There was no need for Peter to go on, the beam was flowing like oil now over Rosie’s whole body and she was slumping with relief. ‘I knew you’d have sense, lad,’ she said softly.
Again Peter’s feet moved, and so much breath left his body that he felt his ribs cave in. ‘Well, now that’s cleared up,’ he said briefly, ‘I’ll get back to work.’ He squeezed towards the door, but before opening it he turned to her saying, ‘But mind, you won’t say anything about the eel, will you, Mam? Don’t even let on to Dad that you know—or the lads.’
She nodded her head in small jerks and laughed as she said, ‘And that explains that, an’ all.’
‘What?’ he said.
‘The twins hammering a couple of the Spraggs and chasing them out of the wood. About ten minutes afore I went to the meeting I had Daisy Spragg at the door asking if we were joint owners of the village along with the Mackenzies, and what she was going to do if I didn’t do something with the lads. Well’—she smiled at her son—‘I’ll send you some tea along.’
The air was clear again. He smiled back at her and nodded and watched her go out, then returned to his work. But he hadn’t been at it more than ten minutes when Florrie’s voice, coming from just behind him, startled him, causing the spanner to squeeze out of his hold like paste from a tube.
‘Ah, guilty conscience…Be sure your sins will find you out!’
‘What’—he swivelled round on his knees, then got clumsily to his feet—‘what are you talking about now?’
‘What am I talking about now!’ She smiled at him with a funny little smile that deceived him into thinking that perhaps she wasn’t on the warpath this time.
‘So you took my advice, did you?’
He returned her crooked smile with a grin, and said, ‘You mean Mavis? Aye…’
‘No, I don’t mean Mavis.’
‘You don’t?’ His brows puckered.
‘How long is this going to take?’ She kicked at the mudguard of the Alvis none too gently.
‘I don’t know.’ He turned and grabbed up a handful of tow and began to rub his hands vigorously.
‘That’s a pity.’ Florrie was holding him with a straight stare and there was a quirk on her lips, as she went on, ‘You might find yourself with a maintenance order if you don’t hurry up and get rid of it—and her.’
Like a thermometer plunged into boiling water, Peter’s mercurial colour shot up, and with it his anger, startling both himself and Florrie; as did his words when he barked, ‘That’s enough of that! If you want to make such comments, then do so, but keep them for your social set at the Hunt Ball or any other place where it fits, but don’t direct them at me.’ He threw the tow against the wall.
Florrie’s quirk was no longer in evidence, but the look she now bestowed on him sustained his anger and caused him to surprise himself further when he faced her squarely and said, ‘I’ve had just about enough of this business all round, and I’ll thank you to leave me and my affairs alone, Florrie, and do your hunting in the proper quarters.’
After this unchivalrous delivery his anger died quickly away, too quickly, for it left him sapped and thinking, ‘That was a nice thing to say; you needn’t have gone that far.’
The insult, however, did not seem to worry Florrie unduly, for she remarked, with a maddening casualness that she could adopt at will, ‘It’s a free country. And that, too, is what I said when I heard you were drunk and disorderly in the wood last night.’
‘I was neither drunk nor disorderly.’ His colour deepened.
Florrie, straddling her legs a little, pursed her lips. ‘But you were in the wood with a certain lady of questionable aspect, weren’t you?’
Slowly Peter’s eyes screwed up, and he peered at her as if bringing her into focus as he repeated in a tone from which all the heat of his anger had died, leaving it cold, ‘Questionable aspect?’
‘Well, I understand she’s a type—blonde, trailing hair’—Florrie’s hand demonstrated just how trailing—‘dead white face, skin-fit frock—the lot that one usually associates with that type.’
On Peter’s face now was an expression Florrie had not seen there before, and in his tone a quality that annoyed her as he said, ‘Have you seen Miss Carter?’
Florrie’s chin jerked. ‘No, I haven’t seen Miss Carter, and I have no wish to.’
‘That’s as may be. Miss Carter is no more of a piece than—than you are. Not so much if the truth were told.’
