The Honours (20 page)

CHAPTER 15

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

July 1935

S
he had been tracking the mother and children for almost half an hour.

Delphine lay in the amaranth bed with her shotgun. Heavy fuchsia tassels hung either side of her head.

The bitch stoat shuffled in the long, dry grass, a sleeve of caramel. Behind it, half a dozen kits hopped, gnashed and boxed clumsily.

Delphine looked at the mother through freshly blacked gun sights. She adjusted for gravity, imagining she was a sniper, pretending it was other than a dreadfully unsporting shot.

But the point – as Mr Garforth had always insisted – was not to show off one's gunplay. The point was simple extermination. Whether by shotgun or snare or shovelhead or gin trap or the introduction of a larger predator, all that counted was death.

The bitch stoat rose up onto its hindquarters, bucked and sprang into the air. Grass splashed as it landed. It rose again, undulating crazily. Delphine glanced over at the kits; they were mimicking their mother, tilting up onto their back legs, fainting like duchesses. She thought of Lewis and Maxim. She thought of Vicky. Her trigger finger tingled. She granted a five-second stay of execution. Another.

She did not notice the rabbit until it was yards away. It lingered, apparently intrigued. The bitch stoat writhed, ecstatic. The rabbit blinked.

The stoat attacked.

The rabbit bolted. The bitch covered the tussocky ground in bright, springing strides. The rabbit bounded towards the treeline, widening the gap, then stupidly, suicidally, swerved left, letting the stoat cut the corner and make up lost ground. The kits looked up from their rough and tumble, vaguely aware that their mother had gone. One trotted a few feet, lost its nerve and returned to its brothers and sisters.

Delphine considered firing. It was certainly a harder shot now, the stoat zipping diagonally across her field of vision, its black tail disappearing behind white sprigs of crow garlic. To shoot would be to grant the rabbit a sudden, celestial reprieve. It would live on, perhaps siring its own children, some of whom would survive to have children in their turn, some of whom would feed the children of predators, whole dynasties rising and collapsing at the twitch of her index finger.

She brought the muzzle round and aimed at the kits. Two were watching their mother; the rest were romping in a listless, perfunctory way. The tendons in her wrist tightened. She pictured the impact, the splatter pattern.

Mr Garforth said a bitch and her kits worked the area round their den systematically, devastating birds and ground game. He said if you disturbed them, they would move, and you rarely got a second chance. Once, on a patrol, he squeaked twice, and when a stoat popped out of an old mole run he blew its head off.

The bitch stoat accelerated up a hump and launched itself, catching the grey rolls of the rabbit's throat in its teeth. The rabbit made a noise like a baby crying. The stoat gnawed and kicked. Slowing to a lollop, the rabbit shrieked then lay down and closed its eyes. The stoat straddled the fat, hot body, massaging the rabbit's head with its forepaws, shh, shh. There was no blood. The stoat wriggled for a while, then fell still.

Delphine felt her lungs pushing against the soil. As she squinted through the dark nick of the sight, she wondered if her own life fell within the crosshairs of some looming, silent creator, and, if so, whether He would shoot.

The bitch stoat snapped its head up, then squeaked and ran to its kits, leaving the dead rabbit behind. In one lithe brown mass the stoats threaded through the grass and into their den, in the shade of an ash.

Delphine blinked, surprised. Stoats were tenacious little beasts, reluctant to abandon good grub without stashing it – bravery was their downfall, really, made them easy to lure into traps, easy to shoot.

Something was coming.

She heard a swish. Dr Lansley came striding through the tall grass, swiping a stick back and forth with gusto. His back had a pronounced concavity that became especially noticeable when he walked; he looked as if he were marching against a strong wind.

She shrank into the amaranth. Through purple columns, she watched Lansley cross the scrub. He stopped, prodded the rabbit carcass with his stick. His tongue came out, triangular, purple. He blenched, moustache curling like a leech put to a candle. Delphine held the gun to her chest. Her heart pumped softly against the barrels.

Dr Lansley glanced around. For an instant, he was looking straight at her –
through
her, she realised – then he continued, adjusting his course towards the old orchard. She waited till he had his back to her then dropped onto all-fours and began to crawl after him, following the amaranth bed to where it met the hedge.

