A Clubbable Woman

by Reginald Hill

  She stood up away from his arm and took off her coat. He looked at her, long-legged, short-skirted, well- rounded.

  ‘They were wise to look,’ he said with a smile.

  She trailed her coat along the floor as she walked to the window and ran her finger along the sill.

  ‘Tell me about it, Daddy.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. Please.’

  ‘There’s not much to tell.’

  ‘Not much. My mother’s dead! And that’s not much?’

  ‘No, I mean …’

  She sat down on the sill.

  ‘I’m sorry. I know what you mean.’

  ‘I came home. I was late. I’d let myself be talked into playing and I got a bit of a knock. Your mother had had her tea and was sitting watching the television. I just stuck my head into the room and said hello. She didn’t say anything. I could feel the atmosphere. You know how she hated anything to spoil her timetable, no matter how unimportant. So I went into the kitchen to get myself some tea.’

  He stopped and after a moment Jenny turned from the window which she had been staring out of since he started talking. Connon was resting his head in his hands, his elbows on the table.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes. It’s just this pain again. That’s what happened on Saturday. It came on then, in the kitchen. I couldn’t eat. I felt sick, so I went upstairs. And I passed out on the bed.’

  ‘What is this pain? Have you seen about it?’

  ‘Not really. McManus has had a look. And a police doctor, but he didn’t give me a diagnosis. I told you I got a knock during the game. Anyway, when I awoke it was nearly eleven. I still felt a bit groggy, but I remember thinking it was rather odd your mother hadn’t been up to look for me. I came downstairs. The telly was still going in the lounge. I went in.’

  He stopped and made a gesture which might have been a shudder, or a shrug, or an incipient reaching out to his daughter; Jenny didn’t move and Connon became still again.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘She was sitting in the big chair. Sprawled out. She was dead.’

  He was silent again, studying his daughter from between half-closed lashes. As if making a decision, he stood up and walked over to her so that he was standing close to her, not touching, not offering to touch, but there if required.

  ‘Her eyes were open. Her forehead was smashed in just above her nose. She was obviously dead. I stood there for a minute. It was odd. I was quite calm. I thought, I mustn’t touch anything. And I walked out into the hall and picked up the telephone. Then this thing in my head started again. I could hardly dial. But I managed.’

  ‘Who did you ring?’

  ‘Old Dr McManus first. Then the police. McManus was more interested in me than your mother. Just took one look at her. But gave me a shot of something and put me to bed. There were police all over the place, but they didn’t get far with asking me questions. I was out like a light.’

  ‘And this morning?’

  ‘They were round first thing. That’s where I’ve been. They told you that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s that fellow Dalziel. I know him vaguely from down at the Club. He’s a brute of a fellow. I don’t know what they expected him to find out.’

  ‘Have they any ideas?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. A couple.’

  ‘What are they?’

  ‘Firstly, that I am lying about this pain in my head and passing out. I came in last night, smashed your mother’s head in and waited a few hours before calling the police.’

  ‘Secondly?’

  ‘That I’m telling the truth about passing out. But, unknown to me or forgotten by me, I nevertheless killed your mother.’

  Now there was the longest silence of all. Finally Jenny opened her mouth to speak but her father gently laid his index finger across her lips.

  ‘You needn’t ask, Jenny. The answer is no, I did not consciously kill her.’

  ‘And unconsciously?’

  ‘I don’t think so. What else can I say?’

  Now she took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. Connon looked fondly down at her flowing golden-brown hair.

  He ran his fingers through its softness; it was a happy mixture of her mother’s once vivid red and his own light brown.

  ‘Don’t worry, darling. It’ll soon pass over, all this. Perhaps we can go away. It’s almost your Christmas holidays. Would you like that, to go away, I mean?’

  She looked up at him.

  ‘Is that what you want? To go away, I mean?’

  He rolled the question round in his mind for a moment, trying to read her thoughts. But nothing of them appeared in her face.

  Finally he settled for the truth.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. No. It isn’t.’

  She nodded her head in serious accord.

