Lamping
LOL STAYED BEHIND after the meditation, helping her put the chairs back. Then they stood together in the porch doorway, hand in hand.
‘It was snowing,’ Merrily said.
‘Been trying to all day. So he wasn’t there, then? Crowden.’
‘No. No, he wasn’t. I didn’t really expect him to be. Not a second time. He’d know I’d have to approach him, and what was he going to say?’ She pulled her scarf tighter. ‘Might have saved time if he had been here.’
‘I’m still finding it hard to believe that the C of E goes in for this kind of clumsy espionage.’
‘This is nothing. And it’s going to get worse. I thought Huw Owen was exaggerating when he told me, years ago, that the clergy fight like rats in a sack, for position and influence. And now it’s about survival, so much more vicious. Anyway… I had a message to ring Sophie, and she’s been talking to people about Crowden.’
‘Women? Boys? Cocaine?’
‘I’m not going to say, “I wish”, because that would sound…awful. No, he’s happily married, a family man. Drugs? Unlikely.’
‘You can’t win.’
‘It’s not about winning.’ She leaned into him. ‘I mean, he’s not popular. Sanctimonious sod. Laughs a lot, but no sense of humour. However, listen, if Darvill hasn’t spoken to him yet, perhaps you could ask him to do me a favour. Next time he talks to Crowden, perhaps he could arrange to meet him.’
She turned and pulled the porch doors together.
‘I’m scared to go home, Lol, in case Jane’s back. It might seem trivial and domestic, but I just want something to go right for her.’
‘She’ll be OK.’
‘I think there’s more wrong than she’s telling me. It’s like she wants him to walk away.’
‘I think she’ll be OK,’ Lol said.
‘Well,’ Jane said. ‘I have to say I really wasn’t expecting this tonight.’
Eirion’s car was parked in near-total darkness in what might one day be a building site but was still a small wood at the edge of Virgingate Lane. Ironically, not far from where Lyndon Pierce lived, right on the eastern periphery of Jane’s imagined henge. There really weren’t many places left around Ledwardine where you could find seclusion with your engine running, for the heater, and nobody likely to pull in alongside. Seeing Lyndon Pierce in the Ox had reminded her of this place.
She thought she could hear the light patter of snow on the rear window, which was wonderful, although…
‘I think I’m actually starting to feel a bit cold now, Irene.’
‘Hang on…’
Eirion pulled the travelling rug up over her bare shoulders.
‘You, erm, never used to keep one of these in your car,’ Jane said, ‘as I recall.’
Pathetic. Shut up.
‘Once again, Jane, I swear to God,’ Eirion said, ‘that you’re the first woman to lie under it.’
‘Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Seriously, I’m sorry. What right have I—?’
‘There really isn’t anyone else. Not even another bloke.’ He kissed her lightly. ‘So what did you say?’
‘When?’
‘When the gay lady in the bookshop asked you whether your teddy was a boy or a girl?’
Bugger. Why the hell had she told him about that?
‘You presumably remember,’ Eirion said. ‘Not going to forget something like that.’
‘Gus said hers was always a girl.’
‘Well, that would figure, but…’
‘All right. I said teddies were, like, beyond all that. Without gender. That was the whole point.’
‘Teddies go both ways?’
‘But then I had a woolly dog, and he was called Ron, and I was still sleeping with him when I was twelve, if you must know, so…’
‘OK, that’s fairly conclusive,’ Eirion said crisply. ‘You can get dressed now, Ms Watkins.’
‘Look, I just needed some sound advice, all right? In the old days, when women were expected to fight against it—’ Jane was leaning up into the cold, feeling along the back shelf for her bra, when it came to her. ‘Oh God, of course – Charlie Howe!’
‘Sorry?’
‘It was Charlie Howe with Lyndon Pierce in the Ox. He was the chairman of our school governors. Very iffy. Nearly as iffy as Councillor Pierce. Who’ll have a slice of the action if his mates get planning permission for this field and Coleman’s Meadow and God knows where else. You do remember?’
‘Of course I remember.’ Eirion was generously helping her on with her bra. ‘News story in that yet?’
‘Wouldn’t give it to you if I knew. You’re a mere student.’
‘Could be a working journalist in a couple of years, Jane.’
No doubts, no uncertainty. She reached up and ruffled his hair.
