The Grave Tattoo (31 page)

Allan gave her a crooked smile. ‘Who says I’m pretending?’

An hour and a half later, Jane was saying goodbye to the genuine article. Eddie Fairfield was a fragile eighty-two-year-old, rheumy-eyed and leather-skinned, his silver hair streaked with yellow from the nicotine cloud of pipe smoke that shrouded him. ‘I gave up when I was fifty, promised myself that, if I made it to eighty, I’d take it up again. Best thing I ever did, it’s the only pleasure I get these days,’ he’d said when he courteously asked Jane’s permission to light up. ‘I can barely walk the length of the street, and I’m damned if I can remember what I had for my tea last night. Our lass brings me in a hot meal every night, otherwise I doubt I’d remember to eat at all. My son wanted to put me in a home, but I told him, as long as I’ve got breath in my body, I’ll stop under my own roof. Have you ever been in one of them old folks’ homes?’

Jane barely had time to admit she had before he was off again. ‘Load of old women staring into space. Or else they’re mad as a box of frogs, thinking they’re eighteen again. No man’s safe from those daft old women, you know. You’d think they’d have lost interest, but not a bit of it.’ He twinkled a smile at her. ‘If they’d have been half as willing when they really were eighteen, they would have made a lot of young lads very happy, let me tell you.’

He’d insisted on making her weak milky coffee and had tottered through from the kitchen with a plate of chocolate digestives. ‘Not often I get a visit from a bonny young lass,’ he said. ‘Least I can do is make you welcome.’

When she’d finally got a word in edgeways and explained the purpose of her visit, he’d grown excited. ‘Aye, I heard tell of yon lass when I were a nipper,’ he said, his Cumbrian dialect thickening as he travelled back into the past.

Jane felt a quiver of excitement. Was this the beginning of the end of her quest? ‘Really?’ she said. ‘What did you hear?’

He closed his eyes. ‘Let me think, now. It was my granny Beattie talked about her. She was born a Clewlow. Beatrice Clewlow, born in 1880. She was the oldest. Her mum and dad, Arthur and Annie, they had four kids: Beattie; Alice, who stopped at home and never married; Edward, who died at the second battle of Ypres, never had any kids that we know of.’ He winked at her conspiratorially. ‘But you never know with them French lasses, do you? And then there was Arthur Junior. Anyway, this Dorcas that you’re after, she was their granny. And I reckon she was as much a one for stories as Granny Beattie.’ His eyes snapped open. ‘She talked about her granny Clewlow quite a bit to me and Annie, my twin. Funny, I hadn’t thought about that for years.’ He smiled triumphantly, pleased at his own feat of memory.

‘What did she tell you about Dorcas?’ Jane asked, trying not to sound as eager as she felt.

He puffed out his lips in a sigh. ‘It was mostly about her later life. When she was widowed and bringing up the children. But I do remember Beattie saying her granny, that would be Dorcas, had been a trusted servant of the Wordsworth family. She said her granny had been there when William Wordsworth breathed his last, that she talked about the sadness of seeing such a noble man laid low.’ He shook his head. ‘That’s all I can remember.’

They’d talked for a while longer, but it soon became clear that Jane had mined the seam of his remembrance to exhaustion. Eddie Fairfield had no recollection of any family papers or secret connected to Dorcas. All he retained was her claim to fame–her presence at Willy’s deathbed.

It was clear that Eddie would have talked to her all day, but Jane was mindful of her lunch appointment with Jake and she finally managed to extricate herself with ten minutes to spare.

She walked down the main street with some lightness of heart. She’d made progress that morning. If nothing else, she could be sure that she was looking at the right family. And she was having lunch with Jake. In spite of her resolve not to trust him, she couldn’t help the rush of blood to the head that prospect provoked. That didn’t mean she had to fall for his charms all over again. Of course it didn’t.

31

Jake was already sitting at the table when Jane walked into the restaurant. She paused on the threshold for a moment, gauging her response. Such a familiar image; the wedge of dark hair flopping over his forehead, the perfect arch of his eyebrows over the long-lashed blue eyes, the coffee-coloured birthmark on his right cheekbone that resembled the smudge left by a mother’s thumb, the long straight nose and the thin lips. Sometimes she thought he looked like Sherlock Holmes would have if he’d been more interested in sensuality than intellect. Once, catching him unawares like this would have caught at her heart. But now, caution mediated her every response. She had her plan. All she had to do was carry it out.

As she approached, he looked up from the menu, caught sight of her and sprang to his feet. He stepped to kiss her cheek as she shrugged out of her coat, but she shifted sideways, leaving him lunging at the air. ‘You look fantastic,’ he said.

Strike one.
She’d deliberately taken no special care with her appearance. Jane knew she looked OK. Not fantastic. ‘Nice of you to say so,’ she said, settling herself in her chair and picking up the menu. She ordered a glass of white wine from the hovering waitress then smiled at Jake. ‘So how are you passing the time up here in the back of beyond?’

