Alison put out an elegant hand. ‘James ...’
For close to half a minute, James Bull-Davies remained motionless.
Then, slowly, he pushed himself from the back wall and moved into the central aisle.
Alison didn’t move.
Jim Prosser started to clap.
As James walked towards the chancel, other villagers joined in the applause, and Mrs Goddard banged her stick on the stones. When James Bull-Davies was halfway to the front, someone squeezed out of a pew, and he and James glanced at each other once. James carried on walking. The other figure moved silently towards the south porch, where Ken Thomas blocked his way.
‘I think it’s better nobody leaves just yet, if you don’t mind, sir ... Oh, sorry, Rod.’
‘Bit late this, Ken, for a farmer.’
‘Sorry, Rod,’ said Ken, moving aside at once.
Lloyd had gone out again to wait for his father. Periodically she would hear him tramp past the door or the beep-beep of his fingers on the phone as he tried to reach his father’s mobile.
Jane seethed. The idea of this brutal, humourless tosser sizing her up as a future bride blew through her fear. She would refuse to think what he might do to her. She’d think instead of what she might do to
She got to her feet, her jeans feeling disgustingly damp from the straw, and crept silently around the cider house. Perhaps there was a wooden paddle or something they used to push the apples around in the mill. She imagined herself waiting behind the door with it raised and smashing it down on him when he next came in. It always worked in films.
But then, in films, there was always something handy. The only stave in the cider house was the one used to turn the screw mechanism on the press and this proved to be metal and bolted firmly into place, and the bolts were so rusty even a wrench wouldn’t dislodge them.
She kicked about in the hay, in case there was something underneath. Only flagstones.
Nothing. Nothing, nothing,
She flung herself at a wall, scratching at the bricks on the off chance one was loose and could be prised out and she could throw it at him.
Hopeless. Was she even strong enough to hurl a brick with any force? She still tried, going from wall to wall, even looking up at the roof to see if there was a loose slate (which she could send skimming at his throat, oh, sure ...) arriving finally at the hayloft over the mill. She’d forgotten all about that.
Worth a try. She might be able to hide up there and drop something on his head. Height was always an advantage, wasn’t it?
There was no ladder (which, anyway, she would have broken up for a hefty stick) but only a couple of feet separated the loft from the top of the stone millwheel.
No problem, probably. Jane tested the thick wooden axle stuck through a hole in the middle of the stone. It was all so crude, in a Stone Age kind of way, but the wood wasn’t rotten and she was able to get a foot on it to hoist herself to the top of the wheel.
She had an awful vision of the wheel suddenly rolling away, leaving her dangling from the rafters, but it was as solid as a rock, which she supposed it actually was, and she hauled herself up, quite easily in the end, into the loft, where she rolled over and flopped on her stomach between a couple of black bin liners. (She could wait behind the door with one and throw it over his head, then duck behind him to freedom; oh Jesus, this was getting ridiculous.) It seemed much brighter up here; the fluorescent tube was only about three feet away; and she felt exposed and pushed herself back from the edge until she felt her feet slot into the narrow area where the rafters met the sloping slates.
Now she was up here, the total seriousness of the situation clouded around her. Her bowels felt suddenly weak and she threw her arms over one of the bin sacks to stifle a sob.
The evil little smell from the bin sack had entered her nose like a thin needle.
Not a smell she knew, but one she had a horrid feeling she ought to.
Before she realized what she was doing, she’d drawn the plastic back.
Over the damp hair and the soft, white skin, purpled by the light. The open, bulging eyes and the big, squashy lips, and the tongue out like a dog’s.
The diamond nose-stud winking in the clinical light.
53
Watching
‘I’M A BLOODY madman, en’t I?’ Gomer said. ‘Even look like a bloody madman, so people tell me. I got a wife en’t gonner speak to me for a month as a result of what I already done tonight this far. So what do we do, boy? What we gonner do about this?’
‘The cider house?’
‘The cider house where the Bulls took their women until they give it to the Powells. Soon as Tess Roberts told that story tonight, it bothered me. Had to go out, have a ciggy. Whatever they’re doin’ in that cider house it en’t makin’ cider.’
‘Whereabouts is it?’
‘Top of a field, other side o’ the new road, as I recall. A barn, an ole sheep shed and the cider house. Used to be a tiny little shepherd’s cottage there at one time, but that got pulled down years back.’
‘You want to take a look?’ Lol said. ‘Put your mind at rest?’ Meaning put
But they hadn’t found Jane.
‘Unpredictable kid, though, Gomer. She comes and goes. Has her own ideas, her own apartment in the vicarage. She could be back there now, for all we know.’
‘All right, boy, I’ll tell you what we does.’
Gomer said he’d go back via the old bowling green, through into the churchyard, check on the situation there and whether the kiddie had been found, grab his Jeep off the square – always felt better on wheels, never much of a foot soldier, see. Lol, meanwhile, would torch-sweep as much of the orchard as he could before making his way to the gate opening on to the new road, where Gomer would pick him up in about half an hour.
‘That way, we covers both exits. If her’s in the orchard, one or other of us’ll mabbe stumble—’ Gomer coughed, shuffled. ‘Sorry, didn’t mean ...’
‘She’ll be OK,’ Lol said. ‘She’ll be OK.’ Like repeating it was going to make it so. ‘She’s always OK.’
But when Gomer had gone, the Garrod Powell in his head faded into Lloyd Powell and both of them merged into Karl Windling and the white-robed apple trees stood around like bent old druids at some woodland ceremony, and he didn’t think Jane was OK.
He was very fond of Jane. He could say that to himself now. It was OK to be fond of a fifteen-year-old girl. It was OK to fall in love with her mother. He walked away. The salmon moon was entangled in a cluster of spiky dead branches projecting from the blossom below. Gomer was right; the only way to make any kind of productive orchard here was to start again.
He walked quickly, pointing the torch at what remained of the path, sometimes apprehensively sweeping it from side to side, and finding patches of fungus pale as flesh and exposed roots like withered limbs.
She went as far away as she could get, squeezing herself into different corners, squatting in the straw. But wherever she was, she could still see the loft and the bin sack. Wherever she went, she thought she could see Colette’s eyes, popping out at her like marbles.
Even though she’d dragged the bin sack back over the face, she seemed to see the eyes making little round bulges in the plastic.
