Victims

by Richardson,Robert

  Back at the office he had locked himself in a lavatory cubicle, his sweating forehead pressed against cool white porcelain. Giles’ normality had been a new form of torment, an unspoken, smiling contempt at Jowett’s weakness and inability to dismiss guilt as irrelevant. Get a life, Randy. It was forever ago. They’ll never catch us now. The trembling that had suddenly squirmed through his body had taken on the qualities of a trip, simultaneously uncontrollable and opening doors on vivid perception: the only place left to run was to go back. To the farm, to the village that had known them and the people he had hurt. Rational motives were impossible — laying ghosts a cliché, psychological hairshirts an indulgence — but then nothing had been rational since the blood-spattered frenzy of that summer afternoon.

  But Finch was the last place to run to and the only road out of it led nowhere except the perpetual insanity of a life he could neither tolerate nor find the courage to end. He asked for unpaid leave to be added to his holidays — claimed as a need to chill out, to rethink his career schedule. It gave him five weeks from the eighth of June, which would include the anniversary. And all contacts would be closed, no address, mobile phone disconnected. He would step outside his walls and face the creature they guarded him from; the Randall Jowett born screaming and helpless amid gunfire and innocent blood.

  *

  Spring was late in coming, sunlight canopied its remains in haze and heat. May had been the wettest in Britain anyone could remember and the glare of yellow on fields of oil seed rape, candled chestnuts, hawthorn blossom like unmelted patches of snow, dull purple of lilac bushes still lingered. The delayed ripening was rich and lush, landscape moulded into endless hollows and shallow domes, a motionless heaving sea of green. As soon as he had left the main road out of Ipswich the countryside had become deserted; the occasional car, a lone cyclist, hamlets he entered and left without seeing any life, wide fields of silent growing. At one point he took a wrong turning and stopped by an isolated signpost to consult his road atlas, parched air scented with dust and the odour of barley seeping through the car’s open windows; Stoke by Walsham … Ash Sounder … Cheslebrook … A bead of perspiration trickled from his forehead and dripped a stain on to the map … Where was he in this labyrinth of twisting, empty lanes? There … he should have taken the left fork. As he straightened up the desire to find the trunk road again and drive back to London returned, but he forced it away by going over the directions he had been sent ‘Watch out for the Shoulder of Mutton on your left, straight on at the crossroads, then we’re the house with the iron railings at the bottom of the dip. I’ll leave a pint of milk in the fridge at the cottage and you can buy food at the village shop, but I’m afraid it’s rather expensive. Most people use the supermarket at Bury St Edmunds or go into Ipswich. Thank you for your deposit. I hope you have a good journey and enjoy your stay.’ It had been written on a word processor, then signed, the ‘J’ and ‘H’ flamboyant.

  The road sign appeared abruptly as he turned out of a stretch of high trees and hedges: Finch. Twinned with Bad Wildegun. Thousands of Allied aircraft had risen out of the East Anglian plain north of Suffolk to attack the German enemy; now peace meant civic delegations and school exchanges. Was that a form of forgiveness for murder? He caught a glimpse of council houses, bleak grey concrete with crude ears of satellite dishes, three youths standing by mountain bikes, a family sitting outside. But the estate was hidden down a side road, a parasite its host did not wish to absorb. Then he was on The Street, long, straight and house-lined, empty except for a young woman with a pushchair and a boy on a skateboard. The frontages were clapperboard or plain plaster, painted lemon, pink, washed orange, pale lime, the roofline of russet pantiles broken by one patch of blackened thatch … And rising up ahead the square tower of the church where the Godwins had been buried, surrounded by love and grief. What would it be like for him if the truth became known? Within the walls of the prison he would be sent to for the rest of his life, a warder to witness the chaplain granting him token ceremony. Buried in quicklime that would eat his body. Did they still do that? Would someone secretly take a photograph and sell it to the tabloids so that they could write a hate-filled epitaph? ‘JOWETT IS BURIED LIKE A DOG TO ROT.’

