The Crow Trap (10 page)

Anne had been asked by a number of people in the village if she would attend. They seemed to feel she would have some influence in the decision-making process. Perhaps this was because she had a reputation for being lippy and standing up for herself. Perhaps it had something to do with her uncanny resemblance to Camilla Parker-Bowles. The similarity was so striking that occasionally there were rumours that she was indeed the prince’s lover, incognito. Of course the idea was ridiculous. She had lived at Langholme Priory with her husband since they were married. Anne herself had always been irritated by the comparison. She could give Camilla almost ten years.

She attended the meeting, not to please her acquaintances in the village, but out of self-interest. What she loved most about the Priory was the garden and the view over the Black Law Valley. That was where the proposed quarry would be. She saw from the beginning that what was planned was essentially an industrial development. There would be new roads, arc lights, the constant sound of machinery. The noise alone would madden her. Then there was the effect on the garden.

She imagined a fine silt of lime dust settling over her plants and her flowers, her raspberry canes and her vegetables, killing them slowly despite her efforts.

She tried to persuade Jeremy to go with her to the meeting. “Think what it’ll do to the value of the house,” she said. But Jeremy had decided that he had an important meeting in London so she went alone.

She sat in the front seat in the body of the hall. Although she arrived late, a chair had been left free for her because it was expected that she would speak for everyone.

The meeting was chaired by a local councillor, a solicitor from Kimmerston. Anne recognized him and gave a little wave. He ignored her and she thought his wife was probably there, sitting at the back.

From the start he pushed the line that any industrial development would be good for the area because jobs were so urgently needed.

“We are losing our young people,” he announced.

Pompous prat, she thought.

She could tell from the beginning that he was trying to win the meeting, while appearing to remain impartial by mentioning vague environmental objections. At last she couldn’t stand it any longer.

She had come prepared. She raised her hand, a diffident gesture, and stood up, smiling sweetly.

“I wonder if I might put a question to the Chair?”

Councillor Benn looked nervous, but he could hardly refuse.

“Could you tell me where you live, Councillor Benn?”

He stuttered before replying, “I don’t think that has much bearing on this case.”

Anne looked at him. He was balding, slightly shortsighted. She thought it was just as well that he specialized in property and employment law. He would be torn apart in a criminal court.

“All the same. Humour me.” She turned slightly to face the crowd for a moment. She had always known how to play a crowd. There was a murmur of expectation. He stared back at the hall, blinking.

“I live in a village on the south side of Kimmerston. But just because I’m not local … “

“The village of Holystone?”

“I’m not sure what my personal details have to do with the matter in hand.” And he was so stupid that he really couldn’t see. Anne felt a brief moment of conscience because he was such an easy target, but she was enjoying herself too much to stop now.

“Could I just quote from a passage in the Kimmerston Gazette dated July twenty-first? The headline is: HOLYSTONE RESIDENTS RISE IN PROTEST.

The article is about a planning application for an open cast mine by British Coal Contractors. Could I ask you if you remember that application, Mr. Benn? It was made two years ago.” He continued to stare into the audience. Panic seemed to make him incapable of rational thought. His mouth opened, fish-like, but no words came out. She persisted, ruthlessly.

“Tell me, Mr. Benn, weren’t you vice chair of an organization known as HAVOC the Holystone Association Versus Open Cast Mining?”

This pushed him at last into coherent speech. He blustered, “Really, I can’t allow any individual to take over the meeting in this way.”

“I have proof,” she said gaily. “There are letters from HAVOC which bear your signature to local supporters. I don’t think you can deny it. And it seems very bizarre to me, Mr. Benn, that you are so concerned to provide work for the youth of our community through the development of the quarry, yet so reluctant to give the same benefit to your own. I’m sure the open cast mine would have provided work too.”

She sat down. Behind her there was cheering and clapping and a couple of catcalls. It served Derek Benn right. If he’d been more even-handed in his chairing of the meeting she’d never have brought up that business of HAVOC. He hadn’t given a toss about the open cast mine, hadn’t even attended most of the meetings. His involvement with the group had provided an alibi, an excuse to be out of the house when he was meeting her. Good God, she thought, whatever did I see in him?

After the meeting a group of protesters went to the pub to discuss strategy. It was midsummer and still light. Anne would have preferred to be in her garden, but she followed them across the road to the Ridley Arms. Living at the Priory had given her a certain, ambiguous status within the village. A responsibility. She wasn’t in the same league as the Fulwells at Holme Park. They wouldn’t be expected to participate in village events, except occasionally to open the church Summer Fayre. All the same she had a standing.

They’d invited her to be St. Mary’s churchwarden, for example, although she hardly ever attended church. The job seemed to go with the house. They’d thought her a stuck-up cow for refusing.

Inside the pub it was noisy and chaotic and very quickly she was forced to take charge. Some of them wanted to organize a petition. She talked them out of it. “Look,” she said, “Planners don’t take much notice of petitions. They get them all the time. They know people sign bits of paper without reading them properly or because they don’t like to say no. You should organize individual letters of protest.

They carry more weight.”

When she sat down Sandy Baines, who had the garage, asked shyly if she’d like a drink.

“I’d have thought this quarry would be in your interest,” she said.

“The lorries would have to fill up somewhere, wouldn’t they?”

It seemed that this idea hadn’t occurred to him and she saw with amusement that as soon as he delivered her G&T, he disappeared. He had been caught up in the village’s general suspicion of change and strangers. She doubted if even self-interest would make a difference to that.

