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  PERSONS UNKNOWN

  Gwen Moffat

  © Gwen Moffat 1978

  Gwen Moffat has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1978 by Victor Gollancz Ltd.

  This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  PERSONS UNKNOWN

  Gwen Moffat

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter One

  ‘I had a dream,’ old Roderick said with heavy drama, and waited for his housekeeper to register interest.

  ‘Let’s get you sitting up first.’

  Iris MacNally set down his breakfast tray and advanced on the bed: a big solid woman in a dress that had seen better days.

  Roderick glared at her. ‘Keep yer hands off me, woman! I can sit up on me own, and I’m finished with breakfast in bed. I’ve never in the whole of me life—’

  ‘You’ve been having it in bed for three days now. The doctor said you’d got to watch your—’

  ‘He’s a bloody quack!’ The old man was covered by nothing heavier than a sheet but the effort to sit up unaided was beyond his strength. Wincing, he sank back on his pillows.

  ‘You see,’ she said without triumph, ‘you can still do with a hand. You’ve strained those muscles and they’ve got to tone up gradually; no sense in trying to hurry Nature.’

  ‘Damme, Iris!’ She helped him into a sitting position and he drooped over his knees: a fierce little figure bristling at his own inadequacy. Iris plumped the pillows and eased him back with a large hand. He perked up at this and his eyes gleamed balefully.

  ‘You’re enjoying this. Yer like having me in bed, don’t yer?’

  ‘It’s for your own good, Mr Bowen.’

  ‘I’m getting up today.’

  ‘Of course you are: after lunch; you can sit by the window and watch your birds—’

  ‘I’m getting up after breakfast. It’s me birthday.’

  ‘There! You took the words right out of my mouth as I came in the door. You and your old dreams.’ She had an accent which she might have termed refined but with traces of Liverpool and Ireland lurking in the corners. ‘Many happy returns of the day, Mr Bowen, and if you’ll only look after yourself properly, I’m sure there’ll be many more of the same.’ She beamed comfortably at him.

  ‘And I want champagne.’

  ‘I’ll be seeing to it.’

  ‘With me breakfast.’

  ‘Aren’t you a one? Now, here’s your tea; look: why don’t I throw out this awful old mug? It’s cracked all—’

  ‘Where’s me bacon?’

  ‘The fat’s bad for your heart.’

  ‘Jesus Christ! You’re always saying people are as old as they feel. I’m eighty-seven today and I feel like a two-year-old—organically.’ He looked evil. ‘And that don’t mean what you think it means. It’s all very well for you to primp yer mouth, but young men have falls too; I’ve been in a lot worse state than this in me time: broken bones into the bargain.’ His eyes glazed. ‘That time I came off the Breithorn I broke the femur in one leg, the tibia in the other, in two places. I was lying on the glacier for eight hours before they found me.’

  ‘Gracious. You could have died of pneumonia.’

  ‘Pneumonia, woman? Don’t be soft. It’s exposure in the Alps: what they call hypothermia these days. Kept meself alive by controlled shivering. Painful business: I could hear those broken bones grating together.’

  ‘Now, now, Mr Bowen.’

  He grinned happily. ‘Kept passing out from shock. Not much pain, yer see; when it got too bad, I passed out again. Quite a good night really. I wasn’t alone at the end.’

  ‘I’m sure you weren’t.’

  ‘Ha! Not in that way. This was some chap who came and sat with me, near me, just out of the corner of me eye: out of focus, I mean. Comfortable sort of feller.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘Not a word. They don’t, yer know. He just kept me company until the rescuers arrived. Quite a common occurrence in the mountains, specially when you’re a bit under the weather. You wouldn’t understand, of course. You’ve led a sheltered life.’

  ‘Now you’re teasing.’

  ‘So I know what serious injury’s like, which is more than you do, for all you’ve set yerself up as me nurse. And I’m just bruised this time. You’re fussing like an old hen.’

  ‘You’re black and blue all down one side, and you’ve had a very nasty shock.’

  He put down his mug with deliberation.

