Eleven Pipers Piping

by C. C. Benison

  “Tom,” she murmured. “Perhaps we should move to the Annex.”

  Caroline was wearing black jeans, wellies, and what looked like a pajama top. Her hair, usually an immaculate cap, was pulled back into an unkempt chignon. When she approached, he could see the skin puffed around her eyes and a dullness along the sclera, the effect, perhaps, of a sleeping pill. She folded her arm into his and leaned into his shoulder, as if she needed his physical as well as his moral support.

  “I’m so glad you’ve come. I’m afraid my brother isn’t really someone capable of offering much sympathy. He rather takes after our father in that way. Or did the army knock it out of him? I’m not sure I know.”

  “How are you?”

  “Oh, numb, I think.”

  “Don’t you have a coat?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  They stepped out the door into the cold air as Nick’s van, HOMECASTLE SECURITY emblazoned on the side, zipped past them, sending a spray of wet snow landing at their feet.

  “And how is Ariel?” Tom asked, frowning after the retreating car.

  “Oh! Isn’t that Miranda?”

  Tom glanced past Caroline to see his daughter, in her scarlet quilted jacket, trudging up the path from the road. He had left the vicarage with her earlier, but she’d parted company with him to fetch Emily Swan and go to Fishers Hill—which, it was rumoured, had been turned by the ice and snow into a glorious slide. Madrun had disassembled a cardboard box to act as toboggan.

  “This is very thoughtful,” Caroline murmured.

  “Would Ariel want a visitor?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t. When I told her yesterday that … well, what had happened, she asked if she could go back out and play. I was so surprised, I said of course, but in any event she chose to stay in. We ended up watching The Lion King, her favourite film. She ended up comforting me. I’m afraid Mufasa’s death scene set me off terribly.” Her mouth sagged. “How odd, how unreal this all is. I can’t take it in that my husband is gone. And this snow on top of it—it’s all part of some horrible ghastly unnatural—”

  “You’re shivering, Caroline. We need to get you inside.”

  “I thought Ariel might like to come and slide on the hill.” Miranda regarded them both solemnly, her cheeks red with exertion and cold. Silver puffs of air emitted from her mouth as she spoke; then her lips curved into an impulsive smile. “It’s really fun! I thought—” She seemed to catch herself, as if sensing the remark lacked sensitivity. The smile fell.

  “Let’s ask her, shall we?” Caroline led the way to the Annex, calling out to Ariel when she pushed open the door, but Ariel was in the shadow of the hall, waiting, her brother, Adam, barely visible behind her, his hands resting on her slender shoulders. Caroline caught her breath. “Oh, sweetheart! You startled me. Miranda wants to know if you would like to go out and play.”

  The two girls regarded each other shyly.

  “Should I?” Ariel asked her mother, her dark eyes telegraphing a tumult of emotion.

  “Yes, of course. But only if you really want to. Your brother and Mr. Christmas will keep me company. You mustn’t worry.”

  “How about this,” Tom offered. “You and Miranda go out for an hour or so—there’s a wonderful icy slide on Fishers Hill that Miranda will tell you about—and then we’ll come and fetch you both.”

  “Or I could go with them,” Adam suggested, though his tone held little enthusiasm.

  “Adam, darling, why don’t you take yourself off to the pub.” Caroline switched on an overhead light and reached for Ariel’s jacket. “You can drop the girls off first, if you like. I expect there’s lots of adult supervision on the hill.”

  “Are you sure?” Adam’s mouth twitched, then fell back to form a thin, unhappy slit.

  Tom studied him as Caroline fussed with her daughter. He was fair-haired like his father, and resembled him, too, in build—tall and lean, rawboned. Yet somehow he seemed a less vital edition of his sire, his face thinner, more attenuated than Will’s, his hair, though clipped ruthlessly short, unable to disguise a hairline in early retreat. Dull despair, marker of misery, flecked his watery grey eyes. It was that, more than the presence of a child who didn’t need reminding, that quashed the words of condolence forming on Tom’s lips. Instead he said: “You managed to get through all right, I see.”

