The Crocodile Bird (38 page)

It was nearly six, she calculated, the sun still high in the sky but some of its heat departed. Sean and she had been together for three hours but it had seemed no more than three minutes. She was thinking about her dilemma once more, wondering if some middle way could be found, some compromise, whereby she could continue to be here with Eve and keep Sean nearby, when she heard the first shot.

Liza’s instinct, whenever there was shooting on the grounds, was to take herself as far away from the neighborhood of those reports as possible, even to cover her ears. Her dread was of actually seeing a bird fall to the ground, bloody and with feathers flying, or a rabbit brought down as it fled for cover. But this time she was not exactly sure where the shot had come from, it was often hard to tell. At any rate, it wasn’t in this wood and wouldn’t be in their back garden.

She saw Matt first. Although she knew of Jonathan’s intention to shoot pigeons, when she caught sight of Matt in the far distance, almost up by Shrove House, she thought it was he who was after the birds. Then she saw Jonathan and Eve standing together between the largest remaining cedar, the blue
atlantica glauca,
and the group of new young trees. They weren’t very far from her, no more than a hundred yards, quite near enough for her to see that they had only one gun between them.

Jonathan had been demonstrating something and now he put the shotgun into Eve’s hands. Holding it gingerly, she raised the barrel in a clumsy way, with what seemed an effort. He gave her a kindly glance, then adjusted her hands, moving them farther apart. Their shadows had lengthened as the sun sank and now streamed out thin and dark across the leaf-patterned grass. When Jonathan clapped his hands to make the pigeons fly Liza stopped looking, opened the gate, and let herself into the gatehouse garden.

She had forgotten to cover her ears. The gun went off, once, twice, three times. There came a cry no bird could have made, a high-pitched scream quite clearly audible from where she was. She stood still. For a moment a little child again, she saw in her mind’s eye the bearded man as he died on the grass in the dusk.

Almost without realizing it, she had put up her hands over her ears. But there was to be no more firing. She took away her hands, she turned around and saw Matt running across the grass, waving his arms.

Between the trees, on the open green that the sun and shadows dappled, Jonathan lay sprawled on his back. Eve had dropped the gun and stood looking down at him, her hands clasped under her chin. Liza ran into the house.

TWENTY-ONE

S
HE’D
shot him,” Liza said. “I knew at once it was on purpose. If he was dead he couldn’t sell Shrove and it would go to his cousin David Cosby, who loved the place and wouldn’t dream of selling it. It was the only way to make sure she got it. Marrying him wouldn’t have worked, he’d still have sold it.

“The way she looked at me, I read it all in her face. The trouble was Matt. Who knows what she’d have done if Matt hadn’t been there? Pretended to find Jonathan dead that evening or next day and made people believe he’d been out shooting alone? But Matt had seen. I don’t mean he’d seen her do it, but he’d seen them together firing at the pigeons.

“Eve said to me, tell the police you saw nothing, tell them you don’t even live here, you’re just visiting, and then she said, why tell them anything? You don’t have to be here. Matt didn’t see you. So I went and sat in the little castle and they didn’t know I’d been there. I think I knew then that she wanted to handle it all on her own.

“The police knew she had killed Jonathan but they could never prove it wasn’t an accident, no one saw it happen, you see. I’ve been thinking a lot about it since the trial and that’s the conclusion I’ve come to, that once they knew she’d killed Jonathan they remembered Bruno going missing and then they started thinking about the man called Trevor Hughes. They’d actually questioned her about him and she’d denied ever seeing him, but they’d got a record of it, they never forgot. I expect that’s what happened.

“When they searched the gatehouse they didn’t find Bruno’s earrings because she was wearing them. She was wearing them the night before I left so I’m sure she still had them on the next morning. They did find Trevor Hughes’s wedding ring with his initials inside and his wife’s.

“They must have asked Matt if he knew anything about Trevor Hughes. Or else Matt went to them of his own accord and told them what he remembered that morning when the dogs behaved in that strange way. If she’d killed him they wondered what she’d done with his body and eventually they started digging.

