Disturbing Ground

by Priscilla Masters

  He was distancing himself from her. The pet name had been dropped.

  She stood up. “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Just a half. I’m driving. Wouldn’t do for me to get copped over the limit.”

  They both drank the second drink quickly, swapping information about ex-classmates. Alun drained his glass and glanced at his watch. Megan picked up her bag. She could take a hint. She smiled. “We’d better make a move. Busy day tomorrow and all that.”

  He answered her smile with a vague one of his own. “It’s nice to see you again, Meggie. You look - well.”

  It was one of his typically clumsy compliments.

  They left the pub, climbed back in the car. Alun drove carefully and silently until they reached the bottom of Heol Caradoc. There was a constraint between them and she anticipated his wish. “Don’t come all the way up the road. It’s so narrow and there’s nowhere to park or pull in. Just drop me here. I’ll walk home.”

  She would have preferred not to have read the look of relief that swept across his face.

  “OK.” He leaned across to open the car door for her. “Good night then, Meggie.”

  Somehow she got out without a polite peck on the cheek. She walked up the road self-consciously without even a backward glance and slammed the front door behind her.

  It was a little past ten o’ clock. Too early even for her to go to bed with cocoa and a paperback so she pulled her own pathology book from the shelf and began to read, conscious all the time that Alun had not invited her to make contact again even if she had more ideas, theories or questions about Bianca.

  The evening had promised so much - and delivered nothing. Bianca was a real and memorable person to her. But to PC Alun Williams she was a nuisance, a statistic, a file; a pathetic, mad old lady who had slipped and drowned in a grubby little pond.

  Sometimes it is easier if we depersonalise tragedy.

  Chapter 7

  They loved funerals in the valleys. Paying last respects was an important ceremony. All who could would attend the funeral - even the funeral of an expired mad, sad creature like Bianca Rhys. She might have been lonely in life, avoided by most, but in death she was far from abandoned. And her dramatic exit had ensured a full turn-out at her funeral. As the hearses crept towards the church people standing on the route dropped their eyes and the men doffed their caps. Catholics crossed themselves, Methodists muttered a prayer. Those with looser religious tendencies prayed for a peaceful soul while even the agnostics stopped whatever they were doing, eating chips, shopping, chattering on mobile phones to stand silently and watch the cars slide down the valley, a queue of motorists behind, some in black ties, others impatient to arrive at work. As the procession passed, the streets stilled for Bianca Rhys. In death she commanded more respect than she had probably ever been given in life. Megan trailed after the procession in her own car, shifting from second gear to first as they neared the church.

  The hearse halted in front of the double doors and the bearers shouldered the white plastic coffin.

  Carole Symmonds was amply supported by friends, relatives and neighbours. A stout woman wearing an elegant, wide brimmed hat helped her up the path. Megan followed slowly, deep in thought. Her own grandparents had been buried here, as had been many of her ex-patients. When she looked up again Esther Magellan was standing right in front of her, blocking her route. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, doctor,” she began.

  Esther had dressed for the funeral. In a bright red hat with a floppy rim that at a guess had been bought from one of the charity shops, it looked like a remnant of the early seventies and battered enough. Purple leggings which sagged at the knee and a long, black T-shirt completed her funereal outfit. Esther was plump and amorphous with a lardy complexion and huge, beseeching eyes. And as always she wore a smear of bright red lipstick and face powder randomly applied, Megan suspected, without the aid of a mirror. Her hair was heavily henna’d, sawdust-dry, brittle and badly cut. Her eyes were pale blue and quite vacant but devoid of malice. She touched Megan’s arm timidly. “Bianca isn’t here today,” she said, “at least she is here in her body. And in her soul,” she added cheerfully. “She just isn’t here any more.” She touched her eye with a grubby handkerchief. “I don’t know how I’m going to manage without her. She was my friend.”

  Megan murmured something non-committal.

  “Perhaps I should have looked after her better.”

