Yours sincerely,
Sylvia Merchant
We shall come again.
She read it again. We shall.
This was getting both ridiculous and borderline night-marish.The answer might simply be to ring Ms Merchant, go and see her if necessary, tell Sophie and the Bishop about it afterwards. Or maybe, as a first stage, ring George Curtiss, see what he’d learned.
She came out of the vicarage drive holding the postcard away from her, between two fingers, as if it was contaminated.
Footsteps behind her.
‘You all right, vicar?’ Gomer Parry said.
25
The quiet
THE SKY HAD cleared, setting up a rare soft evening. Sandy light on the town, shadows deep as clefts in rock, and Robin was aware of a strange sense of seaside. In a coastal town, you could sense the sea even if it wasn’t in view – that constant hidden pressure.
Only here it wasn’t the sea, it was the river after which the town was named and which had become a secret presence, barely visible even from the castle hill.
It occurred to Robin that virtually nowhere in the town of Hay-on-Wye could you see the Wye from the ground and he was aware of no sign anyplace that pointed you to it. A whole street of stones had been built centuries ago with its back to the water. Even the road bridge crossing the river into Radnorshire was accessed through not much more than a slit between buildings.
Crazy. This was the Wye.
Watched over by castles and abbeys and cathedrals. And Hay didn’t want to share it. This symbolized everything he didn’t understand about Hay, which was…
…almost everything. He’d realized that, leaning on his stick while the easy-going Gore Turrell was fixing up his shop sign with no hassle at all, and Robin had thought, It’s too soon. We’re not ready.
A split second before the wooden steps skittered on the sloping ground, and Kapoor lost his footing and crashed into the road, the steps coming down on top of him. If they’d hadn’t, he’d have taken the full weight of the sign and he’d be dead, his skull smashed, blood running down Back Fold.
The cold overcoat of foreboding had slid back around Robin’s shoulders. Paganism dealt in portents. How clear did you want your omen?
What if Kapoor had died?
And he hadn’t even thought to offer to hold one of the pairs of steps he couldn’t climb himself to see they were steady. Asshole. Liability. At the end of it, he’d been shaking more than Kapoor, his hand still unsteady around the phone, half an hour later when he was calling Betty.
Betty was doing business. He’d phoned to ask what time he could pick her up, bring her back to Gwenda’s Bar to hear the wisdom of booksellers. She was waiting for a call from the agent who, in turn, was awaiting a call from the people who’d been to view the bungalow. He knew that, at some stage, she’d sell the bungalow, at whatever price. Betty was practical, pragmatic, while he was… don’t ask.
When the mobile bleeped again, the day was thinning and the candle in the window had melted down, so that the serrated edge of the Yale key was actually visible inside the hot wax.
‘I don’t know what you told them, Mrs Thorogood,’ the estate agent said, ‘but I passed on the information that you were considering their offer and – and I can assure you this doesn’t happen often these days…’
Pause for effect. Betty’s thoughts were stilled. She’d given up three hours ago, deciding the people from Coventry must have shrugged and walked away. A thousand more suitable properties were on offer in the area; if they couldn’t get a cheap deal, why would they bother?
But now the agent was calling from his home.
‘They came back ten minutes ago. They liked all the bookcases. And they liked the fact that it hadn’t been tampered with. Seems all the other similar houses they’d looked at had had their front gardens paved over to provide more parking space. Or there was an extension or a terrace for the barbecue. Things like that.’
Betty smiled.
‘They offered within five hundred of the asking price.’
‘Gosh,’ Betty said.
She felt far away.
‘Someone up there is on your side.’
‘Evidently,’ Betty said.
‘Congratulations. I don’t get to say that very often any more.’
‘Thank you,’ Betty said.
When she went back into the living room, the front door key was projecting from the candle like a blackened finger bone with a tiny flame on the end.
He never did find the river.
Wound up back on dusky Castle Street, walking down to where the Gothic clock tower stood, centuries younger, Robin guessed, than the buildings around it but bestowing its own sense of the medieval. A circle of wan light in the clockface, the weather vane puncturing a cobalt sky. Around the tower, squares of yellow and orange light were appearing in stone and whitewashed buildings, with the castle’s shadowy crust up behind.