“I’m sure they’d have liked to indict her for shooting Jonathan, but they were afraid she’d be acquitted. And they got nowhere trying to trace Bruno. But when they found Trevor Hughes’s bones they found shot among them that came from that four-ten shotgun, that same one Jonathan was using to teach her to shoot pigeons. And they must have found his watch too for his wife to identify. I expect it went on for weeks after they first arrested her. I’d really like to know how they managed that—I mean, did they charge her with murdering Jonathan and then give that up and charge her with manslaughter instead just to hold her? And when did they think they’d got enough evidence to be sure of getting a conviction on the Hughes murder charge?”

Sean was staring at her incredulously. Liza smiled at him. “I told you, I’d like to be a lawyer. I’m interested in the law.”

“You’re a bright girl. You shouldn’t be cleaning for that old woman.”

Liza shrugged. It didn’t seem important, it was only temporary. She began clearing their takeaway containers off the table. “D’you want a cup of tea?”

“In a minute,” he said. “I’ve got something to tell you first. Now it’s my turn.
I’ve
got something to tell
you.
”

She filled the kettle, lit the gas, and, catching sight of his expression, turned it low. “What, then?”

“I’ve been accepted for the management course.”

As soon as the less than enthusiastic words were out, she regretted them, knew she should have congratulated him. But she had said, “Well, you knew you would be.”

A flush darkened his face. “It’s not been as straightforward as that. As a matter of fact, it was touch and go. They only took five out of two hundred applicants.”

“And you’re one of the five? Great.”

She must have sounded kind but indifferent, maternally indulgent perhaps. He said, “Listen to me, Liza. Come and sit down.”

Her sigh was audible but she sat down next to him.

“The course starts in the New Year but they want me up there next week. It’s in Scotland, a place near Glasgow. They wanted to put me in a flat with the other four, that’s the way they fix it, but I’ll have you with me, so I said I’d see to my own accommodations. I never said caravan, I wasn’t telling them all my private affairs.”

“Glasgow?” she said. “That’ll be a long way from wherever Eve is. But I don’t suppose it’d be for long, would it? Didn’t you say six months?”

“Liza, hopefully this is only the start. You’ve not been following me. This is a new way of life. It’s great the things they’ll do for you once you’ve shown you’re up to the course. For one thing, the idea is to manage one of their stores and they’re building new branches all the time. There’s one they’re putting up now on the M3. Hopefully I could be assistant manager of one of them by this time next year. They’ll help you with a mortgage on a flat.”

He must have seen she didn’t know what he meant. While he explained what a mortgage was, she fidgeted about, suddenly wanting a cup of tea more than anything in the world but not quite liking to get up and make it. He took hold of her hand, imprisoning it.

“It’s a great chance for me. It’s sort of made me see myself differently, like I’m not the person I reckoned I was, I’m better, I could be my own man, a responsible person with a real career.”

Yes, she thought, you even talk better. It’s made you articulate, you can suddenly express yourself. Then he shocked her.

“There’s something else I want to tell you, love. I want you to marry me, I want us to get married.”

It was as much as she could do to speak.
“Married?”

“I knew it’d be a surprise.” He leaned toward her and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. Fondly he said, “You silly nana, you’ve gone all red. If it’s on account of your mum, I don’t mind that. It’ll be just the same to me as if you was any other girl with a normal family.”

“Sean …” she began but it was as if she hadn’t interrupted him.

“I’ll get paid when I’m training, that’s another great thing. Hopefully you won’t have to work no more. I wouldn’t want my wife going out cleaning anyway. And when the kids start coming you’ll want to be at home …”

This time she shouted to break the flow. “I’m not yet seventeen years old!”

“That’s okay. You have to be over sixteen to get married, not over seventeen. It’s seventeen for a driving license.”

She burst out laughing. It was too much. Unlike him though this would be, he had to be making some elaborate joke. It was a moment or two before she understood, before she saw from his hurt face that he was deadly serious. “Oh, Sean, don’t look like that, don’t be so
silly.
”

“Silly!”

“Well, of course it’s silly talking about marrying and having children and one of those things, a what-d’you-call-it, a mortgage. We’ve got our lives to live first. I’m not even grown up really. In the law I can’t sign a contract or make a will or anything.”

