Asking for the Moon: A Collection of Dalziel and Pascoe Stories

‘Well then.’

‘But old mother Warnock is due here in half an hour.’

‘She’ll devil us some kidneys. You can say you dropped in to invite me to address the Mothers’ Union.’

‘Boris, dear, she’d stand up and denounce us before the first hymn next Sunday morning. No, I’ll have a quick shower and be off.’

She left the room before he could attempt to restrain her by force or persuasion.

He did not appear too frustrated by her evasion but strolled round the room getting dressed. Unhappy at the selection of trousers in the large mahogany wardrobe which occupied half a wall opposite his bed, he took a key from a chest of drawers and unlocked a smaller oak wardrobe in the corner by the window. Here were hanging the heavier twills which the chill of the morning invited.

Here also hung a woman’s dress in white muslin with blue ribbons to gather it gently in beneath the bosom. On the shelf above was a wide-brimmed floppy hat in white linen trimmed with blue roses. He touched it lovingly, then caressed the soft material of the dress with his open hand.

When he turned from re-locking the wardrobe Ursula was standing dripping wet in the bedroom doorway.

‘I couldn’t find a towel,’ she said.

‘I’ll come and rub you dry,’ he answered, smiling.

3

Geoffrey Rawlinson let his binoculars rest on his chest, stood up, collapsed the seat of his shooting-stick and, leaning heavily on it so that he drilled a trail of holes across the lawn, he limped back to the bungalow.

He heard the phone being replaced as he negotiated the high step into the kitchen, and a moment later his wife came into the room, snapping on the light so that he blinked as it came bouncing at him off chrome, tile and Formica. The changes Stella had made in the kitchen never ceased to amaze him. It was, he claimed, more automated than the War Room in the Pentagon. But even in high summer it still needed artificial light till the sun was high in the sky.

‘Children off to school?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Please, Geoff, how many times do I have to ask you? Don’t dig up the floor tiles with that thing!’

‘Sorry,’ said Rawlinson. He leaned the shooting-stick against the waste-disposal unit and took up his heavy blackthorn walking stick which was hooked over the rack of the dishwasher. It had a thick rubber ferrule which squeaked against the floor as he walked towards his wife.

‘Who were you phoning?’ he asked.

‘The butcher,’ she said. ‘Is she still over there?’

‘I’ve been looking at the birds,’ he answered in tones of gentle reproach. ‘That pair of whitethroats is still here. It’s really incredibly late for them. I think one of them may have been injured and the other’s waited for it. Touching, don’t you think?’

His wife regarded him without speaking. Her face had all the individual features of great beauty, but there was something too symmetrical, too inexpressive about them, as though they had been put on canvas by a painter of great technique but no talent.

Rawlinson sighed.

‘I don’t know. Just because you saw her walking down the old drive last night doesn’t mean she was going to bed down with Boris.’

‘Don’t be a fool,’ she snapped. ‘Peter’s away singing, isn’t he? And why else should she be skulking around out there on a nasty damp evening?’

‘You were,’ he observed quietly.

‘I was in my own garden,’ she said sharply. ‘If she wanted to visit Wear End, she could easily drive round by the road. After all, she does have her own car, which is more than we can afford.’

‘It’s her own money,’ said Rawlinson.

‘It’s the money you had to pay her for half of your own house,’ retorted Stella.

‘We’ve been over all this before,’ he said. ‘I had to buy her out. And there was something left over from Father’s will to pay for all this modernization.’

He gestured at the kitchen.

‘While she lets her husband freeze in that draughty old rectory and spends all her money on cars and clothes!’

‘She has to live there too.’

‘Not when Peter’s away she doesn’t.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ he snapped. ‘She’s my sister, so leave it alone.’

‘And Peter’s your cousin. And you’re my husband. But what difference does that make to anything?’ she yelled after him as he stumped out of the kitchen.

An hour later she took him a cup of coffee in his study.

The light was on above his draughtsman’s drawing-board but he was sitting at his desk with his bird-watching journal. The writing was on the left-hand page. On the other he had sketched with a few deft strokes of a felt-tipped pen a pair of whitethroats in a sycamore tree. In the background loomed the bulk of Wear End House with its windows all shuttered.

She put the coffee down by the drawing.

‘Are we going to Boris’s tomorrow night?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Will John be there?’

‘He’s got the face for it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, leave it alone, Stella!’

‘I think he deserves all our sympathy and support.’

‘Last time you said it was the biggest stroke of luck he’d had!’

‘I still think that!’ she snapped. ‘But the difference between thinking and saying is called civilized behaviour.’

‘OK. OK. Let’s drop it,’ he answered moodily. ‘I must try to get some work done or we’ll have nothing to put down the waste-disposal unit.’

At the door she paused and said, ‘I don’t mean to nag, Geoff, but things …’

‘Yes, yes. I know.’

‘How’s your leg this morning?’