Arms and the Women

by Reginald Hill

  xxi

  an elfin storm

  There was a moment when Ellie thought that they must all simply drown in the viewing chamber which had now become an aquarium tank.

  She had a sense of bodies struggling and thrashing, and no sense whatsoever of up or down, then the waters ran through the open door into the anteroom and went cascading like an Alpine torrent down the stairs into the cellar.

  She shook her head and eyes clear and looked around. She had time to take in only one thing. Jorge with his head almost severed from his body by a shard of glass was lying across the leather grip out of which trailed lines of sodden coke for the fishes to snort.

  Then the storm came back as if the sea had merely withdrawn to take a longer run at them. This new blast of wind and rush of water was even stronger than before, picking everyone up and crashing them against the rear wall. Ellie heard herself scream in agony. What it did to those already in pain she dreaded to think. But at least when the waters once more went bubbling down the cellar stairs, they were all near the doorway.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here!’ she yelled.

  In times of crisis, cliché comes into its own.

  She grabbed at Novello whom the waters had rolled to her side, picked her up in what she guessed must now be known as a fireperson’s lift, and staggered to the door. She glimpsed Mrs Stonelady helping Wendy Woolley, Uncumber and Popeye were already in the anteroom lifting Kelly, and Feenie and Daphne were rolling along with their arms round each other, like a pair of happy drunks out on a night’s carouse.

  The sea came back again, this time bearing them all with it through into the anteroom. By now the cellar must have been too flooded to carry all the water away and a foot or so remained swirling beneath their feet, giving the impression that the floor and the whole building were moving. From somewhere deep down there came a fearful grinding and bumping noise as if some Kraken was stirring in its sleep. Then a memory from her childhood reading told Ellie what it was. The coffins floating in the vault in Moonfleet! This had to be the cases of arms being tossed around by the water in the cellar.

  Behind them in the doorway, the bodies of Jorge and the Ajaxes came crowding, as if they too even in death were eager to flee this fearful place. Feenie and Daphne with the equal insouciance of a former Resistance fighter and an archdeacon’s daughter thrust them back into the viewing chamber and closed the door. Then someone got the outer door open and the beam of the truck’s headlights shone fully in and they passed out into the open air. It was wild and it was wet and it tasted like nectar in Ellie’s gaping mouth.

  One thing which hadn’t changed, though, was the sense of movement beneath her feet. And there was no moving water here to create an illusion. She looked at Feenie and saw her stagger slightly too.

  ‘Quickly, get the wounded into the truck!’ ordered the old lady. ‘I think this bit of Axness is saying goodbye!’

  Ellie carried Novello round to the back. Popeye lowered the tailgate then climbed inside to help her slide the wounded policewoman aboard. Next came Kelly. Uncumber clambered in after her, and knelt by her side, murmuring comfort in Spanish, then kissed her before climbing out. To Ellie’s expert eye, it didn’t look like a particularly saintly kiss. While this was going on, Ellie helped get Wendy Woolley aboard too. She looked more pallid than she’d done at any time since the ricochet hit her, as if now the worst was over, her body could admit its pain.

  During all this activity, Ellie had been aware of vague figures deep in the truck’s shadows, sitting in Buddha-like stillness, but it took a great flash of lightning to show her what her straining eyes had dismissed as delusion.

  There were four… no, five people in there, bound tight, their faces half hidden by something taped over their mouths. Despite this she recognized two of them instantly, yet needed another flash to make her believe her recognition.

  One was Andy Dalziel.

  The other was Peter.

  Oh Christ, why was he here…? Had something happened to Rosie…?

  His eyes were riveted on her face but she couldn’t read his thoughts in them.

  Seizing hold of Popeye’s arm she dragged herself aboard, took hold of the tape across her husband’s mouth and pulled it clear.

  He gasped, ‘Rosie’s safe.’

  That was why she loved him. Even here, even now, in circumstances when only a couple of words were possible, he knew exactly the couple of words she wanted to hear.