It clearly wasn’t the opening gambit Jake was expecting. He looked disconcerted, then gathered himself and gave a half shrug. ‘Well, now I’ve given up stalking you, I’ve had to make do with the pencil museum. Did you know they do a whole leaflet on pencil-sharpening techniques?’

‘We enjoy our simple pleasures up here,’ Jane said drily. She glanced at the menu and, when the waitress brought the drinks, she said, ‘I’d just like a chicken Caesar salad, please.’

Once Jake had ordered his steak and they were left alone again, Jane said, ‘And you really came all the way back from Crete to try to patch things up between us?’

Jake gave her his best hangdog look. ‘I told you. I realised I’d made a mistake. I don’t know if it’s too late, if there’s too much damage done. But I want us to give it another go.’

‘OK. I accept that. But I want to take it slowly. I don’t want to rush headlong into anything.’

He nodded. ‘You’re in the driving seat.’ He smiled and her stomach lurched. ‘It’s enough for me to be sitting here with you. That feels like a pretty good start to me.’ He raised his glass and chinked it against Jane’s. ‘Here’s to fresh starts.’

‘Fresh starts.’

‘So what are you doing back home? They said at work that you were on study leave.’

Strike two.
The question was too fast, too soon and too bald. Her suspicions about his motives were growing incrementally. But she managed a smile and said, ‘Willy and Fletcher. I found some previously uncatalogued material in the archive at the Trust that’s very suggestive.’

‘Suggestive of what?’ Jake was trying to sound casual, but she could see his grip tightening on the stem of his glass.

‘There was definitely a manuscript of some sort that the family wanted suppressed. And there are some clues in the letters that point to Fletcher Christian. I’ve been talking to the descendants of the last person known to have had the manuscript and I’m confident that I’ve got a strong lead on it.’ It was a lie, but it weighed light in the balance compared to the ones he’d once told her.

‘Really? You’ve got a lead on a Wordsworth manuscript relating to Fletcher Christian?’ His eagerness was obvious now, which was entirely reasonable in the circumstances. What came next would be crucial. ‘I can help, you know.’

Strike three.
For once, there was no satisfaction in being right. Knowing she’d estimated Jake correctly was a stab in the heart. Jane pushed her chair back and reached for her coat. ‘I don’t think so. I wondered when you showed up. It’s not that I suffer from low self-esteem, but I didn’t think anyone as self-obsessed as you would have made such an effort to get back with me unless there was something in it for you. Well, now I know I was right. It’s not me you’re interested in, it’s the manuscript.’

Panic spread across Jake’s face. ‘You’ve got it all wrong, Jane. I don’t give a damn about the manuscript, not compared to you.’

‘I don’t believe you. I think you’re here for one reason and one reason only. To make you and your precious Caroline rich. Well, it’s not going to happen, not off my hard work. And I’ll be telling the family who own the manuscript not to trust you either.’ She got to her feet, ignoring the consternation on that face she’d once loved to distraction. She was hurting hard, but she was determined she wasn’t going to backslide. ‘Goodbye, Jake.’

‘Jane,’ he cried as she walked to the door. But he didn’t follow her, and she was glad of that. It reinforced her reading of the situation. It wasn’t her he wanted. It was her manuscript.

Mentally berating herself, Jane got into her mother’s car and set off for the eastern edge of the town, where Eddie Fairfield’s cousin Letty lived in a granny flat attached to her son’s house on Chestnut Hill. He’d told her Letty was Beattie’s favourite grandchild; if she’d confided more about Dorcas to anyone, it would have been Letty.

Jane drew up at the car park exit, waiting for a gap in the traffic, still chiding herself for her earlier susceptibility rather than giving herself credit for her fixity of purpose. Her internal monologue was broken when to her surprise her brother drove past. She checked the time on the car clock. Twenty to two. Matthew must have left school at lunchtime.

Jane couldn’t help wondering what he was up to. The family dentist was in Ambleside, the doctor in Grasmere. It was hard to imagine what was so urgent that Matthew would leave school early to deal with it.

Except, of course, his desire to beat her to the draw.

She thought of trying to follow him, but it was already too late. Three more cars had passed before she could squeeze out into the traffic, but by then he was out of sight. Cursing under her breath, Jane swallowed her anger and set off for Letty’s. At least she could be pretty sure Matthew wasn’t going there, since he was heading in the opposite direction.

It didn’t occur to her at that point that he might have got to Letty before her. But she hadn’t even got across the threshold when she found fresh reason to curse her stupidity in taking time out to have lunch with Jake. Letty seemed bewildered by her arrival. At first, Jane thought it was simply the confusion of age. Then she realised the truth. While she had been talking to Jake, Matthew had been interviewing Letty.

‘Such a nice young man,’ she said. ‘I promised I’d look out some papers for him. I wasn’t sure where they were, you see.’

