Three Bags Full (22 page)

Rebecca began to read.

“‘Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living! You said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered
do
haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts
have
wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only
do
not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I
cannot
live without my life! I
cannot
live without my soul!’”

The moon disappeared behind a dark cloud, and the only light falling on the pages now came from the little glowing point between Rebecca’s lips. The sheep stood around the caravan, fascinated. In the light of that glow, she looked as the sheep had always imagined the Siamese pirate would look in
Pamela and the Yellow Buccaneer
, narrow-eyed and melancholy. She closed the book.

“That’s too sad,” said Rebecca. “I don’t need a book to tell you sad stories, sheep.” She was silent for a while, blowing sweet smoke over the meadow. Then she began again in her reading-aloud voice, but without a book.

“Once upon a time there was a little girl who had not one daddy but two. A secret one and a…an unsecret one. She wasn’t supposed to see the secret one, but of course they did see each other all the same, and they were very fond of each other. The little girl’s mother, the beautiful queen, didn’t like that, but there was nothing she could do about it. No one could do anything about it. But one day the girl and her secret daddy quarreled about a stupid thing, and the girl did all she could to make him angry, even when it hurt her too. After that they didn’t speak to each other for a long time, not a single word. At last a letter came for the girl. It said that her daddy was planning to travel to Europe, but first he wanted to see her. The girl hid her joy, and kept him waiting. So he waited himself to death.”

It wasn’t a bad story, but nothing like as good as what Rebecca had read them first. However, the sheep didn’t mind. They suddenly felt so tired that they could hardly listen anymore. All but one of them.

Mopple the Whale had no time to feel tired. Ever since Rebecca had found the grass under the dolmen he had been obsessed by the idea of tasting it. This was his moment. Rebecca was sitting in the dark with her eyes half closed, humming quietly to herself. Beside her, forgotten now, lay an open packet of the grass. Quick as a flash Mopple was beside her with his nose stuck inside the packet. Quick as a flash he had swallowed the contents. By the time Rebecca noticed, Mopple was licking the last crumbs off the steps of the caravan. Rebecca began to laugh.

“Pothead,” she said.

Mopple chewed guiltily. He was disappointed by the grass. It smelled much better than it tasted. It didn’t taste anywhere near as good as the grass in the meadow, or even as good as hay. Human beings had a very poor sense of taste. Mopple lowered his nose and once more resolved never to eat anything unfamiliar again.

The little glowworm in front of Rebecca’s face went out.

“Time to sleep,” she told the sheep, curtsying to them before disappearing inside the shepherd’s caravan. This time they didn’t hear the key turning in the lock.

A clear night wind carried the smoke away, and the sheep felt less sleepy again.

“She’s polite,” said Cloud approvingly. The sheep nodded, all except Mopple, who had fallen asleep on his feet in the middle of the meadow.

The others didn’t want to sleep yet. All today’s excitement had left them short of time to graze. They decided to stay outside a little longer, fulfilling their daily quota of grazing work and keeping Mopple company, since he was sleeping like a dormouse and wouldn’t be woken.

Night had fallen, the stars were twinkling, and somewhere an owl was hooting for all it was worth. Somewhere a lonely toad was croaking. Somewhere two cats were playing the game of love.

And somewhere the purring sound of a powerful car engine was coming closer. Lane raised her head. The car stopped at the gate to the path through the fields. No lights. A man got out and steadily crossed the meadow to the shepherd’s caravan. Just outside it he stopped, and sniffed the air. Then he climbed the steps and knocked on the door. Once, twice, then once again.

19

Maple and a Lovers’ Meeting

Nothing moved inside the shepherd’s caravan. The man put his hand on the door handle and pressed it down, opening George’s creaking door without a sound.

He closed it behind him without a sound too.

Soon after that, a pale, flickering light came on behind the caravan windows.

“Did you smell it?” asked Maude. “The metal? He has one of those pistols too, like George.” She shuddered.

