The Fifth Rapunzel Part 1

The Fifth Rapunzel.

B.M.Gill.

There was no time for terror. The sudden horrific impact with the oncoming lorry sent the Saab spinning off the Lovcen road like a flaming meteor into the valley of the Boka below. The cab of the lorry, sliced in two by an outjutting rock, decapitated the driver. His head was found later amongst his bloodied cargo of grain.

Had anyone been left alive, the Montenegren authorities would have found it difficult to apportion blame. The British couple in the burnt-out car might have taken the hairpin bend too wide. The driver of the lorry, what was left of him, had smelt strongly of Sljivovica.

The enquiry was short and uncomplicated by eyewitnesses. The charred remains of the car's number plate, together with a couple of items of jewellery, helped identification. The bodies of Professor Peter Bradshaw and his wife, Lisa, were in due course flown home.

Detective Chief Inspector Tom Maybridge attended the funeral as a colleague, neighbour and friend, and as such was invited to read a few appropriate verses from the Bible. He found choosing the verses extraordinarily difficult and eventually settled for St John, chapter 14. The words were simple and compa.s.sionate. When he reached verse 18: "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you", he glanced at the Bradshaws' son, Simon, seated in the front pew. Someone had given him a black tie and the knot had worked loose. It looked incongruous worn with his maroon school blazer. At eighteen, the blazer looked wrong on him, too. Sunlight filtering through the stained gla.s.s windows was making crimson pools on the surface of the pale ash of the two coffins directly in front of him. A cloudy day full of green tranquillity would have better suited the occasion. A grey soft rain would have been kinder still.

Maybridge read on: "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." He paused. If Simon was like his father he would conceal his emotions very tidily, as he seemed to be concealing them now. Peter Bradshaw had never appeared to be disturbed or troubled by anything. Perhaps his career as a forensic pathologist had a formalin effect, pickling the emotions. On the few occasions Maybridge had been forced to have a consultation with him during an autopsy, the professor's skilled fingers had probed the cadaver with slow rhythmic movements like a concert pianist playing Bach on a bloodied instrument. Maybridge's hands, balled into fists to stop them trembling, had been thrust behind his back. Bradshaw, noticing his discomfort, had politely pretended not to. Very polite. Peter. Very controlled. Not like his wife, Lisa, an artistically gifted woman, but deeply neurotic.

Maybridge disciplined himself to read the remaining verses without letting his thoughts stray, and then finally and with relief he came to the last verse: "But that the world may know that I love the Father; and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go hence."

Simon, thrust into awareness by what seemed a peremptory command, half rose, then, realising it wasn't an order, sat again and blushed.

Blushing was an adolescent embarra.s.sment, like acne. And still being a virgin. The Magdalene in her red robe up on the east window was gloriously provocative, aglow with sunlight, the colour of wine. Keeping his eyes on her most of the time made this funeral bearable. It was the first he had been to. He didn't know the ropes. Words his father had spoken came back to him: "Valedictories, Simon, are the few pieces of hyperbole untinged by envy. As for funerals, let the dead bury the dead."

The dead weren't burying the dead today and the hyperbole in the tabloids would have rung the bells of heaven. The heavies were more restrained. The Daily Telegraph obituary was typical:

Professor Peter Bradshaw, M.A. (Oxon.), M.D. (Lond.), F.R.C.P., F.C.Path., tragically killed together with his wife, Lisa, whilst on a motoring holiday, will be greatly missed, not only by his professional colleagues who had great admiration for his skill, but also by his students at London University where he was a part-time lecturer. The professor was an academic who performed brilliantly at the practical level and was able to impart sufficient enthusiasm in his lectures to recruit other medics into the perhaps not so popular speciality of forensic pathology.

Bradshaw's recent involvement as an expert witness for the prosecution which led to the conviction of the serial strangler, Charles Hixon, brought him a high degree of publicity which he endured with quiet good humour, but obviously didn't enjoy.

