The Secret by the Lake (11 page)

I was there one day, waiting for Bess to find her ball which was lost in the dead bracken, when a rangy tricolour collie with one blue eye and one brown wandered up and drank from the pool at my feet. Bess came closer and growled at the dog.

‘Leave her,’ I said, but Bess’s hackles were up and her ears were down. I said, ‘Come on,’ and began to walk away but I was too late – the dogs were already at one another in a tangle of teeth and fur and yelping. I stepped into the pool to try to grab Bess’s collar, but the collie’s owner was there and he said: ‘Enough!’

It was Daniel.

The dogs circled uneasily and then moved apart. I was breathless, my heart pounding. It had been weeks since I last saw him, since I had kissed him, and I was tongue-tied. I blushed at the memory of my previous brazenness.

‘I thought they were going to kill one another,’ I said.

‘It was nothing,’ Daniel said. ‘They didn’t mean anything by it.’ He held out his hand and I took it. He pulled me out of the water.

‘Hello again,’ I said. I smoothed my hair, brushed myself down.

‘Hello.’

‘How are you?’

‘Happy to see you again,’ he said.

‘I’m happy to see you too.’

‘Are your feet wet?’

‘Yes.’

Daniel offered me his arm and I held it for balance while I took off my boot and emptied the water from it. I was standing with the boot upturned in my hand when Daniel said: ‘Look.’

Far away, a bird made a curve in the sky, and then returned, describing a graceful S shape.

Daniel held his binoculars to his eyes, adjusted them. ‘Here,’ he said, and he passed them to me. I dropped the boot and put my foot down on the wet grass. I held the binoculars to my eyes but could see nothing but a fast-moving blur of sky and moor. He helped me, guiding my hand gently until the lenses found the bird. It moved so quickly that I struggled at first to follow it, and then, when I found the knack, I was dizzy with the speed and soar of it.

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘What is it?’

‘A harrier. You don’t see them up here often.’

‘I’ve seen hunting birds before.’

‘Buzzards or kestrels maybe; sparrowhawks, even a goshawk. Most likely not a harrier.’

I passed the binoculars back to him, hopped back into the boot. Daniel was looking at the bird again. His green jumper and old brown jacket with a broken zip made him seem like part of the landscape. The two dogs, having put their differences behind them, were sniffing the edges of the path together.

‘You didn’t call me,’ I said quietly.

‘I couldn’t get through on the number you gave me. During the day it was always engaged. In the evenings there was no answer.’

‘But we are always there.’

‘Honestly, Amy, I tried so many times I know it off by heart.’

He told me the number I had given him and I recognized it at once.

‘That’s my father’s number,’ I said. ‘I gave you my father’s number in Sheffield.’ I laughed, embarrassed and also relieved. ‘He takes the phone off the hook during the days, while he’s sleeping, and he goes out to work in the evenings. I’m so sorry, Daniel. I can’t have been thinking straight when I wrote it down.’

‘It’s OK.’ We walked on for a moment or two. ‘Why didn’t
you
call
me
?’ he asked.

‘I thought you didn’t want to speak to me.’

‘How could you think that?’

‘I don’t know. I just did.’

He gave me a little push with his shoulder.

‘Idiot,’ he said.

I pushed him back. ‘Idiot yourself.’

We smiled at one another and began to walk companionably close together, our shoulders and arms bumping from time to time, smiling from time to time.

‘You like birds, do you, Daniel?’ I asked.

‘Very much.’

‘But I’ve heard shooting on the Aldridge land.’

‘They’re shooting pheasants that were bred to be shot.’

‘Still killing birds.’

‘But the money raised is used to protect the habitat of the wild birds. My father has many faults but he cares a great deal for the conservation of wildlife.’

‘That’s something in his favour at least.’

‘He’s not so very bad, you know.’

‘Hmm,’ I said.

We walked together along the path, me skirting around the pools of water, Daniel walking through them. I picked up Bess’s ball and threw it for the dogs to chase.

‘So how is Viviane?’ Daniel asked.

‘Better now she’s started school.’

‘Is the imaginary companion still around?’

‘Yes. I’m keeping an eye on it, like you said, but trying not to worry too much.’

‘Good,’ said Daniel. Then, ‘Are you busy on Friday evening?’

‘This Friday? I’ll have to consult my social calendar to be sure, but off the top of my head, no, I don’t think so.’

