Arms and the Women (33 page)

'I doubt she would thank you for the description,' said Feenie. 'They're coming for supper tonight, so you'll be able to discuss the point with her yourself. Unless, of course, you get finished this afternoon, in which case don't feel you have to hang about just out of politeness.'

Even if the complexity of Liberata's affairs hadn't driven the woman to resignation, at least by now she'd have had the chance to see that overnighting at Gunnery was not for faint hearts in search of old-fashioned country-house-party luxuries, and with luck she might be eager to take the offered excuse and head straight back to the comforts of her suburban semi.

Luck was in short supply this morning.

'No, really, it's fine, I've nothing to get back to, and there really is so very much to get to grips with. I never realized how very widespread our work was. That's something I wanted to ask you about, Miss Macallum. I can find many references to the trust's funding, but I don't seem to have among the records passed on to me any balanced statement of the current state of our account. I'm sure you don't need reminding that as a registered charity, the trust is answerable publicly for the use that is made of its funds.'

'You are right, I do not need reminding,' said Feenie acidly. 'But perhaps I should remind you, Mrs Woolley, that your primary function is to deal with the trust's day-to-day running, the mail and minor expenses, that sort of thing. The trust's major financial dealings are naturally in the hands of my professional accountants. In any case, as I myself have long been the principal source of Trust funds, I hardly see that public accountability applies.'

When the previous secretary had hinted any uneasiness on this matter, the Macallum acidity had been quite enough to dissolve her to silence. But Wendy Woolley revealed an unexpected stubborn streak.

'No, Miss Macallum,' she said firmly. 'The money may have derived from you, but once paid into the trust, then it is the trust's, not yours, and subject to all the restrictions that that entails.'

Feenie muttered something in Serbo-Croat. It was a favourite maxim of her mother's, and roughly translated as,
A mouse in the dairy can be a bigger nuisance than a wolf in the forest.

'I'll be sure to convey your concern to the accountants,' said Feenie. 'In fact, I'll ring them now. Might take some time, though, and I was going to pop along to Axness village. I can sort out the adult grub for this evening, I think, but we really ought to have some ice cream, soft drinks, choc biscuits, that sort of thing, available for Mrs Pascoe's child, and the shop closes early today. I don't suppose that you, my dear . . . ?'

'Of course, but where exactly is the village?'

'Turn right at the gates, then second left and straight on for a mile and a half,' said Feenie. 'You can't miss it. I'm so grateful. You're very kind.'

The woman flushed, gave an embarrassed smile, and left.

Liar, said Feenie Macallum to herself. People who'd lived within the parish of Axness for fifty years still managed to miss the village. She still didn't like telling lies, but had come to accept over the years that a nit-picking honesty might earn you Brownie points in heaven but it didn't get much done down here on earth. The Liberata Trust was a case in point. It had seemed an excellent idea to register it as a charity with all the tax breaks provided by such status, and over the years it had seemed an easy and sensible policy to feed all her money into Liberata's funds so that it could enjoy the same advantages. But important though Liberata's work was, there were many other causes making financial demands upon her, and requiring that the trust's funds should only be used for the purposes specified in the original deed was like trying to bind God by His own precepts, she thought.

The Law was an ass. Each of her languages had its own version of that, but no other put it quite so forcefully and succinctly, perhaps because the law in England could be particularly asinine. It was pretty good on preventing people from being unjustly imprisoned, and excellent against torture and other cruel and unusual punishments, but when it came to defending the innocent and the ignorant against the financial depredations of the unscrupulous, it had more holes in it than an executed collaborator.

The image made her smile reminiscently, and also in anticipation of a great wrong soon to be righted. But only if she was able to get her mind working at something like its old level of efficiency. With age she had discovered that much could be got away with if you gave the impression of being a dotty old woman. But now she recalled the warning of an old and revered mentor during those wild mad war years -
The real danger of our line of work is not from bullets and betrayal, but that we might become what we pretend to be.

She closed her eyes and thought wearily, perhaps I really am nothing now but a dotty old woman.

When she opened them she was glad to find it was the portrait of her parents she was still looking at and not her reflection in a mirror.

The grim satisfaction on Macallum's face seemed intensified.

She said, 'Sorry,
oteko,
but I'm not ready to lie down and die yet.'

All she had to do was find a new hiding place.

When Mrs Stonelady had told her yesterday that the young men were moving out, Nosebleed Cottage had seemed the perfect spot. The old woman had expressed no surprise or curiosity when told a friend of Miss Macallum would be staying there a few nights, but she'd had the wit to ring Feenie instantly that morning when she discovered Daphne Aldermann's message on the answer machine. The cow had said she'd be turning up sometime after midday, and even the complication of dealing with the forgotten arrival of woolly Wendy had seemed to leave plenty of time. So the shock of running into the Aldermann car, with Ellie Pascoe and child as passengers and a female cop in close attendance, at eleven o' clock, had been great.

Well, she'd dealt with that pretty neatly, and compared with situations she'd had to deal with in the distant, and not so distant, past, when the price of failure was a bullet in your back or a land mine under your lorry, this was pretty small beer.

She made a face at her father and went about her business. Ten minutes later she came out of the front door trailing a well-filled black bin liner and made for the barn.

She found Kelly Cornelius sitting disconsolately on the bumper of the Land Rover, in full view of anyone going by.

'Come on,' said Feenie. 'Got your knapsack? Let's get you settled in before the whole world sees you.'

'Oh good. I don't see why I didn't get to stay in the house in the first place,' said the woman, following her out of the rear of the barn.