  ‘Anyone would be shocked at an attempt on his life.’

  ‘Anyone,’ Iris said serenely, ‘would be shocked at falling fifteen feet down the granary steps.’

  ‘I was pushed!’

  She crossed to the window and picked up a vase of tiger lilies. ‘These don’t last long in the heat. I’ll pick some fresh.’

  ‘Don’t trouble.’

  ‘You don’t like lilies?’

  ‘They’re all right for funerals. What’s this on me cereal?’

  ‘It’s some of Rachel’s bran.’

  ‘Horse fodder! And me bowels are me own business. I’m coming down for me bacon.’

  ‘Mr Bowen! If you’ll only stay in bed while I give the doctor a ring. You’re my responsibility, you’re putting me in a very awkward—’

  Her voice rose as the door opened. A young man with thick blond hair looked in.

  ‘What’s going on here? Many happy returns of the day, Rod.’

  ‘Norman! Thank you, me boy. This bloody woman’s bullying me again.’

  ‘Mr Bowen!’

  ‘Stop laying down the law, Iris; it’s his birthday. How’re you feeling, Rod?’

  ‘Fit as a flea, lad. I’m getting up.’

  ‘You do that. We’ll go for a swim. Work the stiffness out of the muscles.’

  ‘The doctor said—’

  ‘Mr Bowen knows what’s best for him, Iris, and he’s got a constitution like an ox. I’ll help you dress, Rod.’

  The two men exchanged glances. Iris backed to the door. ‘I wash my hands of it, Mr Bowen; I’m only thinking of what’s best for you . . . and your own family have got no call to encourage you.’ She sniffed furiously, her hands rolling her apron. ‘You shouldn’t employ me if you don’t trust me. You know it’s for your own good. The doctor said—’

  ‘You’re employed as a housekeeper,’ Roderick shouted as she opened the door, ‘you ring that quack and you’re fired!’

  The door closed behind her. ‘Damn woman!’ He sank back against the pillows, exhausted. ‘Lot of fuss about a bruise.’

  ‘It was a bad fall, Rod.’

  ‘I was pushed, lad.’

  Norman sighed. ‘You trod on a branch.’

  ‘And where did the branch come from?’

  ‘It fell off the tree.’

  ‘There—was—no—wind.’ It was like a ritual exchange—which it had become over the last few days.

  ‘Branches can come down at any time.’ Norman sounded tired. ‘In this heat anything can happen.’

  Roderick poked at his cereal. ‘I had a dream,’ he repeated hopefully.

&nb
sp; The other sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘Go on; I like your dreams.’

  The old man had found his audience. He closed his eyes, concentrating on the picture in his mind. ‘The peninsula was covered with enormous structures: cooling towers, and those things like outsize balls, covered with ’em so you couldn’t see a blade of grass; all made of aluminium and gleaming in the sun. And there was this pile near the middle, must have been sited right on the cromlech meadow. I was looking down on it all, a hawk’s eye view from the fort, and I felt the earth tremble as if something under the ground was waking up and turning over and rousing itself . . . and the building on the cromlech meadow started to crumble, like a quarry face after the shot’s fired. Then there were flames and the noise of an explosion and the whole bloody complex disintegrated: from Riffli Head right back to where Corn Farm once stood. White smoke, Norman, rising and, you know, that awful mushroom cloud?’

  ‘It’s all over, Rod.’

  ‘And it went rolling up into an absolutely clear blue sky, folding over and over, and then the cloud started to move eastwards. . . .’

  ‘We’ve all become obsessed with it, but stop worrying: you and Rachel together; you’ll drive yourselves round the bend. We won, old chap! They chose another site.’

  ‘You know why the first building collapsed?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They’d built it on the cromlech meadow.’

  ‘Oh, I see. The—the Longheads objected.’

  Roderick darted a glance at him from under jutting brows. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, lad; don’t forget that.’

  ‘I’m not arguing—but I wish you’d forget the other side.’

  ‘You’re suggesting I forget a fast breeder reactor?’ The tone was honeyed.

  ‘They’re not coming here, Rod.’