Lisa Bradshaw, an art historian, will be remembered for her book on nineteenth-century ill.u.s.trators of children's fairy stories in which she compared and contrasted the styles of John Tenniel, A. W. Bayes and Monro S. Orr.

The Bradshaws made their home in the Avon area, within commuting distance of London. Both were in their forty-ninth year at the time of the accident and had recently celebrated their silver wedding anniversary. Their only son, Simon, survives them.

Survival. An evocative word.

Simon moved restlessly, hemmed in by women, and tried not to think of his mother. Mrs Maybridge, on his left, smelt of scent, rather light, a sort of clover, honey clover. Mrs Sutton, the vicar's wife, on his right, smelt of peppermints and sweat and horses. She kept a couple of ponies in the paddock behind the vicarage and mucked out the stables herself. Had the vicar done the mucking out while she wrote the sermons, it might have been a better arrangement. Parts of his funeral address, or whatever it was called, were gruesome. The organ began to play. Apparently it was time to sing. He dropped his hymnbook.

It fell on Meg Maybridge's foot and she bent over and picked it up, then turned to the right page and glanced at the words before handing it back. "When our heads are bowed with woe, when our bitter tears o'erflow, when we mourn the lost, the dear, Jesu, Son of Mary, hear." d.a.m.n it, she thought, crossly and irreverently, whoever chose this ought to be shot. You don't sing hallelujah that the dead are dead, but neither should you twist the knife in those who are left behind. She looked anxiously at Simon. He smiled at her ruefully. "It's all right," he said.

But he wouldn't sing it, though he wouldn't have broken down if he had. The funeral was a charade to be endured. A public expression of private grief. But he didn't feel anything. When Kester-Evans, the headmaster, had called him out of the biology tutorial and told him that both his parents had been killed, he hadn't felt anything either. They had been words he couldn't believe. Later, when he had heard the details, he had formed a mental image of the accident in slow motion, a dream disaster in which flames lapped the car as it fell softly towards the grey smudge of the valley below. A terrible gentleness in the falling. A deep, long silence afterwards. In his imagination the car had been empty. As yet he couldn't envisage the bodies inside it. Couldn't. Wouldn't. Shock blotted out the unacceptable.

After the hymn the vicar intoned a prayer and then it was time for the bearers to approach the coffins. Simon hadn't been invited to be a bearer - out of kindness - concern - or maybe at five feet eight he was too short? He was strong enough, the same build as Maybridge who was one of them and only a couple of inches taller. The other five carrying his father's coffin were representatives of the local police, with the exception of a friend from one of the Home Office laboratories.

Of the six men carrying his mother's coffin he only knew Alan Drew, the family's solicitor, and Dr Donaldson, the medical superintendent of The Mount nursing home. Donaldson's lean, sheeplike face with its crest of thick wavy grey hair looked drawn and ill. Grief? Simon wondered. Well, yes, of course. Everyone grieved, or pretended they did. And they smiled at weddings.

The walk down the aisle was slow as the congregation shuffled out of the packed pews. The small nineteenth-century church had been designed for a small nineteenth-century village. Macklestone village in the twentieth century had expanded, but mercifully not a great deal. It still retained its rural character, despite its proximity to Bristol, mainly because the lie of the land precluded the building of large estates. The few commuters to London built their homes on the village perimeter and for the most part merged with the locals. They helped to swell the congregation, but they didn't make it burst at the seams.

That all these people were here today, these strangers, on account of his parents, or more specifically on account of his father's being hyped up by the Press, Simon found hard to understand. Ghoulish curiosity? His father had been doing clever things with genetic fingerprinting and other scientific oddities as long as he could remember and no one had taken any notice. Until the Rapunzel murders - as the Press called them. Was interest multiplied by five? Five longhaired prost.i.tutes murdered by Charles Hixon in the s.p.a.ce of fifteen months. The Rapunzel ratio. One murder in fifteen months would scarcely raise an eyebrow. His father had dealt with quite a few of those. Most of them ordinary. All of them nasty. When he had first discovered the nature of his father's job, he had been about nine at the time, he had refused to touch him and had voluntarily taken baths. If his father had been hurt he hadn't shown it, just waited patiently for common sense to prevail.