'You're not going to stay in the house now,' said Feenie, striding ahead. 'As I explained before, when you don't report today, your picture will probably be in the papers. And while the house may seem like ultima Thule to you, there is a steady traffic of postmen, delivery men, petty officials from the council come to try and save me from falling into the sea, inquisitive rustics making inventories of what they might rescue from the imminent wreck, plus woolly Wendy, my new hon. sec. who shows signs of being both nosey and invisible. So we need a safe house for you.'

'Oh yes? And where do you suggest?'

'The Command Post.'

Kelly stopped dead.

'The Command Post? You want me stay there? No way!'

'My dear, it's perfectly safe. All right, the services are cut off but the weather is warm and in this bin liner you'll find a sleeping bag, bottled water, bread, cheese, apples, candles, some toilet paper and a copy of Gibbon's
Decline and Fall
considerably abridged. After a remand cell, I'm sure this must be the acme of comfort.'

'I prefer the cell. Or I'll take my chances back in the barn with the rats.'

Feenie was regarding her with a sharply speculative eye.

'But why? You're not normally spooked by a bit of solitude and discomfort. And you need to spend tonight somewhere safely out of sight.'

'That's it,' cried Kelly, as if seeing a lifeline. 'It's not safe, is it? I mean, it's so far beyond the council's Black Stump, it's almost into the sea.'

'What do those idiots at the council know?' said Feenie impatiently. 'My father had the ground properly surveyed and the theory is the pavilion's built on a stack of granite. Well, most of it. So it might list a bit, but I can't see it slipping into the sea till all the sandstone's been eaten away around it and that should take several more big storms, and the forecast is good for the next twenty-four hours, and we'll have you away from here tomorrow. So come on. Let's get you settled in before Mrs Woolley returns.'

She strode ahead again, with the younger woman trailing behind unhappily like a child being dragged around the shopping centre when it would rather be at home playing with its toys.

Mungo Macallum had seen fit to extend Gunnery House at the rear with an ornate terrace of white marble that looked like the bottom layer of a huge wedding cake. This gave out on an intricate formal garden, now sadly run to seed and decay, through which the path the two women were on meandered eastwards towards a rampant rhododendron shrubbery. Just before they reached it, they had to duck beneath a broad fillet of fluorescent red plastic stretched between a line of metal spikes running out of sight in both directions. Every fifth or sixth spike bore a sign consisting of a formalized skull and crossbones with beneath it in bold letters DANGER! and beneath that in smaller letters a warning from the Local Health and Safety Executive that it was strictly forbidden to pass beyond this point on account of the danger of landslip.

Ahead, beyond the rhododendrons, the garden came to an abrupt end where the sea, eating away at the soft sandstone cliffs, had left a scalloped edge over which shrubs and trees and at one point a trellised rose arbour still heavy with rich red blooms leaned drunkenly.

On the most extreme of the promontories thus formed stood a long low concrete building built like a Greek temple with its columns in the form of telamones consisting of military figures ranging from Greek warriors to tommies of the Great War. It should have been kitsch beyond mockery. Instead, occupying the narrow headland so completely that it seemed to be hanging in air, the effect was menacingly magical, as if anyone entering here would be stepping over the threshold of another world.

This was the Command Post, which had seemed a suitable sobriquet for a pleasure pavilion built by an armaments king so that his guests could enjoy nature at its most explosively sublime without relinquishing any of its or man's luxuries. Feenie could recall in her teens acting as a hostess to a couple of dozen of her father's friends enjoying an Epicurean dinner in the long viewing chamber while a spectacular storm lit the eastern sky, its thunders shaking the pavilion like an enemy bombardment. Back then the ground dipping away in front to the cliff edge had stretched for perhaps a furlong. Now the sea, whose storms had for so long been reduced to a spectator sport, was within a few feet of taking what the Greeks would certainly have regarded as its revenge.

Kelly stopped dead at the sight of it. The old woman turned and said impatiently, 'Stop looking so worried! It looks far worse than it is. And in any case the weather is set fair. Now let's get you inside. Remember, it's essential that you don't stray out of here this evening. I have invited those people who have ejected you from Nosebleed Cottage for supper . . .'

'That seems a bit unwise! Why not make it tomorrow when I'm gone?'

Feenie sighed and said, 'Do not teach your grandmother to suck eggs, girl. By inviting them here this evening, I shall know exactly where they are. If I hadn't invited them, they might come wandering round at any time with all the risk which that would entail. Also, it will fix woolly Wendy in the house helping me prepare and inhibit her from idle perambulation.'

'She's your tweenie too?'

'She does not yet know it, but yes. So all you have to do is sit and admire the view out to sea for the rest of the day. Why I let myself be tempted by you in the first place I do not know. But having come so far, let us try not to end in fiasco. Come on, let's get you settled before woolly Wendy returns.'

She set off again.

Reluctantly, Kelly Cornelius followed.

But as they got within a few yards of the building it was the old woman who came to a sudden halt.

'Hello,' she said. 'Someone's been mucking around down here. That lock's been broken.'

She was looking down a flight of steps with a concrete chute on one side which led down to a basement doorway opening into the cellar where her father had stored the supplies of food and wine necessary to entertain his guests.

'And someone's been at this door too,' she went on, turning her attention to the main entrance. 'The council nailed a bar across it to deter visitors. Kids, I expect. They just do exactly what they want nowadays.'

Kelly laughed and said, 'That's rich coming from you!'

'Don't be cheeky,' Feenie reprimanded her. 'Let's look inside. I hope for your sake they haven't been using it as a public loo.'

'No, hang on,' said Kelly, her laughter dying.

'What now?'