  He concentrated on the directions again; the pub, almost the only touch of brick, its outside tables shaded by canvas umbrellas; the crossroads — the church stood on them and he forced his eyes ahead — then the Finch of social status. Individual detached homes behind hedges, double garages, a private tennis court, gardens that glowed with attention, a row of almshouses originally built for the poor and elderly, now redeveloped for young executives who gave to charity after balancing the monthly accounts. This was where the real money was, solid in property and gleaming BMWs, Mercedes and Range Rovers. It reminded him of the area in which he had grown up on the select edge of Bedford: children at boarding school; mannered dinner parties and coffee mornings; flower arrangement classes; voting Conservative; discreet afternoon indiscretions in Strachan Studio bedrooms; the gîte in Brittany; the wine cellar. Of where, after impatient rebellion, he should be himself, a carbon copy of his father, with a wife like his mother, first child asleep in the Lloyd Loom crib beneath Peter Rabbit murals in the pastel nursery. The English middle classes, mocked and envied, sycophantic and condescending, fearful and confident.

  The road dropped suddenly, curving again as the land fell to his right, opposite the house, into a deep, wide bowl of wild-flowered meadow brimming with early-evening sunlight. As he stopped by the gate, he looked across at a poster pinned to an oak tree: a naive drawing of a man in what appeared to be a boar’s head, costumed in tattered scarlet and purple streamers. Vivid green letters announced that the Pegman Pageant would be held on Saturday 29 June, three weeks away.

  Damp with sweat, his shirt peeled off his back as he stepped out of the car and he felt uncomfortable about his appearance: his face flushed and glistening, hair dank, cotton trousers sticky against his thighs, aware that he must stink. Mopping his face with tissues left a feeling of smeared and crusted skin, and attending to his hair laid a glutinous deposit in the comb’s teeth. He walked along the road to a patch of trees and lay in the shade, eyes closed. The village was unrecognizable, no images remaining from that panic-filled race to flee. Giles had been driving by then, and Randall had stared out of the van, everything he saw irrelevant and invisible. This afternoon he hadn’t noticed the farm as he drove in — so where was it? Asking might arouse suspicion, but he would buy a map … Buzzing aggressively a harvesting bee made him move.

  Behind the spearhead railings and the crisp privet hedge that lined them, he could see that money had been planted and cultivated in the garden: a matched pair of tulip trees, rich herbaceous borders, grass shaved smooth. At the foot of six wide steps a small statue of a boy stood in the centre of an ornamental pond, two streams of water flowing like silver drinking straws from the hand at his mouth to form Pan pipes. The house was a mustard-coloured rectangle, four sash windows, upstairs and down, on either side of the central door, frontage decorated with large regular squares embossed with a quatrefoil pattern. A semi-circular conservatory had been added to one end of the house and fir-green wooden barrels filled with marguerites and trailing lobelia stood at the top of the steps. The bell push was set in the middle of an emblematic brass rose.

  ‘Mrs Hetherington?’ She had the classic appearance of someone for whom wealth was an inheritance to be prudently husbanded. She wore jeans, espadrilles and a simple striped cotton shirt, understated make-up; only the hair, attractively styled wheat-coloured curls tumbling almost to her shoulders, revealed wealth.

  ‘That’s right. Mr Jowett? You found us then.’ She had expected an older man, but he could be no more than thirty. He should be taking holidays with a girlfriend … or boyfriend? The slender, hesitant face was sexually ambiguous, skin the colour of pale tea, black hair gleaming and longer than was fashionable. She wondered if he had a Mediterranean ancestor. ‘I’m afraid
I’m going to ask you to drive back to the church and turn right for the cottage. It’s about a quarter of a mile away, just past the old chapel. Look out for the white gate. I’ll meet you there with the key and show you round.’

  ‘Thank you … Can I give you a lift?’

