His men were already looking warm in their dark uniforms. It was going to be a scorcher. One asked if they could work in shirtsleeves and Reynolds was about to say ‘No’ when Elizabeth Rice said ‘Of course.’ He’d speak to her later.
With five minutes to go before the official start time, cars began to swing into the car park and disgorge dozens more occupants from surrounding villages. By 8am there must have been eighty people, all told, most of them ruddy-faced men and burly teenaged boys, several with dogs on bits of rope. Touching flat caps in greeting, leaning over to shake hands, voices curtailed and low out of respect for the reason they were here. There was an excited undercurrent of common purpose. They reminded Reynolds of a lynch-mob, and he could have kissed their feet just for showing up.
Rice moved through them, taking names and addresses and ignoring banter about taking down
Reynolds climbed on to a chair from the bar and from there on to the low roof of the coal bunker, so that everyone could see him and – hopefully – hear him.
He patted the edges of his notes together and ran through his opening lines in his head.
It was a good speech. And thank God there were now people to hear it. What might have sounded too grand for an audience of twenty was going to sound positively Churchillian to a crowd of nearly a hundred. And on TV too …
He cleared his throat, and as he opened his mouth to start, a murmur of surprise, then welcome, ran through the group, and Reynolds looked up to see Jonas Holly.
His heart sank.
He watched people turn to shake Jonas’s hand or carefully pat his shoulder. It seemed as if they’d seen about as much of him over the past eightteen months as Reynolds had. There was certainly less of him to see. Despite his irritation, Reynolds was taken aback by how much weight Jonas had lost, when there’d been so little to lose in the first place. His cheekbones were too high and his eyes too big. He looked haunted.
Reynolds wondered whether the message was still on the answering machine, growing less tragic and more plain
Jonas had stopped shaking.
Walking down the hill into the village – into the midst of the people he knew must despise him – had been an un nerving experience. This was not like driving to Mr Jacoby’s shop to pick up baked beans, when he could hide behind jeans and jumper and his father’s old fishing hat that he’d found in the cupboard under the stairs. This was him very publicly in uniform – once more assuming the mantle of authority that had so spectacularly failed the village where he’d been born and bred.
He’d stopped at the playing field on the way to the Red Lion. The playing field with the skate ramp and the swings, and the little stream where Yvonne Marsh had died. To stave off the moment when he would have to rejoin society at the Red Lion, he’d crossed the field. The grass had crackled almost as loudly from drought as it had with frost two winters ago. He’d stared into the rill under the old blackthorn and remembered the pain in his legs where the icy cold had seeped into his very bones as he’d bent over the half-naked woman …
Jonas had had to stop again in the bus shelter and breathe deeply. He watched his hands tremble like a drunk’s, and fought down the panic that had swelled into a great bubble in his chest. He couldn’t do this. He needed to go home.
Bob Coffin passed by in his crumpled green Barbour and gaiters, despite the weather, and touched the front of his flat cap at Jonas.
‘Mr Holly,’ he said, as if they’d just met yesterday.
Jonas nodded shakily at him.
