Waving arms and swearing, and in the end he bellowed in my face: “Right. So all right. We’ll go and see Clare.” But I didn’t intend then. I was feeling absolutely awful. Wanted to get home to my place—I’ve got a bit of a flat. And call the doctor. But Harris—he had to do his great big bullying act. Grabbed me by the wrist and literally dragged me out. I didn’t even have time to lock the door or put the lights off. He just shoved me into his car, and drove off like a mad thing.’
There was a silence, one of those solid and compact silences, with not an indrawn breath to break it. When Glenn cleared his throat, my nerves jumped. ‘I should’ve killed him the first time,’ he said gently.
‘Then we came up here,’ went on Josie, settled in now, keeping it going in a flat voice. ‘I was in great pain by that time, wasn’t even sure what was going on, only that I wanted it to end. We went in. Front door. Down the corridor—and him saying make a sound and I’ll throttle you. To the gunroom. He unlocked it and shoved me inside, and he put the key on the inside and just said wait there. And be quiet. Which I did. It was what I wanted. Had to have. Quiet, and a sit down. Only two chairs in there, though, and those hard and horrid. But I sat in a corner. Only…I could hear them. Every word. Shouting. Nothing but shouting, that night, and I was tired of it. Tired. And d’you know what he told her! He as good as said he’d got a tart in trouble in the village and she wanted an abortion. And you can imagine…that really got Clare going. She screaming at him that he was sterile and she didn’t believe him, and him shouting at her that he’d show her how sterile. I was…petrified. And it was me they were shouting about. It was me they made into a filthy tramp. My flesh was crawling. I felt dirty…unclean. Then he came back in.’
‘You don’t have to go on,’ I told her. ‘It’s enough.’
Without any further information, I could have completed it for her. But no—as it happened. I would have been wrong.
‘No,’ she said. ‘You wanted it—you hear it all. He came back in. Locked the door, then went to the gun cases and opened one, and took a gun out that he used to smash the glass in the others. Then he got to throwing the guns on the table, and he went over and opened the French windows. I thought this was for me to leave. I wanted to get out of there. Oh…how I wanted that! But I wasn’t sure I could stand. Nothing was very clear any more—all kind of a blur. He’d said something I hadn’t really taken seriously—about me taking a gun or two, to cover what he owed. Ridiculous! And then it began, the throwing out and the throwing back and the noise and the lightning, and if I’d screamed out in pain neither of them would’ve noticed. And in the end—the shut French windows and Clare’s shot at the glass. I nearly passed out, I can tell you that. Harris cried out something and staggered back against the wall. I remember staring at him…all kind of empty, just looked at him, and I can remember a thought going through my mind—well, that’s the end of that bastard. He was bleeding. I heard Clare drop the gun outside. Everything seemed to be happening slowly, so that I could take it in, I suppose. Then Clare went away.’
She was silent. I didn’t want to hear any more of it. I could guess the rest. Josie sat with her head hanging, living it again.
Glenn said, ‘I can tell the rest. Let me tell the rest.’
‘Why not,’ I said. He’d hardly had a chance to put in a word. Glenn nodded, and went on, ‘Clare went away. Josie knew she had to get out of there. Get to a doctor, and quickly.’
‘So why didn’t she call out to Clare?’
‘She didn’t want to say a word to Clare. Anyway, Clare had left the lawn, and was obviously going round to the front. Josie had to wait until she heard the sitting-room door shut. Clare tried the gunroom door first, but it was still locked. But Josie knew it wasn’t finished. She stared at Harris, and she told me it was as though it’d all been laid out for her. She stared at him and she hated him. Hated. How he’d treated her, how he’d used her—and she hated Clare for what she’d said. Because, in all that shouting at each other in the hall, Clare had used Josie’s name. How she knew Josie was pregnant, I can’t say. But she linked it up and used her name. And the foul language she’d used…describing! I’m not going to go into that.’
‘Please,’ I agreed, ‘no.’