  ‘There’s no need. I can take the short cut across the fields.’

  He was standing by the side fence when she arrived, gazing across to where a long hump of trees lay like a green cloud on the horizon. The boot of the car was open, matching pencil-grey leather suitcases beside it.

  ‘Good journey?’ Standard question, polite enquiry without intrusion.

  ‘Yes, thank you … Is that a farm?’

  ‘Where? Yes. It’s their land behind the cottage.’

  ‘What’s it called?’

  ‘Daylock. My daughter keeps her pony there.’ She hesitated, unsure of a Londoner’s rural awareness. ‘If you like walking you can go almost anywhere as long as you close the gates and are careful not to tread on anything that’s growing.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Oh … anyway, I’ll give you the fifty-pence tour.’

  It had been refined over several years of visitors’ questions and problems. Electricity meter takes pound coins … Instruction book for the washing machine is under the lid … Garden chairs in the shed … Immersion heater comes on at … First rise of the stairs is deeper than the rest, be careful you don’t trip … It faces east-west so the front bedroom catches the morning sun, if you prefer that … I’ll bring fresh towels and sheets each Friday … It’s a summer weight duvet; the heavier one’s in the airing cupboard, but I can’t imagine you’ll need it … A man from the village mows the grass when it needs doing, but he won’t disturb you … There are some local guide books in the sitting room if you want to find places to visit … And the balance? Failing to ask for that at the start had led to arguments in the past.

  ‘Sure … my bag’s downstairs.’ He stood aside to let her precede him, an instinctive rather than acquired gesture from this polite young man with vulnerable and intelligent eyes. And he used a bag … No, that was jumping to conclusions, but was he seeking solace on his own after an affair with one sex or the other? It wasn’t her business. As he filled in the cheque she noticed his hands, graceful as long leaves.

  ‘Thank you.’ She tucked the folded cheque in her shirt pocket. Her natural instinct with new guests was to make casual conversation, but he had an air of reserve which made her tread carefully. ‘I hope you realize how quiet it is here. I’m afraid there’s hardly anything to do.’

  ‘That’s OK … I was looking for that … I’m writing a book.’ It was as though he felt the need to tell her, to explain his arrival.

  ‘Oh, you’re a writer?’

  ‘Not really … I work in a bank.’

  ‘Like T. S. Eliot.’

  ‘Pardon? Oh, yes. I’m not a poet though.’

  You ought to be; you look like one. ‘So what’s it about?’

  He replaced the cheque book in his bag. ‘I’m not certain … A novel.’

  She smiled. ‘I tried that once, but I couldn’t manage the discipline. It was about love, of course. What else is there when you’re twenty-two? It was very self-indulgent … I’m sorry, I didn’t mean …’ Christ, that was gauche.

  ‘Mine won’t be about love.’

  ‘Well, I hope it’s an incredible success so I can have a plaque put on the cottage saying you wrote it here. You might make Finch famous.’ She felt that her presence was unwanted. ‘Anyway, I think that’s everything. Let me know if you have any problems. Just pop a note through the letterbox if I’m out.’

  ‘I don’t think there’ll be anything … Oh, what’s the Pegman Pageant? I saw a notice.’

  ‘The pageant? That’s our big village day. It ends up with a fair on the Pegman meadow — the one opposite our house — and … well, it’s all very local and bucolic. I’m still trying to work out how I let myself be talked into taking part this year. If you come, you’ll see me dressed up as the Lady Marion.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘It’s all part of the legend … It’ll take too long to explain. You’ll find it in one of the books.’ She glanced round the room, making sure there was nothing she had forgotten. ‘Right, you know where everything is and I must get back. Goodbye.’

