by Fiona Walker
‘He’s just like any Irish tinker you meet.’ He tied feathery carcasses to his belt. ‘Mannerless trespassers the lot of them, but cowards underneath.’
‘He’s your stepson.’ She tried to control her anger, aware that he was once again carrying a loaded gun, and had fresh game to slingshot too. ‘And he just went over a cliff! Shouldn’t we call the coastguard?’ Her eyes raked the rocky face below her once more.
‘Odds on he swung along the ledge like a thief along guttering and is back with the happy campers already.’ Hector was entirely unconvinced of his demise. ‘Probably gathering a lynch mob. Can’t be too careful with all these proles pitching tents out round the place.’
He appeared alongside her again, pheasant carcasses to the fore, his long face looming over hers like an Easter Island carving out-staring a rock climber. And at that moment she remembered something that left her in no doubt Byrne was safe. The night they had shared a table at the Book Inn, he’d told her he was an experienced free climber. He had never once fallen, he’d said.
She felt the ring on her finger positively glow as relief pumped through her, and she pressed its gold warmth to her lips. She knew that when Francis had handed her back the engagement ring which had belonged to his mother, it had felt like a curse; Byrne’s felt like an enchanted power, a magical token that would guard her against evil.
Smelling menthol and eucalyptus, she realised that she was still carrying the Fisherman’s Friend packet crumpled sweatily in her tightly fisted hand.
‘What did you just say about camping?’ she croaked at Hector, groping for one of the little lozenges.
‘Nothing to worry your pretty head about. I’ll take you back to the hall.’ He grasped her arm. ‘Francis will be going spare. He said you were staying in bed all day.’
‘I must talk to Mum.’ She started back towards the house, with Hector still clasping her arm so that she found herself hawking him along too like a long-legged, feathery handbag.
‘You wait there,’ she told him at the door, remembering the crumpled letters with a guilty start. ‘I’ll just pop upstairs and check she’s OK.’
‘I shall come too.’
‘Actually perhaps we should go straight back to the hall after all. She’s probably asleep.’
‘I am not asleep!’ came a rather slurred voice from the bathroom, followed by the sound of the cistern flushing. Lucy appeared, sleep mask on top of her head now, iPod earpieces trailing behind. She looked even more puffy-eyed, and had clearly been crying again.
‘I’m taking Allegra back to the hall,’ Hector announced firmly. ‘Francis will look after her. She really has been very ill lately.’
‘Yes, that’s probably best,’ Lucy shot her daughter a regretful look. ‘I might just go up for another nap. This has all been very emotional.’ Her face crumpled as reached up then fled towards the stairs, crashing into the bedpan as she went.
‘Better wait until you’re in bed before putting your sleep mask back on,’ Hector snapped witheringly.
‘Oh yes,’ Lucy pulled it back up, sobbed again, and scuttled upstairs.
Legs tried to follow, but Hector still had her in his vice-like grip ‘Let’s get you back to bed too.’
Much as Legs longed to race upstairs and curl up alongside her mother, clinging on for dear life and taking her refuge, she knew that would do neither of them any favours. Hector still had his gun under his arm, cartridges at the ready, eyes darting from window to window in case Byrne brought his lynch mob back. He was not a man to argue with today, and she had no energy left with which to argue or ask any more questions. She was utterly wrung out in body and soul. The thought of bed, any bed, was so inviting she felt almost tearful with longing. She was sure everything would make sense again after a few hours’ sleep.
‘Best get you back.’ He hurried her outside and on through the trees. ‘Come on, the old truck’s just on the cove track here.’
Legs was too wiped out to argue, tripping along half supported by him like a rag doll.
Bouncing around in the back of the Land Rover en route to the hall across the parkland – Hector never bothered using the tracks if he could cross turf at speed – she tried and failed to pull Byrne’s signet ring off her fourth finger, not wanting Francis to see it. She tugged and sucked and prized and scraped, but it was stuck tight. In the end she gave up. She supposed it would at least give her a useful talking point to help open up a very difficult conversation she was about to have with him. She pressed her lips to the lions with their tower and drew strength.
