The Cherry Blossom Corpse by Robert Barnard

caused by the intense natural splendour, and one was over a precipice and well and truly part of that splendour. Even in a bus one’s attention could only be on one’s immediate situation and one’s immediate surroundings. Maryloo sat there rapt.
    â€œMy Gahd, what I could make of this!” she breathed.Then she thought: “Me and two hundred other delegates.”
    We stopped for lunch at a little hotel perched on the hillside overlooking Hardangerfjord. It was a modern construction, dull and anonymous, and quite lacking the appeal of KvalevÃ¥g Gjestgiveri. It had a large, plain lunchroom, however, and here we were fed boiled cod, boiled potatoes and boiled tinned peas. The peas, in all fairness, could hardly have been done any other way, but what they did to the cod was all the more bitter because it had probably been fished straight out of the fjord, before having all its taste boiled out with the water.
    The buses had all arrived at the hotel together, and after standing for a few minutes admiring the stunning clear blue sky and the sloping orchards of blossoming trees stretching from mountain foot to the edge of the fjord we all trooped in to our dispiriting meal. I managed to get next to Mary Sweeny, which at least gave me the prospect of an agreeably vinegarish session. But I wished we could have got closer to another, fascinating combination, for about five places from us, facing each other and obviously raring to go, were Amanda and her interviewer of the day before, Ragnhild Sørby.
    The Norwegian had been sat in her place before we arrived. No doubt she had done Hardanger in blossom time often enough before, or perhaps she was a glutton for boiled cod. Anyway, there she was sitting waiting when over billowed Amanda and insisted on sitting directly opposite. About as welcome as a breeze from Chernobyl, she ignored the scowls and the scufflings and apparently launched straight into a detailed discussion of the Sørby woman’s article. Clearly it was a discussion that pulled no punches, and I wished I could have heard more of it.
    Amanda had a small, slightly mousy figure in tow,who sat beside her and acted as a lay figure in the dialogue, rather as Arthur Biggs tended to use the people around him as lay figures. She was young, obviously dependent on Amanda, and she nodded periodically. Mary Sweeny whispered to me that she thought this was Amanda’s Australian editor.
    But if only I had been nearer the clash of battle! As it was, I only heard snatches, as the conversation died down for a few moments among the people between us.
    â€œBut darling!” I heard, as we waited for the boiled cod, “if a woman is to find her happiness with other women, why does that mean she should dress like a frump?” She cast a kind look at Frøken Sørby. “I don’t quite see why frump ishness should attract other women, any more than it does men.”
    Ragnhild Sørby, dressed in jeans and a chunky pullover that looked as if it had been knitted with shredded tree bark, leaned back and then lunged forward to reply vituperatively, but high, embarrassed conversation breaking out around her prevented me from hearing.
    â€œHow old would you say Amanda is?” whispered Mary Sweeny over the table.
    â€œOh golly, I don’t know. A well-preserved fifty?”
    â€œAdd five, I’d have thought.”
    â€œWait a minute, I think there’s a biographical index at the back of Happy Tears . . . Yes, there is.” I riffled through the pages and found the place. “Fairchild, Amanda—and then in brackets Maureen Jane Shottery. Perfectly good name, but not euphonious enough, I suppose. Let’s see: ‘Amanda Fairchild was born and brought up in Tiverton—’ no date. I’m not surprised. Amanda wouldn’t think it womanly to tell anyone the date, nor indeed gentlemanly to ask. Let’s see: ‘Went to the Guildhall School of Music