And now, in the porch, neatly coffined, he was waiting again. Someone had dropped a camera and it had spewed its innards over the top step. Disapproval drifted in the air like gunsmoke. If the media wanted a picture then it should be taken with decorum and at a distance, Simon heard someone mutter. His parents' dignity in death, someone else implied, had been sullied. Meg Maybridge touched his arm, "Okay? Just a bit of a holdup." Yes, he was okay, he told her, not bothered.

It was cool in the porch, verging on chilly, but very sunny. Bright enough for a good picture, perhaps. He noticed Kester-Evans had pushed his way forward and was helping whoever it was who owned the camera to pick up the pieces. Typical headmaster behaviour. He'd probably quote something disapproving in Latin as he did so. Being rude in an ancient tongue was one of his foibles.

Maybridge, uncomfortably aware of the weight of the coffin on his shoulder, glanced at Superintendent Claxby who was sharing the weight with him at the front. Claxby, thin and dapper, hadn't the build or the temperament for carrying the dead. The Chief Constable had dragooned him into it, he'd complained bitterly to Maybridge. Not that he hadn't the greatest respect and liking for Bradshaw, he'd added, but six strong young p.cs would have done just as well, or five p.cs and the son. "What," he'd asked Maybridge, "was wrong with the son?"

Maybridge, not understanding the question, couldn't answer it. There was nothing wrong with the son other than bereavement. And that was a disease, curable eventually, that ran its own peculiar course. This double funeral would have been easier for the boy if it hadn't attracted so much attention. Maybridge wondered which of the tabloids the owner of the camera worked for. She was a woman of about thirty, dressed inappropriately in bright yellow. Only her hair looked funereal. Long and pitch black, it framed her pale face like a nun's coif. Whoever she was, she had behaved unprofessionally. She stood at last, looked closely at the flagged floor as if to make sure that no fragments were left, and then gave Kester-Evans a curt little nod and stepped back into the crowd.

Carefully, slowly, the bearers of the coffins walked to the porch doors.

Simon, aware of imminent movement, like cars revving up at amber traffic lights, spent a few moments reading the announcements on the church notice board. A light breeze rustled through them. An appeal for donations towards the cost of repairing the church roof. Lists of various duties. Flower arranging. Bra.s.s cleaning. A sponsored walk was to take place on Sat.u.r.day, proceeds to go towards buying a minibus for the local senior citizens. Simon wondered where the O.A.P.s would go when they had it. A trip to the Cotswolds, perhaps. What would they sing as they went - old war songs? 'Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye'? In times of war it could be goodbye for ever - and they knew it. Had his father had it in the back of his mind - a premonition, perhaps - that his goodbye to him was a final one? He had been unusually demonstrative. A warm last hug. And during the holiday he had seemed troubled - different in some indefinable way - or maybe he was imagining it.

And now it was time for the interment. He moved forward slowly with everyone else. Meg, at his side, resisted slipping her arm through his. She sensed that he was dazed rather than calm and didn't know how to help. He had no close relatives who might have taken over. His father's cousin had left his medical practice in the U.S.A. for a brief visit to a.s.sist with the identification and transporting of the bodies, but had been unable to stay on for the funeral. Grandparents would have been a G.o.dsend, though perhaps too old. She wondered how her own son, David, would cope in similar circ.u.mstances, but couldn't make the comparison. David was twenty-three and worldly wise. This boy had been incarcerated in a boarding school since the age of nine, a narrow environment which might suit some, though possibly not Simon. Facially he resembled his mother: fair haired, pale skinned, a tender mouth and eyes that were guarded.

It had rained during the night and the coffin bearers walked with care, their shoes caking with mud. Wreaths piled high on either side of the open grave shone with a sweet beauty on the artificial gra.s.s. The real stuff, Simon noticed, grew weedily and wantonly. Eventually, he supposed, the grave diggers, now discreetly out of sight, would roll up the fake turf, fill up the grave, which was deep enough for the two coffins, and collect their pay. Another day's work.

