Philippa Penhow saw a chance of happiness and she took it. She gave more than she took. You have to admire that, don’t you?
His wife had taken to sleeping in the kitchen. At bedtime Narton watched her pulling the mattress out from the scullery and un-rolling it in the corner by the range, which had been banked up for the night. Margaret lived in the kitchen, which made sense in this weather because it was the warmest room. If you were going to spend your days there, Narton supposed, you might as well spend your nights there too.
Margaret had once been house-proud to the point of mania. She had kept the floor so clean you could eat off it, and she used to give the Vicar tea with newly baked scones in the parlor. On more than one occasion, Mrs. Alforde herself had come with him.
Without looking at him, Margaret made the bed with blankets from the dresser drawer. Narton wondered whether he should stay with her in the kitchen, but only for a second. Anyway it was only a little single mattress of lumpy horsehair. It had gone on the bed they had given Amy when she was ten years old. All in all, he preferred to lie upstairs in the big double bedstead that sagged in the middle, turning restlessly to and fro between the dirty sheets, weighed down by too many memories and a mound of frowsty bedding.
He drifted into unconsciousness at about five o’clock in the morning. The bang of the back door roused him abruptly from a deep sleep at a quarter past seven. His limbs were aching and his mind was as misty and full of foulness as a London fog. Margaret had gone to work. He rolled slowly out of bed and painfully forced his body back to life. It was still almost dark outside. He had slept in shirt and underclothes. He urinated in the pot and pulled on his trousers and socks, noticing without much interest that the hole in one of the sock heels seemed to have grown larger overnight. He stumbled down the narrow stairs into the kitchen. As he had feared, the range was out. Margaret would get a cup of tea and perhaps a slice of toast at the Hall. She worked there for the loonies, whose souls were far above such mundane matters as keeping the kitchen clean.
It took him well over an hour to light the range, boil a kettle, shave and make tea. Afterward he put on his overcoat and walked into the village. It was a gray morning, raining slightly, and he met no one until he was nearing the shop by the church. Robbie Proctor was standing under the lych gate, with his mouth open as usual and his nose in need of wiping. Had a screw loose, that one. When the boy saw Narton, he turned tail and ran off among the gravestones.
Things weren’t much more welcoming in the village shop. Rebecca, the Vicarage parlormaid, was there, and a couple of laborers’ wives from Home Farm. They nodded a greeting but sidled away from him, re-forming in a whispering huddle on the other side of the shop. What were they afraid of? That he’d contaminate them like a cloud of poison gas?
He bought five gaspers and a loaf of bread. No one wished him goodbye. He knew that as soon as the door closed behind him the conversation would begin again. Margaret told him that everyone in the village thought he was mad. Perhaps they weren’t so far wrong.
At the cottage, he put the kettle on again and ate some of the bread. Afterward he lit one of the cigarettes and wandered from room to room. It already had the feeling of an abandoned house. He came to a halt at last in the parlor, where he studied the cupboard beside the fireplace. He threw the butt of the cigarette into the empty grate and fished out a key from his waistcoat pocket. The door creaked as he opened it. There were three shelves. The upper two held toys, one or two books, some clothes. On the bottom one was a flat, soft parcel loosely wrapped in brown paper. Narton took articles at random from the top two shelves-a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a woolly hat with a bobble on the top, a tiny china pony that he had won for Amy with an air rifle at a fairground stall in Saffron Walden.
There was a hammering on the back door. Narton closed the cupboard, locked it and went unhurriedly back to the kitchen. The knocking continued. He opened the door and found Joseph Serridge standing outside and leaning on a stick. He wore a heavy raincoat and galoshes thick with mud.
“I reckon it’s about time you and I had a man-to-man chat,” Serridge said in a flat voice.
“I thought you were in London.”
“You going to let me in?”
“No point. You won’t be here long.”
Serridge came a few inches closer. He towered over Narton, even though the latter was standing on the doorstep. “Suit yourself. I think this fun and games has gone on a bit too long. Don’t you?”