Rook (21 page)

The lower border of the tapestry shows many images of decapitation, of chain mail dragged from the torsos of fallen soldiers. Edyth Swan-neck, Harold’s lover, was summoned because only she would have been able to identify what was left of his body.

Nora stares down at the table. Isaac’s feet were high arched, with widely spaced toes. In the hollow of his back lay a triangle of hair, just above the shallow slope of his buttocks. He used to smoke after sex, stand naked at a hotel window, inhale sharply as he glanced down to a city pavement below, his mind leaping away from her already. Back at the beginning of their relationship, the contrast between his renowned ferocity and the pale-skinned vulnerability of his narrow-hipped body had fascinated her, the thrilling intimacy of being able to watch him walk around a room, naked.

Elsa, too, has her gaze fixed once more on something outside the kitchen, beyond the dough, the rolling pin and pastry cutter in her hand. Lanterns held by whispering gravediggers. Gytha, Harold’s mother, shoulders bowed under the weight of a bear fur, weeping in the dark as she watches another burial, the remains of yet another son. Scenes from the past hold Elsa’s attention in a way nothing in the room can.

‘With the princess’s burial place, local tradition proved astonishingly accurate. Another tradition suggests the coffin made of Horsham stone is Earl Godwin’s. This should not be lightly dismissed. However, the presumption has always been that “Earl Godwin” refers to the first Earl Godwin. In consequence, this long-held tradition has been disregarded, forgetting,’ Elsa smiles to herself, ‘forgetting that, from 1053 to 1066, Harold himself was, in fact, the
second
Earl Godwin.’

‘Good God!’ Jonny smacks the counter.

‘The villagers at the time must have known Harold was buried here, surely?’ Nora asks.

‘The local gravediggers certainly, though it’s probable they were made to swear an oath.’ Elsa rubs more flour on to the rolling pin. ‘But here’s the thing about secrets. A secret is charged with the pressing urge to tell. Sharing a secret bestows a gift – and think, a secret of such magnitude! Thus secrets, information, a little changed or elaborated may pass between loved ones.’

The covering slabs of the two tombs are at more or less the same level. They could have been placed within the same gravediggers’ living memory, before the floor was raised in the eleventh century.

‘Cnut came to England, we know from records, in 1014,’ Elsa continues. ‘So, if his little girl died aged eight, as tradition says, her burial could not have been before 1022. Her tomb is under the centre of the chancel arch, in the place of honour which would otherwise have been claimed for the occupant of the more splendid tomb, which suggests it is the earlier of the two. After the Conquest, according to Domesday, the secular estates in Bosham passed from Harold directly to King William. The fascinating point about this is,’ Elsa’s voice rises and she waves the rolling pin again, ‘of all the estates in Sussex, these were the
only
ones William took into his possession.’ She slides the first baking tray with its neat rows of raw biscuits into the oven before turning to Jonny. ‘You see, my dear,’ she closes the oven door with her foot, ‘William wanted to ensure the grave of King Harold II did not become a shrine. Since Bosham was a naval station at the time, secrecy here would have been simple to enforce. Furthermore, the raising of the floor in the church was instigated not long after the Conquest, and successfully sealed King Harold’s resting place from sight for 900 years.’ Elsa’s voice rings with the triumph: she has uncovered one of history’s untold stories.

Jonny has turned to a new page in his Synchronicity Media notebook and written THE GODWIN GRAVE PROJECT. He underlines the words twice.

Nora and Rook doze in a deckchair in the sun. When they left Elsa’s, Jonny suggested a celebratory drink in the Anchor Bleu. They arrived as Jason was outside with a blackboard and chalk, drawing a cocktail glass filled with bubbles to advertise his new champagne-by-the-glass deal.

‘My man!’ Jonny slapped Jason on the shoulder and sent him straight inside for some. He insisted on a bottle, though Nora drank little more than a glass. She has brought the half-full bottle home to the fridge while Jonny drives to the supermarket to buy them some bread and cheese for a picnic on the green by the church. Languid after drinking champagne at midday, Nora lies back in the deckchair, enjoying the sun on her skin. Rook is snuggled on her lap, a collapsed fluff of feathers preparing for rest, but at the sound of the side gate rattling open, his head is up, neck straining to look for an intruder.

‘Hello?’ Jonny calls out.

Instantly, Rook’s body-shape transforms into a black origami of angled wings. His neck contorts and his claws scrape Nora’s bare thighs, forcing her to stand and shovel him to the ground. Jonny steps on to the terrace – smiling, talking, gesticulating – but Rook hurtles, loose-bowelled, across the paving slabs, to high-step around Jonny’s ankles, his beak jabbing forward and back in jousting thrusts. He leaps up, clinging to Jonny’s leg, claws fastened into Jonny’s calf as his beak stabs Jonny’s shin.

Jonny staggers backwards. ‘Christ Almighty!’

Seeing the look on Jonny’s face, his smile gone, Nora whips forward. Her hands grapple for Rook, whose feathers dust her skin as she misses, and he flails to the ground, wheeling sideways before straightening to shoot again towards Jonny’s legs. When she finally manages to scoop the flurry of wing and claw into her arms, Rook strains to get away. He scrabbles at her arms, his body heaving so much she’s frightened she’ll be the one to hurt him in the battle to hold captive his writhing strength, the springy resistance in his wings as she holds them clamped against his body. Several times, he escapes her grasp. Nora turns away from Jonny, putting herself between the bird and the man, and makes her way to the kitchen, bending over Rook, clasping him to her with a hand and her forearm as he thrashes, his beak opening and closing.

When she lets him down in the kitchen, Rook hurls himself at the door, which Nora closed only just in time. Legs working furiously, wings spread, he heads for the open window instead.