The vicar intoned the prayers of committal and then waited for Simon to throw a handful of earth on to the coffins. He hadn't been told about this part of the proceedings and thought it archaic, disrespectful, almost funny. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection.

Well ... maybe. He wondered if the remains, obviously very few of them, had been placed in the right coffins. If not, would a hybrid male and female parent one day arise? Confusing. Or two parents with a swopping over of careers and personalities, perhaps? His mother performing wild and b.l.o.o.d.y autopsies. His father painting pictures and performing domestic ch.o.r.es, calm and controlled, in a mansion in the sky.

The thought of domestic duties reminded him that after a funeral it was etiquette to provide the mourners, i.e. these people standing around looking embarra.s.sed, with cups of tea and sandwiches at his home. He had made no provision for this, but perhaps someone else had. The villagers had rallied round ever since they'd heard the news of his parents' deaths. He appreciated their compa.s.sion, was even a little touched by it, but there were times when he wished to be left alone. The vicar was approaching, his hand outstretched. "Dear boy," he began, "dear Simon ..." Simon backed away. The vicar's hand had traces of cemetery soil on it. So had his. He felt sick suddenly. Sweaty. Dirty. He mumbled something about it being a nice funeral - and thank you very much - but he had to go - rather quickly because - sorry, and all that, but ...

Simon turned and ran.

He managed to reach the copse midway between the cemetery and the road to his home before flinging himself down on his knees and vomiting.

With the chief mourner suddenly taking off, the vicar wasn't sure what to do. He knew it was up to him to try to cope with the situation, but how? What should he say? The Bradshaws, though neighbours for a long time, had rarely attended church and he hadn't known them well socially. He scarcely knew their son at all. It was the Church's duty to christen, marry and bury, he believed, though some of his ecclesiastical colleagues made protesting noises about the Church being made use of by hypocritical non-believers. The Bradshaws'faith, or lack of it, in the Almighty, wasn't his concern any more; what to do about the boy was. His wife had arranged a light lunch up at the vicarage for Simon and personal friends amongst the mourners who had travelled more than a few miles to attend the funeral, but it was quite possible she had forgotten to tell him. She tended at times to be distrait, especially when something was wrong with one of her horses. The piebald had a bruised fetlock. And the boy had a bruised heart. The Reverend Sutton, kind, sentimental and totally inadequate as a pastor and leader of men, ran nervous fingers through his thick white hair while his parishioners and the strangers amongst them looked at him for guidance. He couldn't give it.

Down on the road the hea.r.s.e driver switched on the ignition and crashed the gears noisily before moving off. It was the only sound in the startled air. Everyone turned and looked at it.

Rendcome, the Chief Constable, remembered booking a hea.r.s.e driver for speeding once, a long time ago, when he'd been on the beat. At times of death you tend to think of your youth, not necessarily with nostalgia. Middle age was a comfortable age, emotionally. You had learnt self-control and were confident and authoritative. Unused to a pa.s.sive role, he forced himself to remain pa.s.sive. If anyone helped out with a sensible suggestion, such as bidding everyone a polite farewell, it would have to be one of the villagers. Maybridge, possibly, he'd lived here a long time. He turned his gaze on him.

Maybridge, aware of the mental semaph.o.r.es directed towards him by his chief, ignored them. It was up to the vicar to bring the service to a close, and if he were wise he wouldn't make excuses for Simon. Excuses weren't necessary. The boy had taken off because he couldn't bear it any more. Understandable. His composure had been like a skin over a growing tumour and the skin had ruptured. The lad needed solitude for a while. In times of stress most people did. You didn't pursue them officiously and thrust your company upon them. Pursuing officially was a different matter altogether and a regrettable part of Maybridge's job. A reluctant sympathy for the felon on the run had always been difficult to quell when the man - woman - whoever it was - had finally been run to ground. He had once confessed this to Bradshaw. "Much as I'd loathe your job," he'd told him, "there are times when I'd almost be prepared to swop with you." He'd gone on to describe the lad who'd taken refuge in a cave in the Chilterns after knifing his girlfriend to death. Together with his sergeant, he'd found him cowering in the dark, very cold and hungry, his amber eyes wide and frightened like those of a cornered fox. Bradshaw's reply had been dry and laconic. "The fox wore bloodied shoes," he said, "group AB. Same as the girl's. Careless of him." Bradshaw the pragmatist. And Bradshaw the father? Only Simon knew about that.

