A Clubbable Woman

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Welshmen weren’t born to be right. They were born to be bloody tragic.’

  He finished the second pint with a definitive swallow and the backward movement of his head shifted one of the pictures.

  Pascoe reached forward to straighten it. The fifteen young men smiled brightly at him. One face, happier than the others, caught his attention. He looked at the names underneath.

  ‘Aye, that’s him. In his Golden Boy days.’

  ‘Connon?’

  He looked closer. Yes, unmistakable now. Connon’s face looked back at him.

  ‘He looks as if he’d been made King of the Harem.’

  Now Jacko peered closely, this time at the date.

  ‘He had,’ he said. ‘Twenty years old. Happy in the day time, happier in the night-time. Just picked for the first trial. Six weeks later he’s bust his ankle and put this girl in the club. He wakes up one morning and though he doesn’t know it, he must suspect it - the party’s over. And no one’s ever going to ask him to another.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never. From now on he’s a gatecrasher.’

  Jacko nodded sagaciously and rattled his glasses together. Pascoe smiled and shook his head.

  ‘No thanks, Mr Roberts. I’ll be getting on, I think. Thank you for the chat. Cheerio!’

  Let me find some nice little girl, with someone else’s drink swilling inside her nice flat little belly, who’ll talk and talk and talk, and be nice to look at. Or even just one who’s nice to look at. I wonder where Jenny is?

  But when he turned to look, she was gone and Marcus was talking to someone else.

  Ted Morgan had gone too.

  The price of information was too high, decided Jenny. So far she had got no information and she had come dangerously near to paying the price.

  Ted Morgan’s car was parked high above the town about five yards down a narrow cart-track which led off the road between two steeply sloping fields. Jenny was heartily relieved that the recent bad weather had made the track so muddy that even the passionate and rather drunk Ted had not dared go any further.

  They were not really out of the town. The hill, or knoll, they were on was almost completely surrounded below by two horns of suburb. The gossip was that the farmer who owned the land was merely hanging on till the price came up to his requirements, then some builder would carve out of the hillside a super executive-type estate, with views for fifteen miles and mortgages for fifty years.

  The only bit of information Jenny had got out of Morgan was that he ‘knew’ the builder was Jacko Roberts.

  It was obviously a popular site, if not for builders, then certainly for lovers. Four or five sets of headlights had blazed rudely into the neck of the lane, then turned in disappointment away.

  The sudden illumination did not seem to inhibit Ted, but Jenny found it comforting. She’d also refused to transfer from the front seat and the gear-lever, hand-brake and steering-wheel were welcome allies.

  At the moment there was a truce. She lit her second cigarette. She didn’t really smoke, but it was time-consuming and also provided a potential weapon.

  Ted puffed energetically at his, uncertain yet whether to congratulate himself on being parked up here with this very attractive young girl, or to commiserate with himself for his failure to make more than token progress.

  ‘Ted,’ said Jenny brightly, ‘how long have you known my father?’

  Morgan shifted uneasily. He didn’t like any of the implications of the question.

  ‘Oh, a good few years.’

  ‘Are you one of his special friends?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. Not really. Not like Marcus. Or Arthur.’

  ‘Gwen’s very pretty, isn’t she?’

  ‘So-so,’ said Ted casually.

  Jenny laughed and started coughing.

  ‘Don’t be so offhand,’ she spluttered. ‘You wouldn’t say no, would you?’

  He grinned.

  ‘No, I don’t suppose I would. Chance’d be a fine thing.’

  ‘I suppose there’s a lot of competition for a pretty woman?’

  How the hell do you get a man to gossip about your dead mother? she thought. I bet Pascoe could.

  Ted grew enthusiastic.

  ‘You bet there is. It can be fun.’

  ‘Fun?’

  ‘Depends whether you join it, or watch it. Me, I weighed up my chances and decided to watch it. Then it’s fun.’

