Текст книги "Vows of Silence "
Автор книги: Susan Hill
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 17 страниц)
“God, it hurts. God.”
“You’re doing brilliant. You’re doing great. Come on.”
“Clive? You’re Clive? Oh God, thank you.”
She was pulled up, gently and slowly, by the others behind them, onto a flat section of the wooden stand. The letters “GHOU” were painted on the wood in white and blood red.
“You’re OK,” Clive said. “It’s over.”
“You’re Clive?” She was dazed.
“Yup. Who are you, love?”
“Helen,” she said.
Fifty-six
“This is Radio Bevham. We’re interrupting the late-night phone-in for some breaking news on a major accident at Lafferton’s Jug Fair. One of the rides is reported to have collapsed and there are a large number of casualties. We don’t know yet how many or the degree of seriousness. Emergency services from three counties are on the scene, and speaking from there is our reporter Cathy Miles.
“Cathy, I gather you were actually at the site of the accident this evening, is that right?”
“Hi, David, yes, that’s right. I live just outside Lafferton and I was at the Jug Fair which occupies the whole of the area around the cathedral c”
Simon switched off the car radio and for a moment or two sat in the dark car. He took several deep breaths in and slowly out and felt the tension flow from him. It had been an alarming and exhausting night but as always in a major incident the adrenaline had kept him, kept all of them, at peak performance, hyped up and working as a team. He had driven from the scene of the accident straight to the hospital where Sam and Judith Connolly had been taken. Cat had gone in the ambulance with Hannah but had sent Simon a text soon afterwards to say that Sam was fine, only badly bruised on his shoulders—the falling platform had missed his head by millimetres. Judith had a broken leg and was in shock. By the time Simon had arrived Sam was ready to be discharged. Judith was being kept in overnight. He had taken his sister and the kids back to Hallam House before returning to the accident, by which time Paula Devenish was on the scene. Now, six bodies had been brought out of the rubble but it was thought unlikely there were more, though the search would continue. The injured had been ferried off in ambulances, the press briefed several times.
Just before he came away, the Chief had found him again. “I don’t know which is worse,” she had said wearily, “this or the shooting we dreaded.”
“Accident or design? On balance I’d rather deal with an accident but c”
“But we would rather have neither. Of course. Do you think there was going to be a shooting, Simon? Was he here and was he going to cause mayhem, only the collapse of the ghost train got in the way?”
“I’d put money on his not being here. He’d never have taken the risk.”
“Does your bet hold for this blasted wedding?”
Simon had wiped his face with his sleeve and the sleeve came away filthy with the dust and dirt that had been released into the air by the crash. From the moment of the collapse until now, he had not given a thought to the gunman. Where had he been tonight? Among them, watching, waiting, looking for his opportunity, or miles away? It was a terrible game and they were only distracted now because of a random catastrophe.
“I don’t know,” he said at last. “But probably. He doesn’t take risks beyond a certain point. He isn’t a chancer, he calculates.”
“He could be calculating this one.”
“He could. We’ve got to make sure he decides the risk isn’t worthwhile, or if he takes it, that we have him.”
“I’m going to make a fuss c press conference pointing out how secure this wedding is going to be, massive armed police presence and so on.”
“Good.” He had looked across at a fireman, poised on a girder. “One of our armed officers deserves a medal,” he said.
“Clive Rowley? Yes, I heard. He wasn’t supposed to pre-empt the fire service of course, he might have made matters worse.”
“You’re not serious, ma’am? AR are not trained to clamber about trying to drag people out of debris? Health and Safety? Oh please.”
The Chief raised her eyebrows. “Officially, Superintendent, officially.”
He felt all the energy and control begin to drain out of him.
“Go home, Simon. You’ve done as much as you can here. Leave them to it.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you safe to drive?”
