Requiem

by Clare Francis

  As the familiar delight began to creep through him, he folded the poacher’s jacket into a cushion and settled down at the base of the tree. It was five thirty; until the rest of the world awoke this all belonged to him alone. Beneath him, the ground sloped gently away in a long sweep of rough pasture to the richer green of the wide park, with its tall beeches, oaks and cedars, standing like scattered sentries. Then, where the land flattened out slightly before continuing its onward fall to the loch, the house itself stood in its circle of gardens and lawns. There was a faint mist around the house, giving it an even more unreal and extravagant air than usual, like a castle created for a film set. A product of the nineteenth-century baronial building boom, Ashard came complete with mock keep, flagstaff and crenellations. It was not a beautiful house – the stonework was heavy, with reddish tone, the effect dark and sombre – but it had a solidity to it, a dependability that gave it the air of a large and ancient family pet. It was what Alusha called a house of character.

  Despite encouragement from his friends, Nick had refrained from flying anything from the flagstaff. A local heraldry expert had assured him that with a good Scots name like Mackenzie there’d be no trouble in finding a coat of arms, but having been born and raised in Chertsey, the depths of green-belt London suburbia, having come nowhere near Scotland for the first thirty-five years of his life, he felt that stuff like flags and coats of arms was not only inappropriate but ludicrously sentimental. Also, flags and pageantry might make Ashard look something of a joke, which it most certainly wasn’t, a point on which he was particularly sensitive. Ashard was a working estate, the house his home, and he liked people to know it.

  He’d never really wanted to live anywhere else, not since first seeing the place. Certainly not in the house in Provence that he’d owned briefly and visited three or four times, nor the place in the Bahamas he’d kept until last year and secretly hated, and certainly not the apartment in New York. Getting rid of them was the best thing he’d ever done. The only place he’d kept, apart from Ashard, was Caycoo, a small island in the Seychelles, where he and Alusha went every winter. Much as he loved Ashard, winter was not its best season.

  He got up and stretched. He decided to walk the long way home, mainly to kill time. If he was going to pretend he’d gone for an early walk, he could hardly return yet.

  He picked up the poacher’s jacket and, taking the gun in his other hand, set off along the edge of the trees, heading east across the top of the pasture. His head ached at each step and he winced as his feet jarred over rough ground.

  At the eastern corner of the pasture he came to the small dark round hill known as Meall Dhu – which meant, in the way of Gaelic names, dark round hill – and climbed it. It wasn’t very high, but from its summit he could look out over the whole of this side of the estate and see high above him, rising over the tree line, the moorlands, daubed gold by the first splashes of sun; and beneath them, reaching as if to his feet, the wide band of mixed deciduous forest that was so much a feature of the Ashard Estate.

  To the east the woodland curved round in a narrower band from one to three hundred yards wide, marking the estate boundary on that side. Beyond was the next-door Fincharn Estate. Owned by a London-based insurance company and run solely for profit, it had been turned over to plantations of fast-growing Sitka spruce. Rising over a prominent hill, the dense regimented rows dominated and overshadowed the soft woodland and, to Nick’s mind at least, spoilt the view.

  He made his way slowly down the hill towards the railed paddock and Alusha’s pony Rona. Rona, normally sedate and unexcitable, tossed her head at the sight of him. ‘No treats,’ he called out to her. ‘Sorry.’ Coming to the rail, she inspected his empty hands before turning her substantial buttocks on him and trotting off towards her stable.

  He continued down, heading directly for the house. The mist was rising from the loch revealing waters the colour of gun-metal, very still and very dark. The loch was long, some forty miles from its head just beyond Inverary to the Firth of Clyde. Though Ashard was a long way from the open sea, he could often smell the salt in the air and sometimes, when up on the moors, he liked to imagine he could glimpse the open ocean beyond the distant Kintyre Peninsula, although he’d been told it was impossible.

