Текст книги "The Risk of Darkness"
Автор книги: Susan Hill
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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
“You don’t.”
“I’m psychic. Pick a card, any card. Word you was going to say is ‘Money’”
“Too right I was and that don’t take a bloody crystal ball.”
“Not a problem.”
“Now you havetaken something.”
“I am getting money. I’m getting five grand any day now, and when it’s all sorted, another, wait for it, forty-five grand. Makes fifty. Fifty grand.”
Donna stared at her. She didn’t argue. Natalie hadn’t taken anything. Natalie didn’t say things she didn’t mean. She wasn’t any kind of a dreamer. Donna waited.
“Next door.”
“Ed, you mean? If that’s why you want to move, I’m not surprised.”
“It is and it isn’t. I’m sick to death of having people knock on the door and peer through the windows and hang around outside. I’m sick of looking into that garden and—”
“—wondering what’s buried.”
“T’ain’t a joke, Donna. You heard the news last night?”
“I know. Couldn’t get my head round it. That could have been your Kyra. Could have been Danny. Bloody hell. What’s it got to do with money anyway?”
“I rang up a paper. I had a reporter come.”
“Christ, Nat.”
“I know. It’s my story. ‘I lived next door to Ed Sleightholme.’ Mine and Kyra’s. She’s coming again Thursday. I’ve started off but we’re going to have to see each other a few more times. She takes it all down on tape.”
“I thought they couldn’t print things when there hasn’t been a trial and that?”
“They can’t. Only it’ll all be open and shut and they pay me some money now after I’ve signed the contract—I have to say I won’t talk to another lot—and then when the trial’s over, they print the whole thing and I get the rest.”
“Fifty thousand pounds.”
“It’s a lorra lorra money, Donna.”
“Jeezz.”
“And the point is, I get five thousand soon as it’s signed, up front. That’s enough for us to move on. How much notice do you have to give the council?”
“Month.”
“Right, same with my landlord. By the time we’ve done that, I’ve got the money and we’re off. We need to sort out where, find a place to rent—we’ll have to share to start with, no point in wasting money.”
“Hang on. What was the idea? You said you knew how we’d start.”
“Right. You know sandwiches? You get rubbish in most sandwiches and you buy a sandwich from a garage, more than rubbish. They’re disgusting. OK, we suss out a place which has four or five garages with shops c and we sell them sandwiches. Good sandwiches. Sandwiches women would want to buy, lady reps and that, not truckers, they only want grease. Nice salads, good bread, organic maybe, and done up nice, little cardboard plate, napkin c and home-made cakes in slices c cost, what, about three quid a cake to make, less, sell them for one fifty a slice. They get petrol on their credit cards, they look round, grab all sorts of stuff, drinks, crisps c well, they’d grab our sandwiches, our cakes c What?”
“Just thinking what you said. ‘Lady reps.’”
“Oh Christ.”
“Seems kind of c”
“Appropriate.”
Donna poured herself more tea. Her face was sad. Natalie wanted to shake her.
“Big step, Nat. I mean, it all sounds great, only—”
“Listen, you get a chance. One. This is ours. If you’re not on, I’m still doing it, Don. Just rather have a mate to do it with.”
“Right.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, what? What?”
“Nothing.” Donna looked at her. “I was just imagining it. Living by the sea.”
They looked at one another.
From the living room came the sounds of Danny singing to the Rugratsmusic and of Milo working up to a scream.
Sixty-four
It was what heaven would be. Once they had given her drugs to take the pain away for hours at a time, it was what heaven would be. No one else was in the hospital wing for three of the four days she was in there. The walls were white and there was a window through which the sun shone, on to the white walls and the white bedcover and the white pillow.
No one bothered her. She could lie for hours listening to the quiet and looking at the sun on the white walls.
She had said nothing about how she got hurt. There had been a load of questions.
“Don’t know.” “Don’t know.” “Don’t know.”
So in the end they’d given up.
But this morning heaven had gone. There was no sun. Another woman had come into the wing and made retching noises half the night.
She ate breakfast. Saw the doctor. Got dressed.
Then it hit her. It hadn’t hit her until now, until she was putting her feet into her shoes. The wall was grey not white and the woman was being sick again and it hit her that this was it. It. For however many years. Life. What did life mean? Life. It wasn’t temporary, it wasn’t a few weeks or a misunderstanding. She knew that now. They knew it, she knew it. Nothing was said. Nothing might ever be said. Didn’t need to be.