Chapter 37
Francis was predictably apoplectic to learn that she had been discovered at Spywood while his father took pot shots at ‘that trespassing tinker son of Poppy’s’.
‘Have you got a death wish?’ he yelled. ‘You walked there alone through the woods. If a secondary infection doesn’t kill you, some crackpot will!’
She tried to explain, but her coughing had reached fever pitch and she was sent straight back to bed like a naughty child. She was too exhausted to put up a fight. She had terrible shakes again. He gave her another slug of the salty-tasting barbiturate. It knocked her out like a tranquillised cat.
She woke up hours later with him stretched out alongside her on top of the counterpane like a carving of a medieval knight lying on a plinth, his head turned towards her. Moonlight cast his beautiful, sleeping face in stone. Then he opened his eyes, bright blue sapphires set in the marble mask.
‘I love you.’ He tilted his head to kiss her.
‘I’m too ill!’ She shrank away.
He reached for her hand, the pads of his fingers, stroking her nails. ‘You don’t make it easy to look after you, Legs darling.’
‘I don’t need looking after. Francis. We must talk about—’
He lifted his hand to her mouth to silence her, her fingertips still gripped in his. ‘You don’t understand what’s going on. You need protecting as much as the rest of us, darling one – more so, according to Conrad. I spoke to him again today. He’s in a terrible state; always lacked backbone,’ he added with satisfaction, sounding just like Hector.
‘What’s Conrad got to do with it?’ She had a sudden vision of her ex-lover threatening to enact a terrible revenge on her for her maddened umbrella resignation.
But she couldn’t have been further from the truth.
Francis took her hand again. ‘We think Gordon Lapis has a stalker who’s already hanging about here at Farcombe – not just a random crank; a fully fledged nutcase.’
‘Since when?’ She sat up, clutching her head as she went dizzy.
Francis propped himself up on one elbow. ‘Well according to Conrad there have always been unhinged mega-fans.’
‘Lots,’ she agreed.
‘And God knows there are enough turning up here in Farcombe each day to bear that out – but this one is a breed apart.’
‘Is this to do with the letters?’
‘You know about those?’
‘Your father accused Byrne of writing death threats.’
‘It’s not him, not unless he has an accomplice. A third letter turned up just today, hand-delivered as before, at about the same time Dad had Jamie-go at gunpoint. It’s obvious that whoever it is watches everything that goes on here. That includes you.’
‘Me?’ She remembered Byrne’s very real fear for her safety, and Hector’s hurry to get her back to the hall.
‘You’ve got a couple of personal mentions in the stories.’ He took her hands in his.
She felt her scalp tighten with fear. “Stories’?’
‘They all start “Once Upon a Time” – Dad’s trying to persuade the police to have a forensic psychologist looking at them, but they’re not taking it terribly seriously to be honest, and obviously see it as a waste of resources. They’ve got all the notes. I met with them again today, but their hands are tied unless a crime actually committed.’
‘Surely poison letters count as a criminal offence?’
‘What happy campers?’
But he wasn’t listening. He had discovered the heavy ring that was stuck on her finger.
He held up her hand to examine it, lifting it up to the moonlight. ‘Why are you wearing Kizzy’s ring?’
She snatched her hand away. ‘It can’t possibly be Kizzy’s.’
‘She never takes it off. She’s got these lions tattooed on her …’ He cleared his throat. ‘Somewhere intimate.’
Mind whirring, Legs’ first illogical reaction was to be livid that Byrne had fobbed off Kizzy’s ring as a love token, and to wonder why he was in possession of it in the first place. Then she was illogically offended that Francis had once made her feel so grubby about the little stars on her ankle, and yet Kizzy clearly had a minor safari park inked somewhere private. Finally she felt paranoid that Francis would never let her leave the hall again, keeping her for ever entombed amid erotic paintings and poetry readings. Her thoughts were still so jumbled up with tiredness and barbiturates, and talk of death threats and stalkers. Somehow it seemed vitally important not to give anything away about her recent encounter with Byrne.
