A Necessary End

by J M Gregson

  But the most impressive item in the room was the floor-to-ceiling bookcase on his left, of which every shelf was crammed with books. Norbury saw him looking at them and said, ‘There are lots of poets there and a whole variety of novels. You must borrow whatever you want, Jamie.’

  It was the first time Alfred had used his first name, the first time he had called him anything. Jamie felt that the relationship was running too fast, moving out of his control. He sat down in the armchair his host indicated, looked down at the canine head which appeared immediately upon his thigh, and said, ‘I don’t know much about dogs. I was quite frightened of him at first.’ He tried to laugh at himself, but didn’t get beyond a sickly smile.

  ‘Oscar’s a golden retriever. They’re very rarely fierce. This one’s a real softy. Daft, but totally harmless. I’m looking after him for a week for a friend. He seems to have taken a shine to you.’

  The dog gazed up at him with wide, guileless brown eyes, as if anxious to reinforce this view. Jamie stroked its soft head cautiously and felt very stupid as he said, ‘Good boy, Oscar.’

  ‘You need a whisky after trekking through the snow. I’ve got a good single malt. Is that all right for you?’

  Jamie Norris signified that it was. He didn’t think he’d ever tasted malt whisky in his life, single or double. He wanted to say that, so that he wouldn’t be a sham, but Alfred Norbury seemed to know and to tolerate everything anyway, without being told. Jamie managed to hold his own when they talked about poetry, or at least to think he did. He was glad when they got on to Seamus Heaney, because he’d bought the selected poems of Heaney when he died. He remembered some of the poems and quite a lot of the introduction, which gave him intelligent things to say about Heaney.

  They seemed to agree about Heaney and about his Irishness and about the need for a united Ireland, wherever the political lines which were drawn. Perhaps Alfred was indulging him, feeding him questions to which he found the answers easy. He’d been worrying about his wellies, which would be leaking their remaining wetness on to the mat by the door, but after a couple more whiskies the world seemed pleasantly warm and unthreatening, and his wellies less important.

  He wasn’t sure how much time elapsed before Norbury went across and parted the maroon curtains to peer out into the night. He closed the gap carefully again before he said, ‘It’s still snowing out there. Perhaps not quite as heavily, but still steadily. We’re much better off in here.’

  As the older man smiled down at his guest, Jamie Norris raised his glass a little unsteadily, clinked it against Norbury’s and said, ‘I’ll drink to that!’

  FIVE

  Three days later, there were still four inches of snow in Brunton. But a rapid thaw was forecast in the next twenty-four hours.

  Alfred Norbury drove out to climb Pendle Hill whilst it was still in its winter white. The main roads were clear of snow, but he had to be careful over the last few miles as he drove round the hill to Barley. He usually climbed it from the Brunton flank and walked along the long top to the summit, but the ascent from Barley was easy: a long, steady pull which was perfectly graduated for these difficult conditions. He put on the boots he had worn for many years now: quality was always the best investment, if you gave it long enough.

  He climbed steadily, drawing in long breaths of the winter air, panting a little with the sheer pleasure of the crisp, cold air. Pendle wasn’t a high hill, not much more than 1800 feet – he didn’t favour the modern fashion of reducing numbers to metres; that seemed to him to diminish his favourite climbs. But Pendle amply repaid the trouble of scaling its modest heights. It gave splendid views of the Yorkshire Dales to the east, of the Pennines to the north, of Longridge Fell and the long descent to the Fylde coast to the west. You could see all of these today. Snow gave extra definition, as well as extra drama. He made the summit, as he had planned, almost exactly at noon.

  There were few people abroad in these conditions: he passed one couple descending as he neared the summit, and that was all. Even the hardy Pendle sheep were sticking to the valleys and the lower slopes today. It was bitterly cold up here, but Alfred hardly felt it, filled as he was with the vigour of his activity and the exhilaration of his achievement. He stood, breathing hard, savouring the immaculate cleanness of the frozen snow around him, enjoying the cold that cut like a knife at his cheeks, the one section of his flesh which he had cared to expose.

