‘No, thank you all the same! In fact, I’m here to see Mrs Eavis.’
‘She’s not ’ere, thank the Lord. You’ll have a lot more fun without ’er, lovey!’ and she took his hands and tried again to get him to dance, though her efforts were compromised by her intermittent difficulties in remaining upright.
‘I won’t keep you from your friends any longer then, Miss, but perhaps you could tell me where to find her?’
‘She’s gone away.’
‘But where?’
She pulled a face indicative of great mystification. ‘Nobody knows.’ Then, clapping her hands for attention, she shouted over the music, ‘The gentleman wants Mrs Eavis!’
‘Gone away!’ cried two or three dancers in unison, with much laughter, and they seemed to dance all the merrier for her absence.
‘When did this happen?’ He took his purse and clasped it so that she could see it clearly as he asked the question. The sight of it sobered her and she answered as fully as she possibly could. ‘Six or seven weeks ago, I should say. A fellow came to see her – so I hear – and she let him into her drawing room and they was there all evening long, and when he went away she went about all puffed up with a secret for a few days, and soon after a trap come to the door and took her cases and off she went.’
‘Were you here before Christmas? I wonder. There was a Mrs Armstrong lived here with her little girl, Alice?’
‘The one that died?’ She shook her head. ‘We’re all new since then. Nobody stayed long when Mrs Eavis was here, ’cause nobody liked her, and when she went, them that owed her money scarpered.’
‘What do you know of Mrs Armstrong?’
‘She was not the right sort for this place. That’s what I heard. Did the cooking and the cleaning here. She was pretty in a skinny sort of way – and there’s some that likes that, takes all sorts – and once the customers had seen her, there was some that wanted a bit. But she wouldn’t. That set old Eavis against her. Said she wasn’t having no silly girl giving herself airs, and gave the key to her room to one of the gentlemen to teach her a lesson. The day after that, she did what she did.’
‘She had a lover, I think? Who abandoned her?’
‘Husband, is what I heard. Mind you, lovers, husbands, it’s all the same, isn’t it? A girl’s better off on her own. Give them what they want, then take the money and bye-bye. Not her, though. She was the wrong sort for this life.’
Armstrong frowned. ‘When will Mrs Eavis be back?’
‘Nobody knows, and I hope it’ll be a good long time. I’ll be off as soon as she comes back, that’s for sure.’
‘So where has she gone?’
The woman shook her head. ‘She’d come into some money, and she was going away. That’s all I heard.’
Armstrong gave the woman some coins, and again she offered him a drink, or a dance, or ‘anything you like, my duck’. He refused politely and took his leave.
Come into some money? It wasn’t impossible, he supposed on his way down the stairs, but after the bad taste left by his first visit to the house, he felt inclined to doubt everything about Mrs Eavis.
Back in the street he regretted the journey, for it had wasted his time and his horse, but since he was there, another idea resurfaced that he had already thought of and discounted. Now that he considered it again, it seemed to him that it was a better idea than Mrs Eavis, in any case. He would find Ben, the butcher’s boy. He remembered Alice, and would know at a glance whether the child at the Vaughans’ was her or not. The word of a child would weigh very little in deciding the matter in law, but that hardly mattered – it was not the law he was thinking of. It seemed to him that his own certainty one way or the other would be a very valuable thing in its own right. If Ben recognized the child as Alice, Armstrong would have solid reason to pursue things further with his son. And if the boy did not, he would share that information with the Vaughans, and so give them the certainty they craved and that Robin was unable to offer of his own accord.
Armstrong walked up the high street, half expecting to see Ben by just bumping into him as he had before. But Ben was not on the grassy mound where they had played marbles and he was not visible in his father’s shop and he was not loitering in the street. When he had peered into every side alley and shop window without result, he stopped a passing grocer’s boy of about Ben’s age to ask his whereabouts.
‘He’s run away,’ the boy told him.
Armstrong was perplexed. ‘When was this?’
‘Few weeks ago. His dad give him a right beating till he were black and blue. Next thing, he were gone.’
‘Do you know where he went?’
The boy shook his head.
‘Was there anywhere he talked of going?’
‘Some farm over Kelmscott way. A grand fellow over there was going to give him a job, he said. There’d be bread and honey and a mattress to sleep on and paid on the dot every Friday.’ The boy sounded wistful for such a place. ‘I never believed in it, though.’
Armstrong gave him a coin and went to the butcher’s shop. A young man was at the block, with a weighty knife, dark with blood. He was chopping a loin into chops. At the sound of the bell, he looked up. His features were strikingly like Ben’s, though the sullen expression was entirely his own.
‘What do you want?’
Armstrong was used to hostility and could assess with accuracy how deep it went in a person. As often as not, people reserved their curtness for those who were, like him, unfamiliar. Difference was upsetting, and people armed themselves with aggression when they met it. With kindness in his voice, he could usually disarm them. Though their eyes told them to fear him, their ears were reassured. But some men went about in their armour every day and showed the blades of their swords to all. The whole world was the enemy. That kind of antipathy he could do nothing about, and that was what he met here. He made no attempt to please, just said, ‘I’m looking for your brother Ben. Where is he?’
‘Why? What’s he done?’
‘Nothing that I know of. I’ve got a job for him.’
From an archway at the back of the shop, an older voice emerged. ‘No good for anything but eating the profits, that lad.’ The words sounded as though they came from a mouth stuffed with food.
Armstrong leant to look through the archway into the room beyond. A man of about his own age sat in a stained armchair. On a table at his side was a loaf of bread and a large ham, with several slices cut from it. The butcher’s cheeks were as pink and fatly gleaming as the meat. A pipe rested in the ashtray. A glass was half full of something and the bottle it came from rested in the man’s lap, against his round belly, unstoppered.
‘Any idea where he might have gone?’ Armstrong asked.
The man shook his head. ‘Don’t care. Lazy blighter.’ He speared another slice of ham with his fork and crammed it whole into his mouth.
Armstrong turned away, but before he could leave, a small, shrunken woman shuffled into the back room carrying a broom. He stood back to let her through into the shop, where she started to sweep the sawdust. She hung her head so that he could not see her face.
‘Excuse me, Ma’am …’
She turned. She was younger than he had expected from the slowness of her movements, and her eyes were nervous.
‘I’m looking for Ben. Your son?’
There was no light in her eyes.