‘I can’t!’ she gasped. Water was pushing against her head.
‘You must! One second!’ I yelled into the roar. ‘Drop the bloody gun!’ She was holding mechanically on to the gun, for God’s sake. As if it was any use. I turned aside to see if there was anything for me to hang on to. Not a bloody thing. Nichole must have feared I was going away because she screamed.
‘
Lovejoy!
’
‘I’m still here, darling.’ I turned back to reach into the flood for her arm. I couldn’t lose her now, not when I’d everything in my grasp. As long as I kept my legs clear of the gears and that huge ominous lever. ‘Lift yourself,’ I bawled, getting a mouthful of the water. ‘
Now.
’
‘I – I didn’t mean to.’ She was babbling incoherently as our hands met. I pulled. Nichole started to come free of the water. I gasped at the exertion. My side was hurting now, but we were clinging firmer. I began to wriggle slowly back along the wooden platform. ‘I
didn’t want to kill your birds, Lovejoy, darling,’ she gasped.
‘
What?
’ I yelled. Her relieved smiling face was an inch from mine. We were both practically submerged, me dangling upside down, hanging on, and her draped on the wheel in the funnelled mountain water. She still clutched the shotgun. As if I hadn’t enough to lift.
‘I knew you’d forgive me, darling,’ she said breathlessly. I still held her in an embrace. ‘And the bike was a silly joke.’
‘
You?
’ I shrieked.
‘And I just
had
to push Edward . . .’
I was still pulling her up but now I stared in horror. She must have seen my eyes change. Her lips stripped back off her teeth. Even in that position she struggled to lift the gun at me, screeching hatred. Hatred at me, who practically loved her. And honest to God, it was an accident but my hands slipped. Her fingers unlatched or slipped or something, I don’t really know any more. I couldn’t help it. Everything happened in a split-second blur. I swear it was beyond my control. My side suddenly gave out and my hand jerked away. It just happened. She slid back down screaming, wedging with a burbled shrill squeal into the millrace. She was howling dementedly with outrage. Her eyes glared up with pure hatred as she dragged the shotgun up against the force of the water. I removed my arm and edged frantically away from the wheel on to the crumbling platform. I swear my hand just slipped. Honest to God. And in the suddenness of her weight vanishing my flailing foot clanked the lever. Before I knew what was going on I heard the gears engage. It was a pure accident. Maybe I was trying to scrabble away from the coming blast of the shotgun. She gave one screech and
the wheel lurched round. I heard it. Then there was only the moaning and whining sound of the big wheel’s slow turning and turning. I lay there, gasping. The paddles had blood on, but only the first time round.
I’d
had
to roll over. She’d been lifting the gun at me again. You can see that. If she hadn’t been trying to pull the trigger I’d have reached for her again. Accidents always happen when you’re in a hurry. Everybody knows that.
I don’t know how long it was before I dared look out. She was crushed beneath the wheel, her corpse deformed and mangled on the rocks and washed quite free of blood. The recesses between the boulders were covered with dark brown discs. I edged along the planking. The turning wheel had used Nichole to scrape the slab covering off the bed of the millrace. There were hundreds down on the river bed. I’d been right. Bexon had walled the lead coffin, now lying crumpled and exposed in the water, behind the millrace.
I could see Nichole’s waxen head in the clear water. It took me an age to work up courage to lock the wheel again. Honestly, hand on my heart, it was accidental.
But as I climbed painfully down pity was alien to me. At that instant it was utterly unknowable. Her arm swayed like the limb of some obscene reptile as I splashed into the water below the waterfall. My side oozed blood.
I stood knee-deep in the millrace, the onrush thrusting against my legs. Looking around it became obvious most of the fortune was in copper and the occasional silver coins. I didn’t blame Bexon, picking out the golds like he had and putting them in the Castle for bait. It was exactly the sort of thing I would have done. Anyway, the Romans considered copper the
mediocre twin of gold itself. There was a small crusted bronze statue, a she-wolf suckling two infants.
I caught a glimpse of one dulled yellow. Her palm was tilted in the water, exposing a Roman gold between two fingers. I took it carefully from her.