‘You know exactly where you want to be, don’t you?’
‘I know what I want to do. And no time to waste any more, the speed newspapers are closing down. The way unbiased journalism’s getting replaced by semi-literate, opinionated, fantasist bloggers on the Net.’
‘It’s scary, Jane. Nobody knows where to find the truth any more. Anyway, I don’t want to ruin the best night since I don’t know when. You decided yet? Like which uni?’
She was quiet. Hadn’t wanted to get into a discussion on this either. Didn’t want to get into another bloody lecture.
‘Jane?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not sure.’
‘Not sure of what?’
‘Whether it’s the way. Digging up building sites before the concrete goes in. And anyway, there are too many universities now. Shows the education system up for what it’s become – just a business. A degree’s worth shit. There are guys who can’t spell poncing around with PhDs in subjects you don’t need to be qualified for. Just another self-perpetuating industry in a country run by people I hate. Whoever’s in power.’
It went very quiet. If the pattering on the window had been snow, it was no longer snowing. She felt Eirion sitting up beside her.
‘I love you, Jane,’ he said. ‘How sad is that?’
Merrily stopped on the square, snow falling lightly again, and she didn’t care at all.
‘You didn’t!’
‘She’s never going to know, OK?’ Lol said. ‘Not from me.’
‘Ever?’
‘If you say so.’
‘What happened, when his text arrived, she asked if it was me who’d put him up to it and I hadn’t – hadn’t spoken to him in weeks. So it seemed OK, now they were back in contact, to ring him. And put him in the picture about… what I just told you about. And I never told you that, either, or Jane and me will be over.’
‘I can’t believe she couldn’t tell me. Well, actually, I can. What I can’t believe is that she told you.’
‘I think, in some strange way not unconnected with your job, that she thought you might feel compromised. Don’t ask me how. Also she probably owed me a secret.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind.’
‘You bugger.’ She felt dangerously light. ‘What did he say? Eirion.’
‘He didn’t laugh. Well, not at first. Then he did. I suspect he wasn’t sure what he ought to think.’
‘What would you have said if he’d been horrified?’
‘Tried to talk him round. Or if he couldn’t be talked round, suggested he just didn’t meet Jane.’
‘How did you know she was going to tell him? How do you know she… has?’
‘Can you imagine Jane not telling him? Also, I didn’t want him coming out with, “Woo, can I watch?” I didn’t think he would, but if it came as a surprise…’
‘You’re a good person, Lol.’
‘Please,’ Lol said. ‘It’s been embarrassing enough—’
And then they were kissing publicly. Or would have been if the weather hadn’t cleared the square.
Eirion started to laugh. It had made him, he said, not want to be a student any more, get university behind him. Get some working years in before journalism became history. Literally.
‘Something will happen,’ Jane said. ‘The Internet as we know it will become unfashionable. Passé. I mean, what else is there to do with it? Facebook’s already a refuge for old people – sheltered networking. Shit, that’s another car gone past. Is everybody going home because of the weather? People are afraid of everything these days. Every trip to the pub’s a risk-assessment situation.’
She told him about the job she’d be starting after Christmas, minding the shop for the Ledwardine Festival. How she planned to make it into a proper business, almost a little tourist centre for Ledwardine.
‘For as long as it’s worth visiting.’
‘You know,’ Eirion said. ‘We really have to make the effort to become more optimistic about things.’
‘I feel optimistic about some things tonight. What was— You hear that? If it’s those bastards lamping hares again. Or foxes.’
‘Jane…’
‘Oh!’ She thought at first it was the banging of her heart. Someone up against the misted windscreen, peering in, making faces. ‘Sod off!’ Pulling on her hoodie, struggling to zip it up as Eirion scrambled up between the front seats. ‘No! Don’t put the lights on!’
‘I wanted to see who this pervert is. I— Oh God.’
The boles of trees had come up all white in the headlights, and also the man’s face, up close, squashed for a moment against the windscreen then sliding away.
‘It’s him,’ Jane said numbly. ‘Charlie Howe. What does he—?’
She saw Charlie Howe turn abruptly away, as if he was disgusted at what he’d seen in the car. Then she thought she saw a pinkish lump come jumping out of the side of his head and he slid silently away down the car bonnet, and the thin layer of snow on it was slicked red and pink and there was a crack in the air.