Lovers and Newcomers (45 page)

‘You want to write a book about Mead and Jake’s family?’

‘Yes.’

There was a silence.

‘I’d have to think about it. Is that all right?’ Miranda lightly said.

Her smile was open, and warm with their long friendship, but Polly knew suddenly and for certain that there were quicksands between them that no one had even ventured upon. Not yet.

All she could do was nod in acquiescence, shielding her passion as discreetly as she could manage.

‘Of course. It’s only the vaguest idea. I might not even be able to interest a publisher in the end,’ she said.

Nic came in. She held her arms akimbo, palms of her hands pressed to her belly. She was flushed and tousled from sleep, half yawning and half smiling. She wasn’t ordinarily a pretty girl, but with the glow of pregnancy and relaxation on her she looked beautiful.

‘Can I make a cup of tea, Miranda? This baby is kicking so hard you can probably see it from over there.’

Polly stood up and went to her. When Nic guided her hand to it, she distinctly felt the pressure of a tiny heel against her fingers.

Here then was the continuum, made flesh beside her.

The race start line was on Meddlett green.

A trestle table had been set up and a sizeable crowd of runners milled in front of it, registering their names and collecting their race numbers from officials. The more serious ones performed stretches or ran up and down the road in mysterious spurts. Whole families turned up to compete. Friends and supporters muffled in scarves and hats crowded on either side of a tape stretched beneath a ‘St Andrew’s Church Tower Appeal’ banner.

‘This is all right,’ Toby approved.

He, Sam and Alpha were in lycra running tights with reflector flashes down the sides, and they had brought safety pins to attach the numbers to their vests. All three of them were regular runners, although Alpha protested she wasn’t fit at all and probably wouldn’t even get around the course.

‘Yeah, right,’ Omie mocked, who knew her sister better than that.

Selwyn wore khaki shorts over a pair of Polly’s leggings, and his all-purpose trainers were decorated with paint splatters.

He passed his number across his chest as though it might attach itself by suction.

‘What am I supposed to do with this?’

The others each donated one of their pins, and Alpha patiently secured the number for him. Selwyn at once set off on a circuit of the duck pond, arms and legs pumping, sending the ducks scattering for shelter under the willows. Children stared at him. He drew a round of applause and catcalls from the teenagers wheeling on their bikes in front of the Griffin. The vicar and his wife passed through the crowd with trays of mince pies, wishing everyone good luck. There was an atmosphere of rising hilarity as more runners turned up, these later arrivals mostly plump, wearing comedy costumes or noticeably hung over. Compared with a huge man decked in a tulle ballet skirt, Selwyn began to look like a serious contender. Soon the joke entrants outnumbered the serious contestants, whose sinewy legs and self-absorbed warm-ups now suggested overkill.

Everyone from Mead had come to see off their runners except Joyce, who said she wasn’t interested in a whole lot of people dashing about like schoolkids in the freezing cold, and Polly who offered to stay behind and keep her company. The box of half-read letters was calling to her, and she declared that Selwyn was absurd to insist on running five kilometres in the wake of three children in their twenties.

Colin got out his camera. Selwyn posed between Sam and Toby, with Alpha in front of her father. Selwyn circled her with his long arms and beamed over her shoulder. The bare willows and the pond made a pretty backdrop. Miranda stood watching them. Several people in the crowd said ‘Hello, again’ to her, with the unspoken rider that it was a surprise to see her in the village twice in as many days.

Nic stood out in her red coat. One of the lean figures in running kit dropped back from the keen contingent who were pressing up to the tape for an advantageous start position. Alpha, Toby and Sam were now amongst them.

‘Hi again,’ Kieran said to Nic.

‘Hello.’ Her face was pink, probably from the wind. ‘You look pretty fit. Are you going to win?’

‘I don’t think so. But wish me luck anyway.’

‘Three minutes,’ the vicar boomed through a megaphone, looking as if he were presiding over a 1950s school sports day. There was a general stripping off of fleeces and gloves.

