pattered on the windscreen, beaten away by the wipers, the Professor saw that the crowd had broken and now meandered away towards the houses and the lights across the stream. Off the lane, in the ruined village, the Cherokee swerved to avoid a rusted and burned-out car, and then again to go past a collapsed farm cart; it was only when they were on the metal led road, going towards Glina and the Sisak crossing point through the front line, that the Professor asked the Canadian for the loan of the light. He opened the money bag. He took out an empty purse and a single sodden traveller's cheque to the value of twenty US dollars, and the passport. He squinted tired eyes at the passport, at the nationality and the name. He took his handkerchief and wiped the discoloured photograph. He wondered what she had been doing there, caught in a shit little war in a shit little corner of Europe. The engines were cut. There was a moment of quiet, before the scuffled stampede as the passengers surged for the cabin door. She sat three rows from the far end of the cabin. She stayed in her seat as it had been suggested to her that she should. She was tall, did not fit easily into the tourist accommodation but the senior purser on the flight had, in kindness, arranged that neither of the seats beside her should be taken. She had the look and the elegance of a woman who was used to being noticed, as she had been by the other passengers, dark hair well cut and short, careful cosmetics, a string of pearls at her throat that were real, and confident dress. She wore a titian-coloured blouse and a deep-green skirt that had the length to cover her bent knees and its hem was over the upper part of her well-shined boots. Several of the salesmen on the flight, those who had been away from home the longest, had looked at her, wondered what her business had been in that dismal city they were so relieved to be gone from. The cabin was clearing, the canned music was now supreme, but she seemed not to hear the forced cheerfulness of the Viennese waltz that drove her fellow passengers towards the immigration desks and the baggage carousel and the Customs quiz. She ignored the movement around her, she leafed the pages of Vogue magazine. A small man, one of the last to go, bulged his stomach near to the diamond stud in her ear as he reached to lift down a shopping bag from the compartment above her head, and when he breathed an apology she seemed not to hear him. She gave the appearance of being quite engrossed in the colour advertisements that her eyes flitted over. She was a sham. The purser thought she was just brave. She was still turning the pages of the magazine when the hostess came up the empty aisle of the cabin. The cleaners were following, whistling and laughing and grabbing paper debris from the floor and from the backs of the vacated seats. She smiled up at the hostess and began to collect her possessions that were discarded over the empty seats beside her. A handbag, an overnight grip, a raincoat, a packet of cigarettes and a slim gold lighter, a spectacle case, and a patterned headscarf, and a single red rose of which the bloom was not quite opened and the stem was wrapped in tinfoil. She craned forward and looked through the porthole window and saw the low grey cloud and the puddles on the tarmac and made a small joke about the weather. The hostess offered a hand in help and her eyes showed her sympathy. Again the smile, as if the concern of the hostess were quite unnecessary, out of place and not required, and she stood and shrugged into her raincoat. She looked behind her, once and briefly, to make sure she had left nothing. She laid the scarf over her head, then loosely knotted it under her chin. She had the rose. It was a small gesture, but she laid her hand quickly on the hostess's sun-coloured arm, to show her gratitude. She could cope, no problem, but the concern was appreciated.
She was led by the hostess down the length of the aisle to the cabin door.
The pilot, coming from the cockpit, ducked his head to her in embarrassment.
The purser shook her hand, said something into his chest that she could not understand, but she smiled back at him warmly, the sham smile.
There was an official from the Airport Authority at the hatch of the aircraft. She thought that he had probably done it before. He had no smile for her and no handshake, and no anodyne small talk. He took her grip bag. He unlocked an outside door at the start of the extended tunnel from the aircraft and gestured that she should follow him. The rain and the wind caught her, trapped her skirt against her thighs and billowed her raincoat. She followed him down the steep staircase, skipping the last step onto the apron. The handlers had already started to unload the baggage from the cargo hatch, and they took the suitcases and string-tied cardboard boxes from the hatch and threw them carelessly onto the open trailer. There was a young woman from Customs edging towards her, unsure, and pushing the documentation under her nose. She signed with the pen she was offered and the ink ran as the rain dripped on the paper. Two men in black suits, the one working his jaw round spent chewing gum and the other cradling in the palm of his hand a dead briar pipe, waited statuejstill beside the hearse. There were no more suitcases, no more cardboard boxes coming from the hatch. The men from the hearse moved forward as if to a signal. She heard the noise of the scraping from inside the cargo hold.
