Second Night (32 page)

Caz was intrigued. ‘How did you that find out?'

‘We were down at the boat and just about ready to push off when this old fella came hobbling along the quay. Ma was up front with the skipper and I was looking after the urn. I'd got the bod shop to sort out his cinders double quick and wrap him up in a box with a lid that I could lever off at the appropriate moment, like we did with Dad. Well, this old fella comes up alongside and says, “You make sure you drop him well out past the Head, boy. Old Frank was trouble enough living, we don't need him making a nuisance of himself now he's powdered.”'

‘What was that supposed to mean?'

‘Apparently the fishing boys don't like doing that sort of thing any more. That's why we had to do it early, to nip in and out with the tide. They're convinced that whoever it was of us who went over the side in the first place haunts the bit where he was dropped. They call him the Watchman.'

Caz felt all the hairs prickling on the back of his neck. ‘How far back was that?'

‘It can't have been so long ago because the old fella reckoned he had it from his dad. Not more than the last hundred years, I would say.'

‘Did he give you any names?'

‘No. He couldn't remember ever hearing any particular name. It can't have been Caleb and his missus. They were blown to bits.'

‘Perhaps it was his dad then, Abigail's husband?'

‘And who was he? There's no photo, no papers, nothing, and we'd just dumped the only person who could have told us in the drink. The problem is there's no official record either. We'd already tried finding out about those two women in the graveyard and drawn a blank. I spent a whole day wandering around offices getting the last stuff sorted. Every time I asked about anybody called Wylde I drew the same blank. Everything I was interested in had been lost in the bombing in the war. It's like the family just dropped off the edge of the planet.'

‘We're still here.'

‘Yes, but between us and our mysterious ancestor, we weren't, if you know what I mean. There are no bodies, no graves, not even a name. Putting Dad in the sea seemed normal at the time, but when someone says something like the old chap trotted out, it brings you up a bit short, doesn't it?' He was clearly very uneasy.

Caz poured more coffee. ‘It's just a load of superstitious old crap,' he said, more coolly than he felt. ‘It's just village talk and nothing to do with us. Don't worry about it.'

‘Do you think so?'

‘I know so.'

Jasper sat upright, putting his fingers to his brow to smooth out the imagined network of worry lines. He moulded the corners of his mouth into a grin. ‘Well said, bro! The more prosaic viewpoint was just what was needed to get back on track.' He stretched, breathed out loudly and stood up. His voice had resumed its customary confidence. ‘You are a man of few words but all of them are pertinent and I thank you for that. We're meeting the boys down the wood yard tonight to sort out the new rehearsal room. Do you want to give us a hand? Drinkies on me down the pub for afters. What do you say?'

‘No, I'm working with Al, but you have a good one, okay?'

‘That goes without saying.' He tapped his watch. ‘Twenty-five days!'

‘Until when?'

‘Until I will be lifting my first public pint.' He raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘But do you know something? I'll never understand why Tris didn't forswear the booze until his leader was legal?' He shook his head sadly. ‘He had no business to be born before me. He knows about Achilles and his mate Patroclus, he knows about Alexander and Hephaestion, but he just can't relate to it.'

‘They were all gay, weren't they?'

Jasper slapped his forehead in despair. ‘Try and see beyond the limitations of the flesh, bro! It's the quality of leadership that counts!' He spread his arms wide. ‘The unique aspiration to greatness! And Tris just doesn't see it. At least Loz is loyal. Alas, that he failed in his suit with our sister but he's probably better off.' He patted his belly. ‘All this talk of the tipple has got me feeling peckish. Where's my woman? Why isn't she here to wait on me?'

He strode to the foot of the stairs, roaring, ‘Stat! Stat!'

A distant voice answered. ‘Up here!'

‘Come down!' he shouted.

‘You come up!'

He groaned and ran up the stairs.

Caz folded the cheque and put it in his back pocket. There was still enough time to bring in the horses and bed them down before the hunger pangs began to grip.