Meg was the first to see him as he left the copse and began climbing the lane towards the house that glittered with windows up on the hill. A white sugar lump of a house, large, expensive, and totally out of character with the ancient grey stone cottages that cl.u.s.tered nearby.

"There he is," she said.

Yes, Maybridge thought, there indeed he was, and there wasn't much they could do to help him. At least not yet. Later, he and Meg would call on the lad. Sometime this evening or tomorrow when he was more controlled. When he had first arrived from school, Meg had suggested he might like to spend a few days with them and had made up David's bed in antic.i.p.ation. He had refused. He was used to being on his own, he'd said. An odd comment. There isn't much solitude in a boarding school unless you're clever enough to find it inside your head, in which case it's all right, or you're ostracised for one reason or another by your peers, in which case it certainly isn't. He hoped it was the former. He was a difficult boy to know.

Kester-Evans, Simon's headmaster for almost ten years, had agreed when Maybridge had done some gentle probing. Simon Bradshaw puzzled him, too, he'd admitted. Superficially he appeared to conform and was academically rather better than average. When younger he had been a nuisance from time to time, as most of them were. But not a spontaneous nuisance. An outsider watching herd behaviour and occasionally taking part because he thought he should, described his att.i.tude. During the last couple of years, the difficult period of late adolescence, he had seemed to settle more into himself and let the herd go its own way. He had friends, two or three in the sixth form who, like him, had followed the same science syllabus and been promised places in medical school in the autumn, but they were friendships that didn't go deep. He hadn't wanted any of them to come to his parents' funeral. The support of his peers apparently wasn't necessary.

Kester-Evans, aware that his own support could quite easily have been dispensed with from Simon's point of view, watched the distant figure disappear round a curve on the hill. It was the first spontaneous act he had seen Simon make. An emotional, absolutely natural, escape from the unbearable. He wondered when he would be ready to return to school for the few remaining weeks of term but now wasn't the time to ask, and he couldn't wait the few tactful hours until the time was right. He had to drive back to Dorset to chair a managers' meeting at the school by five thirty. To go without taking leave of the boy seemed heartless, but someone here might deliver a verbal message for him later. May-bridge possibly. But the detective chief inspector was with the police contingent at the moment and he didn't want to intrude. The vicar, then? Or the vicar's wife, whose invitation to 'eats' up at the vicarage he had declined? 'Eats', what a cra.s.s expression! 'Funeral meats' was the old-fashioned term. What, he wondered, would future generations do to the elegant cadences of archaic and beautiful prose? Hammer it into the ground on their word processors? Kester-Evans, musing in the shadow of the church, looked at sunlight sparkling on muddied pools and was reminded of recent rain. He prudently carried his umbrella with him everywhere and before the service he had left it in the porch. He must remember to fetch it as soon as the vicar spoke whatever final words might suit the situation and release everyone from the trap of silence and embarra.s.sment that held them so still.

The Reverend Sutton, forgetting in his confusion that he had already intoned it, raised his hand and repeated the blessing: "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of G.o.d, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen."

There were a few murmured amens and then the mourners moved slowly away.

Maybridge, about to do the same, halted in surprise as his sergeant approached him, carrying one of the wreaths. Radwell, his hands shaking, was holding it at arm's length as if he were a nervous acolyte about to present an unspeakable object at a Black Ma.s.s. "I'm awfully sorry, sir," Radwell muttered. "I should have spotted it earlier." Lying semi-concealed in the circlet of flowers was a pig's trotter streaked with dried blood.

