Paradise Walk

by Mary Malloy

  “I’m so relieved you weren’t hurt,” he said. He stood back and looked at her. “You aren’t hurt, are you?”

  She assured him she wasn’t injured and he kissed her on the cheek before turning to the nurse to ask about Alison’s condition. He identified himself as a doctor and a friend, and asked if he could see the patient. Lizzie watched as he went into the inner sanctuary of the hospital, led by the nurse and followed by Bruce Hockwold and his two-medic escort. She sank again onto the molded plastic chair of the hospital hallway and pondered the strangeness of the day.

  Chapter 16

  Alison’s broken hip required surgery and George and Edmund insisted that she be transported to Bristol to have the procedure done there. The patient was fully conscious when they loaded her again into the ambulance and she was adamant that Lizzie continue on the pilgrimage as planned.

  “I think I should at least see you comfortably settled before I go on,” Lizzie argued.

  “Nonsense,” Alison insisted. “Why should you spend time in a hospital waiting for me? Edmund can keep you up to date on my condition by phone.”

  George added that he would bring her to Hengemont for her recovery, and with that the doors of the ambulance closed and Alison was gone.

  Lizzie turned to Edmund, who would follow them in his own car.

  “I know this is all rather abrupt,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulder. “That is the nature of accidents. Something happens that takes only moments, and then you spend days or months or years making adjustments to the unexpected changes.”

  “I feel like I should go be with her.”

  “Why? Because you were with her when it happened? That does not oblige you to nurse her through her recovery.”

  Lizzie tried to explain to him how close they had become in just a few weeks of working together.

  “You certainly do go collecting friends and families on your research forays!” Edmund laughed. They walked to his car and he fished in his pocket for his keys. “It’s a long walk from here to Canterbury,” he said, “but you can drive it and be back in a few hours if necessary. I’ll let you know if anything happens that requires your attendance.”

  There was good sense in what he said. Lizzie had been discomposed by the accident and now began to feel her equilibrium return.

  “Do you want me to drive you back to Castle Cary?” Edmund asked.

  “I don’t want to delay your arrival at Bristol Hospital,” she answered.

  Edmund said it wouldn’t be a problem. “Alison’s own orthopedic surgeon is there. I’ll check on her as soon as I get there, but she will be in very good hands.”

  As they began the drive back to Castle Cary, Edmund commented that his father would be a good nurse for Alison, and that the job would be a good distraction for him. “He has been too much on his own rambling around Hengemont,” he said.

  “Thank goodness he has the Jeffries to watch out for him,” Lizzie added.

  Edmund turned his eyes momentarily from the road and gave her a look of resigned condescension. When he spoke his voice had a measured patience. “However much you may want my father and Helen Jeffries to be friends,” he said, “it simply will not be so. They are never going to eat a meal at the same table or sit by the fireside for a cozy chat.” He paused. “I know you want all the class differences to disappear, but for that generation they are too deeply ingrained.”

  She looked at his profile as he drove; his forehead was creased and his mouth was drawn into a line which Lizzie read as displeasure at her comment.

  “Oh for God’s sake!” she said impatiently. “I only meant that Helen will make sure that he is eating and has clean clothes. I wish you would believe that I have learned something from all our past discussions on this topic!” She had not intended to be so snappish and instantly apologized. “I am more shaken by today’s events than I thought,” she said. “But I really did not mean to drag out once again a conversation we have had so many times.”

  Again he turned his eyes from the road for a moment and smiled at her. “I’m sorry too,” he said. “I don’t know why, but you have made me so overly sensitive on this subject that I sometimes think everything you say casts aspersions on the aristocracy in one way or another. I shouldn’t have read into your comment more than was there.”

  “Thank you for that,” Lizzie said. “Of course,” she added, grinning impishly, “it wouldn’t hurt him to go eat in the kitchen once in a while! It’s really quite nice there and the Jeffries are good companions.”

  Edmund rolled his eyes.

  “I know, I know!” Lizzie added quickly. “None of them would feel comfortable crossing over those lines that proscribe their role in the ancient caste system in which they still operate!” She reached across and put two fingers on Edmund’s lips as he turned his head toward her. “And that, my dear Edmund,” she said with a flourish, “is the last thing you will ever hear me say on this subject!”

  He looked ahead at the road and muttered, “Not bloody likely!”

  She turned the conversation to Alison. “Will she make a complete recovery?”

  “It is a pretty simple fracture of the hip and she was scheduled for a hip replacement anyway, so I think her doctor will probably just go ahead with that surgery. She’ll be down for six weeks or so, but—as I almost hesitate to say again—Hengemont will be a good place for her to recuperate.”

  Edmund wanted to know more about the accident and how it had happened and Lizzie described to him the sequence of events.

  “When did you see the car coming at you?” he asked.

  Lizzie closed her eyes and concentrated. “I think I saw it first when it was across the square, but at that point it wasn’t headed in our direction.” In her mind’s eye she could see the small red car on the far side of the Castle Cary thoroughfare. Did Bruce Hockwold actually look at them? She seemed to see his white-haired head turn and meet her eye, but too quickly that image was replaced by his dead eyes and his bloody head, first in the smashed up car and then on the hospital gurney. She put her hand up to her forehead.

