by Rebecca Tope
‘The breeding season’s over now. They don’t do that cry all year.’
‘Maybe not, but they were pretty raucous on Sunday. Frightened the life out of me. And again yesterday. Poor Jocelyn got the full treatment.’
‘What about the geese? They’re meant to be splendid alarm systems.’
‘Not these. They seem to have their own inscrutable notions as to who they like and dislike. Hepzie’s their main hate figure, poor love. And I think they might be pining for their people. They seem a bit droopy.’
He started the engine, glancing at the clock on the dashboard. ‘I’m late,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget to watch the news. And call me if there’s anything to report.’
Thea’s arm twitched as she began another mocking salute. But then she caught his eye, and the motion aborted. ‘Bye,’ she murmured, horrified to find tears prickling behind her eyes as she watched him go.
She stayed outside, trying to regain her equilibrium, wandering towards the field behind the house. ‘Aren’t you supposed to feed that wretched pony?’ Jocelyn called, from the back door. ‘It’ll die of starvation at this rate.’
Thea remembered the phonecall from Cecilia Clifton after she and Jocelyn had had some soup and slightly stale bread. A brief discussion about shopping and future menus prompted the memory. ‘We were asked out to lunch,’ she told Jocelyn. ‘Tomorrow, probably.’
‘Who by?’
‘A woman called Cecilia Clifton—’
‘But I know her,’ said Jocelyn, wide-eyed. ‘Quite solid. Square head. Wide hips. Sergeant-major delivery.’
‘That’s her. How do you know her?’
‘She was one of my tutors. We did textiles with her, if I remember rightly. She was terribly keen on William Morris.’
Thea considered this for a long minute. Another apparent coincidence, which might not have been so surprising when looked at logically. The area was big on Arts and Crafts, and Jocelyn’s university wasn’t so terribly far away, at Bath. A tutor passed a great many students through her hands, after all.
‘Will she remember you?’ was all she could think to say.
‘I doubt it.’ Jocelyn sounded rueful. ‘I’m three stone heavier now, and my hair’s a different colour.’
‘Did you like her?’
‘Terrified of the woman. More than once I stayed up all night finishing off a piece of coursework for her. I never was any good at deadlines.’
‘I was. I loved them. Concentrates the mind.’
‘Wow! Wouldn’t it be funny if she was the murderer! Old Cissie Clifton. She must be really old now.’
‘About sixty, I’d guess. Retired, anyway, but certainly not old.’
‘Heavens! She seemed at least sixty twenty years ago. Isn’t that weird, the way it goes? The way the age gaps seem to get smaller.’
Thea merely smiled. ‘Well, we’d better have that lunch, then, so you can catch up with each other.’
‘I’d much rather not. She never liked me – or any other students. We used to wonder why she’d ever gone into teaching, when she so obviously despised young people.’
‘Research, probably. The teaching would be an annoying side issue from what she saw as her real work.’
‘That must have been it. I wonder if she’s mellowed at all.’
‘I thought she was rather pleasant. She seemed interested in me.’
‘Of course, she would be, with all your guff about canals and woollen mills. She must have thought you were wonderful.’
‘She says we should go and look at Daneway House.’
Jocelyn sighed. ‘No need. I’ve already been there. We had to do an essay on the pesky place. I still dream about it.’
Thea tilted her head back, eyes closed, and received the heat of the sun full blast. She could feel her skin tingling with it, the cells rushing to protect themselves.
‘I should go home,’ Jocelyn said, as she was repeatedly saying, but sounding sufficiently detached for Thea to ignore her. ‘What do I think I’m doing?’
‘Having a holiday in the sun. Helping me. Strengthening our relationship. Teaching your kids to be self-reliant.’
‘Escaping my responsibilities. Hiding from my husband. Avoiding the issue.’
‘All of the above. But there are worse places to do it all in, when it’s like this.’
The place was uncannily silent. No vehicle had passed the gate for a good fifteen minutes. No breeze rustled the treetops. No cow bawled for its stolen calf, or flock of confused sheep for their lambs after a mass migration to new pastures. No dog barked.