Florrie stared at him in open amazement. That the lazy, indolent Peter Puddleton should take a stand like this for a woman—she did not class the owner of the car as a girl—whom he had known but a few hours added significance to the conclusion that was forcing itself on her. Something, almost with lightning speed, had changed him, and it certainly wasn’t Mavis. And, with equal certainty, she knew it wasn’t herself. This last admission was humiliating to say the least, but being fundamentally her mother’s daughter, she drew herself up and for the first time in their acquaintance she put on an air, and the air was prominent in her tone as she said, ‘Indeed? You must have been busy to find out so much in so short a time.’
‘Now look here.’ The hauteur of her manner must have escaped him, for he actually took a step towards her. And if she needed anything further to convince her that something drastic had happened to him it was this—this mild form of attack coming from him constituted a revolution. But after the step, her stare held him and checked what further defence he would have made, for at this moment she was looking an exact replica of her mother, and with much of her mother’s manner and her flair for carrying off the honours of battle, whether as victor or vanquished, she now turned from him and without a word of any kind left the garage.
‘Damn and blast!’ He stamped into the office. What was the matter with everybody the day? He had never known people behave like it, not all at once he hadn’t. Could he have done otherwise than defend himself against such an assumption? He went hot under the collar. What if the others thought the same. But no, nobody would think things like that, except Florrie. She was as racy as…He would not give a definition of her raciness, but said to himself: If it’s got as far as the Manor the whole place must be yapping about me—and her, and the lass not in the place five minutes.
‘Where are you?’ Old Pop came stumbling into the garage. ‘Ah, there you are. Tea’s here. What’s up with your ma? Saw her come dashing up here like a retired greyhound. Owt wrong?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘Ah! You can’t tell me there’s nothin’, she don’t leave the wives’ inferno for nowt. Ah! You can’t tell me. Tale going around you were blind drunk last night. You weren’t, lad, were you?’
‘No, I wasn’t!’
The bawl caused Old Pop to put his hand up and scratch the sparse hairs behind his ears. Then he commented, ‘No, I thought you wasn’t—would have heard you else. We none of us were ever quiet when we was bottled. Not the first time of being bottled, we wasn’t. No, by gum.’ He grinned at Peter and handed him the mug of tea he had poured from the steaming jug. Then pouring out one for himself, he went to the box and sat down. After taking a long drink he wiped his mouth and remarked, apropos of nothing that had so far been mentioned, ‘She’s nice lass that, that miss at the Hart. She is an’ all. What she don’t know about eels ain’t worth learnin’.’
Peter’s mouth fell into a straight line, and he said, with a frankness he rarely used towards his grandfather, ‘You like to nose, don’t you?’
‘Me? I wasn’t nosin’, Peter. Just taking a dander in the wood, and there she was with the young ’uns. The lads made me swear not to say a word, and it’s all right with me. That’s not saying I’d not like to catch she…the eel. There’s some flesh on her and there’s nothing tastier than a bit of eel. Though I have a fancy for them a bit younger; more tender then. And you know summat? The young lady knows every step of her road back—Saggassen Sea she makin’ for, so she says.’ He cocked his squint eye at Peter’s stiff
profile. ‘She comes from Fenlands way, she says. Not the eel, her I mean. Says she used to fish the river with her granda, and the young eels used to pinch the bait. Knows all the different flies, an’ all. Never met no woman what didn’t look like a sack an’ talk fish like she. Started from scratch, so to speak, she did. Used to dig worms for her granda. Fish he did, rain, hail or shine, she said. Had a big umbrella and a lot of paraphernalia. From morn till night they’d stay on the banks. Told me all about it, she did. Any more tea to spare there?’ He handed his mug to Peter, who took it, filled it and handed it back to him without a word. And Old Pop, staring down into it, gave a chuckle and remarked, ‘Remember like yesterday first time I got real sozzled. ’Twas right here at the Hart. Late summer ’twas, hay smellin’ and moon shinin’. At least I remember the moon shinin’ and standin’ on Green singing at top of me voice. Fine voice I had an’ all in those days. But be damned, I can’t remember to this day how I reached Layman’s Farm, and it three miles on, though when I woke in the morning and saw where I was I sprinted down the drainpipe and away across the fields as if the bull was after me. Young Miss Phyllis got married two months later and off she went to foreign parts.’
