The Fifth Rapunzel Part 9

"Was it?" said Sally, smiling valiantly.

At his home, a few minutes down the road from the Avon Arms, Maybridge was apologising to Alan Drew and his client that he couldn't give them more time and more hospitality. It seemed churlish not to offer them a meal. Had Meg been there, she would have got something together while he'd given the problem all the time and attention it deserved. Instant coffee or a soft drink for whoever was driving and a choice of something stronger for the pa.s.senger was the best he could do. They'd had an early dinner at a pub near Stroud, Drew explained. They were fine, honestly, didn't want anything. Except advice.

Maybridge's first impression of Rhoda didn't tally with Meg's, possibly because she wasn't putting on any kind of act. He listened to what she had to say - truth slightly edited, he guessed - and did a little reading between the lines. Her connection with Peter, through her sister, put her activities at Simon's home into a different light. Her unofficial sleuthing was unwise, but worry about her sister might have unbalanced her judgment, and Simon hadn't complained. It was obvious that she wished him no harm, her concern for the boy was genuine. It was wrong, she said, that he should be done out of any part of his inheritance.

And it was wrong, if you viewed it from the strictly moralistic angle, but the chances of its being put right were remote and depended on the goodwill of the missing sister. She would probably hang on to what she had.

If she were still alive, and there was no reason to fear that she wasn't. Hixon had been safely locked away when the photo was taken, and there weren't any other serial murderers roaming around - as far as he knew.

He asked Rhoda if they had parted on good terms last time they had met. She admitted they had had an argument. "About her relations.h.i.+p with Peter. I thought the situation could be dangerous." "Dangerous?" "Well - unwise."

Unwise. A watered-down word, but surely nearer the mark. There had been sibling rivalry over a shared lover, perhaps. She hadn't spoken Bradshaw's name with cool indifference, though she had tried to, and she had avoided looking directly at him. Peter had a lot to answer for. Clare Warwick was by no means the first of his extramarital adventures. If there was an after-life, his h.e.l.l would be celibacy.

It seemed safe to a.s.sume that the sisters had quarrelled and the younger one had taken off in a huff. A simple explanation. If that were so she would return in her own good time and wonder what all the fuss was about. Only there hadn't been any fuss - yet - the only one who seemed to be worried was Rhoda. More than worried. Extremely anxious.

Drew had brought a typed resume of everything that Rhoda had told him earlier in the office. He pa.s.sed it to Maybridge. "If you think this might be of any use, keep it. I have a copy." It looked business-like, he hoped, and took the emphasis off the social side of the evening which had started quite delightfully with an alfresco meal of freshly caught salmon washed down with a good quality Chablis. He and Rhoda had taken a walk afterwards by the river which ran along the bottom of the inn's garden and the evening had been golden and very promising - or perhaps he had been a touch optimistic about the promise.

Maybridge, scanning the notes, realised that most of the information could have been imparted over the phone, though he was glad it hadn't been. It was interesting meeting her. That it was rather more than interesting for Drew was obvious. He tried to remember his marital background and had a hazy recollection of Meg's mentioning that he'd married the daughter of one of her university colleagues, a law graduate, and that it hadn't worked. Two professionals getting scratchy in the domestic cage - happier apart. Maybe it wasn't Drew - another solicitor - but the words had stuck. He and Meg had been scratchy at that particular time, too - job pressure, but no wounds of any consequence. Meg and Rhoda would be glad to have missed each other, he guessed: antipathy between women doesn't dissipate very easily.

He smiled at her. "Telling someone not to worry is about as much use as telling a tooth to stop aching - but - well, for what it's worth - try to be positive. People, even sisters, can behave with cra.s.s stupidity. Forget to write. Not bother to get in touch. Lack the imagination to guess you might be anxious. I'll find out what's happening at the London end and keep Alan informed."

She felt rea.s.sured. He had a quality of kindly honesty and would do all he could. She thanked him briefly. "It's good of you to bother."

He responded by wis.h.i.+ng her a safe journey back to London. She stood a far greater chance of being mugged on the train, he thought, than of anything dire having happened to her sister. It was unfortunate they couldn't have met earlier in the evening.

