Arms and the Women (2 page)

Then he switched on the engine, engaged gear, and without a backward glance at the gaping cave, the gloomy lake or the bodies that lay between them, he sent the truck rumbling into the dark tunnel curving away through the crowding trees.

High on the sunlit, windswept Snake Pass which links Lancashire with Yorkshire, Peter Pascoe thought, I'm in love.

Even with a trail of blood running from her nose over the double hump of her full lips to peter out on her charming chin, she was grin-like-an-idiot-gorgeous.

'You OK?' he said, grinning like an idiot till he realized that in the circumstances this was perhaps not the most appropriate expression.

'Yes, yes,' she said impatiently, dabbing at her nose with a tissue. 'Is this going to take long?'

The driver of her taxi, to whom the question was addressed, looked from the bent and leaking radiator of his vehicle to the jackknifed lorry he had hit and said sarcastically, 'Soon as I repair this and get that shifted, we'll be on our way, luv.'

Pascoe, returning from Manchester over the Snake, had been behind the lorry when it jackknifed. Simple humanitarian concern had brought him running to see if anyone was hurt, but now his sense of responsibility as a policeman was taking over. He pulled out his mobile, dialled 999 and gave a succinct account of what had happened.

'Better set up traffic diversions way back on both sides,' he said. The road's completely blocked till you get something up here to shift the lorry. One injury. Passenger in the taxi banged her nose. Lorry driver probably suffering from shock. Better have an ambulance.'

'Not for me,' said the woman vehemently. 'I'm fine.'

She rose from the verge where she'd been sitting and moved forward on long legs, whose slight unsteadiness only added to their sinuous attraction. She looked as if she purposed to move the lorry single-handed. If it had been sentient, she might have managed it, thought Pascoe.

'Silly cow'd have been all right if she'd put her seat belt on like I told her,' said the taxi driver.

'Perhaps you should have been firmer,' said Pascoe mildly. 'Who is she? Where're you headed?'

No reason why he should have asked or the driver answered these questions, but without his being aware of it, over the years Pascoe had developed a quiet authority of manner which most people found harder to resist than mere assertiveness.

The driver pulled out a docket and said, 'Miss Kelly Cornelius. Manchester Airport. Terminal Three. She's going to miss her plane.'

He spoke with a satisfaction which identified him as one of that happily vanishing species, the Ur-Yorkshireman, beside whom even Andy Dalziel appeared a creature of sweetness and light. Only a hardcore misogynist could take pleasure in anything which caused young Miss Cornelius distress.

And she was distressed. She returned from her examination of the lorry and gave Pascoe a look of such expressive unhappiness, his empathy almost caused him to burst into tears. 'Excuse me,' she said in a melodious voice in which all that was best of American lightness, Celtic darkness, and English woodnotes wild, conjoined to make sweet moan, 'but your car's on the other side of this, I guess.'

'Yes, I'm on my way home to Mid-Yorkshire,' he said. 'Looks like I'll have to turn around and find another way.'

'That's what I thought you'd do,' she said, her voice breathless with delight, as if he'd just confirmed her estimate of his intellectual brilliance. 'And I was wondering, I know it's quite a long way back, but how would you feel about taking me to Manchester Airport? I hate to be a nuisance, but you see, I've got this plane to catch, and if I miss it, I don't know what I'll do.'

Tears brimmed her big dark eyes. Pascoe could imagine their salty taste on his tongue. What she was asking was of course impossible, but (as he absolutely intended to tell Ellie later when he cleansed his conscience by laundering his prurient thoughts in her sight) it was flattering to be asked.

He said, 'I'm sorry, but my wife's expecting me.'

'You could ring her. You've got a phone,' she said with tremulous appeal. 'I'd be truly, deeply, madly grateful.'

This was breathtaking, in every sense.

He said, 'Surely there'll be another plane. Where are you going anyway?'

Silly question. It implied negotiation.

There was just the hint of a hesitation before she answered, 'Corfu. It's my holiday, first for years. And it's a holiday charter, so if I miss it, there won't be much chance of getting on another, they're all so crowded this time of year. And I'm meeting my sister and her little boy at the airport, and she's disabled and won't get on the plane without me, so it'll be all our holidays ruined. Please.' Suddenly he knew he was going to do it. All right, it was crazy, but he was going to have to go back all the way to Glossop anyway and the airport wasn't much further, well, not
very
much further . . .

He said, 'I'll need to phone my wife.'

'That's marvellous. Oh, thank you, thank you!'

She gave him a smile which made all things seem easy - the drive back, the phone call to Ellie, everything - then dived into the taxi and emerged with a small leather case like a pilot's flight bag.

Travelling light, thought Pascoe as he stepped back to get some privacy for his call home. The woman was now talking to the taxi driver and presumably paying him off. There seemed to be some disagreement. Pascoe guessed the driver was demanding the full agreed fare on the grounds that it wasn't his fault he hadn't got her all the way to Terminal 3.

Terminal 3.

Last time he'd flown out of Manchester, Terminal 3 had been for British Airways and domestic flights only.

You couldn't fly charter to Corfu from there.

Perhaps the driver had made a mistake.

Or perhaps things had changed at Manchester in the past six months.

But now he was recalling the slight hesitancy before the sob story. And would a young woman on holiday really travel so light . . . ?

