I dithered about the funeral. At first I wasn’t going to go at all, but then I changed my mind at the last minute and drove down to Hawkshead on the scooter, ten minutes behind Ruby and Russell’s car. I slipped into the church and saw Hunter sitting a few rows from the back.
“Mind if I join you?”
“Why shouldn’t you?”
“Your reputation.”
“Oh, sit down,” he said impatiently. I sat and looked around at the murmuring pews crammed with sombre farmers and their wives.
“Big crowd,” I said. “For a man with no family.”
“All these families have known his for generations,” said Hunter, and I glimpsed Isaac striding away from me across the long dim fields. I’d been of no more importance to him than a momentary breeze ruffling the grass.
Hunter had been right: I never had got close to him. I would never know him now. As I thought of Selena’s veiled, uncertain accusations against Isaac and Ruby, a queasy wave of apprehension rippled through me. Poison.
I craned my neck to see Selena. She was sitting at the front, looking dramatically widow-like with a black scarf draped over her head, and accepting condolences with a solemn grace. She seemed to be the target for them: I supposed there was nobody else, except Bryony, hunched and uncomfortable in a black jacket that was too tight on the shoulders.
Matt and Freddie sat across the aisle a little further down from me. So they were both there after all, despite the shop (and who was selling my paintings? I thought tetchily.)
I leaned over to Hunter. “Matt said he can give Selena an alibi. He saw her in Keswick shortly before noon on the morning Isaac died.”
“I know,” said Hunter shortly. “He rang us yesterday. Larry said, so what? We knew that. It was accidental death.”
“Isn’t that up to the coroner?”
“He’ll go with whatever the pathologist says. And he maintains that Isaac’s injuries are consistent with an accident.”
I was silent for a moment. “I’d like to believe that. Selena said something weird to me the other day. It was about Ruby. She said Ruby poisoned Carol. Or was poison, or something.”
He turned, eyes narrowing. “Well, which was it?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t clear. She said to ask Luke.”
He snorted, quietly. “That’s a really useful piece of advice. What made her come out with that?”
“She was cross with me for not painting her. She wouldn’t elucidate.”
Hunter shook his head. “It’s all pretence.” His eyes turned towards Ruby, who was already wiping her eyes with a bright pink handkerchief. Meanwhile Russell sat ramrod-straight, staring at the altar.
I reflected that Hunter was probably right. It wouldn’t be the first thing Selena had faked. “What will happen to Selena about her birth certificate?” I asked.
“Larry Irlam’s prepared to issue a caution as long as she sorts it out.” Hunter’s tone told me he didn’t approve. “Not in the public interest to prosecute, he says. He buys the poor little widow thing. I don’t.” We watched Matt get up and walk down the aisle to embrace Selena with careful gravity, at which she beamed complacently. She was enjoying all the attention.
“He’d make a good minister, Matt, wouldn’t he?” said Hunter in an undertone. “One of those trendy ones, all talk and no God. Gay, too, Perfect.”
“Careful. Freddie’s apparently already convinced you’re a homophobe.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Just a misanthrope, then.”
“I have few delusions, that’s all,” said Hunter. “Russell’s a cold fish, isn’t he? Ignoring Ruby like that. She’s in tears, and all he’s doing is staring round at other people.”
“Just like you.”
“I do it unobtrusively,” said Hunter. He was happy. In his element.
I wasn’t. I hated this: I didn’t want to be here. And once the coffin was carried in, with too many flowers, under those white walls with the red and blue of the stained glass trumpeting at me, I couldn’t stand it any more.
“Sorry,” I said to Hunter. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” he whispered sternly. “Avoiding the funeral won’t make him any less dead.”
I shook my head. The cold of the church was pressing through me. Hunter jerked his head impatiently towards the door. I slid out of my pew: the truth was, I was afraid I would cry, and didn’t want to do it in public, not with Hunter, not all over his uniform again. And Isaac, that quiet, private man, surely had enough people watching him. As I crept to the back of the church, I was surprised to see Muriel and Griff sitting there. Muriel gave me a little wave.
In the churchyard I breathed in gulps of mild, damp air. Birds gossiped in the trees. I leant on a gravestone and got my hankie out, although the tears didn’t come even when I thought of Nick.
A woman walked up to me. Long, sensible skirt, face kind behind her silver glasses. A churchwarden or whoever.
“Are you all right, dear?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Funerals aren’t easy times, I know.”
