‘Careful where you head off to,’ she said. ‘There’s been lots of doomy whispering in the village. They think we’re due a bit of trouble.’ She shrugged. ‘Probably nothing.’
‘I’m always careful,’ said Bettina.
The sun was out, the grass, still sodden, full of bright-white glitter. The songbirds twittered and chirped hesitantly, as if distrustful of the sudden lull in the weather.
The woods covered a dozen or so acres and ran parallel to the beach. The path from Longworth House was wild and rarely used. Somewhere along it there was another path, branching right, which led to Wadley House. The family who’d taken it over all those years ago were supposedly a ghastly lot who squabbled pettily with the surrounding households and had once shot the McCarthys’ family dog because it had encroached their boundaries by a mere ten feet.
Bettina hopped over the small rubble wall, crossed the lane (there were indeed lots of lipstick-stained cigarette butts) and entered the wood through a gap in the trees. Her father had loved the woods, taking her and Jonathan for long strolls on dry Sundays. He’d crouch down to show them patches of mushrooms, saying which were safe to eat and which weren’t. He’d grown up poor, he reminded her, and used to pick mushrooms and wild garlic for his mother, who’d then bake them into delicious pies, sometimes with meat, usually without.
The path was boggy and slippery but clear of obstruction. How marvellous it was that she could hop this way and that, her feet sure and light, without falling into a gasping fat sweat. And how much easier to do it in trousers. She came to a large silvery birch – the marker. Just after it was the right turn which led to the other path. The way the tree branched, it’d always reminded her of an upside-down naked woman – there was the little pouch of her belly and the meeting place between the thighs, overgrown with moss. She and Bart had had plenty to say about that. She turned onto the side path, lighting a cigarette. Hadn’t they had a name for that tree, she and Bart? Lady… something.
A crunch close by – a branch being stepped on. She looked behind her, cigarette gripped between her lips, its smoke curling into her eye. She went to take it out but the paper had glued itself to her bottom lip and her fingers slid along its length all the way to the glowing tip, and she gasped, taking in an unsolicited throatful of smoke. Coughing, she snatched the cigarette from her lip and clutched her burned finger.
‘Only fools smoke,’ came a voice.
Chapter 31
Next to his corned beef sandwich was a bowl of dried prunes; since Bettina’s arrival he’d been constipated. His stomach felt hard and bloated and whenever he farted it smelled like faecal matter. Because, very simply, it was having to pass through tiny gaps in a shit-logged canal. He put a prune in his mouth and chewed it slowly.
Bettina appeared at the end of the garden. She was jogging – towards him, seemingly. He took his cigarette packet from the table and leaned back in his chair. Her tits were jiggling around underneath her blouse and her knees were covered in a thick cake of black mud. She slowed to a fast walk. What the hell did she want?
‘Hello, Bettina.’
She planted her hands on the table, trying to catch her breath.
He lit his cigarette and smoked it, waiting calmly. His foot tapping the tiles under the table. Taptaptaptap – the body always found a way to betray you.
‘I need your help,’ she finally said. She pulled out a chair and sank into it, then reached out and grabbed his pint of warm ale, drinking half of it in one.
‘Steady on, woman!’
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Burped. ‘I’m in trouble.’
‘We’re all in trouble, Bettina.’
‘Please don’t – this is serious. Can we please, just for now, forget all our – this is deadly serious and I need you.’
A fly landed on his remaining sandwich half. He brushed at it with his hand and it flew away. ‘Surely your special lady friend might be of better use to you.’
‘Oh my God!’ She raised her hands in the air, fingers snapping out. ‘Why must you always be so bloody difficult? You’re such a child!’
‘That’s rich, coming from you.’
She pressed her hands on the table, fingers fanned out, and looked at him, breathing angrily through her nostrils. ‘Fine. I’ll deal with it myself.’ And she got up, shoving her chair back so that it squeal-scraped against the patio tile, and stormed off towards the house. She’d left a greasy lipstick stain on the rim of his glass. He drank from the other side.
She came back out and went right past him, walking stiffly with one hand at her side – she was holding a gun closely to her hip. A gun. He sprang out of his seat and rushed after her.
‘What the hell—’
She continued to walk, refusing to look at him. ‘I told you it was serious.’
He grabbed her by the arm and she spun around, wild-eyed.
‘Congratulations, you’ve got my attention,’ he said. ‘Now get back in the house and put that thing back where you found it.’
She stamped on his foot and he cried out, letting go of her arm.
‘Either help me or fuck off,’ she said.
Oh, you bitch, he thought, rubbing his slippered foot on the back of his calf and watching her run to the end of the garden. Oh, you bitch. He should just leave her to whatever mess she’d made – it wasn’t his concern, not any more. Imagine he ran up to her, begging for help! She’d laugh in his face. You want me to help you? Oh, how delicious! Hahaha. You silly little man.
She hopped quite effortlessly over the wall and rather than veering left towards the path to the beach she ran straight for the woods.
‘Oh, for Chrissake,’ he said, running after her. He caught up a few yards along the path, cursing as his slippers landed in patches of soggy earth. ‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘I’m here. Slow down and tell me what’s happened.’
‘You’ll see for yourself soon enough.’
The whole front of his foot got suckered into a boggy oval of mud. ‘Damn! I wish you’d given me the chance to put some proper shoes on.’
‘I’m sorry for not considering your footwear’ – she hopped over a low, overhanging bramble – ‘but I’ve other more pressing concerns right now. Keep up!’
She stopped at the marker tree – Lady Upsy-Downsy-Ooh-la-la… how silly… he’d forgotten all about that. She pointed down the path. ‘Look.’
There, lying in the dirt, was Henry. His shoes were off and he had only one sock on. His hands were tied behind his back with a grey cashmere cardigan – Bettina’s. His face was turned away from them.
‘What have you done?’
‘I knocked him out. He was trying to blackmail me, can you believe it? I bashed him over the head with a rock and I – well, as you can see, I tied him up and stuffed one of his socks in his mouth. He was trying to—’
‘You might have killed him!’
She looked at him with a sudden childish worry, then back at Henry’s pathetic form. He snatched the gun out of her hands and lobbed it far into the bushes.
‘You rotter! You fucking rotter!’ She smacked him hard on the chest and then kicked his shin. ‘He was trying to make me have sex with him!’
‘What?’ He rubbed his shin. ‘Ow, that— What did you say?’