Lansley tugged at his lapels and hoisted himself over the stile. She counted to ten. She peeped over the hedge.

The orchard was a sea of low, sprawling apple trees in knee-high grass. A narrow, flattened path meandered towards a dry-stone wall at the far end, in which was set an arch and a wooden gate. Lansley's stroll became increasingly vigorous – he thrust his stick at trees or the cottony heads of thistles, as if naming them. He stopped, turned round.

Delphine ducked. She did not think he had seen her. She listened. The day was slow and windless. Even the birdsong had a washed-out quality.

She put down the shotgun and pushed her way into the hedge.
A branch snagged her stupid, dowdy box-pleated skirt; she went to grab it and the branch snapped with a firecracker report. She froze.

When she dared move again, she found a gap in the foliage. Peeling leaves aside, she peered through.

Lansley was smoking a cigarillo, oblivious. They were his latest affectation. One elbow rested on the head of his stick and his gloved hands worked back and forth over each other in an odd, compulsive washing motion. He glanced about the orchard, then down at his gloves. Delphine relaxed her fingers, letting a few leaves swing back into place, and watched through the gaps. Lansley took out a cigarillo tin, opened it; the lid flashed in the sun. He tucked the tin back into his breast pocket and patted it; his hand remained on his chest for some time. He scanned the orchard once more, then continued towards the gate in the distance.

He was heading for the chapel. He had to be.

She reversed out of the hedge, almost toppling onto her backside, and picked up the gun. In the scrub, the mother stoat and its kits were back around the dead rabbit, nibbling, stripping. Beneath their pelts, muscles flowed like water.

Delphine took the wide route around the orchard, following a dry streambed down past dense-packed silver birches, her shoes kicking up clumps of mud. The rows of birches scrolled by at different speeds, gaps opening and closing as she moved. She paused, scooped a clod of sandy soil out of the bank and smeared it laterally across her cheekbones. The book
^*
said camouflage worked by breaking up the lines of the face. The dirt felt cool.

The chapel was a small, boxy building of grey stone. It was surrounded by a low wall. Delphine approached from the rear. Long-term servants of Alderberen Hall were buried here. There were a few simple graves, the grass round them recently cut, and a white marble sarcophagus guarded by four winged cherubs, inscribed with the name
Rutherford Cox
. Mr Garforth had his plot reserved; he had shown her the exact rectangle of earth, tracing its limits with the tip of his cane.

‘Once I pass,' he had said, ‘this slice of land will be mine for all time.'

Today, a single stem of larkspur grew just beyond the border, trembling with flowers that went from mauve to a deep sunset blue. She looked at it and felt a tugging that was close to grief.

On the corners of the chapel, alternate cornerstones jutted out like vertebrae. It was a short, easy climb, but it required both hands. She broke the shotgun, took out the cartridges, and slotted it into the slipcase she had borrowed from the gun room. Slinging the case over her shoulder, she vaulted the wall, ran to the foot of the chapel and began to climb.

The stonework was warm from the sun. From nearby came the
kek kek kek
of a sparrowhawk. When she reached the roof, she put her hands out, steadied herself. Set into a carapace of moss-tinged slates was a little dormer window, its shutters slumped and shattered. Edging along a thin strip of mortar between the roof and the gutter, she stopped in front of the window and lowered herself through.

The sounds of the orchard faded. She was in a cramped loft, two-thirds of which was taken up by a wooden dome, its rafters and supports. This was the void, the gap behind the chapel's elegant domed ceiling. The air was cooler than outside; she smelt old wood and a musty, salty scent that might have been damp stone or bird muck. She pulled the shotgun from its case and used the muzzle to tear through cobwebs.

Parts of the dome had rotted away. Delphine crouched and put her eye to one of the thumb-sized holes.

Below, she saw Lansley standing at the altar. Behind him, beneath a gothic arch, was the war memorial, covered in names of estate workers and men from Pigg who had died nobbling Germans. One name loomed above the others, edged with intricate gold leaf scrollwork:
Arthur Stokeham
. Lansley took out a cigarillo, seemed to think better of it, tucked it away. On the altar, the stub of a candle sat in a tarnished tin holder. A tapestry hung down the front, showing a bull and a sword and a pool. Lansley exhaled, and the hiss of his breath filled the space, seemed to roar.

