*
Jackson gave a startled jump when Acland disengaged himself from a shadowy recess between two buildings halfway down Murray Street as she approached her car. She hadn’t seen him since driving away from the squat the previous day and, by his unshaven appearance and crumpled shirt, he looked as if he’d slept rough overnight. He certainly hadn’t returned to the pub. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded angrily. He was dangling his jacket over his shoulder in a 1930s-style affectation that didn’t suit him. ‘Hitching a ride,’ he said. ‘Where have you been? What have you been up to?’ ‘Just walking.’ ‘For thirty bloody hours ?’ she said scathingly. ‘Give me a break! Daisy and I have been worried sick. You’re damn lucky the police didn’t decide to question you. You’re supposed to stay put at the pub.’ ‘Sorry.’ He walked round the BMW to open the door for her while she put her case in the boot. ‘If I’d realized it was going to upset you that much, I wouldn’t have done it.’ ‘I’m not upset, I’m angry.’ ‘Whichever.’ He pulled the door wide. ‘It was your night off. I thought you and Daisy could do with some time to yourselves. She makes it pretty clear she doesn’t want me around.’
‘So now it’s Daisy’s fault?’ said Jackson grimly, stalking after him. She wrestled the door out of his hand. ‘Get in,’ she snapped, ‘and stop behaving like Little Lord Fauntleroy. As far as I’m concerned, he was a nasty little brown-noser in a silly suit with a deeply insipid mother . . . and I’m not that easily sidetracked.’
But she was. It certainly didn’t occur to her to question why he chose to open the door behind her and toss his jacket across the back seat.
Nor did she pursue the issue of what he’d been doing, although it wasn’t clear to her afterwards whether it was her choice or Acland’s to steer the conversation towards his mother. She had tried for the last few days to encourage him to talk about his family and his sudden willingness to describe his relationship with his parents took her by surprise.
‘If it takes an insipid mother to produce Little Lord Fauntleroy, then you’re confusing me with someone else,’ he said idly, attaching his seat belt. ‘There’s no way you could describe mine as insipid. In any case, courtesy was drummed into me at school and Sandhurst. Manners maketh man . . . and all that crap...but I’ve never understood why women are allowed to be as rude as they fucking well like.’
Of course Jackson was intrigued, not least because she’d come to recognize that the lieutenant was a puritan. He rarely used vulgar language unless he was angry. ‘You think I was rude?’
‘Yes.’
‘I come from the wrong side of the tracks. You’re looking at the last of a long line of working-class grafters who talked in glottal stops and never had an even break in their lives.’ She flicked him a mocking glance. ‘There wasn’t much cause for my ancestors to say thank you to anyone. They had it programmed into their genes to bow and scrape to privileged types like you.’
‘You haven’t done badly out of it,’ he said curtly. ‘At least your grafters sound genuine. I don’t even know what privilege is except that you get sent away to school at eight so that your parents can claim some cachet from it. Appearance is everything in my family.
As long as the surface passes muster, it doesn’t matter how much dirt is being churned up underneath.’
‘What kind of dirt?’
‘Anything that lets the side down. My father’s father was a chronic alcoholic – he was drunk twenty-four seven – but my mother told everyone he had Parkinson’s disease. I was scared shitless of him when he was in a rage. He kicked one of our dogs to death in front of me when I was ten. I was too frightened to say anything... but I really hated him for it.’
‘Did he hit your grandmother?’
‘Probably. She left him after my father was born. I never met her – I don’t think Dad did either.’
‘What about your mother’s parents?’
Acland shook his head. ‘I’ve never met them. As far as I know, there was a massive falling out around the time she married my father. They emigrated to Canada . . . but I don’t know which came first, the falling out or the emigration. Mum used to fly off the handle every time they were mentioned . . . so no one speaks about them now.’ He leaned forward to massage his temples. ‘She’s likely to—’ He broke off abruptly.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Do you get on with her?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Should I take that as a no?’
‘She likes her own way. I sometimes wonder if that’s what caused the row with her parents. If they disapproved of Dad, they might have tried to stop the wedding.’
‘What’s to disapprove of?’
‘Maybe they thought he’d turn out like his father.’
‘Did he?’
Acland shook his head. ‘The opposite. He’s spent his whole life trying to make up for my grandfather’s failings.’
‘In what way?’
‘Mortgaged the house and the farm up to the hilt to pay off the old man’s debts and try to make a go of it. He had a dairy herd until the milk prices dropped and he found it was costing more to produce the stuff than he was being paid for it. I tried to persuade him to sell up at that stage, but—’ He broke off on a shrug.
‘What?’ asked Jackson.
‘The silly old fool went into sheep instead. There’s too much debt hanging over the place. The best he could afford after the mortgages were cleared would be a cheap brick box on an estate somewhere.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Mother wouldn’t like it.’
Jackson smiled slightly. ‘Not grand enough?’
‘Something along those lines. It wouldn’t be worth it anyway. She’d be at war with the neighbours in seconds.’ He stared out of the windscreen. ‘Dad earns just enough out of the flock to allow them to stay there, but it’s all very precarious.’
‘Does your mother know that?’
‘I doubt it. She’d make my father’s life hell if she did.’
*
Jackson thought of the conversation she’d had with Robert Willis that morning when she’d phoned to say Charles hadn’t returned. ‘Would he have gone to his parents?’ she’d asked. ‘I can’t see it. He and his mother don’t get on, although I’m not so sure about his relationship with his father. He talks more sympathetically about Mr Acland . . . usually to do with the farm and the amount of work the man has to put in.’ Willis’s dry smile travelled down the wire. ‘Mrs Acland seems to be a lady of leisure . . . and I think that offends Charles.’ ‘What about the girlfriend? I know you said there was no love lost between them, but would she take him in for old time’s sake?’ ‘Jen? Can’t see that either, I’m afraid. She might go along with it, but I can’t see Charles even asking. Does she know he’s staying with you?’
‘Not that I’m aware of. There’ve been no phone calls for him . . . and he keeps to his room when he’s not out at night with me.’
‘Even when he’s not sleeping?’
‘Yes.’ Jackson sighed. ‘He seems to have a problem with Daisy and it’s making life rather difficult. He cuts her dead if he bumps into her by accident and it’s upsetting her.’
Willis hesitated. ‘What sort of personality is she? Friendly? Affectionate?’
‘Very. I’ve been wondering if he fancies her.’
‘I wouldn’t think so. I’d say it’s more likely he’s afraid she fancies him. He has real difficulty interpreting women’s motives.’
‘Because of the girlfriend?’
‘Because of the relationship, certainly. He talked about signing up to a fantasy. I interpreted that as meaning that he expected to settle down with Jen and live happily ever after . . . but it didn’t work out that way.’