  Megan was swamped by the pathos of the situation. Esther was not capable of looking after herself. Let alone Bianca, with her attendant problems. “It wasn’t your fault that she died, Esther,” she said. “It was just an accident.”

  “That’s what they’re sayin’ but I wonder. Maybe it wasn’t an accident at all. Maybe somebody pushed her. She couldn’t swim, you see. She told me that - once.”

  “She didn’t need to swim. The pool was only shallow.”

  “Oh.” Esther opened her eyes wide, as though this was news to her.

  “You were her friend,” she continued happily. “She liked you. She thought you would make her better, stop her from hearing those nasty voices.”

  Megan nodded, again deliberately non-committal.

  “Bianca was clever,” Esther said suddenly. “She understood things.” She grabbed Megan’s arm. “She did know things. Understand things. Things other people didn’t have the sense to realise. She could put two and two together and make …” she hesitated for a couple of seconds, her eyes shining with a vision, “… anything she wanted,” she finished happily. “Anything.”

  Megan looked back at Esther Magellan, who knew so little and understood less than half that. To her simple mind Bianca might have seemed wise. Knowing. Someone who knew things. But far back her mind prickled with some animal alertness as though primitive instinct had been evoked. “I’ll come and visit you tomorrow, Esther,” she said. “Late - after surgery.”

  Esther nodded and vanished through the swinging doors. Megan took her seat at the back. She was not a relative nor a close friend. She half-listened to the prayers of commitment and filed out, with the others, to the churchyard. At the graveside she glanced around her at the ring of faces and saw sadness and deep, deep thought as though each person was remembering the strange life which had been wasted.

  Wasted - gangland slang for murder.

  But looking across the open grave she would find it hard to credit that anyone here believed Bianca’s untimely death had been anything but a sad and unnecessary accident. There was a spirit of acceptance. Except for maybe one man. He was standing right at the back of the huddle of mourners. He was small and wiry and hopping from foot to foot as though he was angry. Angry? The emotion seemed misplaced. Why should anyone be angry at Bianca’s death - except maybe Carole. And like the others she looked calm. Sad but tranquil. Megan took another surreptitious peep at the man and wondered what was making him angry. Bianca’s death had been a chance event. So was he angry that the pond had remained unfenced? Or that she had been unsupervised -did he blame her death on a lack of care in the community? Megan sneaked another look, wondering whether she had misread his fidgettiness. But if anything she had underestimated his emotion. He was a furious little man. Like Rumpelstiltskin - the angry, restless little dwarf of the child’s fairy story, his eyes glaring, cross with anyone they landed on. She turned back still wondering why he was so angry.

  “Meggie.”

  She knew it was Alun touching her shoulder without even turning round. She would have sensed his presence without him speaking a single word. She could smell his aftershave, recognise the firm grip. He had often gripped when he had meant to touch. She didn’t turn around but tilted her head slightly backwards.

  He leaned forward so his face was almost touching hers. “Meggie,” he said again.

  She turned her head around slightly to look at him. “Do you make a habit of attending funerals?”

  “Do you?”

  “More often than you’d think.”

>   “Does that mean you’re an unsuccessful doctor?”

  She smiled at the clumsy banter. “Successful or unsuccessful has nothing to do with it, Alun. Nature beats me hands down every time.”

  She sensed he was smiling too. In the hot air around she knew he was feeling warm towards her.

  “Not nature this time, Meggie.”

  “No,” she agreed.

  People were filing passed, some nodding at her.

  Alun glanced around him. “Dismal affairs, aren’t they, funerals?”

  “I haven’t been to many happy ones.”

  “Oh - I don’t know. Old people who’ve had a long and fulfilling life.”

  “I know plenty of old people, Alun,” she countered. “But not so many who’ve had a long and fulfilling life.”

  “I intend to.”

  She turned around fully then and met his eyes, read there the fierce determination that had seen him through plenty of tough rugby matches, muddy, cold and with fearful opposition. “I know.” It was all still there - that hunger that she had once adored but now had almost forgotten about. He must have read some response mirrored in her face. He caught his breath.

