Swing, Swing Together (8 page)

“We could try drawing the boat with a towrope,” Harriet suggested. “I could take a turn at that. It would give you a change from rowing.”

“A tow from a steam launch would be more like it,” said Thackeray.

“It happened in
Three Men in a Boat,
” said Harriet. “They met some friends who pulled them all the way from Reading to within a mile of Streatley.”

“A fat lot of good that is to us,” said Thackeray.

“Now, Ted, that ain't no way to speak to a young lady,” Hardy unexpectedly put in. “We know you're sufferin', and we're grateful for all the work you've done with the oars, but you've no cause to take it out on Miss Shaw. Matter of fact, she's given me an idea. Do I understand from what you said, miss, that you've read the book now?”

“Yes, I read most of it last night and finished it this morning,” Harriet answered, surprised at Hardy's intervention, and curious where it was leading.

“I can see you wasn't idlin' away your time in the Roebuck, miss,” said Hardy with a glance at Thackeray. “I wonder if by any chance you remember where the three men in the story made for after they left Streatley.”

“I do. They passed the next night under canvas, in a backwater at Culham.”

“Culham?” vacantly repeated the constable on duty, looking up from the Occurrence Book.

“It might as well be Timbuktu,” said Thackeray unhelpfully.

“I believe they stopped on the way at a place nearby called Clifton Hampden,” Harriet added. “The Barley Mow inn came in for special comment, I remember.”

“Very good, miss,” said Hardy, venturing a smile. “I think we can take it from what we heard about
our
three men that they'll spend this evening at the Barley Mow too. They sounded most particular about copyin' what happened in the book.” He turned to Thackeray. “At least we'll get a drink when we get to Clifton Hampden.”

“You'll need one,” said the constable on duty. “It's fourteen miles from here.”

“Jerusalem!” said Thackeray.

“No, Clifton Hampden.”

Thackeray muttered something inaudible.

“But don't you see?” said Hardy. “Now we know where we're goin', we needn't go by river at all. We can take a train. If we cross the river to Goring, we can catch a local to Oxford. It'll put us off at Culham Station and we can walk up the road to Clifton Hampden. We might be there before Cribb.”

A moment's silence followed this audacious suggestion.

“Do you think that's wise?” said Harriet, turning to Thackeray.

“It may not be wise, miss, but it's good enough for me. ‘Make the best speed you can,' he said, and that's what we'll do. There's no better way of making speed than on the Great Western Railway.”

They returned to the boat, crossed the river and found a mooring. Hardy produced a mallet and drove spikes into the bank to secure the boat fore and aft, taking the initiative quite naturally now that his plan was being acted upon. Watching the two men, Harriet understood why Thackeray had never been promoted to sergeant. Subordinate positions undoubtedly suited some people. Hardy, on the other hand, had a personality better fitted for responsibility. There were grounds for supposing that if he were promoted he might lose some of his more objectionable characteristics and even develop into a passable young man.

“We'll take the travellin' case,” he told Thackeray. “Miss Harriet will want her things with her at Clifton.”

“That's very considerate,” said Harriet, “but won't it be awfully heavy to carry? You remarked just now that there is a mile walk at the other end.”

“No trouble, miss. We'll manage between us. Take the other end, Ted. Hello, that's a familiar blazer out there.” The others followed the direction of his eyes and saw a skiff steering towards the Goring bank with obvious respect for the foaming water on the weir side. The crew were Mr. Bustard, still in his blazer, and Jim Hackett in braces. An odd sensation of revulsion afflicted Harriet at the sight of them. She supposed the yellow blazer reminded her of her angry mood the previous afternoon, when Hardy had made his tactless remarks and she had rebuked him by taking extra notice of Mr. Bustard. It was a cheap thing to have done, and she would have preferred to forget it.

She was not allowed to.

“It's your friend Bustard,” Hardy pointed out in an unconvincing attempt to be casual. “Aren't you goin' to wave to him?”