  And only a couple of words were possible, for Feenie was yelling, ‘Everyone who can walk, get out. NOW!’

  She touched Peter’s lips with her fingers then jumped out and stepped aside just in time as the truck began to reverse. Feenie made no attempt to turn, judging that time was of the essence, also that reverse gear was her best bet for getting across this boggy ground.

  She was right in both respects.

  The fit survivors trotted alongside, one hand on the side of the truck, like security men alongside a presidential limousine, their feet sinking deep in the sodden ground.

  From time to time Ellie risked a glance backwards. The headlights picked out the classical frame of the pavilion, only it wasn’t quite so classical any more. There was a definite list to starboard. Or was it larboard? She pounded on for a few more yards, then looked back again. Now it was definitely moving. Her fascination at the sight nearly cost her dear. Her foot slipped in the mud and she might have gone under the wheels if Uncumber, who was just behind her, hadn’t reached forward and grabbed her arm and pulled her up.

  ‘Thanks,’ she gasped. Then with a matter-of-fact certainty which surprised her she said, ‘It’s Bruna, isn’t it?’

  ‘Si. And you are Ellie, fair mistress Pascoe. I told you when you have quite forgot to look for me, a door shall open and there shall I be.’

  ‘Did you?’ said Ellie. ‘I don’t remember that. But Fidel… Chiquillo… your brother…’

  ‘Buried long years ago deep in our forest glades where none may disturb his rest,’ said the woman.

  This made little sense. Nothing was for real any more. But why should it when you couldn’t even trust the ground beneath your feet.

  She glanced back once more. Bruna smiled, but Ellie was looking beyond her.

  Damn! She’d missed it. Wasn’t it always the way? Peter swore that the most certain way to get England to score was for him to pop out of the room for a pee.

  Where Mungo Macallum’s pleasure pavilion, his Command Post, had once loomed, turning nature into an after-dinner entertainment, there was now only empty space.

  No, not empty. Filled with a triumph of cloud and sea and wind and sky.

  Then they were on slightly firmer ground, passing over the red plastic warning fence, and there ahead, its line of festal light showing clear, was the terrace and the life she had left a million years ago.

  The next hour passed in a dream. She and Peter were united, and after they had spoken on the phone with Wield at Nosebleed and been reassured that Rosie was fast asleep in bed with Tig’s head beside her on the pillow and Carla’s body across her feet, they had shared stories and embraces and, surprisingly, much laughter, as though time was already lacing what had so nearly been tragic with comedy.

  She and Bruna too embraced and shed tears, but had little time for more than a bare outline of the Colombian woman’s tale. Her brother had been fatally wounded by the security forces and when he died, his closest comrades, recognizing that PAL relied almost entirely for its clout on Chiquillo’s charismatic reputation, persuaded Bruna to take his place. The masquerade had been completely successful, and when finally a carefully laid security ambush had left her cornered, she had been able to reinforce the legend of Chiquillo’s almost magical elusiveness by reverting to being Bruna and letting herself be taken and thrown into jail.

  ‘And then Kelly – sorry, Corny – got her gran to put you on Liberata’s mailing list,’ said Ellie. ‘You’ve known Corny a long time?’

  She spoke casually, but Bruna
smiled and said, ‘We are lovers since first we met many years ago. When I lay in durance, it is she who helps to keep Chiquillo alive by… but I do not think these things are for your ears. You have your life which in prison I longed to make mine, and in it there is no place for all these killings.’

  And finally Ellie couldn’t resist asking, ‘I’m sorry, but your moustache, it looks very real.’

  ‘It is in grain, it will endure wind and weather,’ said Bruna. ‘Before when I pretended to be Fidel, it was false so that those who glimpsed me would be deceived. But in prison, the guards… I need not tell you what the guards like to do… and slowly my body puts on a new case, my breasts grow small, and this real hair grows on my lip, so that in the end I become a thing that these men do not desire. But now I am at liberty, I return slowly to being a woman again.’

  So, St Uncumber after all, thought Ellie.

