“I think I’ll do a little work,” he said. He didn’t say write. He-didn’t write. He sat in his study, turning over the artifacts and sketching them and feeling a great pressure on the front of his head.
One day, just at sundown, he went for a walk alone. On the way back he stopped in at The Yew Tree and bought the bottle of amontillado. He spent more than he planned because he refused the cheaper South African variety Mr. Flack recommended. The refusal, the mention of South Africa, gave Mr. Flack an opportunity to add more detail to his Capetown story, how he had stayed drunk on brandy for a week and how he had seen (he explained this closely to Munday) a black woman, “black as Newgy’s knocker," with a load of wood on her head walking along a road suckling her child, “as if it was the most natural thing in the world.”
While Mr. Flack told the story Munday nodded and watched Mrs. Flack kneeling at the fireplace with a coal hod and crumpled newspapers and bits of wood. Her hands were sooty, her back small and bent; she wore one of her husband’s jackets, a long apron, and high rubber boots, and she knelt in a way that allowed her to sit on her heels.
Munday offered to help her—it was one way of silencing Flack—but she said, “No, you’ll just get as filthy as me. Look.” She showed her black hands and made a horrible comic face, squashing her lips together until her toothless gums met. She said, “There’s no proper draft. We’re in a perpetual whirlwind."
Hosmer, who was drinking by the window, put his glass down and without a word took the center page from the Daily Telegraph on the bar and spread it and held it against the fireplace, blocking the opening. Inside a minute the fire flared at the bottom and soon lighted the back of the newsprint. Munday could see the fire growing through the paper. Then Hosmer took the paper away and folded it and creased it.
“I was going to do that,” said Mrs. Flack.
“Was ee?” said Hosmer. He laughed and took his seat.
They talked about fires, and Munday found himself adding to the conversation. As soon as he began speaking the others fell silent and became attentive. He said how he had gone into the cold damp house and started his own fires to drive out the chill, and how he had gone outside later to see the smoke curling from the chimneys.
He believed he had awed them, but Hosmer turned to Mr. Flack and, as if continuing a story Munday’s arrival had interrupted, said, “She were down by the river with her dogs, lying there on the grass, her legs open like this. That’s what Sam said. He walked by and looked up her dress and the dogs barked at him.”
“Disgusting,” said Mr. Flack.
The doorbell jangled. A man entered, about Mun-day’s own age, dressed in a heavy jacket and corduroy trousers and thick-soled shoes.
“The usual?” said Mr. Flack.
Munday, gathering up his sherry and his change from the bar, said hello.
“What will you have?” the man said to Munday. Munday was confused. He hesitated, then said, “A half of bitter.”
“Have a whisky,” said the man. “Give him a whisky, Bill.”
“A beer’s fine,” said Munday, and when he had it in his hand he said, “Cheers.”
The man said, “To your very good health,” and drank. Then he said, “You all moved in?”
“Just about,” said Munday.
“I had a moving job last month,” said the man. “Over Shaftesbury way.”
“I take it you’re in the transport business,” said Munday.
“I drive,” said the man. He mentioned the name of his employer and said, “He’s a good guv’nor.”
“When he ain’t got a drink in him,” said Hosmer. “A tickle of whisky and he’s drunk as a hand-cart.” Mr. Flack said, “Guess who Sam saw by the river exposing herself.”
But the man was looking at Munday. He said, “You like it here?”
“Very much,” said Munday.
“We’ll have you and your missus over some time,” said the man.
How dare you, Munday thought. He said, “Oh, will you?”
He was furious at the presumption in the driver’s vagueness; it was not an invitation, but a pronouncement of a possibility, with the assurance that Munday would come with Emma when the driver bade them.
The driver would never have said that to his employer. He thought: Supper at the driver’s cottage, a talk at the church hall; but he hid his anger and said, “Actually, we’re pretty busy at the moment seeing old friends.” The bottle was under his arm. “And we’ll be spending quite a bit of time in London.”
There was worse, but not from the driver. Munday had said good night and was at the door. There was a trampling of feet and a young man threw the door open. Munday faced him; he had long hair, red cheeks, and a bushy beard and wore a woolen checkered shirt. The hair and beard gave him the appearance of a Biblical figure. He smiled at Munday and said, “Evening, maister,” and looked past him and greeted the others.
“Excuse me,” said Munday and moved sideways. But the young man blocked the door.
“You be Doctor Munday?” he asked politely.
“That’s right. And I’m on my way home.”
“Out in the tractor today,” the young man said, still blocking the door, and raising his voice, “and wasn’t she making a howling! Pugger, I says, and throws up them flaps on her bonnet. Got my arm inside her and the wind picked up and blowed the bloody flaps down. Here, look.”
He rolled up his right sleeve with care and showed Munday a long cut, opened and roughened on his forearm, a rip with the appearance and texture of the burst part of a cooked sausage. It was uncovered and raw and edged with black pepper-flakes of dried blood, and part of it was smeared with bubbly yellow ointment.
He offered the wound to Munday and said, “What have you got for him, Doctor?” Then he cried, “Don’t he hurt!”
“I can’t help you,” said Munday.
“Now hold on there—”
“I’m not that kind of doctor.”
“I thought there were only one kind,” said the young man, smiling as Munday pulled at the doorhandle.
Munday was nearly out the door; a thought came to him, and he said stiffly to the young man who had started toward the fire and whose back was to him, “No, as a matter of fact, there are as many varieties of doctor as there are varieties of farm laborer—perhaps more. Good night.”
He walked angrily away from The Yew Tree, past the pillar box at the cross roads and the lighted telephone booth. The lights in the pub window illuminated the road, but the road curved off to the right and when Munday turned and lost the lights he stumbled, peering into the darkness for the house lights and trying to stay in the center of the road. The perfect darkness clasped his body and slowed him. What he feared most was meeting someone who would startle him, maybe injure him, by slamming against him in the dark. He felt there was someone walking near him, just in front of him, in the dark, and as always the pinching was in his heart, hurting his blood. A car appeared—the mild glow and engine noise, then the blinding lights and the terrifying rush of wind and metal sweeping past him, forcing him to lean against the bank. The car left him dazed in an even more confusing darkness. He plodded on, taking elderly steps, and then he saw the lighted windows of the house and was guided by them. But he knew he would remember that stretch where the road curved, the lights of The Yew Tree lost at one end, the house lights lost at the other, the elbow in the road, marked by oaks, completely dark. He knew he would always hesitate before walking down it at night, and the experience came to represent so much of his arrival home, the rediscovery of old fears, aimlessness he hadn’t bargained for, and a feeling of age and loss he mocked in a way that seemed to make his mockery an expression of greater fear.