He always enjoyed the walk to the yard from the lodge. The gravel surface of the drive had recently been renewed and the rhododendron hedges trimmed back, enough to retain their shape but not so much as to remove all the flower buds that would open in a dazzling display of white and red, and purple and pink in the spring. The red-tiled roofs of the old house stood out against the muted grey sky and the misted silhouettes of the more distant hills.

There was no sound of passing traffic and no visible television mast or overhead electricity cables. There was nothing to suggest that time had not twisted upon itself, where he might step across the threshold into the house as it was a hundred years past, or a hundred years into the unknown future when he might not be remembered and could pass unseen.

Sir Jonas had an interesting concept of time. They had been talking about it one evening in the library after supper.

‘What happens to time when we're outside this world?' he had asked the old man. ‘Is it time like we see it, or is it something completely different? Can there be more than one type of time?'

‘I think that the concept of time is something we ourselves have imposed upon our understanding in an effort to rationalise the many worlds and dimensions we intuitively know exist,' Sir Jonas replied. ‘Perhaps time, as we recognise it, doesn't exist at all?'

‘But that would mean that everything happens spontaneously in the same moment.'

‘Perhaps it does. Perhaps all time truly is
now
and we limit it with our ignorance, as we limit so many other things.'

‘So how do you relate that to something as obvious as our human lifetime? We are born, we grow old and we die. That takes time and we can see it happening right under our eyes.'

The old man had smiled mysteriously. ‘And then we are reborn in another dimension. Perhaps we should consider the concept of time as a series of circles, like your magnificent mail shirt, for example. Endless tiny circles of past, present and future intermeshed and equally accessible in the immediate moment, each interdependent on the other for its existence and not one divorced from the whole.'

Caz had to admit that it was a fascinating idea. He was intensely aware that his existence in this small and exclusive corner of the planet depended on a continuing level of high-maintenance prosperity that was sourced directly as a result of the actions and choices of people who were apparently long gone. But what if they weren't?

The extent of their wealth could have made the casual dispensing of a small fortune irrelevant when a body had to be buried at sea with no questions asked. It still could, for what he had come to understand of it. His great-grandparents' unknown benefactor had had enough cash to bribe the church not to make any trouble – and who else? Were all the records really lost in the war? Or was someone paid to destroy them? Who was the Watchman?

Is that what I saw on the ferry?
he wondered. It all turned around one nagging and apparently unanswerable question.
If it's anything to do with the Guardians, how do I find out?

CHAPTER 54

Lauren avoided the crowd in the coffee shop and lunched in the little bistro in the town centre. She had been too tired to go London with her parents. If anything, the jetlag, or whatever it was, had been worse since her birthday party. The waiter lingered, making boring small talk until Bryony and Jen appeared and she waved to them to join her.

‘I thought you were always away at the weekends, Lauren,' said Bryony graciously, noting the unusually haggard look around the girl's eyes. She glanced over the food on the table. ‘We'll have the same,' she told the waiter.

‘Not always,' said Lauren. ‘Do you often eat here?'

‘When I'm in town on Saturdays. It's so much more select than anywhere else. There's so much to do when you're in business.'

‘Doing what?'

‘We're setting up a sales outlet online. I'm the director, Jen's coordinating and Shriek's the secretary. She's sorting out our website with that geek-boy, Robbie, in London.'

‘Actually, I'm the administrator and the accountant,' said Jen sourly. ‘Without me there's no business, just in case the director forgets.'

Her comment fell on deaf ears. Bryony had remembered her bargain with God. She clapped her hand over her mouth.

‘Oh, Lauren, I'm so sorry! I really forgot he was your cousin.'

The spoon stopped midair over Lauren's bowl of soup. ‘You mean my Robbie? He's seeing Shriek this weekend?'

‘She went up to London first thing this morning and she's not due back until tomorrow night. He calls her Sharon.' Bryony drawled the
a
. ‘It's quite sweet, isn't it?'

Lauren nodded miserably. ‘It's cute!' she agreed.

