The Woman at The Door

by Warwick Deeping

  “Any money, my dear?”

  She hadn’t. Luce had forgotten this detail, only to remember it and curse himself ten minutes after they had left him. Mr. Temperley took out a pocket-book and handed her three pound notes.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Nonsense. Uncles are privileged.”

  “Do come in with me.”

  “Another avuncular privilege.”

  Rachel bought her mackintosh and hat, with Mr. Temperley displaying sufficient interest in his spectacled niece to satisfy a mild convention. He criticized the hats but was mute as to the mackintoshes. Art and utility! And how a pair of spectacles transfigured a pretty face! In fact, it seemed to him that the wearing of those glasses made Rachel’s trying on of hats a distrait and casual business.

  “Oh, I think this one will do. Don’t you, uncle?”

  Mr. Temperley looked at her with his head on one side.

  “Yes, not so bad, my dear. Besides, I haven’t to wear it. Turn round. Yes, pas si mal.”

  The shop assistant, an anæmic young woman, was interested in neither of them, and as a saleswoman she was perfunctory. Rachel chose to wear the new hat, and to have the old one put in a bag, and with her mackintosh over her arm she walked beside Mr. Temperley on the sunny side of the street. It did occur to her to wonder whether the constable who was directing traffic at the top of the market place knew that a woman who had murdered her husband in a Surrey farm was still at large.

  “Do you think the woman in the shop was at all curious about us?”

  “Complete apathy, my dear. Even if I had been forty years younger I don’t think I should have been noticed.”

  They rejoined Luce under an ash tree on the Roman road, a Luce who wanted to apologize for a piece of absent-mindedness. They drove on for Chedworth, and finding a complaisant farm, parked themselves in a field within half a mile of the Roman site. Luce, climbing into the caravan to extract the tent and other impedimenta, found that Rachel had taken off her glasses.

  “I needn’t wear them now, need I?”

  He was touched by her very innocent vanity.

  “I think so! I’m sorry I was such a fool about forgetting the filthy lucre. I’ll pay the good uncle.”

  She put up her face to be kissed.

  “Why is it you have to give me everything?”

  “Perhaps because I like life like that. I’m not much of a believer in formidable women.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not very formidable, John.”

  “Thank God,” said he.

  She remained in camp to wash up the tea things and prepare supper while Luce and Mr. Temperley walked to Chedworth Villa, and for quite a part of the way they argued about those three pound notes. Luce tried to press three other notes upon Mr. Temperley, and Mr. Temperley refused to take them. “Don’t be silly, Luce. Even adopted uncles can make presents. Of course, if you are feeling peeved because you forgot——?” Luce laughed and put the notes back in his pocket. “You have me. I was. I’ll chalk it up against myself.” But this was mysterious country, deeply cleft and high wooded, and strange old dead things seemed to steal back through the centuries. They forgot their argument in that almost haunted valley with its towering trees and its grey relics spaced amid mown turf. The place was beautifully kept, like some sacred acre in which memories slept, and in the little museum there was no sound save the fantastic ticking of a busy clock. Luce had bought postcards at the curator’s house, and had said to the woman who had taken the admission money, “A lovely spot this.” She had answered, “Yes, sir; when the sun shines.” Mr. Temperley disliked other people’s reconstructions, or rather he preferred to reconstruct things for himself. He had his own views to air. The villa had been a dye-works? Fudge! He did not believe it. Look at the plan of that colonnade. And were there signs of much water and excessive cleanliness? Well, the Romans were excessively clean people, and even a Romanized Celt was a gentleman. Luce might take it that the Roman was the first gentleman. No, your Greek was a clever cad, and too literary. Had not some superb old Roman pragmatist referred to the Hellenes as “Those damned Greeks!” Yes, the great Julius would have scorned Chelsea or Glasgow. Mr. Temperley was a refreshing person to trail around with in such a place.

  “Too much humbug in history, Luce. This must have been a pleasant, autocratic piece of property.”

