An Air That Kills (2 page)

The train hissed as it slid along the platform. Jill got up and put on her coat. She checked the angle of her hat in the brown-spotted mirror beside the fading prewar photograph of Tintern Abbey. Her fellow passenger showed signs of wanting to lift her suitcase down from the rack. She pretended not to notice.

As she lowered the case, the past sprang another of its boobytraps: she noticed that there was part of a blue label gummed to the lid, and it brought with it the memory of a hotel in Paris; and the memory had the sharpness of a knife. Her eyes blurred again. She blundered towards the door of their compartment.

The man with the beard slid back the door for her. She heard herself murmuring thank you. The train stopped with a jerk; Jill staggered and almost collided with him.

‘Lydmouth!' a voice cried. ‘Lydmouth!'

Carrying the suitcase, she walked crabwise along the corridor and joined the little queue at the end. She would have to find a porter if Philip had not come to meet her; she was still weak, and the doctor had advised her not to exert herself physically. To her dismay, she heard footsteps behind her. The man with the beard was also getting out at Lydmouth.

There was a delay before the door opened. Then the first passengers, a mother with two toddlers in tow, took an interminable time getting off the train. Jill did not look round. She smelled tobacco and eau de cologne. Beneath it she thought there lurked the rank smell of sweat.

One by one the passengers spilled on to the platform. Jill and the man behind her were almost the last to get off the train. She glanced up and down the platform. To her dismay, there was no sign of Philip or Charlotte. Most of the passengers were already walking towards a staircase leading to a bridge over the lines.

Jill followed. The suitcase was heavy enough to make her feel lopsided. Unfortunately there was only one porter in sight, and he was crawling up the stairs laden with the luggage of an elderly lady. But Jill was determined not to show any hesitation, because the man with the beard might construe it as a request for him to carry her case. She did not want to show weakness. Nor did she want to accept favours, particularly from a man.

She climbed the stairs more quickly than she would otherwise have done. There were footsteps behind her. The man's shoes had nails in their soles which rang against the iron treads of the stairs. He was gaining on her.

She pushed herself to go faster. The footsteps behind her seemed to quicken their pace. Turning round was out of the question. She forced herself to go still faster. Her head hurt and her breathing was fast and ragged. There was a stab of pain deep in her groin which made her gasp. She stumbled and had to seize the handrail with her free hand to prevent herself from falling. Simultaneously her mind was pointing out that she was reacting inappropriately. The little man behind her had shown her nothing but kindness. But he was a man, and she didn't want kindness ever again.

She reached the top of the stairs. Her right arm felt as though it were on fire. The fingers were becoming numb. The last of the passengers in front had reached the head of the stairs down to the opposite platform. A moment later, she was alone on the bridge with the bearded man.

Her suitcase collided with one of the stanchions supporting the handrail. The impact jerked the handle from her fingers. The case scraped against her leg as it fell. She clung to the rail with both hands. She felt sick. Part of her mind wondered if her stocking was laddered. A door slammed on the platform below and a whistle blew.

‘Can I be of any assistance, miss?'

She felt the man's breath on her cheek. She smelled the eau de cologne and the stale tobacco.

‘Jill!'

The train began to move. The bridge shook. Smoke billowed from the engine. She looked up. Philip was loping towards her, an anxious expression on his florid face. He was hatless and his overcoat flapped about him. A poppy glowed in his buttonhole like a spot of blood. He loomed over her – he was a good six inches taller than she was – and his size was enormously and shamefully reassuring.

‘Are you all right?' he demanded.

‘I – I dropped my case.'

He pecked her cheek, and the warmth of his lips brought her nothing but comfort. She found it difficult to think of Philip as a man. He had more to do with childhood memories of large dogs and teddy bears.

‘You look pale,' he said accusingly. ‘
Is
everything all right?'

‘Yes, fine.' She watched the man with the beard disappearing down the stairs to the farther platform. Such a lot of fuss about nothing: she felt as though her emotions were no longer hers to control.

