4

Will Halligan, a carpenter from the village, had spent all yesterday, Wednesday, putting up shelves in Hal’s study. Now, with the room swept and clean again Hal was at work unpacking and setting in order his papers, files and hundreds of books. At present the room, like most of the rest of the house, was in disorder—but then, it was only the third day; it would be all right soon—give it a little more time.

Swinging his chair back to face the large, thickly cluttered desk, he looked across it through the window onto the sunlit rooftops of the village.

‘How’s it going?’

Rowan’s voice sounded behind him and he turned and saw her standing just inside the doorway, in her hands a tray on which stood cups and saucers.

‘Fine.’ He smiled at her.

‘I’ve brought you some coffee,’ she said as she came towards him. When he’d pushed aside several books to make room she put the tray down and perched beside it on the edge of the desk. While he picked up his cup she looked out at the view. ‘Sometimes,’ she said, ‘I get so involved with all the unpacking and the sorting out that I forget where I am. Then I look around me and realize.’

‘I know what you mean.’ He looked up at her over the rim of his cup. Her dark hair was tied back from her face with a pale blue ribbon at the nape of her neck. Over her blouse and blue jeans she wore an apron bearing a reproduction of an old mustard advertisement. She smiled. He was well aware of the amount of work that awaited her throughout the house, but in spite of it she was looking happier and more relaxed than he’d seen her in a long while.

‘As soon as I’ve got all this in some sort of shape I can come and give you a hand,’ he said. ‘You’re coping okay for now, though, are you?’

‘Yes, with a lot of help from Mrs Prescot.’

‘Thank God for Mrs Prescot.’

‘Amen.’

There was a little silence then she said, with the slightest note of self-consciousness: ‘I think maybe tomorrow I’ll take a walk around the village. It’s time I got a better idea of what the local shops have to offer.’

‘I’ll come with you if you like.’

‘No, you stay here and work.’

‘Tote that barge, lift that bale. Thanks a lot.’

She took up her own cup, drank from it and then said quietly, ‘It’s different here in this place, Hal. It’s not like—there.’ Then she shrugged. ‘But maybe it’s not that. Maybe the difference is in me.’

‘I would think that might be true.’

‘Yes, but then again, maybe it’s the village that brings it out—that difference, that change . . .’

He laid his hand on the soft roundness of her thigh. ‘Don’t underestimate yourself, Ro.’

‘No, I won’t. But the whole thing is so—oh, I don’t know. It just—feels so good here. So right.’ She paused. ‘And how do you feel about it?—now that you’re here?’

‘Exhausted.’

‘No, be serious.’

‘It’s a beautiful place.’

‘But how do you feel about it?’

‘I feel good.’

A moment of silence, then she said: ‘But you wouldn’t have come here had it not been for me, would you?’

He looked at her. He didn’t know what to answer.

What she said was true. ‘Well,’ he murmured, ‘that’s a difficult question . . .’

‘Is it?’ She was smiling at him, her eyes soft and slightly anxious. ‘But you won’t regret it, Hal. You wait till you get used to it. When we get settled in. You’ll really be glad.’

‘I’m glad now.’

‘Good.’ She put down her cup and turned to look from the window again. ‘I’d almost forgotten what it could be like. The peace and the—gentleness. Just waking up in the morning—even that; waking up to the sound of birds singing instead of cars changing gear. It’s all so different.’

‘I’ll say. No litter all over the place. No piggish London taxi drivers. And you can walk without stepping in dog crap every few yards. I’m all for that.’

‘And the lovely old houses. And all the space. And the people too. They seem genuinely to care for each other. God, when I think back—I mean, just take the milkman for example; that surly, long-suffering old devil in London did it all as if it cost him blood every time. Here, this one’s so warm and friendly.’

‘How warm and friendly?’ Hal raised an eyebrow.

‘No, really. And he’s typical. He was so nice, so pleasant, and . . . welcoming. This morning he was telling me all about the village, and the different people. And you could tell—you could sense the regard they have for each other. He told me they’re having a memorial service at the church on Saturday, for one of the villagers. Everybody’ll be there, he said. Yet she wasn’t famous at all or anything like that. She was just—one of them. Loved, he said. She was loved. Can you think of any nicer tribute?’

At random Hal picked up a book and began to leaf through it. Attempting to sound casual he asked, ‘Who was she?’

‘I think he called her Emma Larkin or Parkin—something like that. She just died peacefully in her sleep, he said.’

After a moment he was aware of her picking up the empty cups and putting them back on the tray. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’d better get back to work.’

Left alone again he sat at his desk unmindful of the chaos around him. She just died peacefully in her sleep. . . . So the death of Miss Larkin had been put down to natural causes. And nothing could be further from the truth. Still, such a downright lie couldn’t cause her any more suffering than she had already known—and that, he reflected, must have been literally unbearable.

When he thought of the dreadful calamity—and he had done so many times—he always saw the misery and the bewilderment in the woman’s face. He heard her voice again: It isn’t fair to you . . . having this happen . . . it’s not fair . . . I’m sorry . . . He thought too of the last words she had spoken: I’ll come with you . . . But you’ve got to let me talk to you . . . You must listen to me . . . Most of all, though, he relived the moment—and it had taken only that—when she had run from him and leapt up and out over the edge.

Her body hitting the bottom of the pit had sounded so loud. How could such a small body make so much noise? But it was the echo, most of it was the echo, caused by the hollowness of the pit. Even so there had been a terrifying finality about the sound that for a second had held him, eyes screwed up, rooted to the spot on which he had halted.

When he had looked over the edge he had seen her body down below, looking like a discarded bundle of old clothes, dark against the chalk. Minutes later when he had found a way down to the bottom and stood immediately above her he had seen that her skirt had ridden up above her head, covering her face and exposing her thin legs. In an attempt to give her back a little of her dignity he had reached out, taken the hem of the brown skirt and pulled it down over her thighs. Her head was uncovered then. Her eyes, flat and lifeless, the lids half-lowered, had looked dully past his shoulder at the open sky. Her mouth was fixed in a silent, never-ending cry of despair. Her skull had cracked open like an egg and her blood and her brains had been mingled around her head like a halo . . .

And now that awful, grotesque ending had been passed off under a label of the most perfect serenity. She just died peacefully in her sleep. And, as far as Rowan was aware, that was the truth.

His own knowledge, though, left him with a new, small feeling of discomfort. Not at the horror of the woman’s death—though that was bad enough—but at the seeming ease with which that horror had been smoothed out. But there, after all, he had got his wish. Ro had been shielded from the reality—a reality he had feared would be too much for her. He had wanted it and he had got it.

And he was grateful to Paul Cassen, of course he was. And he would always be so. It was thanks to Paul that their arrival—as far as Ro was concerned—had been unmarred by the dreadful happening. But even so . . .

Then he thought again of Paul Cassen’s words to him: Miss Larkin is dead. We must live for the living. And surely, in the general scheme, that was what really counted. The living. That was Ro and himself. And that’s what they were here for—to live—to remake their lives.

With an effort he thrust from his mind the stark pictures of Miss Larkin’s broken body. She was dead. It was over. Her life had ended, but theirs—his and Ro’s—were just beginning again.

He got up, walked to the rear window and looked out onto the sunlit garden. Starlings pecked and squabbled on the lawn. A robin, breast flaming, flew down and perched for an instant on the garden seat, then took off again to alight on a branch of the laburnum tree above. ‘Welcome to Moorstone,’ Cassen had said. ‘Welcome home.’

And that’s where they were. They did things differently here. This wasn’t London. This was Moorstone. This, now, was home.