The White Shepherd

by Annie Dalton

  But when she took a precautionary peep through the window of Cafe Marmalade, Isadora was nowhere to be seen. Isadora wasn’t there, but to Anna’s surprise Sergeant Goodhart was, talking to Tansy in the nearly empty cafe.

  Anna pushed open the door in time to hear him say, ‘Not a date date. Just, you know, a drink or a walk by the river?’

  Anna hastily scrolled through her available options. She could slip away now, in which case they might spot her, and thus adding to everyone’s discomfort levels, or she could announce her presence before their conversation got any more intense. ‘Hi,’ she said tentatively, and they both guiltily jumped apart.

  Even in faded jeans and a white T-shirt, Sergeant Goodhart looked like what he was, Anna thought – an off-duty cop, and distinctly sheepish at being discovered in close proximity to Tansy. Tansy’s face expressed similar confusion. ‘Hi, Anna! You remember Liam? Actually, he was just going, weren’t you?’ she added fiercely.

  ‘That was very subtly done,’ Anna commented as they watched the handsome sergeant disappear down Walton Street.

  Tansy pulled a face. ‘I kind of panicked.’ She tugged at her curls then her eyes went wide. ‘Oh my God, Anna, Isadora told me about the gangsters. What the fuck was Naomi thinking?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘I can’t get my head around it at all.’

  Tansy gestured towards a table. ‘Sit, sit. Isadora shouldn’t be long.’

  ‘Have you actually spoken to her?’ Anna asked. ‘I mean, you’ve spoken to her this morning?’

  ‘Yes, when I fixed up our lunch. Why?’

  ‘Did she sound OK?’Anna hedged.

  ‘A bit subdued, maybe. Why, what happened to make you think she wasn’t OK?’

  Anna gave Tansy a slightly edited version of the end of her evening.

  ‘Oh my God, poor Isadora! Not to mention poor you! Hang on a sec.’ Tansy waved Brendan over. ‘We’re still waiting for our friend. Can you rustle up some bread and hummus to keep us going? Aw, thanks, hon!’ Were all Oxford’s young men in thrall to Tansy, Anna wondered as Brendan obediently hurried away.

  Tansy waited until he’d brought a basket heaped with crusty slices of warmed-through olive bread and retreated out of earshot before she said, ‘What do you think made Isadora so upset?’

  What Anna had felt from Isadora as she crumpled into her arms was a terrible grief. She didn’t know if she should say this to Tansy though, so she just shrugged. ‘Getting old, maybe? Plus, she said she’d seen about a dozen people that she’d slept with at one time or another.’

  Tansy raised an eyebrow. ‘She actually said “people” not “men”?’

  ‘She definitely said “people”.’ Anna tore off a piece of her bread and popped it in her mouth.

  ‘Try it with the hummus,’ Tansy suggested. ‘Seriously, it’s so good.’ She pushed the little earthenware ramekin towards Anna, and Anna saw that Tansy’s nails had been repainted with a pearlescent blue polish sprinkled with tiny gold stars. Like miniature Van Gogh skies, she thought.

  Tansy watched Anna slather a crust with garlicky chickpea spread. ‘She couldn’t have just been upset about the Albanians?’

  Anna shook her head. Isadora’s anguish had been old, pent up, scalding; the kind of pain it half-killed you to feel. ‘The weird thing is she didn’t, you know, act upset until the moment I got her out of the pub, then she just …’ Anna inhaled sharply, letting her sentence just tail off.

  ‘I totally can’t drink,’ Tansy said ruefully. ‘I can’t stand that floaty feeling, like I’m losing touch with reality you know? Leo says I’m a control freak.’

  ‘Why do people always say that as if it’s a bad thing?’ Anna said, perplexed. Why would you not want to stay in control, she thought; who else could you trust to keep you safe, if not yourself?

  Tansy poured them each a glass of sparkling mineral water. ‘I used to do a bit of weed now and then. But I had a couple of bad experiences, and now I’m too much of a lightweight to even do that.’

  In her time, Anna had done more than a bit of weed, along with other substances it made her sick to remember. She tried to smile at Tansy. ‘We’re both lightweights, then.’

  Tansy started idly picking pieces of olive out of her bread. Anna could see her thoughts were wandering. ‘I’ve been thinking. What Isadora’s friend Kit said about Albanian gang lords possibly being connected with Naomi’s death. You don’t think we should maybe check it out?’ Tansy shot a glance at Anna then went back to fiddling with her bread.

