Reginald Hill - Under World

May Farr frowned, then nodded and said, ‘You’re right. Not many.’

She relaxed noticeably, perhaps because the odds on Ellie being a predatory middle-class nymphomaniac had lengthened.

‘What’s going to happen to him, Mrs Pascoe?’ she asked suddenly. ‘What have they got on him, can you tell me that? I rang the police station and they told me nowt, then I rang the hospital and they didn’t tell me much more. So what’s happening, Mrs Pascoe?’

Ellie was saved from reiterating her ignorance by a knock at the front door.

‘Now who’s that?’ said Mrs Farr irritably without making any move to find out. But someone was moving. Ellie heard the door being opened, the sound of voices, then the sitting-room door was pushed ajar and a head appeared wearing what she had thought of last night as the expression of an anxious horse. She reached for the name. Downey.

‘Sorry to interrupt, May, but it’s Stella, Stella Mycroft, Stella Gibson as was.’

‘I know who Stella Gibson married, Arthur,’ said May Farr in a rather exasperated tone. ‘What’s she want?’

‘I just wanted to find out how Colin was,’ said Stella, pushing past Downey into the room and looking at Ellie with undisguised curiosity.

What she saw, Ellie did not care to speculate. Seeing ourselves as others see us might be a desideratum of general social philosophy but it didn’t apply when the other in question was in her early twenties, with an exquisite sensuous figure, silver-blonde hair and a face whose small features had a delicate beauty which not even a heavy hand with the make-up could disguise.

‘Does Gavin know you’re here?’ asked Mrs Farr sharply.

The girl shrugged. Even that was a sensuous movement.

‘I don’t have to get permission to ask after an old friend,’ she said. ‘Any road, he’ll be as keen to know what’s going off as everyone else.’

‘Oh, I don’t doubt they’re all taking a lively interest,’ said the older woman bitterly. ‘Well, they’ll have to be disappointed, I know as little as they do and a damn sight less than they can make up!’

‘Is he still in hospital?’

‘Yes, but they say he’s OK, thank God. Stella, they say your Gavin saw Colin on his way out of the pit. What’s he say happened?’

‘Nothing much,’ said Stella. ‘What’s Arthur think? He was down there too?’

‘Oh, Arthur,’ said May as if Downey weren’t there. ‘He’d not say owt he thought might upset me. But I always got straight talk from you when you were going with our Colin. At least I thought I did.’

So that was it, thought Ellie. An old flame. Perhaps not wholly extinguished either. She examined her feelings, recognized jealousy, and realized with perhaps more concern how little surprised or dismayed she was by the recognition.

‘Folk are saying that Col hated Harold’s guts,’ said Stella, watching Ellie though she addressed her words to May. ‘They’re saying that he’s always had a wild streak and that it’d not surprise them if it turned out he’d put paid to the bastard like he threatened often enough. That’s what they’re saying.’

‘I asked for it straight,’ said May Farr with a humourless smile. ‘Do these folk say why Colin should have hated Harold Satterthwaite?’

Stella Mycroft hesitated, then said, ‘Them things some folk hinted about Colin’s dad and the Pedley kid, Harold Satterthwaite were the worst of all, he really believed them.’

‘Nay, Stella, no need to bring all that up,’ protested Downey indignantly. ‘Not now. Aren’t things bad enough?’

‘It’s all right, Arthur,’ said May Farr. ‘No other reason you can think of, Stella?’

‘What other reason would Col need?’ said the younger woman. ‘You should know best how he felt about his dad?’

It was like watching a No play, thought Ellie. You could sense the drama without really understanding it. Certainly there was little love lost between these women. Did the elder resent the younger for having thrown her son over? Or the younger blame the elder for making him unmarriageable?

‘Aye, I should,’ said May Farr. ‘I’ll get you a cup of tea.’

‘No, I mustn’t stay,’ began Stella, but the other woman was already out of the room. Arthur Downey looked reproachfully at Stella and said, ‘Can’t you watch what you’re saying?’ before he too left.

‘Silly sod,’ said Stella. ‘Hangs around here like a toothless guard dog!’

‘Are they …?’ said Ellie.

‘He’d like to, I reckon, but he’s not exactly Action Man, our Arthur. No, I reckon May would have to start anything if anything were going to start. One thing’s certain: Arthur’s not spent a night in this house since Billy died else the local CIA would have had it all on tape!’

‘So Mr Downey lives by himself?’

‘He lodges with his sister and her husband in the next street. He and Billy were big mates, at least Arthur used to tag along behind Billy like a dog. Then Arthur got made up to deputy. Well, that didn’t help. They’re funny about deputies, this lot, I should know. And not long after, Billy Farr had his accident and had to take a job on the bank. Arthur and him got back to being a bit closer after that maybe, but not much. Billy didn’t seem to want to know, really. There was a lot of people reckoned he turned right unsociable after his accident but I always thought he were a lovely man. I was engaged to Col, and while he was away at sea, I used to come round here a lot and we’d look at Col’s cards and work out where he was, and Billy used to make a great fuss of me. Me and little Tracey. I always reckoned he’d have liked a daughter of his own.’

‘Tracey was the child who disappeared?’

‘That’s right. You’d know all about that. After that Billy really was unsociable. I don’t think I got a kind word out of him from that day on. Nor her either. You’d have thought … any road, I thought it’d be different when Col came back, and it was, or mebbe it was the same. We dragged on a bit, but it ended with me giving him his ring back. We were standing on the bridge over the mineral railway. A train went under and I remember he just dropped the ring over into a wagon full of coal. He were always half mad.’

That’s my boy, thought Ellie. Ever the symbolist. But never my boy, nor this woman’s either, though clearly she still felt some claim.

Another part of her mind had been trying to work out why Stella Mycroft was being so frank with a total stranger. Native Yorkshire tactics were usually to ferret out other people’s business and keep quiet about your own. But two things dawned on her.

One was that Stella didn’t need to be nosey because by now the local CIA would have programmed everything they could find out about Mrs E. Pascoe into the central computer. The other was that this gratuitous stream of reminiscence was not aimed at bringing her into the life of Burrthorpe but excluding her from it. Look, Stella Mycroft was saying; see how much closer we can be to each other even in our hates and quarrels than you can ever hope to be even in your affections. See how my life has been entwined with Colin’s long before you ever set your strange and stranger’s eye upon him. Understand that all these odd things that go on in this village have everything to do even with the least important of us who live here and nothing at all to do with an incomer like yourself!

It was a formidable attack, no less destructive because it came from the flank, and probably from the hip. Stella hadn’t come round to this house where she was clearly unwelcome to see her ‘rival’ off. She’d come to find out about Colin.

Typically, Ellie counter-attacked.

‘You got bored with waiting for Col to make up his mind, did you?’