Two in a Train

by Warwick Deeping

  Redmayne knew nothing of these affairs. This wet day was his fifth day in Ramshackle-by-the-Sea. He had tramped five miles up the long ridge to Westling, and tramped back again. He was wet and depressed. This untidy conglomeration of hutments that was the new Pannage made the very name seem apposite. It reminded him of that curious old phrase in Domesday Book—“Pannage for Hogs.”

  He arrived at Mr. Branker’s bungalow. Like a damned fool he had rented the place for two months. He unbuttoned his sodden mackintosh and felt in his trouser pocket for the key. A fire would have been acceptable, and “Eglantine,” being a summer residence, provided you with nothing but a rather smelly oil-stove.

  Redmayne opened the door and saw something lying on the cheap mat, a grey envelope. Obviously it had been pushed through the letter flap. He bent down and picked it up. There was no name and no address.

  He opened the envelope and extracted a sheet of paper, and when he unfolded the sheet he found just two words in a hand that looked like a woman’s:

  “You beast!”

  There was such an element of acid unexpectedness in those two words that he found them stimulating. Yes, like a good honest slap when you were feeling temperamental and self-centred. “You beast!” But could he take the credit to himself? Surely the accusation had been flung at some predecessor? He had been guilty of no flagrances to which Pannage could take exception. In fact, so far as his own observation served him, Pannage would take a deal of shocking.

  Well, who was the beast? His eminent landlord Mr. Stephen Branker? And who had penned those words? He stuffed the sheet of paper into his pocket, and being a man whom life had taught to use both his wits and his senses, he went out and examined the sandy track that was Pannage’s main thoroughfare. It disappeared eastwards in a wilderness of grass and gorse, but in front of “Eglantine” it was still a road, and Redmayne did discover something of interest, the marks of motor tyres in the wet sand. The tyres were fitted with a particular non-skid tread that had left a criss-cross impression. It appeared to him that a car had stopped outside the bungalow and then had been driven on. He traced the wheel marks to the grass, and there they disappeared. It was a one-way track, and he stood and wondered.

  For if the car had travelled eastwards it would arrive at nothing but the cliff end. “Eglantine” was the last bungalow along the beach; nor could he see any sign of a car among the knolls of gorse.

  Well, it was as mysterious as that very candid communication:

  “You beast!”

  He returned to the bungalow and began to think about supper.

  He was hungry, and with a hunger that scorned boiled eggs and lettuce and Dutch cheese. He wanted something hot and savoury, and at a butcher’s in Westling he had bought a pound of sausages and carried them home in his mackintosh pocket. Yes, hot sausages and a Welsh rarebit, and a bottle of beer; gross provender, but comforting, with the grey dusk merging into the grey of the sea. He hung up his mackintosh and pulped hat, and betaking himself to the small kitchen at the back of the bungalow, he lit the lamp, and removing his coat, got busy on that evening meal. He was rather proud of himself as a chef, and he had lit the oil-stove, greased his frying-pan, and placed the sausages in it, when he heard a car stop outside the bungalow. He stood listening, the frying-pan poised over the oil-stove.

  Someone knocked. He was more interested in the frying of those sausages than in the unknown visitor at his front door. He decided to ignore the summons.

  The knock was repeated and with more emphasis, and resigning himself to the interruption, he put the frying-pan down on the kitchen table and walked into the narrow passage. It was almost dark here, and as he reached for the handle of the door it occurred to him that there might be some relation between that mysterious message and the person on his doorstep.

  There was. For when he opened the door he saw the dim figure of a girl there, and before he had even begun to ask her what she wanted, the attack was launched.

  “So—you are here, you beast? I waited and came back to make sure.”

  Obviously there was some misunderstanding, and obviously she was the person who had pushed that grey envelope through the letter-box. Redmayne wanted to laugh. To find your innocent self hectored so truculently by a strange young woman was highly inspiriting.

  He said, “I’m sorry. I’m afraid you have made a mistake.”

  She had realized it, too, before he had finished speaking, for though it was dark in the passage and she had been unable to see his face distinctly, his voice betrayed him.

  “I say, I’m most awfully sorry.”

  He got the impression of her as being suddenly deflated. Her fierceness had subsided into a feeling of humiliating foolishness, and suddenly he was sorry for her.

  “I thought you were Mr. Branker.”

  “No, my name’s Redmayne. I have rented the place from him for two months.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course not. It’s quite all right.”

  She had retreated to the gate. The rain had stopped, and he saw the dark outline of a small car with its hood up beyond the white fence. It was lighting-up time, but she had not turned on the lamps. He came out and stood on the doorstep in his shirt-sleeves. He felt that he would like to see her face, but it was too dark, and her mood was for escape.

  “I’m so sorry. Did you find that—that letter?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please tear it up.”