  “It would have suited you, sir!”

  “Down to the bone, Luce. If any petty provincial official had shown his face up here I should have had him soused in one of those vats.”

  “I thought you said they were not vats.”

  “No, foot-baths, Luce, foot-baths!”

  Mr. Temperley slept that night in the green tent on a bed over the making of which Rachel and Luce left their own bunks heavily plundered. Luce liked to travel early before the world was too inquisitively awake, and soon after four o’clock someone rapped on the tent. Mr. Temperley had gone to sleep with the flap open, and in the triangular space he saw both the sunrise and Luce’s large figure.

  “Your early tea.”

  Mr. Temperley sat up like a boy.

  “All the luxuries, Luce. What’s the time?”

  “Soon after four, sir.”

  “Imagine a very large Jove serving me with early morning tea! Rabbits up yet?”

  “Scores of them. I saw a fox come down that hedge and go into the wood.”

  “What about shaving-water, Luce?”

  “I’ll bring you some.”

  At half-past five in the morning they took the Cheltenham-Tewkesbury road, and they passed through Worcester just as the shops were opening. Luce seized the opportunity to replenish stores, leaving Mr. Temperley and Rachel in the car. She had put on her smoked glasses before entering Worcester, and she was wearing them when they were confronted by two police constables at some crossroads about six miles beyond the city. Luce felt her stiffen beside him. He was aware of an arm raised and signalling him to halt.

  “Just licences, I expect.”

  He was conscious of pressing his left arm against hers, and of Mr. Temperley leaning forward, and showing a set of very white dentures between retracted lips.

  “Leave it to me, Luce.”

  “No. They’ll regard me as the fellow in charge.”

  He pulled up on the left side of the road, and one of the constables came to the offside of the car. He was mature, and blue eyed and good-humoured, and Luce smiled upon him.

  “You want to see my licence, officer?”

  “Yes, sir. Anyone in the caravan?”

  “No. As you see, we are very much all here.”

  The constable returned Luce’s smile, and having examined his driving licence, went round to the back of the caravan and opened the door. Luce heard it slammed.

  “All right, sir.”

  “Good morning, officer.”

  “Good morning, sir.”

  Luce blessed him, and with a friendly twiddle of the hand in the direction of the other constable, drove on. He was conscious of a deeply-drawn breath, the relaxing of the body that was pressing against his. To Rachel this had been no fortuitous and trivial incident, but a moment of stark fear, and now that the tension had passed, he could feel her knees trembling.

  Said Mr. Temperley, also conscious of those tremors:

  “Decent fellows, the police. Good evidence that; no one is worrying about us.”

  Rachel was sitting with closed eyes.

  “We shan’t be bothered again.”

  “Kidderminster next. What’s Kidderminster famous for, my dear?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Carpets! That’s all we know, and all we need to know.”

  Luce took his eyes off the road for a second to glance at Rachel.

  “Magic carpets, what! Yes, I think I have one.”

  3

  Mr. Temperley spent his last evening with them in an orchard between Much Wenlock and Shrewsbury. The ground fell away towards a lane, and after supper, while Rachel was washin
g up, Luce and Mr. Temperley sat under an apple tree, smoking their pipes. They had their final arrangements to make, synchronizations in time and space, the mutual assurance that each would be reading from the same map. Rachel was just out of earshot, and while Mr. Temperley talked, he watched her on her knees, drying plates with a red and white check glasscloth.

  “So, Bruges is the first resting-place?”

  Luce had explained his plan. On the way home they would camp somewhere within easy distance of London.

  “I shall rig up some excuse to leave the car and caravan there for a day or two, and rush her across to Belgium. That’s our last hazard. I’m taking the Ostend route. It will all depend upon their querying that passport.”

  “It is a fairly neat fake, Luce.”

  “It caused me much heavy breathing. I shall stay in Bruges with her for a day or two, and then leave her there. I shall have to come back to clear things up.”