  He’s still talking about Gwen, she thought disappointedly. But what can I expect? If he knew what I wanted he’d be out of the car and away in a flash of shock. But I can’t sit here all night. It’ll be time for round two soon. Come on, my girl, you’re supposed to be a budding teacher. Skilful questioning of the child can make him tap sources of knowledge he didn’t know he had. But it’d be easier to give him a work-card.

  ‘Tell me, Ted,’ she began, but he wasn’t finished yet. Like the good gossip he was, he had merely been marshalling the various elements of his anecdote to their best advantage.

  ‘You should have been there last Saturday night. Arthur starts looking at his watch about seven. She should have been there by then. He doesn’t go home after the game, you see, not worth it, has his tea here and starts straight in on the beer. Well, I was there, behind the bar, standing in for Marcus, for a few minutes he said, more like two hours, so I saw it all develop. He’d look at his watch, then at the clock on the wall, then at his watch. Finally about quarter to eight he shoots through to the other room and finds Dick and Joy Hardy there, they were supposed to be picking Gwen up and bringing her round. But it turns out she wasn’t in. So he comes back through trying to look unconcerned. But he’s shooting some pretty piercing glances around, I tell you. I let him see me there bright and clear!’

  He paused to chuckle.

  ‘Why?’ asked Jenny in puzzlement.

  Ted sighed at the stupidity of women.

  ‘Because those who were there couldn’t be where his old woman was, could they?’

  ‘And who wasn’t there?’

  Suddenly the impetus of Ted’s narrative seemed to fail.

  ‘Oh, lots,’ he said without enthusiasm. ‘I mean, I couldn’t see, could I?’

  ‘But you were behind the bar? That means Uncle Marcus wasn’t there.’

  Ted cheered up.

  ‘That’s right. He wasn’t. Though I can’t imagine Marcus … anyway it doesn’t matter.’

  He reached over and put his arm round her shoulders, more paternalistically than passionately.

  ‘Is that the end of the story, then? It’s a bit pathetic.’

  ‘Pathetic? Yes, I suppose it is. You’ve got to feel sorry for him, haven’t you? I’m sure there’s nothing to any of it, really. Anyway, let’s talk about something interesting, like you and me.’

  Poor Ted, she thought. He’s just remembered what happened last Saturday night. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? He’s remembered that Daddy wasn’t there either; he’s remembered who he’s talking to and he’s just sober enough to mind his p’s and q’s. Does he really know something about Daddy and Gwen? I wonder. Or is it all in that cotton-wool mind?

  She half turned to look at the figure beside her and this proved a near fatal mistake.

  Ted mistook the move completely and his other arm came round with an enthusiasm which had nothing paternal in it. Jenny found herself dragged uncomfortably over the gear-stick and hand-brake, her left cheek was pressed in against her teeth by the pressure of an ardent but misdirected kiss and she felt a button on her cardigan give with a violence which boded ill for Marks and Sparks cowering beneath.

  Round two, she thought, and I didn’t even hear the bell. Now this long metal rod with the knob on the end which is doing God knows what damage to my pelvis is the gear-lever. From the freedom of play it seems to have in relation to my belly it must be in neutral. This other more rigid lever which is gouging a hole in the knee of my tights must be the hand-brake. Therefore if I move my hand down there, poor
Ted, he’s shifting out of the way, God knows what he imagines I’m going to do, there we are, rather stiff, but there she goes, I think.

  It took Ted several seconds to realize the car was moving. Jenny clung to him tightly, partly to delay his attempts to remedy the situation, partly to buffer herself against any possible impact.

  By the time he got his foot to the brake pedal they were down among the mud and the car slid on for several yards before coming to a halt.

  Below them the lights of the town twinkled unconcernedly on. Jenny had a very poor topographical imagination and needed to apply herself with great concentration to the task of relating the main lines of street lights to her own knowledge of the town. It was a task she devoted herself to while Ted with a most ungentlemanly violence of language put the car into reverse and tried to back up the lane.

  The wheels spun in the mud-lined cart-tracks. Jenny let them spin on for a while; but she was above all things a sensible girl and had no desire to find herself irretrievably stuck. That would be jumping out of the frying-pan into a raging inferno.

