Arms and the Women (37 page)

Her head still dull with sun, it took Novello a moment to react.

Then she sat upright and demanded, 'What chap?'

'Some passing peasant, most likely, who must have thought it was his birthday. I glanced up and spotted him and then he ducked out of sight, and I headed back for the shore. Always safest. Not to do so might imply to the simple male mind that I didn't mind being spied upon.'

Novello jumped up, took a small pair of binoculars out of her holster bag, ran to the water's edge and started scanning the clifftop.

Red stone, blue sky, sea birds soaring. The only sign of human intrusion was some kind of building perched precariously on the edge some way to the north. Bag-lady territory.

Daphne called, 'No need to get neurotic. It was probably Donald, Mrs Stonelady's son, and he's completely harmless.'

Novello ignored her. She'd caught a movement. A small adjustment of the focus and suddenly she had him sharp, just for a moment, side view, more back really, not a full profile, as he moved south along the clifftop path. Not all that big, dark hair, nothing else. She kept on watching in the hope that he'd reappear, but nothing.

Water suddenly covered her brand-new trainers as the oncoming tide rolled up the beach. You couldn't be too careful.

She hopped quickly out and returned to Daphne, removing her mobile phone from her belt.

'What's the cottage number?'

Daphne told her, adding as she dialled, 'But I doubt you'll get through. Even without the cliff, mobile signals are notoriously weak in Axness. Even the landlines aren't very reliable. Nosebleed is off as often as it's on.'

She was right. There was nothing.

Clicking the phone back onto her belt, Novello said, 'Look, I'm going to climb back up and take a look. Are you done here now?'

'I thought I'd dry off in the sun a while then head back to the cottage.'

'Good, I'll see you there.'

'Fine, but honestly, Shirley, I don't think there's any cause for alarm.’

‘You’re probably right, but my bosses don't like
probably.'

She set off up the cliff. Going up was easier than coming down, though even with her gym-toughened leg muscles, she was puffing by the time she reached the top.

No sign of life along the edge running north towards Gunnery House.

She checked south too. Nothing.

Which
could
mean that the watcher, having ascertained that both non-Pascoes were safely occupied on the beach, had headed towards Nosebleed.

Feeling, without any logic, that she'd been outmanoeuvred, she set off at a trot back towards the cottage.

vii

the sirens' song

Ellie, seated on a garden chair that looked like wrought iron but yielded like foam rubber (where
did
Patrick get his garden furniture?), wearing a floppy sun hat and a long loose-fitting cotton dress, with her fingers poised over the keyboard of her laptop whose screen was displaying Chapter 3 of her Comfort Blanket story, suddenly felt like a real writer. Or at least, computer apart, like the kind of painting of a real writer that Renoir might have done in Monet's garden.

This was a considerable advance on the fraudulent feel which often stole over her in the boxroom she refused to call a study. A visiting American had told her that back home it was possible to gain membership of serious author groups as a 'pre-published writer' before you'd even set pen to paper. Ellie had laughed derisively, till she realized her friend was talking personal experience without any sign of ironic self-mockery. Her sense of hostessly responsibility, plus an instinctive sympathy with most anti-elitist ideologies, now made her sit submissively under the subsequent reproving lecture. But not all the lip-service in the world could change what she felt inside, which was that until she saw her words in print with a price tag on them she would remain a wannabe; and that if and when she finally ceased to be a wannabe, not all the out-reaching democratic arguments in the world would make her share her status with some idle plonker claiming to be 'pre-published'!

But out here, in the sun, with birds singing in the trees and Rosie close by, chattering happily to Tig and whatever other strange creatures the little dog had set free from her imagination, it seemed after all possible to think of herself as a true creator, a maker of dreams, without the hard evidence of lunches and launches and learned reviews. Perhaps, she thought, this was ESP at work, and the longed-for letter of acceptance was already dropping through her letterbox. So strong was the feeling that she went into the cottage and tried to ring home on the off chance Peter had come in since she'd left a message on the answer machine shortly after they arrived. Which turned out to be just as well as the phone was now completely dead.

Curiously, instead of irritating her, this sense of being cut off had fed her mood.

Nothing can touch me here, she thought.

But when she returned to the garden she found she was wrong. Some electronic quirk had switched her display from the story to her unfinished letter to Bruna Cubillas. The Colombian woman's letters had rarely spoken directly of the conditions of her imprisonment, perhaps because of the fear of censorship and reprisals, perhaps because through them she was escaping to another world of domestic life with its everyday pleasures and anxieties, and she didn't want to bring her own world with her. But Ellie knew from her reading elsewhere, and from listening to those who had suffered a similar fate and made it back to freedom, that the same sun she basked in would turn Bruna's tiny cell into a foetid oven where even the cockroaches hardly had strength to crawl over the floor . . .

Angrily she punched the letter out of sight. Later. Later would do. This spirit of delight she was enjoying at the moment came so rarely that it would be churlish to suppress it. Anyway, hadn't Feenie said something about Bruna being released? If so, not much point in sending a letter to the prison. She doubted if her friend would have left a forwarding address.

She conjured up her story once more and plunged back into her revision like a dolphin into the wine-dark sea.

She'd begun this chapter with one of those extended similes the classical epicists were so fond of and she wasn't sure if it worked. Or perhaps she meant she wasn't sure how she wanted it to work - as epic simile or post-modern irony? Or maybe simply as good honest fun! What the hell? Why should things always have to be complicated?

