After the break for tea, Patchin got down to work again. Friday evening was one of his busiest times, as dozens of joints had to be prepared for the weekend — he had some particularly choosy customers who liked to have their meat prepared in the finicky French manner, and he was quite willing to cater to their tastes. A great deal of beef had been ordered for that weekend, and his young assistant was not up to preparing it, being capable of carrying out only the humblest jobs. Patchin set the boy to mincing pork and then began butchering two sides of beef, attacking the carcase with relish.
Once supper was finished, he could hardly wait to get Angela to bed: knowing that she was the young man’s mistress had the strange, unexpected effect of doubling his lust for her. And she seemed equally ready for sex, falling back on the bed and raising her knees, smiling at him in a new way, a smile that contained a hint of amusement at his fumbling efforts to please her. This time it was his turn to be left feeling unsatisfied and empty even though he took her twice, as if possessing her half-a-dozen times would not be enough to assuage his restless yearning.
From mid-June, Daniel Patchin spent most of his Sundays in Calcot Wood; it was by far the largest area of woodland owned by Lord Benningworth. One Sunday he decided to devote to searching for clues as to the lovers’ meetingplace and did come on a bed of crushed ferns; it left him with a strange sensation and feeling slightly sick. From the improvised bed he made his way down to a deserted cottage in the remotest part of the wood, a spot that never seemed to be reached by the sun, as it stood in the shadow of Calcot Hill. It had been a gamekeeper’s cottage up to 1939, but the prewar Benningworth regime of having a gamekeeper had been dropped, and the remote, unattractive cottage was let, when Patchin was a youth, to a strange old man called Ted Ames, then left to rot. Lord Benningworth was a true conservative in that he was against change of any kind, even that of having a wreck of a building knocked down. The old widower Ames had eventually gone off his head and been taken away to a mental hospital in 1948, where he died. Since then the cottage had been stripped of its gutters and drainpipes; most of the roof was still sound, but rain had dripped in through a few missing tiles and some of the rafters were rotten, covered in mould; even on the wannest summer day the old cottage smelt of dank decay. There was fungus on the kitchen walls, and weeds were gradually invading the ground-floor rooms, sprouting up from the cracks in the brick floors.
Daniel Patchin stood absolutely still for a long while, staring at the ruined building which some villagers claimed was haunted by Ted Ames. Patchin did not believe in ghosts, spirits, heaven or helclass="underline" he believed that the universe was incomprehensible and absolutely indifferent to mankind. Suddenly he said aloud, “What a waste. Pity not to make some use of the old place.” The second sentence, spoken in a particularly mild voice, ended on a faintly questioning note, and for the first time he moved his head as though he were talking to someone and waiting for a comment on his suggestion. Then he gave the idea, engendered by his memory of a certain feature of the ancient fireplace in Ames’s kitchen, a mirthless smile and turned on his heel.
Throughout Calcot Wood there were piles of logs that Patchin built till he was ready to remove a truckload. There was also a hut where he kept a chain saw, tins of petrol, axes, and bags of wood chips and sawdust. He looked around to make sure that there was no one about and began to carry sacks of sawdust and chippings over to the cottage; he felt great satisfaction in commencing work on his plan.
On succeeding Sundays Daniel Patchin spent a good deal of time in transporting dry branches and brushwood; he also used his van to move cans of paraffin, half-empty tins of paint, plastic bags that had contained dripping, sacks of fat, soiled rags, and other rubbish. These he carefully planted throughout the cottage, gradually turning it into a massive potential bonfire.
While the preparations in Calcot Wood were proceeding satisfactorily, Patchin made a study of Ray Johnson’s working life. By casual questions to the village postmistress, who delighted in gossip, he wormed out the routine of Johnson and other postmen in the area. One of his discoveries was that Johnson often had either Monday or Wednesday afternoon off, and this was confirmed for him on the first Wednesday in July when Angela took a surprising interest in his fishing plans for that afternoon. Usually she was bored by angling, so he answered these questions with concealed, wry humour. Then, prompted by a whim, he took more time than usual in his preparations for the weekly expedition to the Thames. His fishing equipment was the simplest that could be devised — he despised the “London crowd” who invaded the river at weekends weighed down with paraphernalia. He had an all-purpose rod, a few hooks and floats, and one reel carried in an army haversack. As he pretended to fuss over these things and to take an unusually long time in making the flour paste for bait, he could see that Angela was very much on edge, nervous, and yet pleasurably excited at the same time. She had not mentioned going out, so he suspected that there might be a plan for Johnson to visit Pound Cottage while he was away. While the cat’s away the mice will play, he said over and over in his mind as he rolled the ball of dough between his strong, dry fingers.
When he at last set off in the van, he was again ironically amused that Angela came out to wave goodbye, as though to be certain of his departure. Patchin spent an hour on the riverbank but was not in the mood for fishing. The reeds were haunted by colourful dragonflies, and there was a brief darting visit from a kingfisher — sights that usually pleased him, but on this occasion he was hardly aware of anything about him, feeling rather like a ghost returned to haunt the scene of past pleasures.
Patchin drove back from the Thames with not much heart for what lay immediately ahead, but he now felt it was essential to make quite sure of the situation. In Pasterne he parked his van by the pond and appeared to stare down into its clear water for a while. Such behaviour on his part would not excite comment, for he had been known to catch sticklebacks and frogs there to use as bait when angling for pike.
After some minutes of staring with unseeing eyes, Patchin ambled back to his closed shop then walked through it into the garden that led up to Pound Cottage. He trod noiselessly over the lawn and entered the side door very quietly. Within a minute his suspicions were dramatically confirmed: through the board ceiling that separated the living room from the bedroom he heard the squeaking springs of his double bed, squeaking so loudly that it seemed as if the springs were protesting at the extraordinary behaviour of the adulterous couple. Then there began a peculiar rhythmic grunting noise, and his wife called out something incomprehensible in a strange voice.