Facing the Tank (4 page)

‘Yes you are. You
are
! And you’re going to have babies. Yes! Lots and lots. And I wonder who the father is.’

As has been said, Drummond Lodge was weak on most subjects other than discipline. Human biology was to be dealt with this term and Crispin was having to miss it to spare his father’s bank balance. In any event this was probably too specialized a case to be dealt with in the parameters of a Common Entrance paper. At every opportunity since hearing the news, he had taken Lottie for walks past local houses in the hope that her mate would run out with a friendly yap and make himself known. He had made her jump back and forth over ditches, made her climb stiles, even, when left alone one afternoon, exhausted himself running her up and down stairs. He had sat her down in pride of place on his quilt and begged her, in their secret whispered language, to show that he was blameless in this affair, but she had only gazed devotedly back and raised a reassuring paw which made the outlook blacker still. His imagination, which proved so feeble at conjuring up shades of fantasy lovers, tortured him now with nightmare scenes of his mother shrieking as puppy after glistening puppy emerged with the family nose, or human hands instead of paws or maybe just one baby would be born, nearly human, marred only by a squirrel tail and a tendency to yap at the postman. Yet again Crispin stared hard at the dog’s image and thought, ‘Please no.’

A boy came silently in, then two, then a whole gang. Boxes were opened, old friends greeted, books and insults hurled. Crispin slipped the photograph back inside Trollope and sat on his desk facing the room and shyly answered the exaggeratedly grown-up questions that were occasionally put to him. After a few minutes, Jermyn came back in. She sat on the desk beside his in a faintly protective way and together they watched the
burrow
come to life.

In the bedroom of number five, Bross Gardens, her alarm clock woke Dawn Harper at ten to midnight. Dawn stretched out an arm and silenced it. Without even a frown, she threw off her duvet, walked to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. She took a hairbrush and ran it several times through her hair, which was shoulder-length and straw-coloured. Then she crossed her arms and pulled her nightdress over her head. The bedroom window was open and a breeze from off the Bross caused the gingham curtains to stir slightly. Dawn walked down the stairs of her cottage in the dark. Everything was in a familiar place, their order remaining unchanged since she lived alone and received no guests, so she had no need of light. In the kitchen she opened the drawer of the table and took out a black candle in a dark wooden candlestick and an atomizer. She sprayed herself all over with the latter and the night air was touched with citronella. Then she lit the candle with a lighter from the drawer before opening the kitchen door into her back garden.

Bross Gardens was a row of Victorian labourers’ cottages, so called because their gardens ran down to the River Bross at the foot of Barrowcester Hill. The cottages were cheap because poky, damp and awkwardly situated. To reach them by car, one had to take a lengthy route around the entire hill. There was a long flight of steps up the bank behind the cottages which led to an unmade-up lane off Station Approach. Dawn went everywhere on foot and used this route for her daily trips into town. Dawn was no beauty – her late mother nicknamed her Old Father Time – but through the ceaseless exercise she received up and down the hill, she was as lean as a gazelle. Had anyone ever been in a position to see them, they would have found that she was possessed of exquisite legs.

She reached out to the right of the back door and found her plastic deck chair leaning where she had left it in the small hours of yesterday. She set the candlestick down on the grass and walked to the part of her little garden where a cherry tree was in flower. There she set up the chair and returned for the candle.

‘Damn,’ said Dawn, for the breeze had blown it out. She returned for the lighter, lit the candle again and walked with it to the deck chair, shielding it with a hand. She sat in the chair, the blossoms framing her naked form, the light flickering up on her hereditary double chin, down on to her granite breasts and throwing into dancing contrast the features of her sombre face. ‘Nema,’ she began, ‘Reve dna reve rof yrolg eht dna rewop.’ She paused for breath. Her speech had the local vowel sounds but was peculiarly toneless, lacking the singsong patter that greeted the visiting ear in Barrowcester market. ‘Eht modgnik eht si eniht rof noitatpmet otni ton su dael dna.’

‘Temptation’ was one of the hardest words to say backwards along with ‘kingdom’ and ‘against’. ‘Against’ backwards sounded like something in a kung-fu film. Dawn had been reciting the Lord’s Prayer back to front every night for several months. It had taken effect once, it would do so again. She had given up the Cathedral long ago, and it was far too long now for her to own up her problem to the police. This way was discreet and enjoyable. She liked the stroke of the night air on her skin and the scents of the river blending with her own. The last pleasure was marred by the necessity, now that the mosquitoes were here, of using citronella every night.

She had gleaned the fundamentals of her new religion from a book called
Visions of Torment; a Study of Ideas of Hell
by an American. She had read it several times in the public library, then embarked on her new philosophy by stealing it. A list of further reading had guided her to more detailed sources but
Visions of Torment
remained her bible; she kept it by her bed.

