'Anyway Bertie suggested a restaurant, one of these medieval junket places. A licence to mint your own money, he said it was. The catering was done on a production line, no skill needed. And the discomforts were part of what the customer was paying for. So, the innocents abroad, we launched ourselves into it. It was either that or board up the house and apply for a council flat somewhere.'
'What about money?' asked Dalziel.
'Money?'
'You need cash. Nowt gets done without some cash.'
'You're right there,' Bonnie said. She turned once more and peered down at the railway line. Her movement brought her within a few inches of Dalziel who contemplated a brotherly arm around her shoulders but dismissed the idea on the grounds of indecency. A fraternal gesture would make what was happening beneath his mackintosh incestuous.
'We borrowed, mainly. Lou and myself raised a small mortgage on the house. They don't like lending money to women. Conrad was more successful. He didn't have much to offer as security, but he did have the gift of the gab. Bertie had no cash, but it was his idea and he knew something about the catering trade. Also he brought along Hank Uniff and his sister from Liverpool. Hank had just had a bit of a disaster. His studio had just been gutted by a fire, so he was desperate for somewhere to work. He's making a film and was delighted at the chance of being somewhere nice and quiet while the fire-insurance money worked for him in the business. He says he despises cash, really. Well, when we go bankrupt it'll be a test of his principles! His sister, Mave's, very artistic too, terrific with clothes. She's in charge of costumes.'
'What costumes?' interrupted Dalziel.
'Your retainers, court jesters, minstrels, serving wenches. Don't ask me what serving wenches. We're all serving wenches. Lou sings a lovely "Greensleeves". I can manage anything that stays within a four-note range. Hank plays the guitar – don't they all, these days? We were planning to hire some help, of course, but all of us in the business were going to be very actively involved.'
'You haven't mentioned Tillotson,' commented Dalziel.
'You notice everything, don't you?'
He glanced at her sharply. She was grinning slyly – there was no other word for it. It did not diminish her attractiveness one jot.
'Charley; well, Charley came along with Lou one weekend and he seems to have been around more or less ever since. He had a few hundred which he poured in almost uninvited and he'll make a lovely Sir Philip Sidneyor someone to direct traffic. So, there it is. Not a bad set-up. Money to be made. But we'll probably have to sell up to pay off our debts. We'll be lucky if we break even.'
There it was, thought Dalziel. If Mavis had been right, this was the gentle flick of the fly over the trout stream. No. Wrong picture. He was no trout. Carp, perhaps. Or shark. But even sharks could flounder in unfamiliar waters.
'What kind of money were you looking to make, Mrs Fielding?' he asked.
'I can't really say. Finance isn't my line. I wouldn't know which way up to hold the Financial Times. But the gross income's easy enough to work out. Five pounds a head; well that includes VAT, so we get four-fifty. Five hundred and forty from a full night. Bertie says other places like this in the north get six full nights a week and booked up for months ahead. So, six times five-forty.'
'Three thousand two hundred and forty a week,' Dalziel said, unimpressed. Income was nowt without expenditure. He didn't read Dickens but he'd heard of Mr Micawber.
'What do they get for a fiver?' he asked.
'Soup,' she said. 'Half a chicken. Spare rib. Cold pudding. Rye bread. Salad. Half a litre of red wine. Coffee. And a night's entertainment.'
'Uniff on guitar. Tillotson tripping over his codpiece,' he said. He didn't mean to be sarcastic nor did she take offence.
'You can pay more and get less,' she answered. 'Try to walk out of the Lady Hamilton's restaurant with a full belly and change from a fiver. And that's without any drink or floor show. We've got a bar too, of course.'
'Have you?' he said. That could double the profits. People come in groups, in a minibus, taxi, coach; someone else driving; one night when you could afford to let go without risking bother from the sodding police.
'Sounds a good proposition,' he said.
'It was,' she answered. 'Conrad will be sorry to have missed it, wherever he is.'
Dalziel glanced at her again. She was staring out into the night with a faintly puzzled look on her face.
'Or perhaps not,' she went on. 'You know, this is one of the straightest bits of track in the country. Look.'
She pointed. Dalziel stared into the blackness for a few seconds before spotting the light.
'Train,' she said. 'One of our rare expresses. Conrad and I often used to stop on this bridge if we'd been up to the village. Just about this time it must have been, because we'd watch this train coming nearer.'
The light was growing and now the sound of the wheels on the track was quite audible.
'It must touch a hundred or whatever it is that trains can travel at,' Bonnie continued. 'Conrad would stand here and watch it getting nearer. As if he couldn't take his eyes off it. And you know what he once said to me, one hard, frosty midwinter's night? "Bonnie," he said, "Bonnie, you realize it's just a step into summer".'
The diesel seemed to cover the last few hundred yards in a single leap, the horn blasted its three-note clarion call over the quiet countryside, and the upward blast of air as the train punched through the bridge made Dalziel take an involuntary pace backwards. Bonnie did not move.
'Some fucking step,' said Dalziel.
7
Dalziel woke up early the following morning and lay in the darkness knowing it was full of menace. He forced himself to relax, and gradually the menace faded as the shapes and angles of the unfamiliar room began to emerge in gradations of grey, bringing with them something worse than fear, a sense of the grey hours, days, weeks, stretching ahead like a desert landscape of unrelieved, grinding, unsharable monotony.
Depression was a sickness, they told him. The previous year he had been worried enough by symptoms of physical illness to visit his doctor and had come away with a series of warnings and prohibitions concerning diet, alcohol, tobacco – the usual nonsense. But paradoxically his efforts to comply had led him inexorably to ask himself why he was bothering; what was so bloody marvellous about this life he was trying to preserve. Such metaphysical speculations were entirely foreign to his make-up and their formulation now was light years from being precise and intellectual. It was just a feeling of hollowness at the centre, a reluctance to awaken from the safe blackness of sleep, a sense of life like a hair floating on dirty bath water, sinking imperceptibly, moment by moment, till a final, spinning gurgling rush carried it away.
So he had taken a holiday. He had never cared much for holidays, but they were better than the happy-pills he knew many people took to preserve their truce with life. He was not one of those nuts who had to keep taking the tablets. A holiday would set him right. And this was it. He forced himself to start thinking about this odd household he had fallen into. These people interested him. Professionally it might be a mistake to get involved, personally it might be a mistake not to. The previous evening had ended with no proposition of any kind from Bonnie. Most likely he had been entirely mistaken to expect one, but it had been a slight disappointment. Christ almighty, what did he expect? The bathroom door opening in the night and the shadowy figure in the diaphanous nightie stealing to his bedside? Kids' fantasies. No, he told himself grimly, if he had any attraction for the Fieldings it was what Mavis had hinted, as a potential investor, and they weren't going to start carving their roast beef for him till they knew what he was worth.