Hole and Corner (10 page)

Well, what had she done? Run away. And in the middle of running she had thought about Anthony. Just Anthony to start with, because she was horribly frightened, and he was someone to hold on to. And then, still running, she had thought about Anthony week-ending at Emshot, and Jane Rigg, her sister Jane whom she had never seen, living in Emshot in a ridiculously named Acacia Cottage. “I don't suppose there's an acacia within a mile of it,” said Shirley as she ran.

And then and there the panic went out of her and she made a plan. She thought it was a very good plan. She Stopped running and elaborated it. She would whisk back to Mrs Camber's, pick up a toothbrush and pyjamas, and go down to Emshot. Jane Rigg would simply have to take her in. However snuffy and stuffy, and spare-bedroomless you are, you can't turn your own half-sister away from your doorstep in the dark—not in a village. It is just one of the things that can't possibly be done. Shirley had lived long enough in a village with old Aunt Emily to feel comfortably sure about this. Then, having planted the pyjamas and the toothbrush in Jane's alleged non-existent spare room—“which
may
mean that I've got to sleep on the sitting-room sofa, but was probably only meant to choke me off coming to stay”—well, then she must get hold of Anthony, press that horrible diamond brooch into his hand, and leave him to cope with the police and Mrs Huddleston. After all, what was the good of being a barrister if you couldn't cope with a policeman?

This was Shirley's plan, but some of it never got carried out. She had to begin, as it were, in the middle of it. It was the bit about going back to Mrs Camber's and fetching her things which didn't come off. Shirley really did feel ashamed about this, because now that it was over, she felt quite sure she had taken fright about nothing. But when she turned the corner into Findon Road and saw a policeman walking down the pavement about half-way between her and Mrs Camber's whitewashed steps, she didn't stop to think or argue with herself. She ran away all over again.

And caught the train to Emshot by the skin of her teeth. And sat in it between fright and triumph, with no toothbrush and no pyjamas but a sort of dogged conviction that she had done the right thing and that everything was going to be all right, and that if she hadn't done it she would have been completely, absolutely, and finally in the Soup.

She became conscious of feeling cold, and pulled up half the window. Then she leaned back in the corner and put her feet up. The one blessed bit of luck was its being Saturday. If it hadn't been Saturday, Mrs Huddleston wouldn't have just paid her, and she wouldn't have had anything to run away on. If the village shop hadn't shut, she would be able to get a toothbrush at Emshot. Village shops often stay open quite late, especially on Saturday nights. It was a pity about her luggage. Since she was falling on Jane out of the clouds, it would have been much, much better to have had at least pyjamas and a toothbrush to break the fall. And then with horrifying clearness it came over Shirley that by running away without so much as a change of pocket-handkerchiefs she was practically admitting her guilt. If she had gone home for her luggage it would have been all right, because why shouldn't she take a week-end in the country as well as Anthony Leigh or anyone else? But to run without luggage just gave the whole show away. Who was going to believe she was innocent after that? Would Anthony believe it?

She had a horrid picture of an unbelieving Anthony. His face came up in her mind with the astonishing clarity of an image seen on the dark screen of a camera. It was more Anthony than the real Anthony, it was more vivid than life, and it looked at her with cold and unbelieving eyes. In that moment Shirley felt her inmost self dissolve. Something wept in her and would not be comforted. There was no comfort for her anywhere in all the world if Anthony didn't believe.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The train reached Emshot at half-past eight. That is to say, it reached the station commonly known as Emshot, but whose proper name is Emshot and Twing. It is actually two and a half miles from Twing and a mile and a half from Emshot church, though the village straggles towards it, and Mr Pumphrey the postman can reach the platform in six minutes from his house, which is the last in Emshot.

Shirley set off along a pitch-black lane, encouraged by the assurance of the porter who took her ticket that she couldn't possibly miss her way. And just about the time that she got out of the train Mrs Ward, who was Mr Pumphrey's widowed sister, was shutting the door of Acacia Cottage behind her and putting the key under the mat.

“For if she does come by the eight-thirty—and there's no saying she will—I don't see staying any longer, and that's a fact.”