  “Yes,” Caroline answered for her son, “Adam drove in earlier this morning. It’s so good to have him here.”

  “How are the roads?” Tom asked.

  “The A435 is passable, Bursdon Road less so.” Adam shoved his stockinged feet into a pair of wellies and reached past his mother’s head for a waxed jacket.

  “I think you and John are the only people I know who’ve breached the parapets of snow … other than the—” Tom remembered the mortuary van and bit his tongue.

  Adam cast him a troubled frown as he fumbled with his zipper, flicked an undecipherable glance at his mother, and stepped around the girls. He turned at the door, his narrow frame traced by the light, and said, “Perhaps a walk would be better.”

  “Yes, a walk.” Caroline handed Ariel a pair of mittens. “The pub probably isn’t a good idea.”

  “Hard to be around people being jolly in a pub,” Tom remarked, glimpsing the three moving down the path before Caroline closed the door. “How is Adam?”

  “Oh, you know, bottling it up.” Caroline turned and smiled weakly. “As you might expect. I’m not sure I can … reach him. He’s not a little boy anymore. I’m more worried about Ariel, how this will affect her. She’s being very … watchful. She wanted desperately to come to the office with me earlier, but with Nick being …” She left the rest unsaid.

  “Miranda became watchful for a time, too,” Tom told her. “My diary seemed to absorb her. She was concerned I be home by certain times, which is hard to do when you’re a priest with evening meetings and such. Fortunately, she has three doting grandmothers, and Ghislaine, our au pair at the time, was wonderful.”

  “You were lucky to have her. I’m hoping I can get my mother to stay here for a good while. Come through, Tom,” Caroline said, gesturing down the Annex’s central hall towards the kitchen. “Will you have coffee or tea?”

  “Either will do,” he replied, following her. Coffee in the morning was preferred, but more important was the comfort the ritual provided the bereaved. “Your mother lives in Australia, does she not?”

  “Yes,” she replied, lifting the kettle. “She very much took to Australia. More so than my father, who was the one who took us off there in the first place.” She paused over the taps. “I telephoned her last night. So awkward, the time difference between England and Australia. Anyway, I suggested she wait a bit before booking a flight. Has Heathrow reopened? I’m not sure. Are the trains running? What about the roads?” She placed the kettle on the hob with a metallic scrape.

  “I can’t imagine this snow lasting long.” Tom studied her face, creased with anxiety. “It doesn’t usually. Not in this part of the country.”

  “And what does all this mean for the funeral?”

  “The weather?”

  “Yes, I … why? Is there something else?”

  Some look of doubt must have registered in his expression, for he saw consternation in her eyes. “Well,” he began gently, “Will was still a young man, really. I expect there’ll be a …”

  “Postmortem? That’s all right, you can say it, Tom. I’m not squeamish. And why don’t you sit? We might stay here. It’s cosier, I think.”

  “Sorry.” Tom took a Windsor chair next to an old oak refectory table that was the centrepiece of the room. “For some people, the notion of a postmortem comes as a shock. I suppose it did for me, in a way.”

  “Because of your wife.”

  “Yes.” How Lisbeth had died had seemed obvious, hardly in need of examination. He had come across her supine, life’s blood drained from her, with a knife, a crude shiv of razor and duct tape, clearly visible, penetrating the
flesh that he had adored with all his being. That her body had been thus desecrated had been unbearable at the time. It was hardly less so now. “There could be an inquest, too, Caroline.”

  “Inquest?” He noted her body stiffen.

  “I’m sure it would only be a formality, but it may mean a delay.”

  Her back was to him. He watched one hand reach for a glass canister and remove its top. Then she reached up into an overhead cupboard, where she took a cafetière from a jumble of mugs and cups. Silently, she spooned coffee into the beaker. Her head was bent, exposing the vulnerability of her neck, with its wisps of untidy blond hairs.

  “How …,” she began after a moment, her voice tentative. “How did Will … die?”

  Tom let a moment pass. “I’m not sure we properly know.”

  “No, I mean, what happened at the supper?”