It was unfortunate for Simon, too. The timing couldn't have been worse. He and Sally were walking out of the Avon Arms when Drew and Rhoda were driving past. "Looks as if the lad's got himself fixed up," Drew pointed them out. "Young love." He slowed down. "Do you want a word with him?"

Rhoda, speechless with relief, shook her head. If she were a praying woman she would have thanked whatever G.o.d had been wise and wonderful enough to fix such a neat and natural solution. The busty little blonde girl had her arm around his waist. She was perfect for him. Just what he needed. The crush he'd had on her was over. The burden had gone.

Rhoda had turned towards Drew and was smiling at him when Simon saw her. He watched the car moving slowly down the road and then gradually picking up speed. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Rhoda and Alan Drew. Alan Drew who knew his father. Alan Drew who had carried his mother's coffin. He wanted to run after the car, hammer on the bonnet, yell at Drew to stop. And then look at her. To make sure. She wouldn't come and go. Ignore him. Not come near him. Just like that.

Would she?

He found it difficult to move. Sally's arm was like a warm snake around his waist. He took her hand in his cold one and thrust her aside.

And stood looking after the car until it had gone.

"A woman of that age shouldn't have long hair," Sally said nastily. She only had Creggan's description to go on - the black-haired senora - but looking at Simon's face now told her who it was. He was pale apart from blobs of colour on his cheekbones and on his forehead. Was that what love did to you - bring you out in a rash? It was funny, in a way, but she didn't dare smile. The bloke the woman had with her wasn't anything special. Not like Cormack. Cormack's brush-off had hurt a bit, but she'd get over it and try again.

She asked Simon what he wanted to do. They couldn't keep standing here like a couple of zombies. A walk up into the woods, while it was still light? "I don't have to get back to The Mount yet."

He told her he was going home. It was a dismissal she wouldn't accept. The evening, she hoped, might have a few plus points. It couldn't be minus all the time. Black clouds with silver linings - that sort of thing. Anyway, she could do with a few more drinks and the professor's cupboard still had a reasonable stock left.

She walked a few paces behind him because she couldn't keep up. After moving off in a sort of daze he seemed to have got himself into gear and was going at a pretty fast clip. People in a temper were like that sometimes. They walked off their rage.

But you can't walk off pain. You can walk until your heart thumps and your breath comes too fast, but it's inside you all the time. You can't out-walk it. Out-breathe it. It's in the air - on the Macklestone road - in the cool of the darkening house. Simon, aware of Sally's presence, but in a peripheral way as if she were part of the furniture, ignored her and went upstairs.

Sally, listening in the hall, heard the bathroom door close. Yes - well - upsets took her that way too. He might be there some time so she made for the drinks cupboard in the sitting-room and poured herself a gin. He had a fixation on that woman - or was obsession the word? - so there could be a bit of pa.s.sion in him somewhere. A relief, really, to know that. He wasn't a poofter, though she'd begun to wonder. She went to sit on the sofa and removed a pair of his trainers which had been slung on it. This was a nice house. An expensive house. Not the kind of place you gave up on. Perhaps the senora, whatever her name was, had a house of her own. An even better one. Or the bloke she was with had. She hadn't even waved to Simon. Just ducked her head and pretended she hadn't seen him. An uncaring sort of b.i.t.c.h, really.

Sally sipped her gin, listened to the toilet being flushed, and heard the sound of Simon's footsteps as he climbed to the top floor. She had been up there only once, on the day she had packed the Bradshaws' clobber. The place had the look of a rich kid's playroom, she'd thought then. Not that she'd liked the mural much. It hadn't seemed the sort of thing to make a kid happy. Young boys usually liked bug-eyed monsters. Bug-eyed monsters were cheerfully hideous. The creatures in the wall painting seemed to be suffering from anorexia nervosa, or one of the other daft dieting diseases Donaldson catered for, and they had twined poisonous ivy in their hair. Simon had probably been brought up looking at the wrong things. Which explained a lot.

If he had any sense he would paint it out. It would be therapy to do something like that. Sitting brooding wouldn't do him any good, if that was what he was doing. He could, of course, be hanging himself from the hook behind the door. She considered the possibility with equanimity, not believing it. Gin was a calming drink; her mind was untroubled.

