“It is saying its prayers. It’s a moo-cow. That’s the way they say them.”
It took about a quarter of an hour to persuade Penny to be human again. Even then a last faint contumacious “Moo!” followed the final amen.
Judy turned a deaf ear, forbade further conversation, and went to tidy herself up in the bathroom. She had just come to the conclusion that she had never looked plainer in her life, when the front door bell rang and she had to go and let Frank Abbott in.
They made the omelette together in Isabel’s minute kitchen. There is nothing like a homely, domestic job for breaking the ice. By the time he had laid the table, and she had called him an idiot for dropping the butter-dish, they might have been married for years. Over the omelette, which was very good and had all sorts of exciting scraps in it, Frank told her so. His naturally impudent tongue was his own again, but if he expected to raise a blush he was disappointed. Miss Elliot agreed with perfect calm.
“Yes, we might-only not so dull.”
“It mightn’t be dull with the right person.”
Judy proffered tomato sauce.
“You mightn’t think it was going to be until it was too late. I mean, we both like this sauce, but if we had to eat it at every meal for the next forty or fifty years we’d be bored stiff.”
“My child, you make me shudder! I can assure you that I have at least thirty distinct flavours-like all the soup and jelly makers used to advertize, and you could always try mixing them if thirty wasn’t enough. Besides, the brain is not completely stagnant-I can invent new ones. You’ve got it all wrong. People are dull because of something in themselves- a tendency to stew over old tea-leaves-keeping the windows tight shut to prevent any new ideas getting in-all that sort of thing. You have been warned!”
“Thank you.” Words and tone were meek. Her eyes mocked him.
When she saw he was going to speak, she said with her best smile,
“How many girls have you said that to?”
“I’ve only just thought of it. It’s their loss.”
Something made her say a little more quickly than she meant to,
“We’re going away tomorrow.”
“We?”
“Penny and I.”
“Where?”
With the feeling of having reached nice firm, safe ground, Judy could relax. The smile came out again, bringing with it a rather pleasant dimple.
“We’re going to be a housemaid.”
“What!”
“A housemaid. In a nice safe village because of Penny. Their total casualties up to date are one goat in an outlying field.”
“Did you say a housemaid?”
“I did. And if you’re going to say I can do better than that-which is what everybody does say-you haven’t tried, and I have. If I hadn’t got Penny I could get dozens of jobs- but if I hadn’t got Penny I should be called up. And I have got Penny, so that’s that. And I’m going to keep her, so that’s another that. And when you’ve got all that straightened out you’ll find like I did that the only job you can get with a child is a domestic one-and you can only get that because people are so desperate they’ll do anything. Think how nice and appropriate it is, the policeman and the housemaid having supper together!”
Frank looked down his long nose and didn’t laugh.
“Must you?”
Judy nodded.
“Yes, I must. I haven’t a bean. Aunt Cathy was living on an annuity, though nobody knew it. By the time I’d got everything paid up there wasn’t anything left. John Fossett had nothing but his pay, so there’s nothing for Penny except a minute pension, and I want to save that up to pay for her going to school later on.”
Frank crumbled a piece of bread. What business had John and Nora Fossett to get killed in an air raid and leave Judy to fend for their brat? He said in an angry voice,
“Where are you going?”
Judy was feeling pleased with herself. She removed the bread and told him not to waste good food. Then she answered his question.
“It sounds rather nice. Penny and I are to live with the family because-well, I rather gather the cook and butler put all their feet down and said they wouldn’t have us. There are two Miss Pilgrims and an invalid nephew, and the house is called Pilgrim’s Rest. The village is Holt St. Agnes, and-” She got no farther, because Frank rapped the table and said in the loudest voice she had ever heard him use,
“You can’t go there!”
Judy became Miss Elliot. Whilst remaining only just across the table from him, her lifted eyebrows and the expression of the eyes beneath them indicated that he had been relegated to a considerable distance. In a tone of suitable coolness she enquired,
“Why not?”
Frank wasn’t cool at all. The detached and indifferent manner which he affected no longer afforded him any protection. He looked very much taken aback as he said,
“Judy, you mustn’t. I say, don’t look at me like that! You can’t go there.”
“Why can’t I? Is there anything wrong with the Miss Pilgrims? One of them came up to town to see me-I thought she was nice. Do you know them?”
He nodded.
“That would be Miss Columba. She’s all right-at least I suppose she is.” He ran a hand back over his hair and pulled himself together. “Look here, Judy, I’d like to talk to you about this. You know you always said I’d got more cousins than anyone you’d ever heard of, and I suppose I have. Well, one lot lives just outside Holt St. Agnes, and I’ve known the Pilgrims all my life. Roger and I were at school together.”
She said with a zip in her voice, “That probably wasn’t his fault.”
“Don’t be a fool! I’m serious. I want you to listen. Roger is just home from the Middle East. He was taken prisoner by the Italians, escaped, put in some time in hospital, and is still on sick leave. I’ve just had a spot of leave after ’flu myself. I’ve been staying with my cousins at Holt St. Agnes, and I saw quite a lot of Roger.” He paused and looked at her hard. “You can hold your tongue, can’t you? What I’m telling you is what everyone in the village knows more or less, but I wouldn’t want Roger to think I’d been handing it on. He’s a nice chap, but he’s a bit of a dim bulb, and he’s in the devil of a flap. I wouldn’t be talking about it to anyone else, but you oughtn’t to go there.”
Judy sat opposite him with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes wary. She said,
“Why?”
He hesitated, a thing so unusual that it rattled him. The cool self-assurance to which he was accustomed had left him in the lurch. It was like coming into a house and finding the furniture gone. It rattled him. He found nothing better to say than,
“Things keep happening.”
“What kind of things?”
This was the devil. The gap between what he could get into words and what he couldn’t get into words was too wide. And behind that there was the horrid niggling thought that the gap had only become evident when he learned that it was Judy who was going to Pilgrim’s Rest. If it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have bothered his head.
Judy repeated her question.
“What kind of things?”
He said, “Accidents-or perhaps not-Roger thinks not. The ceiling came down in his room-if he hadn’t gone to sleep over a book downstairs he’d have been killed. Another room was burnt out, with him inside-the door jammed and he very nearly didn’t get out in time.”
Judy kept her eyes on his face.
“Who does the place belong to?”
“Him.”
“Is he the invalid nephew?”
“No-that’s Jerome. He’s a cousin, a good bit older than Roger. Smashed up at Dunkirk. No money. They took him in-have a nurse for him. They’re a very clannish family.”
“Is he, or is Roger, well-a neurotic type? Would it be either of them playing tricks?”
“I don’t know. It wouldn’t be like either of them if they were normal. And both things might have been accidents. In the first case a tap had been left running and a sink had overflowed. That’s what brought the ceiling down. In the second Roger went to sleep in front of a fire and the whole place littered with papers he’d been sorting. A spark may have jumped out of the fire.”