and the little tossing craft was visibly diminishing. Slowly, and perhaps with some difficulty, they were making it to shore.

“Oh, Clare, it was such
fun
!”
cried Sally, struggling up the beach, hair, sweater, jeans all soaked with spray. “It was so
exciting
!
We thought we were absolutely going to
capsize,
didn’t we, Edwin, when that great wave threw us right smack into the wreck? I thought it was going to
swallow
us, it looks so
huge
when you’re close to, you’ve no idea! I thought we’d never get away from it; we rowed and rowed, and every time a great wave would come and heave us back —”