Rhoda Osborne was sitting on a bench in the porch eating a Mars bar when Kester-Evans returned for his umbrella. She felt light-headed due to too long a fast. She'd had nothing to eat since a cup of coffee and a biscuit at Paddington buffet before catching the Bristol train. The chocolate now was necessary. She had hoped to be emotionally detached from all that was going on here, but it hadn't been possible. The service hadn't bothered her too much; she had sat in one of the back pews and made all the usual responses with everyone else. But watching the coffins being carried down the aisle on their final inevitable journey had stripped away her calm, forcing her to grip the back of the pew in front so that she could remain standing. Later, at the graveside, she had closed her eyes and listened to a bird singing. A thrush. A sweet gentle twittering that mocked the vicar's solemn tones. Mindless, happy creatures, birds. Humans know pain, are p.r.o.ne to tears. Today she hadn't wept. Be thankful for that, Rhoda, she told herself. You are in control. The only stupid thing you did was to drop your camera. And now the creep who helped you pick it up has come looking for you.

She watched Kester-Evans coldly as he went over to the umbrella stand. He nodded at her politely, found his black umbrella with the carved rosewood handle, and was about to go when he noticed a fragment of lens under the table holding the prayer books. He retrieved it and handed it to her. "There is a time and place for everything," he said censoriously. "It is not good form to take photographs of the deceased at such close proximity."

She smiled faintly. "They were boxed. And no photograph was taken."

"The bearers might have tripped on the shards." Her tone annoyed him.

"In which case they would no longer have been boxed and you would have been right to censure me."

He knew he had no right under any circ.u.mstances, it was one of the weaknesses of schoolmastering to a.s.sume a right where none existed. Even so, the vision of shattered coffins was grisly. "It would have been appalling for the boy. For Simon, their son."

"But it didn't happen. And I didn't intend taking a picture. Afterwards, at the interment. Not then."

He didn't believe her, though it could have been true. When the boys lied to him he usually 'talked things through', as he put it, and the truth emerged eventually. Why he should bother about the truth now, he didn't know. It wasn't his concern. Even so, almost out of habit, he sat beside her and waited for anything else she might have to say.

She moved impatiently. Half rose, then sat again. Examined her nails, carefully manicured and painted a dark shade of maroon. Sighed.

He was a patient inquisitor, adept at silence. She broke it at last. "He wore a black tie. For G.o.d's sake, what ghoul would give a kid like that a black tie?"

He had given it. And Simon wasn't a kid, he was a sixth former in his final term. Being called a ghoul wasn't pleasant.

"It could have been one of his father's," she said, "though I've never seen Peter wear one like that. A bow tie with a tuxedo, sometimes. Never a black lumpy monstrosity."

He was interested that she knew Professor Bradshaw that well. Perhaps she wasn't a professional photographer, after all. He was about to ask her when she got up and wandered over to the door. The mourners were congregating in groups down by the cemetery gates and some were leaving in their cars. It hadn't been difficult to suss out the police amongst the bearers of Peter's coffin and they were still together, she noticed. D.C.I. Maybridge, the local man, would have been more difficult to place if she hadn't already found out who he was. When standing with his colleagues he exuded an air of authority like the rest of them, and of very obvious annoyance when she'd dropped the camera in the porch, but when reading the lesson there had been a depth of sincerity in his voice and he had looked at the boy with compa.s.sion. He might be approachable some day. So far she had had no luck with any of them.

Kester-Evans, hoping for a response, introduced him self. "John Kester-Evans, headmaster at Collingwood in Dorset. Simon's school, and his father's before him, though not in my time, of course."

She glanced at him over her shoulder. So this gangling elderly man with the straw-coloured hair was Simon's dominie. A useful link, perhaps. Worth cultivating, maybe. She went to sit beside him again. "He must have thought well of Collingwood," she said, "to send his son there." It was polite. Peter's words came back to her. "A minor public school. I found it bearable. I think Simon does. The head is a bit of a pain, but harmless. Well meaning." Harmless. A favourite adjective. He had used it frequently. Well meaning? Yes, she could believe it. She smiled at him and her smile transformed her.

