The Wounded Thorn

by Fay Sampson

  Hilary was savouring the particularly good coffee-and-walnut gateau. It was nearing the end of a healing day. This was more like the holiday she had planned. There had been that little upset at the Abbot’s Fish House, when the schoolgirls had recognized her. But Sister Mary Magdalene had steered them away. No great harm had been done. On their wetland walk Veronica had been sure she had spotted a rare crane.

  She would not let herself think too much about David in the Gaza hospital.

  Veronica stared suddenly forward, spilling her tea on the gingham tablecloth.

  ‘I know who it was!’

  Hilary stared at her blankly.

  ‘That woman standing beside the car. I knew I’d seen her before. It was Mrs Marsden. I’m sure it was.’

  Hilary’s brain was still taking time to catch up with Veronica’s words. Then, slowly, the significance of that name penetrated.

  ‘Marsden?… You mean George Marsden’s wife? The little woman who was standing next to him in the gift shop? Saying “George!” and “Keep your voice down”?’

  ‘I had my hands full, fending off her husband about Rupert Honeydew’s book, but I did spare a glance or two for her. Short, stocky. That rather severe haircut. Quick! I need to let Joan know.’

  ‘Joan? Know what?’

  Veronica had almost disappeared below the table as she fished in her handbag. She came up flushed and holding her mobile phone.

  ‘Joan Townsend. The would-be journalist. Oh, don’t be so obtuse, Hilary. She wanted to know more about George Marsden. They’d gone from the Chalice Well before she got there, and they’re not in the phone book. I promised I’d let her know if I saw him. Only, where’s the card with her number?’

  Hilary watched her scrabble through her bag again. Then with a sigh she opened her own knapsack and took out her wallet. Slipped into one of the pockets was the little dog-eared card Joan Townsend had given her. She passed it across the table.

  ‘Oh, bless you!’ Veronica was already keying in the number.

  ‘Though what good you think it will do beats me. The woman was waiting by the car as if she expected George to turn up at any moment. They’ll be long gone before your cub reporter gets there. And she’s a braver woman than I am if she’s going to buttonhole him for an interview in the middle of the street.’

  ‘It’s worth a try, though … Joan! Oh, I’m glad I’ve caught you. It’s Veronica Taylor … Yes, from the Chalice Well. I’m in the Copper Kettle in Glastonbury …’

  Hilary listened as a breathless Veronica reeled off the information about seeing the Marsdens, or at least Mrs Marsden.

  ‘Good. I do hope you catch her. We’re just leaving. I’ll keep my eyes open and let you know if I see him, or her, shall I?’

  She put away the phone, beaming with satisfaction. ‘That’s my good deed for the day.’

  Hilary pursued the last crumbs of the gateau with her finger. ‘Did I gather you’ve volunteered us to do a street search for the missing George?’

  Veronica coloured. ‘Well, not exactly a search. But we’ll be walking back down the street to the hotel, anyway. If they haven’t driven off, it’s just possible we’ll see them.’

  ‘Pigs might fly.’

  Hilary heaved herself to her feet and swung the knapsack over her shoulder. ‘Right, Sherlock, lead on.’

  ELEVEN

  It might have been the effect of a day in the sunshine, followed by a very satisfactory afternoon tea. Hilary found herself walking down the busy High Street in a more contented frame of mind. No longer was she watching anxiously for a potential bomber, but a cantankerous gentleman for the unsuccessful Joan to interview. She did not expect to find him.

  Veronica clutched her elbow. ‘There she is!’

  ‘Who? Joan?’

  ‘No. Mrs Marsden.’

  The small woman in the green suit was no longer waiting impatiently by the car. She was making for the doorway of a shop that announced itself as the Archive of Avalon. Veronica had her phone out again, relaying the information to Joan.

  ‘She’s on her way,’ she told Hilary, her eyes shining.

  ‘Congratulations.’ Hilary’s tone was not entirely sincere. ‘I hope it keeps fine for her.’

  From the safety of the pavement, she could already hear George Marsden’s remembered voice haranguing the shopkeeper at the counter inside. ‘Sounds as if it’s someone else’s turn to be on the receiving end of one of his rants.’

