Текст книги "Vows of Silence "
Автор книги: Susan Hill
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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
And then Jane Fitzroy.
But Jane had been vulnerable, confused in most areas of her life and suffering under the blows which had fallen on her one after another during her short time in Lafferton.
“What is it that you want, Si?”
He was about to say that he wanted what she had—her happy married life, her farmhouse, her family—but he stopped himself. Cat without Chris, Cat facing her husband’s death, Cat on her own bringing up the children, Cat who needed him far more than he needed her, the reverse of the way it had always been—he tried to imagine it and could not.
The waiter took their plates and brought the chalk board of desserts, propping it against the next-door table. They were both glad of it.
“Sticky toffee pudding,” Cat said, “and ice cream. And mint tea.”
“Twice,” Simon said.
Later, driving back to the farmhouse, he said, “Perhaps it’s safer.”
“What is?”
“Like this. Women who aren’t available. Is it that?”
“Cod psychology. It could be, if you don’t want to change.”
“So what do I do?”
“For God’s sake, Simon, I don’t know! You’re putting too much on me here.”
“Sorry.”
“We’re lucky. Work helps. Think if you were stuck in a widget factory watching a conveyor belt all day.”
He sighed. “Instead of failing to catch a particularly vicious gunman.”
“You’ll catch him.”
“Nothing says we will.”
“You won’t let this one go. I know you.”
“I tell you something, Cat. It’s getting to me and when it gets to me it’s personal. Like the child abductions got personal. Like the arsonist got personal. I begin to think he’s doing it to defy me. How paranoid is that? But it’s how I feel. I feel taunted. Come on, Serrailler, stop me, I challenge you.”
“Why? He’s killed women.”
“Oh, I don’t mean he wants me dead. But once they get lucky two or three times, once they start getting away with it, then it does become a thing between the two of us, however many others are involved—dozens in this case. Something connects between me and this unknown out there. I have to get to him, I have to stop him.” He banged his hand on the steering wheel.
“Are you sure there’s only one?”
“No. It’s possible the sniper who shot the girls is not the same as the man with the handgun who killed Melanie Drew and that young mother.”
“What do you really think?”
“Oh, I really think it’s the same guy. I’m sure of it. Gut feeling.”
“And gut feeling says he’ll do it again?”
“Yes,” Simon said quietly, “I’m afraid it does. I want to get there first but get where? Where is he going to next? Why? I’ve no idea about the why, nothing links, nothing fits, Cat, and until some thing does, I’m blundering about in the dark wearing a blindfold.”
They saw the lights of the farmhouse shining out to them from the far end of the country lane.
“So be careful, always,” he went on. “This is important. Don’t answer the door if you don’t know who it is and never let the children answer it, keep the door on the chain.”
“You’re serious?”
“You leave doors unlocked, you leave windows open c”
“OK, OK, and I’ve got enough, don’t start telling me about men with guns waiting to blow out my brains or those of my children when I open the front door.”
“It’s happened. I’m reminding you.”
“Thanks. Aren’t you coming in?”
“No, I’ll head for home, get some sleep in before someone disturbs it.”
“You just don’t want to see Dad and Judith.”
“That too.”
“God, you make me furious.” Cat slammed the car door hard and walked away.
“Don’t say thanks for the lovely dinner or anything,” Simon shouted after her. But she had gone inside.
It occurred to him, driving his new Audi fast through the dark lanes, that an argument with Cat could end like this, with both of them cooling off under their respective roofs. An argument with a wife was one you would find it hard to escape. He did not blame his sister. She had enough to cope with and if she had to let fly at someone it might as well be at him. One of them would ring the other during the next couple of days and the whole thing would be over before it had begun.
If he were married he would not be able to return to a quiet, peaceful flat and life as he liked it.
He was better off on his own.
Forty-four
“You’re pathetic. I don’t get you. Why are you doing this? Why do you want to ruin it for her?”