The fury rose in Harriet like a head of steam. “Yes, I am,” she said on the impulse. “Certainly I am.” She stood up in the boat, took off her hat and brandished it like a battle standard. “Mr. Bustard! Mr. Bustard! Don't pass us by!”

It was the more infuriating that Hardy took no notice as the skiff changed course and headed towards them. He simply carried on moving the case out of the boat and onto the towpath.

“What a capital surprise!” called Mr. Bustard when they came parallel, an oar's length away. “What do you think of that, Jim? If it isn't the Lady of the Lock herself, the delectable Miss Shaw, with her two sturdy watermen in attendance. Where are you going, Miss Shaw? Not abandoning the trip, I trust. There's nothing wrong, is there?”

Everything was wrong that could be, but Harriet answered, “No, we have decided to continue our journey by train, that is all.”

“On a day like this? It's criminal to go by train. Look at those hills ahead. Beautiful country!”

“Mr. Thackeray and Mr. Hardy have done enough rowing,” said Harriet.

“So that's it. Watermen not so sturdy after all, what? I say, I have a suggestion, my dear. Come aboard with us. Allow me to repay your kindness yesterday. Then if the others go by train, they can wait for you further up the river.”

“I couldn't do that,” said Harriet.

“Why not, for goodness' sake?”

“It wouldn't be proper, going on a boat with two gentlemen I hardly know at all.”

“Not so, my dear. Two's quite safe. I wouldn't recommend an outing with one gentleman, but two's a most acceptable arrangement. Besides, I'm a married man, as Jim will testify. He used to work for my father-in-law, a very upright gent. You don't see me doing anything my pa-in-law wouldn't approve of, do you, Jim?”

“Christ, no,” said Jim emphatically.

Harriet was still dubious. “It's much too far. We have to get to Clifton Hampden.”

“We can make it to Clifton by tonight. What do you say, Jim? Jim can row all day. I might take a rest now and then, but he carries on. Part of his philosophy, you see.”

On cue, Jim Hackett quoted his authority, “Psalm 104, Verse 23: ‘Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.' ”

“So it's agreed,” said Mr. Bustard. “We'll come alongside and you can step aboard.”

Harriet stole a glance at Hardy. He was back on board, putting up the hoops that supported the cover. He appeared to be totally absorbed in the task.

“Could you really take me as far as Clifton?” Harriet asked. “It's fourteen miles, I'm told.”

“No trouble at all. Stand by to come aboard.”

Hardy's voice, thick and close at hand, muttered, “Put one foot into that boat, Harriet Shaw, and I'll hump you over my shoulder and carry you to Goring Station myself.” She was in no doubt that he meant it. There was nothing she could do. Tears of humiliation blurred her vision.

“She has to come with us. We're responsible, you see,” Hardy explained to Mr. Bustard, pushing his foot firmly against the skiff as it came alongside. “Decent of you to offer.”

On the train, twenty minutes later, Harriet's indignity flared into anger. “I strongly resent the way you spoke to me.”

“I could have lifted you off Bustard's boat without so much as a word, but you wouldn't have thanked me for that,” Hardy quietly answered.

“You seem to presume that you have the right to order my actions.”

“I do, miss, up to a point.”

“Take care what you say, Constable.”

“I shall,” said Hardy.

“I intend to speak to Sergeant Cribb about you. I shall tell him that you threatened me with physical violence.”

“And I shall tell him what you were proposin' to do, miss.” “It was nothing criminal. I have the right to accept a perfectly proper invitation from a gentleman, do I not?”

“Not while I'm responsible for you,” said Hardy.

“You are not my chaperone.”

Here Thackeray judged it right to intervene. “It was for your own good, miss. I don't think those two are quite what they may appear.”

“Neither are you, come to that,” said Harriet, glancing contemptuously at his ill-fitting flannels. “But at least they know how to speak to a lady.”

No more was said until Culham. Having had the last word, Harriet should have felt better for the exchange, but Hardy's inexcusable behaviour still rankled. If he had not taunted her into waving to Mr. Bustard, the incident need not have happened.