  She made to move on, but Veronica protested. ‘We can’t go now. What if he comes out and they disappear before Joan gets here?’

  Hilary sighed. ‘You can’t act as wet nurse to that girl for the whole of her journalistic career – if she has one. You’ve done her a favour. Move on and leave it to her.’

  ‘I know what you mean, but I keep thinking of Morag. Next year, she may be in the same position. It’s a tough life. Joan needs a break.’

  ‘And you think George Marsden may be it? Come on, he’s a loud-mouthed, self-opinionated bore. Not the Chalice Well bomber.’

  ‘We don’t know that, do we?’

  ‘I’m sure the police will have found where he lives and questioned him by now. If they haven’t arrested him, it’s hardly likely he’s going to spill the beans to an amateur reporter, is it?’

  ‘It should still make a colourful interview. She needs to keep the story alive.’

  Mrs Marsden had disappeared inside the shop. Through the open door came her voice. ‘George! Please!’

  Hilary grinned. ‘Well, so long as we don’t actually speak to him when he comes out, we’re not interfering with a witness again, are we? DS Petersen can read the riot act to Miss Townsend instead.’

  As she spoke, the couple appeared in the doorway. George Marsden was dressed as she remembered him from the gift shop, in a tweed jacket and cavalry twill trousers. His face was an alarming shade of red. She almost expected him, like the cartoon image of an angry colonel, to be shooting off drops of sweat from his balding head.

  The smile on her face froze. From further down the street came a flash of light. There was the sparkle of flying glass, followed by an almighty roar. Clouds of smoke and dust billowed down the street towards them. Hilary grabbed Veronica and threw her to the ground.

  She was choking for air in a fog of dust. Fragments of brick and splinters of wood were still raining down on her. She sheltered Veronica as well as she could and prayed that nothing larger would hit either of them.

  The roar was rolling away from them, fading into the distance. Now she could hear the sharper sound of screams.

  It was seconds more before she summoned the courage to get to her feet. She did not want to see what she knew must confront her. Then she was running towards the source of the explosion before she knew what had set her feet in motion.

  Dust clouded the scene. She almost fell over a young man sprawled on the pavement. Blood was pumping from his leg, shockingly scarlet. A shard of glass had almost severed it. A voice Hilary did not recognize as her own had taken over the inside of her head, instructing her what to do. A tourniquet. That was what you had to do. Stop the flow of blood. She snatched the leather belt from her trousers and knelt to bind it tightly round the upper thigh. The man groaned as she lifted the limb enough to pass the strap underneath it. He was still alive.

  ‘Hang on. Help’s coming. You’re going to be OK.’

  She prayed it was true.

  As if in answer to her prayer the street was filled with the urgent sound of sirens. Ambulance? Police? She couldn’t tell.

  She looked up. Veronica, covered in brick dust, was holding a screaming toddler in her arms, trying to soothe it. There was no blood on the child, but nor was there any sign of its mother. Hilary did not want to look past them through that fog of dust. The street had been busy. The young man she was kneeling beside was the only casualty she had seen yet. Who knew what carnage lay beyond him?

  Blood had soaked her cream linen trousers. She thought, inappropriately, that she wou
ld have to throw them away. Odd how the brain occupied itself with trivialities at a time like this. She had been fond of this particular pair.

  The flow of blood from the young man’s leg was less now, wasn’t it? He had fallen silent. A horrid fear gripped her. She slapped his face. It looked deathly pale under its mask of dirt.

  ‘Wake up, sunshine!’ Then more urgently, trying to shock him awake, ‘Stay with us! What’s your name?’

  Relief broke over her, like a huge breaker lifting her up and washing her down again. He did not open his eyes, but a slurred sound escaped his caked lips.

  ‘Baz.’

  ‘That’s great, Baz. I need you to make an effort to keep awake. Can you open your eyes?’

  It seemed like an enormous effort, but the eyelids rose halfway. She glimpsed brown irises, bloodshot whites.

