A Hovering of Vultures

by Robert Barnard

  “Oh.”

  “Quite the contrary, really. I get the impression that she’s almost pleased at the idea. As close as she can get to pleased.”

  “You surprise me.”

  “Maybe stimulated would be a better word than pleased.”

  “That sounds more likely. Anticipating trouble.”

  “She does very much enjoy trouble, doesn’t she?”

  “Always has.”

  “Of course the question is, what is she looking forward to doing or saying? Any nastiness is usually of her making, and you mustn’t think she is likely to make it easy for you.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. I know my mother.”

  “Yes, of course, but you see . . . a lot of time has passed since you knew her.”

  “Too right. I get you. People don’t improve with age. I know I don’t.”

  “She is . . . well, she’s quite inventive in the things she thinks up to annoy people, or make them feel small.”

  “I get your message loud and clear. I’ll take it that she’s now even more damned difficult than she used to be. When do you think would be a suitable time for me to come?”

  “Whenever you like. She has no better times.”

  “What about this evening? Get it over with.”

  “That would be fine. Let me see: they’re having their meal now. We settle them down around nine o’clock. Any time before about eight, then?”

  “I’ll get on to my tame taxi driver. I’ll be with you in half an hour, at most three quarters.”

  “Splendid. I’ll prepare your mother . . . No, on second thoughts perhaps I won’t. She tends to save up wounding things to say.”

  “She’ll have prepared those already. Oh my! I’m sure looking forward to this!”

  • • •

  “Mike?”

  “Charlie! Where are you? Can we talk?”

  “A phone booth in Batley Bridge. Don’t be so cloak-and-dagger. I haven’t seen anything that calls for George Smiley tactics so far.”

  “Everything clean and shining and aboveboard?”

  “Well, I don’t know that I’d quite say that. But everything to the contrary is really just a feeling, based on what I was told at Scotland Yard about the man, not on anything that’s happened since I’ve been here.”

  “You mean because he isn’t straight this can’t be straight?”

  “Precisely, which is why I’m here, isn’t it?”

  Charlie had phoned Mike Oddie, his superior in Leeds, from Scotland Yard on Thursday. There he had been briefed on the series of forgeries and literary con jobs that seemed—very tortuously, as a rule—to lead back to Gerald Suzman. It had been a fascinating collection, not least because of the interesting ways Suzman had of distancing himself from the transactions. Charlie’s old friend Superintendent Trethowan, going through the catalogue with him and sharing his delight at the man’s inventiveness, said that the interesting thing about the Micklewike Weekend was that, at last, the man was putting himself in the centre of the picture.

  “My bet is,” Charlie now went on, “that, whatever he’s up to, it’s going to emerge slowly—maybe over the years. Certainly so far I haven’t the foggiest what he’s going to come up with.”

  “Nothing remotely suspicious?”

  “No. People keep appearing out of the woodwork and making contact with him: people who knew the Sneddons, have mementoes of them, research students and people like that. You might say everyone wants to stake a claim: they’re sort of hovering over Micklewike like a flock of vultures. But nothing that I’ve heard so far gives me a clue to what his particular pound of flesh may be. Oh, by the way—”

  “Yes?”

  “You remember I said I’d stand out like a sore thumb here, and you said that one thing no one would suspect me of being was a policeman?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you were wrong.”

  “Someone’s on to you?”

  “An American lady. British-born American. Black policemen are very common in New York.”

  “Damn. I suppose I should have thought of that. There were bound to be Americans there. Have you told her anything?”

  “No. I just said there were reasons for my being here that didn’t demand devotion to Susannah Sneddon’s great novels, but that I couldn’t discuss them.”

  “Did she accept that?”

  “Well, on the surface, yes. But I think it’s bound to alert her to Gerald Suzman and his activities, if she wasn’t already. She’s very nice, and I suppose she could even be useful. She knew Susannah Sneddon.”

  “Old, then.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “I don’t know that Susannah Sneddon has anything to do with what our man is up to.”