Standing beside Amos, Katherine was reminded of all the afternoons of the boys’ school days when she had turned up to football matches and track events. There was even the same smell of fresh mud and open Thermoses. Amos had been a less regular supporter in terms of physical presence, although to do him justice he had always been proud of his sons’ sporting achievements. She reached up to touch the necklace he had presented her with yesterday. It was weighty, massive with the implication of money spent, and it felt like a shackle. She had the urge to tear it off. He saw the gesture and she knew he read her thoughts, and was waiting with his lawyer’s precision to see whether she would do it or not.

Suddenly, like equals rather than adversaries, they smiled at each other. Katherine lowered her hand.

Amos was brutal in his way, but sometimes his care for other people surprised her. On Christmas Eve he had fetched a blanket, wrapped the dog’s broken body in it and placed it in the boot of the car. He had waited with the distraught girl until it became clear that the car and its driver had vanished into the fog, and then he had led her away and driven her home.

Amos would be all right. Toby and Sam would be all right too, she realized. She felt dizzy at the prospect of freedom.

‘One minute,’ the vicar called.

Two people stood at each end of the tape, waiting to lift it. The runners formed a broad column, singlets and lycra at the front, children and ballerinas and a single defiant Elvis at the back. There was a rowdy attempt from the crowd to count down the seconds. Toby had his forefinger to the button of his stopwatch.

‘On your MARKS,’ shouted the vicar. ‘And…GO.’

The tape broke, there was a cheer, and the front runners streaked away. The rest of the field jostled over the start line and the ragged column poured towards a lane at the far end of the village. The finish line, via woodland tracks and bridle paths, lay in the grounds of Lockington Hall.

‘Go, Kieran,’ Nic shouted and clapped her hands as he passed. He looked back over his shoulder at her and almost tripped.

‘Who was that?’ Ben jealously frowned.

‘Kieran,’ Nic said.

Colin snapped the runners as they went by the post. Selwyn raced by, already at full stretch, his arms windmilling and his mouth open in a wild smile for the picture.

The spectators watched until the last runners turned the bend of the lane and headed for a belt of dense woodland blanketing the same low ridge that sheltered Mead. Then the groups started to break up, some heading for home, others regretting the fact that the Griffin was closed. With the rest of the Mead contingent following her, Miranda led the way to the short-cut that would take the walkers across to Lockington. Only Amos said he wouldn’t come.

He turned aside to where he had parked the Jaguar, in the same spot near the church as on Christmas Eve. He drove back along the Mead road as far as the gate to Jessie’s cottage, and then pulled in on to the verge.

No one answered his knocking, and, like Geza he moved to the window and peered inside. But unlike Geza, he went on to the back door of the cottage. On the way he pushed open the door of a tumbledown outhouse. The body of the dog still lay there, wrapped in the lap rug that – he now remembered – had last been used in the summer for a Glyndebourne picnic.

Amos didn’t even knock at the back door. He put his shoulder against the flaking paintwork and shoved hard. The screws holding a small bolt on the inside immediately pulled loose, and the door scraped open.

‘Jessie?’ he shouted as he stepped inside. There was no response, but a hint of warmth in the clammy interior air indicated that she had recently been there.

He shouted louder. ‘Jessie?’

He went through the kitchen into the living room, which was empty and looked just as it had done on the night he had slept on the sofa. The bathroom was also empty. He knocked on the closed bedroom door.

‘Are you there? Come on, where are you?’

Fearful now, Amos turned the handle.

The curtains were drawn, but they were thin and let in the greyish light. There was someone lying in the bed, completely covered by the bedclothes. One step took him to the bedside. He stretched out his hand and touched the body. It was warm and breathing.

In a lower voice he said, ‘Jessie, come on.’ He peeled back a corner of the covers and saw her tangled hair and an expanse of bare neck. He put out his hand very gently and touched her shoulder. ‘You can’t lie here like this,’ he said.

She rolled further away, out of his reach. ‘Why not?’ she asked in a voice that was hoarse with crying.

‘I’ve come to help you bury the dog,’ he said.

She was too cried-out even to sob.

Amos went into the kitchen, boiled the kettle and made two mugs of tea. There was milk in the fridge, but it was sour. He took the black tea into the bedroom, put the mugs on the stool beside the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress.

‘Go away,’ she croaked.

‘I’m not going to go away, so you might as well sit up and drink some of this tea while it’s hot.’