He gestured in the direction of the close. He had left his car in front of the flat after returning from Bevham General. The Chief walked with him to the cathedral side of the square where her own driver was waiting. Around them, the teams of firemen were still working, taking the collapsed ride apart piece by piece, clambering on ladders laid flat and occasionally calling down through the debris and then listening intently. The area had been cleared but a few people waited outside the police tape, close to the battery of press vans.
“I’m glad your own family were found so quickly, Simon. Some of these are going to be waiting for the rest of the night and into tomorrow. Have there been many calls reporting people still missing?”
“Not as many as you might expect. They’ve got a lot of people out now.”
“Get some sleep. I’m giving a press conference at nine, come in for that.”
Simon nodded. He saw her into her car before walking off towards the close.
Once he had left the range of the arc lights he had looked up and seen that the sky was clear and star-filled with a thin paring of moon over the cathedral tower. It was only when he reached his car that he realised that there was also a frost and he was very cold. He wondered whether to go straight inside, call Hallam House and then go to bed. But he would be flat out all the following day and almost certainly into overtime for the rest of the week. He needed to see them now, no matter what time it was.
His father and Cat were sitting at the kitchen table, teapot and cups in front of them. Sam was stretched out on his mother’s lap with his legs and feet on the chair beside her. He sat up as Simon came in.
“Do you know how many people are dead? Judith might easily be dead and so might I, it was a lucky escape. The fireman said it didn’t have my number on it.”
Simon sat down next to Cat and put his hand on her arm. “You should be in bed. Are you staying here?”
“Yes. Chris is asleep. I’ve made the beds up.”
“Do you propose to stay here as well?” Richard Serrailler said. “If so you could probably do with a whisky.”
Simon hesitated. There was his old room, though he had last slept in it after one of his mother’s choral society suppers at which he had been roped in to help.
“You’ve absolutely scootly got to stay,” Sam said. “We can discuss how the ride collapsed, I’ve been thinking about it—you see, probably what started it was—”
“Sam, can we do this later?”
“OK, when? It’s very interesting actually, how buildings and things sometimes do just collapse. Occasionally it’s a structural defect but it can be an earth tremor. Do you think there was an earth tremor?”
“It’s a possibility but I haven’t had anything like that confirmed, Sambo.”
“It would be on the Internet, there’s a very good seismological website, we could look it up.”
“We could, but not now. I’m going to have a drink with your grandfather and what I really need is for you to encourage your mother to get to bed. She’s had a bit of a shock, you know.”
“Right. I understand. Shock can be delayed, did you know that? In older people anyway. Mum, I think you might have shock and need to get some sleep now. When people have had a shock they need rest—I expect even I might need a bit, my arm’s started to hurt again.”
“Si, one end of the curtain pole in our room has come down, can you sort it?”
He followed them up. Sam had gone quiet.
“I feel as if I’m climbing the north face of the Eiger,” Cat said.
“I know about that, you see the north face—”
“Save it, Sam.”
“Oh. That’s quite a lot of things we have to discuss tomorrow, there’s the possibility of an earth tremor, the structural weakness of fairground rides, the c”
“Relative steepness of a flight of stairs versus the north face of the Eiger. Scoot into the blue bathroom, I’ve put all our stuff in there.”
“Oh pooh, I like the big bathroom best, can’t I use that, I always did when Granny was here and I know it’s Grandpa and Judith’s bathroom now but they won’t mind and c”
“Sam, I’ve had enough. I’m exhausted and I need my bed. Bathroom. Go!”
He went.
*
As he was lifting the end of the curtain pole, Simon glanced at the double bed where Chris lay, curled on his side. His scalp looked raw. The hair had been shaved and there was a long line of sutures curving across his head.
“He’ll be like this till nine or so. He’s on some pretty knockout stuff.”
His brother-in-law looked different, Simon thought, and not only because of his head. He seemed to be far away in another place. Simon looked away.
“Poor Dad,” Cat said. “Too much to cope with.”