She went upstairs after a while to see what he was up to and found him tearing up sheets of foolscap paper, closely written on, and cramming the torn paper into a wicker wastepaper basket. He didn't glance at her when she came in. It would do him good, she told him approvingly, to do just that. Some of The Mount patients got rid of their aggro by sticking pins in themselves, before they were stopped: tearing up paper was a better way. Would he like her to help - to tear it up with him? It sounded deeply sarcastic but wasn't intended that way.

His voice was small and tight. "Go away."

"A little painting, then?" she suggested. "I can get rid of some of that for you. You're too old to have kids' pictures on a wall."

She looked in the cupboard over the sink and found a gla.s.s jar of powder paint that had been mixed several months ago and gone solid with age. She half-filled the jar with water but it wouldn't absorb the paint and there was nothing to stir it with. Shaking the jar wasn't any use, either, and it slipped out of her hands and broke, depositing a small damp mound like a cow pat on the floor.

"Sorry, Simon. I'm a little whoozy. Didn't mean to make a mess."

She hadn't meant to cut her finger, either. She asked him if he would mind very much if she wiped the blood off with a corner of the quilt. And wiped it off before he could answer.

Simon stopped tearing up Rhoda's notes. She wouldn't need them. She would never come here again. Doing this to her wouldn't hurt her. There was nothing he could do to her that would hurt her.

And there was nothing he could do to himself that would make him feel halfway alive again. Unless ...

He looked at Sally. "All right," he said.

She understood him immediately. Gin didn't turn her on, but it didn't turn her off, either. Had she been sober she would have undressed more seductively and not got her feet tangled up in her knickers. She would have taken better charge of him, too, not let him fumble around so much. He was a male virgin, whatever that was called, and she should have helped rather than giggled. But he got there in the end and she held his head against her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and kissed his hair, which was damp with effort.

Sated, surprised, wanting to weep, to laugh, but mainly wanting to sleep, Simon rolled away from her and fell off the narrow couch on to the floor. The thump crashed him back into the reality of the here and now. Sleep fled. Rhoda's sacrosanct couch. He had made love on it. His pre-s.e.x gloom returned, tinged with guilt. Sally's laughter tinkled like lute strings plucked by demon fingers. He wished to G.o.d she'd shut up.

"You've got to go," he told her.

She thought he was being extremely ungrateful. Why did she have to go? She had been very nice to him. He had enjoyed it. And it hadn't been at all bad for her, either. All he needed was practice.

"I've got to wash the quilt," he said.

Wash it? Was he daft? Okay, so there should have been a towel or something, but it wasn't a clinical exercise, d.a.m.n it. It just happened. Didn't he know that? How would it have been for him if she had been the other woman? Would he have cuddled up with her all night? Was he being deliberately rude because she wasn't the other one?

"What's her name?" Her voice was sullen.

Simon was tugging at the quilt. "Whose?"

"The black haired witch's."

"I don't know who you're talking about." He kept on tugging and she grabbed the other end and tugged back. She needed it to cover her, to keep her warm.

He was the stronger and pulled her off the couch, forcing her around the room towards the door, both of them treading on small slivers of gla.s.s and not noticing, lips compressed with effort, eyes slits of anger. He inched her out on to the landing and on to the top step of the stairs. Not cautious, not caring if the other fell, they slithered precariously, each step down his victory, reversed when she gained a step up. And then her hands wouldn't take the strain any more and she slackened her grip, but didn't let go. The last three steps were taken fast, the quilt softening the impact. Battle scarred - he had a cut lip and she had b.u.mped her forehead on the banister - they sat together on the bottom step, naked, breathless and momentarily at peace. It had been a pa.s.sionate few minutes, rather fun in its way, she thought. Had they made love now, they would have made it better - after a rest. He told her he was sorry and asked if she were all right. Her head throbbed, but not too badly, but there was blood on the quilt - from their feet, which were resting on it. "Your blood is bleeding into mine," she told him, "like a gypsy love ritual."

