A Line in the Sand (43 page)

He t

cascading

y water was over his ankles, in his boots, and he felt nothing but ic

the shame.

He came to the quarry.

t

They were big men, the police out from For

William, and they towered over him, but they treated this slight,

ilthy young man with a rare respect.

spare, f

They thanked him, and

then led him into the trees and

wo

pointed to the yellowed yolk of t

eggs and the smashed shells. The pick-ups always tried to destroy in the moments before they were arrested.

evidence

He looked at the

debris and thought of the fledglings they would have made, and of

the

sad, aimless flight over the eyrie of the adult birds. He started s the police car where the shaven-headed pickup sat handcuffed

toward

on

the back

at,

se

but the policemen held his arms to prevent him reaching

the door.

He was told there was a message for him, at the factor's office.

* * *

Peggy was a cog in the wheel of the village's life. She thought of f as a large cog but to others in the community she was of small

hersel

wledge that reality. Her

importance. She didn't care to ackno

sband,

hu

strict engineer with

dead nine years from thrombosis, had been a di

e

th

water authority, and within a week of burying him she had joined every that gave her access. Her loneliness was stifled by a

committee

workhorse dedication to activity. Nothing was too much trouble for through the hours of the day, out with her bicycle

her: she hustled

and

bag, on her duties with the Women's Institute and the

her weathered

Wildlife Group and the committee for the Red Cross. She had a

of visits to be made each week to the young mothers and

checklist

the

lderly. Dressed in clothes of violently bright

sick and the e

colours,

eved herself popular and integral. What she was asked to

she beli

284

do,

she did. She was happily unaware that, to most of her fellow

she was a figure of ridicule. She had no malice. She

villagers,

had a

loyalty. On that Sunday morning she was tasked by the Wildlife Group to perform a duty which would also feed the curiosity,

iveness,

inquisit

on which she lived.

ould see, side on, the slight wry grin on Davies's face,

Frank Perry c

d his hand sliding away from under his jacket.

an

It wasn't anything

Perry had seen before: Peggy's coat was a technicolour patchwork of her garish lipstick matched none of the coat's hues.

colour, and

Peggy, keeping well? Yes?"

"Hello,

red past him, a sort of disappointment clouding her

Peggy sta

features.

"Not too bad, thank you," she said severely.

Peggy's disappointment, he thought, was that she hadn't spied out

an

moured personnel carrier in the hall, nor a platoon of crouched

ar

paratroops.

oes to see better into the unlit hall.

She was on her t

rry wondered if she'd noticed the new tree and the new post, the

Pe

tyre

e probably had because she missed little.

marks; sh

an I help?"

"How c

ryl I came to see Wildlife Group business."

"It's Me

you'll have to make do with me. Meryl's still upstairs."

"Sorry,

e unmarked car cruised behind her and Davies gave it a small wave

Th

as

indicate that the woman in the dream coat was not a threat.

if to

ry was

There were two more cars in the village that morning. Per

shaven, half dressed, and he had left Meryl upstairs in bed.

un

She

had

en crying through half the night, and only now had slipped into

be

a

ted sleep.

beaten, exhaus

ggy blurted her message, "I was asked to come, the Wildlife Group Pe

285

asked me.

g typing for us.

Meryl was doin

I've come for it. I've

en

be

asked-' "Sorry, you're confusing me."

e was not confused, just

But h

sn't going to make it easy for her.

wa

our next meeting's not till Tuesday.

"Y

She'll have it done by then,

she'll bring it with her."

een asked to take it from her."

"I've b

"By whom?"

y

"B

everybody chairman, treasurer, secretary. We want it back." He was determined to make her spell it out, word by bloody word.

"But it's not finished."

"We'll finish it ourselves."

He said evenly, "She'll bring it herself to the meeting on Tuesday."

he's not wanted there. We don't want her at our meeting."

"S

e day after he, Meryl and Stephen had moved in, Peggy had brought

Th

a

apple pie to the house.

fresh-baked

Of course, she'd wanted to look

over the new arrivals, but she had brought the pie and talked about schools for Stephen with Meryl, the better shops and the

infant

d

reliable tradesmen, and introduced her to the Institute. She ha

made

Meryl feel wanted... He didn't curse, as he wanted to. He saw that the

illed off the detective's face.

grin had ch

Perry said quietly, "I'll get them. Would you like to take the stuff for the Red Cross? Have they decided that Meryl is a security risk too? It'll save you two visits."

said loudly.

"Yes," she

ould be best."

"That w

He went inside. Meryl called down to him to find out who was at the door. He said he would be up in a moment. He went into the kitchen.

st night's supper plates were still in the sink, with the whisky

La

glass.

286

He took the folders from the cupboard where Meryl kept her typing

and

flipped through them. There was the scrawled handwriting of minutes and deliberations by the group and the committee members, the chaotic mess that had been dumped on his Meryl. Her typed pages were clean, neat, because trouble was taken over them, because care was important to her. As he turned the pristine, ordered pages of her work, his resolve began to founder. Because of him, his past, his betrayal

and

his damned God-given obstinacy, she suffered. He turned the pages of

her typing prize lists, outings, letters of thanks to guest speakers all so bloody mundane and ordinary, but they were the necessities

of

her life.. . Like an outcast, he felt the touch of plague.