“Dad? Christ, he’s not the one you should worry about.”
“Judith c”
“Oh, sorry, yes. Broken leg. Nasty that.”
“She was bloody lucky. Sam’s right. They were both bloody lucky.”
“I dare say she’ll be well looked after here, dressing gown behind the bathroom door and all.”
“You’re an A1 shit sometimes. I don’t know you as a brother when you come out with things like that. I can’t deal with you now but don’t even think of saying anything to Dad. Oh, get out.”
He felt as he had felt as a small boy, tempted to say something, knowing it should not be said, unable to stop himself. Something goaded him on. Of course he should not have said what he did, not now, not to Cat. Not ever. But from the moment Sam had mentioned the bathroom he had known that he would. The goad had pricked and pricked away.
He went downstairs, furious with himself.
“Dad?”
“In here with the decanter.”
He went into the study where Richard had stirred the remains of the fire together and was sitting beside it. He looked younger, Simon thought, seeing him as he went in, not suddenly older, which was the way he should have seemed now, but suddenly younger.
“I’d better get back actually, they’re bound to call me and I’ve got to be in for a press conference first thing.”
His father glanced round. “You know best.”
Nothing more. If he had said, no, stay, I want to talk to you, we don’t see enough of one another, we don’t talk enough c No. He wouldn’t stay, not now.
“Goodnight.”
As he turned the car, he saw the study light go out.
In the flat, the answering machine flashed. Simon waited for the cathedral clock to finish striking before listening.
“You have two new messages. First message.”
“Duty Sergeant Lewis, guv. Report that the fire service have recovered another two bodies from the wreckage of the fairground ride. Also, the Chief is bringing the press conference forward to half eight. Thank you.”
“Second message.”
There was a pause. A breath.
“Oh—Simon. Hello. This is Jane. Jane Fitzroy. I’ve just been listening to the news. I didn’t think you’d be at home, obviously, but c I just wanted to say how awful. And my prayers and thoughts are with everyone. So, well c that’s all and I’ll c I’ll catch you sometime. And it’s Jane. If you didn’t hear that. Thanks. Goodnight, Simon.”
Fifty-seven
He laughed as he rode. He went the back way, not through the town but on a four-mile detour, so that he approached the road out towards the Moor from the far side. Had to. No risks. No one knew him out here. And he laughed. Sometimes he grinned. Sometimes he smiled. But mostly he laughed aloud.
It had been good. Better than good. There they had all been, dressed up and nowhere to go and they’d been waiting for him, expecting him. Had they? Had they seriously thought he would have shot a kid’s water pistol at the fair? He hadn’t so much as tried the shooting range though he’d walked past it and watched a couple of times, watched idiots who couldn’t have shot a barn door at ten feet. Didn’t matter. He’d enjoyed it. So had they.
What had it cost and all to catch a sniper who was never going to shoot? That wasn’t his way, ripping off into a crowd at random. People who were mad did that and he despised them. Youths in America who walked into a schoolyard and gunned down a dozen innocent kids, college boys who turned on their classmates with a machine gun. They were sick. They were crazy. They needed locking up for life, only they rarely saw the day out, they turned the gun on themselves. Almost always. Which was one thing he was never going to do because he was not sick, not crazy, not a weirdo, not high on drugs. He had a purpose, he had plans and targets and methods. He was different.
It had been good to know he could be at the fair and be certain, absolutely certain, that nothing was going to happen. He laughed.
But then as he accelerated on a straight bit of road, he remembered that eight people were dead and dozens injured because of some moron. He heard the screams again. He heard the shouts for help deep inside the collapsed ride. That sort of carnage was what deranged youths who rushed into churches and baseball stadiums and school classrooms caused. The electric chair was all they were fit for and he despised them for shooting themselves and taking the easy way out.
All the same. He smiled again, remembering.