  ‘Huh!’

  ‘Well, isn’t that what we’re celebrating today? It’s not only your eighty-seventh birthday—’

  ‘Eighty-eighth.’

  ‘Have it your way. It’s the defeat of the Atomic Energy Authority as well. Hell, Rod; how many chaps of your age have taken on the Establishment and won?’

  ‘Not me, lad; all of us.’

  ‘But you spear-headed the Action Committee. It’s your land.’

  ‘Ah, yes. My land.’ Roderick turned his head to the open window and for a moment they listened to the pigeons crooning in the woods. ‘Family land.’ He passed a thin hand over his skull. ‘Right back to the Old People and on—by way of you and Rachel. Posterity: that’s what it’s all about.’ He looked at his grandson-in-law with affection. ‘I can’t tell you how relieved I am that she found a feller with the same feeling for Riffli. . . . Strange how it can skip a generation; her father doesn’t care.’

  ‘Now, that’s just not true; he’s built that pub up into a flourishing business.’

  ‘His wife has. Rupert’s content to let her run it while he hobnobs with the customers and takes them out on trips to frighten the puffins in the nesting season.’

  ‘So what? A good hotel needs a strong frontman. Doreen’s far too busy behind the scenes to chat up the guests. Rupert’s the P.R. man.’

  ‘What’s that? I don’t hold with all these abbreviations.’

  ‘Public Relations.’

  ‘He’s that all right.’ The tone was gloomy rather than spiteful.

  ‘So he’s the ideal chap for the hotel. And up here you’ve got Rachel—who’ll get stuck into the farming side when—when it’s necessary—and she’s got the same respect as you for the ancient places—no, I’m not laughing, I’m dead serious—and she’s all for conserving the wildlife. And then again: Rupert and Doreen virtually run the village and they look after the holiday cottages which are beneath your notice despite the nice fat rents they bring in. What have you got to grumble about?’

  ‘Lack of respect for one thing. Nice fat rents indeed! You make me sound like an absentee landlord. Let me tell you: all that money goes straight back in the estate; there’s no profit anywhere, not with the taxmen hanging on my tail like a crowd of vultures. I’m not grumbling. I was just saying: I’m glad Rachel married you; you’re a lad after me own heart, and you—yer get on well, don’t yer?’ He held the other’s eye.

  ‘She’s adorable.’

  ‘Yes. Well.’ The old fellow looked doubtfully at his tray. ‘Funny dream,’ he mused, ‘Didn’t know I had enemies . . . like that.’

  ‘Who was the enemy in your dream?’

  ‘In the dream? No, no. I was thinking about the branch on the granary steps.’

  *

  Norman came in the kitchen with Roderick’s breakfast tray to find his wife and Iris MacNally washing dishes at the sink. Rachel Kemp was nineteen: a plain girl with the big Bowen nose and a lot of tawny hair. There were dark circles under her deepset eyes.

  ‘I’ll go up to him now.’ She dried her hands. ‘How is he? Iris says he’s being awkward.’

  ‘He’s muddled.’ Her husband was munching a piece of toast from the tray. ‘He’s getting his dreams confused with reality—or what he takes for reality.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Oh, dreaming about an atomic cloud over the peninsula and the Enemy at the top of the granary steps.’

  Rachel grimaced at the housekeeper. ‘Is he still shocked?’

  ‘Could be.’ The older woman was unperturbed. ‘The fall was only three days ago. He’ll get over it.’

  ‘It’s a wonder he didn’t break his thigh.’

  ‘He could have been killed,’ Norman said with heat. ‘We’ve got to stop him going up in the granary at night.’

  ‘You’ve got a hope.’ Rachel was scathing. ‘It’s the only place from where he can watch those owls. That’s why he put the nest box just outside the granary window. You could fix a handrail though, darling; there’s a stack of timber in the coach-house.’

  ‘That’s an idea. We’ve got to take care of him at his age.’

  ‘He was demanding champagne with his breakfast,’ Iris said.

