“I … I’ve forgotten what your question was,” said Reggie.
“My question is, if you were any kind of a man, you’d do something about it before they get all cozy for the weekend, if you want my opinion.”
Reggie thought better of pointing out that this wasn’t actually a question. And he wanted to avoid further details of her opinion.
“Can I have another Foster’s?” he said instead.
The barmaid gave Reggie a look of incredulous disappointment, and she took his empty away.
Reggie wondered whether he would actually be able to get another beer, and began to look around for some other pub staff to offend.
He was interrupted from this pursuit when a boisterous commotion erupted outside, and the front door flew open.
It was the entire bloody cast from the theater.
They were led in by Mrs. Hatfield. She was followed by the director, who seemed fully recovered from his earlier career angst. Then a handful of other actors, including both an older witch and a younger one, but not including the leading man.
And then, finally, Laura. A bit sheepishly.
She gave an obligatory laugh in response to something that one of the other cast members said, and then she went directly up to Reggie and sat next to him at the bar.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I tried to just sneak out, but there is only the one pub, and you know this is what theater people tend to do after dress rehearsal.”
The bartender was back, at the other end of the bar, but he looked in their direction when Laura spoke. He finished what he was pouring and then came right over.
“What will the lady have?”
“Same as his,” said Laura.
The bartender nodded, looked carefully at both of them for no obvious reason—although Reggie thought he might have been staring at Laura’s lip ring—and then he went away.
After he did, Reggie said, “I had just hoped not to share you quite so much on our honeymoon.”
“I know,” said Laura, and she was silent for a moment before adding, “But, Reggie, if I don’t do this, then we have no cover. We need the excuse for being here. They don’t get many tourists.”
“I’ve heard that.”
“Word would get around, and next thing you know, we’d have paparazzi just everywhere again, like in London, when you threw one off the balcony and got arrested.”
Laura said that in a whisper, because now the bartender was back with their pints.
“Anything else?” he asked.
“No,” said Reggie.
The bartender seemed willing to hover near them even so, wiping things down that he had already wiped, leaving the barmaid on her own to deal with both the theater celebrants and the locals.
At the opposite end of the bar, a man with Einsteinish gray hair set his empty glass impatiently on the bar. He glared toward their end of the bar, wanting his refill, and though he wasn’t banging his glass on the counter yet, he was sliding it around in a circular motion that seemed to indicate his patience was wearing thin.
Laura noticed, and she looked at the bartender and nodded in the man’s direction.
The bartender grimaced and said, “That man is the bane of my existence. I wish he’d just leave, like the others.” Then the bartender went to do his job.
Reggie looked at Laura for a moment, studying her blue hair and lip ring, and said, “Do you still think it’s enough? Your disguise?”
“Oh yes,” said Laura. “Between the way they make me up for the cinema and the way I’ve done myself up now, and the different contexts—oh yes, I don’t think anyone will place me as Laura Rankin, famous actress.” She laughed. “I mean, if anyone really does think of me that way, which I find truly amazing.”
“Me, too,” said Reggie. “But what I meant was, what if there is still someone in town who knew you back in the day? Will they know you now? Will you know them?”
Laura shook her head.
“No. I was only here for a year and a half, and the only impression I made on anyone was Mrs. Hatfield. Even she wouldn’t have known it was me if we hadn’t stayed in touch. If you saw my yearbook photo, you’d understand.”
“I would very much like to see your yearbook photo,” said Reggie.
Now Laura—with both her pint and Reggie’s new one just barely begun—looked around at the noise and festivity in the bar, with all her newly found theater acquaintances laughing and roaring, and she said in Reggie’s ear, loudly enough to be heard, “You know what?”
“What?”
“I think I’ve paid my postrehearsal dues for the evening. Why don’t you and I just—”
“I agree,” said Reggie. “Let’s.”
Reggie stood and finished his pint in one draft, and Laura began to do the same to hers, but it was taking her two drafts, and that was just one too many for an effective escape.
“Oh, you two lovebirds aren’t leaving already, are you? Oh, please don’t, not just yet!”
It was Mrs. Hatfield. She was slightly and cheerily drunk.
“You must at least come see the view from the back deck; it’s amazing! Come along, right this way!”
Reggie was about to object, but Mrs. Hatfield already had a tipsy hand on Laura’s elbow, guiding her along toward the back of the pub.
Reggie followed, going through the back door and out onto a wooden deck with outdoor tables, none of them currently in use. It was some ten feet above the slope behind the pub. The land leveled off a few yards farther out, then gradually climbed again toward the two hills in the distance.
An inebriated local, mid-fifties, thinning on top, and clearly someone who had enjoyed his pints all his life, thinking, apparently, that the invitation was meant for him as well, came happily along with them.
“There,” said Mrs. Hatfield, making a sweeping gesture, when they got outside. “This is the only spot in town from which you can look between the hills and see the Bodfyn Moor valley. Isn’t it lovely!”
“I’d agree with you,” said Reggie, “but at the moment I don’t see much of anything.”
