by Jason Foss
‘Well, whatever.’
‘And not all of them are involved, this is a sort of a shortlist.’
Councillor Knowles returned to the list. ‘I see you have that Rupert Temple-Brooke character.’
‘I heard he was something in the Party. Didn’t he apply for selection as replacement for Sir Lewis when he retires from the House?’
A deep rumbling came from within the Councillor. ‘I think his wife put him up to it. She’s a funny old stick, she thinks he ought to make something of himself. Between you and me, he never stood a ghost.’
‘Why?’
‘The man’s a bloody fascist, that’s why. Have you read any of his poems?’
‘No.’
Harry raised a finger, and it trembled before her eyes. ‘He writes bad poems, so I hear, which are full of romantic claptrap about a New England rising from the ashes. The man himself is even worse, mad as a hatter and convinced he’s right. He’s made your shortlist, but didn’t make ours, no. He changes his name too. In the old days he was just James Templestone. We can’t just give seats away to the opposition.’
‘What does he do, other than write bad poetry?’
‘He inherited a manor farm, out towards Eastport in the marshland. It’s mainly sheep and cattle I think, but someone else actually runs the place. His wife has the real money and does a lot of charity work around the county; people say it gives her an excuse to get away from that dreary old swamp. She’s the keen Party man, he plays laird of the manor, but they’re both on every committee you can name.’ He waved his hand. ‘He’s a Rotarian and on the Golf Club committee, she’s WI and a parish councillor.’
‘They get around?’
Harry touched Vikki on the hand and she gave him a nervously polite smile.
‘They’re meddlers, dear.’
‘What is her money in? I heard he’s also a publisher.’
‘Is he? I know her money was from publishing. The family firm deals in magazines — cooking, knitting, that sort of thing.’
Fingers in lots and lots of small pies, thought Vikki. ‘Did you know he goes to pop festivals and science fiction conventions?’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest.’
‘And is Monica Clewes a member of your Party?’ she asked on impulse, trying to make a connection that bound the two together.
‘The chick-pea lady? Goodness no, I’d guess she was a Green or one of those damned Social whatsits.’
‘Oh.’
The liquid lunch moved onward, Vikki jotting down notes, failing to enhance her own list of plausible suspects. As soon as Harry had cheerio’d from the door, she telephoned the Temple-Brooke residence and invented a few poetic lies of her own. The laird of the manor himself had come to the telephone, sounding pompous and self-important and demanding how she came to know his ex-directory number. He would not talk to the press at such short notice.
Yes he would, Vikki Corbett smiled as she put down the telephone. A new branch of Waterstones had opened only a hundred yards from where she sat. One of their fortnightly literary events was a poetry reading by six local writers. Someone could not resist being one of the six.
Chapter 24
Rowan was approaching a state of ecstasy. Doctor Flint had finally been put in his place, whilst Vikki Corbett’s job hung by a silken thread. Willow had ceased to be an embarrassment, and the police still remained torpid. The Poet would be giving a reading, but more delicious was the thought that his wife would be travelling to Europe for ten days in December. So much could be accomplished in ten days.
She often went to the literary evenings at Waterstones, so attending on this special night would not cause complications. Sitting before her mirror she quivered with anticipation as she dabbed at her face with cruelty-free cosmetics. Only natural products would touch her skin – and then only to obscure the advance of years, not to titillate or entice.
A long wool coat would protect her from the bitter November night, whilst she walked the two hundred yards to the bookshop. The other shops were bright with plastic Santas, reindeers, fake holly and exhortations to spend, with not a Christ-child in sight. The whole English population was ready to celebrate a thoroughly Pagan festival in a thoroughly Celtic orgy of feasting, drinking, gift-exchange and lovemaking. The Poet was right; their time was coming once again. How she wished this year would pass, so that a new cycle could begin and the new dawn be a season closer.
The Poet sat with all the other poets in the front row of forty tubular steel chairs deployed in the tubular steel surroundings of the new bookstore. He was number four on the bill, promising to read his epic ‘Visions of Verges’, published by a small press held in his wife’s name. Rowan arrived precisely on time, and sat at the back as most of the chairs were taken. The attendance had possibly been swelled to forty by the prospect of a free glass of plonk at the management’s expense.
