The Printer's Devil Read Free Page B

twentieth century hasn’t heard of him, but you see his name on a peal-board and it’s like a war-horse hearing a bugle.’
    Alan shook his head. ‘I’m not sure why,’ he said. ‘Something... it’ll come back to me.’
    Kim rolled her eyes. ‘Oh...kay,’ she responded, opening her diary. ‘This week looks horrendous; I’ve got a provisional booked on Saturday, but I can probably put them off till the week after.’
    ‘I can’t wait till Saturday!’
    ‘Well, you’ll have to.’
    ‘Can’t you manage Monday or Tuesday?’
    ‘We got to pay the mortgage, mate.’
    ‘I suppose so,’Alan conceded reluctantly. ‘I’ll just have to slave over a hot word-processor all week, then.’
    Despite the forecasters’ pessimistic predictions that the fine weather was about to end, the weekend began in blazing sunshine which almost made Alan regret that the two of them were going to spend a couple of hours inside a car on what might well turn out to be a wild-goose chase.
    Kim seemed to have resigned herself to this prospect, for the moment at least.
    ‘Which car?’ she asked.
    ‘Oh, yours... at least we can open the lid. Why didn’t you get a convertible?’
    ‘In England? How was I supposed to know the country was going to turn sub-tropical this year?’
    ‘It’s the greenhouse effect.’
    ‘Well, I’m all for it. Do you want to take any tapes?’ She stuck her key in the lock of the Audi.
    ‘No, I expect you’ve got plenty in there,’ said Alan, opening the passenger door and checking. ‘Yup, looks good to me.’
    ‘Well, if I’m driving, you can do in-flight music.’ Kim slung her jacket in the back and got in while Alan shuffled cassettes. Eventually he chose Rigoletto and sat back as the car filled up with Verdi.
    ‘If you could sing like Pavarotti, I might just fall in love with you,’ said Kim a little later. ‘Why don’t you do some navigating instead?’
    ‘Navigator to pilot, take the next left,’ Alan obliged.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the No Smoking sign has now been extinguished and you may unfasten your seatbelts,’ intoned Kim, then began to sing along with the tape, in a surprising tenor.
    The bells were ringing, unexpectedly, in the redundant church of All Saints, Fenstanton. Sweet and light, their chattering hung in the air, a sound so quintessentially English that it evoked a strange nostalgia for rural idylls which never really existed.
    Kim parked, directed by Alan, where he had a week previously. As she turned off the ignition, and with it the music, she sang the next line herself: ‘Quest’e un buffone, Edunpotente e questo. 1 ’ Okay, I hear where the church is. Let’s go see this tomb of yours.’
    Alan pulled the video camera in its case from the back seat of the car. Kim had been a photographer for too long to trust machines which did too much, preferring control over exposures and shutter speeds. Even she admitted that Alan’s new toy was fun, however, and enjoyed discomfiting their friends by producing it when they came to dinner. It was usually left to Alan, though. Now he pointed it in the direction of the church, and musical Stedman Doubles poured into it, while Kim took her own equipment from the car.
    He pointed out the location of Roger Southwell’s tomb to Kim and went to read the note pinned on the tower door, which read, as he had half-expected, ‘Quarter-peal in progress, please do not disturb’.
    It was pleasant to think that these melodious bells were used from time to time, Alan reflected, and turned to follow Kim.
    ‘Might as well be Adam the bloody gardener,’ she was muttering as he came up to the tomb: she was pulling handfuls of sere grass through the railings. Alan bent to help, tugging at the vegetation, and cursing as his fingers encountered nettles.
    ‘What’s up?’
    ‘Been bit by a nettle. Rotten little sod.’
    ‘Dock-leaves this side.’
    Alan tore off some of the sorrel-like leaves and rubbed his smarting hand with the sap, then