There was a church, St. James's, outside the next village down the coast, which had been built on the site of a lepers' hospital.

Dominic

had told him that when the church was built, a hundred and fifty years back, the labourers digging the foundations had found many skeletons, not laid out as in Christian burial, but in rejected disarray. When the first sore appeared, suppurating, and the first bleeding, and

a man

was sent to the lepers' place, had his friends still known him? Or, had they turned their backs?

He gathered Meryl's pages back into the folders and took them to the front door, reaching past the detective to hand them to Peggy.

She dropped the folders into her bag.

So much he could have said, but Meryl wouldn't have wanted it said.

"There you are, Peggy, everything you asked for."

hat by not cursing, not swearing, he destroyed her. Her

He knew t

chin

shook, and her tongue wriggled and spread the lipstick on her teeth.

"I was sent. It wasn't my idea.

th us or you're against us," that's what they said. If

"You're wi

I'm

against them I'm shut out. Doesn't matter to you, Frank, you can

287

move

on.

e nowhere else to go.

I'v

It's not my fault, I'm not to blame.

If

bring those papers back, I'm out.

I don't

I'm a victim, too. It's

not

Frank."

personal,

to her bicycle.

She ran

ies shut the door on her, and climbed the stairs to the

He let Dav

bedroom. There was never a good time for telling a bad story. She was

wiping the sleep out of her eyes.

"I don't want to tell you this, but I have to. Peggy came to take away

your typing for the Wildlife Group and the Red Cross. She's going to

lf.

do it herse

We are not wanted... I could have thrown it all at

her

face and made her grovel down in the road to pick it up. I didn't.

I

He paused and drew a breath.

know what I'm doing to you."

"They say he's still out there.

t, if the injury

He may be hurt bu

isn't severe, he'll come again. They say the dogs found a scent,

then

st it... Peggy's going to do the typing herself."

lo

She screamed.

e shrill staccato burst of her scream filled the room. She

Th

convulsed

in the bed.

am died and her eyes stared up at him, wide and frightened.

The scre

Still in his pyjamas. Stephen was in the doorway, holding a toy lorry and gazing at him.

He told Stephen that his mother was unwell. He tried to hold him

but

the boy recoiled. He left the bedroom, where there were no lights, no

pictures, where the glass of the mirror on the dressing-table was

ith adhesive tape.

scarred w

He walked slowly down the dark stairs,

as

nding into the lower reaches of the bunker.

if desce

288

He stopped at the dining-room door.

"How much worse does it have to get?"

"Does what "have to get", Mr. Perry?"

ave to get before I'm told the Al Haig

"How much worse does it h

ory?"

st

bit worse, Mr. Perry."

"A

s head.

He hung hi

"And how much worse does it have to get before I say I'm at the end of

the road, before I'm ready to run, quit?"

The detective, sitting at the table, the machine-gun beside his hand, keenly.

looked up

door was open once, but not any mo

"That

re. I think it was on offer

a

t it's not an option, Mr. Perry, not now."

bit ago, bu

Parker had used one of the

Cathy

sleeping hutches at the top of the

building to catch four hours' rest. She came down to the floor.

Fenton

s there with Cox.

wa

She riffled through her papers for the address

in

merset. It

So

would be a good drive; she'd enjoy the blessing of being

clear of Thames House.

She might have time to call in for tea or a sherry with her parents Fenton was talking, convincing.

afterwards.

ou worry too much, Barney, you'll go to your grave worrying.

"Y

You

heard what the American told young Geoff, this man is essentially

a

civilian. He is not military, doesn't have the mindset of manuals.

He

will think like a civilian and move like one. You don't put the

ainst him, you put another civilian there.

military in ag

If it had

been the military then you've lost control and that's some thing to bout. God, the day I side with a politician is a day to

worry a

remember."

289

She walked past the grinning Fenton, and Cox whose face was an

mask, and paused at the closed, locked door.

enigmatic

She took a

pen

om her handbag and made a decisive line through the writing on the fr

sheet of paper fastened there.

ved

She wrote boldly, DAY FOUR, and mo

f down the dull-lit corridor.

of

Iranian crude was offloaded. The tanker was buoyed up,

The

monstrously

gh above the waves rippling against its hull, riding to its anchor.

hi

eived.

The radio message had still not been rec

Perplexed, the master called the terminal authority, reported a

turbine

problem and requested that a barge come alongside to take his crew ashore. He did not understand why the order to make the rendezvous had

not reached him.

All day Peggy had anticipated the opportunity to call on the new

people

who had moved into the cottage on the opposite side of the road to the

church. It was a dingy little place, only three bedrooms. Old Mrs.

Wilson, now in a nursing home, had always said the damp in the walls of

Rose Cottage had wrecked her hips. The ride home had settled her

after

the confrontation with Frank Perry, and she'd collected the pie,

wrapped it in tinfoil and balanced it under the clip on the rack over the back wheel of her bicycle.

She had hoped to be invited inside, but she had had to hand over her welcoming gift on the step.

A man had answered her sharp rap at the

spy-haired, slight, raggedly and dully dressed, and seemed

door, wi

to

be astonished that a complete stranger brought an apple and