The Wicker Tree (10 page)

'Thank you sir,' said Beth. If a man had heard or read the word of God and didn't believe it, what more was there to say? But she gave him her special smile. To their surprise, as she and Steve were just turning to go on up the street they heard him say: 'Stop!'

Looking back to see what was the matter, they saw that he had stepped back into his doorway and was gesturing for them to come closer.

'I wouldn't go no further up this street if I was you,' he said, keeping his voice low, although there was no one else around to hear him. 'I think someone's planning to take the piss, big time.'

'You mean someone who knows we're comin'?' asked Steve, astonished.

'No comment. Isn't that what they say? Listen. Unless you got some magic tricks for dealing with dogs I wouldn't go no further.'

'Dogs?' Steve was as used to them as to horses. He'd had gun dogs for hunting all his life. 'You got a back yard? I could use a stick.'

'You haven't seen this dog,' said the man. 'But be my guest,' he added, pointing the way to the back of the house and the yard.

While Steve was looking for a suitable stick among the bushes in the tiny but well kept garden, Beth vented her curiosity about what made some people in this street so hostile. The man hesitated. She wondered if he was feeling guilty about tipping them off about the dog and felt to say more would make him really treacherous.

'You're foreign,' he said thoughtfully. 'There are some people here, in this street – not all by any means – but some – who hate foreign. Yanks, yes I'm sorry, but they do. English too, oh particularly English. If there weren't English there to hate, we'd have to invent them. I'm sorry but you got a fleesome task ahead of you.'

'But, Jesus?' she asked. 'What is there to hate about him?'

'Ah, that's territorial. Jesus can invade their territory. To let him in makes them look soft to their mates. They're mortally afraid of that. I'll be frank with you. I know the feeling.'

Steve had come back with a good stout stick about three feet long. He thanked the man, who went inside and shut his front door. Steve rang or knocked at the next three doors, telling Beth to stay well behind him.

At the fourth door, number 94A Taggart Street, there was a voice answering from within. Beside the voice there was the sound of a dog giving a deep growling bark followed by a curiously high pitched growl.

'Yeah? Whatisit?' A deep, glottal slur of a voice it was.

'We're Redeemers, sir,' said Steve. 'We'd like to talk to you about Jesus.'

For a couple of instants Steve and Beth stood waiting, with Steve trying to push Beth behind him. Then just audibly the voice hissed, 'Gettem Tyson!' The door opened with a bang and a huge mastiff came hurtling out with one snarling leap, straight at the stick held out for him. Unfortunately, just behind the stick Beth, turning away, inadvertently presented her rear and he bit into it before Steve managed to force the stick into his jaws, getting him to bite deep into the wood. The moment his teeth had sunk into the stick Steve was swinging him into the air and hurling him back through the door, where a burly, tattooed man with arms like lamp posts tried to catch him but got the full force of the flying mastiff in his face, knocking him to the ground. From behind the shouting, whining mass of dog and man writhing on the hall floor, a fierce little woman in an apron darted out into the street, closing the door behind her.

'Serve you right, you creepin' Jesuses!' she shouted. 'Who the hail are you Yanks to come here and tell us what to do? What did your God ever do for us?' She was reaching behind her to re-open the door.

'Run like hell, Beth!' shouted Steve. She ran. He followed.

Looking round as he did so, he was relieved to see that Tyson was still inside, probably resisting any attempt to take his prize stick away from him. At the end of the road, they managed to flag down a bus going they knew not where, but well away from Tyson.

THAT BLESSED MONDAY (
Lolly Day
as he had written on his calendar) had arrived for Undercover Detective Constable Orlando Furioso. He filled time while waiting for six o'clock to arrive with writing a report on what he had gleaned from Jack. Looking back on the interview, he now thought he had gone on too long, frustrated as he was by the interviewee's endless recourse to irrelevant verse. When he pressed the poor man very hard on the subject of some kind of ritual animal sacrifice (referred to in one of the letters) Jack had stiffened and croaked more than spoken in his sepulchral voice again:

'When seeking an abstraction

You'll get no satisfaction

From an ugly rumour too,

Too bizarre to be a clue,

Yet of truth a vulgar fraction.'