It hadn't seemed to him like an act of love - his act of love with Sally. And he had forgotten to wear his sheath. He was more sober than she was, but even less rational. Rhoda's desertion, her rejection, couldn't be viewed coolly by him. And the last thing he wanted was to have Sally's plump foot resting on his. He limped into the bathroom and came back with a wet towel for both of them. And he wiped her feet and she wiped his. And the gla.s.s, as small as sugar crystals, was picked out carefully by both of them. Like monkeys picking fleas, she giggled.

Not a Rhoda remark.

He told her he was cold and was going to get dressed - in the clothes in his bedroom. He wasn't going up to the studio to walk on gla.s.s, and if she went up she had better be careful.

Cormack, she thought, would have treated her with more charm. He would have fetched her knickers, her tights, her skirt and T-s.h.i.+rt. Oh, and her shoes. A charming man would walk on razors for the woman he loved. She told Simon he was a boor and it sounded like a bore. He told her she bored him too and left her sitting there.

Some while later, in retrospect, Simon realised he should have played the scene very differently. Failing to push the quilt into the was.h.i.+ng machine - it was too bulky - he should have parcelled it and taken it to the dry cleaners the next day. Not try to burn it. And he should have made sure that Sally had got herself dressed properly so that she could have walked back to The Mount looking decent. Or he should have driven her. And she could have helped by behaving differently, too. If she had needed bandages for her feet she should have asked him, not left blood in her shoes after trying to force them on, and then nicking his trainers.

And if she had wanted to stay the night she might have talked him round into letting her, but she had got into his bed when he'd been downstairs and she'd put on Rhoda's nightdress, which she'd found under the pillow. And she had laughed her silly laugh that made her b.o.o.bs go up and down when he'd told her to take it off. And she'd called him a transvest.i.te, which he b.l.o.o.d.y wasn't. But he shouldn't have hit her. Not that he'd hit her hard. He didn't think he had. He hadn't meant to hurt her.

Sally would have returned to The Mount if Simon's trainers hadn't been two sizes too big. She had torn her knickers into strips and stuffed them into the trainers to make them smaller and to ooze blood into, though the cuts on her feet weren't oozing so much now. They were oozing very little, in fact, but hurt like h.e.l.l. So did her forehead where she had b.u.mped it. And Simon's operi handed slap across her nose had drawn some blood, too. She told herself that she was in a state of collapse and wept a little as she walked. Or tried to walk. It was like being on stilts, one trainer lifted up like a clod, put down again a few inches further forward, ditto with the other trainer. Left, right, slow, slow, slow.

She decided against going along the main road, which was smoother and not much longer, in case someone in a car stopped and finished her off. The lane was rough and brambly and frighteningly dark. She might get finished off here by a lurker in the bushes, but by the time she reached Mrs Mackay's cottage she didn't much care. There were no lights on and she nearly walked into the back of the Ford Cortina which was parked with its boot jutting out.

Cars, in the past, had formed makes.h.i.+ft beds. A mixture of discomfort and delight. Disappointment, too, depending on who she was with. She could adapt herself without too much trouble to the back seat of almost any car, but not this one. Mrs Mackay's car was adapted to transporting flans and the wooden trays on the back seat were a permanent fixture. You can't rest on trays and Sally needed to rest. The front seat wasn't comfortable unless she sat up straight. The only advantage the car had were doors that locked on the inside. It was while she was trying to arrange her body into a foetal position, with her knees just missing the gear lever, that she set off the horn with her elbow. It bellowed into the night like a cow in labour.

"You should have rung the bell, m'dear," Mrs Mackay told her placidly, a little later.

Sally had never admired Mrs Mackay, apart from her ability to cook, but that she could be so placid in the middle of the night, under these circ.u.mstances, was amazing. She had appeared at the car door wrapped in a dark green dressing gown and wearing matching slippers edged with fur. The large torch she was carrying might have been an implement of defence, if necessary, but at least she hadn't brandished it. When she had realised who it was, her eyes had widened slightly in surprise and she had smiled a bitter hurt little smile as if Sally's pain and blood and general despair were, for a few minutes, hers. She had looked at her with love.

Which was alarming.

Sally, already too alarmed to notice, interpreted it as placid and, as the night wore on, as kind.