  “Did John say nothing when he fetched you at Noze?”

  “When he …? Oh! No. Well, I think you know what a man of few words John is. And Nick couldn’t tell me much. I gather he was very drunk.”

  “I’m afraid we’d all had too much—even your priest, who had promised to set a good example. We were fortunate Judith Ingley arrived when she did. She sort of took charge and I think most of us were grateful.” He gnawed at his lip and gave a passing thought to the Last Supper and those obtuse disciples who didn’t seem to notice that anything was wrong; surely a woman among the Twelve would have been sensitive to Jesus’s mood. “Caroline,” he said, “I feel very much that we could have done something for Will.”

  “What do you mean?” She placed two mugs on the counter and turned to him again.

  Tom ran his fingers along the polished edge of the table. “He wasn’t himself, really, much of the evening.” Although, saying it, he could well describe Will as not really being himself the last several months. “He seemed preoccupied, but later he looked—well, I said peaky, but Judith, when she met him in the lobby for the first time, seemed to immediately think something wasn’t right, and said so. She’d trained as a nurse, you see. But Will was adamant that nothing was wrong. ‘Wind,’ he told us. We should have insisted on fetching a doctor or calling an ambulance right then and there. It might have made all the difference.” He found himself wringing his hands. “Caroline, I’m so sorry.”

  Caroline seemed to look through him as she held his gaze. “I don’t think there was anything you could have done,” she responded finally. Her tone gave no clue to her feelings.

  “I wish I could be sure.”

  “The weather, Tom. It’s not likely anyone could have reached Thornford in time. And with no doctor in the village …”

  “Possibly. But you don’t know, do you, until you try.”

  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Caroline murmured.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just a little joke between Will and me. It was a play on his name, of course. As long as he was around, there was a way.” Tears spurted from the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice thick.

  At that moment the kettle’s hiss became a scream, filling the kitchen with its insistence.

  “Sit,” Tom commanded, rising. “I can make the coffee.”

  Caroline did as bidden, while Tom poured the hot water into the cafetière and placed it on the table.

  “I should say,” he said after a moment as he waited for the grounds to settle and for Caroline to compose herself, “because Nick may well tell you in any case, that I happened to overhear a little of your conversation earlier, in the hotel. You said, ‘Where there’s a will,’ et cetera, to Nick. I do apologise.”

  “Oh.” Caroline, wiping at her eyes, gave him a wary glance. “Well, I expect it’s nothing that isn’t being gossiped about in the village anyway.”

  “As I said, I heard very little. It’s none of my business, and it will go no farther.”

  “You really are a bit of a townie, aren’t you?”

  Tom laughed, glad to see her smile for the first time. “Yes, I suppose. I do have trouble with the tittletattle that seems endemic to village life.”

  “As opposed to the tittletattle that seems endemic to Church life?”

  “You may have a point there.” Tom pressed the plunger into the blackening liquid. “But really, Caroline, will you be able to manage?”

  “I don’t know … No, that’s not true: I do know. I will manage, and I’ll manage just fine. It’s what Will would expect of me, yes? Now,” she added with a new resolution in her voice, “do you take coffee black or white?”

  “Black.”

  “I’ll have cream. No, I’ll get it,” she said, rising and moving to the fridge.

  Tom brought the mugs to the table and sat down.

  “And the tower.” Caroline placed a matching milk jug on the table. “You found Will in Thorn Court’s tower.”

  “I’m sorry. You didn’t know?”

  “No, I was told, and went up before the mortuary van arrived yesterday.”

  “Oh, Caroline—”

  “I just …” She shrugged and sat down.

  Tom understood the strange hunger for details. He had felt it, too, in the wake of Lisbeth’s death.

  “It was Judith who found him, really,” he explained. “She insisted on going up first. To spare us, perhaps, she being a nurse, but, really, there was nothing to spare us from. Will looked simply as if he were resting. Caroline, are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “Yes.” She poured coffee into Tom’s mug. “I do.”