  But she knew people were watching and so did Alun. He responded with a fierce blush and a hand on her arm.

  “Come for a drink with me again?”

  She nodded.

  On the following day Megan felt jaunty. The sky was blue, the weather warm but not too hot. The surgery had - for once - been emptied quickly of patients with minor problems and she had no visits - apart from this one she had promised.

  Esther still lived in the small, semi-detached council bungalow she had shared with Bianca. Megan flicked open the red painted wicket gate and approached the front door via a straight concrete path. The garden was neat, sporting wallflowers and scarlet bedding geraniums - tended by the council gardener - and the house itself was recently painted. She gave a brisk knock and stepped back. It always took Esther a while to unbolt the door.

  Eventually it was pulled open and her patient peered around it fearfully, her face brightening when she realised it was Megan. “Hello, doctor,” she said, grabbing her hand. “Hello. So you have come. Thanks. Thanks ever so much.” She was still wearing her purple “funeral” leggings but today they were teamed with a blue polyester blouse which billowed over her wide hips and some very old fashioned brown slippers which slapped against her heels as she led the way to the sitting room.

  The air inside was faintly musty; none of the windows were open and the curtains were still half closed allowing only the dingiest of lights to penetrate.

  “I’m on my own now,” Esther said trustingly, dropping down onto the sofa. “I can’t get used to it neither. She’s gone and she won’t be back now. They buried her yesterday.”

  “I know. I was there.”

  Esther looked, child-like, at Megan. “The council say they’ll move me to a flat. I don’t mind if they do.”

  And although Megan knew she shouldn’t do this she began, gently, to probe her patient. “When did you last see Bianca?”

  Pale blue eyes looked guilessly into hers. “One of the days,” she said with great, vacuous significance.

  “Which day was it? Saturday?”

  Esther nodded, smiling.

  “Morning or afternoon?”

  “I wouldn’t know the time.”

  Megan suspected Esther wouldn’t even know the day. “They told me they found her in the Slaggy Pool,” she continued calmly. “They said she’d drowned. They buried her, you know. Yesterday.”

  “I know. I was there.”

  “You were?”

  “We spoke.”

  “Oh.” It was news.

  “You told me something about Bianca?”

  “I did?”

  “That you thought …”

  “Oh - I don’t know what I thought. She used to say things, you know.”

  “What things? What did she say?”

  “About people. Bad things about people.”

  “What sort of bad things?”

  Esther merely flashed her a bland smile.

  Frustrated now Megan tried again. “Which people?”

  “It’s surprising really. You’d never guess it, who does what.”

  “Who does do what?” Megan asked. “What do you mean? What did she mean?”

  But Esther’s mind had tracked away. “I miss her, you know.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “She was my friend. My - one - true - friend.”

  “I know.”

  “My best friend. My very best friend. The council say they’ll rehouse me.” Esther smiled. “In a flat. I don’t mind if they do.”

  So Megan gave up, checked whether there was anything Esther needed and left.

  On the pavement she hesitated, tempted to knock on Doris Baker’s door. But the police had already taken a statement from her. She had last seen Bianca on Saturday morning to give her her tablets. She would have nothing more to add. Any questions she directed to Bianca’s neighbour would be classed as interference. She sat in her car for a few minutes, half hoping Doris would appear. But there was no movement and after a while Megan started up the engine and drove off.

  It was time to stop peering into the murky waters beneath The Bridge of Sighs.

  Chapter 8

  But events conspired against her. A couple of weeks later, on Friday morning, the sixth of September, a request was filed for her to visit Triagwn House, now a home for fifty elderly residents and the responsibility of herself, Andy and Phil. The Social Services had been the rambling house’s salvation. Unless a practical use had been found for the building it would have been pulled down years ago and the land used for a much needed housing estate. But in the early nineteen eighties, when the grand house had been falling into irreversible decay the council had anticipated a growing need for local nursing home care for the elderly. And so they had bought Triagwn House and adapted it.