“I don’t.”
“You do. Obviously you do. Have you listened to yourself?”
Tom had barged into Lizzie’s room and flopped down on her bed, then got up and roamed around, opening cupboards and shutting them, kicking his foot against the wall, taking a book off the shelf and putting it back. That had gone on for several minutes before he had finally said, “I don’t like him. He’s all wrong. I just don’t like him and he’s got to go, she’s got to see.”
His sister had been furious. As far as Lizzie was concerned, her mother looked wonderful, shining with happiness, enjoying life, having fun, sharing things. All of which was because of Philip Russell. Besides, Lizzie liked Phil. He was exactly right and she couldn’t get over the luck. The chances of Helen Creedy meeting a series of disastrous men, wrong men, weird men, had been high, instead of which she had met Phil, bang, first time.
“What do you mean? Put that down, will you?”
“Jesse Cole told me. Phil Russell teaches his brother so I asked him.”
“Asked him what? What could Jesse Cole’s brother know?”
“I said, he teaches him, he’s been teaching him for two years.”
“And?”
“He said he’s an atheist. He preaches it. He preaches there isn’t a God when he’s supposed to be teaching history, he makes cracks about it all the time, sarcastic remarks, he sneers, he talks to them about that Dawkins book.”
Lizzie sighed and turned back to Henry IV, Part One. Once Tom started on religion she didn’t want to hear.
“He’s bound to talk like that to her.”
“Mum’s got a mind of her own.”
“I don’t want her having anything to do with him.”
“Perhaps I should get him to talk to you like that. Time someone got you into a reasonable argument, showed up your sect for what it is.”
“It’s not a sect.”
“OK, cult.”
“It’s not a cult.”
“Go away, Tom, I’ve got to finish this. Go and pray with your friends.”
“If you came with me you’d see it wasn’t anything like you think. You think it’s the Moonies or the Scientologists or some thing. I dunno. Mormons, Plymouth Brethren.”
“Whatever.”
“It matters, it’s about being on the right side, it’s about having Jesus come into your life and change everything, it’s—”
Lizzie stuffed her fingers in her ears.
Tom sat back down on the bed. He looked unhappy. She saw him as he used to be, moody but free, laughing, taking the mick, mucking about. A good mate. Not any more. Now he was either spouting the Bible or he looked unhappy.
“Leave her alone, let her enjoy herself. You’ve got to get over it, Tom. Once I’ve gone to uni, you can’t rant and rave at Mum the entire time, it’ll do no good and it’ll make her miserable. And if you break them up I’ll kill you.”
“I wish you’d see it like I do.”
“I can’t. I never will. I don’t know you any more, I haven’t a clue what goes on in your head.”
“Yes, you do, I keep telling you, I try to make you see. It’s really, really important, it’s the only important thing.”
Lizzie got up and opened her door. Tom looked at her. Again she saw his face when he was six or seven. Not this face, now. His old face.
“I’ve got to finish this.”
“Lizzie c”
“Please.”
She held his look. Then they heard the key turn in the front door.
“Hi!”
“OK, she’s back from her book group, go and make a cup of tea and don’t you dare say anything, Tom Creedy, don’t you bloody dare.”
After a moment of sitting, staring at the floor unhappily, Tom unwound his long frame and got up.
In his own room he sat on the window ledge looking out, as he had done when he was small and needed to think. The street below was quiet. People went to bed early.
He wondered if he should talk to Pastor Evans. Phil was a problem and Tom knew he had to solve it before his mother did something stupid like marry the guy. It wasn’t that he minded her marrying. He’d sorted that out early on. Lizzie banged on about how lonely she was since Dad died, how it would be good for her, how she needed someone, and she was right, he’d never really had a problem with that. He hadn’t now. She ought not to be by herself once he and Lizzie had gone. It was Phil. Tom used to get vibes around people when he was younger, that there was something not right about them, but more recently he’d tried to ignore them when the pastors had said that sort of thing could be the Devil whispering in your ear or even lodged in your brain. New Agey stuff. Still, secretly, he knew he’d often been right and he didn’t like to ignore the vibes altogether. He’d had them when he’d met Phil, strong ones. He didn’t like disagreeing with any of the pastors, they’d guided him the right way, he ought to listen. But about Phil Russell he knew best, and in any case, it wasn’t only the vibes, it was what he’d been told, real stuff.