He had timed it right today. It was cold and bright, no haze, no wind. Clear. He parked the bike out of sight in a dip, took his bag off the back and walked the rest of the way, up the steep slope. At the top he turned and looked out over the countryside. A pair of buzzards soared high, wings open flat and stiff like the paddles of windmills. The distant town was a faint smoky blue line. He thought he could fly himself from here, just open his arms, lift off and soar on the current of air.
He opened the bag and took out the roll-up tin and tobacco. Papers. Licked. Rolled. Struck the match. The smell of the smoke and the taste of the cigarette was like nothing else. Smoking in the open air. Eating something cooked in the open air. Nothing like it.
He never smoked indoors.
He lay on his back and blew a smoke ring at the sky. He thought about nothing, but he felt and his feeling was a diffused warmth and satisfaction which filled his mind and his body. He was happy. Things were going well. He was good at planning, and it showed. It was idiots who tried to do this sort of thing without a plan, opportunists who came unstuck because they had not thought of every possible error. Leave nothing to chance. He didn’t.
It was good to lie here knowing that every time he carried out a part of his plan he was doing it because Alison had made him. He was not a violent person. He didn’t need some sort of stupid revenge. That was for losers. But what Alison had done to him had caused all of this. Alison was responsible. If the time ever came for him to talk about it, that would be what he would say and he would give details, chapter and verse, so that it was absolutely clear. If he were ever caught c
He sat up. He took the roll-up out of his mouth and smiled. Laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed.
He put the cigarette out carefully and picked up his bag.
It was beautiful inside the spinney. The light came sifting down through the trees and onto the fallen leaves, though there had not yet been one of the autumn gales to strip the bulk of them off. He knew the spot. Nothing had changed.
He opened the bag, took out the small white-painted cans and set them up in a row on the fallen tree. Then he went back thirty paces, carrying the bag.
A minute later he was lying on his stomach, carefully poised. The white cans were bright in the sun.
He levelled. Waited.
Fire!
Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire!
Every one.
He smiled.
Got up and replaced the cans and paced back again. Forty strides this time. The leaves made a soft crunching sound as he lay down. A conker in its prickly bright green ball was beside his hand. He smiled.
Levelled the gun again. The cans were smiling back at him. Beautiful. White.
Fire!
Fifty-eight
Statistics was the only class on Monday. They were out at half eleven.
“Coming into town?”
Tom hesitated, standing beside his Yamaha.
“Cheer you up, man, you need it. Look at you. Listen, your mum’s going to be fine.”
“I know.”
“Right then, so, what? Leave the bike, come into town. You got any cash?”
Tom shrugged. He had cash. At the hospital his mother had made him take twenty quid out of her bag. He had been going to say no when Phil had appeared and asked him if he was all right for money. Bloody cheek. Tom had taken the twenty-pound note and left without answering. What was it to do with Russell?
“Where do you want to go?”
“Rattlers?”
He knew what it was. Luke had always looked out for him, since they were in juniors. The only problem now was Luke had a tendency to rib him about the Jesus Gang. When he’d been at the camp in the summer Luke kept sending him filthy texts. Thing was, they were very, very funny. But three nights ago, it had been Luke who’d rung him, Luke who’d fetched him, Luke’s dad who’d driven him to the hospital and waited and then taken him back to theirs, Luke’s mum who’d fed him and handed him a clean cloth to cry into when it had all hit him. And hugged him. They’d all hugged him. He hadn’t known then if she would be alive or dead the next morning.
Rattlers was in a back street near the bus station and did pie and peas, pie and chips, pie and mash, pie and eggs. It was small and greasy and permanently full.
“You God-bothering this weekend?” Luke asked as they got mugs of tea and ordered food.
“Don’t call it that.”
Luke gave him a shove and grinned. They hung about by the counter waiting for a couple of workmen to leave their table.
“Didn’t notice God round on Saturday night. Maybe off duty?”
“Yeah, well, my mum might have died.”
“Right.”
