In a Dry Season

by Peter Robinson

  “Still,” said Mother, “farming’s not an easy life.”

  Gloria laughed. “You can say that again. It’s dirty and smelly, too. But I can cope. I’ve never minded hard work. Actually, I quite enjoy it.” She shot me a sidelong glance. “This stew is delicious, Gwen. I really mean it. It’s the tastiest meal I’ve had in a long time. Thank you very much.”

  I felt absurdly pleased and struggled to stop myself from blushing, but you can’t do it, like you can’t tickle yourself. I blushed. “My pleasure,” I said.

  After the rhubarb pie, which Gloria once again was kind enough to remark upon, Matthew made more tea and we put the wireless on again for “The Happidrome.” I just caught the end of a news bulletin which confirmed that Westminster Abbey, the British Museum and the Houses of Parliament had been bombed, but only damaged, not destroyed. Still, you never knew whether to believe newsreaders or not, even though they had to say their names before each bulletin now, so we’d know the Germans hadn’t taken over the BBC. After all, the Germans could listen to the broadcasts, too, and we didn’t want them to think we were badly hurt or demoralized in any way. We had enough with Lord Haw-Haw doing that for us. Just the previous week he had actually said something about the Germans bombing the flax mill in Hobb’s End, which nearly gave our ARP

  man apoplexy.

  Over a cup of tea, Matthew and Gloria lit cigarettes. I knew Mother didn’t approve of women smoking, but she said nothing. Then Matthew cleared his throat and said, “Mother, I invited Gloria here tonight for a specific reason, because, well, we have something to tell you.”

  Mother raised her eyebrows; my heart started to thump against my ribcage.

  “We want to get married.”

  I gaped at Matthew: tall, dashing, handsome, that charming lock of dark-brown hair always slipping over his eye, the dimples at each side of his mouth when he smiled, the clear eyes and strong chin. And then I looked at Gloria, saw her radiance.

  Somehow, it was all so inevitable.

  At that moment, I hated her.

  “Ah,” said Mother, after a calming sip of tea. “You do, do you?” “Yes.”

  “And you, young lady?”

  “Very much,” said Gloria, leaning over and taking

  Matthew’s hand. “I know it’s not been long that we’ve known one another, but it’s wartime and—”

  Mother waved her down. “Yes, yes, my dear, I know all about that. Have you thought, though, that Matthew might be going far away soon?”

  “We’ve thought about that, Mother,” he said. “Even though I passed the medical, I’ll still have my military training to do after the degree, and there’s a good chance I’ll be able to come home every weekend until after Christmas, probably, at least.”

  “And the rest of the week?”

  “I’ll be working at the farm, as usual,” Gloria said, “and

  Matt will be at university in Leeds until July, then he’ll go wherever they send him for training. I know it’s not perfect. We’d love nothing more than to be together all the time.” They held hands and she gazed at him. “But we know that’s not realistic. Not yet, anyway.”

  I couldn’t believe it; she called him Matt. How could she? He had always been Matthew to Mother and me.

  “What about your studies?” Mother asked him.

  “I’ll be working just as hard as usual.”

  “Hmph. A lot of couples are waiting to marry,” she said.

  “Until times are less uncertain.”

  “But a lot of people are getting married, too,” Matthew argued, “making the best of the time they have. Yes, we know life is very uncertain now. But if anything happens to me in the forces, I’ll die a far happier man for having been married to Gloria. Even if it was only for a day.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Matthew,” Mother said, putting her hand to her chest again. Then she glanced at me. “What do you think about all this, Gwen?”

  I swallowed. “Me? Well, I suppose if it’s what they really want to do, then there’s nothing we can say to stop them.”

  “Good old Gwen,” said Matthew. “I knew I could depend on you.”

  “Where will you live?” Mother demanded. “Have you thought about that? It’s not that we wouldn’t have you, but there’s not enough room here, you know, even if you wanted to live with Gwen and me. We don’t even have enough room to take in evacuees. And you certainly can’t both live at the farm.”