  Of course, the medical explanation was fairly straightforward to one who had mugged up the physiology of anorexia for her Women’s Studies course. Serious starvation, whether self-induced or given a kick start by a prison diet, could inhibit the release of hormones from the hypothalamus, resulting in hypogonadism which in mature females is often the cause of virilism. Sic probo. But for once in her life, Ellie found herself eager to embrace the supernatural explanation.

  Bruna went off to check on Kelly, and Ellie returned to helping Feenie and Mrs Stonelady, who were busying themselves providing dry clothing and hot food.

  After some first aid, the injured Shirley Novello and Wendy Woolley had been driven to hospital by Daphne who, in a very short time, had contrived to look as if she was going on a photo-shoot with Country Life.

  Feenie had tried to insist that Kelly should go too, but Popeye had assured her that arrangements for her treatment were all in hand, and it was true that Kelly, though clearly still in much pain, had been hugely reinvigorated by the appearance of Bruna.

  Journey’s end in lovers meeting every wise man’s son doth know.

  Andy Dalziel too seemed little affected by his experience and had taken upon himself the task of dispensing alcohol to any who needed it. The only words he exchanged with Ellie at an early stage were, ‘Good to see you, lass, but like my old dad used to say, if it’s not on the market, don’t put it on the stall.’

  Ellie had been baffled till Pascoe murmured, ‘I think he’s a little disconcerted by your deshabille,’ and fastened the buttons on the jacket he had draped round her shoulders.

  Then Bruna came to find her and said, ‘Ellie, the farewell time has come too soon, but here we must not stay. I shall write to you again, this time in such a way these wicked schemers cannot intercept. My best love to your little daughter whom I met.’

  ‘The lady with the moustache,’ said Ellie. ‘She wasn’t fooled.’

  ‘Children see plainly,’ said Bruna. ‘One day perhaps we all shall see as children.’

  She flung her arms round Ellie and they embraced. Then she kissed her on the lips and turned and went.

  Ellie followed her to the front door. Popeye was in the driving seat of the white Mercedes, the two women, close entwined, in the rear.

  The storm was still raging, but now as she watched the white car vanish into its damp embrace, it seemed a magical protective thing.

  She went back inside.

  Pascoe said, ‘So they’ve gone then.’

  ‘Yes. Peter, I know that they must be on all kinds of wanted lists. Thanks for not trying to stop them.’

  ‘Who, me? When my great superior is sitting on his bum, supping Scotch and doing nowt? I wouldn’t have dared!’

  ‘By the way, weren’t there more of you than just you and Andy trussed up in the back of that truck?’

  ‘Were there? Perhaps we’d better ask him.’

  But when they joined the Fat Man they found Feenie was already raising the question.

  ‘Superintendent,’ she said. ‘What on earth happened to those other friends of yours in the truck?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know,’ said Dalziel. ‘Pete, lad, didn’t I tell you to untie them?’

  ‘Don’t think so, sir,’ said Pascoe.

  ‘I’m sure I did. But if you didn’t, then they must still be in there. Bloody hell. He won’t be best pleased, not if I know old Pimpernel!’

  This was an understatement.

  Sempernel did not rage, but his anger was visible in every stiff movement of his body, every controlled syllable of his speech.

  When he learned that Popeye had driven away with the two women, his stillness and his silence were even more eloquent.

  And finally he snapped when he was unable to get any of the telecommunication equipment in the house to work.

  He said, ‘Mr Dalziel, Mr and Mrs Pascoe, Miss Macallum, what has happened this evening is not yet totally clear, but I should not like you to think that you can interfere with Her Majesty’s security services with impunity. I already have information enough to bring all your futures into doubt. When my investigations are complete, I would anticipate that your troubles are just about to begin.’

  He swept out, followed by his acolytes.

  ‘Didn’t follow a word of that,’ said Dalziel cheerfully.

  ‘I think, as Bruna might have put it,’ offered Ellie, ‘that he was saying, I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.’

  ‘He couldn’t do anything, could he?’ said Pascoe uneasily. ‘I mean, you never know what these people have in their files.’

