‘Well, I’m quite sure you
are
wrong,’ Ivan said, looking round the room for support.
‘Well, we’ve got to find out,’ Sara said, ‘haven’t we?’
‘Yes, absolutely,’ Ivan said, with surprising energy and determination. ‘The rest of the grain’s back at the store on the smallholding. We ought to go and look at it, and destroy it at once if you’re right. It must be burned.’
He looked round the room again. ‘Yvonne, there’s alfalfa, peppers and tomatoes, and there’s some bought organic pasta you might as well use up. Will you stay here and give everyone something to eat? I’ll take Sara to the smallholding, just as soon as I’ve binned all this lot.’
The batter, along with the pancakes and the rolls, was dispatched to the kitchen bin and the dishes and bowls
submerged in hot soapy water. Ivan pulled off his apron and picked up his car keys.
‘On second thoughts,’ he said to Sara, ‘I’ve probably had too much wine. Would you drive me? Then you can leave me there and go on home, can’t you? I’ll walk in along the towpath in the morning, not that there’s much to come in for, except to start the clear-out.’
I
N THE CAR
Ivan said, looking straight ahead through the windscreen, ‘If you are right—I hope you’re not, but if you are—I’m sorry. Desperately sorry.’ Sara drove, saying nothing, feeling mean, small and in the right. Forgiveness for what had happened to James might one day be possible, even appropriate, but for now her original dubiousness about the Sulis and its precious philosophies had swollen into an anger that she dared not express. Ivan’s feeling sorry was no less than he ought to feel, yet his saying so was enough to make her want to scream with rage at the inadequacy of it. ‘Sorry’, even ‘desperately sorry’, was not going to bring James back nor begin to make her feel less bereft.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said. ‘If we do find that the crop’s affected, we mustn’t burn it. People have died and been injured, and that means there could be legal action by them or relatives. The clinic could be sued, and the rye is evidence.’ She thought about Tom, about how hopeless an idea it was that money could compensate for anything. But money could start a trust fund in James’s name, an award for pianists, perhaps. She knew, remembering Matteo’s death, that the business of setting up such a thing
would at first displace some of Tom’s grief and would even, eventually, come to comfort him.
‘If you really are sorry, you won’t stand in the way of people claiming some sort of compensation, will you? If the clinic’s sold, the proceeds could be used to pay dam-ages. You wouldn’t try to prevent that, would you?’
‘Of course not,’ Ivan said. ‘You’re quite right. And there’s something else. If we can get ergot here, it must be a risk on other organic farms. Anywhere growing organic grain. People should know about the risks, shouldn’t they? We tend to think organic must be safer than conventional. If
any
good can come out of this,’ he said, fiercely, ‘it’s making people aware of the danger. It will at least bring it out into the open.’
A mile or two further on Ivan spoke again. ‘How do you know so much about this? I thought you were just a musician.’
‘I made some enquiries, that’s all. There’s a fax on the back seat.’
Ivan stretched behind and got it. They were not yet clear of the city, and by the orange street lights he scanned the pages. ‘There’s a picture of it here as well, I see.’
‘Yes. Even on a fax it’s not that difficult to spot. Little black hook-shaped things, growing out from between the husks. I suppose if you knew what it was you couldn’t miss it. We’ll soon know if your rye has it or not.’
After a further silence Ivan said cautiously, ‘I’d never even heard of it till today. But look—you don’t suppose—I mean, if it’s not that difficult to spot, suppose someone knew it was there and said nothing?’
Sara snorted. ‘Oh for God’s sake. Who, for instance?’
‘Well, Hugh Cropper, possibly? If what you say about
damages is right. Look, he’s a farmer, and according to Bunny he was always short. Suppose he knew and said nothing? One dead mother-in-law, I suppose the daughter benefits there, plus a lump sum in compensation?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ Sara snarled, finding her anger rising still further. In the hurt silence that followed she stopped to consider the accusation and satisfied herself, as coolly as she was able to, that it was absurd. ‘Bunny’s been dead over a week and he’s said nothing. In fact, he agreed that she should be cremated, if you remember.’
‘What’s her being cremated got to do with it?’
