Dead Man Riding (10 page)

‘It's more than that, isn't it? She blames me, doesn't she? Blames me for bringing her here.'

‘No, I'm sure not.'

‘Is it the business with the Old Man, then? She thinks I'm doing the wrong thing?'

‘Not as far as I know.'

‘Then for pity's sake, what
is
it?'

I told him he'd just have to ask her, then stepped out fast to catch up with Midge and Imogen. Five words would have answered all his questions, but I wasn't the one to say them.

Chapter Six

W
E SETTLED IN OVER A WEEKEND OF SUN
and showers and everything was such a change from our protected college life that the holiday feeling couldn't help creeping in, murder or not. Most of the time was spent sorting out sleeping space. Alan had a talk on his own with the Old Man and came back looking strained but with a satisfactory outcome. The stone barn or anything else around the place was ours for as long as we wanted it. Kit asked if he'd minded that we were making our own arrangements.

‘He didn't get a chance,' Alan said. ‘I told him I felt I'd placed you all in an ambiguous situation and this was the best all round. And I told him Meredith and I are going in to see the police on Monday.'

‘How did he take it?'

‘Calmly enough.'

The question of where Imogen, Midge and I were to sleep had been settled too. It turned out that most of the upstairs rooms in the house were unsuitable owing to falling ceilings or being packed with odds and ends but there was a long empty loft above the tack room, looking out over the stable yard. At one time it must have been used for storage because there were rough wooden shelves all round it but there was plenty of space on the bare boards for three pallet beds and good light from three windows once we'd brushed the cobwebs off them. There weren't any spare mattresses in the house, but dozens of clean feed sacks in the fodder room and endless quantities of hay. We found waxed thread in the tack room along with some big curved needles and sat cross-legged on the bare floor, stitching away like tailors. The men sent Nathan as an ambassador from their barn, begging us to sew them mattresses too. We gave him a lesson instead – he was a quick learner – and sent him back uphill loaded with sacks, needles and thread. There was one odd encounter as a result of that. Because we'd given Nathan our needles I volunteered to go downstairs to the tack room to get more. There was a little narrow stairway leading straight down to it from our loft and halfway down I realised that the Old Man was there. He had a bridle on a hook and was fixing a different bit to it, absorbed and looking quite content. When I said good morning from the stairs he turned round unsurprised, as if he'd known I was there all along.

‘Oh, it's the argumentative one, is it? Good morning.'

As opposed to the pretty one and the little one, I supposed. He seemed determined not to learn our names, but otherwise quite friendly. I explained about the needles and asked if we could borrow more.

‘Course you can.' He rummaged in a drawer, found none, started trying to open another drawer. ‘Dulcie's bed not good enough for you then?'

This with a grin over his shoulder at me that seemed to say a lot more than the words. I said politely that it had been kind of Miss Berryman to give up her bed to us for one night, but we couldn't deprive her of it any longer.

‘Mrs Berryman. Not that she cares.'

‘Widowed?'

‘Long time ago. Husband was a Solway fisherman, lost at sea.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘She wasn't. Drank and knocked her about.'

He seemed to be having trouble with the drawer. It was sticking and wouldn't pull out. I went across to help him but he waved me away and kept tugging and swearing at it. When it gave at last it came out with a rush that sent him staggering backwards. The drawer crashed to the tiled floor and a confusion of straps and curb chains and spools of thread scattered all over the place. The Old Man kept his feet but staggered and ended up leaning against the opposite wall. I got on hands and knees to pick things up and it was some time before I realised that there was something wrong. His head was bent over and his breath was coming fast and shallow. I went to him but he waved me away.

‘It's all right. Don't make a fuss, woman. For God's sake don't fuss over me.'

I went back to picking things off the floor, but kept an eye on him. After a while his breathing became more regular. He straightened up and smiled but still looked shaky. ‘Heart misses a beat or two sometimes. Comes back again – anyway, always has so far.'

I only just caught the last few words because they were said under his breath as he turned away from me. He was looking up at his picture of galloping horses and sea waves.

‘Have you seen a doctor?'

