'Not feeling so good, darling?' she said, trying to keep it matter of fact. 'Bed's the best place for you. Let's get you home.'
She thanked Miss Martindale, who smiled reassuringly, but from the secretary, who clearly had her down as the kind of mother who sent her ailing child to school rather than spoil her own social life, all she got was an accusing glare. Ellie responded with a sweet smile. Okay, the head might have the hex on her, but she wasn't going to kowtow to a sodding typist.
On the way home she chatted brightly, but Rosie hardly responded. In the house, Ellie said, 'Straight to bed, I think. Then I'll bring you a nice cool drink, shall I?'
Rosie nodded and let her mother unbutton her dress, something which in recent months had brought a fierce I can do that myself!
Ellie made her comfortable in bed, then went down to the kitchen and poured a glass of homemade lemonade. Then she poured another. Sickbed circumstances demanded a bit of indulgence.
'Here we are, darling,' she said. 'I brought one for Nina, too, in case she got thirsty.'
'Don't you ever listen?' demanded Rosie. 'I've told you a hundred times. Nina's back in the nix's cave. I saw her get taken.'
The flash of spirit was momentarily reassuring, but it seemed to wear the little girl out. She took only a single sip of the drink, then sank back into her pillow.
'I'll leave it for her anyway,' said Ellie cheerfully. 'She might like it after her daddy rescues her.'
'Don't be silly,' muttered Rosie. 'That was last time.'
'Last time?' said Ellie, smoothing the single sheet over the slight body. 'But there's only been one time, hasn't there, darling?'
For a moment, Rosie regarded her with a role-reversing expression in which affection was mixed with exasperation. Then she closed her eyes.
Ellie went downstairs. Worth bothering the doctor with? she wondered. While ready to go to the barricades for her rights under the NHS, she'd always been resolved not to turn into one of those mothers who demanded antibiotics for every bilious attack.
She made herself a cup of tea and went into the living room. The CD player was switched on with the pause light showing. She'd been listening to her new Mahler disc when Martindale rang.
The larger package remained unopened.
Few things are better suited to putting literary ambition in perspective than bringing a sick child home, so this seemed a good time to take her bumps.
She ripped open the package and took out her script. There was a letter attached.
'… shows promise, but in the present climate… hard times for fiction… much regret… blah blah…'
The signature was an indecipherable scrawl. Couldn't blame them, she thought. Assassination must be a real danger in that job. Even she, perspective and all, felt the sharp pang of rejection. Perhaps I'm simply barking up the wrong tree? Who the hell wants to read about the angst-ridden life of a late-twentieth-century woman when it's just like their own? Perhaps I should have a stab at something completely different… a historical, maybe? She'd always felt a bit guilty about her fondness for historical fiction, regarding it as pure escapism from life's earnest realities. But sod it, letters like this were an aspect of earnest reality she'd be only too glad to escape from!
Moodily she picked up the CD zapper and pressed the restart button.
'At last I think I see the explanation Of those dark flames in many glances burning.'
It was the second of the Kindertotenlieder. She relaxed and let the rich young voice wash over her.
'I could not guess, lost in the obfuscation Of blinding fate…'
Obfuscation! Not a pretty word. But she sympathized with the translator. Unlike a lot of the multiinflected continental languages, English wasn't rich in feminine rhymes, and they often ran the risk of sounding faintly comic. Not here, though, not with the tragic power of this music setting the agenda.
'… even then your gaze was homeward turning, Back to the source of all illumination.'
What made a composer choose to set one poem rather than another to music? In the brief introduction to the songs, she'd read that Alma Mahler had strongly resisted her husband's obsession with these poems of loss, superstitiously fearing he might be tempting fate to attack his own family. Okay, so it was irrational, but Ellie could sympathize, recalling her own impulse to break all traffic laws to get to Edengrove, despite Miss Martindale's assurance that there was nothing to worry about.
And there wasn't, was there? Not if Miss Martindale said there wasn't. Despite all her efforts to avoid the stereotype, she'd ended up as another silly, overanxious mother, like Alma Mahler… Except that Alma had been right, hadn't she? How she must have looked back on her fears and wished she'd protested even more vehemently when, a couple of years later, their eldest daughter died of scarlet fever.
'These eyes that open brightly every morning In nights to come as stars will shine upon you…'
And that's meant to be a consolation? She zapped off the melancholy orchestral coda, reached for the telephone, and started dialing Jill Purlingstone's number.
The Highcross Inn had once occupied a premier site where coachmen, drovers, horse riders, and foot travelers, about to start the long haul over the moor to Danby, took on sustenance, while those who'd completed the passage in the other direction treated themselves to congratulatory refreshment.
The internal combustion engine had changed all that. What had been effortful was now easy, and most travelers using the moor road were simply taking a shortcut to its junction with the busy north-south arterial.
Externally, apart from the signs advertising GOOD GRUB, DEEP PAN PIZZA, and a mention in some obscure guide written by some equally obscure journalist posing as a North Country expert despite the fact that he'd moved from Yorkshire to London at the age of eighteen and only returned twice for family funerals, the inn had changed little in two and half centuries. In fact some of the flaking paint looked as if it might be original, but that could be down to the long, hot summer.
Inside, though, things were different. Inside, it had presumably once looked like what an old country pub looks like. Then some keg-head brewer had decided it needed to look like what some flouncy designer thought an old country pub ought to look like. Out had gone the real and particular, in had come the ersatz and anonymous, and now a steady drinker might require to step outside from time to time to remind himself where he was steadily drinking.
Novello quite liked it. She was young, and a townie, and this to her was what pubs usually looked like. She sat at the bar and ordered herself a lager and black-currant. At her initiation into the Mid-Yorkshire CID'S home pub, the Black Bull, she'd been foolish enough to request this mixture when invited to name her poison. The kind of great silence had fallen which usually only follows the opening of the seventh seal. Dalziel had fixed her with a look which confirmed the rumor that as a uniformed PC his number had been 666. Then some friendly angel had loosened her wits and her tongue, and she'd said, 'But if it's not really poison you're offering, I'll have a pint of best.'
Pascoe had got it for her, murmuring as he handed it over, 'Your principles may be in tatters, but at least your soul is safe.'
The pub was almost empty. The woman behind the bar had time to chat. She was middle aged, size sixteen, most of it muscle presumably developed from a life of pulling pumps and carting crates. The conviviality of her broad handsome face faded into inevitable wariness when Novello produced her warrant card. But when she mentioned the nature of her inquiries, indignation replaced all, and the woman said, 'I'd castrate the bastards without anesthetic. Then hang them by what's left! How can I help, luv?'
Novello went at it obliquely. All she had was a blue station wagon, and she'd prefer to get anything there was to be got without too much prompting. Eagerness to cooperate could sometimes be as frustrating as reluctance to speak.
First she got personal details. This was Bella Postlethwaite, joint tenant with her husband, Jack. They'd been here five years and relied mainly on passing trade to scrape a living.
'There's not much local trade-I mean, look around outside-not exactly crowded with houses, is it? And you couldn't exercise an ant on the profit margins the brewery allows us. Bastards. Them's some more I'd like to see hanging high.'
She was a very pendentious lady. Novello moved on to Sunday morning. She'd been up early. Jack had a bit of a lie-in. No, she'd noticed nowt out of the ordinary. What about the ordinary, then? Well, the ordinary was bugger all, not to put too fine a point on it. Couple of tractors. Other traffic? A bit on the main road. Not much being Sunday, but there was always some. And on the moor road? Yes, there had been a car. She'd been out front