  They stared at her. ‘Champagne!’ Norman snorted. ‘And he won’t buy a pot of paint so I can do the windows! Anyone would think we were paupers. There’s all those cottages bringing in thirty, forty quid a week, and the butcher’s bill hasn’t been paid for two months! Can’t you get him organised to pay a few bills? Hell, Sandra paid in advance for the mill cottage: two months! That’s over two hundred quid.’

  ‘How did you know she paid in advance?’ Rachel was askance, then vicious. ‘Oh, she told you—’

  ‘She talks too much.’

  ‘She is—a trifle indiscreet.’ She was childishly venomous, then her tone changed, became earnest: ‘Grandad has to plough everything back into the estate, you know that. We’ve always lived on tick; you’ve no idea what it costs to keep up this place, and the land; why, you’ve only got to look at our roof, let alone Corn’s buildings. And for God’s sake, don’t talk about money today; he’s going to have enough excitement without that—and his blood pressure can’t be normal at his age—can it, Iris?’

  ‘He’ll see a few more birthdays yet, providing he takes care of himself.’

  ‘So when are you going to let him start on the champagne?’ Norman asked drily.

  ‘I’ll stall him as long as possible but if it comes to a choice of evils and he’s going to work himself into a tantrum we could allow a small glass before lunch, but no more than that. And we’ll need to watch him carefully once he gets up or he’ll be sneaking down the cellar for a bottle if he can’t get to the fridge.’

  ‘We can soon stop that.’ Norman took a huge key from a nail beside the cooker. In a corner of the flagged kitchen was a door which he locked. ‘Where can we hide the key?’

  ‘In the bread crock,’ Rachel suggested. ‘Can you handle him, Iris, if he finds the cellar’s locked?’

  ‘I’ll manage; don’t worry about it.’

  ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’ Norman’s eyes shone with sincerity.

 
‘You’re a tower of strength,’ Rachel echoed, then she winced as if in pain. ‘It’s ghastly: living with old people.’

  ‘He’s no trouble.’ Iris scoured a pan with capable hands.

  ‘It’s not that.’ The girl’s face was dismal with suffering. ‘It’s remembering he’s so old, and some time soon he’s got to—I mean: eighty-seven! I can’t bear it at times; I feel I’m going to blow my top. I don’t care about dying myself, it could be rather nice: beautiful—and sad?—but, for other people—’ she stared at her husband with such intensity that he was embarrassed, ‘—people you love. . . . God! I’d rather it was me!’

  He put an arm round her shoulders. ‘Darling!’ He nuzzled her ear.

  ‘Don’t!’ she gasped and flinched away from him to be overwhelmed immediately by contrition. ‘I’m sorry, but you make it worse. We’ve got no right to be happy.’

  He changed gear effortlessly. ‘After seventy every day is a bonus. He’s had seventeen years since seventy and he’s happy as a sandboy—even now. He revelled in that fight with the nuclear power people, and he’s enjoying his fall.’

  Iris turned and stared at him.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he went on, ‘he’s not really paranoid, you know; he’s just playing up to the image. He adores drama—like you, darling—’ he regarded his wife with affectionate amusement but kept his tone light, ‘—don’t you remember him telling us, when we thought there was going to be a public inquiry, that the Atomic Energy Authority would stop at nothing to get the site? Including murder, he said. Surely you haven’t forgotten him ringing the chief constable to ask where he could get trained Alsatians for protection?’

  Rachel giggled. ‘And Pritchard telling him he’d buy Dobermans to stop our Alsatians chasing his sheep!’

  ‘He’s a character,’ Iris said fondly. ‘He was swearing like a trooper at me this morning.’

  ‘Back to normal,’ Rachel commented with a hint of possessiveness. ‘Did he upset you?’

  ‘Not me, dear. I didn’t like him working himself into a rage though, for his own sake. We’ve got to make allowances. He’s a little selfish, like Norman says.’

  ‘But not senile.’ Rachel turned to her husband. ‘He just likes scenes. I don’t know how the party’s going to go. I bet he’s got something planned, something naughty. I mean, he is naughty, isn’t he, darling?’