  As Megan threaded down the valley away from Llancloudy, towards the bottom of the valley, she was conscious of an unaccustomed sense of relief. Since Bianca had drowned, the village of Llancloudy had seemed particularly oppressive, almost claustrophobic. The weather had turned hot and the streets had felt even more cramped than usual. It had been noisy too with the streets filled with people, car windows open, blasting music into the air. The houses had looked different; front doors had been propped open, windows thrown wide, people sitting in what little front gardens they had. The patch of land opposite the surgery had been packed and one day Megan had even watched a small boy float a plastic yacht on the Slaggy Pool. To leave the crowded village behind felt like a welcome escape. The road, the river and the disused railway shared the bottom of the valley and she drove downwards until she reached the point where the valley widened out and the ground flattened. By the time she reached the town of Nantyglo and ran the gauntlet of the long rows of pebble-dashed, semi-detached houses she was singing along with the car radio and an All Saints record. The sun beamed in through the windscreen. The road gave way to a petrol station and a wide roundabout. Left and right would lead straight onto the M4, left to Cardiff, right to the West - Swansea and beyond to the narrow lanes of Pembrokeshire and the St David’s Pensinsular.

  She drove straight on, towards the market town of Bridgend, tapping the steering wheel in time to the music, then took a small lane to the right which led to a narrowing road and some tall, iron gates permanently propped open. The car rattled across the cattle grid and finally she faced Triagwn; a pleasing, square red brick building with a white pillared portico, vividly bright in the sunshine.

  As she drew nearer to the house it was hard not to reflect how starkly different the mine owner’s home had been from the tightly packed, higgeldy-piggeldy terraces of cottages which had housed his workers. Their homes had been as different as their working days, the one, mole-like, underground, the other living from it and above it in splendid luxury which must have astonished the mine
rs the few times a year when, usually on Bank Holidays, the doors were flung open to the general public. Megan smiled, in no hurry to end her approach, for once obeying the 10mph speed limit set more for the safety of the sheep that roamed the grounds - having picked their way across the cattle grid - than the inmates who mostly stayed indoors.

  It was ironic that some of the current inmates of Triagwn had once been employees of the mine owner. And now they lived here alongside their one time task-master. Geraint Smithson, aged 94, resided in one small room of this great house when he had once occupied and owned the entire building and most of the land both around it and underneath it. Today he was probably the most troublesome resident of Triagwn, a cantankerous old man who still believed he was master of the mine. And of the house too, so he bossed the nursing staff around mercilessly. The only person he had any regard or respect for was his son, Arwel.

  Arwel was the florid faced member of the local hunt, a 54-year-old bully who had his own delusions. He still believed he had the right to deflower any female who came within touching distance of his long reaching and ever groping hands. Arwel lived in the Woodman’s Cottage, a few hundred yards behind the main house; set amongst the trees which had once provided the wooden pit props the miners had been so fond of. Megan remembered her grandfather telling the reason for this affection. “Because, cariad, if they are goin’ to break they tell you. They do crack first, make a noise, give you warnin’, give you time to get out - most of the time - whereas steel. Well - it do just go.” His eyes had taken on a dark, unhappy look and Megan, the child, had visualised roofs crashing down and had held her hands over her ears to stifle imagined screams. But it was true that until the mines had closed the miners had trusted their lives to native wood and rejected the steel manufactured just a few miles towards the west.

  She was at the top of the drive. She skirted the fountain and resumed her recollections as she often did when she visited the big house. She was hazy when exactly the Smithson family had moved out of Triagwn and decamped to the Cottage, or when Geraint had been admitted back to his onetime home as a patient. She could vaguely remember walking up the drive when she had been a child, maybe ten years old, and the place had been derelict. She could recall peeling paint and dirty windows, gardens overgrown with nettles and weeds, threatening Keep Out signs, boards nailed across ground floor windows, threats that trespassers WOULD be prosecuted and tugging her father’s hand, wanting to escape the forbidden place.