A Place Of Safety(98)

Val had no illusions about what his life would be like when the boy moved in. Though his love for Jax was immensely powerful it was also powerless. He would give and give until it hurt. Until not only his bank balance but his heart was bled white. Jax would take, physically, emotionally and fiscally, as much as he liked for as long as it suited him. Then he would be off. He would not grow to love Mozart or Palestrina. Nor would he ever be persuaded to read a grown-up newspaper, let alone Austen or Balzac. Such Pygmalion longings Val now recognised as hopelessly foolish. Yet they were not ignoble and he could not laugh at them as he could easily have done had they been held by someone else.

This bleak clairvoyance, showing no ray of light or comfort at all, did not unduly depress Val. He liked the thought that he was prepared for anything and believed he would be able to cope when the end came even though the thought filled him with despair.

There was no one to talk to about all this. Val had several good friends, straight as well as gay, but there was not one who could possibly understand. Bruno, yes, perhaps, but he was now a cloud of dust blowing across the Quantocks where they had loved to walk. And Val, who, scattering the ashes, had thought he would die any minute, torn apart by utter loneliness, now spent every waking moment of his life longing for someone else.

He got up stiffly - Louise was quiet at last - and rubbed the muscles of his calves. He had woken that morning with a blinding headache and had not cycled either on the road or on the runners in the garage, the first time he had missed for months and his legs knew about it.

The halogen light came on in the Rectory garden. The tortoiseshell cat from the Red Lion sauntered across the grass then stopped and crouched, quite motionless. Val was on the point of turning away when he noticed the blue door was only half visible. A tall wedge of dark shadow stood in for the missing section. The door was standing open.

His heart exploding with sudden joy, Val ran out of the house across the moonlit road and up the narrow carpeted stairs. Into the darkest moments of his life.





Chapter Eleven

Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby stirred his chopped banana and muesli. Gave a moody sigh. Put his spoon down.

‘Is there any more coffee?’

‘Doesn’t look like it,’ said Joyce, directing her attention to the empty cafetière. ‘And I’m not making any more. You drink far too much of that stuff as it is. Have you cut down at work?’

‘Yes.’

‘You promised.’

‘Yes.’ Barnaby pushed his bowl aside. ‘For heaven’s sake.’

‘What was the matter last night?’

‘I couldn’t sleep.’

He had had fragmentary dreams, vivid little cuttings and snippets all relating to what was overwhelmingly on his mind but juxtaposed in ridiculous combinations that made not the slightest sense. Valentine Fainlight cycling furiously on Ferne Basset village green but never moving from the spot, with Vivienne Calthrop hovering just above the ground behind him like a sequinned barrage balloon. Louise Fainlight in a wetsuit made of crocodile skin, fishing with a billhook in the weeds of a fast-flowing river and catching it on the frame of an old pushchair. Ann Lawrence, young and beautiful, wearing a flowered dress, climbing into an open red car. Straightaway a transparent canopy festooned with tubes and jars fell over her and the car turned into a hospital bed. Lionel Lawrence, in a room like yet unlike Carlotta’s, threw ornaments and books around and tore up posters while Tanya, this time an angel in truth with huge feathered wings, perched on top of a bookshelf and shoved two fingers at him, grinning.

Finally there was Jackson floating up from Barnaby’s subconscious in the shape of a monstrous rocking sailor doll. It was laughing, a clockwork cackle, and the more it was pushed, the more it laughed and bounced back. Beaten and thumped and pushed and beaten, the mechanical laughter became louder and louder, finally distorting into one long scream. This was when Barnaby awoke and knew it was himself that screamed.

Joyce reached out across the table and took his hand. ‘You’ll have to let go of this, Tom.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You always say—’

‘I know what I always say. This one’s different.’

‘You’re like that man with the whale.’

‘That’s right.’ Barnaby managed a bitter smile. ‘Call me Ahab.’

‘It’ll break sooner or later.’

‘Yes.’

‘Try and—’

‘Joycey, I’m sorry. I’m going to be late.’

If anything, he was twenty minutes early. Joyce followed her husband into the hall, helped him on with his overcoat. Took down a scarf.