A Hovering of Vultures (6 page)

“Diabolical service,” he said, when the man had failed to get noticed yet again. “You'd think they'd have put more staff on for the Conference.”

The man turned to look at him. The expression on his full, regular features said as clearly as words that neither Charlie's accent nor his colour qualified him for friendly notice. Charlie knew the expression well.

“You would,” he said shortly, and turned away. Obviously a thought struck him, for he turned back. “Are you here for the Conference?”

“That's right.”

The man smiled, though still with a certain aloofness. He was motivated, probably, by nothing more than some dim sense of
Sneddon oblige.
While he condescended Charlie caught the girl's attention.

“Oh, miss, an orange juice, please. And what are you having?”

“Scotch and soda. I'll pay, of course. You seem to be better than me at getting noticed.” Charlie smiled ambiguously. He thought that with looks like that Sneddon wouldn't often have a problem. “No, I must say I'm feeling a bit apprehensive about this Conference.”

They had moved away from the bar, but not sat down. Charlie felt that sitting down with this man, now fumbling for the price of his Scotch, would be to overestimate the thawing.

“Oh?” Charlie said, as if he had no idea who he was speaking to. “But you're going?”

“Yes,” he said, his expression rueful, almost shamefaced. “I'm the nearest living relative.”

“
Really
!” Charlie's voice and bearing suggested that he was enormously impressed. “So you're representing the family?”

“I
am
the family. But I'm not looking forward to being among all those culture vultures and devoted fans. I really know nothing whatever about the books.”

“Not admired in the family?”

“Hardly ever mentioned, frankly. I grew up knowing I had some sort of cousin who'd once written novels, and that was about it. Once all this stuff about a Society or Fellowship or
whatever started up I sat down and read a couple of the books—had to discipline myself and set aside two evenings when I'd very much rather have been doing something else.”

“And?”

Once more the expression was rueful.

“I found I'd very much rather have done something else. Shocking, I know. You must be an admirer.”

“I find them interesting,” said Charlie cautiously. “You say she was some sort of cousin . . . ?”

“Yes. My grandfather was her cousin, to be precise. But he and his family moved South long ago—well before the war. I don't even know this area, I'm afraid. I've been to Yorkshire only once in my life, and then it was to York, not to this side. So I'm afraid I'm going to be a great disappointment to the aficionados.”

“They'll be thrilled just to have a member of her family here. Or their family, I should say.”

“Oh God—don't mention Joshua. Just a
look
at one of his books was enough.”

“Yes. They're an acquired taste I haven't acquired. But there will be fans of his too, remember.”

“So I'll have to find some polite formula. Thanks for warning me. But I'm in the City. I have to be polite and tactful to all types of people. I once had lunch with Robert Maxwell and survived to tell the tale. I'll think of something . . .”

His eyes strayed around the bar. He was about to say “Well, it's been nice having this chat.” Charlie drained his glass.

“Well, it's been nice having this chat. I must be off. I expect we'll see each other up in Micklewike tomorrow. Best of luck with the fans.”

“Thanks, I'll need it.”

Charlie dredged up from memory an O-level quote.

“ ‘I will see thee at Philippi.' ”

Randolph Sneddon looked bewildered, as if he thought it might be the next village to Micklewike.

That night, making notes of the day's encounters, Charlie put by Sneddon's name the comment: “Not very bright.” Then frowning he crossed it out, because that wasn't at all the impression the man had made as a whole. After some thought he substituted: “Sharp at some things. Money? Self-interest?” He somehow didn't think that many people would be encouraged to get close to Randolph Sneddon. He was quite sure that he wouldn't be.

