Suddenly he yanked his pole up onto the bank. Three eels dropped there. I looked away while he collared them. I heard them splashing in his bucket.
'You'll never make a country booy, Lovejooy.' He lit his pipe. I didn't look at his hands.
'Must be mortal bad to bring you here while I'm clattin', son.'
I gestured to the river, the country. 'Arthur Goldhorn's place.'
You don't have to say much. He got the point. I moved upwind. His pipe stank. I hoped it was only tobacco in there.
'Arthur were a fool, booy. Give that woif of his anything she wannied. Colette'd never no time for her lad Mortimer. Arthur had, even though Mortimer weren't his. Arthur tried to hang on to Saffron Fields fer the booy's sake.'
'He lost everything to Dieter Gluck.'
'That Colette and her French name. Anything in trousers - though you knew that, eh, booy?'
No need for barbs. I gave him my bent eye. He shrugged and looked away.
'This river, Clatter. Can it be linked to the old canal?'
'Ar. That were the old plan, until the railways come. Only take one cut, mebbe couple or three locks through the closed field.'
'Closed field?' I'd never heard the term. The landscape looked depressingly open to me.
He smiled. 'A closed field's where you grow forbidden, Lovejooy. I only know this one in the whole kingdom. Behind you.'
'One field's the same as any other, Clatter.'
'Growed poppy there these eight generations, Lovejooy. Arthur were signature for it, see?'
That made me walk back up the bank and take a long look.
'This land grew poppies?' I already knew people liked flowers.
'Special folk did the harvest, loik. In olden days. The Ministry took away permission when Arthur died. Aborted the crop by spraying. Didn' arf stink.'
Now, Papaver sommferum is famed. Opium is its principal yield, cause of our country's notoriously unjust Opium Wars with China. I'd heard fanciful rumours of four official acres in Suffolk where morphine base was got from an opium crop.
'Who owns the closed field?'
'The only bit of Saffron Fields Manor that thief didn't manage to get.' Clatter spat into the sluggish river. 'Arthur gived it to the booy separate afoor he died. By then, that Colette had gone orff with the foreigner.'
'Ta, Clatter.'
Inland, beyond the closed field, I could see a line of trees along the old canal. Seaward, the river bent into its estuary where the dead airman lay in his plane beneath the sands. So two rich reasons existed for Gluck to snaffle this unprepossessing chunk.
One, he could make a fortune from developing the waterways leisure industry. Two, he would own one of the few approved opium fields in the whole country. Except that Gluck hadn't thought it out: he'd killed Arthur - driving a man to his death is the same as murder, to me - and grabbed everything he could. Unfortunately for him, the Lord of the Manor tide and these priceless few acres had already been ceded to Mortimer for a farthing. Stupidly Gluck had slain the goose and not got the golden egg. Arthur had seen, guessed, suspected Gluck's intentions. I grieved. Why hadn't he come to me?
I knew the answer. Arthur knew about me and Colette. I was just as phoney as Gluck, taking advantage of Arthur's benign nature, cuckolding my friend. I'm not even pathetic. I'm worse.
'All roit, booy?' Clatter said sympathetically. 'It weren't yor fault, son.'
Thank you, friend. 'I'll manage now, Clatter.'
Griefs always too late. I set off back, leaving the lonely river to Clatter and his eels. My old Gran said once, 'A funeral's only ham butties and a slow walk, luv. Pretending that your grief is for a loved one, when it's only self-pity.' My trouble is, I think too late.
My eyes filled. I stumbled over the stile onto the road where I hoped to get a lift to the railway station. Talking time was over, and fighting time was come, as Don John of Austria said at Lepanto. But he'd had a fleet of war galleys, and I had only a few suppositions about a dead airman.
27
THAT DAY, EVERYTHING happened, double bad. I finally remembered to phone Mercy Faldrop in her booming hamlet. She came on after a succession of kulaks had told me that The Lady (sic) would be pleased to speak.
'Lady Mercy? Lovejoy. Got anything?'
'Your listed folk don't come here, Lovejoy. Except for that engineer man Talleyton. He brings two surveyors, buys them supper and a girl each.'
My heart sank. 'Not Sir Jesson Tethroe?' I went through my list.
'No, Lovejoy. Sorry.'
Typical. Just when I wanted a dishonest MP. Now I'd have to use Gloria Dee to somehow bring him in.
'I barred that Gluck.'