  “Are you alright?” Edmund asked, concerned.

  “I’m just trying to get the sequence of events right,” she said. “This is the first time I have actually turned my mind to it since it happened.” She paused for a moment before she spoke again. “This will sound very strange,” she said. “But I think he might have looked at us when he was traveling in a totally different direction.”

  “Are you saying he turned and drove at you purposefully?”

  Lizzie grabbed at a piece of her hair and twirled it around her finger. “No, I’m sure that isn’t possible. I think it might be because he spoke to me just before he died, and later that I saw his corpse. . . .”

  “Memories are not like photographs. They don’t actually capture events so much as interpret them sometimes. Maybe you are needing to process witnessing his death, and are doing it by picturing him alive.”

  “I’m sure that must be it,” she answered, though she was more confused than she was admitting.

  As they reached the center of Castle Cary they found that public works vehicles had replaced the fire trucks and ambulances at the accident scene. Cones and plastic tape defined spaces where the public was denied access around the market building.

  “Where was he when you first saw him?” Edmund asked.

  “Almost right where we are now,” Lizzie answered, seeing again that red car in her mind, the image of Bruce Hockwold looking at her.

  “And where was he when you next saw him?”

  “Speeding toward us from that direction.” Lizzie pointed up to the left as they made a right turn around the market.

  “So he must have gone up and turned around if you were standing in front of the market.” He pulled his car into the nearest space and got out. “Show me where you were,” he said.

  “Are you sure you have time for this?” she asked as she joined him on the sidewalk.

  He too
k her by the arm. “Don’t worry about it, Alison will be fine if I’m not there right away. Show me where you were.”

  They went as close to the market building as they could before a barricade and a policeman stopped them. Lizzie pointed in a line that went from the road, across the space where the missing stanchion was obvious, and to the smashed up column, now being shored up with steel beams. “That is the route the car took, but I didn’t see him until I heard him hit the stanchion.”

  “Well that must have slowed him down.”

  “It didn’t seem to; he just came barreling on up here.” She turned around and looked at the dark cavity under the overhang of the market. “I pushed Alison behind the column and jumped with her.”

  Edmund put his arm through hers. “You were both lucky,” he said. “Thank God.”

  Lizzie acknowledged that they were. It was strange being at the scene again. It seemed like the whole thing had happened much longer ago than just a few hours.

  “I see Alison’s car,” Edmund said, pointing to the black MG parked across the street. “Do you want me to take care of it so you can walk away?”

  Lizzie had already decided to check into the Horse Pond Inn for the evening and leave Alison’s car in their parking lot when she began her trek the next morning. “No need,” she answered. “Alison won’t be needing it for awhile, and if I need a car for anything in the next few weeks I can come back here and get it.”

  “I’m not sure I should leave you here alone.”

  “And I feel like I have already delayed your departure too long!”

  She assured him she was fine, but when he drove away she felt a wave of loneliness. Turning one more time to look at the scene of the accident, Lizzie realized that she had forgotten to tell Edmund the most interesting thing of all—that Bruce Hockwold’s last word was “Becket.”

  Chapter 17

  The Horse Pond Inn was a comfortable place to recover from the events of the day. Lizzie got a room and called Martin in Newcastle to tell him what had happened to Alison, then retreated into a corner booth in the hotel’s pub with a pint of cider. She brought her laptop to check email and found a message from Jackie with the tantalizing subject heading: “I’m here!”

  “Dear Lizzie,” it read, “I’ve decided to attend that Chaucer conference you mentioned in Oxford next week, and want to join you on your walk until then. Did you know that part of your path lies along something called the ‘Leland Trail’? It’s a pilgrimage for librarians! I will arrive in Glastonbury on the train this evening at 6:35. If I am following your passage correctly you should be there. Meet me if you can! Cheerio and all that, Jackie.”

  Lizzie looked at the clock on her computer. It was almost six o’clock; she could meet Jackie’s train if she left right now. Alison’s car was still at the curb in front of the hotel and she had the keys in her pocket, so she put her computer in her bag and headed for the car.

  It was as strange to sit behind the steering wheel on the right side of the old MG as it had been to sit with no steering wheel on the left. It took several minutes for Lizzie to figure out how the gear shift worked, and it was an awkward left-hand procedure. She hadn’t used a clutch in years and the gears ground ferociously as she worked her way out of the parking place, with a sound that made several pedestrians turn and stare at her. By the time she reached the train station in Glastonbury, she had mastered the car, and when Jackie walked out the front door of the station she was able to give her a jaunty wave.

  “Tally ho!” Lizzie called, bringing the car to a stop at the curb directly in front of her friend.

  “Good God, Lizzie!” Jackie exclaimed. “You do rather get into the spirit of your work, don’t you. Did you rent this?”

  Lizzie sprang from the car and slapped a hand on Jackie’s back. “Of course not, you foolish woman. This car is fifty years old! And a classic. You can’t rent things like this.”

  “Where do we put my luggage?” Jackie asked, looking into the two seats of the car.

