“Of course. I can open the gate for you. I even know how to cut out the alarms.”
Security, in the broad sense—security of incomes, of livelihoods and even of lives—had become a real enough concern in a region afflicted first by BSE, then, years later, by foot-and-mouth. But security as the Robinsons meant it and as it might affect a local policeman was something different. Bob Ireton might have said it was something the Robinsons brought with them from London, but he might also have said that it was something that, like those cow diseases, was now just spreading through the air. The feeling that nowhere was real y immune, even quiet green places in the depths of the country. Marleston and Polstowe were not exactly incident-free, but it was only recently that Bob had begun to feel that his safe little job as a country policeman—safe in the sense that it was far more secure than the jobs of dozens of farmers—was actual y bound up, as if he might be involved in some latent war, with a larger, unlocal malaise of insecurity. And he’d felt this particularly, like a palpable burden and responsibility, when he’d offered his shoulder to help carry Jack Luxton’s poor dead brother.
When the Robinsons had asked Jack about security—as if it formed part of the sale—Jack had been inclined to say (after some puzzlement about the word itself) that they never bothered, here, with burglar alarms or even with locking vehicle doors. But El ie had already warned him not to make the Robinsons feel sil y about anything they asked.
He might equal y have said that it always helped to know—
should it come to it—that there was a gun in the house. But this might not have been wise either. So he simply said that they never had any trouble, not in this part of the world. And he’d given Toby Robinson one of his most neutral looks.
The Robinsons weren’t interested in the kind of security
—or insecurity—that had mattered to Jack, that was causing him to be sel ing his farm. They saw this as only offering them their opportunity. They—or Mr. Robinson—
saw cow disease and distress sales as possibly working to their advantage. Toby had told his wife that north Devon was off the beaten track. It was stil genuine, undiscovered countryside. Everyone went to south Devon and Cornwal , where prices were already beefed up, and—talking of beef
—this BSE business could only mean there might be some real bargains around. Toby Robinson, investment banker though he was, had in certain situations, Clare knew, the instincts of a huckster, loving nothing better than to beat down a price. It was perhaps why he’d got to where he was.
And also why the word “countryside” seemed strange on his lips.
Toby had thought Jack was an extraordinary character to have to deal with (he wouldn’t have meant this as a compliment), but he was very careful not to appear to look down on him. He didn’t want to give the impression that a sum of money that to Jack, so he guessed (and guessed right), might be eye-popping, was to him, Toby, stil almost within the bounds of pocket money. At the same time he had a sort of visceral respect for the man. Farmers went to market, didn’t they? (Or did they any more?) They couldn’t be so different from people who worked in the City.
What the Robinsons meant by security was the kind of security that might prevent the possession and enjoyment of their new property from ever being impaired or violated.
Nonetheless, what Clare Robinson might have said of the effect upon her of seeing that newspaper item—though her physical wel -being had in no way been harmed and though their possession of Jebb Farmhouse remained happily intact—was that it made her feel insecure.
HAD BOB IRETON AND JACK found themselves together, soon after the funeral, on what was now the Robinsons’
property—and whether or not Jack would have been theoretical y guilty of trespassing—they might have had a conversation about security. They might have sat in Ireton’s police car, on the new, immaculately bricked turning-area, amid al the new landscaping and terracing, but looking at the essential y unchanged view before them (less impeded now after the removal of the Smal Barn), down Barton Field. Bob might have brought Jack up to date about al the changes at Jebb—visible as they were around them—but they might have moved inevitably, even despite themselves, onto this larger subject.
Bob might have said, al uding to the Robinsons and their kind and the fears manifested by their elaborate alarm systems, that such people had a problem. They didn’t know how fortunate they were, they couldn’t just be glad of what they had, and they didn’t know the real meaning of loss, did they? Here, Bob might have looked at Jack careful y. Both men, sitting side by side, might have been feeling stil a detectable, angular pressure on one shoulder. But on the other hand, Bob might have said, the world—the world at large—certainly wasn’t getting any safer, was it? So, he might have added, with an attempt at weary humour, he’d picked the right job, hadn’t he? But would have stopped short of saying anything to the effect that some people might have concluded that Tom (though Bob knew it could hardly actual y have been his motive) had picked the right job too. Keeping the world safe. Security. That was the argument that always got used, wasn’t it? Though it could be used, couldn’t it, to justify just about anything?
Bob, though a practical policeman, had become a not unreflective man and, while keeping these thoughts to himself, might have looked soberly across the frost-whitened val ey before them.
Jack might have said, “And a sergeant now, Bob.” Remembering al the stripes and gold braid and sashes he’d seen the day before. And Bob might have kept to himself how he’d had his uniform special y dry-cleaned and pressed for the morning’s occasion, how he’d inspected himself in the mirror. Jack might have felt, al the time, the medal burning in his pocket.
Bob, looking at Jack also contemplating that frosty view and seeing his Adam’s apple rise and fal , might have begun to wish this topic of security hadn’t emerged, prompted as it was not just by the burglar alarms at Jebb, but by his local policeman’s need to give some context to the death of a once local man in a far-away country. But Jack might at last have begun to take up the theme by saying that in his current line of work security was actual y quite a factor. It wasn’t just that now and then he had to step in to deal with little episodes that could make him feel a bit like a policeman (he might have looked shyly at Bob), but there was the whole question of guarding the caravans during the off-season months. Like now. Though he probably wouldn’t have mentioned that he had a contract with a security firm (he didn’t just rely on the local police) and this was especial y necessary when they—he and El ie
—took their holidays (though not this winter) in the Caribbean.
Jack might have said that it was a funny thing, but the caravanners, on their holidays, often wanted to talk about the general state of the world, how it wasn’t getting any safer. Just like him and Bob now. And Jack might have put forward the idea that there was no such place real y as
“away from it al ,” was there? Then he might have made a stumbling effort at a joke. He might have explained that he lived these days in a place cal ed Lookout Cottage that had once been a pair of coastguards’ cottages. It had once been where two now-forgotten souls had had the task, in theory, of guarding the whole country against invasion. But now everyone had to keep a lookout, didn’t they?