A classic Italianate fountain played in the background and just beyond that was a tall slim tree which rose up almost to the roof of the conservatory, a mimosa I thought, whose branches cascaded out in long feathery streamers. Wire baskets fell from the roof, little aerial gardens trailing long green anchors beneath them, while the walls were smothered in creeper. The whole place was a delicate jungle of blooms, with a minstrel’s gallery to top it all, jutting out from what would have been the first storey of the house, a sort of Juliet balcony with slim Gothic pillars set high above all the other natural effects.
The woman moved to a table to one side of the conservatory, which I hadn’t seen, where a meal of some sort had been laid out. She lifted a heavy gilt platter. My attention was painful now, the more so when she took a chicken leg from it and, moving back towards me, started to pick at it fastidiously.
I was so taken with this, imagining the taste, salivating, that I still didn’t see the discrepancy: that though she had continued talking, no one had yet joined her. She was talking to herself. The conservatory was empty. And it was only then that I recognised something eerie in the whole tableau: the woman’s pre-Raphaelite dress, hairstyle and appearance, the old goblets and platters: her general performance. For performance it must have been, I thought, just like the war-whoops by the lake, for herself alone, in the empty glass halclass="underline" a courtly picture, against this backdrop of Gothic stone and glass, here brought to actual life with medieval props and dresses.
An act? Perhaps she had an audience somewhere behind her which I couldn’t see. Was there a house party, a late night of amateur theatricals in progress? If not, then she must be mad, I thought. Or was I still being too quick, too shallow in my judgement? Was there some other rational explanation?
There was. The coarse-featured man moved into the light a moment later, dressed in a dark business suit, a drink in his hand, but held in an ordinary glass this time, not a handsome silver goblet: in every way a complete, even an appalling, contrast to all the woman’s lovely airs and graces: a tall, long-faced almost elderly man; dank tufts of hair carefully tended over his broad collar, American smart, expensively dressed, attentive. But the care in his expression was for himself, I thought, not for others. The face was carefully composed so that it would give nothing away; it was essentially sour, grasping.
The woman must have been talking all the time to him, I realised then, where he had been invisible to me, hidden somewhere at the back of the conservatory. They were together now, though, facing each other. She was telling him something, speaking at some length. He was listening, nodding from time to time, as though engrossed. But when she stopped talking he said nothing in reply, just stared at her for a long moment before turning quickly and walking away. And this last expression of his stayed with me, as it must have done for the woman: a look of hatred, of wordless, contemptuous dismissal.
Six
If I’d not been so hungry the following morning I’d have thought more about the events of the previous night. As it was, other than assuming that the two people in the conservatory were the American couple who owned Beechwood Manor, I thought of nothing but food. I still had a few spoonfuls left of Spinks’s Green Label tea and I was able to brew up one of these in the billycan for breakfast. There was some old cress left, too, and I forced myself to eat it, only to feel an even worse hunger afterwards. I realised I had to find something substantial to eat that day, or give myself up. But what? And where? It was obvious I had no talent for living wild. It had all been in the mind.
I went back into the sleeping-bag when I’d had the tea and lay there like someone in a famine photograph, knees up in stomach, dead still, eyes wide open but unseeing. I was aware of the sun, though, bright again, filtering through the leaves. But there was a sharp wind as well, blowing from the west, coming in long gusts, rattling the top of the old oak like a storm at sea, and I imagined a change in the summer, a spell of rough weather approaching this calm centre of England, rushing up the Bristol Channel at that moment, bringing rain, which would soon catch me, drench me. I’d pack it in then …
But it didn’t rain. I listened to the news on the transistor which never mentioned me now, and the weather forecast, which talked of high pressure away to the north by Iceland, but with bad weather doing battle with it, a depression moving in from the Azores. The man thought the rain would win, but not until tomorrow. I had another day to fill before I could use climate as an excuse for throwing in the towel.
Today was Saturday. I’d been a week in the valley. The world outside had become like home when one is in an ugly foreign country. After the news there was news of sport: football in Italy, tennis at the Queen’s Club, cricket in Nottingham, seventy miles away, against the West Indians, events as distant to me now as things passing on the other side of the world. I felt a touch of shocking loneliness then, of self-pity, which overcame me almost to the point of tears, like a great luxury; a warm, pathetic feeling. But even that didn’t last; the hunger was a sharper pain. I lit a cigarette and saw that my hands were shaking. I thought the tobacco would dull the starvation; instead it only made me feel sick. I put it out.
I had three and a half cigarettes left — but only three matches. There was always the small magnifying glass attached to Spinks’s scouting knife. But that would need strong, direct sunlight, and there was little of that in the valley, except on the water and out on the island, away from the overhanging trees. Should I move to the island, as an answer to my hunger as well? For, perhaps, since the woman had brought roses to the old tombs there, she might, like the other Indians in their religion (or was it the Chinese?) come to leave bowls of milk out there, and sweetmeats too …
Such wild thoughts came and went, the result of a mild delirium, as I dozed the morning fitfully away in a green limbo, the tree shuddering in the wind. I hadn’t even the energy to dream when I finally slept.
But a little after twelve o’clock I stirred myself. If I was to get some food, it was now or never. Soon I’d be too weak to get up or down the tree. I climbed the tall beech first, next my oak, going up to the look-out post I’d made there, which gave over the parkland and the side of the manor. I went up because I’d heard a hammering noise faintly through the trees, and the thump of an engine droning from the same direction.
I could see now, even without Spinks’s glasses, what was going on: Saturday. They were preparing the cricket pitch, near the bottom of the parkland, about half a mile away from the house: hammering boundary pegs in while a gang-mower moved slowly round the outfield. Some local team must have used the place at weekends. There was only one man that I could see, on the mower, with a car parked near the curiously thatched, log-built pavilion.
Then, looking more carefully through the binoculars, I saw a woman leaning into the back seat of a car. She emerged holding a big covered tray, taking it into the pavilion. She returned for a second tray a minute later — and then some cake tins and a big carton. I could just make out the legend on the side: ‘Walker’s Crisps.’ Crisps and cakes and sandwiches no doubt — for the cricketers’ tea. But for me as well, me too …
My spirits leapt like a child’s. The man finished cutting the outfield and five minutes after that he left with the woman in the car, driving away from me, along the side of the cricket field and out onto what must have been a back drive into the estate. It was lunchtime. Just after one o’clock. The match wouldn’t start until 2.30 perhaps. No one would be there for another half hour or so. If I was quick, if I was lucky …