Why Aren't They Screaming? (11 page)

Faced with this bait, Peggy's protests subsided, while Loretta marvelled at Clara's skill in manipulating people. ‘Oh, Peggy's things are still at the peace camp,' she told Clara. ‘Shall I take her up there to pick them up?'

‘That's very kind of you, Loretta. Oh, there's the phone.'

Clara left the room, returning almost at once.

‘It's for you, Loretta,' she said. ‘Robert – Robert Herrin.'

‘Oh. Did he say what he wanted?' Loretta was surprised.

‘No. The phone's on the desk in the drawing room.'

Perhaps Robert wanted to arrange another ride, Loretta thought, leaving the kitchen. He'd said something about it the night before. Well, the way she was feeling today, wild horses wouldn't drag her back to that stable-yard. She smiled as she picked up the phone, realizing the aptness of the metaphor.

‘Loretta? How are you? I've just heard about last night.'

‘Oh, that.' The previous evening's attempted burglary had
been driven from her mind by the scene she had just witnessed at the peace camp. ‘Sorry, I'd rather forgotten. Things happen so fast. I've just come from the peace camp – Peggy's husband turned up and attacked her.'

‘No! Is she hurt?'

‘Don't think so, just knocked about a bit. Clara sent him off with a flea in his ear.'

‘Good for her!' Robert laughed. ‘You have to be a brave man to tangle with Clara – you should see her in action on the parish council. Well, you
are
having an exciting time.'

It was an odd way to describe the last couple of days, but Loretta realized Robert was right at least about the latest incident; Clara's triumph over Mick had left her feeling rather elated.

‘Actually, I was ringing to ask you to supper. If you're free tonight, that is. I thought you might like an uneventful evening. I've lived in this house for eight years without being burgled – in fact the only person I know who's got it in for me is a music critic on
The Times.'

‘Well, I –' Loretta began, suddenly unsure of herself. Although nothing in their brief acquaintance had suggested that Robert was attracted to her, the invitation had raised an immediate suspicion. If a single and, as far as she knew, heterosexual man asked her to supper at his place in London, she would recognize it as an oblique question and act accordingly. But here – there wasn't a restaurant for miles, and perhaps Robert simply liked her company. And why jump to the conclusion she was to be the only guest? Maybe he intended to introduce her to more people from Flitwell. It was an intriguing question.

‘Loretta?'

‘Yes, I'm here. I was just thinking about some work I was going to do tonight – some essays I have to mark. But they can wait. What time should I arrive? And where's your house?'

She took down directions, and promised to turn up at half past seven. Then, smiling to herself, she returned to the kitchen, and asked Peggy if she was ready to go back to the peace camp to collect her things.

Robert Herrin's house was a semi-detached three-storey
building at the opposite end of Flitwell from the cottage owned by Ellie and Here. The front door was at the side and Loretta had to open a small wrought-iron gate to get to it. She paused at the side of the house, trying to identify the faint piano music coming from the house: Fauré, she thought, wondering if Robert was the player. He wasn't; she heard his footsteps as soon as she rang the bell, but the music continued. She straightened the grey wool suit she'd been wearing when they met on Saturday, and waited for him to open the door.

‘Loretta. Right on time.' He stood back to let her in, gesturing along the low-ceilinged corridor that ran towards the front of the house.

She followed it to a half-open door, then paused.

‘Go in. What would you like to drink?'

‘Wine, if there's some open. Oh, and I brought this.' She handed him a bottle of Rioja, one of several she'd brought with her from London. ‘What a wonderful room.'

It was low and wide, with an inglenook fireplace to her left; it was a cool evening and a couple of branches were burning on cast-iron firedogs. To her right was a Victorian sofa with mahogany armrests and legs. Behind, the remaining space in the room was almost completely taken taken up by a grand piano – not a baby, but a full-scale Broadwood. The music, she noticed, was coming from a Swedish stereo system discreetly out of the way in one corner.

