Page 56 of The Cocktail Bar
Somehow he didn’t dare challenge her.
“I’ll have to get your autograph before the day’s out, mind.”
Hayley snapped him back to the present and the fact that they were approaching the nearest car park to the station.
“I’ll have to park her up here, else there’ll be every man and his dog trying to get me to ferry them about in Jane Austen Ville if I chance it for a local taxi rank.”
The bust of Cassandra tilted her head back and laughed at the way she’d weaseled her way into his life for the third time that day, until he blinked her ferociously away.
“Good idea.” River nodded as if he knew all about the logistics of cab parking. “And thank you, Hayley, once again. This is over and above the call of duty.”
“You’re most welcome, Sir. No… sit… I insist… it’s my prerogative to open your door for you.”
River had gathered by now that it was easiest at all times to agree with this lady.
“I’m not sure what I think I’m after here,” he said, as they crossed the road moments later and entered the main building. “But I guess there could be a notice board, or maybe we could ask the station master if there’s some way they can give us access to camera footage?”
“Hardly likely, total invasion of privacy.” Hayley frowned at the suggestion and River berated himself immediately for his ridiculous and very desperate clutch at straws.
“What does she mean to you: Alice?”
“Hey? Where did that come from?”
“Well, I get the feeling you’re both dodging each other politely, when what you’re really wanting is to justget it on. You might have spared yourself all of this bother if you hadn’t insisted on playing silly games. What is it with men and freakin’ dating games? Don’t even get me started on my last boyfriend’s constant messing me about like we were on a Snakes and Ladders board.”
“All right, all right calm down!” River was stunned at Hayley’s impetuous words; to an outsider she must have looked like his bolshy big sister. “You sure you don’t want to take a seat and let me see if I can find you a shrink while we’re here?”
“I’m right though, aren’t I?” she ignored him.
“In a way… yes… perhaps,” he conceded.
“See, I’ve seen enough of this over the years, in and out of the cab, as well as my own private life, should have a degree in Psychology, me.”
That threw River back once again to the degree he himself had walked out on. Perhaps if he had followed it through things wouldn’t be the catastrophe they were revealing themselves to be before his very eyes – oh, and he might have some kind of a light bulb moment as to where Alice would take herself next.
In the end it was Hayley who provided that, River having unsuccessfully scoured the station’s entrance, while she strolled the platform, authoritatively hunting for clues.
“Now she did go on about her love of horses briefly… for the short amount of time I could get any small talk out of her on the journey, at any rate.”
“And?”
Hayley breathed in through her nose as would a matriarchal dragon, rankled by its slow-to-catch-on young. Just as she pointed at a notice board at the doorway leading on to platform one; the doorway River had failed to as much as notice, Mercedes’ voice whispered lightly in his ear: “Yes.”
River walked, half-possessed by the murmur which had already vanished, until he reached the notice board. And there it was, clear as day.
“Strawberry pickers wanted; additional expertise with horses preferable. Live-in summer job, small wage, great benefits.”
All of which sounded like the epitome of cons, a magnet for anybody down on their luck, and a quaint little disguise for modern day slavery, all rolled into one. But still, he was in no doubt that this was the detour Alice had taken. He ripped the notice down, at which point a steely-eyed station official began to march forward, mouth open to say something equally stern, until Hayley made herself Piggy in the Middle, hands on hips, glare unbending, putting paid to any attempt of reprimand. The worker retreated Michael Jackson style in an unusual moonwalk, best left to drunken uncles in white patent loafers on wedding dance floors. And Hayley took River under the bingo wing of her arm, a quick peek at the address on the notice, as they paced back to the taxi.
***
They didn’t have to look far once they’d sped past the rural clotted cream fudge factory on the city’s outskirts, and on into the village beyond it. Alice was sitting atop a wobbly stone wall, sandwich in hand, chatting to a girl, both of them presumably taking an afternoon tea break.
“Well that’s something, they can’t be quite as harsh as these slave drivers you read about in the papers if they’re keeping them fed and watered. But still, your Alice wants to put several stone on, let alone pounds. She’s got to weigh a quarter of me,” said Hayley, as she rustled in the sweet bag nestled dangerously close to her handbrake and popped a handful ofJelly Babiesinto her mouth.
“Al, what’s happened? Please come back,” River’s words jumped out of the taxi before him, and he walked after them, carefully towards the woman he loved, fearful that if he came on too strong, she might scurry off like a field mouse.
Alice looked plain startled. She muttered something that sounded decidedly French to the younger girl, evidently a worker in her checked shirt and dirty jeans, and then swung her own body over the back of the border and into the strawberry field.
