The Wicker Tree Read Online Free PDF Page B

the Soviet Russian power station in 1986 was a disaster that would probably always haunt the whole nuclear power industry. Since then, not only the press, but the public at large, tended to view nuclear power stations as accidents waiting to happen. Gazing out at the vast complex of buildings dominated by the cooling towers and encircled with walls topped with razor wire and punctuated with watchtowers, Delia thought how threatening it all seemed. Lachlan, on the other hand, enjoyed the game of protecting Nuada from all who conspired against it; the press, the Greens and quite often the government itself. On the rare occasions he had time to watch television, he tried to catch The Simpsons . He loved this series and pretended to identify closely with Mr Burns, the president of the nuclear plant, applauding every machiavellian scheme he cooked up. Delia was not amused. She hated and feared the always looming crisis at Nuada, reassuring herself only with the thought that it had loomed for ten years, since the accident, but had never materialised – so far.
    Lachlan finished his brief conference and they then headed for what is sometimes called Scotland's Second City, after Edinburgh – but which Glaswegians claim to be the first in both commerce and enterprise. Recently, encouraged by its nomination by Brussels as a European City of Culture, some have called it 'the Paris of the North'. For Beame, the Thai massage parlour on Glasgow's Portcourtauld Street provided as much international culture as he felt he needed or could afford.
    Cocooned in the rear section of the Rolls, Delia tried to feel insulated from that part of her life with Lachlan that most excited her, but which sometimes induced an odd kind of fear. She thought of it as a form of stage fright.
    'I will be alright on the night,' she repeated when Lachlan reproached her for looking tense and nervous. He started to stroke her hair, as one might that of a fractious, nervous cat, while humming a refrain from the Messiah . She suddenly felt one of her rare attacks of irritation with him.
    'It's alright for you,' she said sharply. 'The gods or your mother forgot to provide you with nerves. You behave as if we were on a trip to choose wallpaper for one of the guest rooms.'
    Lachlan ignored her and put the tape of Handel's Messiah on the sound system in the old cocktail cabinet. As its sound filled the well-upholstered rear of the Rolls, he prepared to sing along with the Vienna Boys' Choir.
    'Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!' the boys were singing in their sweet treble voices and Lachlan, counting beats with his fingers tapping on Delia's knee, found his cue and launched his great deep basso profondo voice to echo, 'Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!'
    When the singing briefly paused for the orchestra to work up to
    the next crescendo, she said: 'Did you know that those Redeemers are coming again this year? I had hoped that they'd send the Mormons or some of those wonderful black Gospel singers.'
    'So what difference will it make?' Lachlan asked.
    'There's Orlando, the new young policeman you met with Lolly. She says she thinks he's quite sharp. Peter, at the Grove, agrees. We know what he has been sent to do and it worries me.'
    'He struck Peter as a nice, average young policeman, very Glaswegian,' said Lachlan. 'Tressock will seem like a foreign country to him. He's nothing we can't manage.'
    The crescendo of Hallelujahs had arrived, heralding the end of the Messiah . Lachlan placed his left hand over Delia's, turning to sing to her. She did not snatch her hand away but slowly removed it.
    'Everything will be as before,' he said reassuringly, and then sang:
    'As it was in the beginning…
    Is now and ever shall be
    Wo-orld without end
    Ah – ahmen! Ah-men! Ah – ah – ah men!'

The Peace March
    THE FLIGHT OVER had provided only a slight preparation for the foreignness of Scotland. The air crew had those British accents you hear in movies, usually from upper