It was amusing to see how easily one could perform this ritual on a nightly basis and yet walk amongst one’s fellows without let or hindrance. When people suggested she join them for a Christian service – strictly forbidden now, if she was to have her heart’s desire – she would simply mutter,

‘It’s not really my scene, I’m afraid,’ or ‘I think I’m a little bit too cynical for that myself,’ or even ‘I think my beliefs lie in quite another direction,’ and that would be that. Very civilised. She had once tried the bald truth. When Mrs Delaney-Siedentrop had said, in that wheedling voice of hers,

‘Oh Dawn dear, why is it we so rarely see
you
inside the sacred precincts?’

Dawn had answered flatly,

‘I’m a Satanist.’

Mrs Delaney-Siedentrop had only stared a moment, then roared with laughter, within the limits of her gentility. Dawn thought it might be disrespectful to continue to make people laugh in this way at her practices, so she had contented herself with half-truths. Since her new Lord was father of lies there was no occasion for guilt. The only other time she had come close to telling the truth about this business had been when Fergus, her only friend, had asked her what she had been up to and she had replied,

‘Oh, nothing much. Sitting naked on a deck chair at midnight; that sort of thing.’

He had found this so funny that it had entered the idiom of their friendship and had become a way of saying goodbye.

Something stirred in the bushes to her right. Dawn paused in her incantation.

‘Sasha?’ she called. There was no reply and no further noise, so she assumed it had been the wind. She brought the prayer to an end. ‘Nevaeh ni tra ohw rehtaf ruo,’ she declared, furrowing her brow over ‘ruo’ as she had trouble saying her Rs. Then, alone with her black candle and the pitchy billows of the Bross, she sat and waited for her heart’s desire.

Evan had shared his corner of the carriage with three auntly women in hats, and a fox terrier. His attempts to read his colleague Sukie Lark Rosen’s
Towards a New Mythology
which he was meant to be reviewing for
The Observer
were thwarted by the impossibility of not eavesdropping on his first three Barrowers. He had taken a look at them as they boarded at King’s Cross and asked him whether it was the Barrowcester train. Finding him to be American, they had thanked him warmly for his confirmation then the short, neat one with the fox terrier had proceeded to put the same question to an English couple in the seat across the aisle. Amused rather than offended, Evan had buried his smile in Sukie’s new book but gradually found his attention poached by their interminable conversation. They were not maiden sisters as he had at first supposed, but three friends who had come ‘to Town’ in a pack for security. The one with the dog had been to stay Saturday night with her sister and regaled the others with every detail concerning the latter’s lighthouse-keeper husband and children. The others were bored with this pathetic display of total recall, as they showed by their aggressively irrelevant interruptions concerning litter, cinema posters and scandal concerning a recent sermon of their Bishop’s. They had spent their weekend together. They had passed the weekend in a ‘small hotel’, had today visited a Cecil Beaton exhibition in the Barbican Centre, where they had got lost, and had spent Saturday evening watching a Frederick Lonsdale revival which they had found ‘silly and dated but rather fun’.

‘A bit like us, really,’ had chipped in the one with the fox terrier and they had all laughed.

Evan had taken this opportunity to look up from his book to take a better look at them but the dog, which was too close for comfort, had caught his eye and bared its yellow teeth in a quietly gargling growl and driven him back to his work. When he had lit up the first of several cigarettes there had been an outbreak of gentle coughing until, with a further bout of hilarity, they had seen that they had settled inadvertently in ‘a smoker’. This had led the conversation, via an atoning hymn to their pipe-smoking fathers, to a less tactful discussion of cancer and so to the fluting round of reminiscence, acrimony and lurid horrors with which they whiled away the remaining miles. The only interruptions had been the visit of the ticket inspector (leading to a brief chat about the Colonies), the punctual six o’clock feed of the dog from an array of miniature plastic cartons and Evan’s escape with his case when they were within fifteen minutes of arrival for a restorative vodka tonic.

There were three taxis on the station forecourt. The fox terrier woman claimed the first, her companions fairly ran to the second and the one behind was taken, with an apologetic chuckle, by an elegant undertaker Evan had engaged in desultory conversation in the buffet car. Other passengers melted into the car park while a few headed into the station approach at the spruce pace of those who choose to walk whenever possible. Evan cast an appraising eye over the steep hill ahead of them and lit a Winston. His head inches from one of the hanging baskets that adorned the entrance arcade, he waited for another taxi and admired the view.

Allowing for the inevitable spread, the place echoed Cordes or Mont-St-Michel. A hundred or so years ago it must have been the stereotypical hill town of illuminated margins; a bustle of houses on a hill, bounded by a river and a wall, dwarfed by a heaven-pointing church in its midst. If Barrowcester Cathedral pointed heavenward it did so with two fingers; a victory V, naturally.