He went downstairs.
His mother was sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of tea, writing in her book group notebook.
“Hello—it’s freshly brewed.”
“No thanks.” Tom got a can of Coke from the fridge and stood with his back against the worktop drinking it. He wanted to say something now but where to start, how to start?
“Good meeting?”
Helen smiled. “Fine thanks.”
“Interesting book?”
“Yes thanks. The Kite Runner.”
“Right.”
“Do you want something, Tom?”
“No. Why would I?”
“A sub for instance?”
“No, I’m good thanks.”
“Oh. Fine.” She looked down at her notebook again, waiting for her son to say whatever it was he was finding difficult to talk about.
“You going out this week?”
Ah. She wrote a couple of words while saying, “Yes. Thursday. And then we’re going to the Jug Fair. Daft but fun.”
“Right.”
“Thursday Phil has tickets for the ballet. I’m not that keen on ballet but there you go.”
“Why?”
“Never seen the point. I always think they’d find it so much easier if they just started talking.”
“No, I meant if you don’t really like it, why go? You don’t have to.”
“No I don’t. But I probably owe it to ballet to give it one more try.”
“I don’t see that.”
“No, you probably wouldn’t.”
Silence. He drank two or three times. The washing machine started its spin cycle.
“It is OK about the States, isn’t it?”
“About you going? You live your own life, Tom, you know what I think.”
“It’s really important. I’ve got to do it.”
“It may be important now. I just don’t want you to gear your whole future to this church thing.”
“I’m not.”
“Seems like it from here.”
“It isn’t the church thing, as you call it, it’s giving my life to Jesus, that’s what it’s about. If I go to the Bible college I come out ready to serve and bear witness.”
“You sound like a pamphlet.”
“Sorry.”
“Just don’t be swayed by other people, Tom. Especially not by oratory. I know, they get up there and preach and it’s mesmerising, but when you come down to earth—”
“Phil’s an atheist.”
Tom had gone scarlet. He swigged the last of his Coke hastily and dropped the can into the bin.
“I know. Does that worry you a lot?”
Tom mumbled. His mother had put her pen down and was looking him full in the face, which always made him uncomfortable.
“Because while I can understand that it might, I don’t think it’s really your concern. You’re going away, so is Lizzie soon. This is about me.”
“Not only.”
“Yes, only. Or rather, Phil and me.”
“I have to worry, don’t you see?”
“You mean if I marry him?”
“You going to, then?”
“I’ve no idea. We’re fine as we are for now. But if I go to hell I’ll do it in my own way and take responsibility, it won’t be your fault.”
“Only it will. It’ll mean I could have done something and I didn’t.”
Helen laughed, until she saw the pain and anxiety on his face and stopped.
“Don’t worry. I’ve listened to you, I understand how important it is to you and if I reject it that is really not your fault. I’d stand up in your church and tell them so if it’d help.”
He shifted from one foot to the other. Helen’s heart went out to him. He was too young for all this, trying to save everyone from damnation, trying to convert the world. He had been care free, relaxed, a force for good, and now he was tense, troubled, endlessly striving, measuring himself against those she privately thought were not worth a hundredth of him. Whoever they were, they made her angry.
“Do you like Phil? That matters to me.”
“Don’t know him really.”
“What you’ve seen of him?”
Tom shrugged.
“He’s a good person, Tom. By most people’s definitions of what good means, he is.”
“If you say so.” He turned away.
“I do. But you matter to me most—you and Liz. If this really upsets you, I won’t see him.”