‘Then come to the pub. I’ll buy you a drink.’

‘OK. I’d like that.’

We had reached a crossroads in the path, by the Beacon Batch Trig Point that marked the highest point in the Mendips and the ancient, Stone Age barrows built on the brow of the hill. The wind blew the clouds towards us and my hair whipped across my face. I gathered it in my hands, holding it back. My face was freezing.

‘The rain’s coming,’ Daniel said. ‘You want to get yourself back down to the village.’

In the valley down below, the lake was dark grey and angry, little spitty waves fighting on the surface.

‘Aren’t you coming?’ I asked.

‘I left the jeep on the other side of the moor.’ He held out his hand and I took it. He leaned over, and this time he kissed me so deeply that I could hardly bear to let him go.

‘I’ll see you on Friday,’ he said.

‘OK.’

‘Don’t forget.’

‘I won’t.’

‘The Hare. I’ll be in the Hare.’

‘OK.’ I waved and then I set off down the rocky slope with Bess at my side. My socks were squelching inside my boots but there was a lightness in my heart. I felt the happiest I had felt in months.

THE NEXT DAY,
an extravagant bouquet of flowers arrived at Reservoir Cottage from Bruno Rolland, the editor of Alain’s newspaper. There was a note. Bruno wanted to come over to England to talk to Julia.

Julia looked at me over the top of the bouquet, pollen dusting her chin. The flowers had seemed so bright when the florist gave them to me at the front door, but as soon as they were inside the cottage, in the darkness of the hallway, their colours had seemed to fade and they had become sad and weary. The oppressiveness of the place even affected them.

‘I don’t want to see Bruno,’ she said.

‘Isn’t he one of Alain’s oldest friends? Mightn’t he be able to help you?’

‘He’s not coming out of friendship. He wants to take Alain’s notebooks and no doubt he’ll use whatever he can find in them to achieve his own political ends.’

‘He thinks there’s evidence in the notebooks?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Then why not give them to Bruno? That way, the instigators of the shooting may be brought to justice.’

‘Not like this. Not by giving all Alain’s work away. He didn’t die to make his publishers rich. I won’t let them hijack his work.’ Julia pressed the bouquet back into my arms. ‘Do something with these, will you? All they will do is die. Already they’re dying. Take them away.’

I held the flowers to my face and the printed paper wrapped around them crackled and the tail of the ribbon bow was silky against my wrist. I took them into the kitchen. Julia was right, there was a smell of decay about the out-of-season roses and freesias; the petals were already soft, the leaves already wilting. The dustbin was kept at the side of the cottage. I opened the back door and I saw Mrs Croucher, dressed for the weather in a coat, headscarf and boots, opening the gate at the bottom of her garden. I called out to her, and the old woman turned. I ran down the garden. ‘Would you like these flowers, Mrs Croucher? Julia’s not in the mood for them.’

I held the bouquet over the wire fence so she could see them properly.

‘They’re very pretty,’ Mrs Croucher said, ‘and they must have cost a fortune.’ She looked at the flowers, considered. ‘I could take them down to the nursing home, I’m sure they’d be grateful, only that’s a big bunch for me to carry all that way. I’d struggle with them, dear, because of my chest. I had tuberculosis when I was a child and I’ve never been right since.’

‘Are you going there now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hold on then, I’ll fetch my coat and walk with you.’

That’s what I did. We walked together down to the reservoir, passed the spillway, crossed the dam and turned right beneath an archway made of wrought iron with a sign that read
Sunnyvale: First-class Residential Nursing Care for Gentlefolk
. The gates beneath the archway were open and beyond was a drive leading to the main building.

‘It looks very nice,’ I said.

‘You wouldn’t believe it was once a lunatic asylum, would you?’ said Mrs Croucher. ‘They treat the residents like royalty these days. It’s more like a hotel than a nursing home.’

I gave her the flowers. ‘I’ll leave you here,’ I said. ‘Tell your husband that Julia sends her love.’

‘Won’t you come and meet him?’

I hesitated, but she insisted and so I followed her inside.

Sunnyvale’s entrance area was laid out like the reception of a country hotel, with a wooden desk, bookshelves and easy chairs. It had been lavishly decorated for Christmas with a real tree hung with gold and red baubles and fairy lights, and cards fastened to the beams.