“Shut up about the fucking law, will you?”

She flinched a little, got up and went to the stove. “I want my tea if you don’t,” she said in a chilly voice, Eve’s voice. He was sullen as she had never seen him. Suddenly she realized that she had never crossed him, everything had gone pleasantly for him until this evening, but now the sultan was looking at her head and sharpening his sword.

“I don’t mind coming to Scotland for a bit,” she said in a conciliating voice. “I’d quite like somewhere else for a change. We could try it. You might not like the course.”

He took his tea without a thank-you. “You’d better listen to me, Liza. Have you thought where you’d be without me? You’d be lost, you’d be nothing. Thanks to the way that bitch brought you up, you wouldn’t last five minutes on your own. You don’t even know what a mortgage is! You never knew what the Pill was! The best you can do to earn your living is cleaning or picking apples. You don’t know nothing except for rubbish out of books. She’s crippled you for life, and you’re going to need me to get you through it.”

It was an echo of Bruno, Bruno’s words outside the old station. She brought the teacup to her lips but the tea seemed tasteless.

“I’ll be your husband, I’ll look after you. There’s some as’d say it was a pretty big thing I was doing, considering who and what your mother is. You don’t reckon I’d rather live in this clapped-out old van than in a decent flat, do you? It’d be okay sharing with those guys, but I’ve a responsibility to you, I know that, and I’ll be taking the car and the van up to Glasgow on Friday. I won’t say I’ll be taking them anyway, whether you come or not, because you’ll have to come, you don’t have no choice.”

“Of course I have a choice.”

“No, you don’t. It’s like this, you have to come with me just because you can’t be left here with no place to live, no family, no friends, and—you have to face it, love—no skills. The truth is you’re more like six than sixteen. It’s not your fault but that’s the way it is.”

She said nothing. Taking her silence for acquiescence, he turned on the television. She thought he looked pleased with himself. The look on his face was Bruno’s when he thought he had persuaded Eve to move into that house with him. After a little while he opened a can of beer and began to drink from the can. He must have been aware of her eyes on him, for he turned around, grinned, and made the thumbs-up sign, intended no doubt to reassure. She picked up the book Mr. Spurdell had lent her,
First Steps in English Law,
and found the place she had reached in it the day before.

That was the first broken night she had had since she shared a bed with Sean and almost the first that they hadn’t made love. She lay awake, thinking how much she had loved him and wondering how that could have changed. How could you feel so passionately for a person and then, suddenly, not care anymore at all? A few words, a gross gesture, an insensitive assumption, and it was all gone. Had it been like that for Eve and Bruno?

She was out all day on Saturday, roaming the fields by herself, but on Sunday it rained and she lay in bed, reading. When she refused to get up and tidy the place, shake out the mats, help him fetch water, he accused her of sulking. They both went to work in the morning and met as usual at five. It was dark, pitch dark, when they reached the caravan, and there was no water. They had forgotten to fetch the water before they left. Liza took the bucket and a torch.

It struck her as somehow silly that it was pouring with rain yet they had no water. She held the bucket under the pipe that protruded from the hillside, filled it, and made her way back, once nearly falling on the slippery mud.

Once in the caravan she opened a can of Coke. She was washing her hands at the sink before she saw what he had done to the books. She glanced into the living area as she reached for the towel. A piece of book jacket, a torn-off triangle, red lettering on a black background, lay on the table. It brought a constriction to her throat. They had no wastebasket, only a plastic sack under the sink. The sight of its contents made her feel rather dizzy. Sean wasn’t looking at her, he was watching television, a can of beer beside him, a lighted cigarette in his left hand. She had the feeling he was consciously not looking at her, forcing his eyes to fix on the screen.

Easier than rummaging in that sack was to see what he had done by examining the books that remained. Mary Wollstonecraft was gone and
The Divine Comedy
and the
Metamorphoses. Middlemarch
was gone. With bile rising into her mouth, she saw that he had spared
First Steps in English Law
and the two Hardy novels. Those belonged to Mr. Spurdell and he knew it. Sean was always law-abiding. He wouldn’t destroy “other people’s” property. She didn’t count as other people, she was his.