‘Sorry I'm late. Got held up in some roadworks.' Philip picked up her bag. ‘Have a good journey?'

‘Yes, thanks. How's Charlotte?'

‘I left her polishing the silver teapot in your honour.' He glanced at her and smiled; but his eyes were serious. ‘She'll murder me if she finds out I was late.'

They walked along the bridge and down the stairs to the platform below. The man with the beard had gone. Philip steered her through the ticket hall into the station yard. It had begun to rain – a fine drizzle that cast a grey, greasy pall over everything it touched. The Wemyss-Browns' Rover 75 was standing by the kerb. Philip opened the front passenger door for Jill and put her case on the back seat.

Jill stared through the windscreen. The rain trickled down the glass. To her dismay, she felt her eyes filling with tears. This time there was no holding them back.

Philip opened the driver's door. The car rocked under his weight.

‘Jill – what is it?'

He moved towards her. He lifted his arm as if to put it round her shoulders. Before she could stop herself she jerked away.

‘It's all right,' Philip said. ‘I'm quite harmless, you know.' He leant back in his seat, his hands safely in his lap, and cleared his throat.

‘I'm sorry.' Jill rummaged in her handbag for a handkerchief. ‘It's just that – it's been a bad week – I'm rather tired.'

‘Yes, yes of course.'

She turned away to wipe her eyes and blow her nose.

‘I always say November's a depressing month,' he went on. ‘Nothing to look forward to. Even Christmas isn't what it used to be before the war.'

‘It's the month of the dead,' Jill said. ‘November, I mean.'

‘What?'

‘I read it somewhere.' She felt she had to keep talking – partly for Philip's sake and partly for hers. ‘It's the time of year when they used to kill all the animals, and when the Roman Catholics pray for dead souls. And then there's Remembrance Day.'

‘I hadn't thought of it like that,' Philip said. ‘Makes it seem even worse.'

‘I'm better now.'

‘Is there something wrong? Something it would help to tell me?'

Jill shook her head. She left it unclear which question she was answering. Philip seemed not to notice.

‘You know – a trouble shared, eh?'

No. Jill thought. No, no, no.

‘Overwork, that's what it is. And all those parties, of course.'

‘Philip – don't mention it to Charlotte, will you? Well, do if you want to. It's just that I don't want to make a fuss.'

‘Of course.'

After a few seconds, Philip started the engine, drove slowly out of the station yard and turned left on to a main road rising gently towards the town centre. After fifty yards he was forced to stop.

‘This is what made me late,' he said. ‘There's a demolition job over there. They've had to cordon off part of the road for their vehicles.'

A youthful policeman was directing the traffic. Jill glanced at the warren of buildings on the other side of the road. Some of them had lost their roofs. Most of the windows were broken. The brickwork of the warehouse at one end of the site was blackened, as if by fire.

‘Bomb damage?'

‘Natural wear and tear. The Rose in Hand has been falling apart for centuries.'

‘The what?'

‘It used to be the name of an inn. See? That building with the tall gables. They're pulling down everything from there to the warehouse, and there are some yards and outbuildings behind and at the side. And that's just the first stage. The site's part of an area called Templefields which stretches up to the town centre. It's all very rundown. I imagine they'll eventually pull most of it down.'

‘What are they planning to do here?'

‘There's going to be a car park and some council houses. All part of Lydmouth's contribution to our brave new world.'

Jill glanced at him, catching the unfamiliar note of cynicism in his voice. ‘I'd have thought you'd approve of that.'

His mouth twisted into a smile. ‘I do. But Charlotte feels the working classes have managed perfectly well without flush lavatories for centuries, so why start bothering now? Also, of course, she thinks it's vandalism to bulldoze the existing buildings out of existence. She's got a point. Some of them are very old.'

Jill said nothing. She watched a file of workmen walking slowly along the narrow pavement from the warehouse. They were laden with tools and their heads were bowed. The rain fell steadily on them. They turned under an archway at the other end of the site.

‘Not much of a job, eh?' Philip said.

The policeman turned and waved them on. Philip let out the clutch. The Rover moved forward.

