Reginald Hill - Arms and the Women

Harper An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2000

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Reginald Hill 2000

Extract from ‘Marina’ from the Collected Poems 1909–62 by T.S. Eliot (published by Faber and Faber Ltd) Reproduced by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd

Lines from ‘Girls’ by Stevie Smith from The Collected Poems of Stevie Smith (Penguin) © James McGibbon 1975

Extracts from The Englishman’s Flora by Geoffrey Grigson (Phoenix House 1987)

Extract from A Celtic Miscellany by Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson (Penguin 1971)

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007313181

Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780007378548

Version: 2015-06-18

This one’s for

those Six Proud Walkers

in whose company the sun always shines bright

Emmelien

Jane

Liz

Margaret

Mary

Teresa

who most Fridays of the year… on distant hills

Gliding apace, with shadows in their train,

Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed

Into fleet Oreads sporting visibly…

and, of course, laughing and talking and eating

almond slices,

with fondest greetings from

one of the trailing shadows!

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling Questions, are not beyond all conjecture.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE: Urn Burial

With my own eyes I’ve seen the Sibyl at Cumae hanging in a pot, and when the young lads asked her, what do you want for yourself, Sibyl? she replied, I want to die.

PETRONIUS: The Satyricon

Girls! although I am a woman

I always try to appear human

STEVIE SMITH: Girls!

Cover Page

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

PROLEGOMENA

BOOK ONE

i spelt from Sibyl’s leaves

ii who’s that knocking at my door?

iii memories are made of this

iv spelt from Sibyl’s leaves

v revenge and retribution

vi citizen’s arrest

vii a pint of guinness

viii spelt from Sibyl’s leaves

ix bag lady on a bike

x spelt from Sibyl’s leaves

xi a game of hearts

xii doppelgänger

xiii the death of Marat

xiv a man’s best friend

xv spelt from Sibyl’s leaves

xvi oats for St Uncumber

xvii the juice of strawberries

xviii the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la!

xix pooh on the patio

xx the last of the cobblers

BOOK TWO

i strange encounter

ii drudgery divine

iii the pavilion by the sea

iv spelt from Sibyl’s leaves

v realms of gold

vi cheated by Protestants

vii the sirens’ song

viii we galloped all three

ix coitus interruptus

x belly or bollocks

xi spelt from Sibyl’s leaves

xii come to dust

xiii faery lands forlorn

xiv a face from the past

xv bloody glass

xvi a palomino pony

xvii a formal complaint

xviii the US cavalry

xix I shall wound every man

xx liberata liberata

xxi an elfin storm

xxii spelt from Sibyl’s leaves

EPILEGOMENA

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

When I go to see my father, he doesn’t know me.

He’s away somewhere else in a strange land.

I tell myself it’s not all bad. He missed all that suffering when we thought Rosie was going to die. And all those refugees in Africa, and in Europe too, that we see streaming across our television screens, he doesn’t have to worry about them. Global warming, AIDS, the Euro, none of these impinges on his consciousness. He doesn’t even have to feel anxious about his roses when gales are forecast in July.

He sits here in the Home, like ignorance on a monument, smiling at nothing.

At least he’s content, the nurses tell us, and we tell them back, yes, at least he’s content.

Content to be nobody and nowhere.

But I have seen him outside of this room, this cocoon, with memories of somebody and somewhere still intermittent in his mind, staring in bewilderment at the woman who is both his wife and a complete stranger, pausing in the hallway of his own house, unable to recall if he’s heading for the kitchen or the garden and ignorant of which door to use if he does remember, crying out in terror as the dog which has been his most obedient servant for nearly ten years comes bounding towards him, barking its love.

Seeing him like this was bad.

But worse was waking in the night during and after Rosie’s illness, wondering if perhaps what we call Alzheimer’s – that condition in which the world becomes a vortex of fragments, a video loop of disconnected scenes, an absurdist drama full of actors pretending to be old friends and relations – wondering whether perhaps this is not a disease at all but merely a relaxing of some psychological censor which the self imposes to enable us to exist in a totally irrational universe.

Which would mean that dad and all the others are at last seeing things as they really are.

Unvirtual reality.

A sea of troubles.

Confused.

Inconsequential.

Fragments shored against a ruin.

Oh, Mistress Pascoe,

Laud we the gods, and let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils for glad tidings do I bring and lucky joys. No more I fear the heat of the sun, as time which all these years has wasted me now sets me free, most happy news of price, but not for all, for does not time’s whirligig bring in revenges? Thou’rt much in my mind, nor shall I be content till I have seen thy face, when my full eyes shall witness bear to what my full heart feels. May my tears that fall prove holy water on thee! I must be brief, for though my enemies set me free, in freedom lies more danger than in prison, for here through thee and thine the world knows me in their care, but once enlarged, then am I at the mock of all disastrous chances and dangerous accidents by flood and field, with their hands whiter than the paper my obits are writ on and so must wear a mind dark as my fortune or my name. Fate leads me to your side but gives no date, for I must journey now by by-paths and indirect crook’d ways, but sometime sure, when you have quite forgot to look for me, a door shall open, and there shall I be, though you may know me not, but never fear, before I’m done you’ll know me through and through. Till then rest happy while I remain, though brown as earth, as bright unto my vows as faith can raise me.