Reginald Hill - Under World

What could she do? she asked herself.

‘Look,’ said May Farr as if taking pity. ‘You can hang on here if you like. Someone might ring. You can tell them where I am, what’s going off. Would you mind? It’d be a help.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Ellie, delighted to be given a role.

‘Right. We’ll be off. Come on, Arthur.’

‘Do you want to borrow my car?’ asked Ellie. ‘It’s just parked around the corner …’

‘I’ve got my own car, missus,’ said Arthur Downey possessively.

He followed May out of the front door. The policeman parked against the kerb opposite made a note and resumed his paperback novel.

In the quiet house Ellie prowled around between the living-room and the kitchen. This was permitted territory, she felt. Already her mind was beginning to advance Jesuitical arguments for extending her wanderings upstairs. She was entitled to use the lavatory, of course, and what harm could there be in pushing open the door of Colin’s room and peeping in. You could learn a lot from a man’s room, she told herself. But what did she hope to learn about Colin Farr? The answer was chilling enough to make her sit down in an armchair and lock her arms round her legs as though they might independently convey her upstairs to some dreadful revelation. For all she could, all she needed to, find out about Colin Farr was whether his incoherent ramblings about blood, bones and death down the mine had been an admission of guilt.

A bell rang shrilly, startling her. It had to ring again before she recognized it was the front door.

There were two women. One of them she recognized as the thin chain-smoking woman she’d met last time she was here. Wendy something. The other was a tall, raw-boned woman with a rubbery, expressive face.

‘Hello. What are you doing here?’ demanded Wendy. Walker, that was it. Clearly the local CIA had put her in the picture too.

‘Mrs Farr asked me to look after things here while she went up to the hospital.’

‘Oh, did she?’ said Wendy, pushing past with the determination of one who would not be too surprised to find bodies tied up on the carpet.

‘I’m Ellie Pascoe,’ she said to the other woman.

‘I’m Marion Snape,’ said the other curiously.

‘She’s the one I were telling you about,’ said Wendy. ‘Turns out to be a copper’s wife.’

‘Look,’ said Ellie. ‘I’ve been through all this with Mrs Farr.’

‘Oh aye,’ said Wendy, tossing her cigarette into the fireplace and lighting another. ‘And what did May have to say?’

‘She left me in charge here,’ retorted Ellie. ‘Are you responsible for what your husband does, Mrs Walker?’

For some reason this hit home and for a second Ellie thought verbal violence was going to escalate into physical, then suddenly the woman grinned and said, ‘All right. If May left you here, then you can’t be altogether bad, can you?’

‘You must forgive her, Mrs Pascoe,’ said Marion Snape in a voice tinged with relief. ‘She didn’t get thumped enough when she were a little ’un.’

‘That’s me. Deprived in every way. All right, missus, seeing as we’ve got ourselves a line into the enemy camp, mebbe you can fill us in on what’s going off.’

The question and answer session that followed left Ellie feeling drained, but the ice was broken and melted by the time her interrogators had finished with her. Then it was her turn.

She went straight to the point.

‘All this seems to be about Colin’s dad,’ she said. ‘What did happen there?’

The two women exchanged glances, then Marion said, ‘If I knew, I’d not tell you, but as I don’t there’s no harm in telling you the different stories.’

This interesting distinction between confidence and commonalty being approved by Wendy, Marion began. She was not long allowed sole occupancy of the stage as Wendy kept chipping in with addenda and corrections of details of date, time, meteorology, dress, disposition and genealogy, and soon it became an oratorio for two voices.

What it came down to was that Billy Farr was a man not easy of access, but once reached, his affections were given unreservedly.

‘He loved May — and Colin — and that little tyke of his — Jacko — and little Tracey — he idolized that child — he couldn’t have hurt her, not in a month of Sundays — he’d have loved a daughter of his own — that’s why he were so fond of that Stella — ’

‘But he stopped being fond of her, didn’t he?’ interrupted Ellie.

‘Aye, well, she chucked his lad over, didn’t she,’ said Marion.

‘Surely that was after Mr Farr had died,’ objected Ellie.

‘Were it?’ The two women exchanged glances. ‘Well, mebbe it were — but there’s no getting away from it — no matter what anyone says, Billy Farr couldn’t have harmed little Tracey — there’s no getting away from it — ’

Ellie had a vague feeling that they had got away from something.

‘You didn’t mention Arthur Downey. When you were talking about Mrs Farr’s friends.’

‘Downey?’ said Wendy. ‘He’s nowt but a big kid. Thinks two turnips and a bag of spuds’ll make you love him for ever.’

‘He’s all right, Arthur,’ said Marion. ‘Doesn’t say much, but what he does makes sense. And he treats women like they’re human, which is a rare quality round here. I’ve sometimes thought he’d mebbe have married May if the Strike hadn’t happened.’

‘That’s one good thing that came out of it, then,’ said Wendy.

‘What’s the Strike got to do with it?’ wondered Ellie.

‘She means May got us instead,’ explained Wendy. ‘Widow wanted support in the old days, there was nowhere to turn except family to start with and then mebbe another fellow. You only existed round here as a wife and a mother, so what else was there to do? But the Strike changed all that.’

And now they were into the Strike and the development of the Women’s Support Groups. Ellie listened enthralled. She found herself beset by a feeling almost of envy for the way in which these women had had to struggle with traditions, backgrounds, communities and families to achieve even a modest degree of self-determination.

And behind the envy lurked something else. She tried to identify it but couldn’t. Then she realized she was avoiding the obvious. What went hand in hand with envy? Could it be that just as deep down these women almost certainly resented her for having had it too easy, she in her turn resented them for having had it too hard?

She wrenched them back to the Farrs.

‘Could Billy have killed himself?’ she asked. ‘Not because he was guilty of killing the child, but because he felt guilty for leaving her alone?’

‘Mebbe,’ said Wendy slowly. ‘Christmas is the kiddies’ time. Mebbe it just got to him, is that what you mean? But I’d not have said it was likely. He wasn’t a quitter. Even them who reckoned he could have been guilty didn’t all think he committed suicide. There were some who said …’

Marion shot her a warning glance.

‘Said what?’ prompted Ellie.

‘They were the daftest of the lot,’ said Marion. ‘They said that there were those in Burrthorpe who were so sure Billy Farr were guilty that they’d tried and sentenced him themselves and executed him by chucking him down that shaft.’

Silence fell in the room, a silence compounded of horror and excitement. It was the excitement that made Ellie feel more alien than anything else. The horror was the general human reaction to such monstrosities. The excitement was the buzz of speculation and anticipation which must have run around frontier towns when the word spread that a lynching was in the offing. Rough justice, sorting out your own messes, taking care of your own — all the old vigilante clichés ran through her mind. Burrthorpe was a frontier town, not in the geographic, political sense, but in terms of its monogenesis, its cultural separateness, its awareness of constant threat. Its inhabitants had put down roots in a unique sense. Deep beneath the streets and houses lay the reason for their existence, the hope of their continuance. When finally the coal was exhausted or adjudged too expensive to be worth the hewing, Burrthorpe would literally be cut off from its roots and die.