‘And there was Harris, and there were the guns, and Josie knew where the cartridges were kept. She could still think. Just about. Hardly stand on her feet, but she could think.’ He glanced at her with shy fondness. ‘There was Harris, and Josie had a loaded gun in her hands—she didn’t remember loading it, she told me. And she knew he didn’t deserve to live, and though he looked dead already, she thought she’d better take no chances. So she shot him. And then she had to leave, and on the way out along the corridor she heard the voice of Clare, shouting on the phone that she’d shot her husband—and so, Josie decided, that was how it would be. By that time she knew she had to get to me. Over the fields. A long way, but I was the nearest.’
‘You were the only one I wanted to go to, Glenn,’ she whispered. ‘Thank you.’
I could just detect his smile at her, but I didn’t think she was looking.
‘Go on,’ I said.
‘There’s not much more. There was Josie, and the route she had in mind very nearly took her past the French windows, and she wanted to make a bit of trouble for Clare, and it was so easy to make it look as though Clare had actually killed him, and with the gun she’d already fired. All it took was to pick up Clare’s gun, fire the one cartridge at the sky, and drop it back on the terrace. But that’d been about the last thing Josie was capable of doing. She still had the Darne in her hands. She got this far.’
There was a silence. It seemed to go on and on. In the end I managed to say, ‘You mean it was here? Here she miscarried?’
‘Yes,’ mumbled Josie.
‘Oh God!’
The silence again descended on us. The shadows around us might just as well have been rocks, as there was not a whisper, not a suddenly indrawn breath. Silence, was their motto.
In the end, Glenn cleared his throat, and finished it off.
‘She got to the farm. Left the gun lying here…’
‘Oliver!’ I whispered tensely. ‘The police missed it.’
‘We were only collecting ‘em up,’ he explained plaintively, in self-defence. ‘Not counting. It never occurred to us to look this side of the hedge.’
I nodded. ‘Sorry, Glenn,’ I said. ‘Go on.’
‘She got to the farm. God knows how. She can’t remember. The dogs warned me, and I went out with a torch, and there she was. I thought she was dead. Picked her up. Got her inside. Tried to clean her up, and phoned a doctor.’
‘Who didn’t connect it up? Didn’t report it?’
‘He’s my doctor. Josie’s too.’ He seemed to feel that answered it. I rather felt that it did.
‘And the gun?’ I asked.
‘I went back. The next day, after the police had left, and taken Clare with them. The rain had cleared things—and the foxes. I suppose. I dug a deep hole, and buried the gun. Here, where it had happened, leaving a couple of inches or so sticking out. For the plaque, you see,’ he explained.
‘No. I don’t see,’ I had to admit.
‘My sense of justice,’ he said, giving me, as far as I could tell, a twisted smile. ‘There ought to be some sort of a memorial, I thought. So that was it. Harrison. Born and died on 5 September 1986.’
‘Son of Harris?’ I asked, unable to believe this.
‘We don’t know, of course. It might have been a daughter. But you can’t say Harrisdaughter, can you?’
It was said in a tone of reason and common sense that I had difficulty rationalising. ‘But…his son?’
‘Well, it was—wasn’t it!’
14
Josie flashed him a quick, reprimanding glance, at his impetuosity, no doubt, but had to agree.
‘Yes—it was Harris.’
‘You mean…rape?’
‘Oh no, not at all. Well…sort of, I
suppose. We’d had a row, Glenn and I, you see. The usual thing. He expected me to marry him and pack in the lampshade business. Well—I couldn’t do that. Could I? I mean, it’s my life. I enjoy it. Anyway…that’s not the point. We’d had this row, and the obvious place to go, after that, was to the workshop. I always found it relaxing, and this was late evening, so there’d be nobody there. And along came Harris. Full of beer and acting like a randy bull terrier. And me, angry with Glenn—I sort of thought: to hell with him then. Yes, it was sort of rape. I changed my mind, but by then it was too late. On the floor, it was, all covered with cut-offs of material…but the child would’ve been Harris’s. And Glenn, he’s been sort of marvellous.’ She reached a hand towards him, but I was between. ‘Silly idiot—he still wants to marry me, though they said at the hospital I wouldn’t be able to have children. Not any more. But Glenn still says…’
‘Oh for God’s sake!’ he broke in. ‘Do we have to have this? We can adopt, can’t we?’