He looked at her again, his face open and alarmed. Then he came over and gave her a quick, hard hug. “You’ve got to,” he said. “You go for it. Doesn’t matter what I think.”
He fled from the room.
For a second she made to follow him but stopped herself. Tom worried her because he had changed so drastically. His conversion to this Jesus sect had come in a rush and within months he had spoken of little else, dropped old friends, spent his spare time with new ones from the church, become obsessed with “saving and converting” as Lizzie had said with scorn. But his new-found belief did not seem to make him happy or fulfilled. On the contrary, he was anxious and tense most of the time. The old Tom had been laid-back and cheerful, untroubled by most things.
She made another cup of tea, wondering if she could talk to Phil about it. But this was not his concern. Her children were hers, as Phil’s sons were his.
She went to bed and lay awake, worrying about Tom, and for the first time in some weeks longed for Terry to be here, sorting it all out calmly, talking to Tom, reassuring her as he always had.
She was asleep when Tom slipped out of his room and out of the house without switching on the lights and pushed his motorbike halfway up the road before starting it, for fear of disturbing her and having to answer questions.
Forty-five
“There’s a woman applied for the vacancy,” Ian Dean said on the way to the airfield. “Lucy Fry. Know her?”
“Seen her around. Short dark hair?”
“Lezza,” Clive Rowley said.
“So?”
“Only saying.”
“I could report you for that.”
“Report me for what?”
There were three of them and a vehicle full of gear and it was an hour to the end of shift. It was driving rain.
“What was I thinking? I don’t need the overtime this bad.”
“Hour, tops,” Liam Westleton said, spinning the van round a corner and sending up a sheet of spray.
“Right, and it’s your round.”
“I don’t mind having a woman, best shot I ever worked with was a woman.”
Clive made a noise in his throat.
“What?”
“Be PMT every time we have a nasty situation.”
“You want to watch your attitude, Rowley. Anyway, I only said she’d applied. Right, here we go. Which one are we picking?”
There were five hangars.
“Far one on the left,” Rowley said.
“Why?”
“Dunno. No good taking the nearest, we need a bit of a run.”
Westleton started to plough through the water-filled potholes and muddy grass towards the hangar. It was just after lunch. No one about.
“One day we’ll come out here for training and the place’ll be full of demolition men and builders. Got to be housing here sooner or later, it’s a waste.”
“Think it’s a contaminated site, Ian. No one knows what to do with it. Meanwhile, let’s get on with it. Only this one’s no good, the roof’s half caved in.”
He reversed and drove back, the van lurching and swaying, to the second hangar.
“This one’s too near the road.”
“None of them’s near the road and what does it matter anyway? Save the suspension.”
Clive shrugged and went straight round to the back of the van when they stopped. Westleton went to the metal bar that held the hangar doors and lifted it.
“One of the other lot must have been out here,” he said, coming back. “Thought that would be stiff but it came up sweet as a nut.”
“Fire service come up here for training.”
“Right. Better check when we get back then, make sure they haven’t got a session clashing with us tomorrow.”
They were hauling the gear out of the van, long wooden and metal poles, a steel-mesh rope ladder. The smaller gear, mainly hand tools, came up with them on the day. The training day happened every six weeks, occasionally out here, with team exercises, climbing practice, breaking down and entering. Westleton and Rowley dragged out a couple of old doors from the van, set one down and carried the other towards the hangar. They would be building a makeshift entrance with the doors suspended on poles.
“Ian, bring the box of padlocks from under the bench, will you?”
Padlocks and chains to hitch round some of the girders, another kind of obstacle to be broken through.
The grey light of a sodden autumn afternoon filtered a short way through the open doors but the recesses of the hangar were dim. They would rig up makeshift lighting in the morning but some of the session would be in darkness with the doors half closed.
“OK, let’s have this stuff up against the side here, cover it with the sacks. Not that anyone’s going to be interested.”
