Sid hadn’t told her where they were going yet, but she thought that it would be Cleat. His grandfather was dead, and his Aunt Lizzie lived on in the old thatched cottage which visitors always thought so picturesque. Sid often did quite well out of taking pieces out of stock and putting them into the cottage – a chair, or a table, or some china figures. Visitors used to see them, the table and a chair outside in a casual sort of way, and the figures up in the window close to the glass. They would pay good money and go off as pleased as Punch, thinking they had got a bargain. Lizzie Pardue was very good at selling things like that. She was daily help at the Vicarage, a little bit simple but a good worker. She didn’t know anything about the things Sid brought down for her to sell only what he told her, so that the people who bought them just thought she had no idea of the value which she hadn’t, and that she was a simple soul who had never been out of a village in her life which was perfectly true.
They had to change twice before they got to Cleat. It was only the third time that Millie Blount had been there. A faint reassurance came to her as Lizzie Pardue opened the door of the thatched cottage and made them welcome. Sid must have rung up the Vicarage and said they were coming, because their rooms were all ready, and a nice meal too. He must have done it at the station when he left her in the ladies’ room and they were waiting for their train. The reassurance came from the homely surroundings and from Lizzie Pardue herself. Sid took after his mother’s people. Lizzie had the same florid colouring, the thickset build, the strong arms and hands, but there the resemblance ended. Her features were soft and blurred and her eyes were very kind. Kindness – that was the thing you noticed about her at once, and went on noticing. She had a shy half hesitating look for Sid’s wife who was still a stranger, and a soft almost whispering manner of speech. Mrs Blount didn’t say to herself in so many words that Sid wouldn’t try anything on in front of his Aunt Lizzie, but there was that kind of feeling in her mind. She ate a good supper, and thought that she would sleep.
There were three bedrooms in the cottage. Lizzie had the one which looked to the front. The big double bed was the one in which her parents had slept all through their married life. When old Mr Pardue died she had moved in quite simply and as a matter of course. The cottage belonged to her now and all the furniture, so it was only right she should have the best room. The other two bedrooms were small, with narrow truckle beds.
Millie Blount would rather have slept on the floor than have shared a room with Sid. She didn’t feel as if she could ever share a room with Sid again. Suppose he was to call out in his sleep like he had in Miss Madison’s Pink Room. Suppose he was to say what he had said before. Or words. Everything in her shook at the thought of it. But here she could lie down on a narrow bed and pull the bedclothes right up over her ears and she wouldn’t hear anything at all. The cottage was strongly built, with thick walls, and the thatch all over it to deaden sound. Even if Sid called out she wouldn’t hear what he said.
Just before she went to sleep it came to her that he might want her to have a room of her own just as much as she wanted it herself. He might want to be alone at night just as much as she wanted it, because then if he talked or called out there would be no one to hear him. This comforting thought went with her into a deep and dreamless sleep.
It wasn’t till next day when Lizzie Pardue had left them alone and gone off to the Vicarage that it occurred to Millie Blount to wonder why they had come down to Cleat, but she knew better than to ask any questions. If she could have heard Lizzie talking to the Vicar’s wife it might have started her worrying again. Lizzie had worked for Mrs Field for a great many years and felt quite at home with her. They were making beds together, and she had a lot to say about her nephew Sid and his wife.
‘Very worried about her he is, Mrs Field. That’s why they’re down here. “Country air,” he says, “and your cooking, Auntie Liz,” he says, “and if that don’t make her well, nothing will. Right down melancholy, that’s what she is.” And what with his first wife throwing herself under a train, poor thing, it’s only natural he should take it to heart.’
Mrs Field said,
‘Did she throw herself under a train? How dreadful! No, the sheet isn’t straight, Miss Pardue – it wants pulling up on your side.’
Lizzie pulled it up.
‘She threw herself right under the Brighton express. Sid he took it to heart something dreadful. She left him a nice bit of money, but it don’t make up for losing your wife. And he said to me last night, “I’d never get over it if anything like that was to happen again, Aunt Liz,” he says.’
‘Miss Pardue, that’s the Vicar’s pillow you’ve got, not mine. You don’t mean to say there’s any reason to suppose…’
Miss Pardue shook her head in a mournful way.
‘There’s no getting from it she’s melancholy. And I’m sure there isn’t a kinder husband than Sid anywhere. But he’s worried, I can see that, and he says she talks funny.’
‘The eiderdown is behind you, Miss Pardue. How do you mean, “She talks funny”?’
Lizzie Pardue picked up the eiderdown and spread it across the bed.
‘It’s the things she says, and the way she says them if you know what I mean. Sid don’t like talking about it, but when it comes to saying she don’t think she can go on and he’d be better off without her, well, it gives you a bit of a turn, what with poor Lucy throwing herself under a train and all.’
‘She ought to see a doctor,’ said Mrs Field in her most decided voice.
In the cottage with the thatched roof Mrs Blount was sitting at the kitchen table peeling potatoes. There were some sprouts to see to too. Sid had picked them and brought them in, and she was very pleased to get everything forward so that there would be as little as possible for Aunt Liz to do when she came home at half past twelve. At the other end of the table Sid had a bottle of ink and a writing-pad. He got out his pen and dipped it.
He hadn’t written more than a line or two before he stopped and began to rub his thumb and the side of his hand. She kept her eyes on the potatoes so that she needn’t watch him. He didn’t like being watched, and she didn’t like looking at his hands. They were strong and coarse, and there was hair on them. They frightened her. He began to write again, and went on to the foot of the page. Then he said, ‘Ow!’ and wrung his hand with the pen in it. A blob of ink splashed down on to the white scrubbed table. Lizzie Pardue wasn’t going to like that. Mrs Blount got up to get a cloth, but he shouted to her not to fuss and she didn’t dare. She went and sat down again, and there he was, nursing his hand and saying he had put the thumb joint out, and how was he to finish his letter.
‘And it’s got to catch the post whether or no. There’s a chap I half said I’d go into a deal with, but I’ve thought better of it. Heard something about him as a matter of fact, and he’s not the sort I want to get mixed up with.’
Mrs Blount was very much surprised. They had been married three years, and she never remembered his telling her anything about his business before. She didn’t say anything, because she didn’t know what to say. He went on grumbling about his hand.
‘It’s no good thinking I can hold a pen, because I can’t. And that letter’s got to catch the post. You’ll just have to make the best job of it you can. I’ll tell you what to say. You’d better come round here and take this chair. And wash your hands! I don’t want my business correspondence all messed up with dirt off those potatoes!’
There wasn’t any dirt on the potatoes, because of course they had been scrubbed before she sat down to peel them, but she didn’t say anything.
She went and washed, and he swore at her for being so long. By the time she was set down and had the pen in her hand she was shaking. He put the block in front of her with a clean page on it. He had finished the first sheet and laid it aside. She said, doing her best to keep her voice steady,