Don’t get me wrong, I fancied Beverley Brook but I was little suspicious, not least because both her and her mother seemed capable of getting an erection out of moss if the mood took them. Isis’s caution about getting into the water with somebody who wasn’t a hundred per cent human was just the icing on the cake.
Rush hour was starting to build as I drove back to the Folly. The day had clouded over and rain began to spatter the windscreen. I was fairly certain that Oxley and Beverley had made a connection. When I’d seen them standing side by side in the river, they’d looked … comfortable was the best word, or maybe familiar in the sense of cousins. Bartholomew, who could bore for England on the subject of genii locorum, was adamant that the ‘nature spirits’， as he called them, would always take some of the characteristics of the locus they represented. Father and Mama Thames were spirits of the same river – if I could edge them closer together, then their true nature should take its course.
And if that meant spending a few days watching Beverley in the river, then that was a price I was willing to pay.
I considered checking in with Lesley, but instead I locked up the garage and walked across the park to Russell Square tube station. I bought some flowers from a stall by the station and, for no apparent reason, headed in to catch a train somewhere else.
The Judas Goat
I’d got the tube all the way to Swiss Cottage, and was a quarter of the way up Fitzjohn’s Avenue when I started to question what I was doing. It wasn’t just that I’d abandoned my motor for public transport, it was also that I was walking up one of the steepest hills in London when I could have taken the train to Hampstead and walked down the hill instead. It was still bright, and the afternoon sunlight cut through the gaps between the trees that lined the avenue. The flowers in my hand were roses, a purple variety that were so dark as to be almost black. I wondered who they might be for.
It was warm enough that I unclipped my tie and stuffed it into my jacket pocket. I didn’t want to arrive sweaty, so I took my time and ambled along in the shade of the plane trees planted along the pavement. It was the kind of day where a tune gets stuck in your head and you can’t help singing it out loud; in this case it was a blast from my past, ‘Digging Your Scene’ by the Blow Monkeys. Given that it was released when I was still in nappies, it was a wonder I knew all the words. I’d sung, ‘I’d just like to be myself again’ in the third chorus when I reached my destination. The house was a tall gothic confection with a mock tower at each corner and sash windows painted white. Marble-clad steps led up to an imposing front door but I ignored them and made my way to the side gate – I knew where I was going. I checked my jacket was straight and rubbed the toes of my shoes on the back of my calves; satisfied, I pushed open the gate and stepped through.
Honeysuckle had been planted along the side wall of the house, making a sweet-scented corridor that opened up into a wide, sunny garden. A neatly mown lawn was bordered by formal beds planted with surfinia petunias, marigold and tulips. Two huge terracotta pots bursting with spring flowers guarded the steps down to a sunken patio at the centre of which the afternoon sunlight pooled around a fountain. Even I could see that this wasn’t some piece picked up in a garden store or hypermarket. It was a delicate marble birdbath with a central statue of a nude carrying water; Italian Renaissance, maybe – I didn’t have enough art history to know. It was antique and battered, the marble chipped in places, and the nymph had a discoloured streak running from her shoulder to her groin made by the water trickling out of her gourd.
The water smelled sweet and enticing, just the thing after my long, slow walk up the hill. A handsome middle-aged woman was waiting for me by the fountain. She was dressed in a yellow cotton sundress, straw hat and open-toed sandals. As I drew closer I saw she had her mother’s eyes, black and slanted like a cat’s, but that she was lighter than Beverley with a nice, straight media-friendly nose.
There was once a gallows, close to where Marble Arch now stands, where they used to hang the criminals of old London town. The gallows was named after the village, whose inhabitants profited so greatly from the grisly spectacles that they built viewing stands to bring in the punters, which was named after the river that ran through it. The river was named the Tyburn. They hanged poor Elizabeth Barton there and Gentleman Jack, for all that he’d escaped four times before, and the Reverend James Hackman for the murder of pretty Martha Ray. I knew all this because after Beverley’d dropped her sister’s name into the conversation as the one who knows people who matter, I made a point of finding out.