The waiter brought more soup. Bryony waited for Jen to share out the bread, sighed pointedly and then helped herself. Jen rolled her eyes and sniffed and ate her soup, muttering under her breath, ‘I'm not her bloody servant!'

Bryony glared. Lauren wondered why she had invited them to sit with her. Jen kept her attention on what was going on out of the window.

‘It looks like they're back,' she said suddenly, her face screwed up as though she had swallowed poison. ‘Or at least one of them is.'

‘Who?' asked Bryony.

‘The Wyldes.'

Jemima was walking down the opposite side of the street hand in hand with Julien. Lauren stopped eating. Her face changed colour from pale to white.

‘Didn't you know they were back?' asked Bryony, testing the rumour that the American girl was already in the reject file.

Lauren chose her words carefully. ‘As you can see, I'm not in London.'

‘As I can see,' Bryony agreed, smiling.

A dejected-looking woman with straggling, flat grey hair was drifting along the pavement under the window. She wore a grubby lavender-coloured coat and a long purple scarf wound several times around her neck. She crossed the road at the junction with the main street, without waiting for the pedestrian crossing lights to change, and arrived in front of the bank at the same time as a tall young man she appeared to know.

‘There's Caz!' cried Lauren, standing up too quickly so that the soup slopped over the table and her napkin fell on the floor. ‘Who's that woman he's talking to?'

‘Oh, her!' Bryony sniffed contemptuously. ‘She's a devil worshipper. She does rituals out in the woods.'

The woman followed Caz into the bank. The door closed behind them.

‘What are you talking about?' asked Lauren. ‘What kind of rituals?'

Bryony rolled her eyes. ‘The kind that devil worshippers do when they're out in the woods.'

‘Sex rituals,' said Jen slyly. She licked her lips and wiped her plate with her bread. ‘Crones like her are into that kind of thing.'

‘He's been seeing her for more than two years,' said Bryony.

Lauren sat down. ‘He's seeing me. What makes you think he can possibly be involved with her?'

‘I know he is.' Bryony spoke with the calm authority of someone who is completely sure of her facts. ‘I had a thing about learning the tarot a couple of years ago. She used to give me lessons, really expensive lessons, at that tatty shop of hers down the road. He was doing the same course.'

‘You mean that Free Spirit store?'

Bryony nodded. ‘There's nothing free in there, I can tell you. She's meant to keep her mouth shut about her clients but she doesn't.'

‘You mean she told you she was seeing him?'

‘Oh yes! She couldn't help herself I suppose. I mean, an ugly old bag like that landing someone like Caz. She's really weird but maybe that's why he likes her. He's not exactly normal himself, is he?'

‘He's always been the older-woman type,' said Jen.

‘Like with who?'

‘Like with Miss Scott, the very ex-art mistress for one.'

Lauren frowned. ‘A school teacher?'

‘He dropped his precious thermos one day in her class and didn't have any coffee for at least five minutes,' said Bryony.

Jen's eyes glittered. ‘Then he went all white and she went to the staff room and got him a big mug full and he kissed her on the lips, right there in front of everyone. She hardly even blushed, and from that day on there was always a fresh cup of coffee waiting for him every time we went to art class.'

Lauren lifted both hands. ‘So what's the scandal?'

‘She left last June three weeks before the end of term,' said Bryony. ‘I saw her a couple of weeks ago, hugely pregnant. She's about thirty-eight and unmarried, of course.'

Tired as she was, Lauren had to laugh. ‘But she could have got pregnant with anybody. It doesn't mean that it's anything to do with Caz.'

‘Then why is she so secretive about it?'

‘Maybe one of the other teachers is the father and he's already married? Or maybe she just likes it that way?'

‘Maybe she
has
to like it that way?' corrected Jen.

Bryony sniggered. ‘Of course, while we're on the subject of school and older women, it's worth mentioning what happened at the drama festival, isn't it, Jen?'

Jen reddened. ‘That didn't mean anything!'

‘It's relevant.'

‘What happened?' asked Lauren, keeping an eye on the bank at the end of the street.