Pascoe, he said to himself, you're developing a nasty suspicious policeman's mind.

He turned away and began to punch buttons on his phone.

When it was answered he identified himself, talked for a while, then waited.

In the distance he heard the wail of sirens approaching.

A voice spoke in his ear. He listened, asked a couple of questions, then rang off.

When he turned, Kelly Cornelius was standing by the taxi, smiling expectantly at him. A police car pulled up onto the verge beside him. An ambulance wasn't far behind.

As the driver of the police car opened his door to get out, Pascoe stooped to him. Screened by the car, he pulled out his ID, showed it to the uniformed constable and spoke urgently.

Then he straightened up, waved apologetically to the waiting woman, flourishing his phone as if to say he hadn't been able to get through before.

He began to dial again, watching as the policemen went across to the taxi and started talking to the driver and the woman.

'Hi,' said Pascoe. 'It's me. Yes, I'm on my way but there's been an accident . . . no, I'm not involved but I am stuck, the road's blocked, and I'm going to have to divert . . . yeah, take me when I come . . . give Rosie a kiss . . . how's she been today? . . . yes, I know, it's early days ... it'll be OK, I promise . . . love you . .. 'bye.'

He switched off and went back to the taxi.

'What the hell do you mean, I can't go?' the young woman was demanding. Anger like injury did nothing to detract from her beauty.

'Sorry, miss,' said the policeman stolidly. 'Can't let you leave the scene of an accident where someone's been injured.'

'But I'm the one who's been injured so if I say it doesn't matter . . .'

'Doesn't work like that,' said the policeman. 'Need to get you checked out at hospital. There may be claims. Also you're a witness. We'll need a statement.'

'But I've got a plane to catch.' Her gaze met Pascoe's. 'Corfu. It's my holiday.'

A sharp intake of breath from the policeman.

'Certainly can't let you leave the country, miss, that's definite,’ he said. 'Here's the ambulance lads now. Why not let them give you the once-over while I talk to these other gents?'

Pascoe caught her eye and shrugged helplessly. She looked back at him, her face (still beautiful) now ravaged with shock and betrayal, as Andromeda might have looked if Perseus, on point of rescuing her from the ravening dragon, had suddenly remembered a previous appointment.

'Well, if you're done with me, Officer, I think I'd better start finding another route home,' he said, looking away, unable to bear that devastatingly devastated expression.

The constable said, 'Right, sir. We've got your name in case we need to be in touch. Goodbye now.'

As he made his way back to his car, Pascoe reflected on the paradox that now he felt much more guilty about Kelly Cornelius than he had before, when it had just been a question of simple reflexive desire.

Women, he thought as he sat in his car and put the necessary enquiries in train.
Women!
All of them queens of discord, blessed with the power even on the slightest acquaintance to get in a man's mind and divide and rule. Look at him now, sitting here when he should be heading home, checking out his vague suspicions like a good professional, uncertain whether he would be bothering if he hadn't felt so ready to submit to this lovely creature's control, with part of him hoping even as he started the process that he was going to come out of this looking a real dickhead.

Women. How come they didn't rule the universe?

COMFORT BLANKET

Arms and the Men they sang, who played at Troy

Until they broke it like a spoiled child's Toy

Then sailed away, the Winners heading home,

The Losers to a new Play-pen called Rome.

Behind, like Garbage from their vessels flung,

 - Submiss, submerged, but certainly not sung -

A wake of Women trailed in long Parade,

The reft, the raped, the slaughtered, the betrayed.

Oh, Shame! that so few sagas celebrate

Their
Pain,
their
Perils,
their
no less moving Fate!

But mine won't either, for why should it when

The proper Study of Mendacity is MEN?

BOOK ONE

'Your pretty daughter,' she said, 'starts to hear of such things. Yet,' looking full upon her, 'you may be sure that there are men and women already on their road, who have their business to do with
you,
and who will do it. Of a certainty they will do it. They may be coming hundreds, thousands, of miles over the sea there; they may be close at hand now; they may be coming, for anything you know, or anything you can do to prevent it, from the vilest sweepings of this very town.'

Charles dickens:
LITTLE DORRIT

i

spelt from Sibyl's leaves

Eleanor Soper . . .

The little patch of blue I can see through the high round window is probably the sky, but it could just as well be a piece of blue backcloth or a painted flat.

licks up the blood from the square where a riot has been . . .

Distantly I hear a clatter of hooves. They're changing guard at . . . I've heard them do it thousands of times. But hearing's as far as it goes. They could be mere sound effects, played on tape. You don't take anything on trust in this business. Not even your friends. Especially not them.

I who know everything knew nothing till I knew that.

what does it mean? . . .

The only unquestionable reality lies in the machine.

But while reality hardly changes at all, the machine has changed a lot. It grows young as I grow old.

Shall I like my namesake grow old forever?

My namesake, I say. After so long usage, am I beginning to believe as so many of the young ones clearly believe that my name really is Sibyl? Strange that the name my parents gave me also labelled me as a woman of magic, but an enchantress as well as a seer. Morgan. Morgan Meredith. Morgan le Fay, as Gaw used to call me in the days of his enchantment.

But now my enchanting days are over. And it was Gaw who rechristened me when he saw that I had no magic to counter the sickness in my blood.