'Why didn't you find someone else?' Biggs asked, increasingly impatient.
It seemed there was no one else, not in Rudd's Cross. Edna 'did' for two other families and they, too, complained of being let down. Sometimes she disappeared for days.
Unmoved by the old woman's predicament, Biggs was just telling himself he could see no way of dealing with the matter — not if the wretched Babb was the only cleaner available — when he discovered to his amazement that this, after all, wasn't the problem. It was merely the background to it. Mrs Troy had learned to cope with Edna's absences. If the house wasn't properly cleaned — and there was plenty of evidence of this in the layer of dust he could see coating the mantelpiece in front of him and dulling the glass front of the silver cabinet across the room — it didn't seem to bother the old woman. The crisis lay in another quarter. To be precise, in the shape of Mr Grail.
Mr Grail?
Harold had forgotten about him. Now he had to sit and listen again as Mrs Troy explained in her halting, back-and-forth way that he was the man who had looked after the garden since Tom Donkin's departure.
But there was more to it than that.
One of Edna Babb's duties had been to shop for her employer in Knowlton, but since she could no longer be relied on Mrs Troy had been forced to seek an alternative source of supplies.
'I told Mr Grail he could use the garden shed that's what he wanted — but he had to bring me food when he came.'
Why? Biggs wondered. Why on earth not ask one of the village women to shop for her? What was she clinging to so desperately? Was it her independence?
She shouldn't be living here on her own, he thought irritably. Didn't she have someone to care for her? 'What can I do for you, Mrs Troy?'
'I want you to tell him to go.' She spoke for the first time with certainty. 'I don't want him coming back.'
Biggs blinked. 'You've spoken to him, have you? Is he giving trouble?'
She shook her head. 'I can't talk to him,' she said.
'I want you to tell him.'
Now that he understood at last, Harold didn't trust himself to speak. He'd been dragged all the way out here on his afternoon off just to give some fellow his marching orders! As though to underline his sense of outrage, a loud crack of thunder sounded overhead. It was followed by a patter of raindrops on the roof that swiftly became a downpour. My God, he was going to get drenched!
He sought to keep a grip on his temper. 'Where can I find him?' he asked abruptly.
'He usually comes on a Saturday.' She turned her near-sightless eyes on him again. 'Saturday afternoons.
That's why I wanted someone here today.'
Without a word Biggs stood up and went out into the narrow hallway. He found what he was looking for — an umbrella, it was standing in a flowered china vase — and went from there directly through the house to the kitchen at the back. The smell of stale food assailed his nostrils. A pile of unwashed plates and dishes lay on the draining-board of the sink. Through the window he could see the shed, at the bottom, and to one side, of a small square of lawn bordered by flowerbeds.
He flung open the kitchen door. The rain fell like a curtain before his eyes. Fuming, he stepped outside, opening the umbrella as he did so, and splashed across the already sodden patch of grass to the shed. The door was barred by a heavy padlock. He hammered on it.
'Grail!' he called out. 'Grail! Are you there?'
There was no response. He laid his ear to the wooden door, but he could hear nothing above the noise of the rain beating on the corrugated iron above his head and pouring in a stream from the edge of the roof on to his spread umbrella.
He knocked once more, again without result, and then plodded back to the house. As he stepped into the kitchen he saw that the white leather of his new white-and-tan shoes had turned a muddy brown. Furious, he dried them with a kitchen towel. He returned to the front room.
'Grail's not in the shed, Mrs Troy. I doubt he'll come in this storm. Where does he live, anyway?'
She didn't know. Grail had never said. In short order Harold discovered there was almost nothing she did know about the man. He'd appeared mysteriously, several months back, in early spring. He came often on a Saturday but not every week. He usually brought food for her, groceries of some kind, though not always what she asked for.
'Just any stuff,' the old woman said, with sudden, fierce resentment.
So that was it! Grail hadn't lived up to his end of their bargain. Calmer in his mind now, Biggs reflected coolly. As far as he could see, the garden appeared to have been cared for. If it was just a question of the food Grail was bringing, then a word in his ear might do the trick.
Seating himself beside her again he began to put it to her, suggesting that if someone took Grail aside and- 'No! No! No! That's not what I want.' Twin pink roses like fever spots blossomed in the pallor of her cheeks. The hysteria in her voice shook him. 'I don't want to have to deal with that man. Please.' Listen to me!'
Flushing, Biggs sat back. There was no reasoning with her, he told himself bitterly. She was old and stubborn, and probably feeble-minded. She ought to be in a home. He couldn't see what this fellow Grail had done that was so terribly wrong. Anyone would think he was Satan incarnate! For a moment he wondered if there was something here he hadn't understood. Something she'd left unsaid. But he pushed the thought from his mind. All he wanted was to get the damned business settled and be on his way.
'Well, I can't tell him anything if he's not here,' he said sharply. 'And I can't wait for ever.'
She sat still in her chair, her face turned away from his. The cat's purring had ceased. 'I want Mr Wolverton to come,' she said in a low voice. 'I'll speak to him.'
The implied threat in her words brought the blood rushing to his cheeks again. 'There is something I can do,' he said quickly. 'I could write him a letter. Mr Grail. I'll leave it in the shed, so if he comes tomorrow he'll find it. I'll tell him he has to go, to quit the premises. There — will that help?'
She said nothing. But her shoulders under the knitted shawl made a faint shrugging gesture.
He stood up, temples throbbing. Old and helpless as she was she'd managed to humiliate him. He felt as though she had slipped a chain around his neck and given it a sharp jerk. He moved away to a small writing desk that stood against the wall behind her chair and sat down. His hand shook as he unscrewed his fountain pen and took a sheet of paper from one of the pigeon-holes.
Dear Mr Grail Mrs Troy informs me that for some time now she has allowed you the use of her garden shed in return for certain services…
The room grew suddenly brighter as he wrote.
Glancing up he saw that a beam of sunlight had broken through the lace-net curtains. He was aware that the rain had stopped a few minutes before. The sunshine brought a flash of silver from the glass fronted cabinet, and Harold's eye was drawn that way.
He noticed a pair of tankards standing on a silver salver that occupied the top shelf of the cabinet. The sight of them awoke a recent memory in him. He had gone to an auction in Folkestone with Mr Wolverton to oversee the sale of a deceased client's effects. He recalled the auctioneer holding up a brace of silver mugs, very like the ones in the cabinet.
'Georgian,' the auctioneer had said. They had fetched 120, pounds the pair of them.
She now finds it necessary to put an end to this arrangement and I am writing to inform you of this. Since no contract exists between you and Mrs Troy I assume that a period of notice of one week from today will be sufficient…
A hundred and twenty pounds the pair of them. He could buy a wireless set for 120 pounds for a lot less, as a matter of fact, but the balance could go towards a motor-car.