Dialogues of the Dead

Once more Pascoe reacted to the urgency not the insubordination and checked.

“Marked with grey or brown,” he said. “The Dialogue poem said ‘but wasn’t white,’ remember? Now if only …Hat? You still there? Are you all right? Hat!”

But Hat wasn’t hearing. He was seeing a head of rich chestnut hair marked by a flash of silvery grey. And something else he saw too, trembling on his retina like the filaments of light presaging a migraine.

1576

Not a year. A date.

I have a date, the poem had said.

1.5.76.

The first of May, 1976.

Rye’s birthday.

The bastard had told them she was next and he’d been too blind to see it!

“Hat? What the hell’s going on? Is Dee there? Hat!”

“No, he’s not,” yelled Hat, going down the stairs five at a time. “He’s out at Stangcreek Cottage. And he’s got Rye with him. She’s haswed, her hair’s haswed, and she was born May the first, seventy-six-1576, remember?”

“Hat, wait there, I’m on my way. Wait there, that’s an order.”

“Fuck you,” screamed Hat into his phone.

He flung it on to the passenger seat of his car without switching it off and Pascoe, now moving down the Centre stairs at a speed almost equal to that of his young colleague, heard the crash of gears, squeal of tyres, and roar of an engine as the MG took off.

46

The chair she sat in like a burnished throne gleamed in the firelight.

Sensuously she let her fingers trace the serpentine grooves of the intricately carved arm rests till she came to the sudden hard swell of the lions’ heads.

She smiled down at Dick Dee who squatted before her on the three-legged stool. Between them lay a Paronomania board, which, fully open, looked like some exotic medieval map of the cosmos.

“Will you take it with you?” she asked. “The chair, I mean?”

“Strictly speaking, it isn’t mine,” he said.

“And are you always a strict speaker, Dick?”

“Strict,” he mused. “From strictus, past participle of stringere, to draw or bind tight. It’s a synantonym, of course …”

He paused and looked at her invitingly.

Taking her cue, she said, “A what?”

“A synantonym. One of those interesting words which can be their own opposite. Like overlook, impregnable, cleave.”

Rye considered, then said, “Those I can see, but strict?”

“There is a Scottish usage, meaning swift or rapid, particularly in relation to running water. So yes, I feel I can say I’m a strict speaker in one way or another.”

“But will you keep the chair?”

“In the sense of preserve it, yes. Indeed when I showed it to poor Geoffrey one day, he implied in his bumbling way that I might consider it a gift, though I doubt whether in law my unsupported recollection would be title enough. I fear you are in danger of being deflowered, my dear.”

Rye looked at the board. She had just laid, not without some complacency, azalea. Now Dee crossed it at the l with genitalia, then carefully removed the rest of her tiles.

“I did mention the rhyming rule, didn’t I?” he said. “Cross one of your opponent’s words with a rhyming word and you score both words and also win the right to remove your opponent’s tiles for your own use, if so desired.”

“But that means you could put my azalea back down on your next go,” she said with pretended indignation.

“Just so. It might be wise therefore to seek a way to block my genitalia.”

“Oh, I shall, never fear. If I’d known you invited me here to deflower me, I would never have come.”

In fact she almost hadn’t.

After Percy Follows’ funeral, when Dick Dee had told her he was going to clear out Stangcreek Cottage, she’d said, “You’re giving it up? Trouble with the new lord?”

“As they’re having difficulty establishing who it might be, no, not yet. Just trouble with my relationship with the place. I’ve only been back once since it happened and I got straight back in the car and returned to town. I no longer feel at ease there.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You seemed so much at home. Have you got a lot of stuff?”

“Enough. Even camping out, it tends to accumulate.” A pause, then, “Look, you wouldn’t care to come along and give me a hand? Two hands, in fact, and an extra car, would be very useful.”

She would have said no straight off if he hadn’t gone on in a rush, “And to tell the truth, I’m not very keen on going back there by myself.”

Now she hesitated, but still with the odds on refusal, till suddenly he said, “Oh hell! Rye, of course, you’ve got even more reason than I have for being reluctant to go out there again. My fears are all associative. You actually found the poor devil. It was crass of me to ask you. I’m sorry.”

Which worked better than any persuasion.

“And it’s craven of me to hesitate,” she said. “Of course I’ll come.”

He looked at her doubtfully.

“You’re sure? Please don’t feel you’ve got to.”

“Because you’re my boss?” She laughed. “I don’t believe I’ve ever done anything I didn’t want just because you were my boss.”

“I’m glad to hear it. What I meant was, because you’re my friend.”