  Anna gave a surprised snort. ‘How would we do that?’

  Tansy shrugged. ‘I might know someone who could help.’

  Anna ransacked her brain to think who this someone might be. ‘You don’t mean Liam?’

  ‘Are you mad!’ Tansy looked appalled. ‘We can’t involve the police with this.’

  ‘Who were you thinking of involving then?’ Anna said, bewildered.

  Tansy seemed to study her fingernails for a moment, and then she looked up and flashed Anna a grin that couldn’t entirely hide her relief at a narrow escape. ‘Forget it. No, trust me, Anna, it was a really bad idea, and God knows I’ve had a few!’

  The door to the cafe opened with a crash, and Isadora burst in. Wearing dark glasses and an old mole-coloured trench-coat she looked like a hung-over heroine from the French Resistance. She had bundled her wiry curls into a silk scarf, also mole-coloured. Possibly, she hadn’t felt up to dealing with tangles, or colours, Anna thought.

  ‘I need coffee, strong black coffee,’ Isadora announced as she dropped heavily into the seat next to Tansy.

  ‘I’m on it,’ Tansy said, jumping up. She slipped behind the counter and did something to activate the espresso machine.

  Alone with Anna, Isadora briefly lifted her sunglasses, shooting her a beseeching look, before fixing them tremblingly back in place. ‘Was I very ghastly? What did I do? No, don’t tell me!’ she begged immediately.

  Now that Anna was actually sitting opposite her, she found that she wasn’t embarrassed as much as concerned to spare Isadora’s feelings. ‘You weren’t ghastly. You just told some wonderful stories about being young in the sixties.’ This wasn’t an out and out lie.

  ‘I didn’t tell you that terrible story about Mick Jagger?’ Isadora was pressing her fingers to her temples in a way that let Anna know her head was pounding.

  ‘Not that I recall,’ Anna said, mentally crossing her fingers.

  Tansy came back with a huge mug of coffee and three Cafe Marmalade menus. Isadora began emptying sachets of sugar into her coffee. When she’d reached sachet number six, Tansy’s mouth opened in protest.

  ‘Don’t say a word!’ Isadora snapped. ‘It’s my hangover. I know what I need!’

  The two younger women waited in respectful silence until Isadora had sunk half her coffee. Cautiously removing her dark glasses, she patted Tansy’s hand. ‘I can probably function now, so long as nobody shouts.’ She turned her attention to Anna. ‘How much have you told Tansy about last night? About Naomi I mean. Not about me getting drunk.’

  Tansy tactfully came to Anna’s rescue. ‘She hasn’t told me much about your evening, have you, Anna? Except for something mad about Naomi having meets with psycho Albanians,’ she said, flashing Anna a grin.

  ‘Kit didn’t actually use the term psycho,’ Anna said. Or ‘meets’, she added mentally. Despite its swift retraction, Tansy’s offer to obtain information about gang lords had left her distinctly puzzled.

  ‘What did he say though?’ Tansy asked.

  ‘Anna can fill you in,’ Isadora said, closing her eyes.

  ‘He said Naomi was a brilliant researcher,’ Anna said, ‘and he said that he liked her a lot, but they had a major falling-out about her latest gangland project, and he feels terrible now about not coming down harder on her.’

  ‘That’s all he said?’ Tansy sounded disappointed. She sighed. ‘I suppose it was unrealistic to hope he’d give us something more solid. So how was the book la
unch? Did you meet anyone exciting?’

  Isadora left Anna to narrate the story of how Huw’s wife had stormed out minutes before her husband’s big moment.

  While Anna was talking, she had the feeling Tansy was privately turning something over in her mind. At last Tansy said, ‘I’m not sure if you’ll think this is really morbid, but people are leaving flowers in Port Meadow where we found Naomi. I thought we could go and take something – not mawkish shit like teddy bears, just flowers. Liam said her body is being taken back to her family in Pembrokeshire, so I thought this was one way we could, you know, say goodbye.’

  Isadora opened her eyes to say, ‘I haven’t been back there since that day.’

  ‘I haven’t been back either,’ Anna said.

  ‘Nor me,’ said Tansy. ‘So do you agree this might be a good thing to do? I thought it might be a way of kind of laying her to rest, you know?’