  ‘Why don’t you,’ she said in the ultra-kind voice she reserved for very recalcitrant children, ‘get out, put some branches or stones or something under the wheels, then start pushing? I will drive. I do have a licence and I’m really quite good.’

  Without a word, Ted climbed out of the car and began pulling at the hedgerow. Jenny felt quite sorry for him.

  She wound down the window.

  ‘I think we’ll need some more branches,’ she said.

  Dave and Alice Fernie were walking like a couple of children down the private side of Boundary Drive. They were hand in hand, about a yard apart, swinging their joined hands high and indulging in a tug-of-war every time they encountered a lamp-post or a tree.

  Alice screamed with laughter as Fernie gave her a jerk which pulled her forward so hard that her left shoe stayed behind, its heel bedded deep in the grass verge.

  ‘Oh-Dave-you-silly!’ she half-panted, half-laughed, hopping towards him as he retreated, holding her at arm’s length, but didn’t finish for he let her catch up, caught all her weight to his body and kissed her passionately.

  It had just been an ordinary night, starting like a hundred others. They had walked to the local pub, about half a mile into the estate, to have a couple of drinks with a handful of old acquaintances. But things had gone absolutely right from the start, contrary to usage. Perhaps the Christmas decorations in the pub had helped. Dave had had just the right amount of drink, he hadn’t been tempted to display his superior knowledge in argument; he hadn’t produced any slanderous gossip, he hadn’t felt it necessary to demonstrate his virility by being over-attentive to someone else’s wife. He had irritated no one, offended no one; he had been moderate in speech, witty in comment, generous in purchase and was now obviously amorous in intent.

  There was a sharp edge of frost in the air. Above, clouds ragged as crows’ wings beat across the sky, turning the moon into a pale flower drifting beneath the sea. When for a moment it floated into a clear patch of the sky, it turned to silver the branches and few tenacious leaves of the tree against which they now leaned. There had been nights like this years ago, when they were younger, before there was a house and a television set, before they were married. Memories real as the rough bark pressing against the back of her hands came crowding into her mind. But she did not speak them. Dave did not like the past and she was not going to risk losing any part of the present.

  The wind rose suddenly and her foot began to feel the cold. Gently she pulled away.

  ‘I’ll get my shoe, Dave, and we’ll get on home,’ she said.

  ‘Right, love.’

  His arm was round her waist now as they walked on, quietly, anticipatingly.

  It was darker on this side of the road. The trees, the older less efficient lamp-posts, all contributed. Ahead they could see the telephone-box which stood almost outside their gate. ‘They didn’t need one till the hoi polloi came,’ Fernie had once commented. When he was in the mood, everything appeared as evidence of the difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

  Now it looks like a beacon, welcoming us home, thought Alice, though not without a wry glance at her own romanticism.

  They were nearly there and she turned to cross the road. But he pulled her back and leaned her against another tree.

  ‘Dave!’ she said.

  He kissed her again.

  ‘Afraid of the neighbours?’

  ‘Of course not. I’m afraid of me. There’s some things you can’t do out on the street.’

  ‘Why not?’ he whispered, it’d be fun.’

  ‘Oh, you fool,’ she murmured.

  They kissed once more.

  ‘Let’s go in now,’ he said, eagerly.

  As they stepped out from behind the tree, a figure, walking rapidly and glancing back over his shoulder, stepped off the pavement a few yards up and came at them on a collision course. There was an urgency about the way he moved which caught Alice’s attention, but it was her husband who spoke first.

  ‘Hey, Stanley! What’s up, then?’

  The figure stopped dead and saw them obviously for the first time.

  ‘Mr Fernie. It’s you.’

  Then no more.

  It was Stanley Curtis, his face rather pale, breathing deeply, quickly.

  ‘Is something wrong, Stan?’ asked Alice.

  ‘No. Well, yes. It’s just that, well, I was passing Mr Connon’s house and I just looked over the hedge and I saw someone. Someone there.’