Things would happen of course. People. Journeys. Questions. Courts. However long it took, it would all happen, but at the end of it, that would be that.
Ed picked up her cup and hurled it at the wall, and when it smashed, the dregs of tea dribbled down the greyness. She watched the drips. It was hours before they stopped her from watching them and made her leave and then it all started up, more of them talking at her, more questions, the doctor, the shrink, the Governor.
The sun came out and went in again. She saw it now and again through windows or reflecting on different walls.
Once she heard a noise. She was being taken down a corridor, to see someone else, and the noise started, a hissing noise that grew and seemed to be coming at her from all sides, as if someone were spraying the sound out of a hose. They’d seen her then. They knew. Someone shouted. The hissing stopped.
She was moved. Not just out of the hospital wing. Moved to another section of the prison. She seemed to have spent the entire day walking about.
“My back’s bloody killing me.”
“Not time for your painkillers yet.”
“Jesus. Where’s this?”
She stood in the doorway of the new room. It was smaller. Different. There was a glass panel in the wall. An outer lobby with a chair.
“What’s this for?”
“You’ve been moved.”
“I liked where I was.” The woman shrugged. She had two hairs on a mole under her chin. Ed wanted to pull them out. “Where’s Yvonne?”
“Who’s Yvonne?”
“I want to know what’s going on.”
“I said, you’ve been moved. You’re on special watch.”
She had said nothing, answered none of the questions, but it was as if they’d got a tin-opener to her brain and taken out what they wanted.
“What for?”
“Your own protection.”
It had been decided then. They knew what she’d done, so now she was on her own, no socialising, no work, no library, no gym, no canteen. Exercise in a patch on her own, in her own separate time. And watched through the glass panel twenty-four/seven.
She sat on the bed. The red-hot poker was screwing round again deep in her lower back. She lay down carefully.
It hit her again, a wall of water crashing on top of her. This was it. This room or another like it, with the glass panel. This.
She’d rather be rammed in the kidneys and made to suffer agony for it than this.
This.
The walls were beige and the window was too high for the sun to touch them. It.
Ed brought her knees up and pressed her back into the low bed against the pain.
Sixty-five
Once there had been bands playing on Sunday afternoons. The bandstand was still there, paint peeling a bit, rust showing through, but it could easily be spruced up again, Dougie Meelup thought, stopping to look. People still played in bands, didn’t they? Why had it been let go?
It was hot but the park was quiet. A couple of boys threw a frisbee, a few mothers and prams were gathered on a bench.
He wandered down to the pond. The ducks had been invaded by Canada geese, which made a disgusting mess. The council had tried to round them up and get rid of them, but there’d been an outcry from some daft activists, and anyway, it would only have been temporary. Canada geese would always be back. Mothers didn’t let their toddlers near to feed the ducks now, the geese were so big and pushy.
He sat on a bench some distance away and set his plastic cup of coffee down, peeled off the lid and opened his paper.
Ten minutes later, the paper rested in his hand and the coffee was going cold.
From the beginning, ever since they had been in the Devon hotel and Eileen had seen about the arrest on television, there had been a niggling voice in the back of Dougie Meelup’s mind. It had been whisper-quiet then, but as the weeks had gone by and details had emerged one by one it had grown louder. He had known really. Not suspected. Known. He could never have said a word to Eileen, of course he couldn’t, he had said nothing at all, just tried to keep things ticking over.
He looked down at the paper in his hand. There were photographs, of the entrance to the caves, the cliffs, the police vans. The paper had made yellow and white dotted lines and arrows to mark the routes, the cave mouth. Seven, it said. So far they’d found seven.
He couldn’t take it in. But he knew.
It wasn’t as if it had been some vagrant, some lone man with a beaten-up car seen here, seen there, someone under suspicion, someone in the area with a record of crimes that seemed to fit. That was when you might question it, that was when anyone might doubt. Too often they seemed to pick the obvious suspect because it was easy, and then you did wonder.
Not now. How could they make this kind of mistake? How could they arrest and charge a young woman with a job and her own house and car, a neat-looking young woman with short dark hair who lived miles away from any of it, who had a respectable family and had never been in any kind of trouble. They didn’t just pick a name out of the phone book.
How could they be wrong?
They couldn’t.
He sipped the cooling coffee. The Canada geese had waddled off in a bunch to a muddy patch beneath the willows, leaving the mallards free for a while to circle round and round the pond.