  “The fact is, Mike, we haven’t the faintest notion of what our man is up to.”

  “True. What are your plans?”

  “Tonight there’s a party. Wine and cheese, would you believe?”

  “For a very junior detective constable you do have it cushy.”

  “Give me an acid house party raid any day.”

  • • •

  The Eventide Home was a substantial stone house on the outskirts of the village of Hipperholt, built for one of the local notables, and now housing a collection of forgottens. It took mostly old people whose fees were paid by the National Health, but it tended them in a perfectly humane way, which was not the case with all such establishments. Dorothy Clandon would not have worked there if it had been otherwise. Lettie, hobbling in on the arm of her taxi driver, liked her at once: sturdy, sympathetic and—the prime quality necessary—patient.

  “I’d like you to wait for me, please,” she told the driver. “This may not take much time at all.”

  “Look, I’ll go and have a chat with old Stan Richards. Used to live down the road from me. You take as long as you like—or make it as short as you like.”

  He winked at her and took himself off. Lettie turned to Mrs Clandon, sighing.

  “Well, we’d better get it over with.”

  “Right . . . I should warn you that your mother is likely to make a wounding remark as soon as she sees you. It’s a habit she has. She’s probably thought up several possibilities.”

  “Yes, I remember she always liked to take people down right from the start.”

  “That doesn’t mean things will get any better later on, though they might, depending on her mood.”

  “You really don’t have to warn me,” said Lettie grimly. “My expectations are at zero. And remember I can walk out whenever I want, so I have the advantage on her. I didn’t have that option as a child.”

  “Well . . .” said Mrs Clandon, smiling bravely. “Here goes.”

  She led the way to a small room off from the far end of the hall, a warm, cosy room which she often used for encounters that might prove difficult. Lettie followed slowly behind her, and her heart thumped as she pushed open the door. Don’t be a fool! she told herself. What can she do to you now?

  She turned into the doorway and found herself regarded by a pair of malevolent black eyes in a wizened frame. It was the smallness of her mother that struck her first: it wasn’t how she remembered her. She had shrivelled away to a hideous ragbag of skin and bone: her hands on the chair arms were like skeleton hands, carelessly covered over with what looked like stray bits of discoloured skin already in the process of decomposition. The face was baggy and sagging, like a motley array of purses and shopping bags. Only the eyes were truly alive—and the voice, as Lettie immediately found out.

  “Well, you do look a sight!” her mother said, in a rasping contralto.

  • • •

  The wine and cheese evening was held in the farmhouse itself. It was lucky that the weather had stayed fine, otherwise Charlie calculated that some of the guests would have been forced on to the stairs or the landing. There were something like fifty people present, and by now the processes of getting to know, getting to like and getting to avoid were well advanced.
One no longer needed an excuse for talking to anybody. In addition, one could wander round the house and the garden at greater leisure than in the afternoon. Charlie wondered that Mr Suzman was not more worried about things being stolen, but as he strolled around himself he realized that a great many—in fact most—of the objects were “typical” ones, things that would have been found in farmhouses of the time, rather than actual relics of Susannah and Joshua Sneddon.

  “I bet the Sneddons didn’t throw many parties like this,” he said to the Scandinavian pair, both clutching glasses of white wine.

  “If they vere the cocktail party types, vi vouldn’t read them,” said the man.

  “Why do you read them?”

  “Because they—no, because Susannah is werry much back to the soil, back to the dark core—you say that?—to the dark core of our life. Like our Knut Hamsun in Norvay. I’m Vidkun Mjølhus, by the vay, and this is Vibeke Nordli.”

  “Is that why you read her?” asked Charlie, turning to Vibeke. She nodded briskly. She seemed a brisk, no-nonsense person.

  “In a way. But with more of a feminist slant. She’s very good on women’s sexuality, on women’s right to a sensual life of her own. Carries on from Charlotte Brontë in a way. I want to translate some more of the books into Norwegian, once there’s a proper text established in English.”

