from the past, Andy. Not a day passes but I think about little Lucy. But I still find it hard even to refer to what happened directly. I hear myself skirting around. Like in the cathedral.’
‘You’re not skirting now.’
‘No. I suppose in the cathedral I was talking to a stranger.’
‘And now?’
She smiled even though there were tears in her eyes.
‘Now I’m talking to Rooster Cogburn.’
‘You’ll not get me on a horse,’ he said, seeking an escape route from this intensity.
She was glad to take it.
‘Don’t need a horse to be a perfect gentle knight,’ she said, only half mocking.
‘I’ve been called a lot of things, but not that. Here, where’s my grub gone?’
The Fat Man had no problem eating and talking at the same time, but the problem with this simultaneity was that often the food went down without him really noticing it.
She said, ‘You can try mine, if you like. I’m not really hungry.’
He looked suspiciously at her plate.
‘Beef, is it? How’s it cooked?’
‘It’s not.’
‘Bloody hell! My dad used to warn me, never get mixed up with a lass who eats raw meat!’
‘Perhaps you should have listened to him,’ she said. ‘But it tastes fine. Really.’
‘Well, I’ll try owt, except for incest and the Lib Dems.’
He cut off a sliver, chewed it, said, ‘Not bad,’ and pulled her plate towards him.
His second bottle of Barolo was almost gone.
She on the other hand was showing no inclination to push beyond her second glass. Pity, perhaps. But waste not, want not.
He said, ‘The rest of yon white stuff, you’re not leaving that too, are you?’
Smiling she pushed the bottle towards him.
He had made good inroads into the raw beef when his phone rang again. He looked at the display and said, ‘’Scuse me, luv. Private,’ stood up and descended the steps towards the garden before answering.
‘Wieldy,’ he said.
‘That number, I’ve got a name and address,’ said the sergeant.
Dalziel scribbled it down into his notebook.
‘Thanks, Wieldy.’
‘No problem. Owt I should know about, sir? Or Pete, mebbe?’
‘Talk about it tomorrow,’ prevaricated Dalziel. ‘And if I need to talk to Pete, as it happens I’m looking at the bugger right this minute. Thanks, Wieldy. Cheers.’
It was true, more or less. He could distantly see Pascoe’s head among a group of people at the buffet party.
He thumbed in Novello’s number.
‘Ivor, here’s the name and address. Alun Watkins, 39 Loudwater Villas. Listen, see what you can find out, but softly softly, OK? Good girl. No, no need to get back to me. Unless something really important comes up, it’ll keep till the morning. Enjoy thasel!’
He suddenly felt very relaxed. Maybe it was the fact that he’d sunk two bottles of lovely Italian plonk, but relaxing here in the sun looking out over a garden where the glories of summer were enhanced rather than threatened by the first touch of autumn, with that pleasantly mazy music drifting up from the gazebo while behind him, impatient (he hoped) for his return, sat a golden-haired damsel begging him to ease her distress, he found he’d shed all the doubts and concerns that had beset him since his return to work.
And there was still pudding to come!
Once more master of his soul and captain of his fate, he could do anything he wanted.
Except maybe drive home.
But sufficient be the evil…
He turned round and realized Gina Wolfe had risen too and was standing close behind him. Close enough to have overheard? Mebbe. But it didn’t matter. He’d said nowt that suggested the calls had anything to do with her.
She said, ‘This is a lovely spot, isn’t it? It seems somehow, I don’t know, ungrateful to be unhappy in such a place on such a day.’
‘Then let’s try not to be unhappy,’ he said, leading her back to the table and pouring an inch of golden wine into her glass and filling his own to the brim. ‘Let’s have a toast. To a bright future, eh?’
‘No,’ she said seriously. ‘Don’t tempt fate by bringing in the future.’
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘Wise man sticks to here and now. So, let’s see. Here’s to Iti wine, English weather, and a little chance music out of doors. Cheers!’
‘I’ll drink to that,’ she said, smiling.
13.00-13.40
David Gidman the Third stepped up to the microphone and acknowledged the applause.
Pinchbeck had been right. Again. The crowd at the opening was at least fifty per cent larger than the church congregation. The bloody woman had probably also been right to run interference when that dishy deaconess had tried to top up his glass on the vicarage lawn. The notion of pleasuring a woman in canonicals was strangely appealing.
He shook the thought from his mind and concentrated on carrying his audience back to 1948 and the arrival in England of the Empire Windrush, bringing with it David Gidman the First and his young son, not yet known as Goldie.
Maggie listened critically as he outlined his grandfather’s early days in the East End, his emergence as a community leader, his rise from railway cleaner to guard on the Flying Scotsman. She had to acknowledge he was good. More convincing than Cameron, beefier than Brown, less lachrymose than Blair, he had it all. In the right hands he could really go far.
He made the transition from his grandfather to his father with consummate ease, projecting Goldie as a hard-working, self-made entrepreneur who’d used the opportunities offered by a benevolent state to get an education and make a fortune.
‘There was one other thing my dad shared with his dad as well as a capacity for hard work,’ he declared. ‘Neither of them ever forgot where they came from. They always gave something back and the more they earned the more they gave.
‘Now here am I, the third generation of the UK Gidmans. By their standards, I’ve had it easy. Not for me the long journey across a wide ocean to a new land, a new life. Not for me the long journey from the back streets of the East End to the boardrooms of the City. No, I stand before you, benefiting from the advantages of going to a first- rate school and a first-rate university.
‘Yet I do not feel any need to apologize for these advantages. They’ve been paid for, and paid for with interest, by the love and the devotion and the damned hard work of my father and his father.
‘But I’m always aware that, if I’m to show myself worthy of their efforts, their love, their sacrifice, then I too have payments to make.
‘I’m proud of my pappy and of my granpappy, and I want to make them proud of me. It’s people like you standing here before me today who will tell me by your comments and your votes if I succeed.
‘But I won’t be doing my political career much good if I keep you any longer from the refreshments waiting inside! So without further ado, I would like to declare the David Gidman the First Memorial Community Centre well and truly open.’
He took the scissors that Maggie handed him and flourished them for the cameras, making sure his head was inclined slightly to the right. Both profiles were good, but the left was slightly better. Silently he counted up to