“Well, that’s just the fog and all. You’re used to the big city views of London, of course. This view is completely pastoral. If you come back when it’s clear, you’ll see what I mean. If you look to the right, you’ll see a hill, and probably a sheep or three. If you look to the left, you’ll see another hill, and more sheep, and if you are very lucky, perhaps even some wild ponies. But if you look right between the two hills, and especially if you put a coin in our little tourist telescope, you can see all the way to the main— Oh, what is the name? I always think of them as just a bunch of rocks. Ah, I remember—cairns. You can see all the way to the beginning of the cairn field. And then from there, if you keep hiking to your left, you can go all the way to the lake and to the most complete cairn circle of the Bodfyn Moor!”
The local with the thinning hair tried to help, stepping to the railing with a sweeping gesture of his own, and spilling only a little of his beer.
Laura stepped adroitly out of the way.
“It’s right out there, beyond the rise!” he said, pointing. “And just a clutter of stones, not a proper circle at all. So a cairn clutter is what I’d call it. Other than that, all you see is just meadow and sheep. Or sheep and meadow, as you prefer.”
“Yes, as I said, pastoral,” said Mrs. Hatfield.
“And the occasional druid, back in the day.”
“Oh, that’s just an old wives’ tale,” said Mrs. Hatfield.
“Very true,” said the local. “It was my old wife that told me, and her mum that told her, and so on, back as far you like. Doesn’t mean it ain’t so. They used to pick out a likely sheep and coax it down the valley behind those two hills for the sacrifice of the spring equinox!”
“If you say so, Mr. Hennessey,” said Mrs. Hatfield. “I won’t argue with you.”
“I will,” said an educated voice behind them.
It was the impatient man with the gray ha
ir, in a friendlier mood now that he had his pint.
“There are a couple of tallish stones out there, dragged to the location somehow by humankind a few millennia ago. But the question of what, if anything, was ever sacrificed there is very much in dispute.”
“Scoff all you want,” said Hennessey, the local. “I myself have seen sheep bones on the moor! So there you have it!”
He sloshed with his glass again, and once more Laura dodged successfully.
“Please be more careful, Mr. Hennessey,” said Mrs. Hatfield. And then she added, as an aside to Laura, “Pay him no mind. There are sheep bones in this countryside just everywhere; it’s what you get when you have sheep!”
“Oh, I know that,” said Laura. “It’s Reggie you need to reassure. He’s been a city boy all his life.”
Now the gray-haired local with the educated voice, well into his cups himself, began to get a bit beer-pensive.
“There was a lot to commend it, you know,” he said almost wistfully. “Not like the more recent centuries, with all this nonsense about the individual’s personal relationship with the power of the universe and people allowed to say just anything they want about it. Those were difficult times back then, and the druids weren’t just the spiritual leaders; they were the organizers and lawgivers of the society, as well. Any religion must be right for its times. And those were very troubled times.”
“I’ve known troubled times myself,” said Hennessey, clearly the drunker of the two informative locals. “You know what I do about them?”
“Yes, we certainly do, Mr. Hennessey,” said Mrs. Hatfield. “And you know what? I’m going to buy you another—because we still must do our toasts!”
With that, Mrs. Hatfield ushered Laura and Reggie back into the pub; she grabbed a bottle of champagne from the bar along the way, managed to fill her own glass, and began filling those of anyone she could reach.
“Everyone! Let us all now drink to our new Lady Macbeth, stepping in on such terribly short notice, my dear, dear friend, Lau—”
She stopped, finally comprehending the alarmed look on Laura’s face, and made the best adjustment she could.
“Lau—aaaady Macbeth!”
Mrs. Hatfield put her glass to her lips, and so did everyone else, paying no attention to her apparent botching of the details of the toast.
She had barely swallowed that one before she raised her glass for another.
“And!” She paused for a moment as the not-drunk part of her mind tried to focus. “Everyone settle down, please, just for one minute. I’m serious. Let us raise a glass to dear Melanie, poor girl.”
Everyone in the pub raised their glasses. A portly middle-aged couple standing near Laura, apparently confused by the proceedings, made sure they clinked her glass, and Mrs. Hatfield called out the toast: “To Melanie!”
Reggie and Laura drank the toast and again prepared to leave. The barmaid came over to get their glasses, and as Reggie got out his wallet, he asked, “So, what is it that happened to Melanie?”
The barmaid paused.
“When you say ‘happened,’ do you mean—”
“He means, how was she hurt?” said Laura.
“Oh, you mean how did she die?”
“She died?” said Laura.
“It was a hiking accident.”
“What sort of hiking accident?” asked Reggie, but the barmaid didn’t seem to hear.
“No, no, put your money away,” she said. “It’s been paid for. G’night, luvs.”
Reggie would have asked who it was that had paid, but the barmaid ran off before he could.
Now he and Laura were outside. The flagstones on the path were damp, the street quiet, and the air brisk. Not an unpleasant night.
“So it’s a secret, then?” said Reggie as they walked back to the house.
“What is? I’m sure it was Mrs. Hatfield who picked up the tab.”
“I mean the accident that happened to Melanie.”