Her daughter, Lucy Hill, agreed in her slow, determined voice.

“No call to go at all that I could see. And just like her sending a telegram like that on a Saturday afternoon! ‘Get everything ready. Coming down to-night or to-morrow morning.' Slave-driving, I call it, and you'd no call to do it for her! And come eight o'clock when you weren't back, Bert said to me real angry, ‘You go and fetch your mother home, Lu, and tell her the old cat can do her own clearing up.'”

Mrs Ward straightened herself up with a hastily repressed groan. “Well, I'm coming, aren't I? Of course by rights I ought to wait for the train—”

Lucy took her by the arm and propelled her towards the gate.

“Well, you'll do nothing of the sort, Mother! You'll take and come along home and have your supper and go to your bed! Bert's real angry at your going at all.”

Mrs Ward sighed and acquiesced.

“Well, the water's hot, and I've left a bit of a fire, and the kettle on the side, and there's tea and butter and eggs, and a half pint of milk in the larder same as she always has, and I've boiled a bit of bacon along of to-morrow being Sunday and no meat in the house, so whether she comes to-night or don't come till to-morrow, there'll be something for her to eat. And the key's under the mat, same as usual.”

“You come along home, Mother!” said Lucy Ward.

Shirley walked along the lane until she came to Mr Pumphrey's house. It had red curtains in the sitting-room window, and the light shone through them. After that there were houses all the way, which was rather tantalizing, because you kept hoping you had got there and finding you hadn't. The houses were a long way apart at first, but by the time she had been walking for twenty minutes they were getting more sociable.

The young man at the station had told Shirley that she couldn't miss Acacia Cottage. She didn't feel as sure about this as he did, but she hoped for the best. The reason she couldn't miss it was that it was right opposite the Green Man. Having lived in a village herself, Shirley appreciated this. In the country you steer by churches and pubs. At half-past eight on a Saturday evening the church would certainly be dark and deserted, but the Green Man would be going all out with lights, and drinks, and a full flow of village talk.

The young man at the station proved to be quite right. You come round a bend, and the Green Man more or less hits you in the eye. Well, then the house lurking in the darkness across the road must be Acacia Cottage.

Shirley lifted the latch of the gate. It swung in, creaking a little, and she found herself in the dense shadow of an over-arching yew. At the time she did not know where the shadow came from, only that it was there, and very black. She stood in the blackness and looked towards the house, but she could see nothing except shadow melting into shadow, all dark, and vague, and formless. Suppose there wasn't a house here at all.… Nonsense! She had seen it quite clearly from the other side of the road. Suppose she hadn't really seen it—Suppose she were to walk into the shadow and find there wasn't anything there.… Her spine crept all the way down. Nothing to eat since breakfast is apt to induce spine-creeping in the dark. The slice of toast and the cup of tea of which she had partaken twelve hours before seemed to belong to some remote previous existence.

“Stop it!” said she to herself with as much scorn as she could contrive. It was just enough to take her reluctant feet up what felt like a flagged path and land them on a most undoubted door-mat. At the same time her hand, feeling before her, touched the smooth painted wood of the door.

Well, here she was. But where was Jane Rigg? The house hadn't a blink of light in it anywhere on this side. Perhaps there was a room at the back. Perhaps Jane was a thrifty soul and wouldn't have a light in the hall. Shirley felt along the painted door until she found the knocker, and when she had found it knocked with a vigour calculated to reach every corner of the house. But when she stopped to listen, there was no sound nor any that answered. That was out of the Bible, when the prophets called upon Baal and he didn't hear them.… What a perfectly
horrid
thing to think about on a black doorstep when you haven't had anything to eat all day. But in spite of herself Elijah's mocking words came into her mind: “Cry aloud … either he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth and must be awaked.”

