The Honours Page 20

  She brought the muzzle round and aimed at the kits. Two were watching their mother; the rest were romping in a listless, perfunctory way. The tendons in her wrist tightened. She pictured the impact, the splatter pattern.

  Mr Garforth said a bitch and her kits worked the area round their den systematically, devastating birds and ground game. He said if you disturbed them, they would move, and you rarely got a second chance. Once, on a patrol, he squeaked twice, and when a stoat popped out of an old mole run he blew its head off.

  The bitch stoat accelerated up a hump and launched itself, catching the grey rolls of the rabbit’s throat in its teeth. The rabbit made a noise like a baby crying. The stoat gnawed and kicked. Slowing to a lollop, the rabbit shrieked then lay down and closed its eyes. The stoat straddled the fat, hot body, massaging the rabbit’s head with its forepaws, shh, shh. There was no blood. The stoat wriggled for a while, then fell still.

  Delphine felt her lungs pushing against the soil. As she squinted through the dark nick of the sight, she wondered if her own life fell within the crosshairs of some looming, silent creator, and, if so, whether He would shoot.

  The bitch stoat snapped its head up, then squeaked and ran to its kits, leaving the dead rabbit behind. In one lithe brown mass the stoats threaded through the grass and into their den, in the shade of an ash.

  Delphine blinked, surprised. Stoats were tenacious little beasts, reluctant to abandon good grub without stashing it – bravery was their downfall, really, made them easy to lure into traps, easy to shoot.

  Something was coming.

  She heard a swish. Dr Lansley came striding through the tall grass, swiping a stick back and forth with gusto. His back had a pronounced concavity that became especially noticeable when he walked; he looked as if he were marching against a strong wind.

  She shrank into the amaranth. Through purple columns, she watched Lansley cross the scrub. He stopped, prodded the rabbit carcass with his stick. His tongue came out, triangular, purple. He blenched, moustache curling like a leech put to a candle. Delphine held the gun to her chest. Her heart pumped softly against the barrels.

  Dr Lansley glanced around. For an instant, he was looking straight at her – through her, she realised – then he continued, adjusting his course towards the old orchard. She waited till he had his back to her then dropped onto all-fours and began to crawl after him, following the amaranth bed to where it met the hedge.

  Lansley tugged at his lapels and hoisted himself over the stile. She counted to ten. She peeped over the hedge.

  The orchard was a sea of low, sprawling apple trees in knee-high grass. A narrow, flattened path meandered towards a dry-stone wall at the far end, in which was set an arch and a wooden gate. Lansley’s stroll became increasingly vigorous – he thrust his stick at trees or the cottony heads of thistles, as if naming them. He stopped, turned round.

  Delphine ducked. She did not think he had seen her. She listened. The day was slow and windless. Even the birdsong had a washed-out quality.

  She put down the shotgun and pushed her way into the hedge. A branch snagged her stupid, dowdy box-pleated skirt; she went to grab it and the branch snapped with a firecracker report. She froze.

  When she dared move again, she found a gap in the foliage. Peeling leaves aside, she peered through.

  Lansley was smoking a cigarillo, oblivious. They were his latest affectation. One elbow rested on the head of his stick and his gloved hands worked back and forth over each other in an odd, compulsive washing motion. He glanced about the orchard, then down at his gloves. Delphine relaxed her fingers, letting a few leaves swing back into place, and watched through the gaps. Lansley took out a cigarillo tin, opened it; the lid flashed in the sun. He tucked the tin back into his breast pocket and patted it; his hand remained on his chest for some time. He scanned the orchard once more, then continued towards the gate in the distance.

  He was heading for the chapel. He had to be.

  She reversed out of the hedge, almost toppling onto her backside, and picked up the gun. In the scrub, the mother stoat and its kits were back around the dead rabbit, nibbling, stripping. Beneath their pelts, muscles flowed like water.

  Delphine took the wide route around the orchard, following a dry streambed down past dense-packed silver birches, her shoes kicking up clumps of mud. The rows of birches scrolled by at different speeds, gaps opening and closing as she moved. She paused, scooped a clod of sandy soil out of the bank and smeared it laterally across her cheekbones. The book* said camouflage worked by breaking up the lines of the face. The dirt felt cool.