He reached beneath his jacket and took out his watch. He flipped it open with practised efficiency, lifted it right up to his face.

Delphine breathed through the corners of her mouth. A rafter was digging into her shins.

Lansley produced a handkerchief and wiped sweat from around his jowls. He smoothed gloved thumb and forefinger over his little moustache again and again, checking his reflection in the lid of his pocket watch. He gripped his lapels, stood with his thumbs out, gazing down the aisle like a shipyard owner posing for a photograph. He sat down in one of the pews. He stood, turned away from the door, worried at a piece of dirt on his cuff and glanced back over his shoulder.

He kept wincing, as if chewing on an ice cube, then he would relax his face before putting on a smile, a frown, a half-smile. He looked as if he did not quite know how to be human, as if he were practising the various emotions. He took out his pocket watch for the umpteenth time and blinked at it. The chapel echoed with the clack of the latch lifting.

Lansley put away the watch, straightened his back, lifted his chin, winced again, turned so he was facing the entrance side-on, became absorbed in one of the stained-glass windows.

Delphine heard the door open. Dr Lansley's features shifted beneath the new light source; a shadow fell across the altar.

‘You came,' he said.

The sound of slow footsteps on stone floor. The door shrieked shut and slammed with a boom.

Lansley's lips were parted. From this angle, she could see a star-shaped bald patch left by his aggressive combing. In the light of the stained glass, it burned.

The footsteps stopped. Lansley glanced about him, as if he had lost something. Delphine still could not see who had entered. Lansley took a deep breath.

‘Hello,' he said.

He and Delphine waited for a reply. Delphine gripped her shotgun, pressing the barrels to her cheek. This was it. This was the moment.

Footsteps, faster. Lansley looked shocked – he stepped back. A figure
marched down the aisle, marched right up to him, and stopped. She was half a head shorter than him. She was wrapped in a tan shawl. She let the shawl fall away. She and Lansley were almost touching.

He raised his hands slowly, as if it were a bank robbery. Neither he nor the woman said anything. He was breathing, and looking at her. His hands sank.

The woman touched her brown hair, sunlight silvering individual filaments. She grabbed the back of Lansley's head, pulled him forward and kissed him.

And by ‘she', that is to say – as Delphine saw clearly now – Mother.

Delphine squeezed the trigger.

A loud unbroken tone, like a death ray. Delphine opened her eyes and saw clouds of roiling dust. She was on her back. The air hung thick with the maple-bacon tang of gunpowder. She pulled the neck of her cotton vest up over her mouth, took a breath. Her lips tasted salty wet. She lifted her vest away and saw a bloody crocus. All she could hear was ringing.

She sat up, felt a sharp pain beneath her ribs. The world felt distant and unreal. She groped through a yellow fog until she found the shotgun. There was a new hole in the chapel dome. Her hands were bloody. She crawled to the window and back out onto the roof, not caring if she was seen, not caring if she fell.

The sun hurt her eyes. All birdsong was submerged beneath the single, constant note filling her ears. She was vaguely aware of two figures running pell-mell towards the orchard.

The shotgun slipped from her slick fingers and she let it fall; it landed in the graveyard with a clatter. She walked back along the guttering, climbed down the wall and jumped the last ten feet. The impact thudded through her heels and made her teeth slam together. Colours seemed too bright – the grass was a garish, roaring green, her grubby fingers bright pink against it.

She grabbed the shotgun and ran.

Delphine squatted in the lee of a haystack, rocking. Her heart was a bundle of sticks.

Lansley kissing Mother. Why hadn't Mother resisted him? She had seemed so unnatural, so
compelled
.

Delphine tried for tears, but none came. There was just an icy, hollow feeling.

She took out the box of Swan Vestas she always carried with her now, and struck one. She watched it burn down till it reached her fingers. She let the pain grow to a fine white point. When she dropped the match, her mind felt clear. She lit another and let it burn down. She took a piece of hay from the ground and lit one end. It shrivelled and blackened in moments. She made a little heap, pulling hay from the stack, and set it on fire. She held her hand over the flames, close enough so the heat tightened her thoughts like a winch.