Shape of Snakes

*7*

The house was full of young people when I arrived back that evening to find an impromptu barbecue taking place on our terrace. "Another end-of-term celebration," explained my younger son en route from the kitchen with a tray of spare ribs. He dropped me a mischievous wink. "Luke and I were voted the people most likely to throw a good party." He had a pretty girl draped off his elbow whose hair was almost as long and as blond as his own. "Georgie," he offered by way of introduction. "Mum."

The girl was too besotted to look at me for long. "It's nice of you to invite me," she said.

I nodded, wondering how Luke and Tom had managed to become the center of attention so quickly. At their age I had hidden behind a fringe, longing to be noticed and invariably overlooked, while Sam had followed in the wake of the Jock Williamses of this world, acquiring girlfriends courtesy of their friends' superior pulling power. The boys would say it was their height, surfers' good looks and neat bums, but I thought it had more to do with taking jobs as checkout cashiers in the local Tesco's, which seemed to be the modern equivalent of the village pump. In the end all paths meet across a supermarket trolley.

With a promise to put in an appearance as soon as I'd changed, I retreated to the bedroom where I found Sam laid out on the bed and glaring at the ceiling. "It's bedlam down there," he said crossly. "Why didn't you tell me the boys were planning to invite half of Dorchester to eat us out of house and home?"

"I forgot," I lied.

"Well, for your information," he growled, "I was sunbathing in the nude when they all came piling 'round the corner of the house. It was bloody embarrassing."

Smiling, I flopped down beside him. "Is that why you're hiding up here?"

"No," he said, jutting his chin toward some boxes in the corner of the room. "I'm guarding my wine. I found a girl in the kitchen trying to open a bottle of Cloudy Bay because she thought it looked like cheap plonk, so I gave her a lecture on the quality of New Zealand viniculture and she burst into tears."

"I'm not surprised if you had no clothes on. She probably thought you were a rapist."

"Ha-bloody-ha!"

"I suppose you shouted at her?"

He rolled over to face me, propping himself on one elbow. "I told her I'd have her guts for garters if she didn't learn to tell the difference between liebfraumilch and a priceless sauvignon blanc. Matter of fact, I nearly asked for her birth certificate in case we got raided. She didn't look more than twelve."

He had a pleasant face, my husband, with laughter lines raying out around his eyes and mouth, and I thought how well he wore his years and how little he had changed in the quarter of a century I'd known him. He had the kind of temperament that people felt comfortable with because he was slow to anger and quick to pacification, and his face was the mirror of his geniality. Most of the time, anyway.

Now, he eyed me thoughtfully. "How was your day? Did the Reverend Stanhope tell you anything useful?"

I shook my head. "I hardly spoke to him."

"Then why so late back?"

"I talked to his wife," I explained. "She kept a photographic record of their time at St. Mark's and she's lent me pictures of some of the people who were living on Graham Road in '78."

He studied me for a moment. "That was lucky."

Perhaps I should have seized the opportunity to be honest, but as usual I couldn't decide if then was the right time. Instead I just nodded.

"I suppose she knew all their names?"

"Most of them," I agreed.

"And could tell you every last thing about them?"

"Bits and pieces."

He pushed a strand of hair off my forehead with the tips of his fingers. "There can't be many vicar's wives who photograph their husband's parishioners."

I shrugged. "She was semiprofessional, used to cover the weddings of the poorer couples. It grew out of that. She's rather good actually. If she was forty years younger, she'd have made a career out of it."

"Even so"-he let his hand drop to the counterpane-"you could have driven all the way to Exeter to find some dumpy little homebody who'd never done anything more interesting than bake cakes for the Mothers' Union. Instead you come up with David Bailey. That's pretty amazing, don't you think?"

I wondered what was bugging him. "Not really. At the very least I knew she must have some photographs of Annie's funeral. Don't you remember her taking a picture of us with Libby Williams? She's a very striking woman, tall and gaunt ... like a vulture ... rather difficult to miss."

He shook his head. "How did you know she was the vicar's wife and not a press photographer?"

"Julia Charles told me. Apparently, Wendy-Mrs. Stanhope-took pictures of Jennifer's christening so Julia knew her quite well." I paused as he shook his head in unhappy denial. "What's the matter?" I asked.

He swung his legs off the bed and stood up, disbelief crackling out of him like small electric charges. "Larry came to see me this afternoon. He says you're stirring up a hornets' nest by asking questions about Annie. He wants you to stop."

"I hope you told him it was none of his business."

"Quite the reverse. I sympathized with him. Apparently Sheila nearly had a breakdown the last time she got involved. She was hauled before the BMA after your precious vicar accused her of neglect. It was all rubbish, of course-she was cleared immediately-but Larry doesn't want a repeat."

He walked to the window where sounds of laughter drifted up from the terrace. I kept my fingers crossed that Tom wouldn't choose that moment to power up his sound system to full volume, which was the one thing guaranteed to drive his father 'round the bend.

"What else did Larry say?" I asked.

"He wanted to know what brought us to Dorchester. Claims he's not much of a believer in coincidences." He frowned at me in hurt recrimination. "I told him he was wrong ... that it was a coincidence ... that there was no way we could have known in advance where Sheila was working. So he accused me of being naive. Your wife knew, he said. She went into the surgery the day after you moved here to register specifically with Dr. Arnold, then asked for a copy of Sheila's work roster so that she could be sure of getting her."

I frowned back. "Where would he get a story like that?"

"He asked Sheila's receptionist if Mrs. Ranelagh had known in advance which doctor would respond to her request for a home visit."

I sat up and crossed my legs. "I thought that kind of information was confidential," I murmured.

He waited for me to go on and when I didn't he stabbed a finger at me. "Is that it?" he demanded. "You make me look a complete idiot, then talk about confidentiality."