The cottage had a musty smell of wood smoke and old clothes and was heavily raftered. The grate, put in by a previous owner, was of black iron with insets of tiles down the sides depicting flowers the colour of faded puce. It was the kind of grate that appeared in yuppy conversions and cost a lot. Sally, hazy with gin but not too hazy to bother, valued it at three to four hundred quid and wondered why Mrs Mackay hadn't sold it. Apart from the cash, which could be used to buy something else, it looked awful. An oak sideboard taking up a lot of s.p.a.ce looked awful, too. Junk or antique? Sally didn't know. Probably junk. Why hadn't she bought herself a decent three-piece suite? The only bright thing in the room was a large home-made circular rug on the stone floor - a picture in wool of a cat and a dog sitting amicably together in front of a cottage which was prettier than this one.

She had been put to sit on a beige moquette chair near an oil heater with the heat turned low and given a tumbler of warm milk.

Mrs Mackay gently probed. "What happened, m'dear?"

Sally said she had been raped and battered and nearly killed: Mrs Mackay, flinching, asked who had done those terrible things.

Sally told her that Simon had. The next twenty minutes were fraught with indecision. Should the police be called? The pros and cons of professional interference, and retribution, were gone into. Mrs Mackay was astute enough to guess that the Bradshaw boy, sc.u.m though he undoubtedly was, hadn't raped a virgin. And rape in a court of law might be difficult to prove. a.s.sault and battery, including doing something dreadful to the poor girl's feet, wouldn't be difficult. She "suggested making a phone call to the local police station. "Now, m'dear, while your wounds are visible."

It was tempting. Sally thought about it. She had been roughed up by others in the past, worse than this. In Simon's case, it had been a slapped face and slapped pride. And some of what she felt now was the result of drinking too much. And this milk was making her feel sicker. She asked if she might visit the toilet.

The narrow little bathroom on the first floor had a new suite in pale blue and the tiny window was draped with nets. Sally got sick into the toilet bowl, bringing up the milk. She needed a drink of something sharp, even tea would have been better than milk. She looked doubtfully at the tooth mug, but it might have held the old girl's teeth so she didn't risk drinking from it. Instead, she cupped water from the tap into her hands and drank as much as she could and then washed her face and dried it on the towel, which smelt of cheap soap.

The soap in Simon's bathroom - his mother's soap had been deliciously perfumed. Yves Saint Laurent, And the towels were thick and warm and expensive. Nicer if they hadn't been brown, but thai" was a minor point to quibble over. And the loo in Simon's mother's bathroom had a seat of real wood and had been warm to sit on. And the corner bath - well - when you thought of that bath and this bath and looked at the taps. And thought. Not just about the bathroom, but about everything else. Well, you didn't let a stupid row over a stupid nightdress with a stupid boy who had thousands of quids in the bank spoil the future you might get if you had any sense.

You didn't call the police.

Mrs Mackay took a little dissuading. The lout, she declared, should be punished. "He might have lost you your job, m'dear."

This was an aspect that Sally hadn't considered. Mrs Mackay's view of her was clearer than Sally's reflection in the mirror over the fireplace, which was restricted to her face. Mrs Mackay saw all of her. The zip on her scanty leather skirt had stuck halfway up and it clung precariously around her knickerless hips. Her white T-s.h.i.+rt, no longer white, had some graffiti on it which Mrs Mackay didn't understand but was probably rude " - something about chasing a dragon with angel dust. Her plump pretty legs, ending in those grotesque shoes of Professor Bradshaw's unsavoury son, completed the picture of a girl on the downward path to ruin. She looked like a woman of the streets. And she smelt of drink. If she returned to The Mount looking like that and crept along very quietly to her room in the staff's quarters, she might get away with it, there were no rules about returning at a given time, but if Donaldson happened to be around and saw her, and if he scolded her and she was insolent, he would have the chance he had been looking for. He would sack her. Sally sacked would be Sally doomed to a life of depravity.

Sally, sitting here in Mrs Mackay's living-room in the middle of the night, was Sally delivered into caring hands. Mrs Mackay looked up at the sampler recently completed and hanging on the wall. To Have And To Hold.

