During the following several weeks Mr Hilditch goes about his professional tasks with the care and attention for which he is well known at his place of work. At weekends he cleans his house – the hall and the stairs, his dining-room and big front room. He sweeps his backyard and rakes the gravel at the front. He shops in Tesco’s for supplies. He relaxes with his records and the Daily Telegraph. In idle moments, or in bed at night, he is drawn into the surroundings he so often heard about during the friendship that has ended: the bedroom shared with a woman in her hundredth year, the square with the statue of a soldier, the diamond-patterned table-tops of the café. The father and the twin bachelor brothers are there, the convent friends, the mother of the seducer. In Mr Hilditch’s private life there is nothing new about this excursion into someone else’s background. When Beth went, he found it hard to rid his thoughts of the pimps she had told him about, who had once pursued her; when Gaye went there were the house-breakers she had assisted. There was Sharon’s impetigo when she was a kid, Bobbi’s blind eye. The Irish girl’s name was found by her father, honouring some woman who took part in a revolution: it was in the car he heard that, or in Buddy’s Cafe, hard to be exact. ‘Very tasty, them faggots,’ an employee remarks, as well he might in Mr Hilditch’s view, since under his precise instructions the faggots have been skilfully prepared and cooked. ‘Glad you enjoyed them.’ He smiles his gratitude. Compliments are welcome when a finished association is still raw in his thoughts. Another employee comments on the marmalade pudding and he gives away a secret: that the suet must be finely chopped, that the marmalade and the beaten eggs must be added to the dry ingredients, not the other way round. He points out that the process and the measurements vary according to whether the pudding is steamed or baked. Since childhood he has preferred it steamed himself. The women among the employees often request a recipe and invariably choose to approach him rather than a member of the kitchen staff. He likes to oblige them in this way. It pleases him to think of the canteen dishes being served to the employees’ families. ‘Mr Hilditch’s pudding’ or ‘Mr Hilditch’s way of doing it’ might be expressions used. Although he never mentions it, he believes that this may be so.
‘See, we live in a miracle. Look here at this garden. See the fruits of the trees and the peoples of all nations.’ A black woman, bejewelled and painted, proffers a lurid illustration on the cover of a brochure. A young white girl, tidily attired, stands at her side with a sheaf of similar illustrations. Mr Hilditch, who has been interrupted in the polishing of his shoes at the kitchen table, greets the pair genially, but indicates his lack of enthusiasm for the conversation that threatens by shaking his head. ‘Today we bring you the Word of our Father Lord,’ the black woman continues, ignoring his response. ‘I myself am from Jamaica. This here is Miss Marcia Tibbitts. If my friend and myself could just step inside we wouldn’t take up no more than ten minutes of your day. May I inquire, sir, if you are familiar with the writings of the Bible?’ Mr Hilditch is not particularly familiar with the writings of the Bible. As a child, he was packed off by his mother every Sunday morning to Sunday school. Vaguely he remembers outlandish stories about lambs sacrificed and sons sacrificed, and walking on water. It is all a long time ago and he has never felt the need to reflect on any of it.
What Would Jesus Do? an inscription in coloured wools speculated, shown to the Sunday-school class by its teacher. She had turned it into a decoration for her walls, framing the glass that protected it with passe-partout. ‘I’m afraid I’m not interested.’ ‘If we could step inside your home my friend would offer you her own experience, how she was gathered in.’ Again Mr Hilditch shakes his head, but does not succeed in halting a tale about being rescued from a video shop, and the promise of the paradise earth in which serpents lie harmlessly coiled and the cobra is a plaything for children. ‘I was lost and have been found,’ the white girl states in a singsong tone. ‘As it is written.’ Then she begins again, about the video shop and the better world of the cobra as a plaything. ‘Look here,’ Mr Hilditch interrupts at last. ‘I’m busy.’ ‘We would return,’ the black woman offers. ‘We would come at any hour.’ ‘No, no.’ ‘Ten minutes of any day is not much sacrifice to make. The Father Lord gives us time eternal.’ The black woman displays a mouthful of healthy teeth and pushes at Mr Hilditch the brochures she carries. ‘There is a future for the one who dies, sir,’ she adds, her tone intimating that the literature on offer reveals further details of this claim. It is then, while she is still speaking about the one who dies, that Mr Hilditch notices, and is bewildered by, a sudden curiosity breaking in her dark features. Being professionally familiar with the practices of salesmanship and assuming that the toting about of religion can fairly be placed in such a category, he wonders if this is some kind of selling ploy. But to his consternation and alarm, the explanation is not a commercial one. ‘An Irish girl mentioned you, sir. I remember that now as we stand here. A good man, the girl said, a helpmeet to her. Duke of Wellington Road, she said. Big and big-hearted was maybe the description.’ ‘I know no Irish people at all.’ ‘You helped that girl on her way, not passing by on the other side. Sir, you are at one with our Church.’ ‘No, no. I’m sorry. I have to get on. This isn’t my kind of thing.’ ‘That girl was chattering, it came up like that.’ Miss Calligary pauses. ‘A confidence trickster, as it turned out after.’ ‘I must ask you to go now.’ ‘That girl tried to get money from us. Is this the same story for yourself, sir?’ Mr Hilditch closes his hall door with a bang, and leans against it with his eyes closed, remembering how the girl said she’d spent a few days in these people’s house. He goes over the encounter that has just occurred, from the moment when the black woman suddenly realized she was talking to someone she had heard about. Mentioned? ‘An Irish girl mentioned you’: what exactly did that imply? Chattering, the woman said, and then something about a confidence trickster, whatever that meant. For a moment Mr Hilditch wonders if the whole thing isn’t some kind of error or misunderstanding: by no stretch of the imagination could the Irish girl he has associated with be called a confidence trickster. Others he has known could be described in that way, but it’s the last expression you would use where this recent girl is concerned. And yet clearly it is the same girclass="underline" a girl he helped, going out of his way to do so. She said so herself; apparently, she’d repeated it to others. Slowly, he eases his bulk from where it rests against the hall door and moves across the hall to the kitchen. It’s nothing much, he assures himself, no more than an untidiness, a trailing end; if it seems out of the ordinary it’s only because it has never happened before. A girl he has been good to has never afterwards been mentioned to him by anyone.