  ‘No. Neither do I. We’ll stay. There’ll be lots to do here. We’ll stay and do whatever we have to. Together.’

  She kept on nodding her head till her hair fell in a golden curtain over her white face.

  Chapter 3

  It was a glorious day. The sun laid a deep shadow obliquely across the polished oak of the coffin as it was lowered into the grave. The sky was cloudless, its blue more thinly painted than the blue of summer but the sun was too bright to stare in the eye. The air was just cold enough to make activity pleasant and the mourners shifted gently, almost imperceptibly, under their coats from time to time.

  Only Connon and Jenny stood in absolute stillness.

  Dalziel was scratching his left breast, his hand inside his coat moving rhythmically.

  ‘Ironical,’ he whispered loudly. ‘Suit you, my boy. Subtle.’

  ‘What?’ said Pascoe.

  ‘This,’ he said. ‘Nature.’

  ‘Human nature? Or red in tooth and claw?’

  ‘Don’t get bloody metaphysical with me. The day, I mean. Fine day for a funeral. Sun. No wind blowing dead leaves or any of that. Fine day for golf.’

  ‘What are you doing here then, sir?’

  Dalziel sniffed loudly. A few heads turned and turned away. He obviously wasn’t about to break down.

  ‘Me? Friend of the family. Last respects must be paid. Heartfelt sympathy.’

  He fluttered his hand inside his coat so that the cloth pulsated ludicrously.

  ‘What’s more to the point, what are you doing here? I come within smelling distance-of having a reason. You’re a non-starter. Bloody policeman, that’s all. You’ll get the force a bad name. Intrusion of grief, it could be grounds for complaint.’

  ‘In his master’s steps he trod,’ murmured Pascoe softly.

  ‘Which of us does that make the very sod? And what are you looking for, Pascoe? You’re not nursing any nice little theories, are you? And not telling me?’

  ‘No,’ said Pascoe, ‘of course not.’

  Not bloody much, thought Dalziel. You keep working at it, lad. Nothing like the competitive spirit for sharpening the wits.

  ‘Not a bad gate,’ whispered Arthur Evans to Marcus.

  ‘Arthur!’

  Evans looked sideways at his wife. She had put hardly any make-up on in deference to the occasion and wore a plain black coat, loose-fitting. But the bite in the air had brought the red blood to her lips and cheeks and the looseness of the coat just made it more obvious where it did touch.

  Dressed like that, thought Evans with bitter admiration, she wouldn’t stay a widow long.

  Marcus, on his other side, looked pale beyond the remedy of frost. He swayed slightly.

  ‘You all right, boyo?’

  Jesus, on and off the field, I spend half my life nursing them.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Just a bit cold. Poor Connie.’

  Poor Connie. Poor bastard. Evans remembered the shock last Sunday when they had finally got to the Club, arguments buried for an hour. That detective had been there, he was somewhere around now, bloody ghouls, one of Dalziel’s lackeys, there’s a right
thug for you, like all these Scotsmen, no finesse, first up first down, feet feet feet. Sid had got in first. Snipped his indirect line, gave the news right out, loud and clear. Mary Connon’s dead. And all I could do was look at Gwen, watch Gwen, see her age beneath the words, then gradually come back to life with awareness of her own life.

  Poor Connie. He deserves sympathy. He deserves … perhaps he will get what he deserves. There he stands with that little girl of his. Not so little. She’s a pretty little thing.

  She’s a pretty little thing.

  The service was over. Out of the corner of his eyes Pascoe had noticed two men with spades move tentatively forward from the cover of a clump of trees, then retreat. Their movement startled half-a-dozen crows whose caws had been a harsh burden to the words of the prayer-book and they went winging from the tree tops in ragged grace, as the black-coated mourners moved in twos and threes away from the grave-side, silent at first, but speaking more and more freely as the distance grew between themselves and the motionless couple who remained.

  At the car park they formed little groups before dispersing. Dalziel convened with three or four elder statesmen of the Club, his face and manner serious. He produced a cigarette-case and passed it round.