They lugged things in and out, saying little. The rain slanted across on the wind into the hangar.
They stashed the last of the wooden poles and doors, covered them with tarpaulin and were making to go when Rowley said, “You hear that?”
“Nope.”
“What?”
“I thought I heard something over there.”
“Birds. You get birds nesting in here, up in the roof.”
“Right.”
“You spooked or what?”
“Nah. Be my ears want syringing. See the ME if it gets any worse.”
But as they swung the hangar doors together, Liam Westleton turned and looked back inside.
“What?”
“Was it like a whistling sound?”
“Yeah, and I said, it’s my ears. Forget it.”
“Come on, I want to get home, I’ve got footie training.” Ian Dean played for the county force first eleven.
They slammed the doors, dropped the bar across, piled into the van. The rain had eased but the sky was oyster-coloured, the wind whipping across the water-filled potholes and ruffling the surface.
Westleton had his hand on the starter, but then he hesitated.
“Come on, come on.”
“If there was something, we’d better check it out.”
“There wasn’t.”
“All the same. I’ll drive the van right in, scout the place with the headlights. Apart from anything else, I don’t want that lot nicked.”
“Be a fox,” Ian said. “Foxes all over here, you can smell them when it’s drier.”
“Get the doors open again.”
Clive Rowley got slowly out of the van again and stumbled as he caught his foot. “Shit.”
“Get on with it.”
“Twisted my ankle.”
“You’re not hurt.”
But Rowley was hopping on one foot, leaning against the side of the van.
Westleton sighed. “Get him back on board then. Leave it be.”
“Probably nothing, Sarge.”
The other two helped Clive Rowley up the back step of the van and onto the bench, where he sat rubbing his ankle and muttering under his breath.
“Ears. Ankle. You got a pencil. Better write the ME a list.”
“Ha ha.”
Liam Westleton turned the van and headed off towards the road.
Forty-six
It had taken him a week to plan everything. She hadn’t been in touch at all, not a word, not a note. She hadn’t and not one member of her family. He felt as if he hadn’t existed as far as they were concerned, as if they had airbrushed him out of their lives and their memories.
He wasn’t having it. But he didn’t rush anything. His anger had been a flaring bonfire, but he waited until it had shrunk down and become a small, spinning, red-hot core which he knew he could control. You needed control. He went running, he walked it off up on the Moor, he went into Starly Woods and shot pigeons, and after the pigeons, he took half a dozen empty tin cans and set those up, shot at those until he could do the row, one to six, without missing. Every time one went down, it was one of them. Her father. Mother. Sister. Grandmother. Kid brother. Then her. She was the last each time. When he’d shot them all down he set them up in the same row and shot them again.
A week.
He had waited until teatime, half past six, when he knew she’d be home from work. She was always home then.
It was a beautiful evening, warm, still, sweet-smelling even in the middle of the town. He’d parked the car higher up and strolled down. A couple of kids had been doing wheelies in the middle of the road near her house. He’d waited a bit but in the end he’d told them to scarper. He didn’t want kids there even if he was only going to frighten her. Frighten them all. Kids oughtn’t to be involved.
He could trust his anger now. It was under control. He’d frighten her but nothing more. He wanted to see her face, how she’d look at him, what she’d try to say. Then see the fear.
As he’d walked he’d wondered why he was doing this because, in spite of it, he loved her. He had never thought he would feel as he had felt for Alison, as he still felt, and his ball of anger was a part of the same feeling. He had walked all the way down one side of the street, looking at her house as he had passed it, and then back on the other side. The gate was painted blue, quite bright. He could see the blueness staring out at him.
He had slowed down, slowed and slowed until he was hardly putting one foot in front of the other as he had approached the blue gate.
There was no car in the drive.
He’d stood there, hand on the gate, swallowing his anger down. Then he’d seen the movement in the window, behind the curtain. He had pushed the blue gate open.