  “Yes,” said Matthew, “we’ve thought about that, too. That’s why we want to get married as soon as possible.”

  Mother frowned. “Oh?”

  “We’re going to live in Bridge Cottage.”

  “What? That run-down hovel by the fairy bridge?”

  “Yes. It’ll be big enough for us. And it’ll be ours. Well, we’ll only be renting it, but you know what I mean. As you know, it’s been used for housing evacuees since old Miss Croft died. Anyway, I’ve talked to Lord Clifford’s agent in Leeds, and he says that the people there now are moving out next week. It’s a woman and her two children, evacuees from Birmingham. Apparently they’re homesick and they’re going home. I know it’ll need a lot of fixing-up, but I’m good with my hands. And it’s only five shillings a week.”

  “What about children? Have you thought about that, too?” “I’m not having a baby, Mrs Shackleton, if that’s what you mean,” said Gloria.

  “Of course not, my dear. That’s not what I meant at all. I wouldn’t suggest such a thing. But if you do have a baby after you’re married, the child’s father will most likely be away and you’ll have a lot on your hands.”

  That sad look came over Gloria’s face the way it did sometimes, a dark cloud blocking the sun. “We haven’t planned to have children,” she said. “Not yet, anyway. I wouldn’t want to bring a child into the world the way things are now, not after what I’ve been through.” Then the cloud passed and she smiled again. “After the war, though, we’ll see. Things will be different then.”

  Mother was silent for a moment, then she grimaced as if in pain, which she probably was, and said, “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?” Matthew beamed. “Everything, Mother. We want to start having the banns called next Sunday. Please say you’ll give us your blessing. Please!”

  Mother held her cup out and I poured more tea. Her hand was shaking and the cup rattled on the saucer. She looked at Gloria again. “And you’re an orphan, my dear? You have no living relatives?”

  “None. But you did say I’ve got you, didn’t you?”

  Mother smiled. Only a little one. That’s all she allowed her-self those days. Little ones. “I did, didn’t I?”

  “Oh, please, Mrs Shackleton, please give us your permission.”

  “It doesn’t look as if I’ve got much choice, does it? Go on, then, you have my blessing.” Then she sighed and looked at me. “I suppose we’ll have to start saving our coupons up, won’t we, Gwen, love?”

  Some mornings, especially when the weather was good, Vivian Elmsley liked to walk up Rosslyn Hill to the High Street, take a table outside one of the cafés and linger over her morning coffee. She walked slowly, finding her breath came with more difficulty these days.

  One or two people on the street recognized her from her television and magazine-cover appearances, as usual, but the people of Hampstead took celebrity in their stride, especially the literary kind, so no one pestered her for autographs or “simply had to” tell her how good or how bad her latest book was.

  She found an empty table easily enough, bought her coffee and unfolded The Times. Her routine varied. Some days she found herself thinking about the book she was working on as she walked, hardly noticing the people in the street, unaware even of what season it was. On those days, she would sit down with her notebook and scribble a few ideas as she sipped. Today, though, the book was much further from her mind than she would have liked.

  Instead, she opened her newspaper. The brief item she was looking for appeared in a column on one of th
e inside pages usually reserved for news items from the provinces:

  Foul Play Suspected in Reservoir Skeleton Case

  In a surprise statement given yesterday evening to local reporters, North Yorkshire Police indicated that the skeletal remains found under Thornfield Reservoir were those of a female murder victim. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks, in charge of the case, said that while police have not yet discovered the victim’s identity, they do know that the body is that of a woman in her early twenties. All indications are that she was stabbed to death. How long the body has lain there, DCI Banks added, is much more difficult to determine, but preliminary information indicates that they are dealing with a twentieth-century crime. Thornfield Reservoir was constructed on the site of a village called Hobb’s End, whose remains have now come into view for the first time since 1953. The skeleton was found buried under an out building by a thirteen-year-old boy who was playing in the area. Anyone with information is asked to get in touch immediately with the North Yorkshire Police.