‘Hold them by the edge,’ I said. I keep telling people this but they take no notice.
I thought of saying something else to her submerged face through the rippling water layer, but, finally, didn’t speak.
J
ANIE WAS TELLING
me off again.
‘We didn’t leave,’ she was saying angrily, ‘because a
polite note
from you was just too good to be true. You’d have just gone.’
‘Charming.’
We’d all but packed. The bungalow stood clean and aired ready for more, for all the world like a runner on starting blocks before another race. I knew Janie was working up to something. She attacked suddenly in the lounge, unfairly bonny and colourful with white net gloves and pastel shades.
‘Lovejoy.’
You can tell it’s trouble from the way they say things.
‘Yes, love?’
‘Look at me.’
I’d been staring admiringly at the hillside. St Lonan’s chapel with the valuable engravings was only two miles off and nobody would be there as early as this. I’d visited briefly. Some scoundrel would nick them one day. He could slip up the hedgerow, turn left at the road and cut through the sheepfold. Nobody’d see him. People are rogues and can’t be trusted.
‘Yes, love?’ I gazed innocently into her lovely eyes.
They looked full of suspicion. Women get like this.
‘Lovejoy. The Roman coins.’
‘Don’t,’ I got out brokenly.
‘You didn’t mention them very much to the police, did you?’ She waited.
‘They almost slipped my mind. When I heard how Nichole had been . . . well, ill for so long, in close care and all that . . .’ I paused bravely. ‘Still, I did own up, Eventually.’
‘Did you take any?’
‘Me? Take –’ I was outraged. ‘Certainly not!’
‘Look at me, Lovejoy.’
I’d accidentally turned away, honestly not because I wanted to avoid her eyes. I steadied up and gazed back.
‘Did you,’ she asked, grim all of a sudden, ‘did you go back and steal some?’
I gasped, injured. Women have no sense of grief, not really. It takes a woman to be savage, even barbaric. Look at Nichole.
‘Steal?’ I demanded coldly. That hurt. ‘I showed the police where they were and everything. I said how I’d been looking for Bexon’s find. And how she’d followed me and tried to keep the Romans for herself. Shooting me as soon as I’d found them. And pushing poor Edward off the cliff . . .’ I shuddered. No need to act for that.
‘Steal,’ she said, still suspicious as hell, very determined. ‘Steal. As in nick, lift and thieve.’
‘No,’ I said, wounded to the quick.
‘And,’ she added unabashed, ‘as in Lovejoy. There seemed very few coins. Only a dozen or so. Wouldn’t a Roman army carry more than that?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Janie!’ Algernon was suddenly there. I was very
glad to see him. She never moved or took her eyes off me. ‘How
dare
you!’ He quivered with indignation.
‘How dare I what, Algernon?’ Janie kept judging and weighing me up. She’s basically lacking in trust. It must be terrible to be that way.
‘Make –’ he steeled himself – ‘well, what can only be designated . . .
suggestions
about Lovejoy’s character.’
‘Go and see to the car, Algernon,’ Janie said evenly. ‘I’ve business with Lovejoy.’
‘N – n – no, Janie.’
She stared at him then, astonished. Served her right for losing confidence in her fellow man. She repeated her command but good old Algernon stood his ground quivering like a pointer.
‘No, Janie. I can’t allow these unpardonable insinuations against Lovejoy’s character to go without demur.’
‘Algernon,’ Janie ground out, ‘I think it’s time you, faced the facts. Lovejoy’s an unprincipled, greedy, lustful, selfish –’
Algernon scraped up some more demur and faced her, pale to the gills but still full of heroism.
‘You’re very –’ he swallowed and finally made it – ‘wrong, Janie.’
I gasped in horror and turned aside, doing my strongman-overcome. ‘Algernon!’ I exclaimed. ‘Janie didn’t mean –’
‘The swine’s acting, Algernon!’ Janie cried. ‘He’s up to something. Can’t you see?’
‘If you only knew, Janie, what terrible events Lovejoy has been through,’ Algernon continued icily. ‘How absolutely courageous he was –’
‘It was nothing,’ I muttered, embarrassed.
