For three days Mr Hilditch dwells upon the fact that anyone can make a mistake. Anyone can attempt to advance a friendship too quickly: enthusiasm, he supposes, a surfeit of keenness. He recalls the one he ran into once in a Debenham’s Coffee Bean, who said she’d rather not when he suggested meeting up again, and the one who told him she came from Daventry: Samantha, whom he’d assisted when her car wouldn’t start. It could happen to a bishop, he reflects, recalling this expression of his Uncle Wilf’s: advancing too swiftly is an understandable human error. Since he has never felt the need of a telephone at Number Three, and does not wish to be overheard in his office, Mr Hilditch telephones the barracks on Old Hinley Road from a call-box during the lunch hour. The voice at the other end is matter-of-fact and cold. ‘Who’s making inquiries about this soldier?’ Mr Hilditch states that he is a family friend. There has been an emergency of a personal nature: the young man’s father in an accident at a level-crossing, signal failure. ‘What are you asking me?’ the clipped, uninterested tones inquire. ‘The family’s uncertain which barracks the lad’s stationed at owing to the father being unconscious in a hospital. We’re ringing round all barracks in the area.’ ‘Name and rank?’ ‘Lysaght, J. A squaddy I’d say he is.’ ‘A what?’ Mr Hilditch says a private and is told to hold on. Nearly ten minutes go by, during which time he repeatedly feeds money into the coin-box. ‘We have a Lysaght here,’ he is told then. ‘We’ll pass the message on after fatigues.’ ‘Excuse me, but maybe it’d be better if the family broke the news to the lad. Now that we know where he is we’ll contact him pronto.’ Mr Hilditch smiles agreeably, projecting this bonhomie into the mouthpiece, but the receiver is replaced at the other end without further effort at communication. He extracts his unused coins and steps out of the telephone-box. No way there isn’t a chance that the girl could run into the tough who got her up the pole, no reason why she shouldn’t if she continues to wander about the place. Even so, knowing his location is somehow a comfort: being a jump ahead, as the expression goes. Since he has half an hour to spare, and in order to avoid having to shop later on, Mr Hilditch drives slowly to Tesco’s car park. Finding a trolley, he pushes it through the chromium swinging barrier and makes his way to the refrigerated area, where he chooses cod in batter, faggots, garden peas, broccoli spears, four bags of chips and two tubs of strawberry and vanilla ice-cream. In the fresh meat section he picks out pork chops, chicken portions and prime steak, adds celery and carrots and more potatoes from the fresh vegetable shelves, and bourbon creams, custard creams, lemon flakies, chocolate wafers and chocolate wholemeals from the biscuit shelves. Since Mr Kipling’s Bakewell Slices are reduced, as are Mr Kipling’s French Fancies and McVitie’s treacle cake, he helps himself to a selection, and to packets of jumbo-size crisps and Phileas Fogg croutons near the pay-out, as well as a six-pack of Bounty bars. He smiles at a woman who ungraciously pushes in front of him, saying it doesn’t matter in the least. In the car park he stacks his purchases in the boot of his car, and returns to his catering department, consuming a Bounty bar on the way. Most of the lunch hour has gone, but something hot will have been kept back for him in the kitchens, as he requested earlier. ‘Sorry to give you the bother,’ he apologizes when a plate of gammon and parsley sauce, creamed potatoes and sauced cauliflower is placed in front of him. ‘Had a bit of business to attend to. I’ll have to stay late to catch up on the figures.’ He does not intend to do that. He intends to drive down to the Marshring area in the hope of a sighting. As he eats, and afterwards in his cubicle of an office, an anger he has suppressed gradually begins to seep through his defences. Anyone could have seen her hurrying away from Number Three. He broke his rule for her, and then that: hardly evidence of gratitude, after she’d been driven upwards of a hundred and ten miles, with cups of tea paid for, and all that guff about some woman left a widow seventy-five years ago patiently listened to. And although it should be, it’s no satisfaction to know that the boyfriend has been guilty of porkies. Unable to help himself, Mr Hilditch imagines this soldier, tidy in his uniform and engaged in cheerful afternoon fatigues. He envisages him off duty later on, relaxing with his mates, feet up on a table in the day room of the barracks, the kind of camaraderie he had once looked forward to himself, before the recruiting sergeant with the bladelike moustache rejected him because of his feet and his eyesight. With his legs still cocked up in front of him, ankles crossed, the young thug guffaws that keen bints like the one he had are two a penny, pick them off the bushes, no problem at all. And one of his companions looks up from
Big Ones and recalls the first time he’d had it, with a fat nurse behind a public house, the Flight of Birds up Scunthorpe way, a summer’s evening. Another of them throws in that the first time he had it he was thirteen, a plumber’s wife. At a quarter to six Mr Hilditch drives down to the Marshring area and waits for a while in his parked car. ‘Thanks very much,’ was what she said as she scuttled off. ‘I hope it’ll be all right about your wife.’ At ten past six he drives away again, disappointed.