She was approached next by the small man, whose name she could never remember, who lived in the modern ugly bungalow on the way into the village.

“Look,” he said. “A few of us have been talking. We’d like you to sit on our action committee. Speak for us, like.”

He had a head the shape of a sheep’s and white woolly hair. She fancied the ” came out as a ”. She seemed to remember now that he had once been a butcher. She declined graciously. Despite her support for the project and enjoying a fight, she knew she’d soon be bored with it. Bored at least with them. She finished her drink and stood up to go.

“My husband will be wondering where I am.” Though she knew that even if Jeremy were at home he wouldn’t give a shit.

Outside the pub she stood for a minute enjoying the last of the birdsong. Someone had been cooking a barbecue. She realized she was hungry and almost turned back into the pub because although Milly was a crappy landlady who understood sod-all about customer service, as Anne was some sort of heroine, she would at least have to come up with a plate of sandwiches.

Then a sleek, black car pulled up in front of her, moving out of the shadows with hardly a sound. The window was lowered with a purr. She saw Godfrey Waugh and knew then that he must have been waiting for her.

“Mrs. Preece,” he said, as though he had arrived there quite by chance. “I wonder if I might offer you a lift.”

She had recognized him at once as the owner of the quarry company. She had seen him on the platform during the meeting. He had been introduced though he had hardly spoken. When she had looked at him from the audience, stiff and uncomfortable in his subdued suit and highly polished shoes, he had reminded her of an interview candidate trying too hard to please.

“I have my own car, thank you.”

A grotty little Fiat. When she married Jeremy she had assumed there was money in the background. It hadn’t quite worked out that way.

“I would very much like to speak to you. Have you eaten? Perhaps I could buy you dinner.” He was diffident, a bit like the old men in the pub.

“I’m not bribed that easily.”

“No, of course not!” He took her seriously and was shocked.

She smiled. She might look, in a bad light, like Camilla Parker-Bowles but she knew the effect that smile could have.

“Oh well,” she said. “Why not?” By now it was too dark to do much in the garden and she was curious.

“Would you like to come with me? Or perhaps you would prefer to follow me in your own car? I was thinking of the George.”

Very nice, she thought. The George was an unpretentious hotel in the next village where the chef worked magic with local ingredients.

“No, I’d rather come with you if you don’t mind bringing me back here later.”

Suddenly she didn’t want him to get too close a view of the grotty Fiat. There was something about him which made her feel the need to impress. At the time she thought it was his money.

Chapter Thirteen.

“Tell me about yourself,” she said. She was leaning across the dinner table, her elbows on the white cloth. There was candlelight for which she was grateful. Recently she had noticed fine lines above her upper lip and knew that she could no longer get away with sleeveless dresses.

It wasn’t the George Hotel but another evening, another restaurant.

Godfrey Waugh had called her that morning.

“I thought we should get together again. I found the last meeting very useful. I’d like to hear any suggestions you might have for making the quarry more acceptable to the community.”

But she told him here in the restaurant she would rather discuss him.

“There’s not much to tell,” he said, though she could see he was pleased to be asked. He spoke with a local accent, with a slight stutter. He was very shy. She realized at their first meeting that if it ever came to seduction, it would be down to her. She would have to be the active partner. He might be as old as she was, but there was something awkward and adolescent about him. She had been expecting a brash and vulgar businessman not a boy, and she was touched.

He continued, mumbling so she had to strain to hear him.

“I was brought up in Kimmerston. Failed the eleven-plus and went to the secondary modern. I was never much good at school. Couldn’t see the point really. Not that I mucked about. I just didn’t bother. When I was fifteen I left and went to work in the quarry at Slateburn. It wasn’t much of an operation then, nothing to what it is now. The old man prepared dressed stone for mantelpieces, ornamental walls, headstones, you know the sort of thing. He’d lost interest in it, the business side at least. He liked fiddling with the stone and his chisels but he couldn’t be bothered chasing up unpaid bills. I got a chance to buy in. Making money always appealed to me, even when I was at school.” He smiled at her apologetically. Perhaps he thought she was a woolly-minded environmentalist to whom money didn’t matter.

“That’s it really. We were able to expand. It was as much a matter of luck as anything else. Being in the right place at the right time. You know.” He stopped abruptly. “Look, I shouldn’t be going on so much about myself.” As if it was something he’d read in a magazine.

“Are you married?” she asked, thinking it was probably the advice page in his wife’s magazine that he’d been reading. He wasn’t wearing a ring but she thought he was married. He had the look.

He paused and she was expecting him to lie but he said: “Yes, to Barbara. She doesn’t get out much.”

“What a strange thing to say!” So strange that she pressed him to elaborate but he refused.

“I’m married,” she said at last, stretching extravagantly. “And I get out all the time.”

For some reason the remark seemed to embarrass him. He didn’t answer and stretched over to fill her glass. She’d drunk most of the bottle already. He’d offered to drive.

“Are you local?” he asked. He was very polite as if they’d just met.

“I mean, were you born near here?”

“Quite near.”

She hated going into her background. She’d always considered that her parents were rather horrible little people. Her father had been headmaster of a boys’ prep school. Until she was old enough to go to school herself she was brought up in that atmosphere of petty tyranny and ritual, of competitive games and fake tradition. Her mother lorded it over the other wives and her father lorded it over them all.

“Where did you go to school then? The grammar, I suppose.” She was amused that this business of education seemed to matter so much to him.

She rather despised people with formal qualifications but it seemed to be his way of defining them.