She must have run down the stairs and been waiting because as he lifted his hand to knock she opened the door wide.
Georgina.
He could sense the fear on her. She was holding it back, behind defiance, but her eyes were everywhere, at him, away from him, over his shoulder.
“She’s not here.”
“I don’t believe you. I want to talk to her, Georgie. Tell her.”
“I said. She’s not here.”
“I want to come in and see for myself.”
“Well, you can’t. She doesn’t want to see you anyway, she doesn’t want anything to do with you, she told you that.”
He tried to push her out of the way but then there was someone else, a man he had never seen before, right behind her.
“This is my Uncle Gordon,” she said. “Tell him Ally’s not here.”
The man wasn’t tall but he was squat and muscled, like a small thick barrel, arms crossed. He could have dealt with him easily enough but that wasn’t what he’d come for.
“Alison,” the uncle said, “isn’t here. Can’t you take that in?”
“I want to see her, that’s all. I’ve a right to an explanation.”
“You’ve had one.”
“If she isn’t here, where is she then?”
“Mind your—”
“No, it’s fine, Uncle Gordon, I’ll tell him. I think he ought to know.”
“Know what?”
She moved away from the door a few yards down the path and he followed.
“Look, she’s not here and that’s the honest truth. She hasn’t been here for a few days. She’s gone away and she isn’t on her own. She’s with Stuart. So you’d better leave.”
“Where is she? Where? Where?” He felt himself start to shake, felt the rage burst out of its strict confines. “I’ve a right to know.”
“No,” Georgina said, “no, you haven’t. I’m not saying any more and don’t come here again.” She turned.
He grabbed her arm. “If I write a letter to her, will you pass it on?”
“I don’t know.”
He hesitated. He didn’t want to hurt Georgina. He didn’t want to hurt Alison. But others would suffer. Others. Others would never taste happiness.
He pulled himself up. “Thanks,” he managed to say, “thanks, Georgie.”
He walked down the path, closed the bright blue gate behind him and went fast up the road, and now he was shaking, now he almost lost it, almost knocked over an old woman who was going past him, almost pushed her to the ground. He was angry with himself. He shouldn’t be thinking like that. He needed to get himself under control.
He passed his car and walked on, walked fast and steadily, for a couple of miles, in and out of streets at random, talking to himself, bringing himself down, reining himself in slowly. It was like trying to get hold of a mad horse, but in the end, he felt that he was getting there.
He walked until he came to a corner pub and went in. Half of him wanted to drink himself into a stupor. He bought a pint of Guinness and sat down. He drank it slowly, making it last. His hands were shaking but he made that stop too.
When he was halfway down the glass, he started to think, coolly, rationally, point by point, trying to make a clear plan. He had the beginnings of it by the time the glass was empty.
He didn’t allow himself another.
Forty-seven
It was thundery. The narrow road that wound up the slope to the crematorium was slicked with rain making the cars move even more slowly. Three cars.
Jane Fitzroy waited, sheltering under the overhang, the rain slanting across the lawns. The hearse. One other funeral car behind it. And Cat Deerbon’s dark green Peugeot. And then, much further behind, just turning into the gates, a small battered van.
The hearse crunched slowly towards her across the gravel. Drew up beside her. The pale wood coffin had a small white posy, a wreath of red and gold, and behind those, a vast display of lilies and dark green ivy, commanding and extravagant.
Jane glanced at the card as the coffin was sliding out of the car. “ Dearest Karin, Our love and thanks for all the wonderful things you created for us and for your warm and loyal friendship. Too soon to leave us. Cax and Lucia.”
An elderly couple got out of the car behind the hearse. Then Cat. Then a young man, awkward in a suit, from the van.
Jane hesitated. A large crowd at a funeral did not necessarily mean they were a crowd of loving friends, far from it, but this group seemed pitifully small. Karin had left a note about her funeral. The pieces of music. The hymn. The reading, from the garden writings of Christopher Lloyd. “If it is you taking the service, Jane, I know you’ll pick the right prayers.” She hoped that she had.