I cleared my throat. Oliver and I might not have been there, as, I realised, the villagers who’d been around us were no longer there.
Glenn and Josie were now both silent. I had an idea that it was time we too left. They had matters to discuss.
But it wasn’t quite finished. ‘You said’, I reminded him, ‘that you should have killed him the first time. Is that connected…’
‘Yes.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘When Josie told me about the rape, I looked out for him, and caught him coming out of the pub. Two nights later, this was. Then, I nearly killed him. Like a fool, I let ‘em haul me off. Let him…’ He nodded towards Oliver. ‘Haul me off.’
There was a short silence. I wondered how much it would have changed things if nobody had interfered.
‘D’you think you could get it out?’ I asked.
There were blank stares. Even Oliver didn’t seem to understand.
‘The gun,’ I explained. ‘Get that out, and burn the plaque, and there’ll be nothing left to commemorate that terrible night. Then we can all forget it ever happened.’
‘Forget…’ Glenn didn’t accept that he ever would, that they ever would.
‘The final bit of the evidence would be gone,’ I said. ‘And really, you know, I’d very much like to return the gun to Clare. Before we leave. So—can you get it out, Glenn?’
He was now mentally with me. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It goes down quite a bit. I could go and get a spade, I suppose.’
‘No. Now. Can’t you kick it loose, or something?’
Oliver got to his feet in order to expose the problem. Only three inches of the butt protruded. He backed into the narrow gap in the hedge, and held the torchlight on it. Then he tried kicking it, kicking it hard, his heel to the butt. Glenn got the idea. He went over and stood facing Oliver, two big men with weight and muscle behind them. And they kicked—alternating. Thump, thump. The earth was hard, but it moved, a little at a time, forming a growing gap. I could feel the thumps through the ground.
‘It’ll never come up like this,’ said Oliver. ‘We’re only loosening the top bit.’
Glenn stood over it and studied it closely. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘There’s enough to get a grip, and the taper helps.’
He tried this, crouching down to it, both hands reaching into the gap the kicking had made. Then he gripped hard, and the pull was in his legs, those leg muscles hardened by years of farm work. And slowly, reluctantly, the gun moved. He shook it, tried again. I saw sweat drip from his chin, and suddenly, easily it seemed, Clare’s precious Darne came up from its grave, and, panting, Glenn laid it on the grass.
And what a poor, sad thing it was! Now completely encrusted with a scabbing of rust, which would have bitten deeply into the steel beneath, it kept only a vague shape of a gun. The butt, that part of it which had been below ground level, was cracked and distorted. A wad of earth filled the trigger guard, and as I stared at it a worm wriggled free of it. And at the shoulder end of the butt the heads of two nails stood proud of the wood by half an inch, cracks running down its length from them. The silver engraving
had weathered the best, but that was lifting and curling, and was black.
‘I’ll take it,’ I said, holding out my right hand. I very nearly dropped it, as it was heavier than I’d expected. ‘We’ll say goodnight, then,’ I said to them.
‘We’ll be hearing from you?’ Josie asked tentatively.
‘What about?’
‘Whether you’ve decided to go to the police…after all.’
‘Oh no. No, I’ll have no such news. Call it our secret, shall we? But I’d hope to hear from you.’
She glanced at Glenn. He shrugged. ‘From us?’ he asked.
‘We’d dearly love to be asked to the wedding,’ I told him.
Glenn laughed. ‘We’ll let you know.’
‘But I haven’t agreed…’ burst out Josie.
He put his arm round her waist and turned her away. ‘Everybody’ll be there. Literally everybody…’ he was telling her.
And still arguing, they moved away into the darkness. I felt he was going to get his own way at last. After all, Harris was now well and truly dead and forgotten.