Crazy schemes evolve in the hours of darkness when they seem clear and sane. Sally, she suggested, might stay here a day or two. It would give her a chance to heal. The bruises on her face would fade and the cuts on her feet could be attended to. Also she could have the chance to be better clad in more suitable clothes. Mrs Mackay could fetch them. She would tell Doctor Donaldson that Sally had been called away suddenly to attend a sick relative, or deal with a crisis at home, and then when she was ready she would return looking sober and clean and respectable and her job would be waiting for her.

Sally considered this without much enthusiasm. She didn't want to stay here, but she didn't want to be chucked out of The Mount, either. She needed to be at The Mount to be near Simon. You don't abandon a battle because you've been shot full of shrapnel, but she didn't see why he shouldn't receive some of the flak. At this moment she'd like to gouge holes in him. So let him start worrying.

"To say I'm with relatives would be a lie. It's better to say nothing." She touched the bruise that was forming on her forehead. "Patients who are concussed lose their memories sometimes. I'll disappear for a few days then go back and say I can't remember where I've been. If you don't mind putting me up then I'll stay."

Mrs Mackay, aware of a mind more devious than her own, looked at her with carefully concealed pleasure.

"The son," she said, "will suffer."

Sun? Sally wondered. The dark moonless sky, framed like a black rectangle in the cottage window, snowed no sign of dawn.

And then she understood. Simon son of Peter. If he hadn't been such a s.h.i.+t they'd be cuddled up together now in the bed where he'd gone off his rocker and her nose had bled into that silly twee-looking nightdress which she'd scrunched up into a ball and stuffed under the mattress. He'd probably found it by now and washed it.

"He's an obsessive," she told Mrs Mackay, "he washes everything. His dad would be ashamed of him."

Sally's hangover the following morning was like being visited by a malevolent enemy who would go away eventually. Incapable of clear thought, she made no effort to rationalise anything. She was here in this rather lumpy bed in a dark little bedroom across the pa.s.sage from Mrs Mackay's bedroom and next door to the loo. She didn't like being here but her body in its present state wouldn't like being anywhere. Sleep was an escape. It came and went. When it came it wasn't comfortable. She dreamed of a story her infants' school teacher had read to the cla.s.s about Alice drinking a poisoned potion and growing huge head squashed against the ceiling, foot up a chimney, arm through a small window like this one a few feet from the floor. After waking from that, she dreamed the cottage was on fire and she couldn't get out.

But she had got out and gone to the loo.

Downstairs in the narrow little hall Mrs Mackay heard her moving about and replaced the telephone receiver. She had intended making a call to her mentor, as she thought of Mrs Hixon, but it would have to wait. She needed advice. This situation might grow into something too difficult to handle. She wanted to be told not to do it. She needed a few wise words from the Scriptures to guide her.

The practical side of her nature told her to fetch Sally's clothes, get her tidied up, then drive her back to The Mount. Today. Sally could tell Doctor Donaldson she had fallen, or anything else she chose to tell him. Sally wasn't her responsibility.

The loving, lonely, emotional side counselled her differently. She couldn't help being fond of the girl. Being fond of someone is as natural as being hungry. She a.s.sociated hunger, her own and the hunger of others, with food of the flesh and went to infinite trouble with it. Obesity, according to Donaldson, was the result of compensating for a lack of some kind. Mrs Mackay was verging on being obese. Had she been lazy she would have been nervous, activity kept her weight controlled within reasonable limits. The pyjamas she had given Sally last night had been size twenty. The jacket had reached the girl's knees. She had refused to wear the trousers. When she had peeped into the bedroom at dawn she had noticed that the girl's shoulders were bare. Either the jacket had slipped off or she had taken it off. Sally's nudity worried her. Not that she had any guilty thoughts about it in relation to herself, her fondness for her wasn't carnal, but Sally semi-nude and asleep seemed infant-innocent and vulnerable. She had gently, quietly tucked the sheet around her and folded the blanket back a little as she seemed to be very hot. Cheeks flushed. Forehead moist and creased into a frown. The bruise just above her left temple was a greenish purple. A cold compress might help later.