‘You finished?’
Old Pop, purposely misunderstanding his grandson, said, ‘Aye,’ and handed him the empty mug. Then rising from the box he added, ‘Some bloke at the Hart’s enquiring for the young lady. Booth himself came through the wood to tell her. Seemed in no hurry to go back, neither, he didn’t. Talked like I never heard him afore…Well, you had enough?’
‘Yes,’ said Peter with some stress, ‘I’ve had enough.’
Old Pop gathered up the things and, placing them in the basket, gave his grandson a cheerful leer. Then going to the doorway he turned and delivered his advice without any diplomatic coating. ‘Remember, lad, time’s flyin’. There’s no time like the present. You leave your fling much longer and you’ll lose the taste. An’ I’m tellin’ you.’ He nodded solemnly before adding, ‘Me, I could look back at summat at your age, I’ll say. Though I don’t blame you for steering clear of the Mackenzies’ cow and Miss Florrie. One’s as dry as the Methodist Chapel; as for t’other—she’d be another Bill Fountain’s doe. Pregnant forty-seven times a year.’ After which exaggeration of nature’s bounty Old Pop departed, leaving Peter bursting, but speechless.
In the past, it had always been a source of satisfaction to Peter when his old Austin was out on hire, but tonight he was deeply regretting its absence. If it had been on hand he would have got her out and gone off somewhere.
He walked up the street, in the opposite direction from the Hart, past Miss Tallow’s and past his own garage, which to him now looked somewhat unreal and not a little dilapidated. The closed doors seemed to make his name stand out starkly from the board nailed above them: Peter Puddleton, Garage Proprietor. He gave a disparaging ‘Huh!’ as he glanced at it. It was a daft-sounding name if ever there was one. Why with a name like Puddleton had his mother to call him Peter? Arthur, Bill, John, even Harry—but Peter! His life, he felt, had taken the cue from his name…there was no sense in it. He hadn’t even the sense he was born with. For years now he had been content to slide along thinking that one day things would work out, which meant that one day he would find a lass to suit him and he would marry her. Then last night, because a woman, a strange woman, had laughed at him in the moonlight, he had been mad enough to imagine he was onto something.
He jumped the fence and, skirting the trees, took to the fields. Going by little-known paths and leaping gates and walls as if he had a grudge against them, he came to the lake. There was no-one looking into the water tonight; they would, he thought wryly, all be in the Hart, laying bets with each other no doubt as to what relation the flashy fellow was to her. Yet when you thought of it there was hardly any scope for betting, the relationship was pretty obvious.
The lake was still; the afterglow from the sun lay on it like patches of translucent paint. He stood at the edge of the bank but did not trouble to search the water for a sight of the eel, for in this light nothing could be seen but the reflection of the sky which seemed to have drowned itself in the lake. Soon the quietude and the colour had their effect upon him and he felt somewhat soothed and sat down with his knees up and his hands hanging slackly between them.
‘You all on your own, lad?’
The voice of his grandfather seeming to come out of the air, for there was no sight of the old man, jerked Peter out of his reverie and brought him from the bank like a shot.
‘I’m in here, lad. Thought you was somebody else when I heard you comin’…dashed for cover.’ The brambles parted and Old Pop, pulling himself clear, stood before Peter with head downcast, meticulously picking the burrs from his clothes.
With an indrawn breath of exasperation Peter demanded, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Just out for a walk, lad.’
‘Out for a walk!’ Peter’s mouth squared itself, and Old Pop, cocking his good eye at his grandson, repeated, ‘Just that lad, out for a walk.’ Then nodding towards the water he added, excitedly, ‘I’ve seen her.’
Peter, making absolutely sure to which ‘her’ the old man was referring, said stiffly, ‘The eel?’
‘Aye, half an hour gone by. She made me fingers itch. What say, lad, we have a shot at her?’ Old Pop thrust his head forward. ‘I could scoot back for line…or rig a few worms on some worsted.’
