the hill and came out on to a stunning view. Below him a patchwork of meadows and beyond them a river. He went down and crossed the empty fields and presently was standing looking at a river that flowed, as it must have done for thousands of years, down the valley, in the process creating the flat empty fields he had just crossed. This was what he had come to find. He took off his knapsack and sat on the bank and watched the water drifting by with the occasional ripple that suggested a fish or an undercurrent, some hidden obstacle or pile of rubbish that was sliding past under the surface. Above him the sky was a cloudless blue. Life was marvellous. He was doing what he had come to do. Or so he thought. As ever in Wilt’s life he was moving towards his Nemesis.
It lay in the vengeful mind of a justifiably embittered old woman in Meldrum Slocum. All her working life, ever since she had entered the service of General and Mrs Battleby forty-five years before, Martha Meadows had been the cleaner, the cook, the housekeeper, the every help the General and his wife depended on at Meldrum Manor. She had been devoted to the old couple and the Manor had been the centre of her life but the General and his wife had been killed five years before in an accident with a drunken lorry driver; the estate had been taken over by their nephew Bob Battleby and everything had changed. From being what the old General had called ‘our faithful retainer, Martha’, a title of which she had been exceedingly proud, she had found herself being called that ‘bloody woman’. In spite of it she had stayed on. Bob Battleby was a drunk, and a nasty drunk at that, but she had her husband to think of. He’d been the gardener at the Manor but a bout of pneumonia followed by arthritis had forced him to leave his job. Martha had to work and there was nowhere else in Meldrum she could find employment. Besides, she had hopes that Battleby would drink himself to death before too long. Instead he began an affair with Ruth Rottecombe, the wife of the local MP and Shadow Minister for Social Enhancement. It was largely thanks to her that Martha had been replaced by a Filipino maid who was less disapproving of what they called their little games. Martha Meadows had kept her thoughts to herself but one morning Battleby, after a particularly drunken night, had lost his temper and had thrown her things–the clothes she came in before changing into her working ones–into the muddy yard outside the kitchen; he had called her a fucking old bitch and better off dead at that. Mrs Meadows had walked home seething with rage, and determined on getting her own back. Day after day she had sat at home beside her sick husband–who’d recently had a stroke and couldn’t talk–grimly determined to get her revenge. She had to be very, very careful. The Battlebys were a rich and influential family in the county and she had often thought of appealing to them, but for the most part they were of a different generation to the General’s nephew and seldom came to the Manor. No, she would have to act on her own. Two empty years passed before she thought of her own husband’s nephew, Bert Addle. Bert had always been a bit of a tearaway but she’d always had a soft spot for him, had lent him money when he was in trouble and had never asked for it back. Been like a mother to him, she had. Yes, Bert would help, especially now he’d just lost his job at the shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness. What she had in mind would certainly give him something to do.
‘He called you that?’ Bert said when she told him. ‘Why, I’ll kill the bastard. Calling my auntie a thing like that when you’ve been with the family all those years. By God, I will.’
But Martha shook her head.
‘You’ll do no such thing. I’m not having you go to prison. I’ve got a better idea.’
Bert looked at her questioningly.
‘Like what?’
‘Disgrace him in public, so he can’t show his face round here no more, him and that hussy