‘No,' Jill said. ‘Not much of a life either.'

Chapter Two

There were four of them in the line. The three in the front were bunched tightly together. After a gap of a couple of yards, Charlie Meague followed. He had the ghost of a swagger and his eyes flickered from side to side. He was taller than the others, a dark, good-looking man wearing army boots and trousers below a shabby tweed jacket. He hadn't bothered to shave or wear a collar. His flat cap was pulled down low over his face.

Under the archway, Charlie hesitated. The other three walked on. He moved to the shelter of a doorway, rested the sledgehammer against the wall and took a half-smoked cigarette from the top pocket of his jacket. After he had smoothed it out, he lit it with a match. Staring at the traffic, he noticed the Wemyss-Browns' Rover going up the hill. He exhaled smoke and spat across the pavement into the roadway.

‘Meague! Come on, you lazy bugger.'

Charlie hoisted the sledgehammer on to his shoulder. With the cigarette in the corner of his mouth, he sauntered out from the archway and across the yard. The other men were picking their way through a ruined barn. Ted Evans, the foreman, beckoned impatiently. His mouth was pursed with irritation.

Charlie followed them into the barn. The roof had gone and the interior was heaped with rubble and charred beams. Evans pushed the left-hand leaf of the huge double doors on the far wall. It moved a few inches. There was a rending sound as the top hinge parted company with the gatepost.

‘The wood's like wet cardboard. Give me the sledgehammer.'

Charlie passed it to him. Evans swung it at the lower hinge. A spark flashed as metal collided with metal. The gate groaned and swayed. Evans swung the hammer again. Wood cracked. The door tore itself free from its one remaining hinge and fell outwards.

Beyond the barn was another yard. Heavy double gates, reinforced with iron and topped with spikes, were immediately opposite. To the left was a range of stabling. Other buildings, their original purpose harder to guess, had been reduced to mounds of stone, earth and dead and dying weeds. A leafless elder tree stood on one of the mounds. The roofs and gables of the Rose in Hand were visible on the right.

‘See that?' Evans waved at one of the ruins. ‘We're going to cut a trench through there.'

‘For God's sake,' Charlie said. ‘Why can't they use the bloody digger? That's what it's for.'

Evans stabbed a finger at Charlie. ‘Listen, Meague. You trying to tell me how to do my job?'

‘Just asking a civil question.'

The foreman came a step closer. He was several inches shorter than Charlie, but his bulk and his long arms made him formidable. When he was angry, he lowered his voice rather than raised it.

‘A question? Then here are some civil answers. One, they're already using the digger over there.' He gestured towards the inn, on the other side of which lay the warehouse. ‘Two, we're cheaper. Three, this is exploratory work, the sort of thing you need men for, not machines. The surveyor thinks there might be a culverted stream down there, and that's got implications for the foundations and the drainage. Four, you give me trouble and you'll be out on your ear. Got that, son?'

Charlie stamped his foot and shouldered the sledgehammer like a rifle. He came to attention. ‘Yes, sir!'

The rain pattered down from the grey sky. Evans stared up at Charlie's face and Charlie stared back. A lorry changed gear on the main road.

‘Watch it,' Evans said softly. ‘Just watch it.' He turned to the others. ‘Right – we'll start by clearing the rubbish out. Frank, you'd better fetch a barrow. Get another shovel, too. We'll make a start in here.'

Frank walked off the way they had come. Charlie flicked his cigarette away and followed the other two men through a low doorway into a small, stone-walled building which had lost its roof. A rat darted between his legs. He swore at it. The floor was visible at the end near the door, but a heap of rubbish had been thrown against the wall at the rear.

‘We'll clear the bigger stuff first,' Evans said. ‘Just pile it outside for now.'

He picked up a pair of rusting jerry cans and lumbered into the yard with them. Charlie and the fourth man, Emrys Hughes, dragged a balk of timber from the pile and pulled it across the floor. Frank returned with the wheelbarrow, which they loaded with bricks and stones. Charlie worked mechanically, and also as slowly as he dared.