She banged with the knocker again. If Jane was asleep, this ought to wake her, but if she was on a journey—She stopped to listen. The house positively oozed silence. Suppose Jane really
was
away.…

Shirley stamped on the mat in sheer rage, and heard something tinkle under her foot. The sound touched off a bright firework of joy inside her. A tinkle under the mat meant a hidden key, and you don't hide your key under the mat when you go on a journey—you hide it there when there's only one key and two people use it, and it means you are coming in quite soon. In fact Jane had gone out to supper, and she probably had a maid who had gone out too, and whichever of them came home first would take the key from under the mat and lift up the latch and walk in, just as Miss Shirley Dale was doing now. Wait on the doorstep for Jane to return from riotous supping with some other old hen? Not for nuppence! Anyhow not for Shirley Dale. They might riot till midnight playing bridge for all she knew of Emshot society.

She shut the front door, felt her way forward round a bend, and saw a very faint rosy glow behind a door that stood ajar. She pushed open the door and went in. The room was the kitchen. The rosy glow came from between the bars of an old-fashioned range. There was a faint mingled smell of blacklead, and bacon, and floor polish, with a sort of general over-tone of paraffin. Helped partly by her nose and partly by the glow, Shirley located a lamp. It stood on the dresser breathing out oil—warm oil. Before she put her hand on it Shirley knew that that lamp hadn't been out very long. It needs heat to draw out the full flavour of paraffin oil. There were matches lying beside it. She struck one and lighted the lamp. The yellow flame ran along the double wick and steadied down as she replaced the chimney. A tin reflector threw the light out into the room.

The kitchen sprang into view. There were red tiles on the floor, and Mrs Ward had polished them till they shone. The dresser and the table had been scrubbed white, and the range was as glossy as a newly blacked boot. Curtains of red Turkey twill were drawn across a long casement window.

Shirley looked about her with a sense of deep relief and comfort. If she liked Jane as much as she liked her kitchen, everything was going to be all right. There were old willow-pattern plates on the dresser, and dishcovers with little crouching lions on them. There was a row of Toby jugs on the ledge above the range. The smell of bacon meant that there was food in the larder. She loved Jane's kitchen.

The first thing to do was to make up the fire, and the next to put the kettle over it. It began to sing at once in the most encouraging way. It was the singing of the kettle that made her feel how very cold, and hungry, and frightened she had been, and how very, very glad she was to be here.

There were two other doors besides the one through which she had come. The farther one stood open into the scullery. The nearer one let in a draught of cold air as she opened it. It led into the larder—a very superior larder with a stone floor and wide shelves. On the bottom shelf there was a loaf of brown bread, half a pound of butter, a canister of tea, a little jug of milk, two eggs, two bananas, a sugar-basin half full of lump sugar, and a piece of bacon cooling down in the liquor in which it had been boiled.

A passionate affection for all this food welled gratefully up in Shirley. The only question was, how much of it could she decently eat? She considered this whilst she found a knife and fork and a teapot, tipped the bacon on to a plate, and set everything out on the table. Two eggs and two bananas looked like Jane and a maid each having an egg and a banana for Sunday breakfast, or if there wasn't a maid who lived in, it looked like two breakfasts for Jane. Just enough and nothing wasted seemed to be Jane's motto. And just where did an unfortunate starving half-sister who was running away from the police come in?

The contents of the larder rather confirmed all her worst fears about Jane. There was, to be sure, the piece of bacon. It looked terribly good, but there wasn't very much of it. Supper for one to-night, lunch for three tomorrow, and supper for three to-morrow evening—no, it just couldn't be done.

The kettle changed its singing tone to a boiling one. She made the tea, and then firmly boiled one of the eggs. If she didn't have something to eat—and not a snack but lots
and
lots and lots—she couldn't possibly confront Jane at midnight. Any village shop will sell you food out of its back door on a Sunday. She would leave one egg for Jane's breakfast, and a banana, and just not bother about anything else.

She had never enjoyed a supper so much in her life. The half cold bacon, the brown bread, the butter, and the egg all tasted too marvellous for words. She ate a great deal of the bacon, and she drank three cups of tea, allowancing herself rather strictly with the milk so as to leave some for breakfast. It was a lovely lingering meal and the kitchen was as hot as a toast, and the police, and Mrs Huddleston, and London were all as comfortably remote as something read in a book a long time ago. Her grey coat hung across the back of one of the kitchen chairs. Presently she would have to think about it again and get that blighted diamond brooch out of the hem, but not just now.