  He stopped again.

  ‘Where, boy?’ asked Fernie, sharply. ‘What doing?’

  ‘In the garden. Just prowling around. Then he disappeared up the side of the house. I thought it might be. .’

  ‘Yes, Stanley?’

  ‘… the man who killed Mrs Connon.’

  Fernie nodded vigorously, not so much, it seemed to Alice, at what Stan had said, but rather at some thought going through his own head.

  ‘Right. Come on, lad. Alice, you stay here.’

  ‘Dave! What are you going to do?’

  ‘To have a look. What else? There’s two of us. Come on, Stan.’

  But Stanley made no movement. Poor kid, thought Alice, he’s scared stiff.

  She moved to him and put her arm over his shoulders. He was shivering violently.

  ‘Don’t be a fool, Dave,’ she said sharply. ‘Stan’s not coming with you. And you’re not going either. There’s the phone-box. Get on to the police straightaway.’

  Fernie stood irresolutely for a moment. Alice glanced round. The Curtis house was in darkness. Maisie and her husband were obviously out.

  ‘I’m taking Stan inside,’ she said. ‘You come on in when you’ve talked to the police. You can watch in comfort then.’

  So much for the perfect end to a perfect night, she thought resignedly as she walked up the path. All that build-up gone to waste. It’d have been better if I’d told him to go ahead up against the tree. We might have missed Stanley. And he was too scared to notice us. But he’d have called the police anyway and they might really have caught us at it. Against a tree!

  The thought made her smile. Alice Fernie was a woman of indomitable spirit.

  Behind her, her husband stepped into the telephone-box and began to dial.

  ‘Connie,’ said Hurst, ‘I’ve brought you a drink. You’re not going to hide in here all night, are you?’

  Connie recognized the half-jocular, half-sympathetic note in Hurst’s voice. It was a tone he was growing familiar with. Condolences first. Then afterwards talk as if nothing had happened, but inject enough sympathy into your voice to show you’re still aware that something has.

  He hadn’t meant to sit so long by himself. He had come down to the Club that night with a real purpose, a purpose only half of which had been carried out at the meeting. The sight of Dalziel and Pascoe had disconcerted him more than he had cared to show. He felt illogically that somehow he was responsible for
introducing a dissonant element into the Club. It was a rugby club. He had long been disturbed by the growing diversification of the Club’s interests. And therefore of the Club’s membership.

  But he put these thoughts to the back of his mind now, with a silent promise that they would be uttered one day soon.

  ‘I’ve been glancing through the teams, Peter,’ he said. ‘What’s happened to Jim Davies?’

  ‘He knocked his knee on Saturday. Seemed all right at first, but came up like a balloon over the weekend.’

  ‘So you brought in Gerald on the open side. He’ll never hold the place, will he? Did you think of any of the youngsters? Jo Walsh? Or Stan Curtis?’

  Hurst laughed.

  ‘You might almost have been eavesdropping, Connie. Yes, both of them. But Joe’s best-manning at a wedding on Saturday so he’s not available. Though he’d come along, white carnation, wedding-ring and all, I reckon, if he was asked to play for the Firsts. But we couldn’t do that. And young Curtis has been a bit under the weather, missed training this week, so he’s out. Anything else?’

  ‘Yes. I see Marcus’s name’s missing from the Fourths.’

  ‘Time marches on, Connie! He’s asked not to be considered, for a while at least. Feeling his age, he says.’

  ‘Considered!’ smiled Connon. ‘You don’t get considered for the Fourths. You get press-ganged. He’ll have to join the great gang of us who move around in disguise on Saturdays till half an hour after kick-off time. You’ll be one of us soon, Peter.’

  Hurst nodded and started to pin the team-sheets back up on the board.

  Then he seemed to make his mind up about something.

  ‘Connie, that letter. I was desperately sorry to hear about it.’

  ‘Yes?’

  It was a calm, simple interrogative, inviting but not pleading for a continuation.

  ‘I’d like to see it if I might,’ said Hurst.

  ‘Why?’