“Why on earth would it be a secret?” said Laura.
“I don’t know. But no one has said, have they?”
“No, but … as I said, sometimes life intrudes.”
“Or death does.”
“Well, yes. I’m sure it was something quite ordinary, though, don’t you?” said Laura.
That question—coming from Laura—struck Reggie as odd. After all, she was the theater expert. Why was she asking him?
“Don’t you?” he said.
“Well, if she’d been murdered or abducted by aliens or something, I suppose Mrs. Hatfield would likely have canceled the performance,” said Laura, still sounding a bit odd to Reggie. “Although it’s a fund-raiser, so—”
“And there’s that ‘show must go on’ thing,” said Reggie.
“Yes.”
A moment later as they walked, Laura suddenly looked down and said, “Why is there no mud on your shoes?”
Reggie looked down.
“Should there be?”
“There should be if you performed the ritual properly, as we all told you to do.”
“Oh,” said Reggie.
“Tsk,” said Laura, and she shook her head.
“Perhaps I cleaned them after?”
“Liar. You didn’t do it at all, did you?”
Reggie kept silent.
Laura laughed. “Well. We are certainly in it now, then, aren’t we?”
Then she sighed and said, “Can we take a drive in the country tomorrow? Perhaps a picnic lunch? I don’t have to be back for the final rehearsal until five.”
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard since we got here,” said Reggie.
“Oh, you think so, do you? We’ll see what you say in the morning. Tonight I’ve a few other ideas of my own.”
9
They drove in a vintage MGB two-seater, rented from the local garage. It was a butterscotch convertible, and because the sky was clear, they had the top down, despite the early-spring chill.
“What are you looking at?” asked Reggie.
“Those big white rocks in the field,” said Laura.
“Ah. More cairns. Now if you had said, ‘Oh, I know what to do for our honeymoon! Let’s go to Stonehenge!’ that would have been something.”
Laura laughed.
“I don’t think they’re quite that significant. Anyway, my experience of them is a little more personal. A boy tried to persuade me to lose my virginity out there once.”
“What? Do you mean to say that you went out there and almost—”
“I thought I told you. This is where I went to school!”
“Well, yes, but I thought you just meant things like Latin and geometry.”
“Is that all you learned in school?”
“Pretty much. I did take an academic course in physiology, but no one would let me try any practical applications until university.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Now about that boy and the virginity thing—”
“Oh, that only happened once. It was just before I left Bodfyn and went to live with my aunt. I was almost sixteen.”
“Once is as many times as that can happen, isn’t it?”
“I’ve heard that. Anyway, our history professor came along and shooed us off.”
“In the nick of time?”
Laura laughed.
“Oh, I would say there were quite a few nicks left. He only got a little fresh. Anyway, when I said no, he tried to impress me by doing a carving in one of the rocks—you know, my initials, a heart, his initials—but he didn’t get very far before Mr. Turner came along.”
“Hmm,” said Reggie. “Speaking of fresh, I can do that, to whatever degree suits you.”
She laughed again.
“Why do you suppose I brought a picnic blanket? But let’s just drive on a bit, shall we? It’s starting to cloud up, and I think—oh, wait, what’s that?”
They had just come over a small rise.
To their left in the valley below were three wide green pastures,
separated by hedgerows.
To their right, a narrow road diverged from the one they were on. It curved across a broad meadow, and behind a stand of tall silver birches, to the only structure visible in the valley.
“Turn there!” said Laura.
“Why?”
“I’ll show you. Just turn!”
Reggie did. The MGB took the curve nimbly, and in a moment they were whirring down the road, beneath the light canopy of the silver beeches.
They pulled to a stop in front of a FOR SALE sign.
Behind the sign was a three-story neo-Gothic structure of dark red brick, with a clock tower in the middle, gable windows on the top story, and high pavilions on the east and west corners.
It had to be at least twenty thousand square feet.
“We can’t afford it,” said Reggie.
“I don’t want to buy it,” said Laura. “I only want to visit. This was my school.”
Laura was already getting out of the car before Reggie had even set the brake. She walked across unkempt grass to the main entrance—a heavy oaken double door beneath the clock tower.
The door was more than locked. It was shielded now with an iron grate and an estate agent’s lockbox.
Laura sighed and stepped back.
“I went to school, too,” said Reggie, “but I’ve never been tempted to relive it.”
“We’ll have better luck if we try the back,” said Laura.
She didn’t wait for Reggie to object. He had to run to catch up as she walked quickly around the side of the east pavilion.
At the back, the two pavilions had been extended to form a courtyard, which was closed off from the adjacent meadow—what once had been the school’s playing field—by a simple iron gate. It was secured by the cheapest sort of padlock from the local hardware store.
“What do you think?” said Laura. “Just break it? Or shall we try to climb over?”
“I can pick it, if you really want,” said Reggie. “Barristers do learn skills from their clients. But why? What’s in here?”
“The Winter Holiday Dance. My very first dance,” said Laura, with a look on her face that Reggie could not fathom at all. He wanted to decipher it.
A Baker Street Wedding Page 6