“But he doesn’t have a target!” said Rameses. The man wouldn’t be able to do much with his gun without a target.

“Perhaps he wants George’s target,” said Lane thoughtfully. “Perhaps he wants to take it away.”

Othello looked uneasily at the caravan. “We ought to find out what’s going on in there.”

The sheep moved closer to the caravan. Maple and Othello began grazing under the only open window.

“Why should I tell you that?” said the man’s voice, so softly that you couldn’t hear any emphasis in it. A sparse kind of voice.

Rebecca said nothing, but the sheep could hear her breath coming fast and irregular. Something made a noise inside the caravan. A heavy object fell to the floor.

“So you’ve found it,” said the man. “Congratulations.”

Then, after a while, he added, “Where?”

Rebecca laughed softly. “You’ll never believe me.”

“Oh, I’ll believe you,” said the man. “George was one of our best. Our specialist for the Ireland and Northern Ireland consignments. Full of ideas and never a single incident.”

Rebecca laughed again, louder this time, and choking slightly. “All that, just for grass?” she asked, in a hoarse, toneless voice, quite unlike the one she used for reading aloud. Othello looked anxiously up at the window.

“Mainly grass. Sometimes cigarettes. Sometimes other stuff. Whatever was in demand on the market.”

“You’re telling me that because you think it makes no difference now, am I right?”

“I’m afraid so,” said the man. “I mean, you have the file too. Do you know what you could do with the information in that file? It would be a severe blow to our firm.”

“But I won’t do anything with it,” said Rebecca.

“I believe you,” said the man.

Rebecca did not reply.

“I believe you,” the man repeated after a while. “But unfortunately that’s not good enough.” He hesitated. “I’m sorry.”

“Would you mind putting that light of yours out? It’s dazzling me.”

“Yes, I would,” said the man. All the same, the pale light behind the windows of the shepherd’s caravan went out. Maple cautiously scented the air. A strange storm was raging in there: heavy, oppressive, violent. A storm that could send the cloud sheep galloping over the sky.

“Don’t you think that’s a little unprofessional?” asked Rebecca after a while. “I have a proper job now, as a shepherdess. Well paid. And all I have to do for my money is take the sheep touring Europe. I’ve nothing against your business, nothing against you. The last thing I need now is more problems. I won’t say anything. Ever. To anyone.”

“It would be unprofessional to take the risk,” said the man.

“Leaving another corpse in this meadow would be unprofessional too.”

“Not very. We know the investigating police inspector. He’s incompetent. And very cooperative. What do you think of this one: illegitimate daughter with dubious past breaks into caravan by night, finds a pistol there, plays about with it, and shoots herself by accident? Or out of grief for her beloved father. People like that kind of thing. Or out of a sense of guilt…”

“In her nightie?” asked Rebecca.

“What?”

“Well, it’s not exactly the right outfit for breaking and entering, I’d say—in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Hmm.”

“And what’s more, that’s not George’s pistol. If your story is supposed to convince anyone, you’d need this one.”

The sheep heard the man take a noisy, startled breath.

“Careful. Put that down this minute. That’s no gun for a lady.”

“And I’m no lady,” whispered Rebecca. “So get out.”

Something inside hit the wall with a bang. Rebecca gave a little scream. The man swore.

Then all was quiet inside the shepherd’s caravan again. Very quiet.

“Damn,” said Rebecca at last.

“Don’t let it bother you,” said the man. “It was worth a try, I suppose.”

A foot began tapping rhythmically on wood.

“Would you really have shot me down, just like that?” asked the man, with a note of respect in his voice.

“Why not? What you did to George…”

“We had nothing to do with that. You can believe me there. Definitely. For sure. A great loss to the firm.”

Rebecca breathed slowly out. “Do you know who it was?”

“No,” said the man. “No one in our line, anyway. So theatrical—almost a ritual murder. That’s not how we work. We don’t need that kind of intimidation.”

“You don’t?”

“We don’t.”

Silence. The foot tapped faster.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” said the man. “Do you have a last wish?”