  He strolled down the steep slope that led from the paddock towards the walled garden, and stopped abruptly. A figure had appeared at the back of the house. It was Alusha, walking in that slow purposeful way of hers, her head high, her hair loose, a basket in one hand, like something out of a pre-Raphaelite painting.

  Nick hesitated. He’d been intending to slip the shotgun unobtrusively into the house. Now, he realized, he’d have to think again.

  Breaking the gun open, he hung it high over the branch of a rowan tree where it would be hidden behind a screen of foliage, then, after a moment’s thought, hung the poacher’s jacket alongside it.

  Alusha had gone into the walled garden below him. He could see the top of her head as she bent to pick some vegetables. After a moment, she straightened up and stood very still, her face upturned. He knew exactly what she was doing: looking at the light spreading across the sky. The scene was so perfect, she looked so lovely, that his despondency lifted.

  He touched the side of his head, checking the lump. It hadn’t got any smaller. To cover it he agitated his hair into some sort of uniform confusion, then, brushing down his clothes, entered the walled garden by the nearest gate. Alusha was picking spinach.

  ‘Well!’ she exclaimed with a laugh. ‘There you are! Where were you when I needed you?’

  He gave her a brief kiss. ‘Oh? What happened?’

  She gave an expressive little shrug. ‘Too late now.’

  She had a way of being both suggestive and innocent all at the same time. A tantalizing smile hovered on her mouth, and he kissed it again. What he really wanted to do was hug her very hard, not only because he loved her, and today more than ever, but because just looking at her was enough to make him feel the night had been nothing but a bad dream.

  He settled on a small squeeze. Normally he wasn’t at his most demonstrative before noon and anything more would have made her suspicious.

  ‘What do you think our guests would like for breakfast?’ she asked.

  Nick had forgotten about them. ‘Mel’s never been a great one for breakfast,’ he said. ‘As for David – coffee I should think.’

  ‘And you?’ She looked up at him and her smile turned into a small frown. ‘What have you been up to? Digging with the rabbits? You’re covered in dirt.’

  Nick ran a hand over his cheek. ‘Don’t laugh,’ he said. ‘I fell over.’

  She laughed. ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘Tripped over a bramble,’ he said, avoiding the question.

  ‘Next you’ll tell me you grazed your knee and need a sticky bandage.’

  ‘A sticky plaster,’ he automatically corrected her. It was a habit from the days when Alusha’s English was fragmentary.

  ‘Poor love,’ she murmured with a soft laugh, and reached up as if to stroke his head.

  He ducked quickly away. ‘Must go and shower.’ He blew her a kiss to stifle the faint surprise in her face. She watched him for a moment, narrowing her eyes in a sidelong glance that was both affectionate and suspicious at the same time, then gave a small wave, a slow fluttering of the fingers, before turning back to her vegetables.

  It took him a while to find something for his headache. Pills and potions, though not exactly banned at Ashard House, weren’t encouraged either.

  As Nick crossed the hall, the phone rang.

  ‘Mr Mackenzie, if you please.’ It was a male voice with a local accent.

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a pause. ‘Is that you yourself, Mr Mackenzie?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘You’re back then,’ the voice said.

  Nick stiffened, then, as realization came, he almost laughed with incredulity. ‘You’ve got a bloody nerve!’

&
nbsp; ‘An unfortunate mishap, Mr Mackenzie. Ma friend, he didna’ mean for you to fall on the rock. He wasna’ thinkin’.’

  ‘Wasn’t thinking! He almost killed me.’

  ‘It was the gun,’ the voice chided. ‘If it hadna’ been for the gun nothin’ would have occurred, I think you’ll agree.’

  ‘Agree! My mistake was not using the bloody thing. Next time I won’t make the same mistake.’

  A short pause. ‘In that case, Mr Mackenzie, it might be wise to try loadin’ it.’

  Nick gripped the side of the table. ‘I’ll remember that. Thank you for mentioning it.’