‘I'm glad you like it,' Robert said, handing her a glass of red wine from an open bottle standing on a low table. ‘You're looking at years of work. Everything was dark brown when I moved in, even these.' He pointed upwards to the exposed ceiling beams. ‘It took me ages to get all the paint off, it was a standing joke when people came up from London – Herrin's unfinished ceiling.'

Loretta looked at him blankly.

‘Like Schubert's Unfinished Symphony,' he explained, amused by her incomprehension. ‘Though I've got one of those lying around, too. Hungry?'

‘I am, rather,' she said, wondering whether she should take a seat or continue hovering by the door. Was anyone else going to arrive? She studied Robert covertly as he crossed the
room to turn over the record, which had just finished. Although she hadn't registered an attraction to him at their previous meetings, she was now aware of a
frisson
of excitement which was making her intensely conscious both of her own movements and of his. It was a long time since she'd slept with anyone – not since the disastrous affair of the previous autumn, in fact – and this stirring of interest was novel and welcome. For some months after the last affair, she'd simply been off men; then, at some point, she'd seemed to get out of the habit of noticing them. Perhaps that was why she hadn't before taken in his narrow shoulders and thin hands – now that she had, she hoped she had not read his intentions wrongly. It was as if part of her that had been dry and still as a leafless branch had suddenly felt the first intimation of spring.

‘We might as well go through to the kitchen, it'll be ready in five or ten minutes,' Robert said, coming back to her side. His fingers brushed her elbow as she moved in front of him into the corridor; the contact was brief, but the signal clear.

Glad that he could not for the moment see her face, Loretta followed the corridor to the back of the house, discovering an untidy kitchen organized around an old farmhouse table. Loretta pulled out a chair and sat down, avoiding Robert's gaze in case her thoughts were written too clearly in her eyes. He moved past her to the oven and opened the door.

‘We can eat now, if you like, it's taken less time than I expected.' He shut the door, came over to the table, and began laying two places.

‘You travel a lot,' Loretta remarked, observing the posters that covered the walls, many of them advertising concerts at which Robert had conducted his own music.

‘Yes. It gets a bit wearing in the end, living out of suitcases. One hotel room' – he used an oven glove to carry an oval dish to the table – ‘is very much like another.'

‘What's that? It smells heavenly.'

‘A
gougère.
And there's monkfish to follow. I suppose we ought to be drinking white – or are you happy with red?'

‘I'm always happy with red. Where do you get monkfish round here?'

‘Oh, the fish van comes round every Monday. We're not
completely cut off from civilization, you know. Is that enough? You can always come back for more.'

Dinner seemed to last for hours. Robert was a good cook, and they lingered over each of the four courses. Loretta was careful to drink enough to loosen her inhibitions without getting drunk. Robert, she guessed, was doing the same. Eventually, around ten, the conversation came to a natural pause. They sat in silence for a moment.

‘How d'you feel about going back to the cottage, after last night?' Robert asked suddenly, giving her a direct look.

She returned it unwaveringly. ‘Clara's fitted it up with enough locks for Fort Knox,' she said lightly. ‘But I'm not all that enthusiastic'

‘Stay here, then.'

‘All right.'

It was admirably simple. The only thing Loretta felt guilty about, as Robert undressed her upstairs a few minutes later, was the amount of money Clara had wasted on all those security devices.

Loretta didn't bother with lunch, having enjoyed a leisurely cooked breakfast with Robert before returning to Keeper's Cottage next morning. As she let herself in, she noted with relief that the antiseptic smell had begun to fade. Around three she walked over to Baldwin's, intending to ask Clara if she could use her phone; she'd promised to let her mother know she'd settled in safely. Clara was out, but she found Peggy in the kitchen eating a bowl of soup.

“Lo, Loretta,' Peggy said cheerfully. She was back in her old jeans, and looked much more comfortable then she had in Clara's print dress. ‘D'you want Clara? She's out, I dunno where. Want some soup?'

Loretta refused the offer politely, explaining she'd come to use the phone.

‘Go on,' Peggy advised her, ‘she won't mind. I used it to phone my little girl last night, and she wouldn't take no money.'

Loretta's mother, who lived in Gillingham, answered the phone at the third ring. She was in the middle of icing a cake, she said, and couldn't talk for long. Satisfied that she'd done her duty, Loretta returned to the kitchen.