“What?”
“Right, she got spared, the other eight didn’t.”
“Leave it.”
Luke elbowed his way to the table before someone ahead of them in the queue.
Tom sat down and stared out of the window onto the graffiti sprayed on the wall of the bus station. BRING BACK HANIGN.
“Your mum going to marry that Russell bloke?”
Tom shrugged.
“Be OK. He’s OK.”
“It wouldn’t and he isn’t. He’s weird.”
“Does make you wonder.”
“What?”
“What sort of teacher goes Internet dating.”
Tom flushed. “Who said that?”
“You did.”
“No. No, I never did. I’ve never told anyone about that.”
“Right. I dunno then. Didn’t know it was a secret. Jesse Cole said Mr Russell told them.”
“Phil told Jesse’s class?”
Their food arrived. Luke stabbed a knife point into the pastry to release a plume of steam. “No big deal,” he said.
“Yes it is. It makes her look weird as well and she isn’t.”
“I know she isn’t. Everybody knows she isn’t. What’s it matter? What do your Jesus lot think then?”
Tom bent his head. He didn’t answer. He never did. That was his. And private.
“Anyway, you’ll be off, doing this Bible-bashing course, won’t make any difference to you, will it? When you get back what do you do with it?”
“What?”
“This Bible-bashing thing.”
“Don’t c”
“You going to stand on street corners and that? Come and be saved?”
Tom flicked a pea across the table into Luke’s face.
“Right.” Luke flicked a pea expertly back.
When they came into the street, stuffed full, Tom said, “I hate him.”
“You can’t say that.”
“Why?”
“You can go to hell for hatred.”
“I would,” Tom said. “I’d even go to hell.”
Luke glanced at him. He means it, he thought. He hates him and he bloody means it.
At home, Tom made himself more tea and found a slab of milk chocolate at the back of the fridge. He stood at the kitchen window, biting a chunk of chocolate and then slurping hot tea and sloshing the two around his mouth together. He thought about his feelings with both shame and a certain amount of interest. He had never hated anyone, as far as he could remember. He had hated things. The cancer that had killed his father, for instance, but that had felt like a righteous and pure kind of hate. If he thought about it enough he could conjure up that hatred even now and it was like a clean burning flame, straight and steady. What he felt for Mr Russell was messier. A dirty, dingy sort of hate. It was mixed up with too many other things. His father again. Anger. Confusion. A small-boy jealousy. Dislike of Mr Russell’s brand of atheism, which scored intellectual points and sneered and jested and talked clever. He could demolish arguments so comprehensively that Tom felt inept and a failure because he couldn’t defend his beliefs and speak out convincingly for what he knew as Truth. But what he did most was worry. He knew that it was his responsibility to bring his mother and sister to Jesus, to save them, and he had failed.
He stopped himself. NO. Failed so far, not failed period. When he got to the States and to the Bible college he would learn the way to succeed and when he got back he would begin again. He couldn’t bear the idea of them being outside in the darkness of ignorance, condemned. But he knew what might happen while he was away. He’d seen them together. Lizzie thought it would. Lizzie thought it was a brilliant idea, make sure Mum wasn’t on her own once the two of them had left. And maybe getting together with someone was a good idea. The right someone. A picture of Phil Russell came into his head, smirking, a sarcastic, superior sneer on his face, and fury surged up inside him. He went and knelt down in front of the cross on his bedside table and closed his eyes.
“Jesus Lord and Saviour, who paid for my salvation with your blood c” He stopped. What was he praying for? That his mother would not marry Phil Russell? “Dear Jesus, make Mum and—and Phil come to know you and ask you to come into their lives and give them new birth. Make them see the light. Take Satan from his heart and mind and wash him in your holy blood. Praise and worship. Amen.”
His heart felt ablaze with love and fervour and hope. Later he was due at a youth worship meeting and he would ask them to pray. He was leading the group for the first time tonight and it set him alight just thinking of it and the trust placed in him.