“A last wish?”

“Well, yes. Whatever. A glass of water? A cigarette?”

Rebecca laughed again, in a strained way. “Where do you think you’d find a glass of water here? You’ve never done anything like this before, have you?”

“Yes. No. Well, no need to let that worry you.”

Rebecca sighed. It was a sigh that Othello could feel to the tips of all his four horns. Melmoth had appeared beside him. They were both looking intently up at the half-open window.

“Damn,” said Rebecca. “Why now? Why now, of all times? What can I do to convince you I’m no danger to you?”

“You’re putting other ideas into my head,” said the man slowly. “Sounds tempting, but I’m not
quite
that unprofessional.”

“What? You think
that’s
what I meant?” spat Rebecca. “What are you after, anyway? You just break in here, and…and I suppose you think I’ll do anything you like just because you have that pistol!”

“No,” said the man, surprised. “That bit was
your
idea. I mean, it never even entered my head!”

“I see. Really?”

“If you think I
need
that kind of thing…” The man sounded angry too now.

Silence, for quite a long time.

Then, suddenly, both of them laughed at the same moment.

Then silence again.

“Okay,” Rebecca laughed. “Then we’ll just have to pass the time some other way. Sit down.”

“Hmm,” said the man.

“I could tell you stories. Like Scheherazade in the Thousand and One Nights.”

“I wasn’t really planning to stay quite that long,” said the man. “On the other hand…”

Silence billowed out of the window of the shepherd’s caravan, dense and heavy as hot breath.

The sheep looked at one another. Perhaps it was getting interesting in there after all.

As if at a signal, Maude and Heather started bleating.

“Stories!” they bleated. “Stories!”

It was some time before Miss Maple had restored peace and quiet.

“Even if they
are
telling stories in there,” she said, “how do you expect to hear them if you’re kicking up such a racket?”

But the sheep didn’t get to hear any stories. No more was said inside the caravan. The sheep were not surprised: they were familiar with this situation from the Pamela novels. When the mysterious stranger—and without a shadow of doubt, they had one of those here—was left alone with a woman you could expect the story to trail off into nothing. The man and the woman stopped talking at some point, and that was the end of the chapter. You never found out what happened next. It was a mystery to the sheep, because something had to happen. Human beings didn’t simply disappear. Usually they turned up again in the next chapter, alive and well. All the same, there were these gaps in the stories.

The sheep did what they used to do when George reached such places: they grazed patiently until the story went on. Only Maple raised her head once to scent the atmosphere inside the shepherd’s caravan, just for safety’s sake. Stormy but clear. Rain dripping fragrantly on leaves. Reassured, Maple lowered her head to the grass.

Much, much later, when even Miss Maple was bored with watching the shepherd’s caravan, the door slowly opened. The man came out and looked at the moon shining down for a little while.

“A lovely night,” he said. Rebecca had appeared beside him on the steps of the caravan. She had picked up the skirt of her nightie to make a bag of it. One shoulder strap had slipped down, baring a moonlight-blue shoulder.

Rebecca was humming to herself. The two looked at each other, and Rebecca stopped humming.

“I smoked one joint,” she said apologetically.

The man waved a hand dismissively.

Rebecca chuckled. “And there’s a whole packet missing. One of the sheep ate it. The fat one there.”

“Looks like a ram,” said the man. “Expensive animal. But we can live with that.”

The man began fishing the packets out of the bag that Rebecca had made of her skirt and stuffing them in his coat pockets. He counted as he went along.

“…twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. Less one packet of sheep feed, and that makes the delivery complete. The file. Yes, everything’s there. What’s that?” The man was holding the rectangular package.

“I should think it’s a videocassette,” said Rebecca. “You don’t know about it?”

“Never heard it mentioned,” said the man, as he stowed the rectangular package in his pocket too.

He carefully took Rebecca’s hand between his thumb and forefinger, raised it slowly like something very heavy and fragile, and kissed her fingertips without a sound. Then he turned and went back to his car without saying good-bye. The purring engine moved away.

