Courting Shadows Read online

‘Not blaming you, no. But I want to suggest that you have a certain responsibility to an employee injured in your service – the more so since his injuries appear to be the result of an error of judgement on your part.’

  ‘An error of judgement? Who says so?’

  ‘According to both Jefford and Harris, you yourself admitted as much at the time of the incident.’

  ‘I may have said something of the sort. I was naturally in a rather agitated state. Allow me to remark, Mr Banks, that you need to keep your own guard up. These people will not scruple to use you for their own ends; and when you tell me, as you did a moment ago, that you are not master of yourself, I’m tempted to ask whether that observation reflects an awareness, however oblique, of the hold they have over you.’

  ‘That wasn’t my meaning, and my understanding of the situation differs radically from yours – not least because it’s based on fuller knowledge than you can lay claim to. Jefford is actually scrupulous to a fault, and I can assure you that he never so much as hinted that I should make representation to you on his behalf.’

  He paused briefly, fixing me again with his discomfiting stare.

  ‘May I make a suggestion? I shall be visiting him again tomorrow afternoon. I should like you to come with me.’

  ‘I’m afraid my work—’

  ‘Just an hour of your time. I ask no more. I believe that would be sufficient to alter your view of the matter.’

  I could not see that such an alteration was either likely or desirable. But I was cold, and unwilling to prolong the discussion, and it seemed easiest, all things considered, to accept the unwelcome invitation.

  3

  I have seen some desolate landscapes in my time, but there is usually a compensatory romance to be found in such places – in the rugged grandeur of the Highlands, for example, or the more surprising wildness of the Devonshire moors. My new place of work offered no such compensation. The low hill behind the village seemed to stand simply as a barrier to vision, while eastward the eye was led away across tracts of impoverished grazing and flat marshland to where the sky and the estuary merged in a leaden haze. A stroll in that direction shortly after my arrival had confirmed the landscape’s elemental dullness while at the same time sharpening my sense of my own entrapment. Less than a mile from the village, the lane gave out, and though I pressed on down overgrown footpaths, I soon found my way barred by a drainage ditch, too wide to leap and choked with sedge and rushes. I stood there for several minutes, taking it in – the seeding rush-heads, the abandoned farm-cart rotting beside the path, the dull shine of the malodorous silt, the grey sky pressing down on it all like a lid; then, with a queasy shudder, I turned and made my way back to the village.

  My lodgings were no more inspiring than my wider surroundings – an overfurnished living-room on the first floor and an attic bedroom too small for any furniture apart from the bed itself, a wicker chair and a blanket-chest which served additionally as bedside table and washstand – but they suited my purposes well enough. Mrs Haskell was quite absurdly apologetic about the bedroom, though the truth is that I had expected nothing better for the very modest amount I was paying. I told her so when I first took the rooms, but she continued for some time to raise the subject on a daily basis, as though in perpetual need of reassurance.

  ‘Please believe me, Mrs Haskell,’ I said in response to yet another anxious enquiry at the beginning of the second week of my stay, ‘there’s nothing whatever the matter with my bedroom. If there had been, I should have moved out by now. I wonder if we might find another subject for our conversations in future.’

  She evidently took this as an invitation rather than a reproof. She placed my breakfast tray on the table in front of me and proceeded to give me such a comprehensive account of her life – her parents’ poverty, early marriage to an ageing master-mariner, widowhood, the death of a daughter, the virtual loss of two sons, both now in Canada and, as she bitterly put it, not troubling to write from one year’s end to the next – that it was nearly nine before I was able to stem the tiresome flow and get away.

  Harris was already at work when I arrived at the churchyard, clearing the fallen soil from the trench. I was pleased to see that the coffin still stood intact on its plinths of compacted earth.

  ‘You’ve done well,’ I said. ‘It looks as if it’s just about ready for lifting.’

  ‘Near enough. But we need another pair of hands.’

  ‘We may have lost Jefford,’ I said, nettled by what I took to be his suggestion, ‘but I should like to think that I’m man enough to take his place.’