Kester-Evans, a bachelor in an all-male environment, responded with some confusion. "Yes. Quite so. Thank you." He always believed first judgments to be correct, and they usually were, but now he was less sure. The hard, pure lines of her face had softened. He told her he was concerned about Simon. During the last conversation he'd had with him, just before the funeral, the boy had mumbled something about medicine being "the sickest career there is, especially my father's branch of it", and then, aware of the double entendre, had tried to make a joke of it. It wouldn't be funny if he refused his place at medical school. The bereaved tended to act on impulse. The sooner he returned to school for the last few weeks of term, the better. He needed a guiding hand and the company of his peers.

"His friends here in the village are very helpful," he went on. "The Maybridges particularly so. But the academic relationship is important. I've guided Simon and I know his potential. He'll never be as brilliant as his father, but if he chooses another speciality in medicine he could do very well."

Brilliance, Rhoda thought, could blind. Like a diamond it had many facets. Sharp edged. Sometimes cruel. "Cadavers," she said quietly, "don't bleed."

"What?" Kester-Evans thought he had misheard her.

She let him think it and then responded in the way she believed he would want her to. Her own career as a freelance journalist was important to her, she said glibly. In retrospect she cherished her years at university and wouldn't have missed them for anything. But she understood Simon's att.i.tude now. Grief was unbalancing. She hesitated. "Someone just a few years older than him - well, someone my age - might be able to get through to him."

Steady, she told herself, you're going too far, too fast.

Kester-Evans glanced at the camera case which was bulging in the wrong direction like a dismembered corpse in a plastic bag. And then he looked at her face again. She smiled her transforming smile.

"It was unfortunate," he said.

"Indeed, yes," she agreed.

"Expensive?" He was playing for time, making up his mind.

"Yes, but it doesn't matter. I'm sorry I was rude to you just now, but I was upset. Not about dropping it -a camera can be replaced - but dropping it where I did. I'd hoped to take a picture at the graveside, as I told you. I'm planning to write a profile of the Bradshaws for one of the Sundays - The Times, possibly, or the Observer." (Well, it seemed a good idea, impromptu but plausible.) They were quality papers and he approved of them with just a few reservations. His reservations about her were fast disappearing. "You've known Simon's family a long time?"

"Long enough."

Maybridge might have wondered, "Long enough for what?" Kester-Evans, more naive, more trusting, didn't. He explained that he had to return to Dorset for an urgent appointment at the school and wouldn't have time to call on Simon before leaving. "I've bought his rail ticket - seeing it should persuade him to use it. It's valid until the end of the month, but I don't want him to wait that long. I was hoping someone from the village, one of his friends, would hand it in and pa.s.s on a message from me." He took it out of his wallet. "I could post it, of course, and write, but a letter is too easily ignored."

She agreed that it was. "The sooner you're able to talk to him directly, the better. He needs a little gentle urging to return to Collingwood without delay."

A little gentle urging. He was so easy to mimic. Too easy.

She added hesitantly, afraid of blowing it by appearing too keen, that she didn't have to return to London until the evening and that she would be happy to call on Simon if he would like her to.

Her hesitancy won him. "It's most kind of you. I'm grateful." He handed her the ticket. "If you could give the lad just a few hours on his own before calling he might be more receptive to your good counselling."

She promised that she would and that she would be tactful. "Is there any message, apart from returning to Collingwood, that you'd like me to pa.s.s on to him?"

