'Er,… yes. Yes, I think so.'
'Is at on?'
'Well, no.' Could she be blind?
Then the woman just son of folded in on herself as if afflicted by some awful stomach cramp or period pain, and Chrissie' s brain dried out quickly. The Man I'th Moss. This was Matt Castle's wife. 'Hey,' she said, 'come on, sit yourself down. You on your own?'
Mrs Castle nodded and Chrissie led her to a corner seat opposite the bar and bent down to her. 'Make you a cuppa tea?'
She shook her head. 'I've got coffee. I'm OK. Honestly, Just a shock. I've had a shock.'
'Can I send for anybody? Relatives? A doctor?'
'Please,' Mrs Castle said. 'Just don't go, that's all. Come through. Phone's in the kitchen.' She got up and walked to the bar, and when she reached it a tremor seemed to pass through her and she pushed quickly through a door in the back wall.
Chrissie followed her into a big farmhouse-type kitchen, taking off her sodden mac and tossing it into a corner, useless thing. Underneath, she was wearing her navy-blue suit over a light blue silk blouse and pearls. Classy and understated for John Peveril Stanage's soiree, she thought with a sardonic shudder.
'Just keep talking.' Mrs Castle said. 'I'll be all right in a minute.' She was wearing a big, sloppy Icelandic-type sweater, but she still looked almost blue with cold and she hunched herself over the stove. Chrissie went and stood next to her and folded her arms.
'Well, this chap I was with, called Roger. Married, of course. I'm his bit on the side, except that's not as frivolous or irresponsible as it sounds, for either of us… well, it never is, is it, really?'
Mrs Castle was just looking into space. There was a full coffee cup on the table, but the coffee had gone cold, a whirl of cream almost solid on the top like piped icing.
'Roger's a prat,' Chrissie said. 'There's no getting around that. He's got a terrific opinion of himself and yet at the same time he's obviously a bit intimidated by his wife – she's a doctor. He wanted something else, less demanding. Which was me. One slightly shop soiled divorcee off the bottom shelf – flattering, eh? High powered wife, so he's looking for something cosy and undemanding and, worst of all, a bit cheap, you know what I mean?'
Mrs Castle nodded and struggled to smile, a little bit of colour in her cheeks. She was actually very attractive, good bones.
'I mean, you talk about undemanding, he didn't even have to go anywhere to pick me up. We work in the same office, I'm his secretary-cum-personal assistant – soon found out what that meant.'
Realising she'd never talked to anybody about her and Roger before. Maybe this could turn out to be unexpectedly therapeutic.
'But at the end of the day,' Chrissie went on, 'his biggest love – I mean, listen to this – his biggest love, who's far more important to Roger than cither me or his wife – is a squidgy little brown man who's been dead about two thousand years and came out of a bog. Now, can you…? Ow!'
A kind of mad revulsion in her eyes, Mrs Castle had suddenly swung round from the stove, grabbed hold of Chrissie's wrist and was digging her nails into it.
As if, Chrissie thought, pulling away, cold, to make sure I'm actually flesh and blood.
'I tell you what, Mrs Castle. I reckon you're the one who would benefit from talking about it.' 'Where are we going exactly?'
'Rog, mustn't be so anxious, m'friend! Mind holding the umbrella? Oops! Two hands, please, or you'll lose it.'
Huge golf umbrella; anything else would have been turned inside out by the sheer force of the downpour. Hard, vertical, brutal rain.
'There, that's stopped 'em from dithering.'
'I wasn't d-'
'Surrounded by ditherers. Don't worry, I like 'em. Shaw used to be a ditherer, didn't you, Shaw? Ditherer, stammerer, cowardly little bastard. Fixed it, though, didn't we? Fixed everything. Right, then, if we're all ready, in we go. Been here before, Rog?'
Darkness. Cold.
'Never. Pretty chilly, isn't it?'
'Chilly? This? Hear that. Tess? Poor Roger thinks it's chilly This is Tess, my niece, aren't you, darling? And what shall we say about these others? What they are is a bunch of unfortunates befriended by the lass, she's so… good… hearted.'
'Uncle, please…'
'Apologies, my love. Yes, up the stairs is where we go. Onwards and upwards. Into the Attic of Death, do you like that?
'Not really.'
'Relax, relax. Relaxation. The key to everything, Shaw knows that, don't you, m'boy? Up again. Ought to be a lift, be totally cream-crackered, time we get there. How you feeling now, Rog?'
'A touch light-headed, now, actually. How many drinks did I have, I can't…'
'Just the one, Roger, just the one. Famous for our cocktails aren't we, Tess?'
'What's that smell?'
'New one on you, is it, Rog? What a terribly sheltered life you must have had, m'boy.'
'Oh, dear God.'
'Ah, now, let's not bring that chap into it, Roger.'
'I'm going to be sick.'
'No you're not, you're going to get used to it. No time at all. Now relax, the dead can't harm you.'
Don't look at it, don't look at it, don't… Oh, Lord, what's happening to my head?
'No, actually. I'm lying again. That's a common myth perpetuated by morticians. You're quite right, the dead can indeed harm you, in the most unexpected ways. The dead can harm you horribly.'
Laughter. Laughter all around. By the time Macbeth walked into the room behind the Post Office the sense of there being something deeply wrong at this rain-beaten village – everybody seems to be on edge tonight – had become so real it was starting to affect the air; the atmosphere itself seemed thin and worn and stretched tight like plastic film, and faces were pressed up against it trying to breathe.
Two faces. One chubby and female that ought to have looked healthy and a small, male face under a brown fringe, a face out of Wind in the Willows or somesuch.
Both faces pressed up against the tight air of a small and crowded room full of flower pictures, flower fabrics and flowers.
Macbeth finding it hard to introduce himself. 'I, uh…' Harder still to explain what he was doing here. 'Mrs Castle – Lottie, right? – thought maybe you could tell me where I could find a… a friend of mine.'
'Aye,' the little guy said. 'Look, can I ask you, how close were you to Moira, lad?' A slow, kindly voice, but Macbeth felt the damp behind it.
'I guess I'd like to be closer,' he said frankly.
Rain from his black slicker dripping to the floral carpet.
Rain making deltas on the window and small pools on the sill.
Rain coming down the chimney and fizzing on the coal fire.
And yet all the flowers in the room – on the walls, in the pictures, on the woman's dress – contriving to look parched and dead.
The woman said bleakly 'Since Willie spoke to Lottie we've had a phone call.'
'Moira?'
The woman's wise eyes were heavy with a controlled kind of sorrow.
A hammer inside Macbeths head beat out no, no, no.
'Sit down, lad,' the little mousy guy said, pulling a chair out from under a gate-legged mahogany dining table. On the table was a bottle of whisky, it's seal newly broken; beside it, two glasses. 'Well, of course I don't believe in it, you see, Chrissie. I never have. All right, maybe it's not a question of not believing. I mean, is there a name for a person who just simply doesn't want to know?'