The front door banged. “Tom, you up there?”
He got to his feet in case Lizzie came bounding in. He shouldn’t feel ashamed and foolish to be caught on his knees in prayer and praise, but that was how it always was.
He went downstairs.
“Hey.”
Lizzie was feeding the toaster. She held up a slice.
“Two,” Tom said. “Hey, Liz, why don’t you come with me?”
“Come where?”
“Youth worship. I’m leading it tonight.”
“Right.”
“It’d be good. If you came.”
The toast jumped up, smoking slightly. “Bugger, it keeps doing that, it sticks somewhere and then the side bit gets burned. It’s only the one side. Can you have a look at it?”
“I did. Couldn’t see anything. We just need a new toaster.”
“Jam or Marmite?”
“Marmite. So, will you come?”
Lizzie opened the wall cupboard. “In your dreams. I’m going to see Mum but even if I wasn’t. That’s what you should be doing as well, that’d be more Christian.”
“I went this afternoon.”
“Oh. OK. How was she?”
“Seemed to have quite a lot of pain still. They don’t come round to check much.”
“Short-staffed, aren’t they? You have to speak up for yourself in those places.”
“He was there.”
“Good.”
“Not.”
“Don’t start, Tom.”
Tom held up his hands.
“Just heard on the news. Another one died today c she was on the bottom level when it all came down.”
“Nine.”
“I’ll never go on one of those things again. I’ll probably never go near a fair again. Too bloody dangerous.”
“Lafferton’s dangerous, right? They haven’t got the gunman yet either.”
“The royals aren’t going to that wedding now, last I heard.”
“Don’t blame them. They’ve not been married all that long themselves, have they? He might take a potshot at Charles and Camilla. He doesn’t seem to go for marriage much, our local sniper.”
“God, I hope they get him before Mum and Phil go down the aisle.”
Tom scraped back his chair loudly and went out of the kitchen.
Fifty-nine
“Another person has died as a result of the accident at Lafferton’s Jug Fair last Saturday night when a ghost train collapsed. Today’s death brings the toll to nine. Tanya Lomax, aged twenty-five, was on the ride with her husband, Dan, when the cart in which they were travelling was overturned as the ride fell to the ground. Dan Lomax was badly injured and is still in intensive care. The couple were married only last month.”
He stood still in the middle of the bedroom, naked after his shower, transfixed by the radio report. It was ten o’clock. He had been about to switch off when the item had started. Now, he stood while the newsreader blathered on and his mouth twitched into another of the smiles he could never suppress.
So, nothing had happened at the Jug Fair!
And it had happened without his having to lift a finger. Something was looking after him.
He pulled on the old grey T-shirt and shorts which he wore to bed. He would read for a bit before listening in again. There was a local news bulletin on Radio Bevham every half-hour. He couldn’t wait.
Sixty
“As abbess of the Paraclete, Héloïse wrote to her former lover Abelard asking for guidance on the observance which should best be adopted by nuns. Her letter hit on a critical problem; the lack of a rule written for women c”
The ringing on her desk made Jane start. She had been working for an hour, so immersed in The Monastic Order in Yorkshire 1069–1215 that for a split second she stared at the phone in bewilderment before picking it up.
“Jane, Peter Wakelin. I wondered if you had a few minutes to spare?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I need to rearrange things for a couple of Sundays in November.”
“Shall I come along now?”
“Now would be good—or I’m free after dinner.”
The Dean’s rooms were on the east side of the court overlooking the Backs where they narrowed to flow under the Martyr’s Bridge. Orange and brown leaves floated on the current as they stood at the window looking down. A couple of weeks before when she had been here there had been not a soul about. Now, with the new term under way, it was busy with young people cycling, walking, hanging about in groups.
“I like it full of life,” Jane said, “but I like it when it’s deserted too.”
Peter Wakelin nodded.