Rowan ignored everything the first three nameless nobodies had to say and kicked her feet impatiently as members of the audience strove to demonstrate the extent of their own literary appreciation. When the evening was well advanced, The Poet was called to speak and rose to polite applause.
She knew his 120-line eulogy for the English hedgerow by heart and moved her lips to the rhythm of his words. For Rowan, there were only two people in the room, the presence and the opinion of the rest were irrelevant. She sat back bathing in the glory of his vision, certain that the audience was as entranced as she was. Many new followers would be born that night, it was certain.
Two more readings may have followed, but Rowan simply re-recited the poem she had heard and tried to catch his eye. Once he blinked in her direction, then actively ignored her. She had transgressed again, it seemed she could never please him.
Poets and public mingled after the readings. Rowan made a direct line for R. Temple-Brooke as the formality began to dissolve.
‘Wonderful!’ she exclaimed.
He did not acknowledge her with his eyes and quite simply rebuffed her.
‘Go away, immediately. That reporter is here.’
Rowan looked for the direction his strong blue eyes were pointing as they swept around the crowd. One woman was just too casual, too interested in their two-line conversation. The woman looked away, but her face had been seen. Somehow, the reporter Vikki Corbett had slipped into the room after the reading had started. Rowan’s despair fell to alarm.
‘At your car, I’ll wait.’
‘No!’
But Rowan was moving away from him, watching the reporter watching her. She bowed her head to shade her face, then made for the exit.
*
Through the rush of punters making for the free wine, Vikki tried to see who the tall blonde woman was. By the time the crush cleared, the woman had left the room, so Vikki made straight for the target.
‘That was a really nice poem,’ Vikki said, then wondered if the poet would think nice was an insult.
‘Thank you.’
He was only some five feet six inches tall; dark-haired, with deep blue eyes. The even pallor of his skin, the plasticity of his good looks and the neat controlled hair immediately reminded her of her little brother’s Action Man. Even his motions seemed jerky and poised, as if always prepared to strike the right attitude or ensure light was falling correctly on his profile.
‘Vikki Corbett.’ She thrust out her slim hand and he shook it with a compelling grip.
‘Delighted to make your acquaintance.’ He gave a slight bow of his head, and addressed her eyes with an intensity that made her falter. This man had charisma with a capital C, plus a touch of good, old-fashioned chivalry. ‘Tell me, would you write for the Advertiser?’
‘Yeah, I do, but here I’m on my own. I’m not working.’
Ooh you liar Vikki Corbett, she thought, but Arnold would spit blood if he knew what she was doing. Temple-Brooke was in publishing, wasn’t he? Could he be the one stirring up trouble against her?
‘Reginald!’ Temple-Broo
ke turned to greet a friend with another hearty handshake.
‘I wanted to ask you if I could do an interview,’ Vikki said across the greeting.
Temple-Brooke glanced her way just for a moment. ‘You’re not working, remember? Give me a ring from your office.’
‘I did.’
She had been ‘cut’– quite effectively too. Without making a scene, she could not intervene in the hands-on-shoulders man-talk which had begun in earnest between the poet and his crony in the Rotarian tie. Vikki would not be thwarted. She would simply wait on the fringes of the meeting, and then accost the poet as soon as he attempted to leave.
A glass of Riesling was pressed into her hand and she leaned against black shelves of paperback fiction to wait. An art-lover who topped six feet and wore intellectual spectacles came to lean a hand on the case beside her and began to talk poetry. She smiled and for ten minutes allowed the sound to pass through her head unprocessed. All in a rush, she noticed that the object of her attention had gone.
‘I say, what’s your name again?’ the art-lover asked as she kicked away from the bookshelf and began to hurry towards the exit. She gave the man a flicker of a wave as she rounded the top of the staircase, then left his life for ever.
