Ann Cleeves - The Crow Trap

The candle on their table provided the only pool of warmth in the room.

“Do you have to get back?” she asked. She spoke abruptly. Certainly there was no seduction in her voice. She leant forward over the table and stretched a long white hand towards him. She would never use gloves for gardening or fieldwork and was aware that her hands wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny. There was a stain on her thumb which she couldn’t get rid of, they were scratched, she had to keep the nails short. But she wanted to touch him. He watched the hand slowly approaching his with fascination. When the fingers met she looked up at his face and saw that he was blushing, breathless.

“Well?”

His fingers were rough, like hers.

“I don’t know.”

“Will Barbara be expecting you?”

“I could phone. Say I’d been held up.”

He was stroking the palm of her hand with his thumb. She was surprised by the effect the simple gesture had. She thought she was getting old and jaded, yet here she was, wanting this upright, middle-aged man so much that she was almost fainting.

“Why don’t you do that? Because Jeremy’s in London and you could come home. For a nightcap. If you’d like that.” She could hardly articulate the words.

Outside they stood for a moment hand in hand. Anne could smell the river. Although they were a long way from the coast it had traces of salt and seaweed. Across the road a car started up. For a moment it caught Godfrey’s attention and she felt the hand tense. He turned his face away from the headlights. She was flattered by the reaction of guilt. Adultery obviously didn’t come easily to him. It occurred to her that this might be the first time he had ever been unfaithful to his wife.

“Well?” she said. “Will you come back with me?”

But they didn’t make it home to the Priory. Their first sexual encounter was in the back of the BMW. Godfrey pulled it off the road and parked in a farm track overhung with trees. Afterwards, lying back on the leather seats, she saw the moonlight filter through the summer foliage. She identified the trees as elder and hawthorn.

That summer Anne saw Godfrey regularly but secretly. She was discreet in a way which didn’t come naturally to her. In the past she had flaunted her men. Jeremy had pretended he didn’t mind, and perhaps he really didn’t, though he liked the fiction that they were a happy couple of independent means, devoted to each other and to country pursuits. Anne was afraid that if he found out about Godfrey he would laugh. At the Marks & Spencer suits, the pretentious gold watch, the shiny shoes. Despite the company he kept, Jeremy was a snob. Godfrey was even more eager than she that the affair remain secret. He couldn’t face the prospect of his wife or his child finding out that he had a lover.

Therefore, she continued as usual. It was a hot dry summer and she spent long hours working in her garden. Her forehead turned as brown as leather and her arms and neck spotted with freckles, so once she said to Godfrey, “I look at least sixty. How can you possibly fancy me?” She expected a quip about his liking older women; instead he said, “I don’t fancy you. It’s much, much more than that.” And she believed him. By the beginning of autumn she had picked the early apples, wrapped them in newspaper and stacked them in boxes at the back of the garage. And she still looked forward to the clandestine meetings.

By the autumn too, opposition to the super quarry had gathered in momentum. She continued to be involved. She liked attending meetings to which Godfrey had been invited. There was an anticipatory thrill in standing outside the door of a shabby church hall, knowing that he was inside. Sometimes she could hear his voice, low and monotonous, making a point. His points were often technical. He might not have passed exams but he carried statistics in his head and could recite them flawlessly, like a child performing a favourite nursery rhyme. She loved arguing with him in public.

The people in the action group thought she disliked Godfrey Waugh intensely.

“Come on, lass,” the man with the sheep’s face said to her. “No need to let it get personal.”

In these confrontations Godfrey was always polite. In private they never discussed the quarry. She thought he was relieved by the pretence that there was antipathy between them. His wife would never believe he could fall for such an aggressive, loud-mouthed harridan.

On one occasion she saw them together, him and Barbara. Even the child was there. Godfrey had given one of his worked-out quarries to the Wildlife Trust to form the heart of the new reserve. The pits had been flooded and turned into ponds. The director of the Wildlife Trust talked hopefully about reed beds and a wader scrape. Godfrey had donated a lot of money for planning and hides, but he had just made his official planning application for the super quarry at Black Law so there was some nervousness within the Wildlife Trust. What was Godfrey Waugh after? Did he make his donation as a pre-emptive strike in the hope of getting a soft ride over the quarry? Anne didn’t know the answers to those questions, but found it hard to believe that Godfrey was that devious.

Because of suspicion about Godfrey Waugh’s motives, the party to celebrate the opening of the new reserve had become a low-key event.

Anne overheard one trustee, a conservative country lady in a cashmere suit, say to another: “We had planned a marquee, but in the circumstances, well, it hardly seemed appropriate.”

It was lunchtime, early October and warmer than days in most summers.

The reserve was on a lowland site. Flat fields stretched to the coast.

Although a bund, built with waste from the quarry, made the sea invisible to the guests, it made its presence felt through a shimmer on the horizon, the enormous sky.

Cattle were grazing on the bank, looking down at the celebration. One pit had already been flooded, had attracted mallard, coot and moorhen.

Anne arrived late, on purpose, to avoid the speeches and joined the people who were spilling out of the visitor centre which had been converted from one of the quarry buildings. It was time apparently for the opening ceremony. A ribbon had been strung between two sickly, newly planted trees. Eventually this would be the entrance to the car park. She recognized the back of Peter Kemp’s head and slipped in behind him.

“Who have they got to do the honours then?”

He turned round, startled. “Good God, woman. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“So which celeb’s going to cut the cord?”

“Godfrey Waugh’s brat.” Peter pulled a face. “Sickening, isn’t it?”

“I’d heard you’d joined the fat cats yourself. Haven’t you set up on your own? A consultancy, I understand.”

“Ah well, that’s different.” “Of course,” she said. “Isn’t it always?”

“You should be nice to me, Annie. I might be able to find some work for you. Proper paid work. I’ve got the contract for the Black Law

EIA.” “Christ!” she said. “How did you manage that?” She was seriously impressed. “Didn’t they want to go for someone more established?”

“I’m the best, Annie. That’s all they needed to know.” He paused.

“You don’t want the job then?”

“I haven’t got any qualifications.”

“You’ve got the skills though. I’ve been taken on to complete the report and I can employ who I like.”

She was still thinking about this, wondering in fact what Godfrey would make of it, when they were called to order. Felicity Waugh was led by her father in front of the crowd. She was a plump old-fashioned girl with hamster cheeks and long crimped hair. He handed her a pair of garden shears and she struggled to cut the ribbon. It was an awkward task because the shears were very blunt. Eventually Godfrey helped her, putting his hands over hers. There was a burst of applause.