‘I shouldn’t think that would be it.’
The young man stopped pumping and stood up.
‘There’s Humpy Dick’s place,’ he said doubtfully. ‘Nasty old tumble-down shack though. I shouldn’t think anyone ’ud take it, though you never can tell – can you?’
It didn’t sound attractive, but Hilary wasn’t looking for attractions. A broken-down woman might very well be hidden away in a broken-down shack.
She said, ‘How do I get to it?’ and was rewarded with another flood of information.
‘Third bridge you come to there’s a lane going off to the right – well, ’tisn’t hardly a lane, but you might call it one. Well, you don’t take any notice of that, you go straight on, and then there’s a bit of a wood, and then there’s a pond, but you don’t go as far as the pond. There’s a footpath all along by the side of the wood, and you keep right on till you come to Humpy Dick’s. Only I don’t suppose there’ll be anyone there, because it’s stood empty ever since Humpy fell over the quarry in the dark last January and his brother fetched him away. I did hear a London gentleman had bought it – some kind of an artist – but he wouldn’t hardly move in this time of year, I shouldn’t think. Anyhow, it was empty a fortnight ago, because I was up that way myself and seen it.’ He went on telling her about cottages, until she received a comforting impression that the Ledstow road had fallen a prey to ribbon building, and that cottages fairly jostled one another over the whole seven miles.
She thanked the young man, left a deposit of two pounds, and tore herself away. She would much rather have continued to listen to his friendly discourse than go the round of the house-agents and then start looking for Mrs. Mercer.
The house-agents were a complete wash-out. They were neither chatty nor helpful. The name, of Mercer evoked no response. They knew nothing of any cottage being taken. The Miss Soames never left in winter. Mr. Greenhow’s cottage had not been in their hands. Mr. Carter was going to live in his new house himself. The late Mr. Humphrey Richard’s cottage had been sold about a month ago. They were not at liberty to give any information about the purchaser. Thus three agents with admirable discretion. But at the fourth a very young clerk told Hilary that the place had been bought for a song by a Mr. Williams, a gentleman from London, who wanted it for a weekend cottage in summer.
By this time Hilary was hungry, and today she wasn’t lunching on a bun and a glass of milk. You didn’t pawn Aunt Arabella’s ruby ring every day of the week, and when you did you didn’t lunch on buns -you splashed, and had a two-course lunch, and cream in your coffee.
It was about half past one when she rode out of Ledlington past rows of little new houses, some finished and lived in, some only half-grown, and some just marked out, mere sketches on the ground. Hilary rode past them on the hired bicycle, bumping a little where the road had been cut up, and thinking that the shock-headed young man had been too zealous with his pumping. However, hired bicycles had a tendency to leak, so perhaps it was all for the best.
Once clear of the houses, she had an expanse of perfectly flat green fields on either side under the lowering grey arch of the sky. The morning had been fine, and the weather forecast one of those which thoughtfully provides for every contingency. Hilary, having picked out the pleasant words ‘bright intervals’, hadn’t really bothered about the rest of it, but as she looked at that low grey sky, lost fragments emerged uneasily from the corners of her mind. There was something about ‘colder’, and it was certainly turning colder. That didn’t matter, but there was also a piece about ‘rapid deterioration later’, and she had a gloomy feeling that the word fog came into it somewhere. She ought to have read it more carefully, but the honest truth was that she hadn’t wanted to. She had wanted to get on with this business and get it over, and really, in November, if you allowed yourself to be put off by what the weather forecast said, you might just as well throw in your hand and hibernate. All the same she did hope there wasn’t going to be a fog.
The fog came on at about four o’clock. Hilary had been to fifteen cottages and six small houses. They all said that they didn’t let, though some of them varied the answer by admitting that they wouldn’t mind taking in a quiet lady or gentleman in the summer. One of them went so far as to say that she was used to actresses and didn’t mind their ways. They all seemed to regard Hilary as desirous of forcing herself upon them at an unsuitable time of year when people expected to be left to themselves after the labours of the holiday season. She must have overshot the footpath to Humpy Dick’s cottage, because though there were several patches of woodland she never identified the young man’s pond. This was not very surprising, as he had quite forgotten to tell her that it had dried out in the drought of 1933 and had never had any water in it since. She arrived at Ledstow feeling that she never wanted to hear of a cottage again.
At Ledstow she had tea. She had it in a sort of parlour in the village pub. It was very cold, and stuffy with the stuffiness of a room whose windows have not been opened for months. Everything that could be cleaned was very clean, and everything that could be polished was very highly polished. The red and green linoleum shone like a mirror, and a smell of soap, varnish, turpentine, bacon, onions, and old stuffed furniture thickened the air. There was a sofa and three padded chairs upholstered in an archaic tapestry whose original colour or colours had merged into an even drab. There were paper shavings in the fire-place and, on the mantelshelf above, a bright blue vase with a bunch of pansies painted on it, a copper lustre sugar-bowl with a wreath of lumpy pink and blue fruits below the rim, a horrid little ornament displaying the arms of Colchester (why Colchester?), a brass bedroom candlestick, shining like gold, and a pet of a zebra, all stripy, feeding out of a little girl’s hand. The little girl had a sprigged dress with a yellow petticoat, and the zebra carried a pair of panniers, one heaped up with fruit and the other with flowers. Hilary loved him passionately at sight, and by dint of dwelling fondly upon his stripes contrived to forget that the tea was bitter and the butter rancid, and that she was no nearer finding the Mercers than when she had set out.
It was perhaps as well that the room afforded neither warmth nor comfort, because even its cold stuffiness was hard to leave. If there had been a fire and a comfortable chair, Hilary might have found it almost impossible to wrench herself away and go out into the dark. It wasn’t quite dark yet, but it was going to be, long before the lights of Ledlington came into view. And there was certainly going to be a fog. No, there was a fog already, and it looked like getting worse. Well, it was no good staying here, she had better be going. She would just have to give up any idea of finding the Mercers today. She opened the parlour door, and saw Alfred Mercer coming down the passage.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Hilary’s mind went perfectly cold and stiff, but her hand shut the door. She stood on the other side of it and waited without thought or movement. She did not know how long she waited.
She began to think again. Was he coming in here? No, he wasn’t. The footsteps went past. She lost them. What was Alfred Mercer doing here? She didn’t know. She wanted to know, but there wasn’t any way of finding out. Had he followed her? She must find out. She went to the fire-place and rang the bell.
It seemed a long time before anyone answered it. Then the girl who had brought the tea came in and said there was eighteenpence to pay. Hilary took out two shillings and a sixpence, put one shilling and a sixpenny bit into the girl’s hand, and held the other shilling between finger and thumb.
‘I wonder if you could tell me the name of the man who came in just now?’
The girl was plump and good-tempered – a heavily built young thing with a high colour. She looked at the shilling and said,