He was balancing on the edge of the hole, looking down. So, Fay, this is where Henry discovered there'd been a stone.'
'I think so. Must be.'
'And yet he had the feeling the stone that stood here wasn't an old stone.'
'That's what he seemed to be saying.' Fay was more concerned about the wholesale destruction of the wood. 'And they are supposed to be bloody New Age people!' She peered through what remained of the trees. 'Can I get to the church this way?'
'Sure,' Rachel said. 'Five minutes' walk. There's a footpath newly widened. Goes past a redbrick heap called Keeper Cottage, which is where Boulton-Trow's living.'
'He lives here?' Powys said, surprised. 'In the wood?'
'Yes, and rather him than me. Go past it, anyway. Fay, and you're in the churchyard in no time.'
'Thanks.' Fay pulled a bunch of keys from her bag. 'Do me a favour, Joe, I've got to catch Murray's blasted sermon. Could you bring my car round to the church when you've finished here. It's got the Uher in the back. I'll need to interview him afterwards.'
She vanished into the bushes. Like an elf, he thought.
'I came to a decision this morning,' Rachel said.
She sat down on a tree stump. 'I'm going to quit.'
'Good. I mean, that's terrific. You're wasted on that fat plonker.'
'I'm becoming peripheral anyway. Max doesn't listen to me any more. He's getting so fanatical I don't think there's anything you or I can do to stop him. Also, he's entering one of his DC phases. He's besotted with Boulton-Trow."
'Andy? Is it reciprocated?'
'You know the guy better than me. J.M.'
'He's an opportunist.'
'There you are, then.'
He watched her, pale and graceful in this arboreal charnel house. She brushed a stray hair out of one eye.
He said, 'When will you tell him?'
'Probably after his public meeting on Tuesday.'
'That's marvellous, Rachel. You won't regret it. Coming to church?'
Rachel stood up. 'Oh gosh, far too busy. Least I can do is make sure his stable-block's ready for him. Besides, I'm not a churchy person. I'm one of those who thinks it's a waste of a Sunday – what do you call that, an atheist or an agnostic?'
He put an arm around her waist. 'You call it a smug bitch.'
He grinned, happy for her.
CHAPTER V
And let's pray now,' Murray Beech said, head bowed, 'for the soul of our brother Jonathon Preece…'
Kneeling in a back pew, Fay tensed.
'… taken so suddenly from the heart of the agricultural community he served so energetically. Those of us who knew Jonathon – and can there be any here who did not? – will always remember his tireless commitment to the Young Farmers' movement and, through this, to the revival of an industry in which his family has laboured for over four hundred years.'
Powys slid the Uher into the empty pew next to Fay and stepped in after it. Fay kept on looking directly ahead, over the prayer-book ledge, seeing, near the front of the church, the heads of Jack Preece and Jimmy Preece. One of the few places you ever saw these heads uncapped.
'And we pray, too,' Murray intoned passionlessly, 'for the Preece family in its time of sorrow and loss…'
Fay saw young Warren Preece, head nodding rhythmically now and then, as if connected to some invisible Walkman.
Saw Mrs Preece, Jimmy's wife, hands clasped in prayer, expecting to see a damp tissue crumpled in her palm. But Mrs Preece, seen side-on, looked as dry-eyed and stern as her husband. They seemed to have their eyes open as they prayed – if indeed they were praying.
Looking around. Fay found that even-one's were open, everyone she could see.
Crybbe: a place where emotions were buried as deep as the dead.
Wisely, perhaps, Murray didn't make a big deal of it. He went into the Lord's Prayer and didn't mention Jonathon Preece again.
Fay relaxed.
What had she expected? A denunciation from the pulpit? All heads turned in mute accusation?
Whatever, she breathed again. And became aware of the significance of something she must surely have noticed already – the presence of her father, on the end of a pew two rows in front of her and Powys.
The Canon went to church every Sunday, sometimes attending both the morning and evening services. He sat near the front and sang loudly – 'Bit of moral support for young Murray – boy needs all the back-up he can get.'
So what was he doing further back, a couple of rows behind the nearest fully occupied pew? Could it be something to do with there being only one other person on Alex's pew and the person being at the same end of the pew as Alex? And being a woman?
'Bloody hell,' said Fay to herself. 'He's found a totty.'
Guy Morrison woke up into the greyness of… 5. a.m., 5.30?
He found his watch on the bedside table.
It told him the time was 11.15.
For crying out loud! He turned over and found he was alone in a king-size bed of antique pine, in a pink-washed room with large beams in the ceiling and a view, through small square panes, of misty hills. He'd never seen this view before.
Guy lay down again, regulating his breathing.
He saw a door then, and a glimpse of mauve tiles told him it led to an en suite bathroom, which put him in mind of another bathroom, full of seeping yellow.
With a momentary clenching of stomach muscles, everything came back.
He remembered peeing on his shoes in the dark paddock because she wouldn't let him return to that bathroom – not that he needed much persuading.
He remembered them staying in the kitchen for a long time, drinking coffee – him not talking much and not listening much either, after she'd been gushing like a broken fire-hydrant for an hour or so – until it was nearly light and she'd decided it was safe to go to bed. This bed. He remembered waking up periodically to find her hanging on to him in her fitful, unquiet sleep and wondering how he could ever have found her so attractive.
Guy pushed back the duvet to find he was naked, and he couldn't see his clothes anywhere. If he went downstairs like this it would be just his luck to find the vicar and the entire bloody Women's Institute having morning coffee in the drawing-room.
He went into the en suite bathroom, looked at himself in the mirror and was horrified at the state of his hair and the growth of his beard, detecting a distressing amount of grey and white stubble. He looked around for something to shave with – normally, he used a state-of-the-art rechargeable twice a day – and could find only a primitive kind of safely razor.
Remembering, at this point, the old man with the cut-throat razor in the other bathroom. And hours later in the well-lit kitchen, thrusting aside his fourth cup of coffee, asking her directly, 'Are you telling me it was a ghost?'
He'd once done a documentary about ghosts. They were, the programme had suggested, nature's holograms. Something like that. You might get images of the dead; you could just as easily have images of the living. When the phenomenon was eventually understood it would be no more frightening than a mirage.
This one was frightening, he supposed, only briefly, in retrospect. What had he really felt when he saw the glow around the door and then walked into the bathroom and the old man had looked up and met his eyes? Fear, or a kind of fascination?
Did this old man have eyes? He must have had. Guy couldn't recall his features. Only a figure bent over the wash-basin, shaving. The image, perhaps, of a man who had lived in this house for many years and perhaps shaved thousands of times in that very basin – well, perhaps not that actual basin, but certainly in the room. And this mundane, everyday ritual had imprinted itself on the atmosphere.