They were slow to notice Valerie Innes, as she stood by the fence watching them. Hepzibah gave a single muted yap, which Thea ignored. Only when the visitor skirted the fence to the small gate opening onto the further part of the yard, did they realise she was there.
‘I’ve been knocking for five minutes,’ she said crossly. ‘I thought there was nobody in.’
Jocelyn and Thea looked first at Valerie then at each other. Thea could read her sister’s mind easily.
‘Sorry,’ she said calmly. ‘What can we do for you?’
‘Oh, nothing much. I just thought I’d come and see how you were. I don’t think I’ve met…’ she indicated Jocelyn with a jab of her chin.
‘This is my sister. She’s been here for most of the week. It’s been nice to have some company.’
Jocelyn did not stir from her prone position on the grass, but flapped a limp hand in greeting. ‘Hello,’ she said.
‘You shouldn’t lie on the bare grass like that. It’s bound to be wet.’
‘You sound just like our mother,’ Jocelyn smiled forbearingly.
The woman appeared not to hear this remark. ‘It’s bad for you. You ought to have a rug or something.’
‘I’ll risk it, thanks.’
Thea tried to conciliate, getting up from her garden chair. ‘Isn’t it hot!’ she said.
But this strategy worked no better with Mrs Innes than any others had done. ‘Not for long. They say it’ll rain tomorrow and Friday. Thunderstorms.’
‘Oh, well. Better make the most of it, then.’
‘I gather Jeremy came to see you.’
Thea rubbed a hand across her brow, trying to think. This was Jeremy’s mother, she recalled. And Jeremy had been fond of the cat, which had died in the road. Furthermore, she owned the barn which Hollis had asked her not to mention.
‘That’s right,’ she confirmed, with a stifled sigh.
‘How did he seem to you? I’ve been worried about him, to be honest. He’s waiting for his A-level results and seems very tense about it. I had hoped he’d have a nice relaxed summer, but it doesn’t seem to be happening.’ There was a thwarted look in her eye which gave Thea a fleeting satisfaction.
‘Is he going to university?’ Too late, Thea remembered what Jeremy had said about his future.
‘Oh, yes.’ Thea heard the unspoken of course in the tone. ‘He’s got a scholarship from the MoD, actually. But he has to get good grades before he can take up the place.’
‘My daughter’s just graduated,’ she offered. ‘She’s going into the police.’
‘Fancy,’ said Valerie Innes, with a softening expression. It was enough of a connection to smooth much of the ensuing conversation.
‘What’s all this about Rural Warriors?’ Jocelyn demanded, inserting a sharper note. ‘Is your Jeremy part of it?’
Valerie huffed a rueful Don’t ask me, I’m only his mother laugh. ‘I think they’re all in it, to some extent. Even young Flora Phillips seems to be involved.’
‘Did you know Nick Franklyn?’ Thea asked, in spite of a small warning voice. Something about Valerie Innes inspired a need to compete, to score points and keep one’s end up. And why was she here anyway?
‘Everybody knows him,’ was the reply. ‘Knew him, I should say, poor lad. He’s a bit of a legend around here.’
‘Not your sort, surely?’ Thea challenged.
‘What makes you say that? I
heard him recently, when he addressed a meeting. Very articulate for his age, very thoughtful. Made quite a few of us change our minds about some things.’
Thea felt herself to be corrected. ‘What sort of things?’ she asked.
‘To start with, this business with the canal – it’ll cost millions, and take decades to achieve. And everybody knows canals were never very successful. You can see there’s a case for saying they never should have been built to start with. That’s what Nick said – that they were a mistake from the very outset. Now the woods have grown back, it seems vandalistic to cut them all down again, just for a few tourists. I mean – it’s rather an odd way to spend your time, chugging along at four miles an hour, mostly in the pouring rain.’
‘My thoughts exactly,’ muttered Jocelyn.
Thea was speechless. She had never even considered there could be arguments against restoring canals until these past few days, and now suddenly it seemed to be the majority opinion.