It looked for a moment as if she wouldn’t respond, but then she slowly uncoiled and pushed herself into a sitting position. Her eyes were so swollen she could hardly open them. Amos put the mug into her hand and left her to drink it. He rinsed out a flannel in the bathroom, brought it back to her with some cold water in a bowl. Then he said he would give her ten minutes to get dressed. He drank his own tea in the living room, revisiting the skunk episode and, with an extra twist of guilt, his memories of the tattoo.

After a while he heard Jessie moving about. Some more minutes passed and she appeared fully dressed in the doorway. She kept her face turned away.

‘Do you want to bury him in the garden?’ he asked.

‘No. This place is nowhere.’

‘What about at your mother’s place?’

‘God. No.’

‘Where, then?’

‘There’s a walk he used to like. Over the ridge. By where you knocked me off the bike.’

‘I didn’t…’ he began automatically, and then stopped. ‘All right, we can go up there. I’ve brought a spade. Is there anyone else who should come with us? What about your ex-boyfriend?’

‘What about him?’ she snapped. That was better, Amos thought, with some relief. ‘Bloody Damon’s got enough to think about. Didn’t you know?’

‘Know what?’ he asked.

She picked up her coat and pulled it on. ‘I don’t want anyone there, right? Can we just go and
do
this?’

‘That’s what I’ve come for,’ he said, with restraint.

Jessie insisted that she would carry Rafferty’s body herself. She laid the bundle of rug gently in the boot of the Jaguar once more. Amos drove to the spot and he took the spade while Jessie carried the dog. The path up through gaunt trees was steep and he was soon out of breath, but she trudged upwards under the heavy burden without slowing or looking back. At last she stopped in a small clearing. The slope of land gave a view to the south. Mead was beneath them and to the left, and the tower of Meddlett church and, in the distance, the grey outline of what Amos now knew to be Lockington Hall could both be seen.

The race would be over by now, for all but the slowest or most outlandishly-dressed runners.

‘Here,’ Jessie pointed. She lowered the bundle to the ground, and knelt beside it, her hand patting the stained plaid. ‘Here we are, Raff.’

Amos turned aside from the sight. He began to dig. Mercifully, the earth was quite soft. Even so, after five or six minutes’ work he was bathed in sweat. He could just hear the gnat’s whine of model aircraft circling somewhere in the drained sky.

Even taking turns, a surprising amount of time and effort was required to dig a hole big enough, especially as deeper down the earth was a tangle of stubborn roots. At last, Jessie nodded. She threw aside the spade. Amos had assumed that she would bury the animal in the blanket, but she was having none of that. She turned back the covering to expose the dog’s body. The fur was dull and matted and the side of its head clotted with blood. It looked very, very dead indeed. Jessie scooped it up and hugged it in her arms. Then she knelt and, finally, lay flat on her belly in order to place the animal as gently as possible at the bottom of the hole.

‘Go away,’ she ordered.

He stumbled fifty yards down the path and waited. The model aeroplane noise had stopped. Now all he could hear was the intermittent cawing of rooks.

Jessie came down the path. She was carrying the folded blanket and the spade. The single look she gave him indicated that he was not to say a word.

A gaggle of panting runners pounded along the track beside a ribbon of woodland. The going was rough here and their legs or ballet skirts were thick with mire. An open gate and a stencilled sign marked the 4-km point and a small band of supporters had gathered to clap and cheer encouragement as each runner passed through. Selwyn was dismayed to find himself back here with the fancy-dress contingent, whilst Alpha and the two boys were presumably celebrating on the right side of the finish line. At the gateway he sucked in a couple of gulps of air, and it was lucky for the well-meaning lady in the green padded coat who exhorted him to keep going because he was so nearly there, that he had no breath to spare for any words.

The track unrolled across a field and entered parkland. Selwyn saw but was too weary to speculate about three men busily making their way in the opposite direction, away from Lockington and into the thick belt of trees.

Seven and a half minutes later, he was summoning his very last reserves to manage a semi-sprint across the finish line on the lawns in front of the house. Miranda and the others clapped him home. Toby, Sam and Alpha were already zipped up in fleeces, their faces radiant with adrenaline and fresh air. Selwyn folded at the hips, his head hanging and hands resting on his knees.