‘Rook, Rook.’ Nora tries to soothe him with her voice, attempting to stroke his wing feathers but he won’t be calmed. He’s become an unfamiliar dervish of beak and claw. In the end she closes the kitchen door and leaves him there, flinging himself in silent fury against table legs and cupboard doors.

Outside, Jonny has taken off his socks and his expensive-looking leather shoes. The stitched and pointed toes are covered with grey-white lumps and splats of guano. His jeans are rolled up and he’s hosing down his ankles and bare feet. Steam rises from the sun-baked paving slabs.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he mutters, inspecting his calf.

When he sees Nora, his expression changes to one of astonishment, then hilarity and he starts to roar with laughter, doubling up. She looks down at herself. Her dress is covered with guano – only now she notices the weight and the damp cling against her legs. Before she can move again, water hits her, full force; behind the wide arc of water, she sees Jonny’s mouth, his straight teeth as he leans back to laugh, the hose pointed in her direction as he prowls round her. In seconds, she’s sluiced from the waist downwards and the temperature of the hose water has dropped from lukewarm to icy. Her dress sucks to her body. Jonny steps closer to squirt water upwards, soaking her breasts, her hair. She yelps at the breathtaking force of it against her face but springs forward, hair swinging and heavy, into the water’s spout, tasting its saltiness. Her weight knocks Jonny back against the wall and she wrestles with him, determined to prise his hands from the hosepipe. Her fingers are far stronger than his. She has the hose. She tugs at his shirt and her hip catches on the jab of his belt buckle. He has stopped laughing. The drag of water has soaked them both. When he kisses her, their noses and lips are already wet.

23

A roll of thunder growls overhead; the waiting room darkens. When Nora phoned, they said someone would come to the house but she’s due to meet Eve at the hospital in half an hour so has come straight to the station to report the theft. For something to do, she stacks the polystyrene cups with their dregs of congealed tea. The fluorescent lights flicker. There is no bin.

Eventually, avoiding a chair with chewing gum stuck to the seat, she sits and massages her neck where the tendons are tender. Recently, she’s been playing so much more – the Shostakovich, gutsy music, for the first time in a couple of years. Last night she’d tackled properly the opening phrase of the Elgar, its sliding depth, the lingering adagio, a listening pause as the sound fades to vibration – she played the phrase over and over again until it was better. Not right, yet, but better. Good enough to let her play beyond the hollow spaces, to be caught up with the pumping muscle and blood of the sonata. She’s not sure how long she’d been playing, down in the quiet of the cellar, when she finally lifted her cheek from the cello’s neck, exhausted. When she woke late this morning, Ada had already left the house.

She rubs at a healing patch of eczema on her palm and checks her watch again. Twenty minutes. She’s arranged to meet Eve at the entrance to the maternity hospital. The officer behind the glass still has his head down, apparently busy, although the waiting room is empty. She tries to recall any extra details which might be useful.

She had been eating her porridge on her lap in the kitchen, had sprinkled more raisins on top and given some to Rook, who fluffed his feathers at her feet and began to groom. When the door banged, the sound echoed through the house like a shot. She leaped up and her bowl shattered on the floor. Rook stretched his beak wide in protest, wings flapping wildly, as porridge landed in splats around him. Her body too, had reacted with fear and she stood, frozen until the ricochet of panic died away. Rook was absorbed with helping himself to the spilled raisins and hiding them under the doormat.

In the sitting room, the French doors were half-open, the bolt of the lock shot across and banging on the frame as the door swayed in a rising wind. Had someone come in, or had someone just left? Ada was helping at one of Daphne’s fundraising coffee mornings and there was no sign of Harry, the terrace and the garden both quiet and deserted. An anvil-headed storm cloud was building on the horizon. She locked the French doors and mopped up porridge splatters. Roy, the milkman, knocked and she went to pay him. Her bag was not hanging on the end of the banister in the hallway where she’d left it, so she searched the coat hooks, her bedside table, the kitchen chairs. In the end she had to raid the loose change in the old Tate and Lyle syrup tin and counted out the coins, apologising to Roy, who’d taken off his cap and seated himself with a sigh of relief on the bottom stair to wait.

‘Reckon you’ve mislaid that then?’ He lifted his T-shirt to dab his forehead before he replaced his cap.

‘Put it down somewhere.’ Nora waved a hand and feigned a smile, but the moment Roy left she searched properly, moving cushions, shifting piles of books and newspapers, sheet music, coats. Her bag had vanished. It must have been stolen.

She sat in the kitchen, watched as Rook put a piece of cheese into the hole in the plaster and removed it straight away. He lifted the corner of the rug and nudged the cheese underneath with the raisins, took one raisin out again and jumped across to peck at the curtain hem. He spends most of his days hiding his food.

Yesterday, or the day before, she passed Ada’s bedroom. Ada was shuffling through the fifties photographs again. She held one up to the light, her hand coming up to cover her mouth. As Nora stepped into the room, her expression changed. She shut the suitcase and shoved it under the bed, brushed her hands on her dress with a quick smile as if a task had been completed. Something is going on with her mother.

When, finally, Nora is called to the desk, the police officer slouches, his face propped on his hand, flesh distorted. Perhaps he’s been up all night too. He doodles on his pad as she paints the scene: the slam of the door, her porridge flying everywhere.

The police officer’s eyes don’t meet hers. Nora inspects his lowered eyelids as he writes:
No sign of forced entry
. He stifles a yawn, cocking his head to admire his elaborate doodles. She can tell he yearns for smashed glass, a knife at her throat; a bulbous face squashed into a pair of tights or a balaclava. The police officer has paused in his doodling, waiting for her to continue.

‘
So
,’ she sighs for dramatic effect. He doesn’t respond. ‘I only discovered my bag was missing when the milkman knocked. I went for my purse and it was gone.’