A Clubbable Woman. Reginald Hill

days.

      And she wasn’t looking her best when I saw her, was she? There’s something about a hole in the head …

      So who knows? But I don’t quite see the young men … more like one of these old fogies Randy Andy’s chatting up, best prop-forward the Old Sodomites ever had, don’t you know; or perhaps the best fly-half who never played for England, himself perhaps, selling us all a dummy as he stands there remembering how he smashed her head in so he could look for it inside, for the years lost, the place out in the glow of the crowd at Twickenham, could a man love a game that much? And smashed her with what, for God’s sake? Where was it? I’d like a look round that house. Whatever it is could be lying at the bottom of his wardrobe. He’d get used to it after a while, like an egg-stain on a waistcoat, you get used to anything after a while. Lying there for someone to find, a friend, Felstead, Marcus, what’s he got to look so sick about? And what’d he be doing in Connon’s wardrobe anyway? Homosexual jealousy, that’s the answer, I’ll try it on Dalziel for a giggle. More likely his daughter, she’ll find anything there is. Christ, what a thing to find out about your father, she’d do all right in the back seat too, I wouldn’t mind carrying her away at a student riot. Here they come. And there goes fat Marcus, I come to bury Mary not to, he’s taken his time about extending heartfelt sympathy though there’s always the phone. Still, for a nearest and dearest friend …

      ‘Hello, Connie, Jenny.’

      ‘Marcus.’

      ‘Hello, Uncle Marcus.’

      Marcus had invited her to stop calling him ‘Uncle’ about three years earlier when she had flourished into young womanhood. ‘It makes me feel old and you sound young.’ So he had become plain Marcus.

      Till now.

      I have reverted to my old role, thought Marcus.

      ‘I would have called round,’ he said apologetically, addressing himself to Jenny rather than Connon. ‘But you know how things … how are you both?’

      ‘Well,’ said Connon. He did not look as if he was really listening, but glanced back to the grave.

      ‘What will you do now, Jenny? Is your term over?’

      ‘No, there’s another couple of weeks yet, but I’ve got leave of absence. I needn’t go back till after Christmas.’

      ‘How is it? Are you liking the life?’

      ‘It’s not bad. A bit crowded. There’s more students than space. I can sympathize a bit more with these people who write indignantly to the Express about “smelly students”.’

      Thank God for the resilience of youth, thought Marcus. No damage there, or not that’s going to show. But you, Connie, out of the cage at last, you look as if another sniff of free air will shrivel your lungs. No bloody wonder, the shock, the strain of investigation. There’s a new life waiting, if only you’ll believe that, I must make him believe it before it’s too late …

      Jenny made a move down the path towards the car park. Marcus touched her arm.

      ‘I’ll stay here and chat to your father a bit till the others have thinned out. We’ll catch you up. You’d better go and sit in the car out of the cold.’

      Jenny was surprised to find herself resenting Marcus slightly as she moved away.

      She was my mother after all, and he’s my father. Why should he be treated like the sensitive plant and me chucked down to face this lot?

      Because you can think like this at a moment like this, she admonished herself humorously and the shadow of a smile must have run over her face for she caught ‘Bruiser’ Dalziel eyeing her sharply as she stepped on to the car park.

      Standing a little behind Dalziel she saw a tall young man, elegantly dressed, with a thin intelligent face – the kind of actor-type who played ambitious young Foreign Office men on the telly. She thought momentarily of Antony. She hadn’t had time to see him before she left, everything had happened in such a hurry. But no doubt Helen would have passed on the news to him. Perhaps even made a come-back in her original starring role.

      Definitely her last appearance, thought Jenny, but didn’t find it particularly funny. She intended to make straight for the car and shut the door firmly on all condolences, sympathetic noises, keen-edged questionings probing for vicarious pain. But her arm was taken firmly and she was brought to a halt.

      ‘I just wanted to say that I shall miss your mother, Jenny,’ said Alice Fernie.

      The annoyance that had tightened her lips for a moment eased away. She could not remember anyone else saying this. They were all ‘dreadfully sorry’, it had come as a terrible shock to them, but no one had really suggested that Mary Connon would be missed.

      ‘Yes, I shall too,’ she replied, then feeling this was a bit too cold she squeezed the gloved hand which still rested on her arm and went on, ‘I know how much she relied on you.’

      This was nothing more than the simple truth, she realized, as the words came out. Mary Connon had rarely mentioned Alice Fernie to her except in faintly disparaging or patronizing terms. Her lack of taste; the unfairly large wage her husband earned on the factory floor; the excessive subsidization by the ratepayers of council-house rents. She was capable of blaming the Fernies (‘and all those like them,’ she would say inclusively) for the very existence of the Woodfield estate. It had only been a very few years previously that Jenny had realized that the council estate had been there already when her parents bought the house. She had come to accept a picture of rolling countryside being savaged before her mother’s eyes as the bulldozers rolled in, prompted by the Fernies and ‘all those like them’. But Alice Fernie had been, perhaps by the mere accident of proximity, the nearest thing to a real friend she had. And now Jenny felt real gratitude that this large handsome woman who could only be in her early thirties had thought enough of her mother to accept the condescension of manner and get closer to her.

      Closer than me perhaps, she thought.

      ‘How did you get here, Mrs Fernie?’ she asked. ‘Can we give you a lift back?’

      There were no funeral cars other than the hearse. ‘I will judge what is fitting,’ she had heard her father say to the oblique remonstrances of the man from the undertakers.

      ‘No, thank you, dear. You’ll want to be with your dad. And I’m not going straight back anyway. ’Bye now.’

      ‘Goodbye. Please call round, won’t you? I shan’t be going back to college till next month.’

      I’ll have to watch myself there, she thought as she watched Alice move away with long confident strides, I could become as patronizing as Mum.

      As she got into the car, she glanced back and caught the eye of the young man who could have been from the Foreign Office. He took a step forward. She thought he was going to come across and talk to her. But a rumbling, phlegmy cough from Fat Dalziel caught both their attentions and the young man turned away.

      Policemen, she thought, angry at her disappointment, and slammed the car door.

      Connon watched Marcus walk away from him down the path through the rank and file of headstones.

      The car park was nearly empty now. The Evanses’ car was just pulling away. He looked after it thoughtfully. Gwendoline. He formed the syllables deliberately in his mind and smiled. All those youngsters competing to provoke the loudest laugh, craning forward to get the deepest view of bosom, pressing close to feel the warmth of calf or thigh, and imagining a returned pressure. Tales to be blown up into triumphs over a couple of pints. But the real triumphs were never boasted of, but remembered in secret; first with reminiscent delight, but soon with fear and cold panic.

      Dalziel was gone, he observed, and his puppy-dog, Pascoe. Mentally he corrected himself. He had no reason for thinking Pascoe was merely that, though he was sure Dalziel would make him that if he got the chance.

      And me, what would he make of me if he got the chance? he thought.