‘Bloody waste of money. And don't go gossiping to Alan. I'm not going to let them make an invalid out of me. Understood?'

I didn't promise. When he'd finished looking at the picture he helped me collect up the oddments and we got the drawer back. I thanked him and started back upstairs. When I was halfway up he called after me, ‘That ride – are you still game?'

‘Of course.'

‘Next week, when the moon's full.'

*   *   *

The men showed us their hay mattresses, ranged along one side of the barn with old apple boxes in between for their books and spare clothes. One of the mattresses was at some distance from the others with a pile of hay in between – a defence against Nathan's snoring, they said. They were proud of themselves and had organised a lunchtime picnic on the grass outside – cheese, cold sliced beef, pork pie, bottles of ale for them and tea made in a big kettle they'd borrowed from the kitchen, hanging from a tripod of hazel rods lashed together over a fire made from dead branches they'd collected in the wood. Like most of the practical things, the fire was mostly Nathan's work. He'd even cut out a big square in the grass and rolled up the turves he'd taken from it as neatly as Swiss rolls so that they could be put back later. The flames from the fire were transparent in the sunlight and the smoke smelled sweet. As we ate we discussed the food supply question. The things we had brought with us were running out and we couldn't go on eating up the household's meagre stores. That meant shopping would have to be done in the town and our reception there so far hadn't been encouraging.

‘Alan and Meredith have got to go there on Monday in any case,' Nathan said. ‘If we borrowed the wagonette, we could get a crate of ale and a leg of ham and so on.'

‘And come back at a gallop, chased by a rabble yelling murder and throwing stones?' Kit said. He was managing to eat neatly, one-handed, but from the cautious way he moved, it was clear that the arm was still giving him pain.

Judging by Nathan's expression he seemed to think that was quite a good idea.

I said hastily, ‘It might be a good idea if the three of us went. People are less likely to throw things at women on the whole.'

Surprised looks from Midge and Imogen at that. We'd agreed that we weren't going to let the men cast us as providers of food and washers of dishes. But I had my own reasons for wanting to try the temperature of the town. It seemed to me that we wouldn't get any answers by sitting up there on our hill. Alan's mission to the police was a step in the right direction, but there were certain to be people in the area who knew things the police didn't. It was too much to expect that I'd find out anything to the point on my first visit, but it would be a start at least. As I'd expected, the men took up the idea enthusiastically. They made up a shopping list that was heavy on things like ale, Stilton and Bath Olivers and we all agreed to contribute ten shillings to a pool.

‘Some progress in our little republic,' Meredith said. ‘We now have food and money in common.'

So from that, rather self-consciously, we did what we'd intended to do – we sat on piles of sweet-smelling hay outside the barn and studied Plato's
Republic.
The classicists, Alan, Kit and Imogen, took it in turns to read a passage in the original Greek and translate. After that, we'd discuss it.
As to this justice, can we quite without qualification define it as truthfulness and repayment of anything that we have received?
Even though I couldn't understand more than one word in twenty of the Greek, it was good to lie back on the grass looking up at the sky, hearing words from more than two thousand years ago drifting past like clouds on the breeze. Imogen had a pleasant, low voice, Greek or English, and while she was reading Alan stared at her so intently that she must have been conscious of it, though she gave no sign. Later we carried plates and cups to wash up in a brook that ran out of the wood into a little pool with pebbles at the bottom. I'd been wondering on and off whether I should tell anybody about the Old Man's near collapse. I'd made him no promises but hadn't rushed to tell Alan either. So I compromised by getting Meredith out of earshot of the others, walking along the bank.

‘It looked like heart trouble to me. The strain of all this might be affecting him worse than he pretends. The question is, should Alan know?'

‘In spite of the Old Man not wanting it?'

‘Alan might be able to persuade him to see a doctor,' I said.

‘So we disregard his wishes for his own good?'

‘Plato said you wouldn't give a knife back to a madman, even if it belonged to him and he asked for it.'

‘A reasonable point. I take it you're not arguing literally that the Old Man's mad?'

‘No.'

‘So the question is whether he's such a poor judge of his own best interests that we have to intervene for him.'

