Ancient Images (27 page)

    They didn't budge, but her interrogator rubbed her hands together with a soft dry hollow sound. "Where are you going?"

    "If you want any further information, please ask Lord Redfield. He told me I could go wherever I liked."

    That didn't move them; if anything, they seemed to grow more monolithic. "Should have asked for some guidance," said the woman with the truncheon of bread.

    "Can't say you've seen a town until you've met the people."

    "Can't get the flavor of it if you leave out the salt of the earth."

    If they were hostile to her only because she hadn't interviewed any of the townsfolk, how did they know she hadn't? She felt as if the empty-handed woman could read her thoughts, for she smirked and stepped back a pace. "Let her come out or we'll have her thinking there's somewhere she can't go."

    The others moved just enough to let Sandy sidle by. She took a deep breath that she would release slowly once she was past them, and the vegetable woman said, "Why, look at the time. She can come with us."

    The empty-handed woman displayed a wrist thick and knobby as a branch as she consulted her watch. "Aye, it's time."

    There wasn't quite enough room for Sandy to squeeze past them after all. She was about to demand what they were talking about when the woman with the loaf told her. "We'll take you for lunch. Give you time to get to know us."

    Lunch would include more of the Redfield special, Sandy realized-more of that heavy contentment which had delayed her. For the second time that day her mouth tasted stale, the rusty Redfield flavor rising into her throat. "I can't, I'm sorry," she said. "Thanks anyway, but you'll have to excuse me. I'm already late."

    The women stared grim-faced at her, their broad shoulders almost touching. "You'll learn nothing sitting by yourself," the vegetable woman said.

    How did they know she would be? Having to lie to them, being nervous of telling the truth without quite knowing why, made Sandy hot with suppressed anger, but she would say anything now to shift them. "I have to get back to the hotel. I'm expecting a call," she said, uncertain whether that was a lie or a desperate hope.

    "Fine," said the woman with the loaf. "We'll walk with you and when you've had your call we'll give you your meal."

    "Then let's walk," Sandy said edgily, afraid they might guess what she was planning. "It's very kind of you," she added. "Thanks so much."

    They moved apart at last, and stepped back. The sight of an escape route was so tempting that she had to restrain herself from dashing for her car. She imagined herself fleeing three stout women with hatpinned hats as the townsfolk watched, imagined discovering that breakfast had left her too weighed down to outdistance the women, and felt absurd and irrational, barely capable of pretending that nothing was wrong. She made herself smile confidently as she passed the gate.

    The women closed around her, the vegetable woman on her left and the woman with the loaf on her right, the empty-handed woman so close behind her that Sandy expected the large dull black shoes to tread on her heels. A group of gossiping shoppers bade the women good morning but ignored Sandy, which made her feel even more like a prisoner. So did the question the woman tramping at her heels asked almost casually. "Let's hear about it, then. What have you been seeing?"

    She didn't mean the graveyard, Sandy thought, wishing she could watch the woman's face. "I had afternoon tea with Lord Redfield, and I've been up the tower, and all round the town. Oh, and I've been to the factory a couple of times."

    The women greeted that with silence, in which the tramping of feet beside her and behind her seemed oppressively loud. Ought she to have mentioned the Redfield chapel? Could they know of her visit to it and be wondering what she had to hide? She was about to mention it when the empty-handed woman spoke, so loud that Sandy felt breath in her hair. "Nobody we know saw you in the factory."

    "And we've got cousins there," the vegetable woman said.

    "I said I went to it, I didn't say I went in. Lord Redfield sent me there."

    "Well then," the woman at her heels said triumphantly, "that's where we'll take you after lunch."

    "That's where you'll meet the folk you should meet."

    "That's where you'll see the lifeblood of Redfield."

    They had reached the hotel. They were passing the entrance to the car park. Sandy could see her car, its misted windows dim, its wheels stained with reddish mud. She made herself stride onward, up the steps into the lobby, the women on both sides of her shoving the doors back. The receptionist smiled slowly at the four of them, and Sandy told herself that the girl was just glad Sandy was meeting the townsfolk. Then the girl's mouth straightened. "Sorry, Miss Allan. No calls."