Once one of the original taxis had returned and was bearing him up past the shopfronts of the principal streets, Evan turned briefly to peer down the hill towards the railway viaduct and the pink-fluffed evening sky. The station site could have been chosen with a view to royal visits. An important limousine could sweep in a straight line from the station door up the High Street and on to the pompous, slightly Bavarian building Evan took to be the town hall. He chatted to the driver with half an ear, feasting his eyes as they left the High Street and were suddenly steering along a road of perfect Early Georgian. Then they swung under an impressive arch into the Close.

‘Cathedral,’ announced the driver and fell silent, used to the awe of new arrivals.

Evan saw, framed by soaring lime trees, a colossal buttressed T of silver stone which threw up two filigreed spires from its centre. He was suitably awestruck. Even in the softening glow of a sinking sun it was a brutal, proud structure demanding nothing so banal as a tourist’s admiration. The Close road formed a crescent from one transept to the other, via the high west end. Evan was staring so intently over his shoulder that their arrival, passing out by another fortified arch and stopping almost at once, took him by surprise.

‘Tracer Lane, Professor,’ announced the taxi driver, who had gleaned something of Evan’s work from their brief chat, and he named the price of the ride. He was so sedulous in carrying the Professor’s suitcase up the steps to the front door that Evan assumed he had overtipped as usual.

It was the only house in the row that failed to harmonize. Where the others were balanced, two-and-a-half-storey Georgian (or earlier), painted various but not warring shades of cream, blue and pale pink, 8 Tracer Lane was a piece of exotic-bricked Victoriana. It was one room wide, as if it had elbowed its way into the row and been forced to stand sideways and was now craning its neck over four storeys so as to enjoy a view of the Close at the cost of any indignity. The white front door opened before Evan had time to reach its knocker.

‘Professor Kirby?’

‘Yes.’

‘Mercedes Merluza, but everyone calls me Mercy. How
do
you do? We’ve been expecting you. Come in.’

He wondered why she had used the plural. Perhaps she spoke on behalf of the community. She was not English. She pronounced these few short phrases with the exaggerated precision of one who has learnt her lesson but remains nervous of failure. He followed her into the hall which was furnished to extend the exotica of the exterior. A wide arch of gilt-edged mirror was framed by two Egyptian-looking vases from which rose high fronds of pampas grass.

‘That nice girl from your literary agency rang up on Friday night to say you would be coming on the five o’clock train,’ she said. ‘I would have come to pick you up but I don’t drive.’

The attempt to say literary had given her away.

‘
Es española, Usted?
’ he had to ask.

‘Yes, but it’s a long story which can wait,’ she said in Spanish, then went on in English with the same brittle smile. ‘I put my lodgers in here in the granny flat.’

She ran pointed fingers through her hair as she spoke. Surmounting nails and lips in traffic-light red, eyebrows plucked into constant shock and a tan fudge foundation, this full mane of black resembled a superior wig. Evan wondered if this were an habitual gesture to scotch rumours.

She led the way up two steps immediately to the right of the front door into a set of rooms carved from little space with cunning and much chipboard. The ‘kitchenette’ came first with a net-curtained view of the pavements of Tracer Lane, then a noisily sliding door let one into a windowless bathroom with no lavatory or shower from which a second sliding door led on to the bedroom. This was delightful, having French windows on to one of the overgrown gardens that seemed to be the fashion in Barrowcester and a desk by a second window where Evan could work. Evan slung his suitcase on to the bed. He could tell from the way it bounced that the mattress was too soft and would give him backache but there was room for him to drag the mattress on to the floor if things got really bad. Mrs Merluza showed him how the key to the French windows dangled from a nail elsewhere to deter burglars and demonstrated with a flush of pride the string that drew the plum-coloured curtains.

‘Now I’m afraid the little boys’ room is out in the hall,’ she said, ‘but you’ll need to come there now anyway as that’s where we hang our coats.’

He followed her to the hall. A small passage led into the kitchen and beside it a door opened out into a lavatory like a bowling alley where he duly hung up his coat.

‘Now what about food?’ she asked.

‘Well … I thought I’d take myself off on an explore tonight and maybe eat out.’

‘Lovely. I’ll get your breakfast in the morning. Is eight-fifteen all right?’

‘Sounds great.’

‘I’m afraid I may have to leave it on a hot plate for you as I tend to go to the early Communion across the way.’

‘Of course. My agent recommended I try eating at Le Tarte Tartin. Is it good?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘very good. Very good indeed.’ Then she added, ‘I gather,’ and he knew that she could not afford to eat there. He sensed that she had spent her all on buying the house and been forced to furnish it with atmospheric junk and to take in lodgers. In answer to his smile of sympathy, she asked him up to her sitting room for a quick sherry before he went out. They sat across from each other on sofas whose age she had masked with shawls, and drank two glasses each of Amontillado – one quick, one slow. With the minimum of prompting he confessed to being on the brink of divorce and then, while he studied her curiously, she told him in hushed tones of her family’s tragedy involving a large house on the outskirts of Barcelona and a small but efficacious incendiary bomb.

Evan accepted a third ‘small’ glass. He was going to enjoy himself in Barrowcester.