  Norbury glanced at the clear blueness above him. One felt nearer to the sky up here. Nearer to God, for those who believed in such things. Hills and mountains put things in perspective, especially when you climbed alone. You felt cleaner in mind up here. You felt as if you could leave behind the squalor which seeped into your life in the world below. He looked down towards Sabden and the homes of the Pendle witches. And he wondered as he had done many times before how much was fact and how much was superstitious fiction in the tales of those wretched women who had been hanged at Lancaster in 1612. Modern man had left such things a long way behind him, hadn’t he?

  Part of him wanted to stay up here longer and preserve this feeling of cleanliness, this clearing of moral ambiguity. A kind of serenity had been afforded him by the climb and the solitude and the long views over the frozen landscape. But he knew that it was impossible to stay here for long. Already the cold was attacking the tips of his fingers beneath his gloves: you did not have to stand still for more than a few seconds up here to be reminded of the temperature. He took a last, long look at the panoramas in each direction, then dropped his head and turned to his descent.

  He moved towards the pub when he was down in the valley, then thought better of it. He wanted nothing but his own company for as long as possible. Only in solitude could he preserve the cleansing which occurred when he had been alone amidst snow and ice on the long hill which now towered above him. He didn’t even put the radio on in the car as he drove slowly back to the streets of Brunton and the life which awaited him there.

  There was a message waiting for him on his phone, left for him at 10.41, exactly four hours earlier. He pressed the ‘1’ button on his phone reluctantly, knowing that in doing so he was rejoining the familiar world from which he had escaped for the earlier part of the day.

  ‘Alfred? It’s a voice from the past. This is Enid Frott.’ Then there was a pause, which was long enough for him to feel that this might be all there was. Then, hesitantly, ‘Could we meet? I’ve something to ask of you. Nothing very important, but it would be good to talk. Ring me back, please. The number hasn’t changed.’

  He met her in the small café beside the market hall. She’d suggested her flat or his, but Alfred had said he would prefer to come here. Neutral ground was best. She hadn’t argued. She’d thought he might refuse to meet her anywhere.

  Alfred Norbury was already sitting alone at a table when she walked into the busy little place. Enid Frott had known he would be. He’d always been meticulously punctual, almost obsessively so.

  He hadn’t ordered. He went now to the counter and turned to look at her whilst he waited to be served. He came back with two white coffees and two flapjacks. She looked at them, gave him a taut smile, and said, ‘You remembered.’

  ‘The flapjacks? I remembered, yes. If you don’t want yours, I can always eat two of them.’ He stirred his coffee and looked into her face from no more than two feet. She had lines round her clear brown eyes now, just a wisp or two of grey in the light brown, short-cut hair. He said very deliberately, ‘You’re wearing well.’

  It was a statement, not a compliment, as if he was listing a simple fact of life.

  She responded with facts of her own. ‘I’ve never had children. That helps, I suppose. You’re looking older. Are you eating properly? You were always careless about that.’ She bit into her flapjack, her white, regular teeth suddenly bright in the subdued light.

  ‘You’re retired now.’

  Another statement of fact, not a query. She wondered how he knew that. She didn’t think she’d put tha
t in the message she’d left on his phone or stated it during their brief exchange when he’d phoned back to arrange this meeting. She’d been too nervous for anything save the basics. But then Alfred had always known things you didn’t expect him to know. She said, ‘I didn’t ask to meet you to talk about old times.’

  It sounded rude, or at least abrupt, She hadn’t intended that, but she was nervous. He looked hard at her and then said, ‘Pity. We’d have quite a lot to talk about.’

  His tone sounded menacing, but she saw a smile on his face, so it was presumably all right. Perhaps she was reading too much into things: she knew she was anxious. She was wondering why she’d done this, asking herself now, when it was too late, where it might lead in the long run. Enid wasn’t used to being nervous and she was finding this difficult. ‘Have you got a partner at the moment?’