Sara sighed. Surely innocence of this order in a man of thirty-five was contrived. ‘Hugh wouldn’t have agreed to a cremation if he’d been planning to bring an action, would he? Because he’d know that if it came to court they might want to disinter her, to get evidence of ergot in the body. If you can trace it in a body, that is. But without that sort of evidence he might not be able to prove his case.’
‘Yes, I see. Gosh, you do know a lot,’ Ivan said. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right, of course. I’ve no idea how these things are worked out. But look, if it wasn’t Hugh, what about Joyce? Yvonne? Or even my father?’
‘Oh come on! You think Joyce poisoned her own dog, the only living creature she cared about? And what did Yvonne have to gain? And why on
earth
would your father knowingly have fed contaminated food to his patients? Forgive my bluntness, but I really do think it’s time to stop looking round for a scapegoat and start facing up to a huge, tragic accident for which you are at least partly responsible. It’s quite bad enough, without you behaving like a little boy casting around for some sensational explanation and someone else to blame.’
Ivan said meekly, ‘I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I do honestly want to get to the bottom of it all. I do want to do my part. You can count on that.’ He turned to her with a guilty and apologetic smile which partially worked its blue-eyed, small-defenceless-creature magic.
She smiled ruefully back. ‘Let’s keep our heads, then. No wild theories. We’ll stick to the facts. First we’ve got to look at the rye, haven’t we?’
They were now driving into darkness that stretched out on all sides below the buzzing, sodium-lit main road, a country of dark fields separated only by paths and lanes between farms and hamlets. The land lay open and still under the moon, yet secret, its mysteries deep and centuries old. These fields would have once produced rye. And when the fields were ploughed and the good seed scattered on the ground, it was not God’s almighty hand nor the devil’s, nor any human alchemy or skill that determined whether the crop would be sweet and plentiful, or sour with the black, toxic ergot. It was the rain, the cold and the ready spores meeting in a dire configuration with the seasons, a precise admixture of water, temperature and time that would draw up from the ground a crop so casually lethal that households and whole villages would be wiped out. Yet as it grew it would look the same, waving palely under the sun, a blight year masquerading as a good one, and the crop would be harvested with gratitude. And the same fields had been planted again this year by people who had never heard of ergot. It was as if the earth had now been turned over so many times that all the old stories of the land’s arbitrary evil were buried too deep for telling.
When Sara parked and switched off the engine she was
startled for a moment by how completely the darkness surrounded her. Her eyes adjusted as she clambered out and joined Ivan at the edge of the smallholding. He pointed to a long low concrete building on the far side.
‘See it? You’ll manage, won’t you? Let me go ahead and switch the lights on.’
‘Don’t you have a torch in the house? It’s so dark.’
‘It might freak out Mrs Heffer to see a torchbeam down the field at this time of night,’ Ivan whispered. ‘And it would be a kindness to keep quiet, so we don’t wake her up. She’s been very shaken up, with one thing and another.’
He walked ahead. Just as they reached the door he said, ‘Damn! Just remembered, the key’s in the house. You wait here, I’ll only be a minute.’ He turned and tramped back down between the rows of vegetables, leaving Sara outside the hut. She watched lights go on in the house, as she moved from foot to foot and hummed a tune that came into her head. The lights went out. After a minute she was surprised to hear, and then to see, two figures returning. Walking directly in front of Ivan was Leech, the shabby man. Before Sara could say anything Ivan unlocked the door, pushed Leech in ahead of him and pressed switches on the wall just inside. The entire shed was flooded inside and out with a burst of light which revealed the building in its almost overpowering ugliness. Sara was standing on a shallow concrete ramp which sloped up to the door of the breeze-block building. From the central doorway, where a flat, cheap, interior door with an aluminium handle now stood ajar, and through the flat metal-framed windows, the bleaching light from a double row of fluorescent tubes
mounted on the ceiling shone out. Ivan’s head appeared. ‘C’mon, hurry up. Aren’t you coming in?’
Sara stepped forward into the brightness, bewildered by the idea that such a visually polluting dump could be used for anything as healthful as an organic food store. She looked around. Wooden staging ran the length of the back wall, on which stood labelled cloth and paper bags of varying sizes. She read onion, celery, runner, dwarf. Gardening tools were hung on a side wall, along with netting, canes, wound up hoses, sprinklers and watering cans. Several trugs and wooden boxes containing what looked like onion sets and seed potatoes stood about. On the far side of the room the outline of small round objects could be seen laid out under sheets of brown paper. Tomatoes, perhaps, or onions. Two small, thick sacks stood under the staging.
