Biggs was nonplussed. He couldn't conceive of the old woman having left the house for any reason, particularly in view of their appointment. He had formed a picture of her life in which she was confined to the cottage. It was hard to imagine her even stepping into the garden.
A doorway on the opposite side of the hall stood ajar, giving a glimpse of a dining-table and chairs.
Just past it a narrow stairway led to the upper floor.
Harold paused at the foot of this. He had detected the glow of two eyes in the darkness at the top of the carpeted stairs, and as his own grew accustomed to the gloom he made out the shape of a cat. He remembered the animal from his earlier visit. It sat there with paws folded looking down at him.
'Mrs Troy?' he called up the stairs.
After a moment's hesitation he climbed to the upper landing, stepping over the cat, which made no move to get out of his way. Two doors stood ajar. A third was shut. He knocked on that and heard a voice respond faintly from within. Harold opened the door and saw Mrs Troy's figure stretched out on a bed, half sitting, half lying, propped against a bank of pillows. She wore the same dark bombazine skirt as before and her upper body was wrapped in a plaid blanket. The curtains had been three-quarters drawn on the window overlooking the back garden and the dull light entering the room left the corners in shadow.
'I'm sorry, am I disturbing you?' Harold hesitated on the threshold. He saw her face turning from side to side, like a plant seeking the sunlight. He recalled the clouded milky gaze. 'It's me… Mr Biggs, from Folkestone.'
'Oh, Mr Biggs!" The words were accompanied by a gasp of relief. 'I wasn't sure you'd come.'
'I said I would.' He spoke resentfully, as though he had been misjudged.
'He's here…' Her agitated whisper barely reached his ears. 'Mr Grail 'Yes, I know. I heard him in the shed. I'll just slip down now and have a word with him. See that everything's in order.'
'Mr Biggs…' Now a note of anxiety had come into her voice. She held out her hand to him from the bed. He pretended not to see it. He had come here on business. He didn't want this human contact between them. But her hand remained there between them and in the end he had to come forward and take it in his.
'Be carefulY 'Why? What do you mean?' He recoiled from her clutching fingers.
'Just ask him to go nicely… Tell him I'm sorry, it can't be helped Nicely! Harold stoked his rising temper. The thought of what he planned to do — of the advantage he meant to take of this frail old creature — made him dislike her all the more. He withdrew his hand from hers.
'Don't worry, Mrs Troy,' he said curtly. A fresh idea had just occurred to him and he hastened to put it into words. 'You just lie there. After I've spoken to Grail I'll make you a cup of tea and bring it up. I can see this is upsetting you. You must stay here and rest.'
He'd been nerving himself all morning to remove the mugs in the cabinet from under her nose, under her near-sightless gaze, but this was an unlooked for piece of good fortune. {'You're a lucky devil!' He grinned, remembering.) Already he was breathing easier. As he turned towards the door he caught sight of his reflection in the dressing-table mirror: his solid figure, on the verge of being overweight, bulged at the waistline. He drew in his stomach.
'Just leave Grail to me,' he said.
He hurried down the stairs, out through the kitchen and into the garden.
He would do it!
The certainty had come to him as he stood beside the bed and looked down at her helpless figure.
He had found the courage after all!
Impatient now to bring matters to a conclusion Grail must be sent on his way without further delay he strode across the small square of lawn and rapped sharply on the shed door.
'Mr Grail?'
Without waiting for a response, he pushed open the door and went inside. A wave of heat enveloped him.
The dark interior was lit by a paraffin lamp, which burned brightly on an upturned box in one corner of the room. A man, naked to the waist, was bending down, arranging the folds of a dun-coloured dust cloth over some large, irregularly shaped object in the middle of the shed. Biggs had a fleeting impression he'd been taken by surprise. Then all thoughts were driven from his mind by the sight of the half-clad figure as it rose and turned towards him. The muscular torso, scarred in several places, was shiny with sweat.
A high, rank odour like the smell from an animal's cage assailed his nostrils.
'Grail?'
Harold waited for some response from the man, who said nothing. He noticed a metallic object lying on a work-table at the end of the shed. It looked like a piece of machinery, or a motor part. Tools lay beside it.
'Now what's all this?' Biggs put his hands on his hips. 'I take it you got my letter. You're supposed to be moving out of here today.'
He found to his consternation that he couldn't look the man in the face. The single glance he had given him had revealed a close-cropped head and lips drawn down in a thin line. But it was the eyes. They were brown and flat and when Biggs had sought to meet them with his own, to impress his irritation and impatience on this half-dressed ruffian, he had had to look away almost at once. There was something inhuman in his gaze, Harold thought with alarm. The image of an animal came into his mind again. A carnivore. He was forced to move, to ease the cramp that all at once invaded his limbs, and without any conscious intention he walked forward, further into the shed towards the menacing figure of Grail who nevertheless, surprisingly, made way for him, moving to one side and then a little around so that Harold now stood beside the covered object and Grail was closer to the door.
'Well?'
The word sprang unbidden to Harold's lips. He spoke because he could not remain silent in the midst of the greater silence that radiated like a force from the other man.
'You're meant to be leaving here,' he repeated helplessly. 'Moving out. Don't you understand?'
Grail's only response was to move again. Harold saw with mounting panic that his way out of the shed was now blocked.
'What are you doing here, anyway?'
He didn't want to know, but he couldn't still his tongue. When he moved himself it was with an involuntary lurch, his cramped leg muscles jerking in a sudden spasm. His foot, dragging along the cement floor, caught in a fold of the dust cloth. Distractedly, he tried to work it free, kicking out in desperation, tugging at the cloth, which gradually worked loose from the object it was covering.
When he saw what was revealed beneath it Harold went deathly pale. He stared in horror at the handlebars of the motorcycle — the machine was still half covered by the cloth — and the red pointed nose of the sidecar. At that same instant he recalled, with an emotion akin to grief, the article he had read in the newspaper the previous Friday.
He looked up into the flat brown eyes. He couldn't hide his knowledge from them, he was too afraid. And now he found his own gaze held fast by the lifeless stare. A warm stream of urine ran down his leg inside his plus-fours.
Harold saw the face of his mother — she had died in the last year of the war. Other images flocked to his mind. He saw the girl he had picked up in the high street, Jimmy Pullman leaning on the bar in the Bunch of Grapes, Mr Wolverton's freckled scalp, the cat's eyes glowing at the top of the stairs… His life sped by like the frames of a hand-cranked cinematograph in a penny arcade.
And all the while he stared into Grail's eyes.
At the last, like a drowning man clutching at a spar, he put his hand in his pocket and felt for his key ring and his good-luck shilling.
It brought him no comfort in his agony. Even as he ran his thumb frantically back and forth along the milled edge, Grail moved towards him and he knew then, with the finality of death, that his luck had run out.