Hartsend (26 page)

The room felt very chilly. Duncan pulled the quilt closer, hoping he might get back to sleep , but it was no use. Once more consciousness brought with it thoughts of Lesley.

And a feeling of guilt. He'd been very upset that night, hurt by her lack of explanation. He'd pondered deeply on what he might not ‘have a clue' about, and come up with nothing. But for Mrs Fleming, he might never have found an answer.

She'd been in need of painkillers. Apparently the box in the First Aid kit was empty. Negligence on the part of the Miss Guthrie the First Aid officer. He offered ibuprofen, which she accepted gratefully. Then, with a small fluttery gesture of one hand towards her middle, she mouthed the words ‘time of the month.'

He was embarrassed, but later realized that she had done him a service. She had solved the mystery. Everything now made perfect sense. He supposed in a way it was something of a compliment, since it suggested Mrs Fleming didn't see him as an old fuddy-duddy. Lesley, being the person she was, would never dream of mentioning such things. Not to him, certainly.

At once his anger had evaporated. Her name now conjured up for him only vulnerability. He felt terrible. His heart ached with sympathy. Lukewarm tea, custard cream biscuits too long in the tin, a kitchen tiled in ancient, pale yellow Vitrolite – he saw now with miserable clarity how everything fitted together to make a sort of metaphor of her life. No wonder she disliked it so much. It reminded one of old hospital corridors, and boiler rooms in school basements. And yet, if she hated it, why didn't she change it? Surely there was something childish in this refusal to change things?

The temperature, as forecast, had fallen overnight. In the dim garden below the cracks in the tarred paths were frost-rimmed, the lawns altered to rough expanses of greenish white. Time to take the first suet balls from the freezer. Breadcrumbs. Beef suet from the local butcher. Oats and raisins. Chunky peanut butter. Sunflower seeds got from the Pet Shop, and polenta from the Co-operative.

He was proud of his suet balls. He gave some to a select few of his colleagues in the library each year as an early Christmas present, with a note on the gift tag, ‘‘Not For Human Consumption,'' because as someone had jokingly said, they had more nutrition in them than supermarket sausages.

The sparrows would find them first. He'd changed his mind recently about sparrows on learning that they were in decline and it cheered him to feel that they'd found a haven in his garden. The starlings would squabble over them.
Not
the favourites of his flock. Their sheen reminded him of petrol on water. Greedy, vicious in their intentions and unintelligent, they were the avian equivalent of bikers in black leather. (He wasn't sure whether this idea was his own, or whether he'd found it somewhere, but when he'd used it in conversations, it had been appreciated, which was quite satisfying). In contrast, finches and tits seemed to him to justify their existence merely by their bright defiant colours.

Washed and dressed, he made himself an espresso, set bread in the toaster, then decided to make porridge. While it rotated slowly in the microwave, he opened the blinds. He had neglected the feeders. The male robin was looking directly at him from the hydrangea. It might as well have been carrying a protest placard.

‘‘I know they're empty, but I'm having my breakfast first,'' Duncan said. ‘‘Would that be all right?'' It was as much of a bully as the starlings, but it was a loner, that was the difference. He would order mealworms if he could ensure that only the robin got to them, but they were very expensive and a gang of starlings could devour an entire tray in minutes. He'd put some out once when he had workmen installing a new boiler. The chap in charge had watched it happening and compared them to piranhas.

In an ideal world, he mused, birds could be trained to fetch seed for themselves. The shed door was never locked. Apart from the bird seed mix, nothing of value was stored there, their present gardener preferring to bring his own tools, but it was a useful repository for items that might yet be used; hairy balls of brown twine, ceramic bowls once faithfully filled each autumn with hyacinth bulbs, screws and nails in jam jars attached by their lids to the undersides of shelves, hessian potato sacks, rolls of netting for the long-abandoned strawberry bed, mousetraps (not the humane kind), wooden-handled hoes and forks not used since Mr MacKenzie's day. A tired but somehow reassuring smell of dust hung in its air.