  “That is where I may be able to help.”

  “Haven’t you been doing that already, sir?”

  “I have enjoyed it, my dear man. It is just as well that I should be at headquarters, and able to observe the activities of the official world and of that nice Miss Ballard. And supposing I should want to warn you, Luce?”

  “I’ll post you my final address; also I shall want someone to write me a letter saying that my wife’s mother is dangerously ill.”

  “My imagination could rise to that. And if I want to warn you to be on your guard?”

  “Send me a curt message to say the rent is due.”

  “Excellent. But I shan’t know in the final event whether you have succeeded, unless——.”

  Luce was looking into the distance.

  “You’ll see it in the papers. Headlines, if you take one of the penny sensationals. Otherwise you won’t know till you see me.”

  “I would rather like to be warned.”

  “All right. If we get away, I’ll write from Bruges.”

  Mr. Temperley knocked his pipe out against the tree.

  “Splendid! Good luck to your lying, Luce. Before I die I shall see a case in equity settled out of court.”

  They were on the road by seven, and finding the landscape dominated by that strange and ominous hill, the Wrekin. It was in one of its black moods, for the day had opened with heavy cloud, and the great hill’s mood seemed massive and sinister. Mr. Temperley sat and watched it standing like some pyramid recording, not the death of a king, but the doom of a whole city.

  “What a strange hill.”

  The words were Rachel’s.

  “Is it really as black as that, or is it my glasses?”

  Luce was more concerned with the road than with the Wrekin.

  “It has always looked in a bad temper when I have passed by.”

  Said Mr. Temperley, “Perhaps hills suffer from inherited memories, Luce, and you remind it of one of the big blond beasts.”

  “Thank you. But when the White City went up in flames, the Welsh were the raiders.”

  “Is that the latest theory?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Well, Mr. Francis Jackson will have something to say about it. I’ll hire a car and call on him this afternoon.”

  Luce drove over the English bridge and up the steep hill into the centre of the city. Traffic was almost absent, and Luce, knowing his Shrewsbury, pulled up about a hundred yards short of the Raven Hotel.

  “Do you mind if I stop here? I shall be able to take that right-hand turning, and circulate. I’ll carry your baggage along.”

  Mr. Temperley got out of the car.

  “Good-bye, my dear; happy days.”

  Rachel leaned over and kissed him.

  “We shall owe them to you.”

  “I hope so.”

  With Mr. Temperley’s hold-all under his right arm, and the suitcase pendent from the other hand, Luce walked with Mr. Temperley to the Raven Hotel.

  “It is rather like arriving with the milk, Luce. What a strong fellow you are.”

  “It just happened so. Meanwhile, there is nothing that I can say to you that is adequate.”

  “Compassion is about the only thing that matters, my dear man.”

  “If the last adventure should go astray, I shall have to lie hard to keep you out of it.”

  “That does not trouble me, Luce. Well, I expect they have a room here.”

  “I’ll come in and see.”

  “No, don’t bother, Luce. Leave my stuff here. And may the gods be as we are. Good-bye.”

  Luce looked steadfastly for a moment into those kind, jocund little eyes, and then faced about and walked back slowly to the car. He could not help remembering certain things that Mr. Temperley had said to him in a Shropshire orchard, that a man in the forties should make the most of the force of his years, for, at seventy his passion to preserve his prejudices or his property may become a little thin and colourless like his hair.

  XXI

  They were camped somewhere in Wales in a grass field close to a high wood. A deep lane running between stone walls joined the main road at the foot of the slope. It was a sweet and solitary place with a bracken-covered hill going up to a sharp edge over which the clouds drifted, and with the sea palely blue on the northern horizon. Van, tent, and car were parked in a little hollow that concealed them from the lane. The farm folk lived in a severe, stone house on the other side of the wood, pleasant people with singing voices, much less severe than their house, and whose world was a world of sheep. The man was a wiry, black and white little Welshman; the wife, big, copper-headed, both brawny and benign. They had two small daughters who stared at Luce with huge hazel eyes whichever he appeared to purchase milk and eggs. Also, there was a sheepdog of much sagacity, known in brief as David, and at length as Lloyd George. A village strung itself along the main road about a mile to the west, like grey beads on a black thread.