Kester-Evans thought about this for a moment or two. He hadn't written the usual letter of condolence. It hadn't been necessary, he had been in contact with Simon most of the time. But today, this special day, perhaps something more spiritual should be touched upon. In similar cases he had found Ovid's quotation about immortality suitable and soothing. It began 'Morte carent animae' and was rather lengthy. In translation it might sound clumsy and even - though G.o.d forbid - a little pompous. He had genuine sympathy for the boy, so why not express it simply? "Give him my best wishes," he said rather stiffly. "Tell him I'll be in touch soon." He ran his fingers over the k.n.o.b of his umbrella. Silky wood. Very smooth. "Tell him ... tell him ... that his father was proud of him ... had great hopes for him ... and ..." He knew he should mention Simon's mother, but didn't know what to say. In all the years the boy had been at Collingwood he had never met her. "And his mother, too," he finished lamely.

"Yes," Rhoda said, "his mother, too." Her voice was clear and steady, but she was careful not to look at him.

Embarra.s.sed, a little emotional, Kester-Evans took his leave of her. It wasn't until he was musing over the day's events some while later that he realised he hadn't asked her name.

Lisa Bradshaw had loved the almond tree. She had planted it as a sapling, tended it, watched it grow. Now it cascaded its spring blossom in droplets of white on the rough orchard gra.s.s. This had been Lisa's private place, well away from the house and not seen from any of the windows. Lisa's refuge when she wanted to be alone.

And now her son's.

Simon had approached with some trepidation, as he had used to in the days when he might find her there. His sickness had gone but the pain, the natural pain, was intense. He wanted her to be there, as he had last seen her. She had been wearing slacks, blue cotton or linen, a light material, too light for winter. But the day hadn't been cold. Sunlight had slanted on her short, crisply curled hair. From a distance she had looked like a tall slim boy, not a woman in her forties. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were small and her hips very neat. Everything about her was neat. Coolly elegant. It was hard to imagine her doing anything as gross as giving birth. She could hardly bear to touch him. He flinched, remembering.

On that last day, that last day he had seen her, he had sought her out on his father's orders so that he might say goodbye to her properly. His father's words. It was his last day of the Christmas holidays and he was due back at Collingwood. His father had put the luggage in the car and they were ready to go. She had played the maternal role during breakfast, had even cooked bacon for him. And she had asked dutiful questions. Had he remembered to pack everything? Had he enough socks? Whether he had or not was patently of no interest to her. She hoped he would have a 'good term', whatever that might mean. And he had thanked her for hoping it. He had gone upstairs to fetch his anorak and, glancing through the window, had seen her walking down the garden. The maternal role, this time, hadn't included standing waiting for him in the hall. Not even a perfunctory farewell. It had hurt. It always did. But it never surprised. His father had been irritated by the omission and he had sought her out to please him. Reluctantly.

The long winter gra.s.s had m.u.f.fled his footsteps as he had approached. Miserably. Silently. She was unaware that he was there and was startled when she turned and saw him. "My G.o.d," she said, "do you have to creep up on me like that?" She controlled herself, a.s.sumed the maternal role again. "I'm sorry, dear, but you startled me." She 'deared' him a lot - 'deared' most of her acquaintances, too - half the time, he guessed, she couldn't remember their names. He said he was sorry, too. She seemed to wait for more - his reason for being there. He said he'd come to say goodbye. Obviously she thought they'd already said it, but she extended her hand. "Of course, dear. Have a good journey. Remember me to that headmaster of yours with a name like a bird - Kester - Kestrel - whatever." He said he would and was careful not to point out that you can't remember someone you've never seen. It was natural, perhaps, for men who had just turned eighteen to shake hands with their mothers, rather than kiss. It hadn't been natural when he was younger. The handshake was dutiful and very brief. His father's leavetaking up at the school had been unusually demonstrative. He had hugged him. "It's okay, you know," he said. "Life's a bit of a survival course. You jump a few hurdles, knock a few down, eventually with average luck you arrive where you want to. Your mother can't help being the way she is. Don't let it bother you."

He wondered now, as he stood by the almond tree, what a normal domestic set-up would have been like. His father had planned holidays for him that took him away from home as much as possible. He had gone on various adventure courses. He could absail. Navigate. Pitch a tent. A desert island would hold no terror for him. Nothing physical bothered him. Except s.e.x. Girls, as far as he knew, played a pa.s.sive role. What if he couldn't do it?