Arms and the Women. Reginald Hill

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      ‘That smells grand. I’m right grateful, lord. Only I need a hand to eat with.’

      ‘Only one?’ said Achates, raising his weapon. ‘Which would you like to keep?’

      ‘Nay, not so hasty,’ said the Greek, starting back. ‘Hang about.’

      He flexed his broad shoulders, took a deep breath, bowed forward, his body hunched, and with a single convulsive movement, he snapped the length of cloth which bound his wrists.

      At this moment the doorbell rang and Ellie, dragged back from the dangerous world of her imagination to the equally dangerous world of her life, knocked over the cup.

      ‘Fuck!’ she said, jumping up and shaking the coffee from the keyboard.

      Amazingly, when she finished, the screen still displayed her story but for safety’s sake she saved and switched off.

      The doorbell was ringing again.

      Even the knowledge that Detective Constable Dennis Seymour was sitting in his car right opposite the house didn’t prevent her from checking on the bellringer from behind the curtains like any suburban housewife in a sitcom.

      It was her friend, Daphne Aldermann, full of eager curiosity after having been intercepted and checked out by the watching policeman. After a short hiatus to pour herself and her guest a nerve-soothing Scotch – once you got on Dr Dalziel’s books, you followed his prescriptions to the bitter end – she had launched into the narrative with mock-heroic gusto, and thence to the calmer pleasures of self-analysis. As a long-time opponent of all forms of violent action, she felt it necessary to explain in detail to Daphne, who had no objection whatsoever to a bit of violence in a good cause, what had provoked her to physical assault.

      ‘It was using Rosie that did it,’ she said. ‘It was my own guilt feelings that really exploded, I suppose.’

      ‘Your guilt feelings?’

      Daphne wasn’t Dalziel and she certainly wasn’t that nebby infant, Novello.

      She gave her a version of the confession she’d rehearsed when talking to the Fat Man, ending with, ‘So you see what a mixed-up cow I’ve turned into. I feel like that base Indian – in Hamlet, is it? –who threw away the pearl richer than all his tribe. Only I got it back.’

      ‘Othello, I think. And the point was he had no idea that what he’d got had any value at all. And you didn’t throw Rosie away anyway,’ said Daphne Aldermann sensibly. ‘And you’ve always been a mixed-up cow, so no change there.’

      It was, she felt, in her relationship with Ellie Pascoe, her avocation to be sensible. In upbringing, outlook and circumstance, the two women were light years apart. But the mad scientist of chance had chosen to set their opposing particles on a collision course some years earlier, and while a great deal of energy had been released, it had been through fusion rather than fission.

      Ellie looked ready to meet her head-on in battle, but in the end diverted to a minor skirmish.

      ‘You sure it’s Othello?’ she said truculently. ‘I thought the nearest you privately educated lot got to literature was carrying the Collected Works on your head during deportment lessons.’

      ‘You’re forgetting. They made us learn a classic each morning between the cross-country run and the first cold shower,’ said Daphne. ‘So OK, something bad happens to our kids, we feel responsible. Mothers are programmed that way. Or conditioned – let’s not get into that argument.’

      ‘I know that. But knowing doesn’t stop you feeling. And being shocked how much you feel. Why ever I did it, I still can’t believe I actually assaulted those people.’

      ‘Oh, come on,’ said Daphne, with all the ease of a natural supporter of corporal and capital punishment. ‘They had it coming. God knows what they were going to do with you, but if they get caught, probably they’ll get off with writing a hundred lines and probation. At least as he smiles at you out of the dock, you’ll be able to think, I left my mark on you, mate!’

      Ellie laughed and refilled their glasses. It had been one of the mad scientist’s better ideas to have Daphne call round that morning. As soon as she saw her, Ellie realized that of all her friends, here was the one best suited to the circumstances. With Daphne she could get serious without getting heavy, and her different world view provided a stimulating, if sometimes infuriating, change of perspective.

      They drank and Daphne said, ‘So, how’s Rosie? Did she get a whiff of all the excitement?’

      ‘We tried to keep it from her, but you never know what they pick up, do you? I was tempted to keep her off school today, but that would have confirmed there was something going on. Anyway, the holidays start tomorrow, and she made such a fuss about getting back after her illness, she’d have been brokenhearted to miss the fun of the last day.’

      ‘Children’s hearts are made of one of the least frangible materials known to man,’ said Daphne with a mother-of-two’s certainty. ‘Especially girls’. I seem to recall breaking mine on an almost daily basis but somehow surviving without resort to Dr Christian Barnard. You too, I bet.’

      ‘Perhaps. I never lost my best friend when I was Rosie’s age, but,’ said Ellie.

      There’d been two girls stricken by the meningitis bug. The other, Rosie’s classmate and best friend, Zandra, had died.

      Daphne grimaced and said, ‘I was forgetting that. Sorry. It’s funny, a child’s grief, unless you’ve experienced it yourself, you don’t think about it much… but she was keen to get back to Edengrove, you say? I’d have thought…’

      ‘Me too. We’ve talked about Zandra, naturally. Or rather I’ve talked. Rosie listens. But she doesn’t say much beyond, the nix got her. You remember the nix? The water-imp in that book she used to be crazy about, whose hobby was abducting young girls? The educational psych, who looks about fifteen and has a stutter, says I shouldn’t worry, in fact I should be pleased Rosie’s found a formula which enables her to deal with her loss. Like she’s bottling it up, you mean? I said. Like she’s dealing with it, says this adolescent expert firmly. She’ll talk when she wants to talk, just leave the channels open. Just try to let things settle back to what they were before. Routines are more than comfortable, they are essential. Christ, I reckon she must have majored on The Little Book of Psycho-pap or some such thing!’

      ‘You didn’t actually say that, did you?’

      Ellie laughed and said, ‘No. I’m getting soft. In fact, I came home and dug out Nina and the Nix from where I’d hidden it, then I had a drink and a think, and then I went and hid it again. In other words, I’ve no idea how to cope. So I decided to go with the flow and when Rosie wanted to go back to school, I said, OK, why not?’

      ‘That sounds sensible.’

      ‘Yeah, except I did start wondering if it was just a way of getting out from under this madwoman who’d turned from a straightforward modern laissez-faire mum to an overbearing, over-anxious, ever-present earth mother. OK. No need to say it. That’s me all over. Self-centred. Everything comes back to me.’

      ‘You said it. But everything includes all the СКАЧАТЬ