Midnight is a Lonely Place. Barbara Erskine

fragments of twisted, corroded metal. ‘I think it’s a grave. A Roman grave,’ she said solemnly.

      There was a moment’s silence.

      Slowly Greg shook his head. ‘No chance. If it’s anything at all, it’s one of those red hill things – to do with ancient salt workings. Not that that isn’t extremely interesting,’ he went on hastily after a glance at the rebellious set of his sister’s face. ‘Perhaps we should get someone over here who knows about these things.’

      ‘No!’ Alison rounded on him furiously. ‘I don’t want anyone knowing about it. No one at all. It’s mine. My grave. I found it. You’re not to tell anyone it’s there, do you understand. Not anyone at all. I am going to dig there. Anything I find is mine. If you tell anyone it will ruin everything. Everything!’

      Sweeping her treasures back into the box, she clamped the lid on it and flung out of the room.

      ‘Let her be.’ Diana turned comfortably to the stove. ‘She’ll grow bored with it when she realises how much hard work is involved. And I’m sure there is nothing there. Nothing at all that would interest anyone sane, anyway.’ She smiled tolerantly. ‘Clear up that mess would you, Patrick darling and then let’s eat, otherwise our guests will be here before we’ve finished.’

       V

      His nails had cut deep welts into the palms of his hand; the veins stood out, corded, pulsating on his forehead and neck, but his silence was the silence of a stalking cat. Not a leaf crisped beneath his soft-soled sandals, not a twig cracked. Soundlessly, he parted the leaves and peered into the clearing. His wife’s long tunic and cloak lay amongst the bluebells, a splash of blue upon the blue. The man’s weapons, and his clothing, lay beside them. He could see the sword unsheathed, the blade gleaming palely in the leaf-dappled sunlight. He could hear her moans of pleasure, see the reddened marks of her nails on his shoulders. She had never writhed like that beneath him, never uttered a sound, never raked his skin in her ecstasy. Beneath him the woman he adored and worshipped would lie still; compliant, dutiful, her eyes open, staring up at the ceiling, on her lips the smallest hint of a sneer.

      He swallowed his bile, schooling himself to silence, watching, waiting for the climax of their passion. His sword was at his waist, but he did not reach for it. Death at the moment of fulfilment would send them to the gods together. It would be too easy, too quick. Even as he watched them he felt the last remnants of his love curdle and settle into thick hatred. The punishment he would inflict upon his wife would last for the rest of her days; for her lover he would plan a death which would satisfy even his fury. But until the right moment came, he would wait. He would welcome her back to his hearth and to his bed with a smile. His hatred would remain, like his anger, hidden.

      Watery sunlight filled Roger’s study, reflecting in from the bleak garden, throwing pale shifting lights across the low ceiling with its heavy oak beams. Greg flung himself down in his father’s chair and stared round morosely. He would never be able to paint here. Somehow he had to get Lady Muck out of the cottage – his cottage – so he could go back. She must not be allowed to stay.

      The small room was stacked with canvasses and sketch pads. His easel filled the space between the desk and the window; the table was laden with boxes of paints and pencils and the general debris he had fetched down from the cottage; a new smell of linseed oil and white spirit overlaid the room’s natural aroma of old books, Diana’s rich crumbling pot pourri and lavender furniture polish. Thoughtfully he stood up. He leafed through a stack of canvasses and lifted one onto the easel, then he sat down again, staring at it.

      The portrait bothered him. It was one of a series he had done over the past two or three years. All of the same woman, they were sad, mysterious; evocations of mood rather than of feature; of beauty by implication rather than definition. This was the largest canvas – three feet by four – that he had tackled for a long time and it had given him the most trouble.

      He sat gnawing at the knuckle of his left thumb for several minutes before he glanced round for brush and palette. It was the colours that were wrong. She was too hazy; too indistinct. Her colouring needed to be more definite, her vivacity more pronounced. He stood close to the canvas, leaning forward intently, and stabbed at it with the brush. He had made her too beautiful, the bitch, too seductive. He ought to paint her as she was – a whore; a traitor; a cat on heat.

      His tongue protruding a little from the corner of his mouth, he worked furiously at the painting, blocking in the face, shading the planes of the cheeks, sketching lips and eyes, touching in the line of the hair, his anger growing with every brushstroke.

      It was a long time before he threw down the brush, wiping his hands carelessly on the front of his old, ragged sweater. He stood back and stared at his handiwork through narrowed eyes, aware that as the sun moved lower in the sky, slanting first across the estuary and then across the bleak winter woods, the light was changing once again and with it her face. He glared down at the palette he had slid onto his father’s desk, aware that the anger was leaving him as swiftly as it had come and wondering, not for the first time, where it came from.

       VI

      Turning the car off the road Kate found they were bumping along an unmade track through a wood. Before them the sky, laced with shredded, blowing cloud had that peculiar intensity of light which denotes the close proximity of the sea.

      ‘I hope we don’t have to go far down here,’ she commented, slowing to walking pace as the small vehicle grounded for the second time on the deep ruts. Winding down the window she took a deep appreciative breath of the ice-cold air. It carried the sharp, resinous tang of pine and earth and rotting leaves.

      ‘I’m afraid it gets worse.’ Bill grimaced. ‘And you’ll have to leave your car at the farmhouse. Roger or Greg will run all your stuff up to the cottage in their Land Rover.’

      The track forked. In front of them a rough wooden gibbet held two or three fire brooms – threadbare, broken. She brought the car to a standstill. ‘Which way?’

      ‘Right. My place is up there to the left – about half a mile. The farmhouse is down here.’ He gestured through the windscreen and cautiously she let in the clutch once more. The track began to descend sharply. They bounced again into the ruts as the wood grew more dense. Pine was interspersed with old stumpy oaks, hazel breaks strung with ivy and dried traveller’s joy and thickets of black impenetrable thorn.

      The farmhouse itself stood at the edge of the woods, facing east across the saltings. Behind it a thin strip of field and orchard allowed the fitful sunshine to brighten the landscape before another wood separated the farmhouse gardens from the sea. There was no sign of any cottage.

      She halted the car beside a black-boarded barn and sat for a moment staring out. The farmhouse was pink washed, a long, low building, covered in leafless creepers which in the summer were probably clematis and roses. Even in the depths of winter the place looked extraordinarily pretty.

      ‘What a lovely setting.’

      ‘Not too wild for you?’ Bill glanced beyond the farmhouse to the mudflats. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but mud and water and grey-green stretches of salting. A stray low shaft of sunlight shone from behind them throwing a sunpath over the mud towards the water. The rich colour lasted a moment and then it had gone.

      Bill opened the car door allowing biting, pure air into the warm fug. ‘Come on. It will start getting dark soon. I think we should get you settled in.’

      Kate surveyed her hosts as she shook hands with them. Roger and Diana Lindsey were both in their fifties, she guessed. Comfortable, quiet, welcoming. She found herself responding immediately to their warmth.

      ‘I thought you would like some tea here before you go up to the cottage,’ Diana