  “I suppose,” Tom continued, watching the liquid swirl against the side of the china, “I wondered why he went up the tower, but I can only think now he knew something was fatally wrong, knew we were trapped in snow, and didn’t want to cause concern. It’s remarkable, really.”

  “Men.” Caroline’s tone conveyed a world of meaning: the fear of losing face, the felt need to hide pain or suffering.

  “It’s the training, I expect. I mean the process of making soft boys into hard men, but I suppose it’s more acute when you’re an athlete as Will was.”

  “Yes.” Caroline poured coffee into her own mug. “I witnessed the pickup match where the cricket ball hit broke his nose. I’d have been shrieking in pain, but not a peep from Will. And of course, it’s not simply physical. I’m told he never complained about the blow fate dealt him when injuries ended his professional career so early, though that was before my time.”

  Tom knew the story. Stress fractures in his lower back had sidelined Will; when he completed a long rehabilitation process, he opted to coach the game rather than play it professionally, first in Australia, then in England.

  “I adored the tower as a child.” Caroline stared off into the middle distance. “It was my Secret Garden—you know the book? Like Archibald Craven, my grandfather had had it closed, sealed off. I was never sure why. Anyway, when I was about eight or nine, I happened to find the key in the back of an old desk in the living room here in the Annex. There’s a modern one now, but then it was a Yale style—ancient—and somehow, with some childish intuition, I knew exactly which lock it fit. I remember it was summer holiday, August, actually a rainy day, which may be why I was poking about indoors, and I remember me waiting for my grandfather to take his nap, which he did religiously in the afternoons when the hotel was at its least busy. After my parents married, he moved out of the Annex and into rooms in the hotel proper—near the stairwell to the tower—so I had to be careful.”

  She paused to pour cream into her coffee. “Oh, Tom, it was magical, slipping in the key, opening the door, then going up and being bathed in this glowing light. The clouds had lifted and the rain had stopped by this time and I could look down over the village towards the South Downs and the patchwork fields. I felt like the queen of the castle. I remember I even considered growing my hair so I could be Rapunzel.”

  “I sense an instance of all good things coming to an end,” Tom remarked, noticing her expression falter.

&nb
sp; “Yes and no. Of course, as you might expect, I couldn’t resist inviting a friend or two up. Soon enough word got back to my grandfather, and he was quite adamant I never go up there again, but after some considerable fuss on my part—really, I think I was quite awful about it—he relented and let me play in the tower whenever I wished, as long as I played alone.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, he died not long after—when I was ten—and my father almost immediately sold Thorn Court and moved us to Australia.

  “My grandfather was a wonderful man—at least he was to me. He made my childhood here an idyll. I never knew it as a private residence, as he had—only as a hotel, but I loved it so—all the guests and the activity, eating in the dining room with all the formality, the wonderful gardens, the swimming pool, the elegant wedding parties, the ladies’ lunches, tours to Dartmoor and the coast—all the sorts of things Will and I were trying to restore.” She took a sip of coffee. “I suppose all the activity around the hotel and my grandfather’s skilful intervention were what kept me from the truth: In Australia, with just the three of us, I realised how unsuccessful my parents’ marriage really was. Of course, it didn’t last long after that. My father had a notion of investing in a shooting estate in western Victoria—you can see how Adam might come by his interests—but he really didn’t have the patience—or the interest, really—in the work and so he returned to England after the divorce. My mother, as I said, found Australia very much to her liking, liberating, I suppose—she had been a vicar’s daughter—I must have told you this—and her home life, as she tells it, was repressive. Naturally, in those days, one stayed with one’s mother.”

  “You’d rather have been with your father?”

  “Oh, no, my mother was the much better parent. I love her dearly, though she’s a bit flighty. I’d rather have been in England, though. I could never quite get used to Australia. Perhaps if we had moved when I was four or five, but at ten … Australia seemed so alien, like another planet—all the plants and animals are so unlike anything here, the heat can be absolutely scorching, and of course in school, you’re teased unmercifully for being a Pom. Once we moved to Melbourne after the divorce it was better, but my first years were spent in a little village called Edenhope, where we were very much the outsiders.