‘I … found it,’ she improvised hopelessly. ‘In the woods.’
He tutted in disbelief. ‘Don’t lie to me.’
‘It’s not a lie.’ She had found it – in a Fisherman’s Friend bag, she told herself, staring determinedly back at him in the half darkness. His face was light and shadow dancing as clouds scudded across the moon. He looked both incredibly handsome and eerily predatory.
‘You mustn’t go out alone, it’s not safe,’ his voice was carefully modulated, both caring and censorious.
She found herself thinking about Byrne asking after the threats earlier, the man for whom they were almost certainly personally directed. He had been typically cool and level-headed, claiming to be more concerned about Hector waving a gun about than hate letters and cranky fans. If anything, he had seemed far more concerned for her safety. But if the perpetrator was really wandering around the estate by night, didn’t that put him in terrible danger?
‘Where is Byrne tonight?’ she demanded in a panic.
Francis looked at her warily. ‘He’s camping.’
‘Where?’
‘On the Isle of Wight,’ he snapped, sounding bored. ‘Here, of course, on one of Home Farm’s old hay fields.’
‘Isn’t that a bit unfriendly, not to mention frightening out there with mad stalkers running around?’ She felt terrified for him, ready to raid the wardrobes for more evening wear and storm out to stand guard over his tent with Hector’s shotgun.
‘It was his choice.’
‘But it must be lonely.’
‘Legs, darling, it’s a city out there. Didn’t you notice when you were wandering around earlier?’
She shook her head. ‘I went via the lake.’
‘Come and look,’ talking her by the hand, he led her from the room and across the wide landing into his old bedroom which had mullion windows looking over the walled kitchen gardens up to Home Farm and its pastureland.
There she saw acres of tents in the monochrome moonlight. There must have been more than a hundred, thrown scattergun fashion into the hills like little glacial boulders. A few, where the inhabitants were still awake, glowed like illuminated lanterns. Closer to the farm were campervans and motor-homes in serried lines.
‘All paying handsomely for their pitches,’ Francis looked very pleased with himself. ‘I’ll buy you that Ferrari. If they keep turning up at this rate, it’ll be a 250 GT. Who knew trash fiction could be so rewarding? I can’t wait to shake Gordon Lapis by the hand.’
‘If he survives the death threats and mad stalker.’ She stared at him in horror.
‘It’s all under control. We’re hiring in a private security firm. Conrad has it covered. We can’t cancel now. This lot would riot, not to mention the thousands we’re expecting in the next fortnight.’
‘And you’d lose a fortune,’ she muttered quietly.
‘This place costs a fortune.’ He turned to her suddenly, cupping her face. ‘You’ve saved us, Legs. You’ve saved me.’
‘I have?’ She bleated.
‘You brought me Gordon Lapis. You did this for Farcombe Hall and for us. You did it to beg forgiveness. I love you for it. I never stopped loving you. And my God I’m going to protect you.’ He pressed his lips down on hers.
She hurriedly faked a few coughs to back him off.
‘And Byrne is out there right now?’ Her eyes raked the endless little pods shimmering in the moonlight.
He let out a caustic laugh. ‘Old Jamie-go hates being cooped up indoors, it seems. Probably misses bunking down in a stable in Kildare. Poppy says he loves it out there with all the oddballs, although the dog isn’t quite so keen on sharing his personal space with the great unwashed.’
The first light of dawn was breaking over the horizon. Legs gazed out across the steely fields, knowing Byrne was out there somewhere, sleeping among the superfans. And suddenly she knew what he was doing. He was getting to know his readers face to face, meeting them in person, breaking bread and sharing firelight while he remained behind the cloak of anonymity. He was testing the water to see whether he could cope with the full onslaught of sharing the rest of his life with them all as an active part of it.
