Since this was her own private stumbling-block, Bee had no help to offer.
"It must have been difficult to come back," Eleanor said, running the comb through her brush. "He looked so tired to-night that he looked like a dead man. It's not a very lively face at the best of times, is it? If you chopped it off behind the ears and hung it on a wall, no one would know the difference."
Bee knew Eleanor well enough, and agreed with her sufficiently, to translate this successfully.
"You don't think he'll want to sheer off again once the excitement of coming home has worn off?"
"Oh, no, I'm quite sure he won't."
"You think he is here for keeps?"
"Of course I do."
But Brat, standing in the dark before the open window of his room and looking at the curve of the down in the wet starlight, was wondering about that very matter. The thing had succeeded beyond Loding's most extravagant promises, and now?
Where did he go from here? How long would it be before Simon had him cold? And if Simon failed, how long could he go on living a life where at any moment someone might spring a mine?
That is what he had set out to do, of course. But somehow he had not really looked beyond the first stages. In his heart he had been unable to believe that he would succeed. Now that success was his he felt rather like someone who has climbed a pinnacle and can't get down again. Elated but misgiving.
He turned from the window and switched the lamp on. His landlady in Pimlico used to say that she "was so tired that she felt as if she'd been through a mangle"; he knew now how good a description that had been. That was exactly how he felt. Wrung out and empty. So limp that it was an effort to lift a hand to undress. He pulled off his nice new suit-the suit that had made him feel so guilty in that other life way back in London-and made himself hang it up. He peeled off his underclothes and stumbled into his faded old pyjamas. He wondered for a moment whether they would mind if the rain came in and marked the carpet, but decided to risk it. So he left the window wide open and got into bed.
He lay for a long time listening to the quiet sound of the rain and looking at the room. Now was the time for Pat Ashby's ghost to come and chill that room. He waited for the ghost but it did not come. The room was warm and welcoming. The figures on the wallpaper, the figures that those children had grown up with, looked friendly and alive. He turned his head to look at the groups by the bedside. To look for the one Eleanor had been in love with. The chap with the profile. He wondered if she was in love with anyone now.
His eyes went on to the wood of the bedstead, and he remembered that this was Alec Loding's bed, and was pleased once more by the irony of it all. It was fantastically right that he should come to Latchetts only to sleep in Alec Loding's bed. He must tell him one day. It was the kind of thing that Loding would appreciate.
He wondered whether it was Eleanor or Bee who had put the flowers in the bowl. Flowers to welcome him-home.
Latchetts, he said to himself, looking at the room. This is Latchetts. I'm here. This is Latchetts.
The sound of the word was a soporific; like the swing of a hammock. He put out his hand and switched off the light. In the dark the rain suddenly sounded louder.
This morning he had got up and dressed in that back room under the slates, with the crowding chimney-pots beyond the window. And here he was, going to sleep in Latchetts, with the sweet cold smell of the down blowing in on the damp air from the window.
As sleep drew him under he had an odd feeling of reassurance. A feeling that Pat Ashby didn't mind his being there; that he was on the contrary pleased about it all.
The unlikeliness of this roused him a little, and his thoughts, running on approval and disapproval, went to Bee. What was it that he had felt when Bee took his hand to lead him to the interview this afternoon? What was different from any other of the thousand handclasps he had experienced in his time? Why the surge of warmth under his heart, and what kind of emotion was it anyway? He had suffered the same obscure gratification when Bee had thrust her arm through his on the way to the stables. What was so remarkable about a woman putting her hand on your arm? A woman, moreover, that you were not in love with, and were never likely to be in love with.
It was because she was a woman, of course, but the thing that made it remarkable was something else again. It had something to do with being taken for granted by her. No one else had taken his hand in just that way. Casual but-no, not possessive. Quite a few had been possessive with him, and he had not been gratified in the least. Casual but-what? Belonging. It had something to do with belonging. The hand had taken him for granted because he belonged. It was the unthinking friendliness of a woman to one of her family. Was it because he had never «belonged» before, that made that commonplace gesture into a benediction?
He went on thinking of Bee as he fell asleep. Her sidelong glance when she was considering something; her courage; the way she had braced herself to meet him that day in the back room in Pimlico; the way she had kissed him before she was sure, just in case he was Patrick; the way she had dealt with the suspense of Simon's absence when he arrived to-day.
She was a lovely woman, Beatrice Ashby, and he loved her.
He had reached the toppling-over place of sleep when he was yanked of a sudden wide awake.
He had remembered something.
He knew now who it was that Simon Ashby reminded him of.
It was Timber.
17
On Wednesday morning Bee took him to call on the tenants of the three farms: Frenchland, Upacres, and Wigsell. "Gates last; just to larn him," Bee said. Gates was last also in importance, since Wigsell was the smallest of the three farms. It had originally been the home farm of Latchetts and lay just beyond the Rectory, on the slope north of the village. It was almost too small a farm to be self-supporting, but Gates also ran the butcher's shop in the village (open twice a week) and was not dependent on what he made from Wigsell.
"Do you drive, Brat?" Bee asked, as they prepared to get into the car.
"Yes, but I'd rather you did. You know the"-"road" he had almost said-"the car better."
"Nice of you to call it a car. I expect you're used to a left-hand drive."
"Yes."
"I'm sorry it had to be the bug. It isn't often the car goes wrong on us. Jameson has all its inside out on the garage floor, and is conducting a post-mortem in a silent fury."
"I like the bug. I came from the station in it yesterday."
"So you did. What a very long time ago that seems. Does it seem like that to you?"
"Yes." It seemed years away to him.
"Have you heard that we've been saved from the Clarion?" she asked, as they sped down the avenue to the accompaniment of the bug's sewing-machine song.
"No?"
"Are you not a consumer of the Press at breakfast?" asked Bee, who had breakfasted at eight o'clock.
"I never lived where we had papers to read at breakfast. We just switched on the radio."
"Oh, lord, yes. I forget that your generation doesn't have to read."
"How have we been saved?"
"We have been rescued by three people we never heard of, and are never likely to meet. The fourth wife of a Manchester dentist, the husband of a principal boy, and the owner of a black leather trunk." She pressed the horn and turned slowly to the right out of the avenue. "The owner of the trunk left it at Charing Cross with someone's arms and legs in it. Or, of course, it may be the owner's arms and legs. That is a question which will occupy the Clarion for some time to come, I expect. The husband of the principal boy is suing for alienation of affection, and none of the three people concerned has ever been bothered with an inhibition, which is very nice for the Clarion. Since the reports of divorce cases have been pruned the Clarion has been suffering from frustration, and a suit for alienation of affection is a gift from heaven. Especially when it is Tattie Thacker's affections." She looked with pleasure at the morning. "I do like a morning after rain."