CHAPTER

14

Hardy buys a German—Three men in the Barley Mow—Touching on Jack the Ripper

T
HEY
MANAGED
TO
AGREE
on one thing by the time they reached Culham: they needed a meal. At the ticket barrier Hardy asked if tea was served anywhere locally. “I can think of three places,” said the ticket collector after some reflection. “The first is in Culham, but that's closed down. The second I wouldn't recommend, and the third is the Railway Hotel across the road.”

It was an attenuated meal, owing partly to Thackeray's repeated requests for more tea cakes and partly to a general understanding that it would not be prudent to get to Clifton Hampden before Sergeant Cribb. There was not much conversation, but Hardy did find the good grace to congratulate Harriet on pouring a perfect cup of tea, an observation she acknowledged with a nod. It would want more than
that
to reinstate him.

Towards six o'clock the waitress signalled that tea was officially over by laying the tables for dinner in a good imitation of a rifle volley. After a short consultation, Hardy approached her and asked for the bill. “You serve a good dinner too, by the looks of it,” he told her, indicating a table spread with various kinds of cold meat. “That large sausage at the back—is that the sort they call a polony?”

“I couldn't tell you, sir. Germans is what we call them in the kitchen.”

“Do you have another one like it? I'd like to take one with me.”

“You'll have to ask the waiter, sir. Germans are supposed to be for cold dinner, you see.”

“Is he available, then?”

“Just coming across the road from the station, sir. He comes on at six.”

It was the ticket collector. He had exchanged his railway livery for a black tie and tails. “Can I be of assistance, sir?”

“Yes,” said Hardy. “That—er—German on the table—”

“The polony, sir?”

“Polony. I'd like to buy it, or another like it.”

So when the party started along the road to Clifton Hampden, Hardy's polony, wrapped in cheesecloth, perched on Harriet's travelling case.

“That was a good thought,” Thackeray remarked. “You never know when you might need something to eat.”

“Oh, it's not for eatin',” said Hardy. “I've got something else in mind for this.”

The sunlight of early evening on the brickwork of the village produced a roseate glow of the intensity only a pavement artist would dare reproduce. The church stood high in the background and the river was to the right. When they were midway across the narrow, six-arched bridge to the Berkshire bank, Hardy asked Thackeray to put down the case, and drew him into a bay. He pointed to a moored skiff with the hoops up and the covers gathered along the top. As they moved on, they were able to see the name
Lucrecia
on the side. When they drew level, a dog barked twice. Smiles were exchanged. They had saved themselves fourteen miles of rowing.

The Barley Mow lay ahead, a timbered structure of genuine antiquity with whitewashed walls and a thatched roof.

“Before we go in,” said Hardy, “I don't think Cribb will thank us if we walk straight up to him and say, ‘Here we are, Sarge.' ”

“Which of us do you suppose would be so stupid as to do that?” Thackeray asked. He was still frowning as they entered and took their places at a corner table.

Cribb was sitting in an armchair facing the door, staring into his beer with the preoccupied air of an angler waiting for a strike. The only others present were three seated round a table against the window adjacent to the door. Without question they were the crew of the
Lucrecia,
a bearded man of Viking proportions telling a story in painstaking detail to his not too attentive companions, a short, squat man with glasses so thick that all you could see from the side was concentric rings, and another in a pinstripe suit, hunched over a glass of sherbet.

Hardy dipped his head under the beams to cross the floor to the bar, through a doorway opposite. Thackeray escorted Harriet to a table screened from the other group by a short projecting wall, but still visible to Cribb.

The narrative in the corner finished as Hardy ordered his two beers and a cider, so his conversation with the landlord was heard by everyone in the room.

“Come by the river, have you, sir?”

“Over the bridge, actually. The village is charmin' from the river, but we wanted to see it at close quarters.”

“I hope it didn't disappoint you.”

“Quite the reverse. It's as pretty a spot as any of us have seen. We'd like to stay the night. Do you have three rooms—or a single and a double?”

“Whichever you like. Have you got luggage?”

“One case only. It's all in one for ease of travellin'. We'll take three single rooms, then.”