He had come out to fetch a few bits from the shops and to buy more stamps for Eileen. Money didn’t seem to be spent on anything else now except on paper and envelopes and stamps and new cartridges for the printer. He had never counted how many letters she sent out. Sometimes he looked at the names and addresses if he went out to post them for her. MP this and Lord that, bishops, actors, chief constables. There had even been one to the Queen. He had hesitated about posting it. What was the chance of the Queen reading a letter from Eileen Meelup, let alone being interested and getting involved? No chance. But he thought maybe the letter would get opened by someone and that they’d be polite enough to do a printed acknowledgement. Eileen would wait. She had a chart and ticked off every reply. None of them said anything much, no one supported what she called The Fight. Why would they? He knew that if they’d read anything at all about Weeny, they would know, as he knew, that there had been no mistake. Couldn’t have been.
The house was a permanent mess which he tried desperately to sort out. He shopped and cooked the meals—which Eileen only picked at—and hoovered round, but he was no good at coping with the washing and ironing, making beds, all of that. It depressed him but he felt desperately sorry for her, so that he could not have said a word against what she was doing or complained about the effect it had. Weeny was her daughter, charged with snatching and murdering little children. What could he say?
He had no heart to read the rest of the paper and even less to carry it about with him. He couldn’t take it home. Eileen no longer watched or listened to the news, believing that it was all biased, all fed with false information. She need never know.
Dougie took his empty cup and the paper and buried them in the nearest litter bin. A wasp sailed out and circled his hand.
He couldn’t go home. Not yet, not while it was all swirling round his head. He felt a revulsion against it and not just the news, or just Weeny, against Eileen and even his own house. He wanted to run away, catch a train to Scotland or a plane to South America. Or just walk. Walk and walk the dust and filth and horror of it off his shoes.
But after an hour he got in the car and drove home, back to Eileen and the next pile of letters begging for help in the Fight to Free Edwina, the next effort to clear up a bit, make lunch and try to get her to eat it, the next thing he could do, because he was really all she had, even though he did not believe there had been a mistake, even though, locked inside himself, was what he was certain of, what he knew.
Sixty-six
Richard Serrailler watched the last cars go out through the gate and away. It was still hot, the air heavy.
“Dad.” Cat came up and took his arm. “Come with me while I feed the pony.”
“No. I would like to get back home.”
“You can’t go home by yourself. Not tonight. Stay here. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
“Why would I do that?”
Cat sighed. Why was it that he had always, always to be like this, always confrontational, always asking for the exact, the rational explanation behind a vague remark? He had never had small talk, never been able to ease himself into a conversation or a friendship. She wondered how her mother had sustained over forty years of marriage to someone so c Simon would say pig-headed.
“I don’t like to think of you going back to Hallam House on your own tonight.”
“I have been there every night on my own since your mother died. I see no difference.”
“OK. You know best.”
He smiled slightly. “Thank you for preparing the funeral baked meats. I never understand why they are provided but you provided them admirably.” He looked at the gate as if expecting a car to drive in. “A great many people came,” he said. “I suppose some out of curiosity. There are professional funeral-goers.”
“No, Dad. People came who knew and respected and liked and admired her. People came who wanted to say goodbye. Their feelings were genuine. Why must you be so cynical?”
She turned away, choking on her own tears. The funeral, conducted by the Dean, with Jane Fitzroy assisting, and the full cathedral choir, had overwhelmed her. The music, the words, the presence of so many people who had worked with Meriel through her professional life, and who represented the charities she had given her retirement to, the pale, awed faces of Sam and Hannah.
Simon had wept and Sam, standing beside him, had reached out and taken his hand.
And throughout it all, through his own Bible reading, through the committal at the cemetery afterwards, through greeting the dozens who had come back to the farmhouse, their father had been silent, straight-backed, tight-lipped. Unfathomable.
Cat wanted to beat him with her fists, to scream at him, to ask if he had loved her, if he was distressed, how much he missed her, whether the future frightened him, but could say none of it.
“Just come with me while I do the animals.”
He shrugged slightly, but after a long moment turned and walked with her to the paddock gate.
“The children behaved well.”
“Of course they did. They know how to. Besides, the whole thing overwhelmed them.”