  The chapel was a small, boxy building of grey stone. It was surrounded by a low wall. Delphine approached from the rear. Long-term servants of Alderberen Hall were buried here. There were a few simple graves, the grass round them recently cut, and a white marble sarcophagus guarded by four winged cherubs, inscribed with the name Rutherford Cox. Mr Garforth had his plot reserved; he had shown her the exact rectangle of earth, tracing its limits with the tip of his cane.

  ‘Once I pass,’ he had said, ‘this slice of land will be mine for all time.’

  Today, a single stem of larkspur grew just beyond the border, trembling with flowers that went from mauve to a deep sunset blue. She looked at it and felt a tugging that was close to grief.

  On the corners of the chapel, alternate cornerstones jutted out like vertebrae. It was a short, easy climb, but it required both hands. She broke the shotgun, took out the cartridges, and slotted it into the slipcase she had borrowed from the gun room. Slinging the case over her shoulder, she vaulted the wall, ran to the foot of the chapel and began to climb.

  The stonework was warm from the sun. From nearby came the kek kek kek of a sparrowhawk. When she reached the roof, she put her hands out, steadied herself. Set into a carapace of moss-tinged slates was a little dormer window, its shutters slumped and shattered. Edging along a thin strip of mortar between the roof and the gutter, she stopped in front of the window and lowered herself through.

  The sounds of the orchard faded. She was in a cramped loft, two-thirds of which was taken up by a wooden dome, its rafters and supports. This was the void, the gap behind the chapel’s elegant domed ceiling. The air was cooler than outside; she smelt old wood and a musty, salty scent that might have been damp stone or bird muck. She pulled the shotgun from its case and used the muzzle to tear through cobwebs.

  Parts of the dome had rotted away. Delphine crouched and put her eye to one of the thumb-sized holes.

  Below, she saw Lansley standing at the altar. Behind him, beneath a gothic arch, was the war memorial, covered in names of estate workers and men from Pigg who had died nobbling Germans. One name loomed above the others, edged with intricate gold leaf scrollwork: Arthur Stokeham. Lansley took out a cigarillo, seemed to think better of it, tucked it away. On the altar, the stub of a candle sat in a tarnished tin holder. A tapestry hung down the front, showing a bull and a sword and a pool. Lansley exhaled, and the hiss of his breath filled the space, seemed to roar.

  He reached beneath his jacket and took out his watch. He flipped it open with practised efficiency, lifted it right up to his face.

  Delphine breathed through the corners of her mouth. A rafter was digging into her shins.

  Lansley produced a handkerchief and wiped sweat from around his jowls. He smoothed gloved thumb and forefinger over his little moustache again and again, checking his reflection in the lid of his pocket watch. He gripped his lapels, stood with his thumbs out, gazing down the aisle like a shipyard owner posing for a photograph. He sat down in one of the pews. He stood, turned away from the door, worried at a piece of dirt on his cuff and glanced back over his shoulder.

  He kept wincing, as if chewing on an ice cube, then he would relax his face before putting on a smile, a frown, a half-smile. He looked as if he did not quite know how to be human, as if he were practising the various emotions. He took out his pocket watch for the umpteenth time and blinked at it. The chapel echoed with
the clack of the latch lifting.

  Lansley put away the watch, straightened his back, lifted his chin, winced again, turned so he was facing the entrance side-on, became absorbed in one of the stained-glass windows.

  Delphine heard the door open. Dr Lansley’s features shifted beneath the new light source; a shadow fell across the altar.

  ‘You came,’ he said.

  The sound of slow footsteps on stone floor. The door shrieked shut and slammed with a boom.

  Lansley’s lips were parted. From this angle, she could see a star-shaped bald patch left by his aggressive combing. In the light of the stained glass, it burned.

  The footsteps stopped. Lansley glanced about him, as if he had lost something. Delphine still could not see who had entered. Lansley took a deep breath.

  ‘Hello,’ he said.

  He and Delphine waited for a reply. Delphine gripped her shotgun, pressing the barrels to her cheek. This was it. This was the moment.