  Black Russian perhaps, thought Pascoe. That would amuse Dalziel if I could tell him. Do I want to amuse Dalziel? And if I do, is it to keep him sweet so I can manipulate him, like I pretend? Or is it because he puts the fear of God into me? Just how good is he anyway? Or is he just a ruthless sucker of other men’s blood? ‘Don’t get bloody metaphysical with me!’ But said quite nicely really. Like a jocular uncle. Uncle Andrew. You had to laugh. But not here. It’s colder now. Christ, I’m holding conversations with myself about the weather, the mental Englishman, that’s me. Now there’s something to warm us all up, that woman getting into the back seat, back seat’s the place for you, dear, are you sitting comfortably, now get them off. Don’t be shocked, love, that’s what all the detectives are thinking this year, you’ll be giving yourself a scratch in a minute Andrew, you randy old devil. Randy Andy. Now if she’d been killed, her, Gwen, wasn’t it? Evans, that would have been easy. Jealous husband, spurned lover, or one of those tumescent young men who’d been hanging around her from the moment she set foot in the bar, yes, one of those provoked just that bit too far, just over the edge where playing starts to be for real. But not Mary Connon, not that parcel of middle-aged lumber they’d just stored away. Though why not? She’d been built on the same lines, streamlines, take a hundred lines, so they said. Forty-five. Inches. Years. Was forty-five too old? No kind of age at all these days.

  And she wasn’t looking her best when I saw her, was she? There’s something about a hole in the head …

  So who knows? But I don’t quite see the young men … more like one of these old fogies Randy Andy’s chatting up, best prop-forward the Old Sodomites ever had, don’t you know; or perhaps the best fly-half who never played for England, himself perhaps, selling us all a dummy as he stands there remembering how he smashed her head in so he could look for it inside, for the years lost, the place out in the glow of the crowd at Twickenham, could a man love a game that much? And smashed her with what, for God’s sake? Where was it? I’d like a look round that house. Whatever it is could be lying at the bottom of his wardrobe. He’d get used to it after a while, like an egg-stain on a waistcoat, you get used to anything after a while. Lying there for someone to find, a friend, Felstead, Marcus, what’s he got to look so sick about? And what’d he be doing in Connon’s wardrobe anyway? Homosexual jealousy, that’s the answer, I’ll try it on Dalziel for a giggle. More likely his daughter, she’ll find anything there is. Christ, what a thing to find out about your father, she’d do all right in the back seat too, I wouldn’t mind carrying her away at a student riot. Here they come. And there goes fat Marcus, I come to bury Mary not to, he’s taken his time about extending heartfelt sympathy though there’s always the phone. Still, for a nearest and dearest friend …

  ‘Hello, Connie, Jenny.’

  ‘Marcus.’

  ‘Hello, Uncle Marcus.’

  Marcus had invited her to stop calling him ‘Uncle’ about three years earlier when she had flourished into young womanhood. ‘It makes me feel old and you sound young.’ So he had become plain Marcus.

  Till now.

  I have reverted to my old role, thought Marcus.

  ‘I would have called round,’ he said apologetically, addressing himself to Jenny rather than Connon. ‘But you know how things … how are you both?’

  ‘Well,’ said Connon. He did not look as if he was really listening, but glanced back to the grave.

  ‘What will you do now, Jenny? Is your term over?’

  ‘No, there’s another couple of weeks yet, but I’ve got leave of absence. I needn’t go back till after Christmas.’

  ‘How is it? Are you liking the life?’

  ‘It’s not bad. A bit crowded. There’s more students than space. I can sympathize a bit more with these people who write indignantly to the Express about “smelly students”.’

  Thank God for the resilience of youth, thought Marcus. No damage there, or not that’s going to show. But you, Connie, out of the cage at last, you look as if another sniff of free air will shrivel your lungs. No bloody wonder, the shock, the strain of investigation. There’s a new life waiting, if only you’ll believe that, I must make him believe it before it’s too late …

  Jenny made a move down the path towards the car park. Marcus touched her arm.