The door wouldn't open more than a few inches. Assuming it was to do with either the previous rain or the present hard frost, Duncan put his weight on it. When he heard sounds from inside, his first thought was that it might be a hedgehog or a cat. But what animal would close the door behind itself?

He scraped the frost-encrusted side window and peered in. There was a body on the floor, face down, wrapped in sacking. Male, judging by the size of the shoes. He breathed on the glass again, making a wad from his handkerchief this time rather than using his leather glove.

 

All Ryan wanted was to be left alone, but Crawfurd wouldn't let him be. He'd been forced to sit up, then get up, his arms and legs totally numb, as if they were substitutes, his own taken away, and prosthetic parts attached to him in the night. Crawfurd half dragged, half carried him into the house. Now he was in an armchair, with a scratchy rug round his shoulders, another round his legs and feet, in front of an electric fire, his teeth vibrating against one another, and his throat feeling like it had been scoured with one of his mother's sink cleaners. A cup took shape in the space just beneath his nose. Crawfurd told him to drink. He did as he was told. It was coffee, but there was alcohol in it.

‘‘How do you feel? Any better?''

Fuck this guy who kept waking him. He looked like a teacher, the kind who needed to be liked, the one nobody took seriously, not even the rest of the teachers.

‘‘You haven't done any harm, except to yourself, so I suppose I should just turf you out onto the street …''

Ryan bent down, trying to find his trainers and socks, then decided against it. His head felt like it was going to break in two.

‘‘I don't think you quite realise how stupid you've been. D'you know what the temperature is out there? Once your jacket's finished drying, I'll drive you home.''

‘‘Fuck you.''

The old guy seemed to explode. ‘‘Don't you dare use that language in this house!''

‘‘Stop it. You're doin' my head in.''

The shouting stopped. When he next opened his eyes, Crawfurd was sitting across from him on the other side of the fireplace, with an expression on his face Ryan couldn't interpret. It could have been hatred or disgust. Or maybe the opposite. This was, after all, the man his mother spoke about as if he was next in line to Santa Claus for sainthood.

‘‘Your mother must be worried to death about you.''

‘‘She's no' worrying about me. She's got a hell of a lot more to worry about than me.''

‘‘What d'you mean?''

Ryan shook his head, and wished he hadn't.

‘‘We knew she was ill, obviously. Is it … something serious?''

Was the guy being stupid on purpose?

‘‘I don't want to intrude of course, but if it's … something that a specialist might …''

Ryan looked at the room, seeing it properly for the first time. Rows of books, gilt-framed mirror above a marble fireplace, paintings, heavy dark green curtains with tasselled tie-backs, the B&O music centre and the stacked CD's, the brass-studded tan leather of the chairs they were sitting in – it was a different planet. Nothing ugly, nothing cheap, nothing that would have looked at home in their living room less than a mile away. Three times a week his mum had come into this world and back to theirs. How had she stayed sane?

‘‘I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you,'' Crawfurd said.

‘‘You're no' upsetting me. It's having a fucking paedophile for a father that's upsetting me.''

The word was out before he could stop it. He waited for Crawfurd to shout at him again. Nothing.

Next moment, the door opened.

‘‘Duncan? I thought I heard voices.''

Crawfurd stood up.

‘‘Raised voices, Duncan. What is happening? Who is this person?''

The Manse door was opened, by the daughter, the pretty blond girl. She was yawning, only belatedly remembering to cover her mouth.

‘‘Good morning. Is your father at home?'' Lesley asked.

‘‘I'm sorry, I think he's still asleep. There was an emergency last night. He didn't get back till this morning …''

Clearly this was why the phone had been ringing out. Lesley stood her ground. Saying she would go and see, the girl showed her into a small book-lined room. Old weighty volumes stood neatly along the bottom shelves. Others more modern lay at odd angles or on top of one another. Facing the door was a small desk with a computer and a telephone. A poster of a black motorbike, with the word Honda in bold red letters, took up most of the other wall, but the oddest thing was a penguin, at least three feet high, hanging on a hook next to the window. It was made of black and white fur fabric, with spiky black hairs on the top of its head, a garish orange beak and over-large shiny eyes.