    For once Sandy was grateful to hear it. She turned toward the stairs, and the woman with no shopping moved into her path, holding up her palms, which looked hard and raw. "She'll tell you when your call comes. You can sit down here and talk."

    Sandy felt as if a shovelful of hot ash had been flung at her. She changed her panic into rage, let it glare out of her eyes and chill her voice. "Please wait here for me. I'm having my period and I need to go upstairs."

    The woman stared doggedly at her. Sandy wondered if she was about to ask one of her friends for a tampon and usher Sandy to the toilet near the reception desk. "Talk to the receptionist about lunch," she suggested, and pushing past the woman with the reddened hands, marched upstairs without looking back.

    As soon as she was out of sight beyond the landing she halted and held her breath, though it throbbed in her windpipe and threatened to make her teeth chatter. The women weren't following. She hurried to her room, snatching the key out of her handbag, and slammed the door behind her. With the sound still thudding in her ears, she grabbed her suitcase and threw it on the bed, snapped the clasps back, swept everything she'd laid out on the dressing table into the case and pulled open the wardrobe door. The jangle of unclothed hangers made her catch her breath. She lifted her clothes out of the wardrobe as swiftly as she could without rattling any more hangers and slung them into the case, cursing the women for making her crumple them. "I ought to send you the bill," she said through her teeth, and gave the room a last glance as she locked the case. She ran to the door and easing it open, leaned her head into the corridor.

    The women were downstairs. She could hear them murmuring dully, one after the other, in what might almost have been a chant. She seized her case and walked loudly across the corridor, opened the bathroom door and closed it with as much noise as she could, and then she tiptoed rapidly to the end of the corridor, to the door that opened onto the fire escape.

    She took hold of the bar across the door with both hands and pushed it gently, shoved it harder, bore down heavily on it. It didn't shift. She leaned backward, listening breathlessly for anyone coming upstairs, then let herself fall onto the bar. The only response was sweat that sprang out of her palms, making the bar feel colder and spiky, undermining her grip. She shut her eyes so tight that her vision blazed red, and flung her whole weight at the bar. As she felt it jerk away from her she restrained it, and it emitted only a muffled clank as the door inched open. She fumbled her keys out of her handbag and almost dropped both bag and keys. She clenched her slippery fist on the handle of her suitcase, and stepped onto the fire escape.

    Should she close the door? Mightn't someone in the lobby notice the draft? She set down her case on the iron mesh of the fire escape in order to shut the door quietly, and all at once she felt grotesquely ridiculous. How could she sneak away like this without saying goodbye to Lord Redfield or thanking him for his hospitality? What was she afraid of-three women in silly hats? Embarrassment and guilt were massing in her stomach, an aching weight that needed to be assuaged.

    Suddenly it wasn't the women or even the dates in the graveyard that frightened her, but her own growing inertia that felt like a hunger to stay in Redfield. She grabbed the handrail so hard it shook the iron staircase beneath her, and clutched the handle of her suitcase. Though a staleness that might be a taste or a smell was threatening to make her dizzy, she tiptoed quickly down the fire escape.

    Her car was cold: the misted windows showed that. The engine wouldn't start at once, and how much time would she have to start it before the women noticed her? Hers was the only vehicle in the car park. If she began anticipating the worst she wouldn't be able to go down. She forced herself to think of nothing but reaching the foot of the fire escape, crossing the mossy car park, slipping the key swiftly and easily into the lock of her car, as she did.

    She opened the door wide and heaved her suitcase onto the back seat. There would be time to move the case into the boot once she was out of Redfield. She climbed into the driver's seat and closed the door gently but firmly, holding her breath. She pushed the key into the ignition and rubbed condensation off the inside of the windscreen with her forearm, and risked one sweep of the wipers. They left two arcs like monochrome rainbows of mud, but she could see ahead. She could see the hotel receptionist, less than twenty feet away from her beyond the window behind the girl's desk.