She ran into the sharp winter air like a fly meeting a car windscreen. Struggling into her coat, she looked right towards the High Street, then left down the pedestrian precinct. A hundred yards away, a couple walked with arms interlinked, the woman some inches taller than the man. Vikki broke into a jog across the frosted paving until she had halved the separation, then slowed her rush and moved into the lee of the shop fronts, replacing the urge to confront with a desire to follow.
The couple crossed the precinct and disappeared up a side-street. Vikki followed, knowing that was where a line of parking bays stood. By the time she rounded the corner, they were already inside the Range Rover and she burst into a full sprint. The engine started as she ran around to the driver’s door and banged on the glass.
An electronic hum accompanied the appearance of a narrow vision slit above the steamy window. The poet’s eyes could be seen. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s me, about the interview.’
‘Goodnight, Miss Corbett.’
The window slid closed and a forward gear was engaged. Vikki stood back, noticing the sticker in the window of the back seat. A Red Setter lolled its tongue towards her, above the legend ‘A dog is for life’.
*
‘What a moronic act of lunacy!’ The Poet said as the Range Rover lurched away from the parking space.
‘What a bitch!’
‘Not her, you! Here I am, asking favours of everyone I know to close up the situation, and there you are parading yourself in public like the Queen of Sheba!’
‘Don’t be angry, please!’
‘Oh Rowan, this whole affair with Oak and Hazel has gone too far.’
‘I thought you had dealt with that reporter?’
‘So did I.’
‘Have her sacked, you can do it.’
‘I cannot be so crude.’
‘Sack her, talk to Arnold Brass, take him out to dinner, buy shares in his paper.’
‘Rowan, I am not a millionaire.’
‘Yes you are.’
‘Not a real millionaire, I don’t have great heaps of money in offshore deposits, my money works for England.’ He concentrated on driving out of town. ‘It’s tied up, I’d have to work out a very expensive arrangement.’
‘Is your wife at home?’
‘Yes. We’ll drive around for a while, then I’ll bring you back to the edge of town and you can get a taxi home.’
Neither said anything for several minutes.
‘Rupert!’ Rowan crooned. ‘Won’t it be delightful when your wife goes abroad?’
‘Perfectly,’ his tone changed to one of jollity, ‘you must come to stay at Foxstones. We’ll have a whole crowd of people to stay; poets, free thinkers, artists, you’ll love them all.’
‘I will.’
‘You’ll have to cook us one of your banquets.’
‘I shall insist.’
He was concentrating on watching a set of traffic lights. Once they were moving once more, she advanced a more tempting idea.
‘It could he like that all the time. Couldn’t you arrange it, one day?’
The Poet said nothing in reply, but he never addressed that question whenever she asked it. She could only hope for a plane crash, or Parisian muggers or an unfortunate fishbone in a Left Bank restaurant. Rowan should ask the goddess to remove the inconvenient woman and free The Poet from her thrall.
Kingshaven faded into petrol stations and ribbon development, then the black hedges of the countryside replaced the streetlights. To their right, the river glinted ancient and cold in the frosty moonlight.
The Poet had been quiet, obviously preparing to speak. ‘Listen to me, Rowan, I have decided that we cannot risk being seen together again in public, not until this whole Hazel affair has been forgotten. If there is any whiff of scandal, my wife...’
‘Oh forget your wife!’ Rowan lost control.
‘Rowan!’
‘Tell her, for God’s sake tell her! Let’s go straight back to your house now and get it over with.’
‘Sometimes, Rowan, I can’t understand you.’
‘I love you, can’t you remember that for one moment? Rupert, I love you, I would do anything for you. Tell her and get rid of her, she’s no use to you, she only gets in the way.’
‘Life is not that simple. My wife is an asset to our cause; I cannot afford either the scandal or the financial cost of separation.’
‘I have money, I can sell my property.’
‘Pennies, Rowan, pennies. I would lose all the companies, all of them.’ He spoke in short bursts of objections now. ‘And my farm; it loses money, you know that, I couldn’t even keep the farm.’
‘But she doesn’t see you for what you are.’
‘Yes she does, in her own way.’
More silence, road noise, the sound of the petrol-guzzling engine.