She unbolted the feed store. Somehow, she had to tell him about Australia. But Australia today meant Ivo, who had not flown over for the funeral. Cat could barely bring herself to think about it. She did not think she could possibly begin to talk about their going out to the same country as her brother. Richard had shrugged off Ivo’s absence with barely a word. Simon had raged and blamed. Cat knew Ivo’s absence had nothing to do with Meriel. It had to do with distancing himself from his entire family, physically since the age of twenty but in every other sense since early adolescence, for complex reasons of his own and because of quarrels he himself had always instigated.
Meriel had been the one who had kept him in the family loop, with letters, phone calls, and then emails and several visits out to see him on her own. Cat and Chris had been a couple of times, Simon once.
Simon did not know about Australia either.
She scooped stud-mix into a bucket, worrying. How could she tell either of them, today, that they were leaving Lafferton for half a year? But if not today, when? There was never going to be a good day.
“Let me carry that.”
“I’m fine.”
“Just stubborn.”
“And I wonder where I get that from?”
They smiled at one another quickly and then Meriel stood between them, Cat felt her presence as strongly as if she could see her. Tell me what to do, she asked. Help me out here, Ma.
The grey pony was waiting. Cat unlatched the gate and pushed him gently away to let her pour the food into the metal holder. The hens scratched round his feet waiting for any grains that fell, though few ever did.
“Why you saddle yourself with all this I’ll never know. As if a husband and three children and half a general practice were not enough.”
“As if.”
She handed him the empty bucket and bolted the gate. Then she said, “There’s something else.”
He waited in silence, giving her no help. From the farmhouse she heard Felix let out a long wail, of rage rather than distress.
“Well?”
“We’re going to Australia. We’ve found a couple who will take over the practice and Derek will do locum. We’re going for six months. It—”
Richard Serrailler began to walk away from the gate so that she had to scurry to catch up with him.
“Dad?”
“Catherine?”
She felt six years old again.
“Say something, for God’s sake, tell me what you think.”
“I think your children will run wild.”
“You know what I mean.”
Silence.
“If it’s too soon c if you’d rather we didn’t go, of course we wouldn’t dream of it. Or maybe you could come with us.”
“I think not. I will have a busy winter. The journal continues. There will be a great deal of work for the lodge.”
“But you’ll be on your own. Of course you’ll be busy, of course you have friends, but you won’t have Mother or us. Family.”
“Oh, come,” he said, glancing at her slyly. “I shall have Simon.”
Sixty-seven
“Guv? The pub’s the Flaxen Maid, it’s on the Golby Road. Victim is male, twenty-two years old, stab wounds to the neck and chest. Ambulance on way. Uniform got here in ten, only they’d made off, natch– someone took the car reg though.”
“Be nicked. Is the place clear?”
“Yeah, everyone scarpered when it started up. Landlord is Terry Hutton. Says it was pretty quiet tonight.”
“Does he have any take on it?”
“Nah. Or if he has, he’s watching his back. My guess is it was someone who knew the bloke was in here, knew it was quiet, came in, picked a fight, got him to come outside c that was it.”
“The usual. Check up, see if this Hutton knew who was drinking in his pub, whether they were local. House to house then. Witnesses outside? Forensics might get something if he was in a hurry. We’ll talk to the dead man’s family and friends in the morning. Have they been informed?”
“Yes, and they’re taking his mother and brother to the hospital now.”
“Make sure there’s a trace on the car and pump the landlord again. Try and get some names. If he was a regular then who did he talk to, who did he drink with. We’ll pull anyone in tomorrow.”
“Guv.”
Simon put the phone down. Another young man dead. Another fight over drugs or money or just possibly a woman and knives out. It was routine. Patient detective work would turn up the likely suspects, routine inquiries and a bit of luck would track them down and, between them, questioning and forensics might possibly score a hit. No, make that probably. It looked like that sort of case. One of police life’s less interesting. So what was “interesting”? he thought, clearing up a couple of mugs and a plate and taking them into the kitchen. The Ed Sleightholme case. Seven children, if not more than seven, abducted and murdered and their small bodies hidden on stone ledges at the back of caves. Interesting?
He loaded the china into the dishwasher.
An hour earlier, he had left his sister’s farmhouse, driving too fast, shaken at her news and unable to cope with it in the aftermath of the funeral.
“You’re making more of a song and dance than Dad did.”
“That figures.”
“For God’s sake, Si, it’s six months, we’re not emigrating. Get over it.”
Cat had been angry because she had been upset. It had come out in a rush and he had been too appalled to react calmly. He didn’t want to stay in alone. The stabbing at the Flaxen Maid pub didn’t warrant the overtime attention of a DCI even if he had wanted to work. Yet an absorbing job was the thing he needed.
