‘I suppose so’
After London, the quiet of the country was almost tangible. ‘You know, Frances, I often wonder if we could get back together.’
‘So do I, Charles.’ She sighed. ‘But if it did happen, there are certain things I would demand.’
‘You could have truth. I’ve always tried to be truthful to you, Frances.’
‘And what about that other recurrent word. . responsible?’
‘Hmm.’
‘There’s still the matter of other women.’
‘Oh, there aren’t many of those now. Never have really been many who counted.’
‘No?’
‘No.’ He sighed. ‘Hasn’t been anyone for months, really, Frances. I don’t seem to feel the same urge to wander that I used to.’
‘All right, Charles,’ asked Frances softly, ‘when was the last one?’
Oh dear. He had genuinely forgotten about Dottie Banks until that moment. And he had promised Frances that he would always be truthful. ‘Well, last night, actually. But she didn’t mean anything.’
Charles spent the night in the single bed.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It must have taken a while from Taunton, Charles thought, as Frances drove them in the yellow Renault S along the route Lesley-Jane had described. How they ever found time to get there during Peter Hickton’s intensive rehearsals, he could not imagine.
But then he remembered that Lesley-Jane and Alex had both been in the company before work on
He glanced sideways at Frances. He thought it might be some time before he was looking for a love-nest again with her. His wife’s face was rigidly set, not with anger, which would have been easier to manage, but with hurt, which was almost impossible.
Damn Dottie Banks. And damn all the other Dottie Bankses in his life — all the quick irrelevant lays, who had a nasty habit of suddenly becoming relevant when he was with Frances.
Still, Dottie Banks had given him more than most of the others. She had sent him on the way to solving the mystery of her husband’s murder.
‘Not far along here,’ he said. ‘The North Molton road out of Withypool.’
‘What are you expecting to find, Charles?’
‘I don’t know. I just hope it isn’t another corpse.’
They drew up beside the stone-pillared farm gate which Lesley-Jane had described. Charles got out of the car. It was very muddy underfoot. Damn, he didn’t have any boots. Hardly surprising. He hadn’t expected a trip down to his daughter’s for lunch to end up in the middle of Exmoor.
‘Do I come too?’ asked Frances. She looked a little less resentful than earlier, and — dare he hope it? — even slightly anxious for him.
‘No, love. Stay in the car, if you don’t mind.’
‘All right. I have a book.’
‘What are you reading?’
‘
‘Oh well, that should keep you going for a little while.’
‘You bet.’
‘Funny, I find I’m rereading more books now. Going through my old favourites. Must be entering the last lap.’
‘Don’t be morbid, Charles.’
‘No.’ He outlined a tussock with the toe of his shoe. Now he was so close to a possible solution, he felt the urge to linger. It wasn’t exactly that he was afraid; he just didn’t want to leave Frances.
‘Off you go then.’
‘Yes. Yes. .’ He turned away and started trudging through the wet grass in the direction Lesley-Jane had specified.
The landscape was very empty. Charles could see why it had appealed to Alex Household. Humankind and human structures seemed a long way away. The hills rolled and folded into each other, hiding little patches of dead ground. The tall, tough grass that covered them ruffled and flattened with the wind, like a cat’s fur being stroked. Disgruntled sheep with strange dye markings cropped away at the grass, glowering at Charles as he passed. Anyone who wanted to feel at one with the earth, to shed the twentieth century and all its trappings, might think that here he had achieved his ambition.
No doubt in the summer, the area would be spotted with ardently rucksacked walkers, but it was now early November, and the recent rain and cold would have deterred all but the most perverse. Given shelter, someone might pass undetected in this landscape for some time.
But he’d need a lot of shelter to survive. The cold wind scoured Charles’s face and whipped his sodden trousers against his legs. He wished he had brought his overcoat.
He looked round, but the undulations seemed to have shifted, rolled into a new formation. He could not see the distinctive yellow of Frances’s car. Still, there was a little stream just beyond the mound to his left. That would give him his bearings again.
He reached the top of the mound and looked down. The stream, like the hills, had moved. He now had no idea where he was.
He looked at his watch. Eleven-twenty. He had to be at the Variety Theatre in Macklin Street at seven-thirty that night for another performance of
The sky was dull, with a foreboding of rain. He set off briskly in what might be the right direction, but found it difficult to get up any speed over the snagging grass.
He changed his mind, and set off in another right direction, but this offered only more hills. Over each new brow, more hills.
He tried another way, now slightly sweating from anxiety. He didn’t care what he found, the car, the stream, or the hut that was the purpose of his visit. Anything that would give him his bearings again. He listened out for the trickle of water, but the wind offered nothing but rustling grass, now very loud in his ears.
Another hill-top gave on to more hills. He turned randomly at right angles, and set off at a lolloping run. His foot caught in the grass, and he sprawled headlong.
He picked himself up and breasted another mound.
Thank God. In the crease of the hills beneath him, in a channel of rushes dark like body-hair against the brightness of the grass, was the stream.
And at the bottom of the dip stood a small stone hut with a broken-backed roof.
He followed the stream down towards it. Presumably once the building had been a shepherd’s hut, even his home perhaps, but it was long derelict. The thatch of what remained of the subsided roof was streaked with the dark green of lichen.
It was a dank and unwholesome spot.
And yet he could see how different it must have looked in the summer, how it would have appealed to Alex at the beginning of his supposed new start, and to Lesley-Jane in the throes of her first grown-up affair. It had what all lovers seek, secrecy, privacy, exclusivity. Charles could picture the smugness with which Alex Household would have sat in such a sanctuary and discussed the frenetic activities of the Taunton company. It was a place that offered a kind of peace.
Along the stream pale grey rocks stood exposed. Charles picked his way between them, sometimes having to clamber up, sometimes jumping from one to the other across the water.
