‘Picked?’ Brock was conscious of how tense and still their bodies were.
‘When I was a girl, a teenager,’ she whispered, and she suddenly sounded very weary, ‘I remember reading about a village in Spain during the Civil War. Was it in Hemingway? I don’t know, I was reading him about then, I think … Anyway, this village was high up on the side of a mountain, and there was a sheer cliff on one side of the village square. When one side won control of the village, all the people who had supported the other side were picked out, and one by one they were carried to the edge of the cliff and thrown over.’
She paused as if watching the scene projected on to the white surface of the ground.
‘I was horrified, imagining what it must have been like, waiting for your turn, watching the others lifted up, struggling and begging and screaming, and then disappearing over the edge. And then seeing the eyes turning on you, realizing it’s you now, feeling their hands on you, carrying you towards the void.’
Grace stopped for breath, trembling, and Brock waited, silently.
Another deep breath, like an immense sigh. ‘I have cancer, David. That’s it. I have cancer.’ ‘Oh, Grace, I’m …’
‘They first detected it last June. A tumour in my side. I had chemotherapy through the summer and it seemed to work. I lost all my hair and felt like a wet rag, but I was in the clear. I knew it was going to be all right. I came here a couple of times to help with the recuperation.
‘Then last month I went for a check-up. My hair had been growing back and I had more energy, though I still kept feeling exhausted. In a way I enjoyed that. It reminded me of what I had overcome, and made me feel that my body was recovering. But they discovered that the cancer had survived after all, and it had spread all over, deep, malignant. And I began to realize, from what they said and the way they said it, that it wasn’t going to be all right after all.’
She half turned her head and looked into his eyes. ‘I shan’t be here for summer. I shall be gone, into the void.’
Brock turned away, unable for a moment to meet her gaze. ‘Grace … I’m so sorry.’
‘The thing that really brought it home to me, that really made me feel so terrified, was the way Winston and the boys took it. Winston is my husband.’
She took another deep breath. ‘We have two boys — Richard, who’s eighteen, and Arthur, who’s sixteen. Anyway, they were very sympathetic and caring and everything, just like the first time. Only … I began to see that they were taking it in their stride. They’d already had a dress rehearsal, thinking they were going to lose me, and now they knew how to deal with it. It was as if they just went straight to the recovery stage, as if they’d already gone through denial, grieving and all the rest, and didn’t need to do it again.
‘For me it was the complete opposite of the first time, when I’d been distracted from worrying about myself by worrying about how they would cope without me. That first time I’d told Winston he mustn’t feel guilty about marrying again when I was gone, because I didn’t see how he’d manage on his own. He told me not to say things like that, but now I realize that he did think about it, and now I don’t think I like it any more. Oh, it’s not that he wants me to die or anything. I’m sure he’d do anything to save me, if he could — it was he who suggested I come here. It’s just that in his mind he’s already moved ahead to when he’ll be a single man again, and I think he doesn’t find the idea all that unbearable. I find it difficult to face my women friends now, especially the single ones, without wondering if their being so solicitous has something to do with the fact that there’ll be an attractive spare man in my house in a month or two who’ll need helping out.’
She sighed. ‘Doesn’t that sound dreadful? I even imagine them asking me if I’ll leave him to one of them in my will. It isn’t really jealousy exactly. I feel as if I were sitting in a train in the station, and Winston and the boys are alongside me in another train, and we can talk to each other through the open windows, just as if we were all together. But pretty soon our trains will leave the station and continue their journeys, and we all know that the tracks will separate and go off in different directions. I have a terrible sense of panic, of loss, that I won’t be with them any more, that they will go their way without me. Maybe that’s what jealousy is, really, the thing that makes it hurt so much. It’s also fear. I’m absolutely terrified, David. It wasn’t like this the first time at all. I was brave, or at least I seemed to be able to act bravely. Perhaps I was just in shock. Now I seem to have completely lost my nerve. And the calmer and more considerate they become, the more I panic. That’s why I had to get away from them for a while.’
It occurred to Brock that, for someone who had spent half his life investigating sudden death, supposedly an expert in the subject, he had absolutely nothing useful to say to her.
‘Grace, I feel so stupid suggesting we come out here …’ He waved his arm at the sarcophagus.
‘No,’ she put her hand on his arm. ‘I’m glad you suggested it. It isn’t morbid. I really want to come to terms with it. That’s why I was in the temple yesterday. I wanted to try to understand what had been in Alex Petrou’s mind.’
Brock had originally planned to turn the conversation to this. It was the reason why he had suggested their walk. Now he no longer wanted to pursue it with her. Yet it took them on to slightly easier ground, away from the impossibly oppressive facts of Grace’s story. ‘Do you feel he could have known what he might be facing?’ he asked.
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to decide. Did he know? He had such style! He made everyone else seem timid, tongue-tied, rather provincial, as if he belonged to a wider, more expansive, more exciting world. I’ve been trying to imagine, if he had known that he was at risk in some way, would he have behaved differently? Or would he have gone on being the same, risking everything, daring the fates?’
‘You felt he was a risk-taker?’
‘Oh yes, I’m sure he was! I remember some old dears driving back to the clinic one day and arriving in a terrible state because they’d met Alex on the road on his motor bike. He drove like a bat out of hell — that was his expression. He’d picked it up from someone and it appealed to him. “I am the bat out of hell,” he would say. He’d had several speeding tickets.’
‘Well … maybe that’s the best way to go.’ Brock muttered the words before he could stop himself, then immediately bit his tongue. But Grace didn’t appear to have heard. She was staring past his shoulder, eyes wide, her expression rather as he had seen it first in the lower chamber of the temple.
Brock turned in the direction of her stare and saw a dark, hooded figure standing motionless, watching them, about thirty yards away towards the high hedges which surrounded the north lawn of the house. They remained immobile, the three of them, for a long second, and then the figure turned abruptly and disappeared behind the nearest hedge.
‘Stay here,’ Brock said. He ran as fast as he could towards the other end of the hedge, jumping over flower-beds and clumps of dead foliage. He threw himself around the end of the hedge and slithered to a stop. There was no sign of anyone else. Chest heaving from the sudden exertion in his heavy boots and coat, he trotted along the hedge, back towards the spot where the figure had been standing. Before he reached the place, he saw the footprints and recognized the diamond heel pattern. The track came a few paces down the line of the hedge, then crossed back through a gap and headed towards the clearing where he’d left Grace.
‘Shit!’ he muttered, and pushed through the gap, his eyes fixed on the footprints. They detoured round a cluster of bushes, and looking up he caught a glimpse of the dark figure through an opening in the shrubbery ahead. Whoever it was had reached Grace, was standing over her, and Brock could see her pale face turned upwards.