‘You don’t have to,’ Hadstock said. ‘I’ll take him out for a bit each morning and evening, as I did when he lived with me before; and leave him locked up. I’ll put the key in the hole in the thatch just over that window, so you can come and see him any time you want to.”
Thank you. It may not be for long. Richard generally takes notice of what Mr Mundford says, and he spoke in the dog’s favour. Also—they’ve already stayed here five
weeks.’
‘I know,’ said Hadstock with some feeling. The time had seemed interminable to him, missing his evening visits to Linda, brief and formal as they often were, and subjected daily to Richard’s nagging, veiled insults and interference. He shifted a little on his stool, linking his long brown fingers and letting his hands dangle between
his knees. ‘And that is all that happened this afternoon?’
She looked at him, surprised. Did he know about the other happening? It was possible, the order might have been relayed through him.
‘Not quite all. But I didn’t mean to bother you … that. Did you have anything to do with the pheasant Did you know?’
‘What pheasants?’
‘The two Chinese pheasants that lived in Layer Wood. , They were … they belonged to me; I brought them back from India where they were given to me in circumstances that made me value them very much. At first they stayed in the garden, then they moved into Layer, but I used to catch glimpses of them now and then. I hoped they’d breed this year, but I don’t think they did. This afternoon Simon and I were just leaving the house by the side door —it isn’t much used now that the front is completed, but we use it so as to go in and out unnoticed; today Mr Mundford and Richard were there and so were my pheasants, in a crate! Mr Mundford was saying something about everything falling into place. They both looked startled, rather confused, when they saw me, and more so when I asked what the pheasants were doing there. Richard said he intended to give them away. I asked to whom and he asked was that any of my business, and I … I answered him sharply and said yes, it was, because they were my pheasants–-‘
‘A not unnatural remark,’ Hadstock said dryly. ‘And then?’
‘That is all. He was very angry, of course; and I feel that is partly why he was so obdurate about poor Simon.’
‘And where are the pheasants now?’
‘I don’t know. They had gone when I returned. I admit I was curious. I asked one or two of the servants—quite casually; but they none of them knew anything about them. Mr Mundford knows; I think he had a hand in it, somehow. Ordinarily he is so very ready to put in a tactful word, but all the time we were talking about them he stood and stared at the birds and never even looked
round. And then … then, later on, when he came to my room he asked might he replace them by a more domesticated pet, and asked if I would like a parrot or a monkey. I was aware then that I had behaved childishly; but those pheasants, though I saw them so little, were dear to
me, in a way.’
Hadstock was surprised to find himself instantly jealous of the donor of the pheasants; jealous in a different, deeper way than he was of Richard Shelmadine. ‘Sentimental associations?’
‘Yes… and no. They were given to me by an old man, a cripple, who gave them to me for a keepsake because they were all he had to give.’
‘Ah,’ said Hadstock. He visualised a beggar, making a precarious living perhaps by showing off the birds.’
‘He was so immensely rich, you see, he wouldn’t have missed’ anything else; the pheasants were valuable to him because he had only had them two days.’
She remembered how that truth had had to be concealed from Richard. And now here she was offering it so simply to Hadstock, knowing he would understand. Suddenly, in the light of that comparison, she saw the whole tragedy of her marriage. It wasn’t only that by marrying the wrong man you brought misery to yourself and to him; you lost all chance of the happiness that you and some other man might have known.
‘I think I should go now,’ she said. ‘If I am missed there may be another fuss, and I don’t think I could bear any more today. Thank you for taking the dog and for listening to all my troubles.’
Hot, hasty words beat their way to the surface of his mind. Don’t go back … stay here with me … I love you. … But with the taste of them on his tongue he knew that he could never speak them. He was too old, much too experienced. He knew what it meant to be poor, having been rich, and what a descent in the social scale meant; he could visualise the search for work, the search for a home, the scandal, the friendlessness, the placelessness. He would, at that moment, gladly had lain down and
died if his death could have benefited her even a little; but such drama, he thought, satirically, was denied him, like so many other things. So he rose and took her cloak from the peg and laid it on her shoulders, and said in an ordinary voice, ‘You will allow me to walk back with you. I have my rounds to make. Have you thought of how you will explain the dog’s disappearance?’
‘Not yet. My one concern was to get him away.’ “We’ll think of something as we walk,’ Hadstock said. He shrugged himself into his coat and reached down his lantern and carried it over to the fire, where he lighted it with a twig. The dog had gone with Linda towards the door and she had first bent over him and then gone down on her knees, hugging his white head to her breast.
‘No. No. You must stay here, Simon. Just for a little while. Sit! Sit! Simon stay here.’ By the light of the lantern Hadstock could see the tears in her eyes. He opened the door a little way and said brusquely, ‘You slip through. I’ll keep him back.’ She did so, and as the dog lunged to follow her Hadstock caught him by the collar and heaved him into the middle of the kitchen. Tor God’s sake,’ he said, addressing the dog as though it were human, ‘don’t make it harder for her.’
‘He’ll be all right,’ he said, locking the door and putting the key in his pocket.
A loud, unearthly howl from the kitchen denied that Simon would be all right.
‘It’s quite plain to me,’ said Hadstock, ‘that his presence, like murder, cannot be hid. I shall say that I let him out of wherever he was confined and took him home with me. Sir Richard can make what he likes of that.’
Linda’s words of thanks were lost in the clatter of hoofs and rattle of wheels as Mr Rout’s gig and Mr Thurlow Lamb’s carriage followed one another along Berry Lane.
‘Late traffic this evening,’ Hadstock commented, reaching forward to open the little gate.
‘I expect the Cloptons have a party,’ Linda said. ‘It is
All-Hallows’ E’en, you know.’
‘All-Hallows?’ repeated Hadstock in a curious voice. ‘Why, so it is I’
Up on the Waste only two windows were lighted; people retired early, saving light and fuel. Candles had never been much used there; rushes which cost nothing, dipped into animal fat, which was plentiful in due season, and allowed to harden, had been the usual form of illumination. This year there had been a shortage of animal fat and a consequent dearth of rush-dips. Matt Ashpole was working by firelight; he missed his fuel-rights from the Waste less than the others, for being able to get about in his cart he was free of the countryside and always kept a sharp look-out for fallen branches or dead trees. Amos Greenway was burning a precious candle, which was justified, for he was finishing off a pair of top boots for Fred Clopton. They were exactly of the pattern and quality that Sir Charles had been wont to order—which just showed how Fred was prospering.
Matt was working on a still. He’d tried various kinds of brews in the last few months and had been satisfied with none of them. Then he’d had the good fortune to fall in with an Irish cattleman at one of the markets and had listened attentively to an account of how what sounded like real good liquor was made in illicit stills in Ireland. By all accounts it wasn’t only drinkable, it was saleable. Matt had straightway invested a few pence in a quantity of slightly damaged barley which he said he needed for chicken food, and had made his ‘mash’. If the strength of the resultant liquor should bear any relationship to the potency of the odour of the ‘mash’ it would be liquor of no mean order. Tonight, with a large copper kettle, a bit of brass piping, some clay for sealing the joints and a wash-tub for cooling, he was busy with his first experiment in distilling. The Irishman had warned him that homemade ‘potheen’ should not be drunk straight from the still; but all Irishmen were notorious liars, and Matt promised himself that if the still did not blow up in his