She had a picture of a boy, creeping around the house, shrinking into shadows, making no noise, and found it hard to reconcile with the image of this successful, energetic man.
“And your gran came to look after you?”
“Ivy, yes.” He turned from the window to face her. “Did Bella tell you about that too?”
“About you and Dougie and Ivy living together. Yes.”
“They were good times. We weren’t a conventional family but it worked OK. Dad found it easier when I was old enough to help on the farm. We had things to talk about then.” “Neutral ground,” she said, echoing her thoughts about her and Edie.
“Something like that.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I left first to go to school. It’s too far to travel from here to Kimmerston every day, especially in the winter, so the council run a hostel where high school kids can board during the week. I was lonely at first but I suppose it made me independent. Then I went away to college. Like you, I suppose. It’s what young people do.”
“Weren’t you tempted to come back?”
“Not then. I had other ambitions. Something to prove perhaps. Later, when Dad was ill and it would have been natural to take over the farm, Bella was here, doing at least as good a job as I could.”
“Did you resent her taking over?” It was an Edie-like question but he seemed not to mind. “A bit, I
suppose. Only natural, isn’t it? But I’d not have had the patience to care for him like she did. As I said, we weren’t that close. Because of Mum dying he could never be a touchy-feely sort of dad, even if it had been in his nature in the first place. I couldn’t imagine doing all those intimate things Bella took in her stride -feeding, bathing, you know. And I couldn’t imagine Dad wanting me to do it either. I suppose I could have taken over the farm, but I don’t think it would have worked, the three of us together. Now though… ” He had been talking almost to himself and, realizing suddenly that he had an audience, stopped abruptly.
“You’re not thinking of farming Black Law yourself?” She was astonished. The whole encounter had been a surprise. She had thought of Neville Furness as a businessman. Ruthless, ambitious. Working first on the Holme Park Estate and then for Slateburn Quarries, he was, so far as she was concerned, one of the bad dies who ravaged the countryside. A cartoon villain. It had been easy to blame him for Bella’s suicide, even to suspect him of Grace’s murder. Yet now he was talking so diffidently about his father, with such affection about the farm.
Watch out, girl, you’re being conned, she thought. What big teeth he has. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“It has crossed my mind to move back,” he admitted. “It’s either that or sell it and I don’t think I have the heart to do that. But I’ll have a look at the figures. Perhaps I’m not being realistic.”
“What about the quarry?”
“Oh, the quarry would go ahead without me. Or not, depending on the outcome of the inquiry.”
“I suppose you’d sell access to the site across Black Law land,” she said. “It would make more of a profit than sheep.”
“At the moment anything would make more of a profit than sheep.”
“Would you come to an arrangement with Godfrey Waugh?” she persisted “I don’t know. I still love this place. It wouldn’t be the same, would it, with a main road past the kitchen door, articulated trucks rolling past every hour of the day and night.”
Don’t be naive, she thought. Don’t get taken in. They all tell you what you want to hear. Remember Peter Kemp.
“Do you have any idea why Bella killed herself?” she asked suddenly.
“I feel responsible in a way.”
“Do you?” It was the last thing she had expected.
“I should have realized it was all getting too much for her. Looking after Dad, the farm. Something must just have given. At least… ” “At least what?” she demanded.
He shook his head. Some expression of distaste on his face prompted her to complete the sentence for him. “You were going to say that at least the violence was directed at herself and not at your father?” “Yes,” he said. “All right.”
“You knew about her conviction?”
“Of course.”
“When did you find out?”
So it was you, she thought. You made her kill herself. Somehow you found out and you couldn’t bear the thought of her looking after your father. But again his reply surprised her.
“It was years ago, before they were married. I was invited to tea.
This room was just the same. We sat here, drinking tea and eating walnut loaf and she said, “I think you should know. I’ve a conviction for manslaughter.” Quite calmly, as if it was a bit of news she’d picked up at the mart.
“Then I remembered the case. It was when I was a kid but it was all over the papers and they talked about it at school. Charlie Noble had been a pupil there a couple of years before. She’d told Dad the night before, had offered to leave at once if he wanted her to. Of course he said she should stay, but she insisted on telling me too.
“I said it was up to them, their lives. That was what they expected and I’d have wanted the same response from them if it was the other way round. But it wasn’t easy. I thought she was after a meal ticket.”
“She wasn’t like that.” But Rachael wondered how she’d feel if Edie took up with an ex-con.
“No. I realized that later. I’d have found it hard to like her anyway at the time. She wasn’t my mother. And my father seemed happy with her. Much happier than I’d ever been able to make him. I was probably glad of an excuse to disapprove.” He smiled. “I came to terms with it when my father was ill. It would have been churlish then to keep up the icy formality. I started to visit, to stay overnight occasionally.”
So Neville’s room really was Neville’s, Rachael thought.
“It was true what I told you at the funeral. We did get on very well at the end.”
“I’m glad.” But she wasn’t glad. She was jealous. How could Bella have confided in Neville Furness and not in her? And she wasn’t even sure she believed him.
In the distance there were voices. Vera Stanhope and Joe Ashworth had returned. Even from here Rachael could sense their anger and frustration. Doors were slammed. Vera swore. It seemed the meeting in Kimmerston hadn’t been a success.
“I want you to have something,” Neville said quickly. He looked at the door as if he expected Vera to burst in. “Something of Bella’s. She’d want that.”
“Oh, I don’t know… “
“Are you allowed away from this place?”
“Of course.”
“Come to dinner with me. Not tonight, there’s a meeting. Tomorrow.”
“I can’t,” she said. “My car’s at the garage.”
“I’ll pick you up. Of course.” He moved to the door. “I’d better see what they want with me.”
Then she realized that Vera had summoned him to Black Law for an interview. He hadn’t said he was there because he loved the place; that was the impression he’d given. She felt cheated. She had wanted to ask Vera what news she had on the car which had rammed her, but now she left immediately and went back to Baikie’s to work.
Chapter Forty-Four.
In the garden at the Priory Anne was weeding. She was wearing shorts and knelt on an old folded towel, standing up occasionally to stretch and move on to the next patch. The sun was hot on her back and shoulders. The weeds pulled out easily and she could shake off the sandy soil before throwing the ragwort and the groundsel into her barrow.
She had paid a man from the village to come into the garden every week to water and cut the grass but he’d done nothing else and the plants seemed to have thrived on the neglect. The place had a riotous tropical feel. There were large overblown blooms and under the fruit-net berries had ripened and dropped from bushes and canes, so as she crouched in the border she smelled decay as well as heady perfume.