‘Do you know anybody else who’s directly involved in these Warriors?’ she asked.
‘I’ve already said – they all are. Our Dominic, for one. The Cravens, as well. Various people from Oakridge and Chalford. There must have been nearly a hundred at the last meeting.’
‘They have meetings? Public meetings?’ Thea asked faintly.
‘I told you,’ snapped Valerie impatiently. ‘Why don’t you listen? Making me repeat everything twice. And why are you still here, anyway, with all this going on? Haven’t the police given you orders to leave? You must be just another burden for them, when they’re already stretched to the limit.’
Thea bristled. ‘We’re not causing any trouble to anybody. Why should you worry?’
‘You’re causing complications,’ said Valerie. ‘Upsetting Jeremy, telling him about the cat like that.’
Thea just stared at her, lost for words. The brief silence gave Jocelyn the opening she’d been waiting for.
‘Thea,’ she said, sounding very meaningful. ‘Aren’t we supposed to be going out?’
Thea was quick to take the hint. It had, after all, been a day slightly too full of encounters and revelations. A nice normal trip to a supermarket would be very therapeutic for them both.
‘Gosh – yes. What time is it?’
‘Half past three,’ said Jocelyn. ‘We’ll be late.’
‘Going where?’ demanded Valerie. ‘Isn’t this rather an odd time to be going out?’
Mind your own business, Thea wanted to scream. But she controlled herself for a few more moments.
‘We need some shopping,’ she said. ‘If that’s all right with you.’
‘No need to be rude,’ came the predictable, infuriating response. ‘I only came to be friendly.’
Jocelyn slowly got to her feet. ‘You haven’t been, though, have you?’ she said, her head on one side, her voice mild. ‘You started by telling me where I should sit, then you told us we were wasting police resources, and finally you stick your nose into our business. If that’s friendly, then I’m a waterlily.’
Without a hint of hurt feelings or damaged dignity, Valerie took her leave. Thea was bursting by the time the woman was out of earshot.
‘A waterlily!’ she exploded. ‘Why a waterlily?’ Jocelyn shrugged complacently. ‘Why not?’ she said.
Thea drove them to Chalford, and they spent an hour exploring the little town set on the steep-sided hill to the north of the river, with Hepzie on the lead. ‘I’m not leaving her there on her own again,’ vowed Thea.
‘It feels so strange,’ Jocelyn said, as they found themselves in a narrow street, with a high wall on one side, holding back the gardens of the houses above them. ‘I can’t imagine who would live in a place like this.’
‘All sorts, I suppose,’ said Thea. ‘Probably even some descendants of the weavers and clothworkers, who made the place what it is, a century or two ago.’
‘Don’t start giving me a history lesson,’ Jocelyn pleaded. ‘I want to know about now.’
‘I’m not very good on now,’ admitted Thea. ‘You’ll have to work that out for yourself.’
Failing to locate a supermarket, they found instead a small high street grocery store where they bought fruit and bread and other necessities, and started back to the car with a carrier bag each. ‘I’m tired,’ said Jocelyn. ‘This country living is exhausting.’
‘You got up too early.’
‘I know I did.’
‘Well, we’d better get back. We need to catch the news at six.’
‘Do we?’
‘Didn’t I tell you? There’s going to be an appeal for information about the murder. If you think we’ve had a lot of visitors up to now, you ain’t seen nuttin’ yet.’
‘What?’
‘Honestly – you’ll see I’m right. All the neighbours who haven’t caught on yet will swarm on us like locusts.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s what people do. They’ll pretend to be offering moral support, and advice and home-baked cakes, but really they’ll just want to gawp at the place where a murder happened. It’s human nature.’
‘You don’t sound very bothered.’
‘No point in fighting human nature,’ Thea shrugged. ‘It’s understandable, when you think about it.’
‘How?’
‘Well, because a sudden death is just about the biggest thing that can happen. It shakes up everybody’s world, and they want to satisfy themselves that they’ve got to grips with it. Something like that, anyway.’
‘So you think people who slow down on motorways to have a good old look at crashed cars and ambulances are okay, do you?’