‘How calmly he explained to the police, despite a serious wound –’
‘It’s only a scratch,’ I put in self-effacingly.
‘– when he’d been in the very jaws of death!’
‘Anyone would have done the same,’ I whispered nobly.
‘I want a minute alone with him,’ Janie said angrily.
‘I fully appreciate your . . . your relationship, Janie.’ Algernon drew himself up for a last stand. ‘Don’t think I’ve failed to perceive your, well, your
weakness
where Lovejoy’s concerned. I’ve turned a blind eye towards your . .
. goings-on
until now, perhaps even erroneously. But I must speak out.’
I listened, marvelling. How can somebody reach twenty-two and still talk like reading Bram Stoker? He darted a kindly glance at me. I hastily looked courageous.
‘I’m going to search him,’ Janie said sweetly. ‘From balls to bootlaces.’
‘I forbid it!’ cried Bulldog Drummond.
‘Then,’ she said, smiling to show she wasn’t smiling at all, ‘I’m going to frogmarch him down to the Douglas police station and return the Roman things he’s stolen.’
‘He’s not stolen a single item!’ Algernon stood firmly between us, dauntless despite having lost his cutlass in the first wave of boarders swarming over his galleon. ‘Your feelings are deforming your views. The very fact that your
obsessive desire
for Lovejoy is entirely
physical
–’
‘Please,’ I said, broken. ‘I feel you are going too far.’
‘Your fatal attraction continually upsets your judgement!’ he cried.
Even Janie was speechless at that. I couldn’t help thinking Algernon was making some real progress.
‘Don’t think, Janie,’ he said with controlled calm, ‘I’m entirely ignorant of your repeated
surrenderings
to
. . . well, what can only be called . . .
temptations of the flesh.
’
‘Excuse me, please,’ I said quietly. ‘I . . . I can’t stay to hear this.’
‘Stay here, Lovejoy!’ Janie yelped.
The white-faced Algernon blocked her path as I trailed slowly and sadly to the door. ‘It’s time I remonstrated, Janie,’ he was saying as I went, ‘on Lovejoy’s behalf as well as your own. Have you never thought of your husband? Have you never searched in your innermost heart to learn what value a woman must place upon her sense of loyalty . . .?’
Isn’t education wonderful?
Outside, I inspected the Lagonda’s rear off tyre. You’d need a microscope to detect any change. It had taken me all bloody night. I scuffed the gravel in case there were telltale signs. Thank God, I offered up, for tubeless tyres. Hiding stuff in those old-fashioned inner tubes must have been almost impossible.
I stuck my ear near the door. They were still at it.
‘I’m going to search every ounce of his stuff before we move an inch!’
‘And I absolutely forbid –’
I looked again at the Lagonda. Anybody driving would have to take it slowly towards the main Liverpool ferry road. Especially on the bends, though the Romans were wedged thick and tight in layer after layer of unwaxed toffee paper and would be safe.
I’d left a lot of coins in the stream before climbing to the main road and phoning the police. Well, a dozen. I’d carried the main mass wrapped in my coat and stuffed it in an overgrown niche a hundred yards downstream for later. People have to learn they can’t always have everything. I’ve had to. I would give several
to the Castle’s museum. Popplewell would have kittens. I’d insist they were exhibited with gold-lettered name cards, one blue, one green. They’d say:
THESE ROMAN TREASURES DISCOVERED IN THE ROMAN PROVINCE OF THE ISLE OF MAN
. I’d make sure the donors’ names got pride of place, too:
DONATED BY MESSRS DANDY JACK, B. MANTON AND B. WILKINSON
.
And if he asked, I’d tell him B for budgie.
‘He’s a selfish –’ Good old Janie, sticking at it.
Women can really get you down if you let them. What disappoints me most is how suspicious they are for no obvious reason. Even when you’re being perfectly open they can’t stop imagining what you might be up to. No trust in people. I’m glad I’m not like that.
It seemed a clear choice, Janie or the coins. Her, or a Roman treasure. The trouble is I can’t stand disagreements. Women really like them. Ever noticed? Anyway, she probably had enough for the fare home.
I got into the Lagonda and drove off.