As he was trying to make some sense of Jack's words in his report he glanced up and saw Lolly walking up the street from the castle gates, heading for his front door. She was wearing a dress. Gone were the slightly mannish riding clothes she'd worn before, that so accentuated the lovely woman inside them. The dress looked, from a distance, as if it was made of loose leaves that partly clung to her form and partly fluttered around her long legs, caught in the breeze. She was very early. He was still in uniform. He went to the door to greet her, planning to give her a – what? – he couldn't serve a drink in the Police Station…

On opening the door he saw that she was still twelve paces away. Her face, still thoughtful at that instant, still in shade, saw him, burst into a great sunburst of a smile and she was running, yes running, straight at him, throwing her arms around his neck, kissing him full on the mouth again.

'Orlando!' she cried, 'I know I'm early, but I just couldn't wait.'

Almost in shock, Orlando could see, in his peripheral vision, half a dozen passers-by, good citizens of Tressock, glancing up at them and smiling.

'Come in. Come in. I can't be seen kissing you in uniform,' he said, leading her inside, shutting the door behind them. Lolly clung gently to his neck, cleaving her body to his, her mouth slightly open, her tongue ready as if she was about to lick some cream from his taut, embarrassed face. But she didn't speak, only searched his face with her eyes as if she were, ever so benignly, inspecting her prey.

'I've reserved seats at the Odeon; it's the multiplex on the Kelso Road,' he said, feeling he was losing the initiative. 'They're showing the new Schwarzenegger movie. I'm that glad you're early because we can have a nice leisurely drink at the Slug and Lettuce first – they do real ale there. Good wine too. No rot gut. The lads at the Kelso cop shop recommended it highly. Then I've reserved a table at… I hope you like curry… the British Raj restaurant in Kelso. I thought I would surprise you… Is all that OK with you?'

She was staring at him as if she hadn't heard a word he had said. It was the inquisitive stare of a woman who sought to look through his little torrent of words at what might lie behind them.

'Would you like a – a cup of tea – while I go and change?'

'Tea? No, Orlando. At the end of this evening you have so sweetly planned for us, don't think I am not grateful and flattered, what do you hope for as a finale?'

Once again the element of romance seemed to be slipping away from Orlando, but somehow this time he felt he could trust Lolly to… what?

'Make love?' he said hopefully.

'Thank heavens for that!' she said. 'Tell me this. After goggling at Mr Schwarzenegger's pecs for an hour and a half will I want to make love to you more than I do now? After swilling real ale and wonderful cop-shop approved wine will you be a better lover? Will either of us, rumbling and farting with British Raj curry, be much of a treat for each other?'

'So?' It had suddenly occurred to Orlando that in just a matter of minutes he could have skipped a long evening of expensive anticipation and be doing what the characters in a popular American sitcom call 'it' – more or less right away. 'So?' he repeated.

'We can do what you planned and skip the finale. Or go straight to the finale and make it…'

'The main event?'

By way of assent she kissed him again, this time quite chastely. Then she was walking through to his bed-sitting room while he was frantically locking the front door, pulling down blinds, drawing curtains and finding the
Thai Opening Lotus
condoms Mai Lin had given him as a farewell present.

'Won't that old witch allow you to get rid of the birds?' she asked as she shrugged off the leafy looking dress, which seemed to be made of some gossamer material, revealing only the essential Lolly underneath.

'So you think she's a witch too. Can there be white witches?' he asked as she helped him fling off his clothes.

'Of course,' she replied. 'One day, a thousand years from now, I will tell you all about them.'

From outside the Police Station a soft, warm light shone through the blinds of the bed-sitting room. Inside, Lolly and Orlando were slowly entering that breathless, post-coital quiet zone which is particularly poignant if, as on this occasion, all has gone very well. It was Lolly who broke the spell.

'Or-lan-dooo!' she almost yodelled his name. 'What a fantastic lover you are. Is it being Italian, do you think?'

'Sorry, Lolly, but that's bullshit,' he replied. 'Reckon I'm almost as Scottish as you are. My ma's pure Scot. My da's a Scot on his mother's side. It's just my grandad. He came over to sell ice cream after the war. So just a wee bit of me is Italian.'