  “Is there some problem with the text?”

  “Of course there is. It’s been censored—cut and changed, watered down. Susannah was a woman, wasn’t she? Women weren’t allowed to say the sort of things Susannah wanted to say.”

  “I believe D. H. Lawrence had the same problem,” murmured Charlie. He wanted, on the strength of having read Sons and Lovers for Advanced Level, to add “And he was a hell of a lot better writer,” but he decided not to. Hardly appropriate for a founder member of the Sneddon Fellowship. And not sensible to arouse hostility. He was reinforced in that feeling by being the recipient of a decidedly hostile look a moment later. The Coggenhoes were as usual crowding round their daughter, giving her no space to be herself, and Rupert Coggenhoe, who directed the glare at Charlie, was telling him he was not forgiven for the morning’s exploit. Charlie shot him one of his most dazzling and guileless smiles, a shameless exhibition of incisors and premolars. Then he moved to behind the man’s back, from where he mouthed the word “After” at Felicity. When she nodded, her father’s shoulders shot round suspiciously, but by then he had only a view of Charlie’s back.

  Charlie was, he found, by the little table with the typewriter and pages of typescript that he’d inspected that morning. He looked back at the text now with more time to look closely. It was, as he and the Japanese lady had recognised, the steamy scene in the loft of the barn from The Barren Fields, but as he read in detail he realized that the scene was even steamier than he remembered:

  She felt his hard chest against her breasts, his scalding breath on her cheeks, and as she whispered her compliance she felt his harsh, calloused hands on her thighs, then between her legs, and as she parted them willingly, urgently . . .

  “Gosh!” Charlie raised his eyebrows. He’d check with his copy in the b. and b. later (if he could stand the excitement) but he was willing to bet that the published version was considerably toned down and shortened. Cunning old Gerald Suzman! Not only to put a page from one of Susannah’s hottest scenes at the top of the pile, but one that had been censored, presumably by her publishers. What it showed bore out Vibeke Nordli’s contention: Susannah had wanted to be considerably more explicit than she had been allowed to be. How many had noticed this, he wondered? It amounted to a promise of heady delights to come when the full texts were published.

  Charlie moved lithely through the throng, down to the kitchen area and out the latched door to the garden. Ten or twelve guests, singly or in couples, were enjoying the rich evening sunlight.

  “She must have loved her garden,” he heard one middle-aged lady say to a similar friend. “I can just imagine her looking for the daffodils poking their heads through the winter earth, or lovingly tending those roses and azaleas.”

  Yuk!

  “Actually she only had primroses here,” he said as he passed.

  It was a mistake. The ladies turned on him accusingly.

  “How do you know?”

  “An old lady told me. Someone who knew them, used to come here when they lived here.”

  “Who’s that then?”

  I really got myself into this, Charlie thought. He reined himself in. Lettie had told him she wanted to lie doggo for the moment.

  “I’m not sure I should say. I ought to respect her privacy. But she’s here for the Weekend. Maybe she’ll say something at the meeting tomorrow.”

  They looked hard at him as he made his escape. Clearly they were putting him down as a bullshit artist. He walked with what dignity he could muster over to the lawn, where Randolph Sneddon was holding court with the sort of slightly forced bonhomie that Charlie had reluctantly admired earlier in the day.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about the texts,” he was saying. “I hate to admit it, but I only started reading the books recently.”

  “So you don’t have any say over who edits the new editions?” Gillian Parkin demanded, a terrier expression on her face, her manner positively inquisitorial. Vibeke Nordli was beside her, and they made a formidable duo.

  “None at all. Nor any interest, I’m afraid.”

  “You can’t insist that we see the manuscripts?”

  “Oh, you’ll have to talk to Mr Suzman about that.”

  “So you didn’t inherit them?” Vibeke Nordli asked.

  “Oh no. They come from the publishers, I think.”

  “What did you inherit? Any of the things here?”

