Late, Late in the Evening

'Stop talking, that little girl with the scrazed nose!' (I was not talking. It was Cissie.)

However, we were free at last, and just as we reached grandfather's front gate and were discussing what there was likely to be for Sunday dinner-'Chicken, I hope,' said Kenneth-we saw Aunt Kirstie and Uncle Arthur coming towards us down the hill. We rushed up to them.

'Thank you for the chocolate cream pigs,' I said. 'We've been to Sunday school. It was horrible. We knew much more about the Romans than the teacher who took our class. She was just plain ignorant. She only knew what was in the Bible.'

'That's no way to talk,' said Aunt Kirstie, who always paid lip-service, but no more, to religious observances. 'Sunday school is very nice and proper.'

'Can we have dinner with you instead of with Aunt Lally?' asked Kenneth.

'No, that you can't. Lally has killed and plucked a chicken specially. Besides, ours isn't even in the oven yet.'

'Aunt Lally said you went to the manor house. Did you really?'

'Your aunt don't tell lies,' said Aunt Kirstie. 'You'll maybe hear all about it later on.'

'Was it about Mr Ward?'

'Now why on earth should you ask me that?'

'Only because Lionel let out one day that Mr Ward was some kind of relation of his. He said he was a remittance man. What does that mean, Aunt Kirstie?'

'Only that he's kept by the family and doesn't have to work for his living.'

'Why doesn't he?'

'Because he was a gentleman born and has delicate health. And now you'd better run along, else Lally's dinner will spoil and I'll get the blame for keeping you talking.'

'You know what I think,' said Kenneth, when Sunday dinner was over and we had been settled on our own in the sitting-room with copies of an uplifting but dull periodical which Aunt Lally bought each Saturday when she went to the town for her shopping. 'I think Mr Ward is an ex-convict and Mrs Kempson or someone pays Aunt Kirstie to look after him, because the family don't want to own him any more. Lionel practically said as much, you know.'

'He could even be a lunatic,' I said. 'He acts like one at times.'

'We ought to be careful. He might be a criminal lunatic, and we did wonder whether he was a murderer. I'm glad we don't sleep at Aunt Kirstie's.'

'Why do you think they had to go to the manor house? It was something to do with Mr Ward. I'm sure of it.'

'Perhaps to ask for more money for looking after him.'

'Aunt Kirstie wouldn't do that.'

'Well, perhaps Uncle Arthur would.'

'I don't think they went of their own accord. I think they were sent for. It would be much more likely.'

'Oh, I don't know. They're not Mrs Kempson's servants.'

Speculation was idle. We gave it up, but, on the following day, when we were able to resume our normal routine, our suspicions that Mr Ward was not altogether compos mentis received a new fillip. We went along to the sheepwash in search of Our Sarah and her gang, for there was no sign of Lionel that morning and this was disappointing, since we had planned to ask him whether he knew of our relatives' visit to the manor house in the hope that he might be able to tell us something about it. However, nobody was at the sheepwash except Mr Ward. He stood up to his thighs in the water, swinging his pickaxe. Water and mud were flying in all directions and he himself was so wet that we could see the sun shining on the drops of water in his hair.

'Down!' whispered Kenneth.

'Where?'

'In the brook. He's got his back to us. Take your shoes off and leave them on the bank.'

'I've got stockings on.'

'They'll soon dry.' So we took off our shoes and waded into the brook where the bank was steepest and peered out at Mr Ward from behind the tall summer grasses. We gained nothing. Mr Ward hacked away with his pickaxe, sending up mud mixed with rainbow spray, then, suddenly, he lofted the pickaxe so that it described an arc before it fell fifteen feet away on to The Marsh. He took out his watch, looked at it, put it back in his pocket, came out of the sheepwash, regained his pickaxe and began to walk towards us.

We crouched down, my frock and Kenneth's shorts getting wetter and wetter, but apparently Mr Ward was unconscious of our presence. To our relief (although I now cannot see that we had anything to fear) he passed by us on the drove road and made his way back to the plank bridge. We gave him a good ten minutes, I should think, before we followed him on to grandfather's land and up to Aunt Kirstie's house for a washing-day dinner.

As usual, Mr Ward did not eat with us. He went up to his room by way of the back stairs, changed his wet clothes and went out again. We were anxious to follow him, but the food-cold roast pork and jacket potatoes-was already on the table, so we sat down quickly to conceal our wet clothes and began our meal.

We always hated washing-day. At home where the scullery in our London house was very small and most of the space was taken up by the copper, the gas-cooker and the sink, it was worse, but even at Aunt Kirstie's the whole of the downstairs smelt of heat and suds and wet clothes and our dinner was plonked down in front of us while Aunt Kirstie, with pink, horrid-looking, water-softened hands, flushed and perspiring brow, untidy hair and sleeves rolled up above her elbows, continued with her rinsing and wringing and Aunt Lally helped her by banging out the clothes on a long line which stretched the whole length of the garden.

We ate our dinner as fast as we could. There were no 'afters' on washing-day unless there was some apple pie or baked rice or bread and butter pudding left over from Sunday, and on this particular Monday there was nothing, although Aunt Kirstie called out that we could have a bit of bread and jam if we liked.

Kenneth, however, was too anxious to put his plan into execution to stop for anything as unexciting as bread and jam, so we put our empty plates together, got the iron bar out of Uncle Arthur's shed the minute the garden was clear of Aunt Lally, and made for the iron fence at the bottom of the hermit's garden.

It was simple enough. Two of the iron uprights of the fence were soon forced apart by our united efforts with the bar and we were able to squeeze through the opening without much trouble, although it was fortunate that we were thin and had narrow heads. The garden was overgrown with tall, rank grass, thistles, docks, nettles and every other kind of weed. There were elder bushes, currant bushes long untended, some raspberry canes and near the back of the cottage a collection of empty tins which seemed to prove that the hermit had eaten other things besides Miss Summers' discarded loaves. At the bottom of the garden there was a doorless, stinking earth-closet and an equally doorless woodshed out of which a rat scurried at our cautious approach.

The back door had gone, as we knew. We stepped inside with caution, listening before we took each forward step, but it was evident the place was still empty. Moreover, again it smelt so fetid and unpleasant that there was no temptation to linger. A doorway separated the kitchen from the front room so, after peering through it at the scene of Mr Ward's labours and noting that his spade and pickaxe had gone, we retired to the back garden to think things over.

'Well I shan't be in a hurry to go in there again,' said Kenneth. 'I shouldn't be surprised if you couldn't catch all sorts of diseases in a place like that. You could even catch the plague, I shouldn't wonder. Rats carry it, you know.'

'Only overseas rats,' I said. 'Did you think Mr Ward had made his hole any bigger?'