At first he only asked which route I took to Brichester, and then which one I would follow if the motorway was closed, by which point I’d had enough of the way he skulked around a subject as if he was ready to dart into hiding at the first hint of trouble. ‘Are you after a lift?’ I demanded.
He ducked his head so that his long hair hid even more of his ears and peered up at me. ‘Well, a lift, you know, I suppose, really, yes.’
‘Where to?’
‘You won’t know it, cos it’s not much of a place. Only it’s not far, not much out of your way, I mean, if you happened to be going that way anyway sometime.’
When at last he released the name of Warrendown like a question he didn’t expect to be answered, his irritating tentativeness provoked me to retort ‘I’ll be in that square of the map next week.’
‘Next week, that’s next week, you mean.’ His face twitched so hard it exposed his teeth. ‘I wasn’t thinking quite that soon. ’
‘I’ll forgive you if you’ve given up on the idea.’
‘Given up — no, you’re right. I’m going, cos I should go,’ he said, fiercely for him.
Nevertheless I arrived at his flat the next day not really expecting to collect him. When I rang his bell, however, he poked his nose under the drawn curtains and said he would be down in five minutes; which, to my continuing surprise, he was, nibbling the last of his presumably raw breakfast and dressed in the only suit I’d ever seen him wear. He sat clutching a small case which smelled of vegetables while I concentrated on driving through the rush hour and into the tangle of motorways, and so we were irrevocably on our way before I observed that he was gripping his luggage with all the determination I’d heard in his voice in the pub. ‘Are you expecting some kind of trouble?’ I said.
‘Trouble.’ He added a grunt which bared his teeth and which seemed to be saying I’d understood so much that no further questions were necessary, and I nearly lost my temper. ‘Care to tell me what kind?’ I suggested.
‘What would you expect?’
‘Not a woman.’
‘See, you knew. Be tricks. The trouble’s what I got her into, as if you hadn’t guessed. Cos she got me going so fast I hadn’t time to wear anything. Can’t beat a hairy woman.’
This was a great deal more intimate than I welcomed. ‘When did you last see her?’ I said as curtly as I could.
‘Last year. She was having it then. Should have gone down after, but I, you know. You know me.’
He was hugging his baggage so hard he appeared to be squeezing out the senseless vegetable smell. ‘Afraid of her family?’ I said with very little sympathy.
He pressed his chin against his chest, but I managed to distinguish what he muttered. ‘Afraid of the whole bloody place.’
That was clearly worth pursuing, and an excuse for me to stay on my usual route, except that ahead I saw all three lanes of traffic halted as far as the horizon, and police cars racing along the hard shoulder towards the problem. I left the motorway at the exit which immediately presented itself.
Framilode, Saul, Fretherne, Whitminster. Old names announced themselves on signposts, and then a narrow devious road enclosed the car with hedges, blotting out the motorway at once. Beneath a sky clogged with dark clouds the gloomy foliage appeared to smoulder; the humped backs of the hills glowed a lurid green. When I opened my window to let out the vegetable smell, it admitted a breeze, unexpectedly chill for September, which felt like my passenger’s nervousness rendered palpable. He was crouching over his luggage and blinking at the high spiky hedges as if they were a trap into which I’d led him. ‘Can I ask what your plans are?’ I said to break the silence which was growing as relentless as the ancient landscape.
‘See her. Find out what she’s got, what she wants me to.’ His voice didn’t so much trail off as come to a complete stop. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know where his thoughts had found themselves. ‘What took you there to begin with?’ was as much as I cared to ask.
‘Beat ricks.’
This time I grasped it, despite his pronouncing it as though unconvinced it was a name. ‘She’s the young lady in question.’
‘Met her in the Cabbage Patch, you know, the caff. She’d just finished university but she stayed over at my place.’ I was afraid this might be the preamble to further intimate details, but he continued with increasing reluctance ‘Kept writing to me after she went home, wanting me to go down there, cos she said I’d feel at home.’
‘And did you?’
He raised his head as though sniffing the air and froze in that position. The sign for Warrendown, drooping a little on its post, had swung into view along the hedge. His half-admitted feelings had affected me so much that my foot on the accelerator wavered. ‘If you’d prefer not to do this. ’
Only his mouth moved, barely opening. ‘No choice.’
No reply could have angered me more. He’d no more will than one of his own vegetables, I thought, and sent the car screeching into the Warrendown road. As we left behind the sign which appeared to be trying to point into the earth, I had an impression of movement beyond the hedge on both sides of the road, several figures which had been standing absolutely still leaping to follow the car. I told myself I was mistaking at least their speed, and when ragged gaps in the hedges afforded me a view of oppressively green fields weighed down by the stagnant sky, nobody was to be seen, not that anyone could have kept pace with the car. I hadn’t time to ponder any of this, because from the way Crawley was inching his face forward I could tell that the sight a mile ahead among the riotous fields surrounded by hunched dark hills must indeed be Warrendown.
At that distance I saw it was one of the elements of the countryside I most disliked, an insignificant huddle of buildings miles from anywhere, but I’d never experienced such immediate revulsion. The clump of thatched roofs put me in mind of dunes surmounted by dry grass, evidence less of human habitation than of the mindless actions of nature. As the sloping road led me down towards them, I saw that the thatch overhung the cottages, like hair dangling over idiot brows. Where the road descended to the level of the village, it showed me that the outermost cottages were so squat they appeared to have collapsed or to be sinking into the earth of the unpaved road. Thatch obscured their squinting windows, and I gave in to an irrational hope that the village might prove to be abandoned. Then the door of the foremost cottage sank inwards, and as I braked, a head poked out of the doorway to watch our arrival.
It was a female head. So much I distinguished before it was snatched back. I glanced at Crawley in case he had recognized it, but he was wrinkling his face at some aspect of the village which had disconcerted him. As the car coasted into Warrendown, the woman reappeared, having draped a scarf over her head to cover even more of her than her dress did. I thought she was holding a baby, then decided it must be some kind of pet, because as she emerged into the road with an odd abrupt lurch the small object sprang from her arms into the dimness within the cottage. She knotted the scarf and thrust her plump yet flattish face out of it to stare swollen-eyed at my passenger. I was willing to turn the vehicle around and race for the main road, but he was lowering his window, and so I slowed the car. I saw their heads lean towards each other as though the underside of the sky was pressing them down and forcing them together. Their movements seemed obscurely reminiscent, but I’d failed to identify of what when she spoke. ‘You’re back.’