T
he village hall of Micklewike had been built in the 'thirties, five minutes from the centre of the village, on the edge of a small estate of council houses. Here, over the years, the local amateurs had performed
Tons of Money, Night Must Fall
and
Haul for the Shore
until the television habit had become so deeply ingrained that it was impossible to get the villagers out into their bleak, windswept streets for a night in a draughty hall. These were, in any case, performances more for the benefit of the actors than the audience. Nowadays there were aerobics classes held there, and karate classes, and the occasional lecture or school concert. But for much of the time the hall stood dispirited and unused. It was here that the Sneddon Fellowship was to be born.

Mr Suzman had been uncertain how many would be attending the inaugural meeting. He had a rough idea how many were lodged in local hotels, inns and bed and breakfast places, because he liaised closely with the Batley Bridge
Tourist Office. What he did not know was how many would prefer to stay at more distant places such as Haworth or Skipton, nor how many locals within easy driving distance would decide to come to the inaugural junketings. When he drove into Micklewike an hour before the meeting was scheduled to begin he was pleased to note that the meagre places for parking in the village were starting to fill up. He had a last-minute pow-wow with Mrs Marsden at the farm, then took himself down to the village hall. Here he had another pow-wow with Mrs Cardew, an elderly resident of Micklewike, whom he had persuaded to take notes at the meeting, and whom he hoped would eventually act as (unpaid) secretary to the Fellowship. For the title, and the cost of the postage, he anticipated getting a great deal of work out of her. Then he went to stand at the door of the hall, mingle with one or two familiar faces outside, and generally to act as mine host and onlie begetter of the Fellowship. But while he was welcoming and mingling outside in the watery sunlight he was all the time keeping an eye on the number and kind of people who were assembling around him in dribs and drabs, smiling tentatively at each other, and generally beginning the business of coming together.

“A nice little bunch,” Gerald Suzman thought, with the part of his mind that was not commenting on the weather or pointing out landmarks from the Sneddon novels to perfect strangers. “I wouldn't mind betting we shall have sixty or seventy, and there's a fair number who are only arriving this afternoon. Ah—a member of the ethnic minorities: that always looks good. Young too—in fact it's generally a gratifyingly young lot.” By which he meant that there was a scattering of genuinely young people, and that there were more under-sixties than are generally found in such societies.
“What's that—German? No, not guttural enough. One of the Scandinavian languages, I should think. Oh—
very
nice! Young, but not too young, lovely long blonde hair.” He was stirred by an unmistakeably lascivious urge. Mr Suzman had been a notable womaniser in his time, and his time was not yet up. He suppressed the urge as suitable neither to the time nor the place, but mentally registered an intention to engineer a time and place that was suitable. And the place wouldn't be a hedgerow or a barn, he told himself. “Down, Gerald,” he said mentally to dampen his ardour. “Look at her legs.
Not
graceful. And her bearded boyfriend looks very capable. Why boyfriend? Why not husband? Scandinavians marry sometimes, I suppose. But he doesn't look like a husband, so I will hope . . . Ah—she's meeting up with another young girl. I suspect that may be the—what is it? Parker, Parkin, something like that, woman. Writes long letters full of questions, and very interested in the manuscripts. No doubt a future contributor to our journal. To be encouraged, but not allowed too close. Ten minutes to go. Yes, a very nice little group indeed. Perhaps we should all be moving inside.”

As he himself began the move back to the door and into the hall people gathered around him obediently and followed: his photograph had been several times in the
Batley Bridge Advertiser,
and recently in the
Yorkshire Post.
He moved down towards the platform and his seat in the centre of it, and from it he sat surveying the people assembling. Most of them were coming down for good seats at the front, though he noticed that the young black man had taken one in the middle of one of the back rows. Diffident, he thought to himself. I must try to bring him out, bring him forward.

It did not occur to him that only from the back could one see everything that was going on.

• • •

Charlie Peace had had an early breakfast—a full Yorkshire one, with endless toast and tea—and had chatted to his landlord and landlady while he was getting it down. When they asked what had drawn him to Susannah Sneddon he said that a girlfriend had introduced him to the novels. The girlfriend had gone, but the interest had not. When they asked him what he did, he said: “Security work.”