  “I’m afraid not. I didn’t have anything at all to offer Mr Suzman. What happened was, when they died, or soon after, the farm and all its contents were put on the market. Public auction—quite a few sensation seekers there, I wouldn’t mind betting, buying up mementoes of a minor local scandal. So I know Mr Suzman’s hoping that more things will turn up . . .”

  “But didn’t your people care anything about her?—”

  “Country people are very unsentimental, you know. And I believe my grandfather was rather straight-laced.”

  Over her head Charlie and Randolph Sneddon looked at each other, two tall men communing. Sneddon’s face was a picture of wry long-suffering. Charlie was interested to register that now, apparently, he was accepted by the other as one of his part of the human race.

  • • •

  “Now, now, Mrs Blatchley,” began Mrs Clandon.

  “Don’t you ‘Now-now’ me like I was a school-child! I’ll tell my own daughter she looks a sight if I want to!”

  “You don’t look any oil painting yourself,” said Lettie equably.

  “Don’t talk to me about painting! What have you plastered your face with?”

  “It’s called make-up.” Lettie sat down heavily in the other chair. “People have been painting themselves since prehistoric times. You don’t have to stay, Mrs Clandon. Mother and I will get on just fine.”

  Dorothy Clandon looked dubious for a moment, then nodded and withdrew.

  “Well!” said her mother with relish as the door shut. “I never expected my daughter to come home a painted woman!”

  “I should think that’s exactly what you did expect,” said Lettie. “Make-up may not make me look any better, but it makes me feel a hell of a lot better.”

  “Language!”

  “Well, I think we’ve exhausted that topic. How have you been all these years, Mother? When did Father die?”

  The lips parted in a sort of snarl, revealing a small and miscellaneous collection of discoloured teeth.

  “Nineteen sixty. Or it may have been nineteen seventy. I don’t remember exactly. Time doesn’t mean much any more. He’d been ill for years. He was terrible when he was poorly, always whining and complaining.”

  “It must hav
e been a bundle of laughs in the old house. You were still in the cottage in Tanner’s Alley, were you?”

  “All the time. Right up to when I had to come here. The Methodist minister was on at me for years to come here. Said I shouldn’t be living down there in Micklewike all on my own. Very concerned he was.”

  Lettie’s opinion of the cunning of Methodist ministers took an upward turn. She had no doubt of his real reason for thinking her mother should leave Micklewike for the Eventide Home.

  “And what did Father die of?”

  “Pneumonia in the end. Just like your brother Paul.” She nodded meaningfully. “He was a good son. If only Paul had lived. He’d have taken care of me.”

  Lettie saw that her dead brother was now shrouded in an affection and regard that had never been lavished on him while he lived. She knew her brother would have got away as she had. They had often discussed it, in bed at night. It had given an added sad pang to his early death.

  “And what have you lived off? Do you get some kind of pension?”

  “Of course. It’s more than enough. There’s plenty as complain, but they’re the soft livers. I’ve never been one for the vanities of life.”

  “Except the vanity of a thoroughly good opinion of yourself,” Lettie opined.

  “Those that walk in the way of the Lord shall see the Lord plain,” her mother said complacently. Lettie smiled. Her mother had not lost her habit of producing improvised scripture, then.

  “I’ve no doubt you’re right,” she said. “And before very long, too. I suppose you’re wondering why I’ve come back?”

  This was greeted with a hard stare.

  “Why should I wonder that? There’s no explanation needed when someone comes home to see their mother.”

  My God—she’s more deluded than I thought, Lettie said to herself. She carefully ignored the suggestion.

  “There’s this conference, you see. You may have heard of it. A sort of weekend in honour of the Sneddons.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you remember, Mother? The Sneddons, Joshua and Susannah? You used to go and work for them at High Maddox Farm.”

  “Oh, I remember them. Why would anyone honour them? I shouldn’t have demeaned myself, going up there. She wrote mucky books. All novels are lies, and she wrote dirty lies.”