Powys looked at her, then at Jonathon Preece who'd turned to the river, was glaring out. The river looked stagnant. Preece hesitated, stared savagely into the drab water, started to say something and then didn't.
'Please,' the woman said from the grass.
It began to rain, big drops you could see individually against the hard sky.
Powys pulled off his jacket and knelt down. The dog's eyes were wide open, flanks pulsating. Powys didn't know what to do.
The dog squirmed, blood oozed.
Powys laid the jacket down. 'Put him on this.' He slid both hands beneath the dog. 'Gently. We'll get him to a vet. You… you never know your luck.'
In the river now, almost up to the tops of his Wellingtons, Jonathon Preece bellowed, 'I know your face, Mister. I'll 'ave you!'
'Oh, piss off,' Powys said, weary of him. He heard Mrs Seagrove wailing, 'You must've seen it. It was coming right at you. It went through you.'
CHAPTER VII
Jean Wendle was living in a narrow town house on the square. Inside, it was already quite dark. She put on a reading lamp. Its parchment shade made the room mellow.
Gold lettering on the book spines, the warm brass of a coal-scuttle in the hearth. It reminded Alex of his first curate's house in Oxfordshire, before he'd been promoted into an endless series of vast, unbeatable vicarages and rectories. She'd certainly brought the warmth of her personality into the place.
Jean Wendle made him sit in a smoker's bow chair, his back to the fireplace, with its Chinese screen, facing a plain, whitewashed wall.
'Some days,' Alex said, 'it seems fine. I mean there might be nothing wrong. Or perhaps that, in itself, is an illusion. Perhaps I think I'm all right and everybody else sees me as stark, staring…'
'Shush.' Touch of Scottish in her voice, he liked that. 'Don't tell me. Don't tell me anything about it. Let me find out for myself.'
Yes, he really rather fancied her. Sixtyish. Short, grey hair. Still quite a neat little body – pliable, no visible stiffening. Sort of retired gym-mistress look about her. And nice mobile lips.
Cool fingers on his forehead. Moving from side to side, finding the right spot. Then quite still.
Quite sexy. Would he have let himself in for this if he hadn't fancied her a bit?
Not a chance.
'Don't talk,' she said.
'I wasn't talking.'
'Well, don't think so loudly. Not for a moment or two. Just relax.'
Taken him a few days to arrive into the cool hands of Jean Wendle. Well, a few nights – tentative approaches in the pub. Not a word to Fay. Definitely not a word to Grace.
And why shouldn't he? What was there to lose? The GP in Crybbe was a miserable beggar – hadn't been much to poor old Grace, had he? Drugs. Always drugs. Drugs that made you sleepy, drugs that made you sick. And at the end of the day…
Gradually, he and reality would go their separate ways. Rather appealing in one sense – what did reality have to commend it these days? But not exactly a picnic for anyone looking after him. Alex knew what happened to people who lost their minds. It sometimes seemed that half his parishioners had been geriatrics. They remembered having a wash this morning, when it was really days ago. They peed in the wardrobe by mistake.
Fay, now – that child was suffering a severe case of misplaced loyalty. If he couldn't get rid of her, it was his solid intention to pop himself off while he could still count on getting the procedure right. She'd thank him for it one day. Better all round, though, if he could make it look like an accident. Fall off the bridge or something.
Would have been a pity though, with all these alternative healing characters swanning around, not to give it a try first. What was there to lose?
The first chap he'd been to, Osborne, had not been all that encouraging. Almost as depressing as the doc. Alex got the feeling old age was not what the New Age was about.
And all this 'like cures like' stuff. A drop of this, a drop of that. Little phials of colourless liquid, touch of the medieval apothecary.
'How long before it starts to work?'
'You mustn't expect dramatic results, Alex,' Osborne told him. 'You see, holistic medicine, by definition, is about improving the health of the whole person. Everything is interconnected. Obviously, the older one is, the more set in its ways the body is, therefore the longer…' He must have seen the expression in Alex's eyes. 'Look, my wife's an acupuncturist, perhaps that might be more what you…'
'All those bloody needles. No thanks.'
'It isn't painful, Alex."
'Pain? I don't mind pain!'
Just the image of himself lying there, an overstuffed pincushion.
This kind of healing was a good deal more dignified, if you concentrated on those cool hands and didn't think too hard about what was supposedly going on in the spirit world.
He'd grilled her, naturally.
'Dr Chi? Dr bloody Chi? You don't look like a nutter, Wendy. How can you seriously believe you're working under the supervision of some long-dead Chinky quack?'
'My name's Jean,' she'd corrected him softly.
'Dr Chi!' Alex draining his Scotch. 'God save us.'
'Do you really want to know about this, Alex, or are you just going to be superior, narrow-minded, chauvinistic and insulting?'
'Was I? Hmmph. Sorry. Old age. Senile dementia.'
'Are you really old enough to be senile, Alex? What are you, seventy?'
'I'm certainly way past flattery, Wendy. Way past eighty, too. Go on, tell me about this Peking pox-doctor from the Ming dynasty.'
He'd forced himself to listen patiently while she told him about Dr Chi, who, she said, she'd once actually seen – as a white, glowing, egg-shaped thing.
'The name is significant. Dr Chi. Chi is the oriental life force. Perhaps that's the name I've subconsciously given him. I don't know if I'm dealing with a doctor from the Ming dynasty, the T'ang dynasty or whenever. He doesn't speak to me all sing-song, like a waiter serving chicken chow mein. All I know is there's a healing force and I call him Dr Chi. Perhaps he never was a human doctor at all or perhaps he's something that last worked through a Chinese physician. I'm not clever enough to understand these things. I'm content to be a channel. Good gracious, don't you believe in miracles, Alex? Isn't that the orthodox Anglican way any more?'
Regarding the Anglican Church, he wasn't entirely sure what he believed any more.
Powys found the page, ran his finger down the column headed Veterinary Surgeons. 'OK, D. L. Harris. Crybbe three-nine-four.'
Mrs Seagrove dialled the number and handed him the phone.
The woman in the bloodstained blue cagoule sat in the hall. The dog lay on Powys's jacket on the woman's knee, panting.
'Have a cup of tea while you're waiting,' Mrs Seagrove said.
She shook her head. 'No. Thank you…We may have to take him somewhere.'
The number rang for nearly half a minute before a woman answered.
'Yes.'
'Mr Harris there, please?'
'What's it about?' Local accent.
'We've got a very badly injured dog. Could you tell me where to bring it?'
A silence.
'Dog, you say?' Shrill. As if he'd said giraffe or something.
'He's been shot.'
'I'm sorry,' the woman said flat-voiced. "But Mr Harris is out.'
'Will he be long? Is there another vet?'
'Sorry.' Cool, terse. 'We can't help you.'
A crackle, the line broke.
'I don't believe it,' Powys said. 'She said the vet was out, I asked when he'd be back or was there anyone else, and she said she couldn't help me. Can you believe that? This was a vet's, for God's sake.'
'Wrong,' Fay Morrison said bitterly. 'This was a Crybbe vet's,'
'What the fuck was happening up there?' Max Goff lay on his bed in his room at the Cock.
'You tell me,' said Andy Boulton-Trow.
'I never felt so high. Like, at first I was really angry, really furious at the inefficiency. Why weren't they bringing the flaming wall down, why was nothing happening, why was the sound failing?'