Reginald Hill - Pictures of Perfection

Dalziel and Pascoe looked at each other incredulously, knowing this was pure invention. Guy too was trying to look incredulous but making a pretty poor fist of it.

The Squire said, ‘Guy, I have never been fond of you, but I always thought that at least you were a Guillemard. Now I hope that my poor dead brother, or his son, your father, was cuckolded, because it shames me to call you kin.’

And now Guy finally abandoned hope.

‘Well, I hope so too,’ he said, his good-looking face twisted in rage. ‘Because you don’t think I ever got any pleasure out of having people know I was related to an antique loonie who spends his time composing doggerel that would disgrace a nursery rhyme, not to mention this pipe-smoking freak of a granddaughter. Helpmeet, you called her. What’s that mean? That she rocks you to sleep with a hand job once a week … Jesus!’

The old man had released his arm and stepped back to give himself room for a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree swing of the right hand which ended with a crack on Guy’s face that sent the rooks squawking up out of the Wilderness trees.

For a second Guy looked as if he might retaliate.

Then: ‘Fuck you,’ he said. ‘Fuck the lot of you.’

And he strode away towards the house and a few moments later they heard the roar of his Land Rover as he gunned it down the drive.

The Squire stood nursing his hand. Girlie and Fran rushed up to him.

‘Grandfather, are you all right?’ asked Girlie anxiously.

‘I think I may have sprained my wrist,’ said the old man.

‘Let me take a look,’ said Fran.

‘In a moment,’ said the Squire. ‘Friends …’

As he raised his voice once more, the excited buzz of speculation faded away.

‘ Fucata non Perfecta ,’ proclaimed the Squire. ‘The rents are paid.’

‘What’s that mean?’ demanded Dalziel.

‘From the look of it,’ said Pascoe, ‘I think it means grub’s up.’

‘About bloody time too!’ said Dalziel. ‘Let’s get stuck in while there’s some left!’

Dalziel need not have worried, even though his assessing glance at the heroic deeds being performed all around convinced him he was in the company of peers. There was grub aplenty and of a quality he hadn’t encountered since his childhood.

‘If I weren’t promised, I might marry that lass,’ he declared. ‘Where’s she at?’

‘I think she’s being reconciled with her brother and to her new status,’ said Pascoe, looking to where George and Dora were huddled together in animated conversation. ‘Who are you promised to, sir?’

‘Greasy Joan in the canteen who gives me extra chips.’

‘Is this a formal engagement?’

‘Nay, I just told her if I ever did decide to get wed again, I’d give her first refusal,’ said Dalziel. ‘Pass me them cream horns, will you? Where’s Wieldy?’

‘Over there talking to Digweed.’

‘We’ll need to watch him, Peter. He’s been acting funny ever since he got back. What was all that crap about yon kingfisher anyway?’

‘What was all that about the kingfisher?’ Digweed was saying.

‘Guy shot it. It’s an offence,’ said Wield stolidly.

‘I see. So us burglars can be allowed to run free, but offences against wildlife must be rigorously prosecuted. Very green of you. So it was only incidentally that you did Enscombe in general and Old Hall in particular the signal service of disinheriting Guy.’

‘You think the Squire will disinherit him, then?’ said Wield.

‘I do love a man who knows how to change a subject,’ said Digweed.

‘Are you really going to make Girlie and George your heirs?’ asked Fran as she strapped the Squire’s wrist.

‘If I live long enough to see my lawyer,’ said the Squire. ‘What’s that redheaded fellow hanging about for?’

Fran glanced to the doorway where Harry Bendish was visible peering in.

‘I think maybe he wants to ask if it’ll be all right to marry me,’ said Fran.

‘Good Lord. That’s not what you want, is it, my dear?’

‘Very much,’ she said.

‘Fellow’s a striker, you know that?’

‘No, he’s not. That time you saw him on the wall, well, we’d been together in the garden, in the shed actually, and afterwards he just sort of got carried away.’

‘Together? Doing what?’

Fran cast around for an idiom which might be familiar to the old man. All she could come up with was, ‘Spooning.’

‘Spooning?’ he echoed, then threw back his head and laughed. ‘ Spooning you call it? In my days we kept our clothes on to spoon, especially in midwinter! No, my dear, what I think you mean is at the very least canoodling, and possibly even coupling, eh?’

Fran flushed deep apricot and said, ‘I’m going to marry him, Grunk.’

‘Of course you are. You’re like your gran, my sister Frances. Went off and married the vicar while I was chasing sheep around New Zealand. She’d gone by the time I came home. Never saw her again. Pity. She might have told me little Agnes was pregnant. I never knew that, you know. I thought I got sent away simply because she wasn’t what they called suitable. A terrible man, my father. Most of them were, the Guillemards. Perhaps you think I’m a terrible man too?’

‘No,’ she smiled, ‘I’ve never thought that.’

‘Good. I’ll tell you something. First place Agnes and I ever spooned in, that was the garden shed too. What do you think of that?’

‘I think it’s great.’

‘You do? Great , eh? Well, I’ll talk to young fellow-me-lad later. First things first. Soon as you bind me together, you slip off and get that big fiddle of yours.’

‘But I thought you weren’t going to do the ballad today?’ said Fran.

‘Things have changed, haven’t they?’ he said. ‘Besides, there’s probably plenty of folk out there thinking it’s going to be all cakes and no ballad. Can’t have them going home disappointed, can we?’

And he winked at her.

It took Fran a second or two to grasp his meaning. Even then she wasn’t certain. She’d always been sensitive to the politely glazed boredom of most of his audiences, and it had been a constant worry that the Squire himself might one day detect and be hurt by it.

She said cautiously, ‘I’m sure most of them enjoy …’

‘Oh God. I hope not! After the years I’ve spent listening to them droning on at fêtes and shows and concerts and meetings, I hope I’m not wasting me old age entertaining them!’

She began to laugh, the Squire too, and after a while, encouraged by their mirth, Harry Bendish came through the door, smiling shyly.

Kee Scudamore smiled shyly at Larry Lillingstone and said, ‘It’s probably all for the best, Larry.’

It was, she realized, at the very least an ambiguous statement. It could mean, it’s all for the best that the object of an avowed celibate’s desires should put herself out of reach by marriage. Or it could mean that in view of the kind of expectations Caddy would have of a husband, it was all for the best that someone else should be landed with her. What it really meant, of course, was that it was all for the best that her sister’s availability had been so satisfactorily removed, thus clearing the decks for her own assault.

He said, ‘Never console a professional consoler, Kee. He’s played that game too often not to know all its finesses.’

Kee regarded him fondly, thinking how well despair became him. He was right, of course, he knew the cards of consolation as well as she did — the needs of the living, the healing powers of time. Eventually he would also recall that he knew these were not deuces and treys but mighty trumps. She wanted him body and soul. The one was still focused on Caddy, the other fixed on God. No problem, she thought. She was aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary very much as to time in different people, but, late or soon, she had the patience to wait.