‘Yes. We're doing that already with the other thing.'

‘And you're arguing that one intervention justifies another?'

‘No. If anything, the reverse.'

The Old Man had annoyed me but I still liked him enough to want him to keep his dignity. Talking to Meredith, the decision seemed to have made itself.

‘I don't think I'll tell Alan. Not for the time being at least.'

We'd come to the fence where the field met the wood. I turned to stroll back to the others but Meredith hesitated.

‘Miss Bray, there's another thing – rather similar in its way.' He sounded unsure of himself, which wasn't like him.

‘Yes?'

‘Alan. Last night he confided in me. I don't know whether I'm right to be telling you about it or not.' I waited. ‘You remember that conversation we had on the train?'

‘About his being in love? Of course.'

‘He seems to think that he's done something to offend her quite badly but he has no notion what it might be. If that is the case, if there's been some kind of misunderstanding, then it might be useful for him to know.'

I stared down at the stream, visible only in snatches under a tunnel of fern and foxgloves.

‘I don't think he's offended her.'

‘What is it then? Until now he was under the impression that she didn't dislike him at least. I know I've got no right to ask, only…'

I looked up and saw the anxiety in his face. It was gone the instant he realised I was looking at him, but it had been far too sharp to be caused by any anxiety over a pupil. The whole landscape seemed to give a little skip, the way it does when you're adjusting to something new, and I thought ‘Good heavens, he's in love with her too.' It was a jolt, but then why should it be? After all, men did fall in love with Imogen. She'd been sitting there through a whole course of his lectures and she wasn't a woman you could ignore. So it all made perfect sense in its way and there was no reason for this sharp little pain in my chest that felt horribly like envy but couldn't be. I was sorry for them, that was all. Sorry for all of them and perhaps a little angry over this business of love that confused things and made idiots of people and made it so hard to be honest and reasonable however much you'd agreed that men and women should be. Once I got that sorted out I knew I had to give him some kind of answer, if only to stop him hoping.

‘It's for her to say, not me. But you can take it that she certainly doesn't dislike him and he hasn't offended her.'

I could see from his face that he'd taken my meaning, but he recovered quickly.

‘May I tell him that?'

‘I suppose so.' Then, thinking of the stunned way Imogen had been behaving. ‘But could you give me some time to talk to her first over the weekend? You might tell him on Monday perhaps, when you're in town together.'

I hated having to plot like this, but sensed that Imogen was on the edge of a cliff. Whether the way off it was flying, plunging or simply walking back the way she'd come and waiting for another day, she should at least have time to think. He nodded and we went back to the others.

*   *   *

On Sunday the hot weather started and the sky was an almost metallic blue like the body of a dragonfly. We read Plato for a while after a picnic breakfast, then the men found a bathing place lower down the brook, in the big field where the mares were. They came back, wet-haired and pleased with themselves, for more tea and philosophy. Kit said the cold water had been good for his arm and Meredith rebandaged it for him. I lay on the grass, tried to memorise various tenses of the Greek verb
luo
, I loosen, and did my best not to watch Meredith standing in the sunshine, combing his dark hair. He seemed somehow more elegant, more finished than the other three men, even the handsome Alan. It was something to do with the way he moved, under control with no gesture wasted. Or perhaps … Concentrate woman.
Leluka
, I have loosened,
lelukas, leluke.
Should I warn Imogen that he was attracted to her? Probably not. It would only worry her and she had enough to think about, God knows. On the other hand … Damn. Why did people persist in landing me with their dilemmas as if I were some sort of oracle? Being two years older than Imogen shouldn't mean I had nothing to do but sit on the grass and dole out wise counsel – as if I knew anything, particularly about this business of loving or not loving. Why should the curve of a cheek, the colour of a lock of hair, a few inches in height more or less govern who you spent your life with or even what you did with your life? In the middle of the afternoon, with the Scottish hills hazy in the heat, Imogen, Midge and I decided that we'd go bathing too. We walked slowly down our field and into the lane. I noticed Sid grazing quietly in the shade of the trees and told them about the Old Man's picture and lines from Byron.