“Greg popped in earlier. Were you hoping to grab anyone in particular?”
“No one I haven’t already grabbed,” he said quietly.
“Walls have ears.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“That’s good,” she said. “We’ll make a spy of you yet.”
With that ringing in his ears, he made his way back to the Butterfields.
Stephen and Meg Butterfield. Parents of Damien, another member of the flying club. He was retired from publishing; she part-owned a boutique in Moreton-in-Marsh. In the country but not of the country, as Stephen put it; in the country, but happy to pop up to London twice a month to eat, visit friends, catch a play, “remember what civilisation feels like.” But happy too to wear a tweed cap, a green V-neck, and carry a silver-topped stick. In the country and blending in nicely, more like. He asked River:
“How goes the writing business?”
“Oh, you know. Early days.”
“Still researching?” said Meg. Though her eyes were on River, her long, nervous fingers toyed with the smoking equipment in front of her: packet of tobacco, Rizla papers, throwaway lighter. Her graying blonde hair was under wraps tonight, coiled beneath a black silk headscarf; and this too, and the wrinkles at her eyes, and even her clothes marked her out a smoker—the ankle-length skirt glittering with silver threads, and the black cardigan with deep pockets, and the red-fringed shawl she wore like a displaced Bedouin. In London, he’d have dismissed her as a superannuated hippie; here, she seemed more like an off-duty witch. He could see her knocking up a remedy for lovesick swains, if that was still a word. Probably was round here. Not much call for it in the city.
The couple sat next to each other on the bench, which River thought sweet. “Ninety per cent of the job,” he said. Funny how simple it was to be an expert on writing. “Getting it down on paper’s the easy part.”
“We were talking about you with Ray. You met Ray yet?”
River hadn’t, though the name was all too familiar. Ray Hadley was the maypole around which the village danced: he was on the Parish Council, on the school’s board of governors; on everything that required a name on a dotted line. He was the eminence grise of the flying club, too: a retired pilot, and the owner of the small plane housed near the MoD land. And yet he remained elusive.
“I haven’t, no.”
Because Hadley always seemed to have just left, or was expected any moment but didn’t turn up. There weren’t many places in Upshott that weren’t the pub, but Hadley had contrived to find most of them these past few weeks.
“Ray was great mates with the brass at the base,” Meg went on. “Always in and out of there. Wasn’t he, darling?”
“Give him half a chance, he’d have joined up. Still would. The chance to fly one of those Yank jets? He’d have given his right bollock.”
“I can’t believe your paths haven’t crossed yet,” Meg said. “He must be hiding from you.”
“Actually, I might have seen him this morning, heading for the shop. Tall bald man, yes?”
Meg’s phone rang: Ave Satani. “Son and heir,” she said. “Excuse me. Damien, darling. Yes. No. I don’t know. Ask your father.” She handed the phone to Stephen, then said to River, “Sorry, dear. Busting for a fag,” and collected her paraphernalia and headed for the door.
Stephen Butterfield began a lengthy explanation of what it sounded like was wrong with Damien’s car, waggling an apologetic eyebrow at River, who made a no-matter gesture and returned to the bar.
The pub had oak rafters onto which paper currency had been pasted, and whitewashed walls on which farm implements hung. In a corner were photographs of Upshott through the years. Most had been taken on the green, and showed groups of people metamorphosing through black-and-white austerity to the Hair-Bear Bunch fashions of the ’70s. The most recent was of nine young adults, more at ease with their youth and good looks than earlier generations had been. They stood on a strip of tarmac, three of them women; Kelly Tropper at their centre. In the background was a small aeroplane.
He’d been looking at this photo on his first evening there, and had recognised the woman who’d just served him a pint, when a man approached. He was about River’s age though broader, and with a head like a bowling balclass="underline" hair trimmed to the skull, an equally sparse fuzz prickling chin and upper lip, and eyes sharp with cunning or suspicion. River had seen similar eyes in other pubs. They didn’t always spell trouble, but when trouble broke out anyway, they were usually right near the middle.
“And who might you be?”
Let’s be polite, thought River. “The name’s Walker.”
“Is it now.”
“Jonathan Walker.”
“Jonathan Walker,” the man repeated in a sing-song voice, to underline the effeminate nature of anyone limp-wristed enough to be called Jonathan Walker.
“And you are?”
“What makes that your business?”
And now a third voice chimed in, and here was the bartender, offering a brisk “Behave, you.” To River she said, “His name’s Griff Yates.”
“Griff Yates,” River said. “Should I repeat that in a stupid voice? I’m not sure I’ve grasped the local customs yet.”
“Oh, we’ve got a clever one,” Yates had said. He put his pint down, and River had a sudden glimpse of what his grandfather would have made of this. You’ve been under cover five minutes, and you’re about the same distance away from a public brawl. Which part of covert is giving you trouble? “Last clever one we had in here would have been that city twerp who took the James’s place for a summer. And you know what happened to him?”
River had little option. “No,” he said. “What happened to him?”
“He fucked off back where he came from, didn’t he?” Griff Yates paused a beat, then roared with laughter. “Fucked off back where he came from,” he repeated, and kept laughing until River joined in, then bought him a pint.
Which had been River’s first Upshott encounter, and a little bumpier than those that followed, but then Griff Yates was the odd one out; Griff Yates was local stock. A little older than the crew known as the flying club, he existed at a tangent to them: part envy, part blunt antagonism.
He wasn’t here now, though. Andy Barnett—who was known as Red Andy, having voted Labour in ’97—was at the bar instead, or technically was, his unfinished pint and Sudoku puzzle claiming the area for the duration. Andy himself was temporarily elsewhere.
With no immediate audience, Kelly smiled a welcome. “Hello again, you.”
He could still taste her. “I haven’t bought you a drink yet.”
“Next time I’m your side of the bar.” She nodded at his glass. “And it won’t be mineral water, I can tell you.”
“You working tomorrow?”
“And the night after.”
“What about tomorrow afternoon?”
“Habit-forming, is it?” There was a look women could give you once you’d slept with them, and Kelly bestowed this upon him now. “I told you. I’m flying tomorrow.”
“Of course. Going anywhere nice?”
The question seemed to amuse her. “It’s all nice, up there.”
“So it’s a secret.”
“Oh, you’ll find out.” She leaned forward. “But I’m finished here at eleven thirty. If you want to pick up where we left off?”
“Ah. Wish I could. Kind of busy.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Kind of busy? What kind of busy can you be after closing time round here?”
“Not the kind you’re thinking of. It’s—”
“Hello, young man. Chatting up our lovely bar staff?”
And this was Red Andy, back from having a smoke, if the fumes clinging to his jacket were any guide.