The daughter came back into the room. She had straitened her hair a little, and put a long jumper over her rather skimpy pyjama top.

‘‘I'm really sorry,'' she said again. ‘‘If it's not desperately urgent, could you leave a message, and he'll phone you in a little while?''

The penguin seemed to Lesley to be staring at her, trying to read her mind. She turned her back on the glittery eyes.

‘‘Please tell him my friend's husband was attacked last night. He's now in Intensive Care in the District General.''

The girl wasn't looking at her, more interested in the garden outside, where nothing at all was happening.

‘‘I'll certainly pass that on. Thank you for …''

‘‘The point is, she can't stay in that house.''

The girl retreated into the hall. Lesley followed her.

‘‘I don't make a habit of interfering in other people's lives,'' she said as the girl opened the front door to let her out. But her response was nothing more than a faint smile.

Clearly the Reverend Smith didn't want to be disturbed. And indeed, why should he do anything? Mrs Flaherty was not one of his flock. But with each homeward step Lesley felt more and more annoyed. Johnny Flaherty, perpetrator of unspeakable crimes, lay safe in a hospital bed being looked after, while Mary sat behind closed curtains, too scared to show her face. The police didn't have the manpower to watch the house constantly, no surprise there, and she refused to go to either daughter. ‘‘Come to me then.'' The words had formed in Lesley's mind, but she hadn't said them. There were all sorts of reasons why this was impossible.

Once back at the house, she took out two shopping bags and placed various basic foodstuffs in them. As she walked past the end of the Crawfurd's street, she told herself that she did not need help. A grown man who couldn't ask a friend out for dinner without his mother's permission, correction, on his mother's instruction, was hardly likely to help in this kind of situation. If there were troublemakers outside the house, it was very likely that she would know them from school. She would know exactly who they were.

Her feet, however, seemed to contradict her. Against her will she found herself turning, making her way up to the Crawfurd mansion. No-one answered the doorbell. She went around the side, avoiding the overgrown pyracantha and its sharp thorns, glancing into Duncan's study. He looked straight back at her through the glass, then signalled towards the kitchen door.

‘‘Good morning,'' she said. ‘‘I just wanted to tell you that I've …''

‘‘I'm so glad to see you, Lesley. Please come in. I could do with your help. I've got Mary Flaherty's son in my study,'' he said.

‘‘What? Why?''

‘‘I found him in the shed, half-frozen. Come in, please.''

She followed him into the kitchen.

‘‘He's sleeping at the minute. But he says he won't go home, and I don't know what to do.''

‘‘What does your mother advise?''

‘‘I sent her back to bed with a cup of tea. She hasn't come down again,'' he glanced at his watch.

How could someone so intelligent be so dense? How could a grown man be such a child? He wanted shaking or slapping, or something.

‘‘I feel completely at a loss.''

He was. She saw it and rebuked herself. This at least was admirable. She could see he wanted to do good. There was something of the hero inside him, in spite of everything.

‘‘And by the way,'' he went on, ‘‘forgive me for the other night. It was complete thoughtlessness on my part. It won't happen again.''

She swallowed what she'd been about to say. There was a helpful stool just beside her and she sat down. When she looked up, Duncan was sitting on the opposite side of the table, watching her.

‘‘I was just on my way to their house,'' she said at last. ‘‘Mary left a message on my phone. She said Johnny was in the hospital.''

‘‘Johnny?''

‘‘Her husband. And there were people outside, throwing stones at her windows.''

It was his turn to ask why.

It took time to explain but she did the best she could, leaving out completely her fruitless visit to the manse.

‘‘Good Lord,'' he said, when her tale came to an end. He raised his hand to his upper lip, in search perhaps of the lost moustache. ‘‘I'll phone the police,'' he said.

‘‘I think she already has. I couldn't sit at home any longer. At least I can see she has enough food.''