“Really? Wouldn't have thought there were many men in Security who were readers,” Mrs Ludlum had said.

“Oh, I don't know,” said Charlie. “Some of my mates can sit around all day with the
Sun
.”

Careful, he said to himself. His sardonic humour had more than once got him into trouble when he had used it at inappropriate moments.

When he'd finished his fried feast he decided that the only thing to do after that kind of meal was to take the hill path up to Micklewike. He thought to himself that he would regard it as his daily training over the weekend, his means of keeping himself in condition. And he had to admit that, second time round, it had become easier, because you knew what you were in for.

He had prepared for his first view of Mr Gerald Suzman by remembering the various photographs he had been shown at the Yard, so the sight of the man, as he emerged from the door of the village hall at the same time as Charlie joined the group milling around outside it, was no surprise. But though the man was unmistakeable the impression made was very different: none of the photographs he had seen were informal snaps, or taken when he was off-guard, and as Gregory Waite had said the day before, a posed photograph is always the imposition of a desired impression, with greater or lesser
success. In the flesh, publicly performing, Gerald Suzman was busy, ingratiating, plausible, but Charlie told himself that even if he had been watching him “cold” he would have had doubts about—what?—his sincerity? His honesty? He simply did not give the impression of a man of integrity.

He strolled nearer to him, but he caught nothing but commonplaces from his conversation with the various conferees. At first Gerald Suzman then the rest began the movement into the hall. Charlie noticed the girl he had talked to at High Maddox Farm the day before: he gave her a wave and a meaningful look and got an instant response. But she seemed firmly attached to her father and mother, and was shepherded by them to a seat in the second row. Charlie had no intention of missing what went on in the main body of the hall just for a close view of Gerald Suzman, and took an uncharacteristically inconspicuous seat at the back.

The meeting began with Gerald Suzman explaining with disarming (if you were readily disarmed) self-deprecation that he had constituted himself chairman for this inaugural meeting, and that more formal arrangements could wait until a small committee for the Fellowship had been elected and a provisional constitution adopted—of which a draft would be found on every seat. That would take place at a formal meeting on Sunday morning. Meanwhile what he hoped for from this morning's meeting was an expression of what those potential members assembled there—and how welcome they all were, and how gratifying the large number!—wanted from the Society, how they each hoped to contribute to it, how they felt the Society could best honour the memory of Susannah Sneddon—not forgetting Joshua!—and raise (to use a convenient cliché) their profile in the literary world.

So far so boring, Charlie thought. As members in the body
of the hall showed signs of wishing to speak, Mr Suzman gracefully gave way and the discussion became more general. Mr Rupert Coggenhoe got up and spoke “as a writer myself, and from a writer's standpoint.” He contrived to introduce the name of his novel
Starveacre
, and the pseudonym he had written it under, three times in the course of his contribution (all those rehearsals in his mind of what he would do when he became a chat-show regular thus paid some small dividends). When he sat down Charlie was hard put to remember anything he had said. A dumpy lady in a bright blue coat and hat got up and announced she was from the
Shirley
country, bemusing Charlie, who began speculating where that was in relation to Herriot country, Brontë Country and
Last of the Summer Wine
country. The lady suggested that it be written into the constitution of the Society that High Maddox Farm was never to be added to or built on to without express permission of a majority of Society members.

“An excellent idea! Capital!” enthused Mr Suzman. “Though I think we must say that the farm is never likely to be a shrine in the way that Haworth Parsonage has become, nor Micklewike the tourist attraction that Haworth is.” He rubbed his hands. “And a very good thing too, many will say!”

That gave Charlie to think, and he thought about it during the other early speeches. So Mr Suzman did not expect the farm to become a shrine, if he was to be believed. His mind was not on large sums of tourist money from entrance fees, from postcards or tasteful souvenirs (replicas of Joshua's axe, perhaps?). What then was behind this? Where was the scam?