    Sandy pulled the choke out as far as it would go, and gripped the key until the tips of her thumb and forefinger ached. "Start first time," she whispered, halfway between a command and a plea, it didn't matter which so long as it worked. She poised her foot ready to tread on the accelerator, and the receptionist stood up.

    She wasn't coming to the window, she was going to the counter. Sandy let a shiver pass through her and opened her fists to release it, and grasped the key again, just as the three women appeared at the counter. If they glanced past the receptionist they would be looking straight at Sandy. "Try and stop me," Sandy mouthed at them, and twisted the key, held it as the engine roared. She let go of the key, shoved the lever into first gear, trod on the accelerator. The engine made a clogged sound, and died.

    The receptionist had already turned toward the noise, and now she came to the window. As she caught sight of Sandy, her face grew sullenly determined. Behind her Sandy glimpsed the garish hats bobbing as the women craned over the counter to see her. She twisted the key again, and the hats disappeared. The women were coming for her.

    The engine coughed, revved, belched fumes that filled the rearview mirror. The car sprang forward so abruptly that the wheels skidded on the mossy stone, and the left-hand headlight barely missed the edge of the entrance arch. The car lurched out of the car park, but she had to brake at the street to let a delivery van coast by. The women piled out of the hotel and ran down the steps like a grim chorus line, each of them with one hand on her hat, the other outstretched toward Sandy. "Hoi!" cried the woman with the reddened hands, and the engine stalled.

    It wouldn't start when Sandy twisted the key. The women sprinted the few yards between the hotel steps and the gap in the pavement. They meant to block her way, and they could. With the clarity of desperation, she realized she'd forgotten that she had to switch off the ignition before she could restart the engine. She turned the key back, then forward, and the engine caught. The car swerved past the women onto the road.

    She swung it around the delivery van, shifted into second gear to pick up speed. In the mirror she saw the three women on the pavement, performing a kind of impromptu dance of rage, hands on their hats and their fists in the air, and then the van blocked her view. People outside shops and in front gardens glanced at her as she drove past, but nobody else moved to detain her. The last houses dwindled behind her, the planted Redfield sign shrank. The road sloped down into the sea of wheat, which flooded around her beneath a pale sky. She shoved in the choke and trod hard on the accelerator, and began to hum to herself, a wordless song of escape-from what, she wasn't sure. But she was still in sight of the tower of Redfield when she stamped on the brake.

    The road was higher than the fields now. Both the road and the fields were deserted apart from the scarecrows in the wheat. Had there been as many scarecrows when she had last driven along this route? Ahead of her was the Ear of Wheat, and beyond it, where the haze began, the tops of trees in the copse past the bridge at Toonderfield. Beyond the copse there was a choice of roads, and that was why she was hesitating. Once the roads divided, she couldn't be certain of meeting Roger if he happened to be on his way to meet her.

    He wouldn't be coming so belatedly, she told herself, but suppose he was? This wasn't much more than a day later than he had said he would join her. Perhaps he had become so engrossed in his work that he had forgotten to call her, or perhaps he'd assumed she would call him if she was moving on, or perhaps his phone was out of order. She knew she wasn't thinking logically, but she seemed unable to do so while her fears were so vague. What did she imagine would happen to him if he went to Redfield, for heaven's sake? He would head for Staff o' Life and be referred to the Wheat- sheaf, where he would learn that she had already left: what else? But the fear she had been suppressing since she'd encountered the three women at the churchyard gate was finding its voice, chanting "fifty years, fifty years" in her head. If Roger's phone had been out of order, surely it would have been repaired by now, and if he had simply forgotten to call her, she mustn't let it matter. She would feel consider ably happier if she could speak to him before she reached the division of the roads. She peered hard at the rearview mirror to reassure herself that she wasn't being followed, and then she drove to the Ear of Wheat.

    The fields swayed around her, and she had the disconcerting impression that some of the scarecrows were rearing up. She swung the car off the road and parked beneath the pub sign. A wind made the sign cry out, made the car shudder. She locked her suitcase in the boot and strode to the porch.