  He set aside his shovel and stared up at me.

  ‘Take his place? With respect, sir, this isn’t a job for two. The third rope – there, coiled up by your heel – that’s yours. As I said, we need another pair of hands.’

  Having just offered my assistance, I was poorly placed to challenge his casual assumption of my availability for the task, but I was not going to be pushed into hiring unnecessary labour.

  ‘The coffin’s not an unduly large affair,’ I said. ‘I think our combined strength should be equal to it.’

  ‘Take my word for it, sir, it’s heavier than it looks. But it’s not simply a matter of strength. With only two of us on the job there’s no room for mistakes, if either of us should stumble or lose his grip, the whole thing goes. A third rope – a third man – gives us an anchor in case of trouble.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll have any trouble. Let’s try lifting the thing. If we then decide it’s too much for us, we can always lower it again and bring in additional labour at that stage.’

  I am not sure that this satisfied Harris, but it certainly silenced him. He stooped and picked up the end of the rope which Jefford had been about to attach at the time of his accident. He passed it under the shoulders of the coffin and tied it firmly before retrieving his shovel and clearing the last of the debris from the corner of the trench. Only when he had finished the work and joined me at the trench edge did he speak again.

  ‘I shall have to ask your help, sir, fetching one of those poles from the far side of the church.’

  ‘What for? We need them all for the scaffolding.’

  ‘This is only temporary. You’ll see.’

  I followed him round, irked by his reticence and obscurely aware of having been placed at a disadvantage. He selected one of the sturdiest of the scaffold poles, lifted one end and motioned me to take the other.

  ‘Listen, Harris, I think you’d better tell me what you’re up to.’

  ‘It’s obvious. We can’t drag the coffin straight up the side of the trench. This will hold it clear as well as giving the ropes a smoother run.’

  I should have thought of it myself. It was a good point, and I conceded as much.

  ‘It’s only common sense, sir.’

  The pole comfortably spanned the length of the trench. Harris aligned it immediately above the coffin, about eighteen inches in from the trench edge, and drove in four wooden pegs to hold it in place. Then he climbed down and checked the knots, inspecting them carefully, tugging at the ropes.

  ‘All safe?’

  ‘Safe isn’t the word I’d use, sir. But the knots should hold.’ He flung the ropes over the pole and clambered back up the ladder.

  ‘Are you ready?’ he asked.

  It occurred to me that he was rather relishing his own dominance of the situation. I nodded and picked up the nearer of the two ropes.

  ‘Perhaps I should take that one,’ he said. ‘The foot of the coffin will be lighter.’

  ‘I can manage, thank you, Harris.’

  He shrugged. ‘As you like. But I want to say something before we start.’

  ‘If it needs saying, say it.’

  ‘Supposing we can lift the coffin at all, we’re going to exhaust ourselves within a few minutes, so we need to work fast. But steadily; remember, it’s important to keep it on an even keel as it rises. If it once unbalances itself, we’ll have the devil’s own job of
it.’

  ‘Only common sense, isn’t it, Harris?’

  I had intended the comment to be playful rather than malicious, and slightly surprised myself by the acerbity of my own tone, but Harris gave no sign of offence. He spat on his hands and picked up the end of the second rope.

  ‘Most things in life are a matter of what we call common sense. The trouble is, in my view, it’s not so common as it ought to be.’

  I thought, as we started to pull on the ropes, that the coffin was going to be too heavy for us; then it broke free of the two plinths, scattering soil, and began to rise. Not easily, but steadily, swaying slightly as it came but essentially under control. It was not until it reached surface-level and hung there, hard against the pole, that I felt myself to be in any kind of difficulty.

  ‘What now?’ I asked, suddenly and uncomfortably aware of my quivering thigh muscles, the tension in my back and shoulders. ‘It’s jammed.’

  ‘Just put a turn on the rope. Hitch it around the pole.’

  I kicked the free end into the space between the pole and the trench edge and dropped to one knee.