She felt a surge of anger against the Bradshaw boy again as she went into the kitchen to prepare two trays. The smaller one held medicaments - lint, cotton wool, antiseptic, a bowl of ice-cubes from the fridge. The larger was set with cereal, fruit juice, milk and a flask of tea. Tomorrow, Sunday, the a.s.sistant cook took over and she would be home all the morning and would have time to make Sally the kind of breakfast that would nourish her - freshly baked croissants, the best cut of bacon carefully grilled, toast with her own brand of marmalade that smelt of orange groves in the hot sun.

She would care for her.

She went upstairs and knocked at her door. "May I come in, m'dear?"

Sally, back in bed after being to the loo and feeling lousy, grunted.

Mrs Mackay, taking this as a.s.sent, opened the door and smiled at her anxiously. "Are you better, m'love?"

Sally didn't mind m'dear, but she thought m'love was overdoing it a bit. She said she wasn't feeling better and wanted to go to sleep. "Have you an aspirin, or a tranquilliser?" Mrs Mackay said she'd get some from The Mount's pharmacy. She would have to tell the pharmacist that she needed them for herself. Lying didn't come easily to her, but for Sally's sake she would have to lie, these were mitigating circ.u.mstances.

She fetched the trays and put them on the bedside table. The tea in the flask should stay hot for some while, she told Sally, but it would be wise to make the cold compress for her forehead straight away before the ice melted. Should she do it for her? Sally said she'd do it herself thanks and added without much hope that medicinal brandy was better than tea when you didn't feel well. To follow strong drink with strong drink seemed to Mrs Mackay the height of folly. The inebriates at The Mount who had come to dry out should have been looked at more closely by the girl. Look, learn and inwardly digest. There was no such thing as medicinal brandy, she told her, any more than there was medicinal gin. Her stomach would settle in time and she would return as soon as she could with some tablets for her head.

What seemed to be Sally's incipient alcoholism was upsetting. She had guessed she might take a gla.s.s or two of lager now and then, but if she drank more heavily in her spare time then she had kept it well concealed. It was young Bradshaw's fault, of course. He was the one who took her to the Avon Arms, according to Dawn Millington who had seen them there together. His was the bad influence. The sins of the fathers, her mentor had quoted to her once, using her husband's words, are branded on the souls of their progeny.

The friends.h.i.+p between Mrs Mackay and Hixon's wife had formed slowly over the years. They had first met at an orchestral concert in Bristol where by chance they had been seated next to each other. A casual reference to charismatic church music had resulted in an invitation to attend a meeting in Bath where Mrs Hixon's husband, Charlie, was to speak a few words. The few words, over the years and in other places, had grown into a spate. His own charisma was powerful, if you liked that sort of thing. Mrs Mackay, inarticulate, tightly b.u.t.toned up emotionally, felt a great release as she listened to him. He was a good man, she informed her friend, Dawn Millington, a sincere man and an a.s.set to any church of any denomination with his laypreaching. Mrs Millington, confirmed in the C. of E. which didn't encourage lay-preachers, nevertheless went along with her a few times and understood her enthusiasm. It might be something to do with the vocal chords, she said, with what seemed to Mrs Mackay unseemly humour, none of the famous laypreachers, present or past, had ever croaked their sermons, they had delivered them fullthroatedly. Songs of redemption bursting forth in great paeons of praise.

Mrs Hixon, quiet, mouse-like, walked in her husband's shadow in the days when all was well. She was a forgettable woman who wore cotton gloves at all times, summer and winter, due to a mild skin disease. Her eyes had a dark imploring quality as if she begged for kindness and understanding. And she apologised a lot. Hixon called her Mrs Hixon, as if she weren't an individual in her own right, and in those good pre-prost.i.tute days she had been happy to let it be that way.

In the bad days, when the devil and all his hordes descended on them and there was no more tranquillity, her nature changed.

She believed him innocent.

Her voice, still quiet, was no longer meek but incisive with rage. The mouse-like creature had become a sabretoothed tigress who stood up for her man. Journalists hoping for a wronged-wife article to print in the tabloids after the trial approached her brashly with large sums of money and were shown the door. And, uncharacteristically, retreated through it. Fast. Some saw her as a martyr burning at the stake and hurling blazing f.a.ggots at her tormentors if they came too near. Even the hardest-boiled recognised pain, but this was pain plus. They respected it.