Only when the car was out of hearing did the sheep relax. The quiet man had made them uneasy. But now everything was back in order again—in better order than it had been for a long time. George’s daughter was sitting in the shepherd’s caravan, Gabriel and his voracious sheep had disappeared, and Europe awaited them.

Unfortunately this happy state didn’t last long. It was one of those nights when all sorts of people kept invading their meadow. This time a small, plump figure was making its way clumsily and noisily around the caravan.

Then Rebecca was suddenly standing in the doorway with George’s gun in her hand.

Lilly uttered a short, sharp scream.

“What’s the idea?” asked Rebecca wearily. “What are
you
doing here now?”

“I just wanted …I thought…” Lilly was staring as if hypnotized at the pistol. “I wanted to think about George a bit.”

Rebecca shook her head. “I suspect not. I think you wanted to get in there.” The pistol pointed briefly at the door of the caravan and then back at Lilly. “And I want to know why. And after that I really would like to get some sleep.”

Lilly struggled with her fear for a moment. Then she gave in. “I just wanted the receipt,” she said. “So that they can’t hold anything over me. The receipt, that’s all!”

She fell silent for a moment, but went on talking in a hurry when Rebecca made an encouraging movement with the pistol.

“I sometimes work at the Lonely Heart Inn,” she said. “Only now and then. When…” She stopped.

Rebecca looked at her in annoyance for a moment, but then suddenly nodded. “All right. What about the Lonely Heart Inn?”

“Well, the customers there, they don’t just come to …you know what.” Lilly’s hands fiddled with her hair. She was embarrassed. “They like to smoke something too. And I knew George, and George was a good place to go…so I always bought from him. Only the landlady is so…so suspicious. And greedy. She wants a receipt. With my name on it. And I just forgot it, that wretched night. And then he was dead. And if they find it, they’ll have a hold over me. Everyone here’s been waiting for that.”

Rebecca lowered the gun, and Lilly calmed down a bit.

“You were here?” asked Rebecca. “On the night when George was murdered?” She whistled through her teeth, exactly like George when something struck him as remarkable. “If that gets out, and you go on slinking around here, you’ll soon have more hanging over you than just a receipt for a bit of grass.”

Lilly made a face. “Ham says so too. Says they’ll pin something on me if I don’t watch out. But I need that receipt.”

“You mean Rackham? The butcher?”

Lilly nodded. “He must have seen me when I came back from visiting George. But he says I needn’t worry. He knows I don’t have anything to do with it, he says. He has evidence. Although he hates me really. Because of Kate.”

“Ham’s the only one who saw you? And then he had that accident, falling off the cliffs. You must have really strong nerves if you’re still worrying about a receipt.”

“But I need it,” said Lilly obstinately.

“And you can have it if you’ll tell me exactly what happened here between you and George that evening,” Rebecca promised.

Lilly looked at her indignantly. “Nothing happened! Nothing at all! Everyone thinks it did, and they’ll say anything they like about me too. But George was a good man. You could still talk to him like a decent human being. I bought the grass, and we chatted for a bit. That was it. That was all.”

Rebecca sighed. “And what did you talk about?”

Lilly thought. “About the weather. What lovely weather it had been these last few weeks. Weather fit for a new departure, he said. He was in a good mood, really cheerful. I never saw him like that before. He said I’d have to buy the goods somewhere else in future. He gave me a phone number. And then he suddenly…I think he almost cried.”

The sheep could tell from Lilly’s face that a new and unwelcome thought had just made its way into her brain.

“Oh shit!” she said. “I’ve forgotten the phone number too.”

“You can have the phone number,” said Rebecca.

“Really?”

“Did George say what else he was planning to do that evening?”

Lilly wrinkled her brow. “Go to the Mad Boar for a Guinness. That surprised me, because he never usually went to the Boar. Never ever! He said he wanted to take one more look at the people there. And then he was going to say good-bye to someone.”