  ‘Not at all. I trust your head mends good an’ quick. An’ if you’d leave ma coat by the back there, I’d be obliged. You’ve a wood store, have you not. If you would leave it there, just inside the door.’ There was a soft click as he rang off.

  Nick wrenched the receiver from his ear and, holding it inches from his face, stared at it, unable to speak.

  Then he gave a short exasperated cry. He was still muttering when he stepped under the shower.

  Chapter 2

  SATURDAY, SATURDAY. DAISY awoke feeling guilty, and it was a moment before she remembered that there was no need. She felt a wash of relief. No need to jump out of bed to push oranges through the expensive Californian juicer, which took hours to clean, no need to pound down the street to fetch newly baked croissants, nor feed freshly roasted coffee into the grinder whose screech carved right into her brain.

  But then Richard would have put up with anything to get these things right. She knew the end had come when he decided it was time to get into heavy opera, and, not being one to do things by halves, had made her sit through over five hours of Götterdämmerung. She wouldn’t have minded if opera had been a genuine passion, but like most things with Richard, it was a matter of social éclat. Something that had to be endured to get his lifestyle into shape.

  At the opera, during one of the all-too-short intervals, Daisy had failed to live up to cultural expectations in front of Richard’s friends by allowing her south London accent out of its cage – as often happened in times of exasperation or stress – and asking who this Wagner geezer thought he was anyway, rambling on for longer than Ben Hur, giving people stiff bums and tired brains?

  She was so used to waking to the sound of Richard showering – a signal that the rush to create the perfect breakfast must begin – that it was a moment before she identified what had woken her. It was, she realized, the ring, click and buzz of the answering machine. A little early for a social call, which was the only sort she was interested in, but she got out of bed and checked the machine anyway.

  ‘Daisy, something’s come up – ’

  ‘Oh no, it hasn’t,’ she said switching the machine firmly off. She didn’t need Alan’s voice first thing on a Saturday morning, not when she’d heard it all week in the office. What she needed was some calls from her friends, an invitation to a party or two, and while she was waiting for that, a bit of self-indulgence. Now that it was no longer an offence to be a slob, she wanted to go the whole hog – milky Nescafé, the Sun and the blare of Capital Radio while reclining on her uncoordinated sheets. And for afters – yes, a bowl of Coco Pops with full-cream milk – none of your skimmed stuff – and a heavy lacing of white sugar, followed by toast made from steam-baked sliced muck from Gateways.

  She pottered off to the rabbit-hutch of a kitchen and five minutes later was back in bed with a steaming mug of coffee which, coming straight from the jar, tasted like nectar. The newspapers, despite being yesterday’s, weren’t bad either, mainly because for the first time in months she passed straight over the Guardian and the Independent in favour of the tabloids and read all the silly bits.

  Skimming through the papers was a regular item in her life, and when pushed she could get through all eight of the main rags in twenty minutes without missing anything very important. She took cuttings on most environmental articles, whether or not they related directly to Catch. Three years ago, when she’d started with Catch, she’d been lucky to find as many as three Green articles in a week of tabloid-reading. Now the office files fairly bulged with Green news, views and opinions.

  Anything on chemicals or toxicity was of special interest, of course, but then she usually knew when something like that was coming up. The press, being short on time and information, and lazy to boot, often contacted her for their facts. After she’d done all their work for them she’d give them an earful on the government’s environment policy – not a subject she ever felt reticent about – before spelling out Catch’s name in full – the Campaign Against Toxic Chemicals – and telling them to put it in big letters near the top of the article, preferably with an appeal for funds. They never did, of course, but she lived in hope. If she hadn’t been a dedicated career optimist she wouldn’t have been in this job in the first place.

  At eleven, when she’d exhausted the last gossip column, she finally got up and, pulling on some jeans and a sweater, went down the hill to Mr Patel’s to fetch the Saturday papers.