“No.” I dabbed my eyes unnecessarily. “Do you keep a record of all the funerals you’ve had here?”
“We do indeed.”
“So would you have a record of one that happened almost two years ago? Around the end of May,” I said, recalling Carol’s death certificate.
“Somebody you know?”
“Carol Staithwaite,” I said. “The wife of–” I gestured dumbly at the church.
She made sympathetic noises. “Yes, I do seem to remember. Very sad.”
“I just wanted to check the date,” I said, and while I was still mumbling about anniversaries and flowers, she led me through a little side door, said “Wait here,” and returned a moment later with a fat, business-like ledger.
“We should really charge for this,” she said with a compassionate glance at my face, “but in the circumstances… let’s just see.” She leafed through the ledger. “Here we are. May the twenty-ninth.” The minister boomed through the wall. There was muffled coughing.
“Can I look?” I asked her.
She pointed to the page obligingly: but the entry I looked at was not of Carol's funeral service, but the one immediately before it, the previous day. The funeral Selena should have gone to, when she turned up at Carol’s by mistake.
John Skelton of Satterthwaite. Only the two funerals had taken place that week.
“Thank you,” I said. Then I managed a trembly hiccup, got my hankie out again and used it as an excuse to escape her kindness.
Back out in the churchyard, I stood looking across the village, the church beside me as square, grey and comforting as a grandmother. It would not approve. I walked down into Main Street so that it would not hear.
I got out my phone and dialled directory enquiries: Skelton, Satterthwaite, Cumbria; and jotted down the number.
When I rang it, an old woman’s voice answered. “Irene Skelton.”
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I said, “only I’m trying to trace an old friend, Selena Crabbe, and I believe she used to know your family.”
“Selena what? Selena Crabbe? We don’t know anyone of that name. Winnie!” I heard her move the phone away to call. “Winnie, do we know a Selena Crabbe?” Her voice came close again. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”
“A dark girl, very striking, in her twenties? I understood she was invited to John Skelton’s funeral.”
“I’m afraid not, dear. It was a very quiet funeral. Our father was ninety-seven when he died, you know. There was only family there.”
“I must have the wrong Skelton,” I said, and ended the phone call in a torrent of mutual apologies.
So why had Selena turned up at Carol’s funeral? She hadn’t known Carol: she hadn’t known John Skelton. But her presence there had changed her life, and Luke’s.
Nobody went to a funeral by mistake. It gave me a creepy feeling, as if she’d been a persistent ghoul
hanging around the gravestones, just waiting for a likely victim to happen by.
When I saw Griff and Muriel strolling down the road towards me, I greeted them with relief.
“I thought we’d better come away,” said Muriel. “It was all too confusing. We don’t need to stay for the whole funeral, do we, Griff?” She patted his hand.
“We didn’t even know the man,” said Griff, looking faintly baffled.
“He was a friend of a friend, Griff… Like Eden. This is Eden. I thought we’d stroll around the village for a while. Will you join us?”
I accepted, although Hawkshead is a disappointing village, in my opinion. Attractive buildings, but the churches and the pubs are the only ones with any point. The shops were overrun with Peter Rabbit and his accomplices. We stood and looked in a window at jumpers appliquéd with cross-eyed sheep, which Griff happily mocked, the funeral forgotten.
“Who would wear that, really? Could you see me wearing that at home, Muriel? Why do people buy these things?”
“They have a sheep fixation,” I said gloomily.
“People get carried away on holiday,” said Muriel. “They’re hoping to take a piece of it home with them.”
“That’s what I rely on,” I admitted. For I knew that was the reason the tourists bought my watercolours: to own a small rectangle of magical calm, a window on a purer world. They hoped to acquire health with the new hiking boots, serenity with the watercolours, and culture with their copy of Dorothy Wordsworth’s journals (how that woman walked!) – all of which would be, once home, unused, unread, unbearably remote.
Griff was typical. For all his gentle joke about the jumpers, he was carried passively along on that dreamy holiday drift like a floating log surrounded by Beatrix Potter teapots. Our confrontation on the top of Loughrigg had vanished out of sight downstream.
Not so Muriel, though. Hassled and busy, she was working: like the hoteliers, delivery drivers and all the rest who had to cope with the tranquillized herd. Griff gave her little respite.
“We’ll have to go back to the church soon,” she instructed him. “I said we’d meet up with Ruby after the service, and find a tea-shop.”
“Who?”
“A friend of mine,” said Muriel. “A friend of Freddie’s.”