  So they knew that much already. Her hand trembling slightly, Vivian put the newspaper down and sucked some of the frothy milk from the top of her coffee. She wouldn’t be able to concentrate on the rest of the news now, or attempt the crossword. That little item had quite spoiled her day.

  It was funny, she thought, how time played tricks. Over the years she had managed to distance herself from the past: the years with Ronald in Africa, Hong Kong, South America and Malaysia; her early struggles as a writer after his death; the rejections and humiliations; the flush of first publication; the slow rise to success; the television series. Before Ronald, she had thought her life completely blighted by fate. What she discovered instead, over the years, was that while it had been in some ways diminished, it had also been far more fulfilling than she could ever have dreamed. Time might not heal everything, but some things just die, dry up and flake off.

  Of course, after Ronald’s death, she had never been involved with another man. (One might say she hadn’t even been involved with Ronald in that way.) But there is always a price to pay, and that was a relatively small one, far less than the nightmares and the deep, gnawing guilt that, while fuelling her imaginative flights of fancy, crippled her in just about every other way and brought on black moods and sleepless nights she sometimes feared would never end.

  Now this. She watched the innocent pedestrians passing to and fro on the pavement: a young woman in a smart grey business suit talking into her mobile telephone; a young fair-haired couple carrying rucksacks, Scandinavian tourists by the look of them, holding hands; a man with a grey beard, wearing a paint-smeared smock; two girls with green and orange hair and rings through their noses. Vivian sighed. The streets of Hampstead. “All human life is here,” as the old News of the World used to proclaim about itself. Well, perhaps not all—not in Hampstead, at least— but certainly the more privileged classes.

  Were they all so innocent? Perhaps not. No doubt there walked among the crowds of Hampstead a murderer or two.

  Vivian gave a little shudder. She remembered how she had felt there was someone following her on and off over the past couple of weeks. She had put it down to an over-active imagination. After all, she made her living from writing about crime, and the same morbid imagination that made her so good at that also sparked off occasional panic attacks and fits of depression. They were two sides of the same coin; she profited from her fears, but she had to live with them, too. So perhaps she had been imagining it all. Who would want to follow her anyway? The police? Surely not. If they wanted to talk to her, they would approach her directly.

  Vivian glanced back at her newspaper, folded open at the Hobb’s End item, and sighed. Well, it shouldn’t take them long now, should it? And then what would become of her hard-earned peace?

  Banks started with Brian’s university administration office, and ten minutes later, after a few white lies about the importance of the information he was requesting, he had managed to convince the assistant to break her “strict code of privacy.” On the pad in front of him was the London telephone number of one Andrew Jones.

  He paused before dialling, unsure of what he was going to say to Brian if he did get through. The only thing he knew was that they had to get beyond the argument, get to some position where they could talk like reasonable human beings. Still, both he and Brian had always been quick to forgive. Whenever they had disagreements in the past, one or the other would make a conciliatory move within minutes, and it was all over. Sandra was the one who kept things on a slow simmer; sometimes it took her a week of cool distance and moody silences before she let you know exactly why she was upset with you in the first place.

  Whether Banks could manage reconciliation this time without slipping into the irate father role, he wasn’t sure. Besides, he had damn good reason to be irate. Brian had cocked up three years of higher education—which hadn’t been easy on Banks and Sandra financially—and then he had bottled out of telling anyone for weeks, practically disappearing off the face of the earth.

  As it turned out, Banks needn’t have worried. When he dialled the number, no one picked the phone up, and there was no answering machine.

  Next he phoned Annie, who seemed excited about a painting of Hobb’s End done by an artist called Michael Stanhope. Banks couldn’t share her enthusiasm, though he was glad to find out she had discovered the name of the cottage by the outbuilding.

  Waiting for John Webb to call with an inventory of the material recovered at the crime scene, he examined the contents of his in-tray. Designs for new uniforms had been approved at a conference of the Association of Chief Police Officers. Fascinating stuff. Had they nothing better to do? What the hell did the top brass think the police force was, a bloody fashion statement? Soon they’d have PCS and WPCS flouncing down the catwalks in see-through uniforms with feather boas.