Oliver cleared his throat. ‘So let’s go home.’
‘I’ve got to hand over this gun.’
‘Then throw it in from the lawn. The windows are still open.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to treat it with due reverence, and take it in.’
So we went round to the correct gap, and through to the lawn. The lights in the gunroom were still on, and, as Oliver had said, the French windows were flung wide. We walked up on to the terrace and to the windows. There we paused.
Clare was standing in the middle of the room, slowly turning as her eyes swept around her array of guns. Everybody had gone home, except us, of which fact she was obviously now aware, and she was robbed of the glow of their presence. All she had at this time was the collection, her lovely, lovely guns.
Then she saw us. There was no nervous start of surprise. ‘Oh…hello,’ she said. ‘I thought everybody had left.’
‘We’re the last. Look what I’ve brought you, Clare.’ I dropped the Darne on the table with a clatter. The vibration jerked another worm free, this time from the barrel. ‘It’s your Darne, I think.’
The blood ran from her cheeks, then flooded back again. A hand hovered and was withdrawn. She suddenly sobbed. ‘Oh, my poor Darne,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, the poor thing.’
Then at last she laid a hand on it, ran it down the length of the knobbed barrel, and caressed the butt. Then she removed it quickly with a tiny yelp of pain. She sucked her finger.
‘There’re nails stuck in it,’ she whimpered.
‘Yes.’
‘Where did you find it?’ Her tone was almost accusatory, as though we had been hiding it from her.
‘Just say we dug it up from somewhere,’ I suggested. ‘Now you’ve got the lot, Clare. Doesn’t that make you happy? You’ll really enjoy yourself, cleaning it up, but don’t be disappointed if it ends up all pitted and rough. Never mind—you can tell people it was in the Napoleonic wars. It’ll look very businesslike, all battered and spent.’
‘What’re you talking about?’ she demanded sharply. ‘Everybody else has gone—so why haven’t you?’
‘We’re waiting for the chance to get my car out.’
Oliver was walking round the room, apparently unconscious of a certain abrasiveness that had entered our conversation. ‘They certainly make a grand show, Clare,’ he said.
‘You’ve seen them before,’ she reminded him curtly.
‘So I have. But it was a long while ago. I never really took much notice.’
That anybody could not really take much notice of her guns appalled Clare. ‘You’re a fool,’ she told him.
‘Have been, perhaps.’
‘Oughtn’t you to be leaving?’ she asked me tartly. ‘The rest have gone, ages ago. There’ll be no trouble getting out.’
‘In a minute,’ I assured her. ‘I couldn’t leave before I’d come and told you that I’ve managed to prove your innocence.’
‘What!’
‘Your innocence in respect of the death of Harris.’
‘I think you must be mad.’ She turned a shoulder to me, saw that Oliver was eyeing her without any smallest gleam of approbation, and jerked her head back.
‘Not mad at all,’ I said. ‘I’ve only recently been talking to the real culprit. A clear admission was made.’
She lifted her head, her eyes now a burnt umber colour. ‘Why can’t you keep your nose out of my affairs?’
‘It’s my nature, nosey. Because I was sure you hadn’t done it, Clare, in spite of all your tricks and evasions.’
‘Who asked you—’
‘Nobody.’ I shrugged. She was taking exactly the attitude I had anticipated. ‘But all the same I thought I’d like to prove your innocence. Then there was the suggestion that Oliver might’ve been involved, so it wasn’t any longer a simple matter of proving your innocence, because I really had to prove who was the actual culprit. And I have.’
She stared at me balefully, with blank eyes and not a blink. ‘Who is this person, you interfering bitch?’
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to say that. The fact that she’d made her statement as to my ancestry without any intonation, as a simple statement of fact, seemed to place a more vicious emphasis on it.
‘You’re not the first one to complain that I interfere.’
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Oh…I can believe that. Who said it last, this person you claim admitted to shooting Harris? Shouted it in your face, I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘Well, no. No anger was involved. We spoke together quietly, just the other side of your hedge.’
A Shot at Nothing Page 22