  Footsteps, faster. Lansley looked shocked – he stepped back. A figure marched down the aisle, marched right up to him, and stopped. She was half a head shorter than him. She was wrapped in a tan shawl. She let the shawl fall away. She and Lansley were almost touching.

  He raised his hands slowly, as if it were a bank robbery. Neither he nor the woman said anything. He was breathing, and looking at her. His hands sank.

  The woman touched her brown hair, sunlight silvering individual filaments. She grabbed the back of Lansley’s head, pulled him forward and kissed him.

  And by ‘she’, that is to say – as Delphine saw clearly now – Mother.

  Delphine squeezed the trigger.

  A loud unbroken tone, like a death ray. Delphine opened her eyes and saw clouds of roiling dust. She was on her back. The air hung thick with the maple-bacon tang of gunpowder. She pulled the neck of her cotton vest up over her mouth, took a breath. Her lips tasted salty wet. She lifted her vest away and saw a bloody crocus. All she could hear was ringing.

  She sat up, felt a sharp pain beneath her ribs. The world felt distant and unreal. She groped through a yellow fog until she found the shotgun. There was a new hole in the chapel dome. Her hands were bloody. She crawled to the window and back out onto the roof, not caring if she was seen, not caring if she fell.

  The sun hurt her eyes. All birdsong was submerged beneath the single, constant note filling her ears. She was vaguely aware of two figures running pell-mell towards the orchard.

  The shotgun slipped from her slick fingers and she let it fall; it landed in the graveyard with a clatter. She walked back along the guttering, climbed down the wall and jumped the last ten feet. The impact thudded through her heels and made her teeth slam together. Colours seemed too bright – the grass was a garish, roaring green, her grubby fingers bright pink against it.

  She grabbed the shotgun and ran.

  Delphine squatted in the lee of a haystack, rocking. Her heart was a bundle of sticks.

  Lansley kissing Mother. Why hadn’t Mother resisted him? She had seemed so unnatural, so compelled.

  Delphine tried for tears, but none came. There was just an icy, hollow feeling.

  She took out the box of Swan Vestas she always carried with her now, and struck one. She watched it burn down till it reached her fingers. She let the pain grow to a fine white point. When she dropped the match, her mind felt clear. She lit another and let it burn down. She took a piece of hay from the ground and lit one end. It shrivelled and blackened in moments. She made a little heap, pulling hay from the stack, and set it on fire. She held her hand over the flames, close enough so the heat tightened her thoughts like a winch.

  As the ringing in her ears died down, it broke into bits. All the little fragments rang at different pitches, fading in and out.

  Was this the madness, finally? Was her birthright coming to claim her?

  Then she realised – the sounds came from inside the haystack.

  They were rats.

  An hour later, Delphine marched beneath a purpling sky with her electric torch, the ferret box and a cricket bat. The box had airholes drilled in it and hung from her shoulder by a leather strap.

  The fields were northeast of Alderberen Hall, shielded from the sea by a narrow belt of trees. By the time she reached them, it was almost night. Capped with the last shafts of light, haystacks stood dark and massy and silent, like a herd of sleeping diplodocuses. She walked to the nearest and set the box down. She flipped the lid. Behind the ringing in her skull she could hear rustles, squeaks. She took out Lewis and Maxim, gripping them like stick grenades.

  ‘Careful, Max,’ she said, and kissed him on the head. She hurled him into the air. A black smudge arced through the sky and landed on top of the haystack. ‘Careful, Lewis.’ She kissed Lewis, then flung him, too.

  Delphine took the torch and the cricket bat. She swept the beam around the base of the stack, looking for runs. She found a hole and put the torch down facing it. The squeaking grew louder. She lifted the bat.

  Bodies poured from the hole. Screaming.

  She hit them with the bat. She hit them again and again. Their stomachs burst. Some got away. The bat left pits in the earth. A rat writhed, slapping its tail in the dirt; she pounded it flat. When her arm got tired she switched to a two-handed grip.

  They kept coming. She beat them and beat them. She felt as if she were watching herself. They died in ones and pairs, and she despised them for it.