  Under that was a copy of the latest report from Ms Millicent Cummings, Assistant Chief Constable, or Director of the Department of Human Resources, as her real title went. North Yorkshire had been under fire lately for its excessive number of sexual harassment claims—accusations of bullying, sexual assault, discrimination and bizarre initiation ceremonies—and Millie had been brought in as the new broom. On a broomstick, too, so the lads had it. Banks liked Millie, though; she was a bright, fair woman with a tough job to do. As far as he was concerned the more thugs and yobs kicked off the force, the better all around.

  Banks turned to a report on tightening up alcohol sales. It included an incident report about a ten-year-old kid who got pissed on alco-pop and rode his bicycle through a shoe-shop window. Minor cuts and bruises. Lucky bugger. Which was more than could be said than for the poor sales clerk who just happened to be bending over a prospective customer’s feet with a shoehorn at the time. Instant haem-orrhoid surgery.

  Banks signed off on the reports and memos—including one that informed him CID was having its name changed to Crime Management—then he worked for a while on an article he was writing on contrasting policing in the nineties. One of the advantages of his new computer and his desk-bound existence was that he had written two of these over the past couple of months, and he found he enjoyed the process. He had also given a few talks and lectures and discovered he was good at that, too. There had been times when he had thought it might not be a bad idea to try for some sort of police-related teaching career, but the cards were stacked against him in the form of his education—or lack of it. Banks didn’t have a university degree, as Brian had so cruelly reminded him the other day. He had come out of the poly with a Higher National Diploma in Business Studies. It was supposed to be the equivalent of a pass degree, but only the equivalent. And that was almost a quarter of a century ago. As far as he knew, such diplomas probably didn’t even exist any more. A prospective employer would take one look at it and burst out laughing. The thought made Banks flush with shame and anger.

  At least Brian had got a third-class honours, which beat a mere pass, or equivalent. Christ, it
sounded like a poker game. Was he in competition with his son all of a sudden?

  Luckily, the phone rang before he could frame an answer. It was John Webb.

  “I’ve just picked up the stuff we dug up with the Hobb’s End skeleton,” he said. “Dr Williams’s lads have given it a good clean.”

  “What did you find? Not much after all this time, I imagine.”

  “Actually, you’d be amazed at some of things that do survive. It’s all very unpredictable. I found a few buttons and some metal clips that look as if they might have come from a brassiere or a suspender belt. I also found some small leather shoes which look as though they might have belonged to the corpse.”

  “So you’re saying she was buried in her clothes?” “Looks like it.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes, some other material, black and heavy. Definitely not clothing.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Some sort of curtains, perhaps?”

  “Did you find a wedding ring, or anything that looked as if it might have been one?” he asked.

  “I think so. I wasn’t sure at first because of the corrosion, but that’s what it looks like all right.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s a name and date engraved on the inside, is there?”

  Webb laughed. “Even if there was, I wouldn’t be able to read it after this long.”

  “Thought not. Any sign of the murder weapon? Most likely some sort of knife.”

  “Nothing like that.”

  “Handbag or a purse? Anything with identification.” “Sorry, no. Just what I’ve told you. And a locket, no inscription and nothing inside. Nothing that survived the years underground, anyway. If there was a photo or something like that, it probably disintegrated.”

  “Okay, thanks a lot, John.”

  “No problem. I’ll have it sent over to you later today.” Banks walked over to the window. The heat was still getting to him; he felt sleepy and woolly-headed, as if he’d had a couple of drinks, which he hadn’t. The cobbled market square was chock-a-block with tourists, coaches from Leeds, Wigan and Scunthorpe, cars parked in every available nook and cranny, a riot of primary colours. All summer the tourist hordes had been coming to the Dales. Pubs, hotels, shops and B&BS had all done record business. Of course, it hadn’t rained in two months, and even before that there had been nothing much more than minor showers since April.