Dreaming of the Bones Read Free

felt the hair stir on the top of his head as the coal tit flew another kamikaze run.
    “Come on,” Vic said, turning towards the house. “You’d better dive for cover while you can.” Over her shoulder she added, “It’s such a lovely day, I’ve set lunch out in the garden. I hope you don’t mind.”
    He followed her into the house and through a sitting room, where he had a fleeting impression of pale gold walls and faded chintzes, and of a grouping of silver-framed portraits on a side table; then she led him out through French doors onto a stone-flagged terrace. The garden sloped away from the house, and beyond the low wall at its end he could see a meadow, then a curving line of trees that looked as though it marked the course of a river.
    “Grantchester gets its name from ‘Granta,’ the old name for the Cam,” Vic said, pointing towards the river.
    “The garden’s lovely.” Dandelions and wild onions sprang up in the shaggy lawn, but there were recent signs of prep work in the beds, and against the low wall stood the garden’s crowning glory—an immense old crab apple tree, covered with bright pink blossoms.
    Vic gave him the sideways glance he remembered as she gestured towards one of the chairs she’d pulled up to an ironwork table. “Here, sit down. That’s a bit generous of you. My friend Nathan says the garden’s a disgrace, but I’m not a real gardener. I just like to come out and dig in the dirt on nice days—it’s my alternative to tranquilizers.”
    “I seem to remember that you couldn’t keep alive a potted plant. Or cook,” he added as he examined the lunch she’d laid out on the table—cheese, cold salads, olives, wholemeal bread, and a bottle of white wine.
    Vic shrugged. “People change. And I still can’t cook,” she said with a flash of a smile, “even if I had the time. But I can shop, andI’ve learned to make the most of that.” She filled their glasses, then raised hers in salute. “Here’s to progress. And old friends.”
    Friends? Kincaid thought. They had been lovers, adversaries, flatmates—but never that. Perhaps it was not too late. He lifted his glass and drank. When he had filled his plate and tasted the potato salad, he ventured, “You haven’t told me anything about yourself, about your life. The photos …” He nodded towards the sitting room doors. The man had been thin and bearded, the boy fair and sturdy. He stole a glance at Vic’s left hand, saw the faint pale mark circling her fourth finger.
    She looked away as she drank some of her wine, then concentrated on a piece of bread as she buttered it. “I’m Victoria McClellan now. Doctor McClellan. I’m a fellow at All Saints’, and I’m a Faculty teaching officer, specializing in twentieth-century poets. That gives me more time to pursue my own work.”
    “Faculty?” Kincaid said a bit vaguely. “Poets?”
    “The University English Faculty. You do remember my Ph.D. thesis on the effect of the Great War on English poetry?” Vic said with the first hint of sharpness he’d heard. “The one I was struggling with when we were married?”
    Kincaid made an effort to redeem himself. “That’s what you wanted, then. I’m glad for you.” Seeing that Vic still looked annoyed, he blundered on. “But I’d have thought two jobs would have meant more work, not less. You’re saying you work for the University and for your college, right? Wouldn’t you be better off to do one or the other?”
    Vic gave him a pitying look. “That’s not the way it works. Being a college fellow is a bit like indentured servitude. They pay your salary and they call the shots—they can stick you with a backbreaking load of supervisions and you have no recourse. But if you’re hired by a University Faculty, well, that gives you some clout—at a certain point you can tell your college to go stuff itself. Politely, of course,” she added with a gleam of returning good humor.
    “And that’s what you’ve done?”