‘She is useful,’ he said again.
‘And me? Am I useful?’
‘Irreplaceable,’ he said in a softer tone, patting her knee as he drove, ‘you are the right hand that wields my sword.’
His right-hand woman said nothing more as they drove around the lanes then back towards Kingshaven. Fate would have to contrive too many fatal accidents before her life could be complete. Fate might need a hand.
*
November ended in cold, swirling sleet and the promise of worse to come. It had been a chilling year and a frustrating year, Vikki mused as she sat before her word processor writing a totally neutral account of the poetry reading. She might go up to London for Christmas with the family; she could see the lights and find someone to take to a show, if she could wangle the tickets. She could look up Jeffrey Flint – he probably knew a whole range of exotic bistros tucked away in side-streets and he wasn’t half bad once he stopped using jargon and descended to the level of everyday conversation.
Vince passed across her line of vision with a bundle of mistletoe for the secretary to Sellotape at strategic points. The office party would be the drunken shambles it had been last year, so she ought to contrive a headache that day and leave for London early.
Christmas cards, damn! If she didn’t organise herself soon, all the best selections would be gone, leaving her to send naff ones as usual. It was almost noon and launching into the push-and-shove of Christmas shoppers appealed to her. Quickly, Vikki left the building, working out how many cards she needed to send. From the Press Office she had a brisk walk to reach High Street, passing the scaffolding-clad museum on the way. She crossed the junction at the lights, then entered the pedestrianized ‘Old Quarter’, as the Tourist Board had dubbed it. As she reached the end of The Passage, she thought of Jeffrey Flint and of his sometime girlfriend in the wholefood shop. It would be a touch ironic to buy him a little something fr
om Naturella Wholefoods.
The shop was double-fronted with its woodwork stripped and repainted rainforest green. Its door was adorned with narrow boat-style floral paintwork that Vikki had never appreciated before. She had been here twice to speak to Monica Clewes, but had been too full of the hunt for truth to pay much attention to the shop itself. The door jangled as a Chinese wind-chime caught the air. Inside, the odours were enhanced by extra Christmas potpourri baskets lining the window. Up above the cash desk were the glass sweet-jars of herbal teas. Vikki thought of another top shelf lined with herb jars and wondered where Amelia Winter had done her shopping.
Monica Clewes sat behind the desk, half hidden behind Vikki’s own newspaper. She wore a one-piece homemade dress, basically black but with a wild riot of jungle plants and toucans breaking up its shape in dazzling camouflage. Her hair was swept back into a ponytail and either prematurely grey or naturally platinum blonde, unless the wholesome Miss Clewes had found a little peroxide to fudge the issue. A hand-knitted shawl dangled around her shoulders whilst heavy brass hung from her neck. Vikki felt she ought to ask to have her fortune told.
‘Can I help?’ the shopkeeper asked.
Vikki could see what Flint saw in the clean face and those grey-green eyes. Monica recognised her.
‘Hello again, it’s Veronica, isn’t it?’
‘Vikki.’
‘Yes, sorry.’
She wasn’t sorry at all, thought Vikki; she could spot a catty remark any day of the week.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have anything to tell you.’
‘I was just passing,’ Vikki said, ‘window-shopping, I thought I’d pop in and see what you have.’
‘Please do.’ The shopkeeper’s eyes fell back to the paper.
Vikki walked slowly into the body of the shop, which changed direction, level and lighting at the rear. This had once been another room, two steps lower, which ran at right angles to the first creating an L-shape. A green-painted staircase ran upwards and below this were four shelves of books. Vikki stopped beside them and read the titles: save this, recycle that, alternative lifestyles, alternative cosmologies, Arthurian Tarot, Green politics, herb lore. Food for the body, food for the soul. For a few minutes, Vikki browsed, half-captivated, half-bemused, wondering if there was anything in this New Age nonsense. She fingered the facsimile herb lore, then the definitive work on mushrooms. Organic winemaking might appeal to Flint – she could send him a book through the post. Then she saw the short row of poetry books by the little-known local author.