  ‘I think it would be a lovely thing to do,’ Isadora said at once. ‘How about you, Anna?’

  ‘I’d like to do that too,’ Anna said. She wondered if she would have come up with it by herself. She hoped so, but she wasn’t convinced.

  ‘Shall we all meet up on Sunday?’ Isadora asked. ‘That’s if everyone is free?’

  Tansy and Anna nodded.

  ‘Good, that’s settled!’ Isadora said, sounding more like her normal self. ‘And now I suppose we should have our vegan lunch! What do you recommend, darling?’ she asked Tansy. ‘My one stipulation is that it shouldn’t involve any form of tofu. In my current fragile condition, I feel that would be most unwise!’

  Anna saw Tansy waiting with Buster as soon as she drove into the car park. Tansy had thrown a leopard-print swing coat over her skinny jeans and was holding an enormous bunch of brightly-coloured flowers that reminded Anna of harvest festivals.

  A moment later Isadora’s Volvo pulled up. Anna saw Isadora reach into the back of the car, before she emerged with her arms full of russet coloured chrysanthemums. Hero jumped out, wildly excited to see the other dogs. Buster and Bonnie greeted each other with polite interest. Isadora’s dog, still half puppy, flew back and forth between the older dogs, exuberantly licking their faces.

  Tansy gave a rueful laugh. ‘When I pictured us being here in my head it was way more dignified.’

  ‘Shall I put her back in the car?’ Isadora suggested.

  Tansy shook her head. ‘We all have to be here, or it isn’t a proper goodbye.’ She opened the gate into the meadow. The three women set off a little self-consciously, carrying their flowers, the dogs racing ahead. Overhead, rooks cawed and sullen clouds threatened rain.

  ‘I know this was my idea,’ Tansy said. ‘But now I’m here, I don’t really know how I’m supposed to feel. Does that sound stupid?’ In typical Tansy fashion, she was saying what Anna had half-felt but not liked to say aloud.

  ‘It doesn’t sound stupid,’ Anna said. She wondered if they were all sharing the same thought. If it hadn’t been for Naomi they’d still be three strangers, yet here they were tramping over a damp autumn meadow to say goodbye to this woman they had hardly known.

  ‘You’ve both bought lovely flowers.’ Tansy glanced doubtfully at her own offering. ‘I took these from Nick and Leo’s garden. I just walked around picking everything I liked the look of.’ Tansy had included rosemary and rose hips in her bunch, along with late-flowering roses and shocking-pink cosmos. Anna thought Tansy’s heartfelt if raggedy posy made her own all-white bouquet look lifeless in comparison.

  Isadora brushed her hand over a green spike of rosemary, releasing its scented oil. ‘Rosemary for remembrance,’ she said softly. ‘How perfect, Tansy.’

  Long before they reached the spot they could see the sea of cellophane-wrapped flowers left by local people, most of whom had probably not known Naomi, Anna thought; the Lady Di effect. As Tansy had feared there were a few damp-looking teddy-bears. Several mourners had left well-intentioned messages about being taken to be an angel that Anna suspected would have made Naomi laugh. It had rained in the night, scattering raindrops across cellophane wrappings and flower petals like transparent beads. The scene reminded Anna of those eerie double exposures you sometimes saw back in the days when cameras used film; the innocence of flowers and toy bears surreally imposed over the horror of Naomi’s last moments on earth. The killer had fled, Naomi’s body had been removed, yet the violent act still resonated, unseen but savagely present.

  Anna rather awkwardly laid down her flowers, and Tansy and Isadora placed theirs beside hers. Tansy reached into her bag, bringing out a lighter and a white tea light in a clear glass holder. Anna watched her light it and carefully set it next to their flowers.

  ‘Do we have to say anything?’ Tansy asked.

  Anna shook her head. What could they possibly say?

  ‘It’s enough to feel it, darling,’ Isadora said.

  Anna swallowed. When this little ceremony was over, she and Tansy and Isadora would say their goodbyes and maybe exchange cards at Christmas, because after today there would no longer be any valid motivation for them to continue to meet.

  ‘Would it seem really tasteless of me if I said how stunningly gorgeous this bouquet is?’

  Anna followed Tansy’s awed gaze, and her eyes widened. The bouquet was three times the size of hers or Isadora’s.

  ‘Do you think Naomi’s boyfriend sent them?’ Tansy suggested.

