A Place Of Safety(6)

At this point Ann, by now lying in nearly cold water, struggled to put a clamp on these wretched reminiscences. She wrapped herself in her robe and took the claret and her glass into the bedroom. She drank a little wine but it made her feel sick so she simply lay down on the bed and prayed for oblivion. But it was nearly dawn before she fell asleep.





Chapter Two

There was a certain amount of talk the next day in and around the village touching on the possibility that someone might have fallen in the river over Swan Myrren way. The Wren Davis milkman, whose cousin lived nearer the spot, said the police were there round about midnight. And an ambulance. He, his wife and the neighbours went out to see what was going on but the police were not very forthcoming. Asked a few questions but didn’t give much in the way of answers. After a while they worked their way down river and that was the last the milkman’s cousin saw of them.

But although the excitement was over almost before it had begun that did not stop Ferne Basset making something of a meal of it. Drama had been in short supply since the church fete when the pig, whose weight everyone was trying to guess, had broken out of its pen and ran amok, laying waste several stalls and making a mess in the refreshment tent.

In Monday’s pension queue at the post office it was generally agreed that there was no smoke without fire. The police would not turn out for nothing and were no doubt concealing the true state of things for reasons of their own. It would all turn up, sooner or later, on Crime Watch. Disappointment that no one in their own village seemed to have disappeared was well concealed.

The conversation in Brian’s Emporium, the single tiny self-service shop, had a harder edge. A bloody hoaxer, was Brian’s opinion. Nothing better to do than waste police time with daft phone calls. If he could get his hands on them. Someone in the lottery line-up suggested it might be the old lady who lived near Penfold’s Mill and was sometimes to be found wandering and reciting poetry. The poetry clinched it. People dispersed to await the news that she had been found floating downstream supported only by a brace of rhyming couplets.

Lunchtime in the Red Lion saw a more crude, even heartless response. Many customers suggested well-known personalities who could well be spared and were more than welcome to a watery grave. These included politicians, sportsmen and television personalities. The conversation then got more personal and several relatives, neighbours, a spouse or two and, inevitably, someone’s mother-in-law were thrown into the ring.

Louise Fainlight heard the rumour from their postman. She strolled into the huge steel garage where Val was racing through his daily twenty miles, today on a dazzling Chaz Butler. The bike was balanced on rollers which made a powerful humming noise, like a tremendous swarm of bees. Speed transformed the wheels to a blur of flashing light.

Louise loved to watch her brother exercise though she knew he didn’t really like this. Val rode like a man possessed, his face a grimacing mask of concentrated effort, eyes invisible behind screwed-up lids, lips clamped together over gritted teeth. Perspiration flew from his body in a constant glittering spray. Every now and again, when his legs would not, could not go any faster he cursed, using imaginative and profane language.

When he did this Louise laughed, relishing the contrast between this demonic display and the ironically detached persona Val liked to present to the workaday world.

She heard the computer attached to the frame click off. The humming gradually became less powerful, the outline of the wheels more distinct. Then the spokes. The hubs. The delicate but immensely strong chain. And finally the bike was still. Val climbed down, the powerful muscles in his legs and shoulders still quivering. Louise handed him a towel.

‘You’ll be back in the Tour de France yet.’

‘Too old,’ Valentine grunted and mopped his streaming face. He took the machine off the runners and placed it carefully at the back of the garage where there were already almost a dozen others. ‘Got the coffee on?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good.’ They made their way across a covered walkway leading to a verandah at the back of the house. ‘Any mail?’

‘Only junk. And some gossip from Postman Pat.’

‘I was promised the proofs for Barley Roscoe and the Hopscotch Kid.’

‘Don’t you want to know what it is?’

‘What what is?’

‘The gossip.’

‘For God’s sake, woman.’

‘Someone’s jumped into the river down by the weir.’

‘It’s Lavazza, the coffee - right?’

‘Right.’

‘Good. I didn’t like that chocolatey stuff we had last week.’