“Oh, yes, Freddie! He’s a nice chap, Freddie.”
“So is Matt,” said Muriel. On Griff’s face, incomprehension, so she turned to me. “A clever young man. I’m surprised he stays up here, in a way.”
“I suppose it’s a bit of a backwater,” I said.
“Love,” said Muriel, her face wistful. “Love and obligation. They lead one down roads that one wouldn’t otherwise choose. And Freddie rescued Matt, you know, when he was down on his luck.”
“Did he?” I didn’t know the full story.
“Yes, when Matt was manning an antiques stall in Liverpool, two years ago, and Freddie was there looking for old books. Quite a romantic story, really. Freddie bought a book off him and then bought him a drink. Matt liked him at once but thought he’d never see him again. Then a few weeks later Matt’s business went kaput and he came back up to the Lakes, hunting for Freddie, asking around until he found him. And Freddie took him in.”
“Sweet.”
“Though I think positions are reversed now. I get the impression it’s Matt who keeps the shop afloat,” said Muriel. “He’s the ambitious one. He plans ahead. It was Matt who started up the internet sales. Freddie’s not really much of a businessman, is he?”
“Not really,” I said ruefully. “When did you learn all this?”
“Freddie rang me up the other day and asked me to go for a coffee. He obviously had things on his mind. He’s rung me once before, wanting advice about Matt, but goodness! To be honest I have no experience of gay couples and their problems.”
“Well, I should think not!” said Griff.
“Not that he was telling me about anything – you know,” said Muriel modestly. “But he sounded so upset that I thought I’d better go and chat to him. Actually, it was on that day you met Griff on Loughrigg. I feel I owe you an explanation. I was out of the house for longer than I’d intended.”
“Loughrigg?” said Griff. “We met on Loughrigg?”
“That’s all right,” I said. “But is Freddie okay?”
“Well, I don’t know. He seems totally distracted,” said Muriel. “He obviously thinks Matt’s about to leave him but I have no idea why. He seems to have no idea himself. He just says Matt’s withdrawing, but it’s all very unclear. I wanted to say, well, Freddie, perhaps you should consider going on a diet? And cutting back on the alcohol? It’s not just the shop that’s going downhill, you know. I did wonder if Freddie had been drinking.”
“When did we meet on Loughrigg?” persisted Griff.
“Ages ago,” I said, “don’t worry about it. I know what you mean, though, Muriel. Sometimes I suspect he’s got a whisky bottle hidden in the bookshelves.” That might well account for his querulous tone the other day, and why Matt was so obviously under strain.
“I’m afraid I wasn’t much use as an agony aunt,” said Muriel, “but I do hope they can sort it out. I noticed that police sergeant of yours turned up today. Is he a close friend?” She was sniffing with kindly curiosity for a romance, so I said,
“No, not very,” as the phone in my pocket began to ring.
Griff stared at me. “That’s the telephone,” he said. “Is that the police?”
“I doubt it.”
“Have you been following me? What police sergeant? What’s going on?”
“Come along, Griff!” said Muriel heartily. “We need to get back.” She took his elbow in a firm hand and steered him round, marching him towards the church as I answered my phone.
It was the Ruskin Hotel. They wanted me to go for an interview the next day: I made the arrangements distractedly. After finishing the call, I walked slowly after Griff and Muriel, lost in thought.
Have you been following me? Griff had said it almost as if he remembered being pursued by me across Loughrigg, telephone in hand. Yet surely that was impossible. Apart from the odd aberration of the Lady of the Lake, his memory was closed to new impressions. Wasn’t it?
I stopped by the church wall to watch the mourners spilling out. Selena, leaning on the minister’s arm, looked beautifully downcast. Russell was glowering at Ruby, who had obviously been in tears again. Far from trying to comfort her, he snapped out something which I couldn’t hear but could lip-read as, “Oh, get a grip!”
Ruby closed her eyes. Hunter surveyed her for a few seconds, then went up and with a gentler manner offered a protective arm for her support.
I wasn’t needed. My presence added nothing. Suddenly desirous of solitude, I didn’t bother staying for the rest. Instead I went to fetch my scooter and buzzed along the winding lanes past the top of Coniston Water, whose clean grey surface, as always, made me think of the bodies it once hid: the violently killed, lost for so long in its depths. To get away from them, I rode the scooter too fast back to Raven How.