Jane nodded, trying to keep her churning emotions in check. ‘These would be old family papers?’

‘That’s right, dear. I thought they were packed up in one of the boxes in Gavin’s garage. That’s my son, Gavin. This is his house, he had the flat built on so I could be near at hand but still independent. But then the minute your brother had left, I remembered I’d put some boxes of family memorabilia in the wardrobe in the spare room, and when I went to look, there they were. That was lucky, wasn’t it?’

Jane’s heart beat a little faster.
Calm down, chances are it’s nothing to do with what you’re looking for.
‘It certainly was. I wonder, might I have a look at the papers? Matthew and I are working together on this project, and it would save him coming back to check them out. Since I’m here anyway…?’

‘Of course, dear. Come through, they’re on the kitchen table.’

As she followed Letty into the kitchen, she saw her quarry at once. A pile of papers, yellow with age, was loosely bundled together and tied with string. ‘There you go, dear. You have a look through that and see if it’s what you’re looking for. Your brother was a bit vague, he just said there might be some Wordsworth papers from my great-great-grandmother. I doubt there’s anything like that there, but you’re welcome to see what you can find.’

Jane sat down and slipped the string off the bundle. The first sheet was unpromising. It was a letter dated 1886, addressed to Arthur Clewlow, congratulating him on the birth of his second son, also named Arthur. Jane scanned it quickly and put it to one side. The next was a recipe for rhubarb syllabub. The next few were household accounts from 1883. She carried on regardless, scrutinising every piece of paper for clues. Letty sat next to her, carrying on a running commentary of sensational irrelevance. Jane had to resist the impulse to ask her to get out of her own kitchen.

An hour later, Jane had to admit defeat. She knew more about the domestic minutiae of the branch of the Clewlows descended from Dorcas’s elder son Arthur than any human being could reasonably wish for. But there was nothing about Dorcas herself, nor any reference to any manuscript in the family’s possession. Jane turned over the last sheet and shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, it’s not what I was hoping to find.’

‘Oh dear, I’ve wasted your time with my silly family trivia,’ Letty said, looking genuinely distressed.

‘Not at all. I appreciate you taking the time and trouble to look these out for us. Is that all there is? Nothing from Dorcas herself? Maybe in the boxes in the garage…?’

Letty shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, dear, that’s all I have from the old days. Granny Beattie used to talk about her granny, how she worked for William Wordsworth and was there at his deathbed, but I don’t think she had any letters from her or anything like that.’

‘Never mind.’ Jane felt the now-familiar crush of disappointment. ‘That’s just the way it goes.’ She stood up. ‘Thanks for your time.’

‘Not at all. It’s a pleasure having the company of young people. I miss that, living here. When I was living in my old house down in Braithwaite I had lovely neighbours. They had two teenage lads who were always dropping in. They loved hearing stories about what it was like in the old days. But I never see them now,’ she said wistfully. ‘Nobody ever just drops in up here.’

Nothing Jane could think of saying felt adequate. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Don’t get old, dear,’ Letty said sadly as she showed her to the door. ‘What was that song our Gavin was always playing back in the sixties? “Hope I die before I get old,” that was it. They’ll be old men themselves now, I suppose.’

‘Only two of them,’ Jane said. ‘The other two managed the trick. But I don’t imagine either of them was very happy about it.’

‘No, I don’t imagine they were. Well, good luck, dear. I hope you find what you’re looking for.’

Jane waved goodbye, weighed down by the day. At least she had dinner with Jimmy and Dan to look forward to. A couple of hours to forget about betrayal and failure.

Jake finished his coffee, still smarting at Jane’s treatment. Christ, what was it with women? He’d abased himself, offered his belly like a dog acknowledging the leader of the pack. And she’d taken it into her head to walk out on him. What a bitch. If he’d been relying on her loyalty, he’d have been deep in shit with Caroline by now.

Mind you, now Jane had blown him out, it was going to be a bit harder than he’d been hoping. He pursed his lips, looking so grim the waitress veered away from his table. Bitch. He was so sure he’d reel her in. But he’d had it with waiting for table scraps from the women in his life. Soon he was going to show them who was really top dog. He’d carry on with his own plans and find the bloody manuscript on his own. And then he’d show Jane what a fool she’d been to walk out on him. He’d be damned if she ever got a sniff of William Wordsworth’s missing masterpiece.

Jane debated whether or not to stop off at the school-house to tell Matthew not to waste his time going back to Keswick to see Letty’s papers. And to give him a piece of her mind. She decided against it. There had been enough
Sturm und Drang
already that day to last her for several weeks. Besides, the fruitless journey was the least he deserved in return for his shitty behaviour. Instead, she picked up her phone and called Dan.

‘Where are you?’ she asked.

‘I’ve just got on to the M1,’ he said. ‘Missy Elliott snagged me on my way out of the noon seminar, I think she was checking up on me.’