  ‘That’s it. Now you’ll need to reach across the pole with one hand and bring the rope – easy now, easy!’

  ‘I can’t do it. I need both hands to hold the thing.’ My voice was unsteady now, my whole body trembling.

  ‘Hold hard. I’m coming over.’

  I looked across and saw that he had braced one foot against the pole and was letting down the loose end of his own rope. He lunged forward and downward, seized it as it swung away from him and, with deft, economical movements, wound it several times around the pole before fastening it with a couple of half-hitches. Then he scrambled to my side and leaned out over the trench.

  ‘I’ve got it.’

  He was taking some of the strain now, his left hand grasping the loop of my rope just below the knot, the fingertips of the other hand hooked under the flange where the lid lapped over the coffin edge.

  ‘If you can tie the rope now, we’re home and dry.’

  I could see he was right. Once secured, the coffin could hang there for as long as it took us to recover our strength. It would then be an easy matter, each of us taking one end of the pole, to lift it clear. I edged round him and braced myself as he had done.

  I felt it in my hands and wrists before I saw anything happen. Just a subtle premonitory tremor, something slipping, catching; and then the loop slid over the angle of the far shoulder so that the coffin twisted in the air and lurched heavily inward. It would, I think, have fallen at once had Harris not held it steady against the side of the trench, pulling hard on the rope with his left hand, tightening his grip on the lid with his right. I remember the strained gape of his mouth as he threw back his head, eyes tightly closed, the veins standing out in his neck and on his sweating forehead.

  ‘I can’t hold this. Tie the rope quickly and get your hands to it.’

  I started forward and, as I did so, felt the coffin shift again. I heard Harris gasp and saw him scrabbling with both hands now at the lid. Then the weight was gone from the rope.

  The impact of the coffin on the trench floor seemed oddly subdued, a muted smack or thud reverberating through the ground beneath me. As I struggled to regain my balance I looked across to see Harris on his knees, staring over the edge, clutching a large sheet of lead to his heaving chest. The expression on his face was extraordinary, disgust warring for a moment with what I could only interpret as a terrible fascination. Then he was on his feet and stumbling away, casting aside the lead as he hurried towards the gate.

  In this respect, at least, I proved myself to be made of sterner stuff than Harris. Although the smell that rose from the trench as I leaned over was undeniably repulsive and might well have overpowered me in a more confined space, I was able to cope both with that and with the thing itself. The coffin had fallen right way up, though tilted a little towards my side of the trench by the crushed plinths of earth beneath it. The section of the lid which had peeled away in Harris’s hands had left exposed the upper part of a body so astoundingly well preserved that for a second or two I imagined that I was looking at an effigy rather than a corpse.

  I know men who have worked extensively on church restoration and I have heard several of them speak in general terms of the remarkable preservative properties of a well-sealed lead casing, but I was not prepared for anything so disconcertingly complete. I was astonished by the surviving detail of the graveclothes: the scalloped edges of the stained sheet which enfolded the body, the gathered cloth of the garment visible where the sheet fell open around the breast, the delicate drawstring tied in a neat bow at the throat. The woman – for the body was unmistakably female – stared up at the sky through half-closed lids from beneath a lace-fringed cap, her lips unevenly drawn back from her teeth in what might have passed for a wry smile. The brown skin of the lower part of the face appeared slightly crusted or cracked, but the brow was smooth and the hair still lay in thick dark drifts on the pillow that supported the head.

  Searching my memory, I can find only one parallel to the curious intimacy of that moment. I am a child, small enough to have to stretch upward to see, sleeping on the high four-poster in the guest-room, a middle-aged woman. She lies on her back, one arm hanging over the edge of the bed, breathing noisily through her mouth. I have stumbled in unknowingly and now I hesitate in the half-light, snuffing a faint unfamiliar perfume, wanting – absurdly, since the woman, as I now suppose, can know nothing of my presence – to apologize for the intrusion. But the parallel, I realize, is inexact. The childhood experience speaks to me of embarrassment, even of trespass; but standing there at the edge of the trench I experienced something more. Not terror exactly, for the emotion was firmly under control; but some sense of the way in which a mind of a more primitive or superstitious cast than my own might be overset by sudden confrontation with the enigmatic lineaments of the dead.