The house was quiet and empty, Delilah having jumped on the bus to Bowness to meet her fellow-Gothlets. I gathered my paper and paints and carried them to the studio, determined to do some work while Russell wasn’t here to glower at me. Even if I was confused and wretched, at least I could still paint. I had to paint, or what else was I good for?
So, arranging my gear in the north corner of the room, I sketched the landscape through the biggest studio window. The crown of hills wasn’t as spectacular here as from the farmhouse, but I cropped and adjusted until I found a fragment of the view that worked, and then set up my little factory of four A6 sketches, the scene pencilled in with the faintest of lines.
The moment I loved best: the comforting ooze of colour from the tubes. The promise that everything was possible. The whole world was waiting to be remade, lying in those thin, translucent, question marks of paint, if only I could get it right.
I laid a warm
grey wash of French Ultramarine and Burnt Sienna. Blotted away the clouds, deepened shadows, each one subtly different, let the wash dry a little before using a damp mix for the trees. My usual tree stuff – I didn’t need to check through the window. A hint of light here: blotting away again. More shade on numbers three and four.
I laid them down to dry and mooched around the studio, looking at Russell’s work, flipping through the pile on the rack and the makeshift portfolios propped against the wall. His landscapes were technically adept, I had to admit; painted with great skill – but it seemed that every scene had been done in winter, even those showing trees in full leaf. They were grey, scoured, cowering before the storms: a winter of the soul, if not of nature. Why would Russell paint such persistent bleakness, I pondered, if – as was evident – it didn’t sell?
I untied the cord of the next portfolio and opened it up. These were portraits in pen and watercolour: Ruby. So he did still paint her. They were harsh, the lines of age and care mercilessly exaggerated, giving her a censorious frown. There were full-length studies too, clothed and otherwise, highly competent but without any of the passion of The Nude Ruby out in the corridor.
I tied them back up again, disgruntled. They were still better than anything I could produce. Why couldn’t I do portraits? Why did they always die on me, turn flat and wither away?
I returned to my factory. A streak of sun here: a little lilac shadow there – lilac always seemed to sell pictures, I don’t know why. What about a hint of rainbow? Would that be too naff?
Suddenly I swept my arm in a gesture of disgust that blew all four of them off the table. They frisbeed across the room: one skidded right beneath the cupboard.
What was I doing this for? Was this it? Was this what I had set out to achieve, all those years ago when I decided I was an artist? Was this what I had hoped for when I first saw Isaac framed by hills and experienced that rare, breathtaking epiphany?
I leant against the wall with my head on my arms. That didn’t help, of course. It just made me feel like a bad actor. Moping is pointless. It only puts off the moment of necessary action.
So I raised my head and set up my paints again. The moment of action was now, quickly. I took up a large sheet of cold-pressed that was already stretched and taped to its board. I laid the wash again with steady, even strokes. I wanted the outline to melt into it. The shapes from my notes, the colours from my memory. The mountains rising like a growl at the sky. The luminous, turbulent clouds, the face developing beneath them as inevitable as the rain, blurring into the landscape. I damped and blotted in a careful frenzy in case the moment disappeared.
Which it did, all too soon. I heard the car rattle up outside.
Putting the brush in water, I took up my board and hurried to my room to push Isaac’s wet half-painted face beneath the lower bunk. The door downstairs slammed as I returned to the studio to tidy up, remove the traces of my presence, picking up the scattered factory-pieces, diving under the cupboard for the last one.
There was something else there, in the dust: the edge of a sheet of paper was visible, standing on its end. I stood up and looked round the back of the cupboard. I would never have spotted it hidden there against the wall. It was just within reach of my finger ends, so I tweezed it out.
“Hells bells,” I said, staring at the clump of close, black lines.
It was a portrait of Selena: not just head and shoulders this time but full length. She lay on a bed, entwined with fine black slashes, criss-crossed like a fish in a net. What were they? Close-fitting cords, tattoos, or just the act of an imaginative brush?
Beneath them, she was naked, doubly naked, because Russell had taken care that they should hide nothing, only emphasise her breasts, her hips. Close to pornography, it had none of the juicy allure of Ruby’s portrait: it was as scratchily, blackly furious as Russell’s recent landscapes. It made me nervous. The more I looked at it, the worse I felt: panicky, fearful and angry. Selena’s legs were parted, and so were her lips, in a sulky pout.
There were footsteps in the hall. Sliding the paper back into its hiding place behind the cupboard, I picked up the last of my belongings. Then I closed the studio door behind me as silently and carefully as if it held an unexploded bomb.
Chapter Twenty-one