  ‘Well done, son. I’m Hilary. And I’m going to stay with you until the medics arrive. You’ve got a nasty cut on your leg, but they’ll see to it.’

  It was a massive understatement. Short of a surgical miracle, he would lose the limb. How old was he? Mid-twenties? Was he local? A visitor? She thought about her own children, Bridget and Oliver, not much older. Then she forced the thought away. She could not bear to think of one of them here, caught in this mayhem, terribly hurt like this.

  ‘Do you live in Glastonbury, Baz?’ As if this was a chance encounter and they were chatting politely.

  He was slipping away. His eyelids were closing. She slapped his face again.

  ‘Not yet, Baz. Stay with me. They’ll let you sleep in hospital once they’ve patched you up.’

  A reassuring male voice spoke behind her. ‘You’re doing a great job, love. We’ll take over now, shall we?’

  She turned to find a pair of paramedics in green overalls. There was an ambulance close beside them, with its rear doors open. She had not heard it come.

  The second paramedic, slighter, female, was helping her to her feet. Hilary felt astonishingly weak at the knees. There were spots like flies buzzing in front of her eyes. She wasn’t going to faint, was she? Not now.

  ‘Are you OK? No, of course you’re not. Here, sit down.’

  She let herself be led away to the edge of the road. She lowered herself to sit on the kerb and the paramedic pressed her head between her knees.

  The blood soaking her trousers was cold against her legs now.

  ‘Are you hurt too?’

  Hilary shook her head, and then wished she hadn’t. ‘No, we were further up the road, thank God.’

  She had a sudden clear memory. Standing outside a shop that bore the name in Gothic lettering: The Archive of Avalon. There was someone else there too, besides herself and Veronica stepping out of the shop. A trim little woman in a green suit with clipped black hair. And in the doorway, George Marsden. The name flew back to her. Red-faced, tweed jacket. Flushed from shouting invective at the shopkeeper. But just before the bomb went off he had fallen silent. He was already looking down the street to where the explosion would happen a second later.

  She hadn’t imagined that, had she? She could see it in such sharp-edged detail. She must check with Veronica.

  Veronica! Her mind leaped back to the here and now. The aftermath of the bomb. The clamour of voices. People in pain. Police shouting orders. The dust was still settling. The paramedics were stretchering Baz into the back of the ambulance.

  How many more?

  Veronica?

  For a heart-churning moment, she could not remember when she had last seen her friend. Then the fog in her mind cleared. It was OK. Veronica had run to help, just as Hilary had. She had been holding a sobbing child. Hilary got to her feet and looked around. There was a huge number of uniforms at the scene. Enough, she was glad, to form a protective wall, so that she did not have to see what had happened further down the street.

  Had Veronica found the child’s mother?

  A straggle of schoolgirls was coming towards her. Some of them were bloodied. Their uniforms, though dirt-caked, looked somehow familiar. Those purple blazers. And then a voice, calm but firm among the chaos.

  ‘Well done, girls. It wasn’t an easy thing to see, but you’ve acquitted yourselves splendidly. The school will be proud of you.’

  Sister Mary Magdalene was shepherding her charges away from the epicentre of the explosion. Some of them looked dazed, others were crying silently. The nun’s plain grey skirt was soaked in blood, like Hilary’s trousers. For a moment, they stopped and stared at each other. Then Sister Mary Magdalene smiled, with a genuine joy Hilary could only envy.

  ‘I love teenagers, don’t you? You think their heads are full of trivialities – what they look like, what their boyfriend said last night, who posted that photo on Facebook – and then something really serious happens and their true quality comes out, when older people are going to pieces.’

  ‘Yes.’ Hilary avoided imagining what the girls and their teacher had been doing. ‘Will you excuse me? I’m still looking for my friend.’

  ‘The pretty woman with fair hair? She’s by the Tibetan boutique across the road, being buttonholed by a journalist, I think. She doesn’t look as if she’s been hurt.’

  Again that reassuring smile.