‘You’ll do no such thing. You leave her alone. Now mind, I’m telling you.’
Old Pop walked slowly to the water’s edge and looked down. ‘Pity…she’d be something to brag about the rest of your life, lad.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Heard young lady telling a bloke about ’un, little while gone.’ Old Pop did not turn but kept his interest concentrated on the water.
‘Where?’ Peter was looking at his grandfather’s back.
‘In the wood here, with the bloke what came to the Hart for her. Said some funny things, both on ’em did, and not all about eels neither.’
‘You didn’t have to listen, did you?’ Peter now sauntered the few steps back to the bank, and he too looked down into the water.
‘Couldn’t get out of it, lad.’ Old Pop threw an amused look upwards at his grandson. ‘Was answering urgent call behind bushes when they stopped close by. Was in a pickle, sure enough! But knew ’twould be they would get biggest shock did they see me. So just kept doggo.’ He turned his face, now full of merriment, on Peter, but when it met no answering gleam he turned it away again and concentrated his gaze once more on the water. Then, after some moments, he commented, ‘Nice girl, she—but fancy she’s been in trouble.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘Oh, just something what was said, you know.’ Old Pop, with unbearable contrariness, now settled himself down on the edge of the bank and completely turned the course of his reminiscence. ‘When I looks at this pond sometimes,’ he said, ‘I get creeps. Like now…look at the red in it—like blood. The old ’un, he never liked it neither. Ever notice that he never come here when he could get around?’
Peter did not answer this, but waited. He knew it was worse than useless trying to force his grandfather to divulge anything except in his own time. He also knew the old fellow was playing him as he would a fish.
‘No, he never did.’ Old Pop jerked his head. ‘Saw something here when he was around fourteen that put him off lake. It was the day of the riot, you know. That Sunday when the women of the village all went mad, parson’s wife an’ all. I know you’ve heard some of it afore, but not all…no, not all.’ Old Pop moved his tongue over his lips. ‘And you don’t hear many speak of it now…men a bit ashamed of their dads being locked up in church like and kept there at the point of shotguns…want to forget it.’
Peter still remained mute, and presently Old Pop went on: ‘Connie Fitzpatrick was an Irish maid in two senses when she came over, but she didn’t remain either of ’em long.’ He sniggered in his throat, �
��No, she didn’t, by jove, if all tales be true. When she suddenly came into money she had that cottage built, nicely tucked away in the grove. Hard to get at it was then, and still is. Now had she remained like her cottage, hard to get at, she could have carried on for years. But she wasn’t one for making flesh of one and fish of t’other. Connie’s motto, by all accounts, was “Come all ye faithful!” and they came, including the minister. That last did it! They dragged her, the women did, shriekin’ and screamin’ through the wood here to the lake and threw her in, and when she tried to get out they pushed her back. Bet you wouldn’t believe it, lad, but Ma Armstrong’s mother was one…Granny Andrews. A bit lass she was at the time. Did you ever hear that afore?’
Before Peter could answer Old Pop forestalled him by saying, ‘But there’s something I’m gonna tell you now that I bet you never have heard afore. See over there,’ he pointed across the water. ‘It was from there that the old ’un watched ’em. Like wild animals he said they were, howling and yelling. He watched Connie swim the lake to yon side. She was more dead than alive, and when she crawled into the undergrowth she fell almost on top of him, and he petrified. Can’t imagine the old ’un petrified.’ Old Pop laughed. ‘And what did he do?’ Again he turned an enquiring eye on Peter, but gave him no chance to comment before going on, ‘He covered her up under shrub, and then ran out onto the back path making a hullaballoo. And when they came pelting round the lake he led them a wild goose chase, supposedly after her. That was smart, wasn’t it? Later he came back and found her almost finished. He got her to shelter in the sheep hut on the far fell. And then, would you believe it, he went at her bidding to the cottage and brought back a deed box which she had hidden under the floor of a summer house. She had her head screwed on, had Connie, and she paid the old ’un in more ways than one, she did an’ all.’ Old Pop turned and faced Peter now. ‘You never heard that bit afore, did you?’
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