  He occupied himself with unpacking, hanging clothes in the wardrobe, finding a glass for gin and tonic, which he drank while watching television. It helped him to behave like a normal person would, settling in, exploring, putting the lasagne he had brought in the microwave, opening kitchen cupboards and drawers until he found dinner plates and cutlery. He finished eating and went outside, staring for a long time at clouds like brushed raw cotton, colours being pulled down as though slowly melting into the fires of a furnace. It was utterly quiet. Within a few minutes’ walk lay the bodies of five human beings he had never spoken to but who were more important to him than anyone he had ever known. The thought was too immense to comprehend.

  Later he took a sleeping pill, kept from a prescription years earlier, and only once in the night did a dream-racked cry of distress sound through the open bedroom window. But there was no one to hear.

  Chapter Three

  Silence and silver light filled St Matthews; silence of emptiness and centuries of hushed voices, light of sunbeams, like lowered steel swords, piercing diamond panes of plain clerestory windows, shining on pale grey pillars and walls of whitewashed stone. The heavy oak north door scraped the tufted mat as Joyce opened it and the clock’s half-hour strokes sang muffled from tower to sounding nave. There was money on the pewter plate next to the pamphlets that explained an unremarkable history repeated in countless Suffolk churches, many now more Reformation heritage museums than centres of faith. But Finch, sharing its vicar with three other parishes, maintained a congregation divided between those for whom churchgoing had been a childhood occasion and who wished to preserve some sense of God in a faithless age, those for whom it was a social habit and those who attended because the church had instilled fear in them. Joyce slid the coins through the slot of the small iron box sealed into the wall against petty theft, placed her bag on the table and took out metal polish and duster before turning towards the altar and the brass bits at the holy end; her own ambivalent beliefs could accommodate Larkin’s cynicism.

  Expecting the church to be empty — too early for tourists, wrong time for prayer, which required booking an appointment with God on Sundays — the bowed figure in the front pew startled her; a man, the back of his head sunk low before the intricately carved arches of the rood screen. Her rope-soled sandals had made virtually no sound and she realized he was unaware of her arrival. She hesitated, not wanting to invade his privacy with weekly housekeeping; whoever it was would probably not stay long, and she could wait in the vestry … Then his shoulders rose and fell as he gave a shuddering sigh. Joyce felt embarrassed, unable to decide whether to approach or leave; her Christianity was full of such uncertainties … Then he raised his head and turned, as though her presence had reached him.

  ‘Oh, it’s you … Sorry.’ She held up the gingham duster and canister of spray polish as defensive excuses. ‘I was just going to … It doesn’t matter. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’

  ‘No … Is it all right? The door was unlocked.’

  ‘Of course. We never lock it during the day … There’s nothing worth stealing and … I didn’t realize anyone was here. Stay as long as you want.’ Across the distance between them it was impossible to be certain, but he could have been weeping. ‘I can do this later.’

  ‘But I’m in your way.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, we can’t keep apologizing to each other. Please stay … It’s what the place is for. I’m sorry.’

  She withdrew swiftly, uncomfortable at having found him so distressed, disliking the flicker of irritation that her routine had been interrupted. That was uncharitable … And it would be best if she left the chu
rch completely, not lurked in the vestry as though impelling him to go. Outside she faced a hiatus with nothing to do in the unexpected interval. Sitting on the bench near the door would also suggest impatience if he came out and saw her, so she walked away through the churchyard, still carrying her cleaning materials amid the crumbling gravestones. Perhaps her first instinct about him had been right; an affair had ended, new love or treachery slipping through an unsecured door and destroying happiness. But it felt unusual that a young man should turn to the Church — unless that had been part of his upbringing. Or he could be one of the countless who fled back to promises of comfort long since dismissed as superstition. Should she ask if he wanted to speak to Jeffrey? Or would that be an intrusion, exploiting a chance encounter?

  After quarter of an hour she cautiously returned; if the polishing was not done that morning there would be no opportunity for the rest of the week, leading to mutterings from the Finch Coven; Kathleen Kershaw could spot dulled metal at twenty paces, and it was a matter of pride never to give her ammunition. He knew she had a job to do, so perhaps he had … But he spoke as she was opening the door again.