She turned and went inside to the first notes of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” As she did so, she heard a car come fast up the approach road. She hoped Karin’s ex-husband might have thought better of his decision not to be here, but she walked on into the small, bland chapel, not glancing round.
She delivered the opening prayer, but as Cat got up to read a passage Karin had chosen from The Well Tempered Garden, Jane looked up and directly at Simon Serrailler. He was gazing at her. She turned her eyes quickly away, to Cat, to the flowers on the coffin, to the floor. He had slipped into a seat in the second row.
Cat read well, carefully and slowly.
Jane looked steadily at her as she finished, acutely, furiously conscious that her own face had flushed scarlet. But she kept her voice steady.
“Karin wanted the hymn ‘The King of Love My Shepherd Is.’ It isn’t always easy to sing when there are so few voices, so we have chosen a recording of a congregational version and we can join that. I hope it doesn’t seem too much like karaoke.”
Strangely, it did not. The voices from the tape took up the hymn and the real and present voices were clear above them. It was a compromise but better that, Jane thought, than a weak, thready rendering to embarrass everyone.
The rain drummed on the roof of the chapel as the hymn finished. It was hard to focus and she felt ashamed of that, angry that she was so disturbed by Simon’s presence, wishing he had not come, wanting to remember Karin. And what would she have said? A picture flashed into Jane’s mind: Karin looking amused. Yes, she would find it amusing, yes, she would have had something teasing to say. But if Karin was smiling, Jane could not.
“God our creator and redeemer, by your power Christ conquered death and entered into glory. Confident of his victory and claiming his promises, we entrust your servant Karin to your mercy in the name of Jesus our Lord, who died and is alive and reigns with you, now and for ever.”
She hated cremations, hated the anonymity of these identikit chapels, hated the lack of beauty, hated the terrible curtain and the sound of the coffin sliding away. For her, a burial had dignity, though she knew plenty of fellow priests who disagreed.
She looked once more at Karin McCafferty’s coffin, the white flowers, the flash of brass on the handle in the dark chapel. Then she bent her head and began the committal prayer.
Cat had her eyes closed but made no attempt to brush the tears from her face. Andy Gunton stood rigid, swallowing hard. He had worked with Karin, spent part of almost every day with her in the gardens at Seaton Vaux, the Caxton Philips’s estate, learned from her, laughed with her and, not knowing what to do or say when her illness took a final grip, had kept away and was ashamed of the fact now, despising himself for being the kind of person who crossed the road to avoid an uncomfortable encounter.
“Amen.”
Simon heard his own clear voice bridging the short distance between himself and Jane Fitzroy. He had not known what his reaction would be to seeing her again and had been taken aback by it.
The coffin slid forward and Cat caught her breath. Chris, she whispered, oh God.
Simon looked at her but her head was bent. Chris, he thought.
“Karin asked for some music now. It meant a great deal to her. Please listen to it and think of her with gladness, remembering her brave and vital spirit.”
So often, Cat thought, there is a dire moment at cremations when the canned music blares out “My Way’, “Somewhere over the Rainbow’, “I will always love you” c But when “Blowing in the Wind” came in, it was right after all. Cat smiled.
“God, I hate these places,” Simon said, touching Cat’s shoulder as they came out to the porch. The thunder was rolling away but the rain was still heavy, the sky blue-black as a fresh bruise.
“I’m glad you made it.”
“Didn’t think I would.” He looked round quickly, then said, “I want to have a word with Andy Gunton. Now there’s an old lag who turned out well.”
“I think Jane would like to see you.”
“I have to scoot then, sorry.”
She gave him a look, said nothing, as he went up to Andy who was standing uncertainly to one side.
Jane was talking to Karin’s relatives. Cat waited, hearing the last of the song, sounding melancholy in the empty chapel behind them.
