skirts, leaped up into the cab and slammed the door.
‘Drive!’ Alice yelled. ‘Drive, Michael! Let’s get outta here!’
Startled, Michael pressed the accelerator and for once did not stall. The engine roared under his inexpert handling, and he swung the wheel around. They drove noisily around the perimeter road of the campus and then turned out of the campus on to the dual carriageway and headed east along the coast.
‘All right?’ Michael asked over the noise of a driver braking sharply behind them as they wove from slow lane to fast lane and back again.
Alice wound down the window and let the wind ruffle her hair. ‘All right now,’ she said. ‘I have just had a most unpleasant forty minutes.’
Michael glanced at her, surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have thought anyone could be unpleasant to you,’ he said. ‘I would have thought you would have been a match for anyone!’
Alice smiled at him and then turned her head and watched the hedges flicker past. A car overtook on the inside, sounding its horn. The driver waved and shouted something. Alice waved pleasantly back.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s odd. I suppose it was an old bad habit.’ She paused. ‘I think I’ll give it up,’ she said.
She lay back and closed her eyes, reviewing her marriage as an old bad habit which it was time to give up. Slowly her heartbeat returned to normal. The image of Mrs Bland’s conspiracy with Professor Hartley was left behind them. Alice was driving away from the bastion of the Professor’s power: his work, the institution of the university, his authority over his students, his control over Alice. Alice could feel the bonds of a lifetime stretching and breaking. She threw back her head and started to hum in the long pulsing column of her white throat.
Michael smiled at her pleasure and changed gear from second to third, the engine screaming for release. A motorcyclist cut in front of them and then felt terror surge as the van leaped forward and chased him from lane to lane across the road as Michael glanced at Alice and swerved to the left, and then turned his attention back to the road and swerved to the right.
It was a pleasant drive in the early-morning sunshine. Grass-like stuff, which Michael vaguely assumed to be wheat, was growing green in the fields. White birds which were probably seagulls were circling behind a lone tractor. On the hills of the Downs the little blobs of white were sheep and the tiny blobs beside them were either very small sheep – perhaps lambs – or dumped copies of the European.
Alice wound down the window and the sweet smell of fresh-cut hay blew into the cab. Michael sneezed; Alice inhaled deeply, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her face was shining with her joy while her heart still pounded with the throb of adrenalin. Every now and then she exclaimed ‘And another thing…’ and then fell silent. Her hair crackled with static electricity as if it were charged with Alice’s newly freed energy.
They drove along the main road, and then turned right down the narrow road to Rithering village. Small birds sang loudly in the hedgerows, the uncut grass of the verges was speckled with flowers which Michael recognized unerringly as daisies of various different shapes, sizes and colours. The hawthorn buds were thick and white in the hedges, apple blossom and cherry blossom snowed petals down on to the lane. Michael thought that the eglantine was probably blowing. He tooted his horn at a particularly sharp corner and waved with the casual friendliness of country folk at the driver coming in the opposite direction who was forced to brake and swerve and run into the ditch.
‘Nearly there,’ he commented.
Alice opened her eyes and leaned forward to rummage in a large black rucksack at her feet which was lumpy with bottles of medicine and packages of herbs and seeds.
‘What have you got in there?’ Michael asked curiously.
Alice veiled her eyes with her eyelashes and smiled. ‘Nature’s cures,’ she said. ‘I have been a herbalist and a natural healer for many years. If your Aunt is not ready to leave this earthly plane it may be that I have something which might cure her. If she is wanting to make an easy transition to the next plane then I have some herbal teas which will help her on her way.’
‘Oh good,’ Michael nodded. Then he said suddenly ‘What?’ and the van swooped perilously close to the bank at the far side of the road as the meaning of her words hit him. ‘Help her on her way?’ he yelped. ‘What d’you mean?’
Alice smiled again, that special smile which denoted that she was in touch with deep elemental forces. It gave Professor Hartley the creeps, but Michael was new to it and it thrilled him down to his toes. His big right toe, less controlled than the others, gave an excited little twitch and the pantechnicon leaped forward.
‘Don’t worry,’ Alice said. And Michael could do nothing but smile back at her.
He had a bit of trouble turning the van into the narrow gateway which was marked with a lopsided sign – Rithering Manor. The furniture clanked and shifted ominously as the van bumped up the potholed gravel drive. Low hanging boughs of slowly falling trees banged on the roof of the van and roses run to briar scratched at the windows and the paint-work. The house itself was dark; it looked uninhabited, standing alone among tall trees on the outskirts of the village, the high gable ends pointing at a sky which had grown suddenly cloudy.
Michael stopped the van in front of the house and went up the shallow steps to the large double wooden doors, dusty with peeling paint. He pulled at the bell-knob. It came off in his hand with the promptness which normally only happens when these things are arranged by a good special effects department. He looked back towards the van for help from Alice.
She shouldered her rucksack and, wrapping an extra scarf or two around her head, came up the steps.
‘Try the door,’ she advised.
It yielded at once to his touch. Feeling for Alice’s hand, Michael stepped over the threshold into the darkness of the hall.
‘Who’s that?’ came a voice. A strong and hearty male voice from the front room on their left.
‘It’s Michael!’ squeaked Michael. He got a firm grip of himself and tightened his hold on Alice’s hand. ‘Michael Coulter,’ he said. This time he had gone too far in the other direction. He sounded as if he were auditioning for the bass part in Figaro. ‘I’ve come to see my Aunt,’ he said in a pitch midway between the squeak and basso profundo. ‘My Aunt, Miss Sarah Coulter.’
‘You’ve left it a bit late,’ came the reply. The door opened and a thick-set, grey-haired man stood in the doorway looking them over. ‘She’s dead. Are you the lad from the university?’
‘I am her nephew, Michael,’ said Michael, trying for a little dignity.
‘And you must be Mrs Coulter?’
Alice flushed scarlet with pleasure at being mistaken for Michael’s wife. Michael’s grip on her hand tightened. It was a tender moment for them both.
‘I didn’t know you were staying with your son or I’d have contacted you direct, Mrs Coulter,’ the man said.
Alice’s flush went redder but she abruptly lost her smile. ‘I am a friend of Michael’s,’ she said icily. ‘I came over with him today to keep him company.’
‘Oh aye,’ the man nodded. ‘Well I’m Doctor Simmonds, I sent the message