  When they stopped coming, she stood panting over a trench lined with bodies.

  Max scampered out of the run, chirping. She dropped the bat and caught him round the haunches just as Lewis appeared. She made a grab for Lewis but he ducked back into the run. She called for him, waiting with her hand poised above the hole, and when he stuck his head out a second time she snatched him up.

  Lewis had been bitten on his nose. His pale fur was dappled with dark flecks.

  Delphine looked down at the bloody bat, the bright pool thrown by the torch, the corpses. The pain and fear and confusion had receded, leaving only a steady, pounding hate. There were plenty of haystacks left. The ferrets wriggled in her grip. Her muscles trembled.

  She walked to the next haystick, kissed Lewis and Maxim on their warm, wet heads, and began again, a mantra forming to the rhythm of her swings:

  Lansley, Lansley, Lansley

  *The Boys’ Bumper Treasury Of War (1934).

  CHAPTER 16

  GOOD AUTHORS TOO WHO ONCE KNEW BETTER WORDS

  August 1935

  Delphine squatted at the edge of the lake, prodding the corpse with a twig. The afternoon was hot, fragments of sun glowing beneath the water like clinkers in a bucket.

  The reeds hid a cracked terracotta bowl with steep edges. Inside, the frog’s crisp, shrivelled body was like a seedpod. She blew gently and it shivered.

  Off in the distance, in front of the house, guests were doing complicated calisthenics while Mr Propp sat in a lawnchair watching. Every so often he rang a bell and everyone had to freeze till he rang it again. It was like a game, except nobody was smiling. Professor Carmichael looked like he might cry.

  Delphine drew her pocket knife from her sock and used it to saw a stick into pieces, then tied the pieces together with fishing line to make a miniature raft. She set the raft on the bank and added a layer of balled-up tissue paper, loosely secured with a couple more loops of fishing line. She swept the desiccated frog into her palm, then sat it in the middle of the tissue paper, like a deva on a lotus. She unscrewed the canister she had stolen from Mr Garforth’s storeroom and drizzled paraffin onto the pyre. Droplets ran over the frog’s dry flesh, beading on its back and lips.

  She noticed a toad* watching from the sticky mud. She went over and picked it up; it was fat and wet and cool.

  ‘No civilians.’ She carried it a short distance along the bank, one hand cupped over its head like a sunhat, feeling its soft, squat legs kick at the heel of her palm. She set it down on a little headland and it lolloped into the clear
water with a plop. She sniffed her fingers. They smelt of gunpowder.

  She returned to the frog and stood over it for a few moments. She weighed up various pronouncements but none felt appropriate. Eventually, she placed her palms together and said, in her head:

  This court finds you guilty of adultery. The sentence is death by immolation.

  She picked up the raft by its corners and lowered it onto the water. It settled, then began to turn, very slowly. Across the frog’s black body drops of paraffin winked like garnets.

  Delphine wrapped some cotton wool round the end of a twig. She splashed on a little paraffin then struck a match and lit it. The cotton wool blackened and vanished, flames licking invisibly in the bright sun. She touched it to the funeral raft.

  Nothing happened. Then the air above the frog’s head warped and fluttered. The crumpled tissues transformed from lilies to black dahlias. She knelt to get a closer look. The frog tilted, its throne furling, compressing like bellows. When she shielded her eyes she could see a soft yellow outline. Something in the frog’s head popped and hissed.

  ‘Viking, was he?’

  Delphine turned. Lord Alderberen sat in his wooden wheelchair, squinting from beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat. He was wrapped in a camouflage-green double-breasted jacket and had a cream blanket spread over his knees.

  ‘I used to burn things, y’know,’ he said.

  She stared at him, a coldness rising in her chest. His skin had a bluish tint. His eyes were gluey and yellow. He was not looking quite at her face.

  He frowned, blinked at his lap. Now she finally confronted him, Delphine was surprised at how brave she felt.

  As he watched her, he nodded constantly. Some days, he brought it under control until it was the barest quiver. Sometimes, like now, it became a sequence of violent pecks, as if he were attempting to hammer in a nail with his chin. He gripped the hand rims of his wheelchair.