‘You look well,' she told Peggy, observing the rosy colour in the girl's cheeks. Even the cut over her eye now looked insignificant.

‘Yeah, I feel it,' Peggy confirmed. ‘You know, Clara's great. I thought she was dead bossy first time I met her, but it's just her way. I feel dead ...' – she groped for the right word – ‘dead
safe
here. Mind you, she's hopping mad today.'

‘Who is? Clara?'

‘Yeah. You should have seen her this morning when she read the paper. They've put something in about the peace camp, and she was... ooh, her eyes really sparkled. She rang up and gave them what for.'

‘What did it say?' asked Loretta.

‘Oh, I didn't read all of it. But it was by that MP bloke she knows, Colin something. He's got a posh name. It was about how all the girls at the camp are lezzies, and they should go home to their husbands. That's what he says. Just shows what he knows,' she added, raising her eyebrows to show her contempt for this assertion of traditional values. ‘He oughta go to a refuge, one of them places I was in. That'd teach him a few things about why women leave their fellas.'

‘And this was in the
Guardian?'
Loretta asked, surprised. This was the only paper she'd seen delivered to Baldwin's the previous day, but it didn't sound like a
Guardian
feature.

‘Nah, it was in that other one, the
Daily Telegraph,'
Peggy told her. ‘Jeremy, he went down to the village shop this morning and bought it. He took it with him to London.'

Loretta was disappointed, and wondered whether she'd be able to get a copy at the shop in Flitwell. She had to go into the village some time that afternoon – Robert was coming over for a late supper, and she needed to buy food.

‘Oh well, I'll be off,' she said, thinking that she might as well do this errand next. ‘Tell Clara I used the phone, and I'll give her some money when I see her.'

‘OK.' Peggy lifted a hand in farewell. Loretta left her struggling to open a packet of ginger biscuits.

Robert arrived earlier than expected that evening and Loretta met him with a half-peeled peach in one hand and a kitchen knife in the other.

‘Did you think I was another intruder?' he asked, shutting the front door and putting his arms round her. ‘Mmm, you taste of peaches.'

‘They're supposed to go in with the lamb, but I can't resist eating them,' she said, kissing him again. ‘I hope it'll be all right.' She moved back to the Aga and stirred something in a battered Le Creuset casserole. ‘It's supposed to be lamb with apricots, but they didn't have any in the village shop. I'm having to make do with peaches instead – I brought some with me from London. Flitwell isn't
that
civilized, I couldn't get any fresh coriander, either. What would you like to drink?'

‘This'll do.' He picked up the open bottle of red wine standing on the table and filled the empty glass Loretta had put out for him. Then he leaned across to turn up the volume of Loretta's cassette player, which was in the middle of a recording of highlights from
Turandot.
‘Listen to that,' he said above the noise. ‘Perfect – just perfect.' He drew out a chair and sat down at the table, idly turning the pages of a magazine Loretta had left lying there.

Loretta smiled and carried on slicing peaches. When she'd tipped all the pieces into the casserole she put on the lid and looked round for the potatoes she'd put out to scrub. She cleaned them, dropped them in boiling water, and began topping and tailing a heap of green beans.

‘It'll be ready soon,' she said, turning to look at Robert.

He raised his eyebrows, unable to hear her over the music. Loretta shook her head, hoping they weren't disturbing Clara. She went back to the Aga, wondering if the lamb was cooking too fast. Behind her, Robert turned the volume of the music down to its previous level.

‘I could listen to that for hours,' he said, getting up and coming to peer over her shoulder. ‘Smells good.' He ran a finger lightly down her back from the nape of her neck to her waist. ‘Oh, about the coriander. If you really can't do without it, you could try Clara. She grows it herself, she's very proud of it. I'm sure she'll let you have some.'

Loretta untied the apron that was protecting her linen trousers and silk shirt and hung it on the back of a chair.

‘Won't be long.' She stopped at the front door and blew a
kiss to Robert. Leaving the door ajar, she began picking her way round her parked car.