The coffin was of grey sheet metal and it was heavy and awkward to manoeuvre in the confined space.
The pipe was pocketed, the chewing gum was spat out.
The coffin was lifted clear. She stepped forward. She laid the single rose on the coffin's lid beside the documentation that was fastened to it with adhesive tape. The wind seemed to come fiercer off the tarmac and she walked beside the coffin with her fingers steadying the rose until they were sheltered by the length of the hearse. The back door closed on the coffin and she could see her rose through the rain-blurred windows. It was driven away.
Was she being met? No, she had her own car… Did she need a lift? Yes, that would be very kind, to the long-stay car park…
Mary Braddock had brought her daughter, her Dorrie, home.
'I said we could go out and get something in a pub. I said I'd have a go at knocking something up. She wouldn't hear of it. Said something about being too tired to go out, and something about me needing a proper meal. She was into her kitchen and putting it all together.'
'She's so strong, she's a grand woman.'
'Sorry, Arnold, but it's a facade. It was all over her face, she'd been weeping, the poor darling, all the way home. I couldn't go with her, you see. Well, you know that… The contract is eleven million sterling, it's got to be in day after tomorrow. She said, anyway, quite definite, that she was going and going alone. Damn the little bitch… I married Mary, not her bloody daughter… You'll have another?'
Charles Braddock's hideaway, what he called his 'snug', was at the bottom right corner of the acre of garden behind the Manor House. The Manor House, Elizabethan brick and good timber, was hidden from them except for the tall chimneys by a succession of screens provided by the old azaleas and rhododendrons, and a yew hedge, and the wooden frame that supported honeysuckle and climbing roses, and the flint stone wall of the vegetable garden. Under the big bare branches of the oak and beech trees that separated the garden from a farmer's fields, he had designed, then built, the wooden hut that was his hideaway.
There was power in the hut for a small fridge, and space for a small cabinet. He came to his 'snug' to read, meditate on problems at work, sleep through weekend summer afternoons, and curse. Alongside the hut was the boundary fence to his neighbour's smaller garden, and set in the fence alongside the cage for compost and grass cuttings was a stout stile that provided his neighbour access to the ice and Scotch and gin. It was the way of things that when Arnold climbed heavily over the stile and took the offered plastic cup Charles Braddock would do much, most, of the talking.
'She wasn't easy…'
'God, and that classifies as understatement. She was hopeless, impossible…'
'And dead, Charles.'
'Are you going to read me the lecture? Mustn't speak ill, that sort of stuff? If she hadn't been Mary's girl I tell you what, I would have said 'bloody good riddance'. I would have said…'
'Best you don't, Charles. Not many medals to be won there. I think we all know what sort of young person was Dorrie. Thank you…'
Charles Braddock passed the refilled plastic cup. It was always plastic cups that were used in the 'snug', no washing up afterwards, and a bin bag in the corner for the throwaways. He valued Arnold. He thought of him as sensible and logical and calm. Probably, he used Arnold. Senior partner in the practice, major architectural projects, country-hopping for business, taking home before tax a minimum of 300,000 a year, he found from Arnold a patience and an understanding. God, the man knew just about every secret in the life of Charles Braddock and his second wife, Mary… But then Arnold was good with secrets.
And it was secrets that paid him a salary considerably less than fifteen per cent of Charles's gross. They talked about Charles's work, interminably, and about Charles's domestic scene, often. Charles knew the exact nature of Arnold's job, and it was off limits and his family was not mentioned. They stood in the front of the hut, huddled in their overcoats straight from the day's work in London and the 6.17 train from the capital. Charles knew