  Luce had gone down to the farm about three o’clock for milk and eggs. He had silver for his purchases, and pennies for the children. In camp it had been washing-day, and the tub, Luce’s green canvas bath, filled with spring water heated over a camp-fire. He had a feeling as he followed the field path round the wood, that life had become secure and tranquil in this Welsh hillside, and that they had been sharing one of those periods when two personalities merge in a more profound understanding of each other. Rachel seemed to have climbed out of her valley of fear to a place where the sun shone, and all hurried and breathless moments had ceased. He would not have described it as resignation, but as a regrouping of the crystals of the psyche into a more subtle pattern. The weather had been infinitely kind to them, and there was more sunlight in Rachel’s skin, and perhaps more tender abandonment in her so-called sinning. She could say to herself in secret, “If I should have a child by him, no one can take that away from me.” But the child idea was in the dark womb of things. She was not sure that she would ever ask for a child if the knees of her god were merciful.

  Rachel had hung up her washing on an improvised line stretched between two young ash trees close to the stone wall, perhaps because she had decided that shirts and etceteras did not ornament a camp site, but this domestic bunting was visible from the lane. She had got tea ready, and was sitting on a cushion in the hollow, watching the kettle, when the head appeared. It was a very hairy head, apostolic under a blackguardly hat, and seeming to rest at first on the green swell of the turf. Its owner, a tramp, scouting up the lane and seeing the washing on the line, had been moved to explore possible opportunities.

  The shoulders followed the head as the man approached the hollow in the field. He was a biggish fellow in the early forties, with a particularly unpleasant face, red patched over the nose and cheekbones, the little angry eyes very near together. He had a revolting mouth, the loose red lower lip projecting almost like some fungous growth. His beard was the appendage of a sloven who had not shaved for many days. Over his left shoulder he carried a sack, and in his right hand an ash stick cut from a hedge.
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  Rachel, sitting very still, looked up at him with quick alarm. He came to the edge of the hollow. He stood there and leered.

  “Got any grub, lady?”

  Her impulse was to propitiate the fellow, and so get rid of him.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Sure.”

  There was a cake on a dish, and she bent over, drew the dish towards her and cut a slice, while the man appraised the car, caravan and tent with quick, restless little eyes. No man about, obviously. Here was a chance for some rough coercion, and the bullying of a little spare cash from a young woman who was looking frightened. Rachel got on her feet, with the cake dish, only to realize that the man was coming down into the hollow. His face had a kind of smeary insolence. He looked at the cake dish, and then at her. The chance seemed too good to be wasted.

  “Got any boots, lady?”

  “Boots?”

  “Yep, gent’s boots. Mine are a bit tired. I could do with a pair.”

  He sat down on the grass, relieved himself of his stick and sack, and leered at her.

  “Yep, I could do with a pair of boots.”

  Holding the cake dish in front of her she said, “You had better wait until my husband comes back.”

  His brutal lip stuck out.

  “You get that pair of boots, my dear, and I’ll try ’em on.”

  She put down the cake dish and entered the caravan. She was so scared that it did not occur to her to shut the door of the van and lock it. Her one thought was to get rid of the blackguard. She found a pair of brown boots under Luce’s bunk, and emerged with them. The tramp had possessed himself of the slice of cake and was eating it.

  “I think we can spare these.”

  “You can try ’em on for me, lady, while I eat your cake.”

  Did the wretch expect her to unlace those filthy boots of his? And suddenly, she remembered that she had legs and could make a dash for the lane while he was sitting there munching. The man was watching her. He seemed to divine her impulse towards flight.