Before she had met him, she had had an image of a dean which was based on the one in her own undergraduate time, a thin, beaky man with an acerbic manner concealing great kindness and sensitivity towards the young. He had died suddenly in Jane’s last year and she had been surprised that he had been only sixty-five. Peter Wakelin had also come as a surprise. He was in his early forties and a Yorkshireman by birth and education.
“I’ve been asked to go to the cathedral in Washington for ten days in November. It runs over two Sundays so we need to rearrange the preachers and I wondered if you could do the first? I know you’re taking evensong that day as well. Is that too much?”
“It’s fine. Nice to preach near All Saints’ Day.”
“I’m very aware that you have limited time. I don’t want to push you, Jane. You have the chaplaincy and your PhD—and then you’re doing things here c Have some fun as well.”
“I’m fine. I love balancing the three things actually. It works rather well, though I probably like the hospital work best.”
He frowned slightly. “I was there this morning,” he said, “with a dilemma. Can I ask your advice?”
“Mine?”
“Why not? You’ve worked in a hospice, I haven’t. Though I know them well enough of course.”
They sat on the window seat. But for some time Peter Wakelin said nothing, only looked out at the mist hanging low over the water. Jane waited. She knew little about him. Wondered what he had to say.
“I was called to an elderly woman,” he said. “She has Alzheimer’s and this morning she had a stroke. She was alive and conscious and they’d made her comfortable. No one had much idea of a prognosis but the quality of her life was certainly very low. Her family—sons, daughter-in-law, had asked if she could be—they said ‘put quietly to sleep.’ The doctors refused of course so the family called me. Wanted ‘my opinion.’ No, they wanted me to persuade the medics. I couldn’t, it wasn’t for me to do that, and even if I had they wouldn’t have listened. But they were so desperate and what they said hit home, Jane. They said it wasn’t that they wanted her to die, because she’d died to them long before, but that if she went quietly to sleep now, she’d finally be at peace and out of distress and pain—and they were right. They were right. No one knows how long she’ll last—maybe hours but it might drag on for weeks. They hope it won’t but c”
Two young men came running towards the college buildings through the gathering mist. They were wearing singlets and shorts, grim-faced.
“What do you think?”
“You mean what would I have said? The same as you because we have to.”
“In the hospice, were you asked this? To intervene? To plead with the doctors to end a life?”
“Yes. Only a couple of times, though I’m sure the medics are asked more often.”
“And?”
“Listen, I understand the request c but in a hospice the pain is so well controlled and they make the quality of life as good as they possibly can that it isn’t the same. And death is not usually very far away.”
He was silent.
“You think you should have said yes?”
He shook his head and again was silent and then Jane realised that he was crying.
“Peter?” she said gently.
He went on looking out of the window. “I did it myself, you see,” he said at last. “I asked them to—to give her something much stronger.” He looked at Jane. “My wife.”
“Oh, Peter, I didn’t know.”
“No reason you should. She had a melanoma.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, it’s a couple of years. One reason I came down to Cambridge. Only you never get away, do you? You can’t.”
“I’m so sorry. It doesn’t help when you have to deal with situations like this morning.”
“Different though.” He stood up. “Feel like a walk out there before it gets dark?”
*
They went, out of the back gate, over the Martyr’s Bridge and along the path in the direction of King’s and Peter talked. He talked about his childhood, on a York housing estate, his visit to York Minster, alone one evening during choral evensong, and how he had stood at the back, a boy of twelve, transfixed by the singing and had come sneaking back—sneaking away from everyone—to wander about the great building, looking and sometimes listening and thinking. He talked about his decision to become first a Christian and later a priest—not a conversion, he said, a gradual, inevitable decision. About Alice. About their ten years together, longing for and failing to have children. Her illness, swift and terrible, and her death, slow and also terrible. His first months here, when he had felt lost and out of place, bewildered and uncertain of anything.