  Banks was almost upon me before I became aware of his approach. As I turned, he stopped and looked at me enquiringly, narrowing his eyes against the pale sunlight.

  ‘What’s going on, Stannard? Is Harris all right?’ He nodded towards the gateway where Harris stood, one hand on the wicket, staring at the ground as if he were lost in thought.

  ‘I think so.’ I lifted my head and called out across the graveyard. ‘You’re not hurt, are you, Harris?’

  ‘No, sir.’ He shambled towards us. ‘No. It gave me a turn, that’s all. I was expecting bare bones, not—’

  He broke off with a nervous shrug of his broad shoulders, moved to the edge of the trench and looked in. Banks, following his gaze, started visibly.

  ‘What’s happened here?’

  ‘An accident. Nothing serious.’

  ‘You’re rather prone to accidents, Stannard. Or, rather, those who work with you seem to be having more than their share of them. And I’m bound to say, too, that the matter may be more serious than you think. If certain members of the community were to find out about this—’

  ‘I’m aware of the problem. But there’s no reason why anyone other than ourselves need know. Once we’ve got the coffin out, we can rebury it temporarily in the upcast, and it will be easy enough to slip it back in when we refill the trench. What is it, Harris?’

  ‘Nothing, sir. I was just thinking that the lifting will be even more difficult now. We shouldn’t try again until we’ve found someone to pull alongside us. I can vouch for George. My brother, sir, strong as an ox; and he’ll keep his mouth shut.’

  I glanced across at Banks. He seemed to hesitate briefly before giving me a discreet nod.

  ‘Very well, Harris. Would he be free to come over at once?’

  ‘He might be persuaded, sir.’

  I saw where the conversation was tending.

  ‘You can tell him he’ll be more than adequately remunerated. But I want this thing out of the way by the end of the morning.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I’ll fetch him over.’

&
nbsp; Banks watched him go, waiting until he was out of earshot before turning to me.

  ‘This is a troublesome business,’ he said, indicating the damaged coffin. He shifted uneasily and stared into the trench, his mouth pinched as though clamped on some unspeakable grief.

  ‘I’m not unduly troubled myself. I regard this as a trifling setback. We’ll be back on course by this afternoon.’

  ‘I hope so. The Dean was optimistic that the work would be completed by early spring.’

  ‘I shall do my best not to disappoint him.’

  ‘He thinks highly of you, Stannard. I gather you’ve known one another for some time.’

  ‘Mr Vernon is an old friend of my father’s. He took some interest in my progress when I was young, but it’s a good few years since I last saw him.’

  ‘You must have made a considerable impression. He was adamant that the contract should go to you.’

  ‘I’m very much indebted to him.’

  ‘As is the parish, of course. I think it’s fair to say that none of this would be happening if it hadn’t been for his intervention. I had mentioned the condition of the church to him early last winter, pointing out the difficulties we faced, as an isolated and impoverished community, in finding subscribers for even the most modest programme of restoration; but my observations had been made casually and without expectation. The Dean’s response, on the other hand, was far from casual: shortly before Easter I received a letter informing me that subscriptions were being raised from other quarters, that he had approached an architect and that we could expect work to begin in the late autumn.’

  ‘The answer to a prayer?’

  ‘I suppose so, yes. But the tone of the letter seemed ominously high-handed, and when I wrote to suggest that we might more conveniently wait until spring to start the work it was made very clear to me that, as recipient of a substantial gift, I was in no position to challenge the wisdom of those who had placed it in my hands. I’m not ungrateful, Stannard, and I know better than to jeopardize a programme designed to prevent the building from falling into ruin, but I’ve had ample reason over the past few months to regret my own impotence in these matters.’