  ‘I don’t think she had a boyfriend,’ said Isadora. ‘They didn’t mention one in the papers, and no grieving boyfriend came forward so far as I know.’

  ‘There’s a card.’ Tansy crouched down for a closer look. ‘It’s from someone called Laurie Swanson.’

  ‘Laurie Swanson? Are you sure?’ Isadora sounded startled.

  Tansy nodded. ‘The writing’s gone a bit blurry, but you can read the name.’

  Isadora seemed perplexed. ‘The only Laurie Swanson I know has been a complete recluse for years.’

  ‘This must be a different guy then. Most of his message has run in the rain, but there’s a bit about being sorry their connection was so brief and thanking Naomi for listening and being there.’

  ‘Well, whoever he is, he obviously thought a great deal of Naomi,’ Isadora commented as they set off back to the car.

  ‘So who was your Laurie Swanson, Isadora?’ Tansy asked.

  ‘An amazingly talented composer. People were calling him the next Benjamin Britten. About ten years ago, in the middle of conducting his new symphony in Berlin, he just walked off stage. I heard a rumour that he’d had a massive breakdown, poor man. Still just a baby, really, in his early forties. He hasn’t produced any new work since, so far as I know.’

  By the time they reached the car park, it had started to rain in earnest.

  ‘Can I offer you a lift?’ Isadora asked Tansy.

  ‘That would be great, thanks.’ Tansy turned to include Anna. ‘I’m really glad you could both come. I feel better that we did this, don’t you?’

  Anna nodded. ‘Much better.’ No point trying to put into words her irrational sense of loss, of loose ends that would now forever stay untied. They had started something, the three of them. They just weren’t equipped to finish it. There was nothing anyone could do about it, so better just leave it all unsaid. Anna realized she didn’t even know where Tansy lived. She’d have to drop off her Christmas card at Marmalade.

  Isadora briefly squeezed Anna’s hands. ‘Goodbye, you darling girl.’

  Anna opened the back door of her Land Rover so that Bonnie could jump in. ‘I’m sure I’ll see you guys around,’ she said. She got into her car, gave them a smiling wave and drove away.

  NINE

  That evening Anna lay on her back on the kitchen sofa wearing her old flannel PJs and a baggy T-shirt, knees bent, a pillow under her head. On the floor next to the sofa was a bowl of sweet ‘n’ salty popcorn. Now and then Anna threw Bonnie a kernel, though she thought Bonnie enjoyed catching them with a triumphant snap – and, subsequently, crunching them man
ically – almost more than the actual popcorn. She had her radio tuned to a mellow music station, and Nina Simone was singing ‘To Love Somebody’.

  Out of all the rooms in Anna’s flat, her basement kitchen was the one that said ‘home’. It was also the least overlooked, which made it easier to relax. She had installed a small TV and DVD player next to the sofa and had just finished watching Silver Linings Playbook. But when she’d checked the time it was only nine forty-five p.m., far too early to go to bed. So she’d switched on the radio, picked up her copy of Owen Traherne’s biography and settled down to read Kit’s introduction.

  She’d bought Kit’s book in Summertown after dropping her grandfather back at Bramley Lodge. They’d driven out to nearby Woodstock to the Woodstock Arms for Sunday lunch. By the time they’d emerged from the pub the clouds had rolled away, and Anna had suggested going to Blenheim Palace, a place her grandfather loved. She’d lifted his wheelchair out of the back of her Land Rover, and they’d made a leisurely circuit of the lake known as the Queen’s Pool, so he could enjoy the autumn colours twice over, first in the landscape planted by Capability Brown and then reflected back from the millpond still waters.

  It had been a good day, Anna thought, what she privately designated as a normal day. That’s if you edited out the part where she took some flowers to a murder scene and heard a name that for no logical reason had lodged in her brain and refused to go away.

  Laurie Swanson. Who was he? And what was he to Naomi Evans? And what had Naomi done to affect this man so deeply that he had spent the equivalent of Anna’s weekly grocery bill on a bouquet to honour her memory? In his message he had thanked Naomi ‘for listening’, for ‘being there for him’. In her group therapy days, Anna had unwillingly found herself in the company of people who used this kind of therapy-speak, but she suspected that Laurie Swanson’s words, like his hugely expensive flowers, were the only way he knew to express the inexpressible. He didn’t care about being original or even adequate. He was just pouring out his heartfelt gratitude to a valued friend.