'Well, I think that must be the bit that was so fantastic,' said Lolly, giving him a languorous hug. 'And I wouldna call it wee. Let's do it again. Not exactly the same thing of course. I want to learn something new from you. Some wild, wicked Italian thing. Cover me with double virgin olive oil. Think of me as a Caesar salad.'

'This is a Police Station, Lolly, not a delicatessen. But do you really think I'm a fantastic lover?' As he was saying this, Orlando had raised himself to kneel beside her on the rather precarious sofa-bed they were sharing, looking down into her eyes, those eyes that always seemed amused, as if she was nursing some cosmic joke he would never be able to share. Yet, in spite of this, there was something completely open about her. She always seemed to say exactly what she was thinking and say it at once without any calculation or hesitation. Her openness inspired him to be equally unguarded.

'I could fall for you, Lolly. Really fall for you, and that's a fact.'

He didn't know what he expected her reaction to be. But, in the event, it really surprised him. She seemed quite taken aback.

'Oh no! No, no, no!' she was saying. 'Please don't say that, my lovely Orlando. Don't you see, I just like doing
it
? Particularly with someone who does
it
as well as you do. I never, ever fall in lerve.' She pronounced it rather self-consciously, as if it was not really part of her vocabulary. 'And Orlando, not that anything so silly would ever occur to you I hope, I am never, ever anybody's exclusive woman. Nor do I expect exclusivity in any man. Is that OK with you?'

Orlando managed to laugh, but his mind reeled at what she had just said. She loved doing
it
with him, but she didn't want to be his girlfriend. What kind of an arrangement was that?

'OK with me? Since you put it like that, Lolly, I guess it'll have to be.'

'Thank heavens, another free spirit!' she cried. 'If I can use your shower, perhaps you'll join me and we'll think of something really wonderful for Act Two.'

He wanted to believe she had really found him a wonderful lover. But he knew she had steered him away from what, before, had always been slightly mechanical. She had created a sort of theatre of the erotic in his bed. Into his ears, she had whispered urgent cues; conjured up wild allusions; invented roles for him and assumed others for herself.

'Let's imagine,' she had urged at one point, 'that you are the last man left on earth, and that I, among all the millions of women that remain, have won you in a lottery for this one night only. After this, I shall have to remember how you made love to me for the rest of my life… there can never be an encore.'

Meanwhile, joined together in the shower, another highly imaginative act was starting and this time he, remembering the boastful talk he had shared with his team mates in the communal bath at their Glasgow clubhouse, couldn't resist reminding her that: 'This is number three, Lolly.'

'So it is,' said Lolly, thoughtfully. 'You know a compatriot of yours, one Caesar Borgia, bet his father the Pope that he could do it five times with a poor little virgin princess on their wedding night. He had five horsemen waiting under the window of their bridal chamber and each time he came he shouted out to another horseman to ride and tell his father. If he could do that with some poor whimpering little lassie, straight out of a convent, just think what you could with me!'

A lot later Anthea McWhirter, a stable hand who worked for Lolly, was walking back from the Grove after an evening rehearsing May Day songs when she heard some sharp cries of pleasure coming from the Police Station. Wondering idly to herself what a person who is not a voyeur but a listener is called she paused long enough to hear Lolly give a triumphant shout of: 'Orgassissimo Orlando! Orgassissimo!'

THE GLASGOW ROYAL Infirmary has the usual complex parking system most hospitals support and Delia was anxious to arrive there before Beth was discharged. Beame was reassuring about her injuries. He'd spoken to the dog owner and reported that it was a simple bite in the girl's bottom, regrettable but not serious. Delia left the Rolls Royce, with Beame still hunting for a parking spot, and hurried into Accident and Emergency. Steve was sitting in the waiting room. Delia hurried over to him, her beautiful face a mask of concern and compassion.

'Steve! How is she? Poor love! What a dreadful thing to happen. I am so glad you called me.'

'She'll be OK I guess,' said Steve. 'They already gave her a tetanus shot. Right now they're putting a few stitches in her butt.'

'Butt? Oh you mean her bottom. Poor old thing. Where is she..?'