  ‘I’ll stay here and chat to your father a bit till the others have thinned out. We’ll catch you up. You’d better go and sit in the car out of the cold.’

  Jenny was surprised to find herself resenting Marcus slightly as she moved away.

  She was my mother after all, and he’s my father. Why should he be treated like the sensitive plant and me chucked down to face this lot?

  Because you can think like this at a moment like this, she admonished herself humorously and the shadow of a smile must have run over her face for she caught ‘Bruiser’ Dalziel eyeing her sharply as she stepped on to the car park.

  Standing a little behind Dalziel she saw a tall young man, elegantly dressed, with a thin intelligent face - the kind of actor-type who played ambitious young Foreign Office men on the telly. She thought momentarily of Tony. He hadn’t had time to see him before she left, everything had happened in such a hurry. But no doubt Helen would have passed on the news to him. Perhaps even made a come-back in her original starring role.

  Definitely her last appearance, thought Jenny, but didn’t find it particularly funny. She intended to make straight for the car and shut the door firmly on all condolences, sympathetic noises, keen-edged questionings probing for vicarious pain. But her arm was taken firmly and she was brought to a halt.

  ‘I just wanted to say that I shall miss your mother, Jenny,’ said Alice Fernie.

  The annoyance that had tightened her lips for a moment eased away. She could not remember anyone else saying this. They were all ‘dreadfully sorry’, it had come as a terrible shock to them, but no one had really suggested that Mary Connon would be missed.

  ‘Yes, I shall too,’ she replied, then feeling this was a bit too cold she squeezed the gloved hand which still rested on her arm and went on, ‘I know how much she relied on you.’

  This was nothing more than the simple truth, she realized, as the words came out. Mary Connon had rarely mentioned Alice Fernie to her except in faintly disparaging or patronizing terms. Her lack of taste; the unfairly large wage her husband earned on the factory floor; the excessive subsidization by the ratepayers of council-house rents. She was capable of blaming the Fernies (‘and all those like them,’ she would say inclusively) for the very existence of the Woodfield estate. It had only been a very few years previously that Jenny had realized that the council estate had been there already when her parents bought the house. She had come to accept a picture of rolling countryside being savage
d before her mother’s eyes as the bulldozers rolled in, prompted by the Fernies and ‘all those like them’. But Alice Fernie had been, perhaps by the mere accident of proximity, the nearest thing to a real friend she had. And now Jenny felt real gratitude that this large handsome woman who could only be in her early thirties had thought enough of her mother to accept the condescension of manner and get closer to her.

  Closer than me perhaps, she thought.

  ‘How did you get here, Mrs Fernie?’ she asked. ‘Can we give you a lift back?’

  There were no funeral cars other than the hearse. ‘I will judge what is fitting,’ she had heard her father say to the oblique remonstrances of the man from the undertakers.

  ‘No, thank you, dear. You’ll want to be with your dad. And I’m not going straight back anyway. ‘Bye now.’

  ‘Goodbye. Please call round, won’t you? I shan’t be going back to college till next month.’

  I’ll have to watch myself there, she thought as she watched Alice move away with long confident strides, I could become as patronizing as Mum.

  As she got into the car, she glanced back and caught the eye of the young man who could have been from the Foreign Office. He took a step forward. She thought he was going to come across and talk to her. But a rumbling, phlegmy cough from Fat Dalziel caught both their attentions and the young man turned away.

  Policemen, she thought, angry at her disappointment, and slammed the car door.

  Connon watched Marcus walk away from him down the path through the rank and file of headstones.

  The car park was nearly empty now. The Evanses’ car was just pulling away. He looked after it thoughtfully. Gwendoline. He formed the syllables deliberately in his mind and smiled. All those youngsters competing to provoke the loudest laugh, craning forward to get the deepest view of bosom, pressing close to feel the warmth of calf or thigh, and imagining a returned pressure. Tales to be blown up into triumphs over a couple of pints. But the real triumphs were never boasted of, but remembered in secret; first with reminiscent delight, but soon with fear and cold panic.