‘Nothing will stop this festival going ahead now,’ Francis was saying. ‘Crowds are estimated as high as a hundred thousand. We’re going to close public access to the village and bring them in through the estate gates from the main road, charging anyone without a ticket a tenner each.’
Legs felt foreboding trickling the length of her body; whether the mad stalker would get to Gordon before he got to Hector was debatable; either way it was set to be a dramatic festival. And the crowds could be the most unpredictable force of all.
‘Where exactly is Gordon Lapis’s first public appearance being staged?’
‘The current plan is the library. Given the threats to Gordon’s safety, it’s thought that the main marquee is too much of a security risk. Gayle Keiller-Myles has come up with the brilliant idea of taking out all our books and replacing them with thousands of Gordon Lapis ones in every edition including the hundreds of foreign language ones. It will look fantastic on the live screening.’
‘Live screening? On EuroArts?’ Legs knew the budget satellite arts channel which sponsored the festival had an outdoor broadcast unit consisting of one freelance journalist and a digital camera hooked up to a laptop. They didn’t do live.
‘Auntie’s finest from Four are dedicating an hour to us.’ He touched his nose, indicating a secret. ‘It’s being announced at the press launch tomorrow. EuroArts are cool as they get fifty per cent of all syndication rights, plus the chance to run endless repeats. The broadcast has already been sold around the globe. And the Beeb will show edited highlights as a part of a Gordon Lapis Omnibus special.
‘We’re also laying on big screens in the parkland here,’ he bragged, sounding as though they did it every year whereas Legs knew Farcombe’s most newsworthy festival speaker to date had been a photogenic Iranian female poet under fatwa. ‘We have a company coming to place a fifty square metre LED in front of the parterre – it sits on top of a huge pantechnicon.’
‘I guess that will make up for the fact that you don’t have a television in the house,’ she said faintly.
Legs felt weak as she took in the sheer scale of the operation and its total lack of foresight or understanding about Gordon and his readers and their long, loving relationship with Ptolemy. She’d spent enough time at Fellows Howlett dealing with the cranky post and email – just a tiny fraction of the
Lapis phenomena – to know what a demanding lot they were. They would want to be close to him, she was certain, not fobbed off with a glorified webcam screening.
The one person possibly best qualified to judge right now was out in the parkland, counting down the days to the moment he revealed himself as an imposter not only to those fans all around him, but also to the mother with whom he had only just made contact. Legs adored Byrne with an intensity that frightened her, and she loved Gordon’s work with an addict’s passion, but now that she knew one man to be the flipside of the other, she feared for his stability. What had he got planned for Hector? Now that he knew he couldn’t publicly discredit him, would he risk something even more shocking? If it involved a crowd of thousands, no public liability insurance and a live BBC screening, he could bring down Farcombe like the House of Usher.
She was suddenly very angry with all those who had let Byrne down; Conrad with his negligence and cowardice; Francis with his greed; Hector for his bullying selfishness, but mostly angry with herself for playing her part so artlessly, living for the moment as always and now faced with the possibility of truly catastrophic consequences.
‘You’re shivering, Legs darling.’ Mistaking her shaking anger for fatigue, Francis was instantly back in condescending carer mode. ‘You need to get back to bed.’
‘I’m fed up of being in bed.’ She shrugged away the hand on her shoulder. He’d be quoting at her next, she predicted wearily, suddenly realising she was very tired indeed.
As soon as she clambered into bed she conked out, gold signet ring pressed against the tip of her nose for comfort, only to dream that she’d been entombed in the family mausoleum in Farcombe’s graveyard, the festival in full swing in the parkland beyond the walls. Then blinding lights flashed on and she realised she was facing a television crew with live action being fed to the big screens outside. Alongside her sat Byrne and Fink the basset, both wearing dark glasses. She was interviewing the duo, a producer who sounded like Conrad shouting in her ear. Beside the camera’s all-seeing eye, an autocue starting to roll with questions, the first of which read ALLEGRA: ‘So, Gordon Lapis, tell me, if you were a biscuit which one would it be?’