  She still wasn’t quite sure why she’d chosen to live here on the borders of Tufnell Park and Upper Holloway. To the east was a ragbag of two-roomed flats and bedsits and crumbling terraces that housed every nationality, and a few more besides. To the west, ranks of grey-brick villas undulated over the switchback of hills that led up to Highgate. Inhabited by writers and academics, classless Guardian-readers and women who did pottery – professionally, mind you – and precocious chess-playing kids, it was another continent after the conspicuous consumption of SW3.

  And Richard’s consumption had been particularly conspicuous – designer haircuts, hand-made shirts, car phones, restaurants six nights a week – though, pig that she was, she’d miss the food all right – and a BMW convertible, for God’s sake, which had taken a bit of explaining away at Catch, where the employees – a grand total of three including Daisy herself – were on wages that would have caused the tightest employer to blush.

  Daisy hadn’t always been poor. In fact until she gave up her job as a solicitor specializing in family law her salary, being firmly tied to the divorce rate, had been buoyant and rising fast. But three years ago, taken by the thought that there had to be more to life than the breakdown of the family unit she’d decided to go for broke, quite literally, by joining the anti-chemical group. She hadn’t regretted it. Well, only when she was stupid enough to worry about money.

  The newspapers didn’t get any lighter, not even when Mr Patel handed them over with an apologetic smile. By the time she had bought Coco Pops, milk, jam, butter (a cholesterol no-no in SW3), a tin of mackerel, fruit, and a sticky cream cake (roughage-free), the walk back up the hill to number 50C Augustus Road became something of a trek.

  Climbing, she planned her day. Coco Pops, papers, then work on the flat. The word flat was estate agent’s hyperbole really: it was more of a one-roomed space with cubbyholes daringly described as bathroom and kitchen. The place was a new conversion of a Victorian house in a shabby terrace, and it was only after she’d moved in that she began to understand why the rent was affordable. The ceiling was so thin you could hear the two Greek waiters in the flat above arguing, which, being lovers, they did frequently; the fittings were so flimsy that the lever-type plastic door handles had assumed permanent downward curves, there was a chronic shortage of hanging space, and there wasn’t a single door that wasn’t slightly warped. That said, it was on the first floor with a large bay window which faced south, and the girl she shared it with, a social worker called Anthea, spent four days out of every seven at her boyfriend’s.

  She struggled in through the flat door just as the phone rang. A social call. One lived in hope anyway.

  It was Alan again.

  ‘Don’t want to hear from you.’

  ‘Didn’t you get my message?’ he asked. ‘Listen – your Mrs Knowles. Something’s come up.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She’s planning a one-woman demo at some agricultura
l show in Berkshire.’

  Daisy groaned softly and said, more to herself than to Alan: ‘What does she want to go and do that for?’

  ‘Don’t know, but it could spoil your coverage.’

  Daisy didn’t need reminding. She’d been working on the Knowles story for two months and now it was within a week of being ready to tout round the quality press as a subject for a serious investigative piece. The last thing it needed was Mrs Knowles making scenes at some agricultural show, and having the tabloids make her look like some kind of agitator.

  ‘How did you hear?’ she asked.

  ‘Local pressman. Left a message on the office machine. Wanted some background. Apparently Mrs Knowles has talked to him and promised him the whole story. He says he’s going to try to string it to a national.’

  Daisy sat down heavily on the bed. ‘Why, for God’s sake?’

  She could almost see Alan shrugging at the other end of the line. ‘Finally got to her?’ he suggested. ‘Flipped her lid?’

  ‘Don’t even mention it.’ But the thought had already occurred to her. Alice Knowles was under intolerable pressure; many lesser people would have cracked before now. ‘When’s this meant to be happening?’ she asked.

  ‘At three this afternoon.’

  End of quiet Saturday.

  Daisy tried calling Alice Knowles, but there was no reply. Already left for the show, perhaps. Or lying low, avoiding the phone.

  There was nothing for it then, not if all the work wasn’t going to go up the spout. Quite apart from anything else, she rather liked Mrs Knowles; it would be dreadful to see her disappointed, maybe even humiliated.