  Hilary threaded her way between the ambulances and police cars. There was a cacophony around her of which she had only dimly been aware. It looked as though the police were trying to clear the street of all but the wounded and the emergency services. Hilary felt suddenly anonymous and unneeded, and was glad of it. She had done her bit. She could only pray that Baz would live. Now all she wanted was to get back to the hotel, have a large whisky, a shower and sleep.

  The way to the Tibetan shop was blocked. A young woman in a baggy beige jumper was accosting a dazed-looking woman with a scared toddler clinging to her skirts.

  ‘How close were you when the bomb went off? Did you see anyone going into the shop or coming out just before?’

  Joan Townsend.

  Hilary looked back. She could now make out that the explosion had ripped apart one of the shops and damaged others. There were still people on the pavement being tended to. She felt an unreasonable anger surge up inside her.

  ‘Have you got nothing better to do with yourself? People are dying over there.’

  Joan swung round. In a single glance she took in Hilary’s blood-soaked clothes, the grit that snagged her hair.

  ‘You were there too! Just like at the Chalice Well.’

  Hilary saw the eager flash in the reporter’s brown eyes.

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean? Of course I was there. Veronica phoned you, didn’t she? We were coming down the street because Veronica had seen the Marsdens and she wanted to be able to tell you where George was, before they got away.’

  The reporter’s eyes grew wider.

  ‘George! Of course. The Marsdens! You told me at the Chalice Well they’d been there when you found the first bomb. Veronica thought there might be a possible story there. And now … Oh, thank you!’

  The woman with the toddler had made good her escape.

  ‘There must have been a hundred people on the street and in the shops,’ Hilary snapped. ‘And who’s to say the bomber hadn’t legged it long before his bomb went off?’

  ‘But that’s what they do, isn’t it? Hang around. Just far enough away not to be hurt, but close enough to see the result … Unless it’s a suicide bomber, of course. I can’t thank Veronica enough for bringing me in on this. I mean, who else from TV or the dailies is right here on the spot? I had my camera out seconds after it went off. Here, take one of me, will you? Just for the record. I need it to be professional quality.’

  She thrust her expensive-looking camera into Hilary’s hands.

  ‘You really want me to take a picture of you? Like a holiday snap? Not “me outside Buckingham Palace”, but “me after an atrocity, with people dying in the background”?’

  The sallow face flushed. ‘You’re not being fair. All the really bad cases have be
en taken off to hospital. It’s mostly police now. Please!’

  Hilary’s finger was shaking as it hovered over the button. She lifted the camera, though what she really wanted to do was fling it away across the littered street, as so much else had been flung by the force of the explosion.

  Instead, obediently, she framed the shot, with Joan smiling into the lens, and snapped it.

  She handed back the camera silently.

  ‘You’re an angel! This time I really will make the front page.’

  Hilary walked past her. Veronica was watching from the doorway of the shop, framed by knitted hats and multi-coloured bags.

  ‘They gave me a cup of hot sweet tea. Would you like one?’

  ‘I’d rather have a whisky back at the hotel. Let’s get out of here as fast as we can.’

  TWELVE

  The hotel bar was abuzz with news of the explosion in the High Street. The chatter died instantly when Hilary and Veronica appeared. It took a couple of seconds for Hilary to realize why everyone was staring at her in horror. Slowly she became aware of the shocking figure she must present. Her cream trousers drenched in blood. Debris and dust in her hair. Her face no doubt grimed or smeared where she had passed her bloodied hands over it. Veronica was similarly dirty and dishevelled, if not caked in blood.

  Ignoring the outbreak of concern and curiosity which followed, she spun rapidly on her heel and made for the stairs. Halfway across the foyer she stopped. The hotel manager, who had been serving behind the bar, was in sympathetic pursuit.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry. If there’s anything we can do …’

  ‘Two large whiskies and a pot of strong coffee. In our room.’

  The stairs seemed higher and harder to climb than she remembered. She found herself clutching the rail for support. A turn on the landing, then one last shorter flight. Veronica was there before her, unlocking the door and holding it open. It was wonderful to collapse into the armchair.

  ‘You can have first crack at the shower,’ Veronica said firmly. ‘I’m going to try and brush some of this masonry out of my hair.’