  It was a straightforward enough question, but he took a little time and an unhurried sip of his coffee before he answered. ‘No. I find it more difficult to commit myself to others, as I get older. You’re still in the same flat. Does that mean that you haven’t a significant other in place?’

  He delivered that phrase with a slight curl of his saturnine lips. She had the impression again that he already knew the answer to his question. ‘No. Commitment’s easy when you’re young, even when it’s entirely unsuitable. I find it becomes more difficult as I get older. You get fonder of your own comforts and your own idiosyncrasies and you’re not prepared to give them up. I’m like you in that, Alfred.’

  She used his first name as boldly as she could, acknowledging that it was an attempt to move towards an intimacy they had once enjoyed. Norbury did not respond to it. ‘I live my own life. I do not care to open it up to others, except on my terms.’

  ‘It was always on your terms, Alfred. You were generous enough to others, so long as it was you who called the shots.’

  He watched her finish her flapjack and her coffee, as if challenging her to say more. When she did not, he gave her the smallest of smiles. ‘You said in your phone message that you had something to ask of me. What would that be?’

  ‘It’s a small thing, really. I’ve made it bigger by arranging a meeting, when I could have done this on the phone. But I wanted to see you again. And I suppose I thought you’d be more likely to say yes if we met face to face.’

  His eyes seemed to be set even more deeply in his sallow face than she remembered. He said, ‘I should be intrigued by this. I’m certainly curious. What is it you want?’

  ‘I’m starting a book club. Well, two of us are, really.’ She looked up into the dark, intelligent eyes, searching for a reaction; she found none. ‘We plan to meet once a month and talk about a book we’ve all read. I thought you might be interested. I’d certainly like to have you there: I’m sure you’d be an asset in a group like that.’

  He looked hard into the oval, intelligent face, as if he hoped to read more there than she was prepared to tell him. ‘You know me. I’m a loner, not a team player. I wouldn’t fit into a group. I’d probably be too trenchant with my opinions. I’d give offence to your friends.’

  ‘They won’t be my friends – well, not most of them. And if you don’t like it, you don’t have to stay. That applies to everyone. It’s tentative and entirely voluntary.’

  ‘You said there were two of you involved. Do I know the other person?’

  She’d hoped he wouldn’t ask her that. She’d been planning that he’d only find out at the first meeting. She looked down at the empty coffee cups, trying hard to be nonchalant and knowing that she wasn’t succeeding. ‘You’re not going to believe this. I’m still not sure how it came about.’ She looked up at him, hoping for the encouraging smile which he didn’t volunteer. ‘Its Frank’s widow. Sharon Burgess.’

  Now at last Alfred Norbury did smile. Not a very pleasant smile, Enid thought. ‘All right, I’m in. I wouldn’t miss this for the world!’

  The internet was a fine thing for discovering all kinds of information. Everyone said that. Jane Preston’s experience was that it could also be a great time-waster.

  She was having second thoughts about this book club business. She’d half agreed to take part in it because with the snow falling steadily outside she had been anxious to get away from Sharon Burgess. She’d taken the line of least resistance in a bid to get home safe and dry last Tuesday night. It was surely too much to hope that the man she wanted to get near would be there.

  Now she wasn’t at all sure that she wished to be a member of the enterprise. Was she to be a trophy for the older woman to brandish in the group – an expert on the nineteenth-century novel and on books in general whom she could wave in the faces of her fellow members and produce as her own expert? Or was she being paranoid, her brother’s favourite word to taunt her? Sharon Burgess seemed a nice enough woman, an enthusiast for the classic nineteenth-century writers and a great asset in Jane’s class on the subject. Even if this group never involved her target man, it might be amusing. And given time, she’d bring him in. Jane knew she was a persuasive woman, once she put her mind to something.