  “In the boot, of course,” Lizzie answered, though it quickly became apparent that she didn’t know how to open it, and Jackie ended up holding one of her bags in her lap and squeezing the other in by her feet.

  “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re here,” Lizzie said, when they were finally settled in the car and on the road back to the Horse Pond Inn. She described the accident earlier that day and Alison’s condition.

  “So I won’t get to meet the old girl?”

  “Not unless we go visit her in the hospital, which I am inclined to do in the next few days.”

  “I’m even more interested in meeting her than I was before, now that I know she drives a car like this,” Jackie said, running her hands across the polished wood of the dash. “Does she know you’re driving it?”

  “Not yet,” Lizzie said with a laugh, “but I couldn’t leave it just sitting on the street in Castle Cary while she is in the hospital—and she gave me a set of keys.”

  “I suppose this means that she won’t be able to give the presentation at Oxford next week.”

  There hadn’t been time to think about it since the accident, Lizzie said. “We’ve talked about it and the plan was to be fairly straightforward. I could certainly give the presentation, but I’m inclined to think it should be put off until Alison can do it herself. This journal is going to be the biggest project of her career.”

  “What journal?” Jackie asked in surprise. “You have not yet told me all I need to know.”

  “Sorry about that,” Lizzie said, “Alison had previously sworn me to secrecy, but since I showed her that paper you wrote she has agreed to bring you into the coven of the Weaver. When we get back to the hotel I will tell you all, with illustrations that will surprise and amaze you!”

  They had a light supper and then retreated to Lizzie’s room, where she spread Alison’s transcription of the journal and the photographs of the tapestry across the bed. Jackie’s reaction to the material was exactly what Lizzie had expected: impressed, enthusiastic and knowledgeable.

  “This is exciting!” she said as she compared back and forth between the images and the text. “Either of these things on their own would be considered a major find, but the combination of the two. . . .” She paused to look for the right word. “It’s fucking awesome!!” she said finally.

  “May I say again how pleased I am to have you here,” Lizzie said, smiling at her friend.

  “Fucking awesome!”

  They spoke for another hour, until Jackie said her brain couldn’t function anymore without sleep. As she prepared to go to her own room across the hall, she turned and told Lizzie that she simply had to present the material for Alison at the Chaucer conference. “It’s too fucking awesome to keep to yourself,” she said.

  “Let’s walk for a few days,” Lizzie answered. “And then go see Alison in Bristol and talk about it.”

  Jackie gave a sleepy wave and agreed it was a good plan.

  The next morning they took out the Ordnance Survey maps and looked at the path.

  “Shaftesbury is just too far for one day’s walk,” Lizzie said, running her finger along the path.

  “What about Wincanton as a halfway stop?” Jackie asked.

  “I’ve been there already. It’s where the ambulance brought Alison.”

  “Nice town?”

  “I didn’t really see much of it.”

  As it was just the right distance in the right direction, they decided to make it their destination for the day, and aim for Shaftesbury the following evening. Jackie showed Lizzie a brochure for the “Leland Trail,” which she had picked up in the hotel lobby, and they agreed to incorporate as much of that as possible into their walk.

  After making arrangements to leave the car and everything from Jackie’s luggage that didn’t seem essential for the next two days, the pair followed the sign that put them upon the “Leland Trail” and the “Public Footpath,” which ran alongside one wall of the hotel. The first hundr
ed feet or so was between the high stone walls of old buildings, but they quickly found themselves leaving the busy level ground of the town and working their way up an incline into farmland, and then up the steeper path to the top of the ridge. Here they stopped to catch their breath and found two stone benches sitting incongruously in a field, surrounded by cows.

  “Clearly, we are on the right path for librarians,” Jackie said, sinking onto one of the benches. “Who else would furnish the out-of-doors for the comfort of sedentary patrons?”

  Lizzie fished the map out of her pack and began to orient herself. “I think we must be on the site of the castle for which this town was named,” she said, looking around her for any sign of the old fortifications. “The Weaver would have come up this same path and around the castle.”

  “The Weaver?”

  “Alison and I decided we needed a name for her.”

  “You may think about her if you like—I shall think that upon this path trod the velvet shoes of John Leland, bibliophile and librarian to His Majesty King Henry VIII.”

  They looked around them at the view of the village below, the fields dotted with sheep and cows and crisscrossed with short stone walls, and up the opposite side of the valley.

  “That next big hill is called Cadbury,” Lizzie said, pointing. “I wonder if it’s where the chocolate comes from.”

  “According to John Leland, it’s where King Arthur’s court was.”

  “Camelot?”

  “The very same.” Jackie kicked at a stone with her shoe, and then stood up and tossed another down the long hill. “But I’m sorry to have to tell you that though he was a librarian, Mr. Leland was full of shit when he made that claim.”

  “I am all astonishment,” Lizzie proclaimed facetiously. “What was he doing here anyway?”

  Jackie pulled the brochure from her pocket. “According to the South Somerset Council,” she read, “who has marked this path for our benefit, ‘Leland traveled around England for five years collecting information for his book, The Laborious Journey and Serche for Englandes Antiquities’—spelled with many extra e’s, as was the custom in those days.”