‘Nice thought,’ said Pascoe. ‘But wickedness is a strong swimmer. And how did you feel, Mrs Shimmings?’
It seemed an innocent enough question, but to his distress he saw her eyes fill with tears, even though she turned away quickly to hide them and went to the teacher’s desk.
‘Funny,’ she said. ‘While I was waiting for you, I went into our little library and this was the book I picked out.’
She took a book from the desktop and held it up so he could see the title.
It was The Drowning of Dendale.
‘I know it,’ said Pascoe. ‘My wife has a copy.’
It was, as he recalled, a coffee-table book, square-shaped and consisting mainly of photos with very little text. It was in two parts, the first entitled ‘The Dale’, the second ‘The Drowning’. The first photograph was a panorama of the whole dale, bathed in evening light. And the epigraph under the subtitle was A happy rural seat of various view.
‘Paradise Lost,’ said Mrs Shimmings. ‘That’s how I felt, Mr Pascoe. It may have been spoilt, but it was still like leaving Paradise.’
A horn blew outside. Glad of a diversion from this highly charged and, he hoped, totally irrelevant display of emotion, Pascoe went to the window.
They were arriving, all kinds of vehicles bearing everything necessary for the Centre. Furniture, telephones, radios, computers, catering equipment, and of course personnel. Must be like this in a war, he thought. Before a Big Push. Like Passchendaele. So much hustle and bustle, so many men and machines, failure must have seemed inconceivable. But they had failed, many many thousands of them needlessly killed, one of them his namesake, his great-grandfather, not drowning in mud or shattered by shell-fire, but tied to a post and shot by British bullets …
He said, ‘We’ll talk again later, Mrs Shimmings,’ and went out to take control.
‘I often think they’ve only gone out walking,
And soon they’ll come homewards all laughing and talking.
The weather’s bright! Don’t look so pale.
They’ve only gone for a hike updale.’
‘So what’s this? Narcissism, or the artist’s response to just criticism?’
Elizabeth Wulfstan pressed the pause button on her zapper and turned her head to look at the man who’d just come in.
The years had been good to Arne Krog. Into his forties now, his unlined open face framed in a shock of golden hair and a fringe of matching beard kept him looking more like Hollywood’s idea of a sexy young ski-instructor than anyone’s idea of a middle-aged baritone. And if, in terms of reputation and reward, the years had not been quite so generous, he made sure it didn’t show.
She said, ‘Most of what you said was right. Makes you happy, does it?’
She spoke with a strong Yorkshire inflexion which came as a surprise to those who knew her by her singing voice alone.
‘It makes me happy that you have seen your error. Never mind. It will be a collector’s disc when you are old and famous. Perhaps then, to be contrary, you will make your last recording of songs best suited to a young, fresh voice. But preferably in the language in which they were written.’
‘I wanted folk to understand them,’ she said.
‘Then give them a translation to read, not yourself one to sing. Language is important. I should have thought someone so devoted to her own native woodnotes wild would have understood that.’
‘Don’t see why I should have to speak like you just to please some posh wankers,’ she said.
She smiled briefly as she spoke. Her face with its regular features, dark unblinking eyes, and heavy patina of pale make-up, all framed in shoulder-length ash blonde hair, had a slightly menacing mask-like quality till she smiled, when it lit to a remote beauty, like an Arctic landscape touched by a fitful sun. She was five nine or ten, and looked even taller in the black top and lycra slacks which clung to her slim figure.
Krog’s eyes took this in appreciatively, but his mind was still on the music.
‘So you will change your programme for the opening concert?’ he said. ‘Good. Inger will be pleased too. The transcription for piano has never been one she liked.’
‘She talks to you, does she?’ said Elizabeth. ‘That must be nice. But chuffed as I’d be to please our Inger, it’s too late to change.’
‘Three days,’ he said impatiently. ‘You have the repertoire and I will help all I can.’
‘Thanks,’ she said sincerely. ‘And I’d really like your help to get them right. But as for changing, I mean it’s too late in here.’
She touched her breastbone.
He looked exasperated and said, ‘Why are you so obsessed with singing these songs?’
‘Why’re you so bothered that I’m singing them?’
He said, ‘I do not feel that, in the circumstances, they are appropriate.’
‘Circumstances?’ She looked around in mock bewilderment. They were in the elegant high-ceilinged lounge of the Wulfstans’ town house. French windows opened on to a long sunlit garden. Faintly audible were the rumbles of organ music under the soaring line of young voices in choir. If they’d stepped outside they could have seen a very little distance to the east the massive towers of the cathedral whose gargoyled rain-spouts seemed to be growing ever longer tongues in this unending drought.
‘Didn’t think you got circumstances in places like this,’ said Elizabeth.
‘You know what I mean. Walter and Chloe …’
‘If Walter wanted to complain, he’s had the chance and he’s got the voice,’ she interrupted.
‘And Chloe?’
‘Oh aye. Chloe. You still fucking her?’
For a moment shock time-warped him to his early forties.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ he demanded, keeping his voice low.
‘Come on, Arne. That’s one English word no one needs translating. Been going on a long time, hasn’t it? Or should I say, off and on? All that travelling around you do. Must be great comfort to her you don’t let yourself get out of practice, but. Like singing. You need to keep at your scales.’
He had recovered now and said with a reasonable effort at lightness, ‘You shouldn’t believe all the chorus-line gossip you hear, my dear.’
‘Chorus line? Oh aye, I could give Chloe enough names to sing the Messiah.’
He said softly, ‘What’s the point of this, Elizabeth? What do you want?’
‘Want? Can’t think of owt I want. But what I don’t want is Walter getting hurt. Or Chloe.’
‘That is very … filial of you. But you work very hard at that role, don’t you? The loving, and beloved, daughter. Though in the end, alas, as with all our roles, the paint and wigs must come off, and we have to face ourselves again.’
He spoke with venom, but she only grinned and said, ‘You sound like you got out the wrong side of bed. And you were up bloody early too. Man of your age needs his sleep, Arne.’
‘How do