‘I absolutely do, yes. If the alternative is to speed on, pretending nothing’s happened, then certainly I do. Did I tell you about that woman who rang me after Carl was killed?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘She said I might want an eyewitness account of how it had all looked, a few minutes after it happened. She was really nice. It helped a lot.’
‘I chose a bad example,’ Jocelyn said glumly. ‘I didn’t mean to remind you of Carl.’
‘I don’t need reminding,’ Thea said gently, long since accustomed to the paradox of so often having to be the one offering consolation for a loss that was so acutely her own.
* * *
They were back soon after five, approaching the final few yards with exaggerated trepidation. ‘What d’you think we’ll find this time?’ Jocelyn asked in a melodramatic whisper.
‘Stop it,’ Thea ordered. ‘Nothing else is going to happen.’
The afternoon had continued hot and sunny. The geese, ducks and bantams appeared to resent the sudden heatwave with varying degrees of passion. The peacocks, by contrast, evidently loved it. Two of them sat comfortably in their tree, heads cocked sideways in complete mirror-image of each other. The third, on a higher branch, seemed lost in atavistic dreams of India. Jocelyn tried to capture them on film.
‘Why did you bring a camera?’ Thea asked.
‘I didn’t deliberately. Alex makes me keep it in the car in case there’s an accident and I need proof for the insurance people.’
‘Why does everything keep coming back to car accidents?’ Thea wondered. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing it deliberately.’
‘No, I’m not, I promise.’
‘Anyway, if you want a good subject, you should use Hepzie. She’s wonderfully photogenic.’
‘So she might be, but all cocker spaniels look the same, don’t they? It gets a bit repetitive.’
‘As far as I can see, all peacocks look the same as well.’
The gentle sniping was typical of their exchanges, throughout their lives. Neither could fully relax and let the other be natural. Thea hadn’t understood this until the acute crisis of Carl’s death, when all the bickering dropped away completely, and Jocelyn enfolded her sister in her fleshy arms, pulling her tight against her chest and absorbing the flood of tears with a maternal calm that was entirely new to Thea
.
It hadn’t lasted, of course. Six weeks later, they were arguing about some small piece of trivia, and Joss was asking one of her unreasonable favours. But they both knew that the bond between them had been confirmed and acknowledged, that it was always going to be there, even if they went through long separations or serious fights.
They missed the news, because at ten to six there was a distraction. Jocelyn had noticed a row of blackcurrant bushes, laden with fruit, at the back of the fenced-off garden. ‘We can’t let them go to waste,’ she’d insisted, taking a colander and quickly filling it with shining dark currants. ‘I’ll put some in the freezer and cook the others.’
Remembering the freezer in the barn, Thea suggested Jocelyn use that one. ‘It looked as if it was where they keep their own produce,’ she said. ‘Bags of apple slices and loads of beans and stuff.’
When Jocelyn came back seconds later, Thea was flipping through TV channels, idly waiting for the news. ‘Psst!’ hissed Jocelyn from the doorway of the living room. ‘Come here.’ The urgent whisper was so reminiscent of childhood games that Thea was momentarily transported to another time and place.
‘What do you want?’ she asked in a normal voice.
‘There’s somebody out there. Hiding in that car, in the barn.’
‘What?’ Thea stared. ‘There can’t be.’
‘There is. Wrapped up in a blanket on the back seat.’
‘Not dead?’
‘No,’ Jocelyn snapped impatiently. ‘I saw a movement when I went in there, and some sort of noise. At first I thought it might be a rat. But I was fantastically brave and went for a look. It’s a youngster, I think. One of these stupid Rural Warriors, I imagine. What d’you think we ought to do?’
‘Go and have a proper look,’ said Thea robustly. ‘If they haven’t already escaped, that is.’
They had not escaped. Or rather she had not. Armed with a stick she found propped against the barn wall, Thea strode to the Lamborghini and peered through the rear window. All she could see was a rolled-up sleeping bag stretched along the somewhat cramped back seat. Jocelyn hovered a few steps behind her.
