In A Dry Season

skin shriveled and wrinkled over the knuckle joints, puffs of flesh around the wedding ring she could never remove even if she wanted to.

Her hands were the first to go, she thought. The rest of her was remarkably well-preserved. For a start, she had remained tall and lean. She hadn’t shrunk or run to fat like so many elderly women, or generated that thick, hard, matronly carapace.

Steel-gray hair pulled back tightly and fastened at the back created a widow’s peak over her strong, thin face; her deep blue eyes, networked with crow’s feet, were almost oriental in their slant, her nose was slightly hooked and her lips thin. Not a face that smiled often, people thought. And they were right, even though it had not always been so.

“A steely, unblinking gaze into the depths of evil,” one reviewer had written of her. And was it Graham Greene who had noted that there is a splinter of ice in the heart of the writer? How right he was, though it hadn’t always been there.

“You used to live up north, didn’t you?”

Vivian looked up, startled at the question. The man appeared to be about sixty, thin to the point of emaciation, with a long, gaunt pale face and lank fair hair. He was wearing faded jeans and the kind of gaudy, short-sleeved shirt you would expect to see at a seaside resort. As he held the book out for her to sign, she noticed that his hands were unnaturally small for a man’s. Something about them disturbed her.

Vivian nodded. “A long time ago.” Then she looked at the book. “Who would you like me to sign this to?”

“What was the name of the place where you lived?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“Did you go by the same name then?”

“Look, I-”

“Excuse me, sir.” It was Adrian, politely asking the man to move along. He did as he was asked, cast one backward glance at Vivian, then he slapped her book down on a pile of John Harveys and left.

Vivian carried on signing. Adrian brought her another glass of wine, people told her how much they loved her books, and she soon forgot about the strange man and his prying questions.

When it was all over, Adrian and the staff suggested dinner, but Vivian was tired, another sign of her advancing years. All she wanted to do was go home to a long hot bath, a gin and tonic and Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, but first she needed a little exercise and some air. Alone.

“I’ll drive you home,” said Wendi.

Vivian laid her hand on Wendi’s forearm. “No, my dear,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I’d just like a little walk by myself first, then I’ll take the tube.”

“But, really, it’s no trouble. That’s what I’m here for.”

“No. I’ll be perfectly all right. I’m not over the hill yet.”

Wendi blushed. She had probably been told that Vivian was prickly. Someone always warned the publicists and media escorts. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to suggest anything like that. But it’s my job.”

“A pretty young girl like you must have far better things to do than drive an old lady home in the London traffic. Why don’t you go to the pictures with your boyfriend, go dancing, or something?”

Wendi smiled and looked at her watch. “Well, I did tell Tim I wouldn’t be able to meet him until later. Perhaps if I phoned him now and went to queue at the half-price ticket booth, we could get some last-minute theater tickets. But only if you’re sure.”

“Quite sure, my dear. Good night.”

Vivian walked out into the warm autumn dusk on Bedford Street.

London. She still sometimes found herself unable to believe that she actually lived in London. She remembered her first visit – how vast, majestic and overwhelming the city had felt. She had gazed in awe at landmarks she had only heard of, read about or seen in pictures: Piccadilly Circus, Big Ben, St. Paul’s, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square. Of course, that was a long time ago, but even today she felt that same magic when she recited the names or walked the famous streets.

Charing Cross Road was crowded with people leaving work late or arriving early for the theaters and cinemas, meeting friends for a drink. Before getting on the tube, Vivian crossed the road carefully, waiting for the pedestrian signal, and strolled around Leicester Square.

A small choir was singing “Men of Harlech” just beside the Burger King. How it had all changed: the fast food places, the shops, even the cinemas. It wasn’t far from here, on Haymarket, that she had been to her first London cinema, the Carlton. What had she seen? For Whom the Bell Tolls. Of course, that was it.

As she walked back to the Leicester Square tube entrance, Vivian thought again about the strange man in the bookshop. She didn’t like to dwell on the past, but he had pushed her into a reminiscent mood, as had the recent newspaper photographs of the dried-up Thornfield Reservoir.

The ruins of Hobb’s End were exposed to the light of day for the first time in over forty years, and the memories of her life there had come crowding back. Vivian shuddered as she walked down the steps to the underground.

TWO

Banks paused for breath after his walk through the woods. From where he stood on the edge of Thornfield Reservoir, the entire elongated bowl of ruins lay open below him like a cupped hand, about a quarter of a mile wide and half a mile long. He didn’t know the full story, but he knew that the site had been covered with water for many years. This was its first reappearance, like an excavated ancient settlement, or a sort of latter-day Brigadoon.

He could see tangles of tree roots sticking out of the slope on the opposite embankment. The difference in soil colors showed where the waterline had been. Beyond the high bank, Rowan Woods straggled away to the north.

The most dramatic part of the scene lay directly below: the sunken village itself. Bracketed by a ruined mill on a hillock to the west, and by a tiny packhorse bridge to the east, the whole thing resembled the skeleton of a giant’s torso. The bridge formed the pelvic bone, and the mill was the skull, which had been chopped off and placed slightly to the left of the body. The river and High Street formed the slightly curving backbone, from which the various ribs of side streets branched off.

There was no road surface, but the course of the old High Street by the river was easy enough to make out. It eventually forked at the bridge, one branch turning toward Rowan Woods, where it soon narrowed to a footpath, and the other continuing over the bridge, then out of the village along the Harksmere embankment, presumably all the way to Harkside. It struck Banks as especially odd that there should have been a fully intact bridge there, under water for all those years.

Below him, a group of people stood by the other side of the bridge, one of them in uniform. Banks scampered down the narrow path. It was a warm evening, and he was sweating by the time he got to the bottom. Before approaching the group, he took a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow and the back of his neck. There was nothing he could do about the damp patches under his arms.

He wasn’t overweight, or even especially unfit. He smoked, he ate lousy food and he drank too much, but he had the kind of metabolism that had always kept him lean. He didn’t go in for strenuous exercise, but since Sandra left he had got into the habit of taking long solitary walks every weekend, and he swam half a mile at the Eastvale public baths once or twice a week. It was this damn hot weather that made him feel so out of shape.

The valley bottom wasn’t as muddy as it looked. Most of the exposed reddish-brown earth had been caked and cracked by the heat. However, there were some marshy patches with reeds growing out of them, and he had to jump several large puddles on his way.

As he crossed the packhorse bridge, a woman walked toward him and stopped him in the middle. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, arm extended, palm out. “This is a crime scene. I’m afraid you can’t come any further.”

Banks smiled. He knew he didn’t look like a DCI. He had left his sports jacket in the car and wore a blue denim shirt open at the neck, with no tie, light tan trousers and black wellington boots.

“Why isn’t it taped off, then?” he asked.