anonymous. No sexy stuff today; she was in the high-necked black Bench jacket, fully zipped up, jeans and trainers, an old red beret of Mum’s.
This was business. A handful of people had gathered to wait for the second bus. She hadn’t joined them, but stayed within range, looking into the bookshop window where two copies of Mother Julian’s Revelations of Divine Love were displayed. On impulse, she went in and bought one from Amanda Rubens.
‘You’re joining the meditation tomorrow, Jane?’
‘Maybe. Think it’ll work? Into the valley of pain and death? An Easter miracle?’
‘That’ll be?6.99,’ Amanda said.
As Jane left the shop, the book jammed into a jacket pocket, the bus was coming round the corner, the morning sun bursting in its windows. Chariot of fire. Jane felt a certain half-guilty relief and stepped out across the cobbles.
Then a dark grey shadow glided in front.
‘Girlie returns,’ Cornel said from inside the Porsche.
Jane looked up, blinked and then walked slowly over like she didn’t know who this might be but was intrigued. A few people moved around her, some giving her a glance before getting on the bus.
‘Remind me,’ Cornel murmured over his raunchy little engine growl. ‘Do I owe you an apology?’
‘Could be me.’ Going automatically into the voice she’d used on him that night in the Swan. ‘I was, like, a bit pissed?’
‘Very charitable of you,’ Cornel said. ‘But I was a lot pissed.’
He was wearing this kind of dated short chamois-leather blouson jacket over a khaki shirt with camouflage patches on it, and sunglasses. He didn’t look cool, maybe a little sad.
‘Look, do you need a lift?’
‘I was getting the bus into Hereford, actually, but if you want to get a cup of coffee somewhere, you could park on the square?’
‘With you? You’ll miss the bus.’
‘I, like, wanted to ask you something?’
‘I’m not going in the Swan, girlie. Not too popular, you know?’
The bus was up against the Boxter’s back bumper. The driver jerked his thumb.
‘Cornel, you’re, like, blocking the bus stop?’
‘So hop in. Stone me, girlie, it’s a Porsche! Mass-rapists don’t drive cars this conspicuous.’
Jane’s scenario had them on foot or in the back room at the Ox, lots of people around. But she supposed he was right.
Never been in a Porsche before. The passenger seat moulded itself around her. She hardly heard the door close.
‘There you go. That wasn’t too hard, was it? Where we going?’
‘I was going to Hereford,’ Jane said.
‘I could go that way, I suppose.’
Cornel drove off into Old Barn Lane, speeded up. Jane looked over her shoulder at the diminishing square.
‘OK, look,’ she said, ‘I was pissed and you said something about shooting cats. I’ve got a cat.’
‘I didn’t shoot your cat, did I?’
‘Well, no, but…’
‘I was legless.’
Cornel came out of Old Barn Lane, hit the bypass with a satisfying tyre-bounce and shot her a glance.
‘What’s your name, again?’
‘Jane.’
‘And what did you want to ask me?’
‘I…’ She floundered, hadn’t expected things to escalate, was still talking in girlie’s voice. ‘Like… what you said about Paris?’
‘Ah… Paris, France.’
Cornel began to smile, the skin over his face stretched so tight that when he opened his wide mouth it was as if you could see his skull. The sun was behind them now, the fresh countryside opening up all the way to the Black Mountains, but that wasn’t the way they were going, and it didn’t seem to be towards Hereford either. Cornel had the top down now, flooring the Porsche’s accelerator on the bypass.
‘Oh, and I didn’t go out killing sheep and chickens either, OK? Mr Savitch needs the support of all the farmers and landowners he can schmooze.’
Jane looked across at him. Hint of cynicism there, in relation to Savitch?
‘Besides,’ he said, ‘chickens are too easy. Even for me.’
It was like a gift. OK, go for it.
Jane took a breath.
‘They, like, kill one another, anyway, don’t they? Maybe that’s more fun?’ Concentrating on not looking at Cornel, even when she felt the flicker of his glance. ‘Well, cocks, anyway. This time of year.’
Feeling the pull as his foot came off the accelerator. Cornel slowing down very gradually, saying nothing, coming off the bypass at the smallest exit lane, which was just there for the sake of a couple of farms. The road surface was full of potholes from the winter. There was no other traffic. When they hit a straight stretch, Cornel just stopped in the middle of the road.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’
‘Me?’
‘Nicked a sack from a litter bin?’
His lips were stretched, his big chin thrust out. The Porsche’s engine was muttering. She could, of course, get out now if she wanted to. Just climb out and walk off. He could hardly leave his Porsche in the middle of the road. Jane watched him warily.
‘What did you see, Jane?’
‘I… saw you put a sack in a bin. That’s… that’s it. I just… wanted to see what was in it.’
‘And then you took it.’
‘I just wanted to show it to somebody? My grandad?’
‘What for?’
‘He breeds them.’ She had this bit all worked out. ‘And he’s always-’
‘Breeds what?’
‘You know…’
‘I don’t!’
‘Gamecocks!’ Jane backed hard against the car’s door. ‘And like he’s always going on about how great it was in the old days? With all the betting and how they used to feed the cocks special diets and like it wasn’t really cruel because they had a good life, and he… he still breeds them.’
‘What’s he do with them?’
Cornel released the handbrake, let the Porsche creep along the lane like a hunting cat.
‘Well, that’s it,’ Jane said. ‘Nothing. He just breeds them and he’s like, Oh, I wish it was still going on. Like, Oh I’d give anything to put one of my birds in the ring again.’
‘So you told him, did you, where it came from?’
‘No. Like, I told him where I found it but not how it got there. And he had a good look at it, and he’s, like, yeah that’s been fighting.’
‘So what did you see before you took the sack?’
‘What was there to see?’ Could blow it all if he thought she’d listened to him getting humiliated by the Brummy-sounding guy. ‘I’m just coming up Church Street and I seen you toss the sack in the bin and walk off. I was, like, curious?’
‘Curious.’
‘When I seen it, I thought it was, like, one of his? My grandad?’
Inspired. She was cruising. Just don’t sound too glib.
‘So, like, that’s why I took it to him. Thinking maybe somebody shot one of his birds? But it wasn’t one of his.