His father came to his mind, dark suit, black tie, grey hair brushed back, basilisk-faced, cool and polite in his greetings to those who had gone back to the farmhouse. What had he felt and thought as he had stood next to his wife’s coffin with its single small circlet of white flowers?
Simon had scarcely been able to bear the sight of it. He had loved his mother more than anyone apart from his sisters, the living Cat, the dead Martha. He had never fully understood Meriel but he had admired her unreservedly, enjoyed her company, laughed at her, teased her. She had driven him mad and irritated him; he had felt sorry for her, wanted to defend her, and after an hour or two, had usually needed to get away from her. But his love had never faltered or been in question. And she had loved him. He often thought no one else ever had or ever would love him so absolutely, though her love had not been uncritical.
He had thought that she was immortal.
His drawing of her was on the wall. Others were in his bedroom, and more in portfolios in the chest. He had loved to draw her elegant, but at the same time, gentle beauty. He wished he could have drawn her as a young woman. Photographs had never done her justice, and in any case, she had hated the camera.
He looked at her. She was serene and calm, her head slightly to one side. He had drawn it the previous year as she had sat in the kitchen one winter afternoon bringing her garden diary up to date, with the low sun filtering in through the window. When he closed his eyes, he was there. He could smell the faintly scented China tea in the cup at her elbow.
His eyes pricked with sudden tears.
He felt like going out and getting drunk. But he was not a man who had mates to call on for that sort of expedition. His brother-in-law would be busy at the farmhouse, Nathan either still working or back home with his pregnant wife. Drinking alone was not Serrailler’s idea of fun.
And then he knew what he wanted to do; the idea dropping cleanly, satisfyingly into his mind. He was surprised by it.
Sixty-eight
“I confess I feel unequal to any more funerals,” Jane Fitzroy said, holding open the door of the fridge. “Max Jameson, which was desperate—six people were there and two of them were your sister, because she was his GP, and me. My mother, for which she left explicit instructions—no religious service, no prayer, no readings, no music. Have you any idea how bleak that sort of thing is in a crematorium? Your mother’s today which was triumphant but draining. I haven’t any more emotion left. I do have eggs, cheese, some rather nice home-baked ham from the farmers’ market and the makings of a salad. And a decent bottle of wine.”
Simon looked at her. How could she be a priest, a clergywoman—whatever she liked to be called? She wore pale blue jeans and a white shirt with a frill down the front. Her hair was longer than when he had first seen her. Earlier, during the funeral, it had been tied tightly back and then coiled into a black silk scarf. Now it was loose and brilliant in the light through the kitchen window. She wore no make-up and looked twenty.
“Jane, I came to take you out, not to have you cook.”
She looked at him for a slow moment, as if working out the meaning of what he had said. “I know. And I told you, I couldn’t face it. I was going to watch Ocean’s Eleven.”
“Great film.”
“The best. Brad Pitt eating pretzels.”
“Brad Pitt answering the little acrobat guy’s Chinese speech—only in English.”
“Have you seen Ocean’s Twelve?”
“Saving it up.”
“Don’t bother.”
“Ah.”
She was piling things on to the table of the tiny kitchen, bowls, forks, eggs, tomatoes, avocado, the ham.
“I wish I’d known your mother better. I think we might have been friends. Maybe that’s presumptuous.”
“No. Ma liked making new friends. She was good at it. It made up for my father.”
She did not ask, did not look at him, just took a bottle of Sauvignon out of the fridge.
“Dad doesn’t like them. Friends.”
“Just not a people person then,” Jane said with equanimity.
“Just a bloody Freemason.”
She gave one swift glance and started to laugh. “And you?”
“God, no.”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t, but the whole thing just cracks me up. It’s the little suitcases and the aprons and the funny handshakes. Honestly, boys.” She handed him a chopping board, a knife and a pile of tomatoes. “Thin slices.”
No one, Simon thought, there has been no one in my life like this. What is it? Funny. Irreverent. Straight. Honest. Sensible. Light-hearted. All of those things. More than those. He had never imagined that a life such as Cat and Chris had would be his, a life of children and a warm kitchen, a Cat, a garden, a c there had been Freya. He might have had those things with Freya. Would. Might. Who knew now? He had never found out.
But after Freya, he had doubted that those were the things he even wanted.
He sliced the tomatoes wafer-thin. Jane put a glass of wine by his left hand.