I gave an indifferent shrug. "What do you want me to say? Yes, I knew this house was in Sheila's practice, and that's why we're renting it."

"Why didn't you ask me?"

"Ask you what?"

"If I was happy about it."

"I did. You said Dorchester was as good a place as any."

"You didn't tell me there was a hidden agenda, though, did you?" He was managing to keep his voice under control, but I could feel the tremors of a major tantrum building inside him. And that, of course, is the trouble with people with equable temperaments-once they lose it, they lose it big time. "I might have felt differently if you'd told me you were planning to resurrect Annie Butts. Jesus! Don't you think we went through enough bloody misery at the time?"

I suppose everyone has a pet subject that triggers their anger-with me it was my mother's wicked talent for stirring, with Sam it was his fear of Mad Annie and everything her death represented: the mask of respectability that overlaid the hatreds and the lies. He always hoped, I think, in a rather free interpretation of the karma principle, that if he refused to look beneath a surface then the surface was the reality. But he could never rid himself of the fear that he was wrong.

I took a moment to reply. "It wouldn't have passed the 'so what' test, Sam. I'd have come anyway."

A look of incomprehension crossed his face. "Without me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

It was such a little word but its interpretations were endless. Why would I think of deserting him? Why was I being so devious? Why didn't I trust him enough to tell him the truth? If he cared to, of course, he could answer those questions rather better than I could as he'd had a great deal longer to think about them. Admittedly, I'd never challenged him with them directly, but there must have been occasions in the small hours when he prepared his explanations in case I did.

I answered straightforwardly. "I chose Dorchester because I guessed Sheila had more information than anyone else," I explained, "though to be honest, it wouldn't have mattered where we went. The diaspora from Graham Road has been so widespread that we'd have had this conversation whether we'd come here or"-I gave another shrug-"Timbuktu. Paul and Julia Charles are in Canada ... Jock and assorted others are still in London ... Libby remarried and lives happily with her second husband and three children in Leicestershire ... the Stanhopes are in Devon ... the coroner retired to Kent ... John Hewlett, the RSPCA inspector, is in Lancashire ... Michael Percy, the son of Annie's immediate neighbor, is in prison on Portland ... Bridget Percy, nee Spalding-one of the girls who lived opposite Annie-works in Bournemouth..." I ran out of names and turned to plucking the dowdy candlewick bedspread which was part of the fixtures and fittings and filled me with loathing every time I looked at it.

I'd shocked him to the core. "How do you know all this?"

"The same way you know that Jock lives in Alveston Road. I kept in touch. I have a file of correspondence from my father, who's been writing letters on my behalf for years, and Julia and Libby drop me a line every six months or so to keep me informed about people's movements."

He looked horrified. "Does Jock know you've been talking to Libby?" He used the sort of tone that suggested I'd been party to a nasty piece of treachery. Which was pretty rich, all things considered...

"I doubt it," I said. "They haven't spoken since the divorce."

"But he's always believed we were on his side. Dammit, I told him we were."

"You were half-right then," I said, absorbed in teasing the bedspread with my fingernails. "You've always been on his side."

"Yes, but..." He paused, clearly grappling with some new and unpleasant thoughts. "Does your mother know your father's been writing letters for you?"

"No."

"She'll go apeshit," he said in alarm. "You know bloody well she thought the whole damn mess was dead and buried twenty years ago."

I yanked a particularly large tuft out of the candlewick and poked it back again when I realized I'd made a hole. I wondered if he remembered that my parents were coming to stay with us the following day, or whether like all the other disagreeable things in his life he had pushed it out of his mind. "I wouldn't worry about it," I murmured. "She won't be angry with you ... only with me."

"What about your father?" he demanded, his voice rising in pitch. "She'll tear strips off him for going behind her back."

"There's no reason why she should ever find out."

"But she will," he said pessimistically. "She always does."

I thought of my father's advice on the lesser of two evils. If nothing else, Sam's inability to hide his feelings would start my mother on a hunt for hidden secrets. "She might be cross for a day or two," I said, "until she persuades herself it's all my fault. She's programmed never to blame men for anything. As far as she's concerned, Eve corrupted Adam"-I held Sam's gaze-"when she ought to know that Adam almost certainly took Eve without permission."

He had the grace to blush. "Is that what this is all about? Getting your own back?"

I didn't answer.

"Couldn't you have told me?"

I sighed. "Told you what? That I was pursuing something that was important to me? As I recall, the last time I used those words to you, you accused me of being a neurotic bitch and said if Annie's name was ever mentioned in your presence again, you'd divorce me."

He waved a despairing hand. "I didn't mean it."

"Yes, you did," I said flatly, "and if I'd been half as confident then as Tom and Luke are now, I'd have told you where to stuff your pathetic little divorce. I only stayed with you because I had nowhere else to go. My mother banned me from going home and none of my friends wanted a loony parked in their spare bedrooms."

"You said you wanted to stay."

"I was lying."

Sam lowered himself gingerly onto an unopened box of wine. "I thought this was all over a long time ago. I thought you'd forgotten about it."

"No."

"Jesus," he muttered, dropping his head into his hands and lapsing into a long silence. He roused himself finally. "Have you ever loved me?" he asked bitterly.

I wanted to tell him it was a childish question, that if he didn't know the answer after twenty-four years then nothing I could say would make a difference. Did he think anyone could live indefinitely with someone they didn't love? Could he? But outside on the terrace Tom's boom box roared into sudden life, causing the walls and floors of the old farmhouse to thump in sympathy, and I was spared the necessity of replying.

I went into the bathroom to change and left my rucksack on the bed for Sam to explore. It was a cowardly way to impart information but I didn't feel badly about it. As the old adage has it-you reap what you sow-and Sam's harvest was well overdue.