  ‘Stop worrying, lad. I’ve got this feeling that dear old Gawain’s going to find his files are a bit like himself, fading with age. Any road, I’m sure he’s far too much of a gent to offer poor mortals like us a threat. But just to put your mind at rest, I’ll be sure and ask him next time we meet.’

  ‘And when do you anticipate that might be?’ enquired Pascoe.

  Andy Dalziel took out a huge khaki handkerchief and started wiping his fingers which somehow seemed to have got a bit oily.

  ‘I reckon in about two minutes when he finds his car won’t start,’ he said.

  xxii

  spelt from Sibyl’s leaves

  Morgan Meredith…

  lost in a dream where she walks and she doesn’t need wheels…

  how good it feels…

  Meredith. A good name. To make it even better, I used to insinuate at Cambridge that I was related to George, the novelist. More than insinuate. Gradually I created a web of circumstance, of family tradition and anecdote, of heirlooms and letters and manuscripts in boxes in our attic.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said my tutor. ‘Perhaps a good subject for your Ph.D. should you feel that way inclined.’

  And I smiled, thinking myself the great deceiver, Morgan le Fay, swinging out of the sixties with my skirt round my bum, the world at my feet, dancing to a Beatles beat, confident that every kind of first in every area of experience was in my grasp.

  And my tutor smiled too, more impressed by my powers of deceit than my academic potential.

  Then his dear friend Gawain Sempernel, alumnus of our college and respected classical scholar, visited the university to give a lecture on Homer in the Eighteenth Century and when my tutor invited me to meet him, I thought it was my scholastic brilliance that was being acknowledged.

  Much later, and much too late, I realized he was in fact merely Gawain’s pander, supplying him with likely lads and lasses for his closer examination.

  Of course in our case pander proved more than just metaphor.

  Lovers beneath the singing sky of May we wandered once.

  He put it so well, my unrelated relation. Except that our version of Modern Love was far beyond what he could imagine even at his most cynical and disillusioned.

  We two were rapid falcons in a snare.

  Half right. Gawain means hawk of May, I expect you know that. And you were a veritable bird of prey, Gaw. I have felt your talons.

  As for me, certainly I acted like a falcon for a while, with the singing sky my element.


  Perhaps my high-flying days were already numbered. Perhaps like the wren on the eagle’s back, I felt you had strength for two. Certainly when the aches started, and the lassitude, and the air grew thin and hardly able to bear me up, and I went to the departmental doctor for a check-up, I did not hesitate to come fluttering to you to share his dusty answer.

  MS. Multiple sclerosis.

  How loving, how sympathetic you were.

  How quickly, how subtly you acted.

  I said we must part. You said it made no difference.

  Neither of us meant it, in that at least we were one.

  And gradually you eased us apart, almost imperceptibly, and in such a manner that when I did perceive it, I almost believed it was my decision.

  But not quite. Or rather not forever. For by creating me (to universal applause) your Sibyl in her cavern, you gave me access to areas of information where the truth of you was writ plain.

  It’s no use letting your creature talk to the gods unless you accept that the poor thing must hear what the gods have to say.

  Apollo offered the Sibyl at Cumae anything she wanted and she asked for eternal life but forgot to include eternal youth and good health. Centuries later there she still was, now so reduced and wizened that they put her in an earthenware pot and she uttered her prophecies, dangling helplessly from the roof of her cave.

  My pot is made of steel and leather and has four wheels and my fate is less tragic than hers, for I can still move, though where I should move to is a question beyond Apollo’s wisdom. The end of my service here is in sight and soon I must go rolling into the greyness which swirls between me and the final dark, while you, my hawk of May, are all set to go out in a blaze of glory, to end your days in the sybaritic comforts of the college where we met.

  Or perhaps not.

  For you are teetering on the brink of fiasco, Gaw.

  Oh yes, I know you have often been here before, and always those broad strong wings of yours have opened at the last minute and you have soared away, safe and high above the smoke and stir of this dim spot which men call failure.