‘I’m so glad you could come round.’
‘We were lucky. Me with a break. You on afternoons.’
Sue dunked tea bags in stone mugs. Camomile for herself, Sainsbury’s Red Label for Amy. There was a home-made oat and carob slice each, too. All on a tray balanced on the cracked old Rexine pouffe in front of the fire.
Amy took her tea, murmuring, and by no means for the first time, ‘A terrible day.’
‘Oh, yes - terrible. Terrible.’
They had talked about it and talked about it. Amy starting even before she had taken her coat off.
It was twenty-four hours now since the police had called at Gresham House. After their visit, and the dreadful revelations they had left behind, Amy had naturally expected that she and Honoria would sit down and slacken their disbelief together. Absorb the shock (as she and Sue were doing now) over a warm, comforting drink. But Honoria had appeared satisfied merely to deliver a run-of-the-mill diatribe describing the sociological forces that had combined to bring the criminal element so firmly into their midst. These, though varied, were neither wide ranging nor original.
Ignorant and indulgent parents, lax teachers, spoon-feedings by the state from the cradle to the grave and easy access to the depravities of television. Contempt for authority came next, closely followed by the abandonment of corporal and capital punishment and the deliberately malicious council policy of siting municipal dwellings a mere thieving’s distance from the homes of decent, tax-paying citizens. All or any of these heinous components could, it seemed, be permed any which way to produce the thing that had killed Gerald Hadleigh - for that he came from the dregs of society went without saying. Foolishly, Amy had argued.
‘Aristocrats killed people. Elizabeth the first was always chopping heads off.’
‘Royalty is different.’ Honoria had stared at Amy with her round, hard pebbly eyes. ‘If you’re so interested you should have asked that turnip-faced hobnail of a policeman if you could go over and have a look.’
‘Honoria! What an awful—As if I would ever—Ohhhh.’
Amy’s fingers trembled anew as she broke off a piece of her carob slice. To be made to feel like a morbid snooper, like those awful people parked on the Green. She didn’t want to see anything. Indeed felt quite ill at the thought. But surely (and she had said so) it was no more than human to wish to discuss such an appalling incident on one’s own doorstep.
‘In that case,’ Honoria had replied, ‘I’m glad I’m not human.’
‘Tell us something we don’t know,’ said Sue, as Amy passed this on.
They had cried a little together, as they had separately the previous day. Sue had wept when the news hawks had finally left her in peace, Amy during the brief moments she had spent in St Chad’s after visiting Ralph’s grave.
Not knowing if Gerald had been religious, and not being especially religious herself, she had kept her prayer simple, merely asking that his soul should be accepted in heaven and there find peace. Of course all this sort of thing would be properly and officially attended to at the funeral, but Amy had a vague notion that time was thought to be relevant in these matters and that there should not be too much delay.
Sue spooned thick meadow-flower honey into her tea. ‘I got in touch with Laura and Rex,’ she said,‘when I knew you were coming, in case they wanted to join us. She was really short with me and Rex seemed to be out when I went round.’
‘Oh well.’ Amy was not really disappointed. She loved sitting in this room with Sue, the fire crackling, throwing shadows on the dark red walls. It was like being in a snug cave.
They had become friends almost by default - drawn together as two English people might be if marooned in a foreign country, reaching out in their isolation, sensing immediately a kindred spirit. Without words each understood the other’s situation. They never needed to ask, as outsiders might (and frequently did), why on earth do you put up with it?
Instead they offered comfort, encouragement and advice. Sometimes they would let off steam, angrily berating their oppressor’s behaviour. But, in the main, they struggled to remain humorous and detached. What else could you do?
Neither allowed the other to slide into self-pity, or take unnecessary blame. When they had first started meeting Sue had done a lot of that, explaining that Brian only acted the way he did because she was slow and not very bright. Amy had knocked that notion severely on the head.
They had an escape plan, of course. Sue was to become a famous illustrator of children’s books and buy a little cottage with room for just herself and Mandy, if she wanted to come. There would be a garden with space for ducks and chickens. Amy would sell her block-buster and get a house not too far away. It would be spacious, airy and modern, for she had had enough of clanking radiators and stone floors and smelly, mildewed cupboards.
And when they met they would have slow, thoughtful conversations with breathing spaces. Not like now, when they talked and laughed and interrupted each other non-stop but always with one eye on the clock. Amy said they were like two nuns from a silent order vouchsafed a once-a-year speaking day.
‘I keep wishing,’ said Sue - they were still discussing the murder - ‘that I’d looked at my clock when I heard Max drive away.’
‘How were you to know? Anyway I don’t see that it would help the police that much.’
‘It would give them a time when Gerald was still alive.’
‘I thought post-mortems sorted all that out.’
The phrase struck them both with a deep chill and they looked at each other in some distress.
‘I expect they’ll have to talk to him - Max I mean. It’s so embarrassing. Us mixing him up in something like this.’
‘Could be worse.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘Could have been Alan Bennett.’
They burst into nervous giggles, ashamed at such levity yet also knowing relief. Then, acknowledging that the time had come to put their reflections on death aside, Sue said, ‘Something nice happened yesterday. Did you have the policeman with red hair?’
‘Yes.’
‘“Fox” I called him at first,’ said Sue, for she anthropomorphised everyone. ‘But then I had second thoughts. His lips were so thin and his teeth so sharp that I decided he should be “Ferret”. And the bulky one’s “Badger”.’
‘Oh yes, I agree with “Badger”,’ said Amy. She agreed with ‘Ferret’ as well, for she hadn’t liked Troy much at all. ‘What about him?’
‘He wants to buy a painting of Hector. For his little girl.’
‘That’s brilliant! How much will you ask?’
‘Heavens, I don’t know.’
‘Twenty pounds.’ Sue squealed her disbelief. ‘At least. He’s getting an original Clapton. Tell him one day it’ll be worth a fortune.’
Amy knew she was wasting her breath. Sue would probably just mumble, ‘Oh, that’s all right’ when the time came. Or shake her Greenpeace collecting tin, with soft timidity, in Ferret’s general direction. She was saying something else.
‘I still haven’t heard from Methuen.’
‘But that’s good news.’ Sue had submitted some paintings and a story nearly three months ago. ‘If they hadn’t wanted your book they’d have sent it back straight away.’
‘Would they?’
‘Of course. It’s being passed round to get lots of opinions. Depend upon it.’
‘Amy.’ Sue smiled across at her friend. ‘What would I do without you?’
‘Likewise.’
‘How is Rompers?’ asked Sue. ‘Have you managed to do any more?’
She did not ask out of mere politeness. The immensely baroque structure of Amy’s book impressed Sue enormously and she followed every twist and turn of the narrative with the deepest interest. It seemed to her wonderfully gripping and she was sure that, should Amy ever snatch enough secret moments to finish it, Rompers would be a great success.