'Is something wrong?' he asked.
She shook her head at once. 'No, nothing. Thank you for bringing the food.' She kept repeating herself.
He knew she found his presence unsettling, but now there was something else in her manner: a kind of tension, which she was trying to hide. He moved a little closer. He wanted to get to the bottom of this.
Distrust and suspicion were the dominant strains of his character, together with his need, and it was this last — the constant thrust of his longing — which caused him to turn away suddenly and leave her sitting where she was.
He would find out later what had upset her.
A last-minute change in Mrs Aylward's itinerary had meant a delay of several hours in his departure for Rudd's Cross. Normally he accepted these occasional disruptions in his plans without emotion. He could afford to take the long view.
But this afternoon for the first time he had felt impatience. The everyday world with its routine of chores and duties was becoming a burden to him.
Though he wasn't aware of it, the frail moorings that bound him to common reality were starting to fray.
Twilight was falling when he opened the shed door, and he failed to see the letter lying on the floor at his feet. When he lit the paraffin lamp a minute later he had already stripped the dust cloth off his motorcycle and thrown it aside. It fell on the floor, covering the white envelope.
He reached the forest before midnight and slept, wrapped in his groundsheet, beside his motorcycle until dawn. At first light he was on the move, hoisting his heavily laden bag on to his shoulder and striding, silent and ghostlike, through the thick ground mist that swirled about the tree trunks.
He found the dugout as he had left it, apart from a layer of mud that had accumulated at the bottom with the recent rains. He used his entrenching tool to scrape it out, stamping the remaining wet soil into a hard surface, and then went in search of one of the many stands of saplings with which the forest was seeded, returning an hour later with two armfuls of poles, which he trimmed and laid side by side on the packed mud floor, damp-proofing the pit.
At noon he broke off to open a tin of bully beef.
All morning he had kept his mind fixed on the minutiae of the jobs he was engaged in: on the branch he was trimming to size, on the neatness of the levelled floor. But he had been conscious all the time of the forces gathering within him: a tidal bore of emotion that throbbed at his nerve ends, making his skin prickle and burn as though lava flowed in his veins.
The sensation was thrilling. But it also made him uneasy. Self-control was the anchor of his life. It had steadied him through years of near-unbearable anguish and aching need, and the fear of losing it now was enough to calm him and keep his mind fixed on the tasks ahead.
When he had finished eating he left the area again, this time heading for a nearby pond, and returned with a sheaf of willow branches. Earlier he had nailed together a rough frame from the remaining saplings and now he began to plait the willow into a lattice to be fixed to the frame. It was painstaking work, and twice he had to return to the waterside for more willow laths, but by five o'clock he had constructed a roof for the dugout and laid it in place.
Collecting his bag and tools he retired into the refuge he had built. Now that his preparations were complete he was able to relax, lighting a cigarette and brewing a mess tin of tea on the Primus stove he had brought on his last visit. While it was still light he went through the contents of his bag, picking out those items he meant to leave behind. The stove he wrapped in oilcloth and stowed in a corner with the tinned supplies, following the pattern he had established, preparing himself for several visits and a long period of anticipation.
But even as he did these things he felt a seed of doubt. He wasn't sure he could wait. His experience at Highfield had been unique, a period when time had seemed suspended, a moment of sweet indecision prolonged to the point where he had temporarily lost the power to act. In retrospect he seemed to have sat for countless evenings in the woods above the village while the excitement mounted in him bit by bit like the slow accretion of coral.
He felt different now. The pressure inside his chest was like a clenched fist. His desire was growing by the day.
The last thing he did before leaving the dugout was to cut fresh brush, which he used to camouflage the site, threading the branches into the surrounding undergrowth, creating the illusion of a dense thicket.
Having made a final inspection of the area to satisfy himself that all was as it should be, he returned to where he had left the motorcycle, taking his bag with him.
Before wedging it into place in the sidecar he unbuckled the straps and took out a piece of meat wrapped in striped butcher's paper, which he slipped into the pocket of his leather jacket, wrinkling his nose at the gamy smell. He had bought it the day before and it was starting to go off.
The doors to the drawing-room stood open and the curtains on the windows had been pulled back so that light from inside poured out on to the grass. Two maids were busy with trays, moving back and forth between the house and the table under the trellised vine. Beyond the stretch of lawn illuminated by the lights the garden lay in silvered shadow under the bright moonlight.
Pike sat with his binoculars nailed to his eyes.
He had been watching for more than two hours, propped against the trunk of the beech tree, motionless in a well of darkness untouched by the moon's rays.
The adult members of the family were eating dinner.
There were three of them, but two he barely noticed. His attention was fixed on the fair-haired woman facing him, whose bare arms and shoulders glowed like ivory in the flickering candlelight.
Some kind of celebration was in progress. All three were in evening dress. Champagne had been poured at the start of the meal and glasses raised to the older of the two women. Even from a distance Pike could see the wine froth and sparkle.
He had done this at Highfield. He had sat in the shadows and watched. But try as he might now he couldn't recapture the feeling he had had then: the sense of a pleasure postponed, but within his grasp. A fruit he could pluck whenever he chose.
The beast stirring within him now cared nothing for patience and detachment. Its demands were insistent.
He shifted, easing the pressure in his groin.
He turned his attention away from the table to the edge of the lawn, where the yew alley began, and then traced the course of the path that ran the length of the garden to the croquet lawn. Three-quarters of the way along the yew alley a subsidiary path branched out and led to the gate in the mossed wall. Pike's eye came to rest there.
But not for long. Slowly, with all the deliberation he could muster, he made the return journey with his glasses, following the pathway back to the yew alley and then up to the lawn and the house.
He pictured it all in his mind's eye.
The charge, with the rifle and bayonet thrusting ahead!
The glass doors shattering!
He heard the screams. He'd heard them before.
They only increased his excitement.
Heart pumping in his chest, he brought the binoculars back to bear on the distant figure of the woman.
His mouth turned dry at the sight of her bare arms.
The thought of her body beneath his brought a low growl from his throat.
'Call me Sadie… I want you to call me Sadie.' He whispered the words.
At Melling Lodge he had been unable to contain himself. His climax had come too soon, soiling his trousers, while he struggled with the woman on the bed, the shame and the blood and the pleasure all mixed together.
Recalling those moments now, he made a silent vow.
This time it would be different. This time he would call on his iron control.