Let it stand!

Chapter 3

Like to the spikenard spider which casts an invisible floating web over the scented shrubs abounding the fringes of the foetid Asian swamplands in which it lives, trapping the golden bees lured there to feast on the rich exuded juices of the blossoming trees in bonds so loose that though they may not flee, they may still drink their fill and be at their sweetest when the time comes for patient Arachne to suck them dry, so Aeneas plied his guest with wine and sweetmeats, always purposing that in the end he would pay the price for the great deception which toppled Troy, but not before he had been drained of all he knew of the shifting perils of these dangerous seas.

Yet, be they never so different of race, taste, and temperament, and though they have fought long years on opposite sides, when men of arms at a camp fire share memories of battles fought, pains endured, perils survived, another invisible bond will form between them which has nothing to do with plots and schemings.

'You are truly the most resourceful of men,' said Aeneas, after listening to Odysseus's tale of how he had escaped from the cave of Polyphemus. 'And in this instance at least, I too have cause to be grateful for your cunning, for without it, my fleet might never have come away free from the land of the Cyclops.'

'You got mixed up with them one-eyed bastards too?' exclaimed Odysseus. 'When was that?'

'About three moons after you escaped. No, do not look surprised that I am so exact. When we landed, a poor wretch came running down the beach and threw himself at our feet and prayed for mercy. He was one of yours who'd been left behind when you escaped and he was so desperate that he preferred to put himself in the hands of Trojans rather than run the risk of being eaten alive by a Cyclops.'

'Achaemenides! You're not telling me you rescued Achaemenides?'

'Yes, that was his name. It was a lucky encounter for us. He told us of your adventures, and thus forewarned we were able to make our escape, though not without a close scrape.'

'Well, I'm buggered,' said Odysseus. 'So Achaemenides survived after all. He always claimed his mother was told by the gods he was destined for great things, that he'd likely become a king one day! Well, nowt's impossible as far as that mad lot are concerned. So where's he at now? Good job I didn't run into him outside, else he'd likely have told the whole world who I was.'

Aeneas looked a little uneasy and said, 'Actually, he's not here. We had to .. . let him go.'

'Let him go? Like, you set him down somewhere and said, Off you go, lad; it's been nice knowing you?'

'Not exactly,' said Aeneas. 'The truth is when we got hit by the great storm that eventually drove us to this inhospitable place, as we rushed along before the wind which seemed at any moment like to turn us over and drive us down into the dark jaws of death, some of the men, indeed most of them, began to feel that there must be some presence among us which was offensive to the Earth-Shaker, and Achaemenides, being one of your crew who had blinded great Poseidon's son, Polyphemus, seemed the man most likely. So we held him over the side. Then, after a while, well, we .. . let him go. I'm really sorry.'

Odysseus looked grim for a moment, then his face split in a huge toothy grin and he said, 'Nay, Prince, think nowt of it. In your place, I'd have done just the same.'

'Thrown a Trojan prisoner overboard, you mean?'

'Nay. Thrown Achaemenides over! He were always a useless bugger and a right liability at sea. Know what we used to call him? Hector, after that girt brother-in-law of thine.'

'Because he was a useless bugger, you mean?' said Aeneas, ready to be offended.

'Nay! Because he was forever lolloping around, knocking Greeks over!'

Aeneas laughed, then, serious again, said, 'Alas, poor Hector. When he died, our hopes died too. A remarkable thing, though - among many other remarkable things since the debacle - I ran across his wife, Andromache. On Epirus. She's married to Helenus - you remember him? Another of Priam's sons.'

'Aye, I do. I once captured the bugger and he went into a trance and told me Troy were doomed. I thought, this one's either very clever or he's doolally, so I ransomed him quick. He's still around, is he?'

'Oh yes. He's got a nice little thing going. He's established a sort of mini Troy which he calls Chaonia.'

'I were right about him then. Bloody clever! Weren't you tempted to set up shop there too?'

Aeneas smiled. 'No, not really. I'm bound. . . elsewhere. But I'm interrupting your story. Funny how our trails keep on intertwining. Scylla and Charybdis, the Cyclops

'Aye. Bet you never heard the Sirens sing, but,' said Odysseus complacently.

'No, and from what I've heard, I understand that no man can and remain living.'

'He can if he gets his crew to stuff their ears with wax then bind him to the mast so he can't be tempted to jump over the side.'

'And that's what you did? Remarkable. You must be truly greedy for experience, Odysseus. And was it worth it? Myself, I can't imagine a song so sweet that it would cause a man steeled in war to forget all else and rush madly to discover its source.'

'You can't? Well, if I'd not been tied up, I'd have gone rushing, I tell you, no question.'

'Really? So what did it sound like, this irresistible music? Can you perhaps give me a flavour?' enquired Aeneas, faintly mocking.

'Do me best. Let's see now. It were something like this.'

And the Greek took a deep breath, threw back his head and let out a terrible rasping, gasping, raucous yell.

The din filled the cavern and before its echoes had ceased bouncing round the walls, the curtained entrance had been torn aside by Achates, and the fat Greek was surrounded by grim-faced guards with drawn swords.

'See?' said Odysseus complacently. 'Told you it worked. Brings 'em running every time.'

For a moment there was silence, then Aeneas began to laugh and the Greek laughed with him, till in a short while both men were helpless with mirth.