the very bright or professional Rugby League for the very brawny.
You were neither, Edgar, but you found a third way which, though it attracted the contumely of your peers, diverted their suspicion from the truth of you.
The police.
Were you perhaps still trying to convince yourself that it was, as they used to say, only a phase? That given the right environment you'd wake up one day and say to yourself, what I really fancy is finding a willing lass and giving her a right good shagging?
Or were you looking for a job where most people see only the uniform, never the man?
You were good at the job.
Not ivory tower university bright perhaps, but sharply focused with a phenomenal memory and a huge capacity for marshalling intricate detail, you took all the police exams in your stride, you won commendations for bravery, your annual reviews were undiluted paeans, you looked set to rise high. But once you became sergeant in the CID, you remained fixed.
Not for you the exposure of high rank.
You enjoy what you are doing. You are good at it. And your association with those other two who have also come fluttering down into Sempernel's leaves, Dalziel and Pascoe, has given you confidence enough to live your life more freely, not to flaunt who you are but not to hide it either.
And still Gaw Sempernel suspects you.
Or at least feels he might at some point be able to use you.
From what I know of you, lying here in my little casket, Sergeant, this may not be the least of his errors.
loved by his friends . ..
refusing to yield . . .
Edgar Wield . . .
Edgar Wield . . .
v
revenge and retribution
Every age has its own defining philosophical speculations, often best expressed in terms which may at a glance appear over-personalized and tainted with self-interest.
It was, for example, in relation to her prospects of professional advancement that Shirley Novello first asked herself the question, was being treated like a man a form of sexual discrimination?
Things had seemed pretty straightforward the first time she had attended a CID gathering in the Black Bull with the Holy Trinity and found she was expected to go to the bar and collect the drinks no matter who was actually buying the round. She was disappointed without being surprised, as this chimed perfectly with the expectation at all levels in the Force that if tea or coffee were to be fetched, any woman present would be the fetcher. Novello had worked out various non-confrontational strategems to avoid doing this, but she had not been afraid to fall back on confrontation.
Confrontation with Andy Dalziel, however, felt as futile as confrontation with Uranus. (Or any planet, but Uranus somehow seemed most fitting.) Hit it hard as you could, you weren't going to jolt it out of its orbit.
The other two, however, gave the impression that they might in their better moments be susceptible to the nudge of right reason. But before she could nerve herself to put this to the test, she had discovered by distant observation that if the group consisted of the Trinity alone, it was usually Wield who did the fetching and carrying, while if the three became a pair, it was Pascoe.
So now right reason asked, if a male sergeant and a male chief inspector could accept this as the natural order of things, was it reasonable for a female constable to cry discrimination?
Or, to put it another way, what should a woman do who fought for equal treatment and then found that the equal treatment she fought for was in fact unequal?
These were the speculations thronging her mind as she returned from the bar at eleven o'clock on the morning after the attempted kidnapping of Ellie Pascoe, bearing a tray loaded with a pint of best, a half of the same, a fizzy mineral water and a Coke.
Pascoe's request for the mineral water had emboldened her to buy the Coke.
They were in the Black Bull to discuss possible ramifications of yesterday's events. The chief inspector had arrived late at the station, having spent
You were neither, Edgar, but you found a third way which, though it attracted the contumely of your peers, diverted their suspicion from the truth of you.
The police.
Were you perhaps still trying to convince yourself that it was, as they used to say, only a phase? That given the right environment you'd wake up one day and say to yourself, what I really fancy is finding a willing lass and giving her a right good shagging?
Or were you looking for a job where most people see only the uniform, never the man?
You were good at the job.
Not ivory tower university bright perhaps, but sharply focused with a phenomenal memory and a huge capacity for marshalling intricate detail, you took all the police exams in your stride, you won commendations for bravery, your annual reviews were undiluted paeans, you looked set to rise high. But once you became sergeant in the CID, you remained fixed.
Not for you the exposure of high rank.
You enjoy what you are doing. You are good at it. And your association with those other two who have also come fluttering down into Sempernel's leaves, Dalziel and Pascoe, has given you confidence enough to live your life more freely, not to flaunt who you are but not to hide it either.
And still Gaw Sempernel suspects you.
Or at least feels he might at some point be able to use you.
From what I know of you, lying here in my little casket, Sergeant, this may not be the least of his errors.
loved by his friends . ..
refusing to yield . . .
Edgar Wield . . .
Edgar Wield . . .
v
revenge and retribution
Every age has its own defining philosophical speculations, often best expressed in terms which may at a glance appear over-personalized and tainted with self-interest.
It was, for example, in relation to her prospects of professional advancement that Shirley Novello first asked herself the question, was being treated like a man a form of sexual discrimination?
Things had seemed pretty straightforward the first time she had attended a CID gathering in the Black Bull with the Holy Trinity and found she was expected to go to the bar and collect the drinks no matter who was actually buying the round. She was disappointed without being surprised, as this chimed perfectly with the expectation at all levels in the Force that if tea or coffee were to be fetched, any woman present would be the fetcher. Novello had worked out various non-confrontational strategems to avoid doing this, but she had not been afraid to fall back on confrontation.
Confrontation with Andy Dalziel, however, felt as futile as confrontation with Uranus. (Or any planet, but Uranus somehow seemed most fitting.) Hit it hard as you could, you weren't going to jolt it out of its orbit.
The other two, however, gave the impression that they might in their better moments be susceptible to the nudge of right reason. But before she could nerve herself to put this to the test, she had discovered by distant observation that if the group consisted of the Trinity alone, it was usually Wield who did the fetching and carrying, while if the three became a pair, it was Pascoe.
So now right reason asked, if a male sergeant and a male chief inspector could accept this as the natural order of things, was it reasonable for a female constable to cry discrimination?
Or, to put it another way, what should a woman do who fought for equal treatment and then found that the equal treatment she fought for was in fact unequal?
These were the speculations thronging her mind as she returned from the bar at eleven o'clock on the morning after the attempted kidnapping of Ellie Pascoe, bearing a tray loaded with a pint of best, a half of the same, a fizzy mineral water and a Coke.
Pascoe's request for the mineral water had emboldened her to buy the Coke.
They were in the Black Bull to discuss possible ramifications of yesterday's events. The chief inspector had arrived late at the station, having spent
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