“Did I tell you, they’ve gone back through my mother’s patients? It’s been so painstaking c they’ve pulled out the name of anyone they thought might have clashed with her—mind you, where my mother was concerned that would be most people. But they’ve found three they think may have been serious about getting at her. The Inspector rang me yesterday. He’s going through the files, he’s talking to the other staff there. I can’t really help him. She didn’t talk about her patients of course. She talked about her theoretical work. The academic stuff, never the children.”
“They’ll get there.”
“Ah, CID solidarity.”
“Most of it’s down to trawling through the detail.”
“Is that what got you Edwina Sleightholme?”
“Oh no. Luck. Big lucky break. You need them. Do you believe in the Devil? I suppose you have to.”
“I believe in evil. The force of evil. Pure evil and evil personified. If that is what you meant.”
“Not sure. I’m not a theologian.”
“Nor am I. Those look OK.” She took the plate of tomatoes. “Thanks.”
“I felt it. Evil. Looking at her. But it wasn’t what I expected. It was impenetrable and pointless. Cold. Locked away. Shut up inside itself.”
“Despairing?”
“Yes. I suppose you could say that. Odd. I felt I had no point of human contact with this person, not a single spark of recognition that we belonged on the same planet.”
“Would she have gone on?”
“Yes. So long as she was alive and fit and went undetected she would have gone on. People like that can’t stop. But she isn’t mad.”
“Sure?”
“Absolutely and completely sure. Whatever evil is, yes, whatever mad is, no.”
He was glad they had not gone out. Out would have been different, other people, noise, interruptions. It was best like this, talking quietly, the food simple and good, coffee in an Emma Bridgewater mug on the low table beside him. He thought of Cat. When he got home he would ring her. He had left the farmhouse in a bad mood and his mood was now entirely changed. Everything. Entirely. Changed. He could not stop looking at Jane.
“I’ve been wondering how sorry I really will be to leave,” she said.
The room went cold.
“Ah, you didn’t know. Well, why would you?”
“You’ve only just come. Why? Is this to do with your mother?”
“No, no. I just made the wrong decision. It happens. Even to priests. I don’t know why.”
“How can it be wrong? What is wrong?”
“Me. What happened in this house when Max attacked me. Plus I don’t fit into the cathedral hierarchy c the Dean is fine, he was the one who wanted me here and pressed on until they let me in. But they don’t want a woman, they’re not ready for a woman, you know, and that really isn’t a battle I’m going to fight. I’ve other things to do.”
“I thought it was a battle won.”
“Yes, you’d imagine so, wouldn’t you?” She poured herself another half-glass of wine.
“Too many battlegrounds. The hospital, Imogen House c I’m not a fighter, Simon, I just want to get on with my work, there are more important things. I can’t play politics.”
“Oh come on, why let them win?”
“That isn’t a language I speak. Not in this context anyway.”
He looked at her in dismay, thinking only that he had somehow to produce enough reasons—not arguments, he sensed those would fail—to make her change her mind. He had no doubt that he would succeed. He had the best of all reasons. But he did not yet know how to put it before her.
“What about you? Lafferton for life?”
“No, this is about you. You.”
“Me?”
“What makes you think it will be different anywhere else? There are always battles. Didn’t you have them before you came here?”
“Every day. And most of my growing up. My battle to go to church, be baptised, read theology, go for ordination. My battles in the last parish with recalcitrant PCC and a very difficult bishop. I know all about bloody battles, thank you. I’m leaving the field.”
“What, not be a priest any longer?”
“I’ll still be a priest. I’m going into a monastery for a year. After that, either I’ll want to stay, or I’ll go back into the academic world. I feel a Ph.D. coming on.”
He sat silent, appalled. The room was dark. Jane reached out and switched on a lamp and sat in the circle of the light. He was transfixed by her beauty, the calm way she sat not on a chair but on the floor beside him, leg bent, arms clasped round it.
“Jane c”
“People have quite the wrong idea,” she said, “about convents.”
“I don’t have any idea about them, I only know you can’t incarcerate yourself in one.”
“See what I mean?”
“Christ, you’d be c walling yourself up. For what? To do what?”
“If I say ‘to pray,’ I don’t expect much of a response. Leave it.”
“I can’t leave it.”
“Why? Why is this something that always gets people so worked up? I don’t want to argue, I don’t want a battle. Please.”
“Go and do your Ph.D., if that’s what you want you should do that.”