  She googled Burgess Electronics on her PC and found that it was a small but prosperous private firm which had carved out a niche for itself in the electronics field and grown steadily over the years. Its founder was Frank Burgess: she knew that Sharon was a widow, so presumably the founder of the firm was her husband, who had recently died. Sharon must be a rich widow. Rich and likeable, Jane told herself firmly: there was nothing pretentious in the woman. Indeed, she had been very supportive in the early stages of the evening class, when no one knew each other and the adult students had been sizing up their teacher.

  Don’t close your mind to new experiences, Jane Preston. You don’t do that at twenty-seven, because of one unhappy love affair. If the book club doesn’t work out after a couple of sessions, you can always say it’s not for you. And there is always the possibility that it will get you nearer to the man you’re looking for.

  She rang before she had time to dither any further. A female voice spoke to her – a young voice, she thought. Jane asked for Sharon Burgess and the voice asked for her name and then said, ‘I’ll see if Mrs Burgess will speak to you,’ as though administering a rebuke. A maid, perhaps? How very Agatha Christie! Jane didn’t think she’d known anyone with a maid before.

  But Mrs Burgess, when she spoke, was as friendly and informal as usual. Jane said, ‘I said I’d let you know about your book club. Yes, I’d like to give it a go. You could give me further details when the class meets again on Tuesday.’

  Jane Preston wondered as she put the phone down why a simple decision like that should feel so significant.

  Enid Frott didn’t choose neutral ground for her meeting with Sharon Burgess, as Alfred Norbury had done.

  There was ample room in the driveway of Pendle View, the impressive Burgess house, but Enid chose to park on the road outside it. The house was familiar to her, but it was years since she’d been here. She had stood here years ago, after Frank had told her he was ending it with her, studying the big house and wondering exactly where he was inside it. She’d wondered also what he was doing inside those walls, when she’d chosen to torture herself in those months of pain. Time healed, they said, and she supposed that it was true. The wounds were still there but they had thick scabs upon them now. The pain was all but gone.

  The big detached house had been impressive, but new and raw in those days, its fresh bricks rising stark and harsh against the sky behind it. The house on the summit of the hill had been an affront to nature, in her anguished thoughts. It had matured now, as she had. The flowering cherries and the rhododendrons had partly obscured and certainly softened the outline of the house, sculpting a more varied and rounded silhouette for the whole against the winter sky.

  And Frank was dead. She had seen him off with others at the crematorium. She had conversed with Sharon at the funeral reception and they had spoken like civilized women, not harpies scrapping over a corpse. Death b
rought a close, with lovers as certainly as with parents. It was difficult to retain a passionate hatred for a dead man.

  It was quiet here. The few other houses in this exclusive road were as big as Pendle View and widely spaced. There was no one else in the road and no presence visible in the Burgess home. She studied the house for a little longer, making sure she was composed before she walked slowly up the drive. There was a white frost upon the grass today, but the lawns were straight and sharp and the borders were filled with sturdy polyanthus and wallflowers, ready to burst into colour with the advent of spring. They would employ a gardener, of course, one who knew his stuff. Sharon would have a gardener, she should say. She must get used to saying that. It would be a good job for a gardener, working for Sharon.

  She rang the bell and was surprised when Sharon opened the door herself. She was in a dark blue dress with heels which lifted her a little but were not absurdly high. Becoming but not ostentatious. That seemed to be the keynote of Mrs Burgess, who now smiled at her and said, ‘You’re commendably prompt.’ She gave Enid a smile which could have meant anything or nothing. ‘But of course, you knew where the house was, didn’t you?’

  She led her into a huge lounge with a view down the long back garden to a border of roses which were no more than sticks, having obviously been pruned in the autumn. A low winter sun had burned away the frost here: the grass looked surprisingly green for January. A coffee pot steamed gently beside two china cups and saucers on the table. Sharon offered her home-made biscuits but did not take one herself. She watched her guest nibble one and said, ‘You were always slim, Enid. You can afford to indulge yourself.’