Leech was sitting on a mound of cloth on a camp bed in one corner. Pushing both hands through his hair, he stretched, nodded at Sara and Ivan and looked round without the slightest curiosity. Then he leaned over to take off his shoes, lay down and pulled the assortment of blankets and old quilts over himself. He was shivering.
‘I told him he’s to come down here. I just woke him up and now he thinks he’s going back to bed. No grasp of time, not much grasp of anything. He’s been staying down at the house, in my attic, eh, haven’t you? Keeping you safe, haven’t we, eh?’ Ivan said, with what sounded like amusement in his voice.
‘But the police want to talk to him. About Warwick. Do you mean you’ve been hiding him?’
Ivan appeared not to have heard her, but Leech did. He got up and stood by his bed, looking at her.
‘No grasp of time,’ Ivan repeated. ‘I think that’s why he likes the trains. They’re nice and regular. Isn’t that why you like the trains? You like the trains, don’t you?’
‘Is he deaf as well?’ Sara asked, because Ivan had raised his voice, insultingly she thought, to speak to him. And strangely, mention of the trains brought to mind something that Andrew had said.
He was coming down from the embankment just after the 9.23 went past
. But he had not been talking about Leech. Leech was now grinning grimly at her as he scratched extravagantly at his long torso, pulling his clothes around and revealing the white, frail skin over his ribs. He was still shivering, and the sight of his, to her, unbearably vulnerable, cold and uncared-for body created a slight tugging feeling in Sara’s throat.
‘Here Leech, put this on.’ Ivan had pulled a blue checked shirt from a peg on the wall. ‘You can wear my shirt, you like that, don’t you?’ Leech smiled and caught the shirt clumsily as he flung it across. He pulled it on, but still shivered.
‘Leech, get the rye, would you? The sacks of rye, over there,’ Ivan said, not unkindly, gesturing with his head. Sara watched, puzzled that Ivan should be making what amounted to a ceremony out of the dismal business of inspecting the rye. He was standing very straight now, his back to the wall where the garden tools hung, his hands clasped behind his back. His face had assumed an almost military formality and the chin, usually soft, was thrust forward. Sara watched as Leech shuffled to the staging at the far side of the room, bent down and brought the two sacks from under it to the table in the centre. He pushed aside the courgettes laid out on newspaper, the mugs and
teabag box, the folded newspaper and biscuit packets and placed the sacks in the space he had cleared.
‘Leech, go back and sit on your bed,’ Ivan said. Leech’s submissive turning and doing so was craven, and Sara realised that he was familiar with the tone of voice Ivan was using. She said as much.
‘But he likes clear directions,’ Ivan replied, slightly irritated at this digression. ‘He likes to know what’s expected of him. He’s quite happy. Now, shall we get on?’ He nodded towards the sacks but remained where he was, standing by the wall, as if afraid of what they might contain. ‘Sara, open them, would you?’
As she stepped forward and did so, a sharp, damp, rotting yet not quite rotten smell rose from the sacks. She brought out a handful and stared at the grains in her palm, turning them under her thumb. When she looked up and saw Ivan’s face she could see that beneath the formality he was frightened.
‘Let’s see, then,’ Ivan said. ‘Come on, I might as well know the worst.’
Sara advanced, her hand held out. Ivan grabbed her by the wrist, scattering the grains in her palm over the floor. With his other hand he had reached to the wall behind him, and was now holding a small scythe. Sara gasped. Leech was sitting wide-eyed on his bed, his mouth opening and shutting. He rose with a frightened moan and made ditheringly for the open door, wringing his hands. Ivan moved swiftly and stepped across his way, dragging Sara with him, his grip on her wrist tightening. ‘Get back,’ he commanded. ‘Leech, get back over there.’
Leech did so, sinking with a creak on to the bed from where he continued to stare at Ivan and through the open
door behind him into the dark. Sara tried with her other hand to free the fingers digging into her wrist, until the scythe swung over her arm. ‘Let go or I’ll slice you up,’ Ivan told her. She had no doubt that he would.
‘What’s going on?’ she gasped. ‘What’s all this about?’