I gave the flowers to the nurse at the reception desk who admired them and then directed us to the day room at the end of a lushly carpeted corridor. It was a light and airy room, well-furnished. Mrs Croucher led me towards a well-built, bearded man in a wheelchair. He was talking to an elderly man wearing a dog collar beneath a shabby black suit – the vicar.

The two men were deep in conversation although they stopped when they saw us. Mrs Croucher introduced me to her husband, then to the vicar, Reverend Pettigrew, and also to his daughter, Susan, a lumpy, middle-aged woman in a housecoat, who was hovering nearby. Susan, I was told, worked in Sunnyvale as a cleaner. Mrs Croucher leaned close to my ear. ‘Susan’s not quite the full shilling,’ she whispered. Susan may not have heard this, but she certainly guessed the meaning. Her cheeks coloured. I was terribly embarrassed for her but thought the kindest thing I could do was pretend I hadn’t noticed.

‘Well,’ said the vicar, rubbing his hands, ‘I’d best make a move. People to do, things to see!’

‘Don’t go on my account,’ said Mrs Croucher. ‘I’m always glad to see my husband’s friends haven’t forgotten him.’ She smiled at me in a conspiratorial way. ‘They still play cards twice a week, these boys, and I have more than a suspicion that whisky is involved!’

The doctor spoke for the first time. ‘Perhaps you could show the vicar out, dear,’ he said to his wife. ‘I’d like to have a quick word with this young lady.’

They went, eventually, and when they and Susan were gone, the room seemed to fall quiet. The other residents went back to their crosswords, their books and their knitting. The doctor beckoned me closer, took my hand and raised it to his lips, barely touching my skin. The old-fashioned courtesy and the intimacy of the gesture caught me somewhat off-guard. I could feel the touch of his lips long after he had let go of my hand.

‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Amy. I’ve heard so much about you,’ he said. ‘My good lady wife keeps me informed of the comings and goings at Reservoir Cottage. Shall we go into the dining room? It’s more private and this is a sensitive matter.’

He picked up the old-fashioned black doctor’s bag at his side and laid it across his knees, then wheeled himself out of the room. I followed, unsure as to what he wanted to talk about. The other residents did not seem to be watching us, but still I sensed that they were. I fixed my gaze on the back of the doctor’s head. He still had a full head of white hair, with a strong curl. It was neatly and expertly trimmed at the nape. The backs of his ears curved pink, dotted with age spots and moles.

The dining room was grand, filled with tables with cloths on, already laid for lunch; sprigs of holly and ivy had been placed on the window ledges and draped above a massive fireplace. A wireless was playing beyond. I could hear the muffled strains of Bing Crosby singing ‘White Christmas’.

‘Shut the door, please,’ the doctor said. I did as he asked. He indicated that I should sit down and I pulled out a chair and sat with my hands on my lap and my feet together, side by side, feeling as if I were somehow being assessed. The doctor’s gaze was friendly but direct. He was the kind of man who, I imagined, wouldn’t miss much – a reader of people. I had a niggling worry that someone might have seen Viviane tearing up the flowers on the Cummingses’ grave and had told the vicar, and that the vicar might have told the doctor and
that
was what he wanted to talk to me about. I was beginning to understand how things worked in this village and was certain that very little went unnoticed.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ said the doctor. He cleared his throat. ‘I’ll come straight to the point, my dear. I’m concerned about Julia.’

‘Julia?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ I paused, ‘it’s good of you to be concerned. Thank you.’

We looked at one another for a moment. He was waiting for me to say something else. Did he want me to tell him that Julia was falling apart? That she was hearing voices? That I was desperately concerned too?

The silence was becoming uncomfortable when the doctor steepled his fingers and said: ‘My wife tells me that Julia never leaves Reservoir Cottage, nor does she talk to anyone outside the house. She says that Julia makes no effort to look after herself and neglects her appearance. In addition, she is losing weight and looks tired all the time. Is that right?’

‘She’s had a terrible time but she’s a strong woman,’ I said. ‘She’ll come through this.’

‘With all due respect, you’re hardly qualified to be a judge of that,’ the doctor said kindly, and he sat a little straighter, made himself a little larger. He was a large man anyway. No matter how I straightened my spine, I felt small by comparison. He smiled at me over his fingers. ‘It’s commendable that you don’t want to be disloyal to Julia. I understand. But
you
need to understand the possible ramifications of allowing the situation to slide. The longer Julia carries on like this, the more she is at risk.’