  She got herself out of the gate, and he walked down to it.

  “Anything I can do?”

  “O, no, nothing, thank you.”

  She scrambled into the car, switched on the lights, pressed the self-starter, and without another word to him, drove away. He was able to read the registration plate at the back of the car, and he made a mental note of the letters and the numbers. He went inside and wrote them down.

  The frying-pan and its sausages awaited him, and holding the frying-pan over the stove, he wondered how Mr. Branker had contrived to enrage that strange young woman. Had he behaved like a beast, or was the accusation mere picturesque language, the latest thing in topical philology? But hardly so. She had said beast, and she had meant beast, and Redmayne, having never set eyes on Mr. Stephen Branker, could indulge only in conjecture. He had never read any of Mr. Branker’s novels. He knew nothing about the fellow, save that the bungalow was a somewhat messy habitation.

  But he was tempted to trace that car. He had liked the girl’s voice, and her passion, and the dark intensity of her attack. Pannage possessed a garage, and he strolled along to it next morning, and having looked as a possible purchaser at a second-hand Chummy Cambridge car, he asked the proprietor a question.

  “O, by the way, do you happen to know the name of the owner of a car with a number-plate XX703?”

  The proprietor eyed him with slight suspicion.

  “Blue two-seater with black hood?”

  “I believe so.”

  The man hesitated, and Redmayne smiled at him.

  “No, nothing secret. It stopped outside my bungalow the other day, and someone left a letter that was not meant for me.”

  The proprietor knew the car and its owner. She had bought petrol and sundries from him on several occasions.

  “Want to return the letter?”

  “Yes.”

  “The name’s Miss Langdale. Lives up at Windmill Hill.”

  “And where—exactly is Windmill Hill?”

  “About five miles or so. Turn off the Westling road at High Oak corner.”

  “Is there a windmill?”

  “No. Used to be. Little old farm-house close to a clump of pines. It’s a chicken farm.”

  “A chicken farm? Thanks. Let’s see, how much did you say you wanted for that car?”

  “Fifty-five, three months’ tax and insurance thrown in.”

  “I’ll think it over.”

  The weather continued to be described by the meteorological experts as unsettled, and Pannage’s sun-bathi
ng was fitful, and a matter of opportunism. Redmayne bussed into St. Martin’s that same afternoon. He was in need of tobacco and some literature, and at the circulating library a young lady who liked his looks because he expressed in the flesh her concept of a cave-man came to his aid. She kept a few special volumes for special patrons on a shelf under her desk.

  “I’ve got Stephen Branker’s latest. Only just out.”

  Redmayne smiled at her and at the coincidence.

  “By George, have you? I’ll take it.”

  She thought him a lamb, a lamb with such beautiful teeth and a splendid sun-tan.

  “Yes, it’s just a little—fresh.”

  “Sea breezes and salt spray and all that?”

  The girl simpered.

  “Well, not quite. Please don’t think it’s quite—my style of a book, but it’s a Branker.”

  It was. Redmayne sat down with the book after supper, and he remained with it until he had turned the last page, not because he was enthralled by Mr. Branker’s exposition of life, but because the book explained certain happenings. Its title was “Cocktails for Two.” Mr. Branker indulged in that sort of text. The novel described the life of a place such as Pannage, and it did not describe it too kindly. It portrayed an artist who lived in a bungalow and a girl who kept a chicken farm, and the intimate experiences of the artist and the girl. It was witty and wanton and whimsical, and its portraiture of Pannage and its people was palpably realistic. Redmayne could recognize the fat fellow in shorts who had directed him on his arrival. And, of course, the girl of the chicken farm!

  Redmayne’s neutral comment was, “What a damned cad!”

  He did not know his Branker, nor had he any conception of Mr. Branker’s infinite complacency. He was an excessively clever man, with a thick neck, a hot colour, and the integument of a pachyderm. On several occasions he had transmuted his personal and private adventures into copy. He had both kissed and told, and sometimes he had told when he had failed to consummate the kissing. His conceit was such that he believed that the world was rather flattered when it found itself painted by Branker, but he made a habit of disappearing discreetly before the portrait was hung, just as he had disappeared from Pannage.

  When he had finished it, Redmayne heaved the book into a corner. He quite understood why that angry young woman had addressed Mr. Branker as “You beast.”

  Yes, it was a filthy trick to play on a girl, whether she had surrendered or whether she had not. It was the pose of proud flesh or of pique, and Redmayne found himself prejudiced in favour of pique.

  Next day he walked. He was big and long in the leg, and his long legs carried him up the Westling road to High Oak corner. The day was hot and sultry, with a thunderstorm threatening, but he had brought no mackintosh with him. He turned off at High Oak. He went down a hill and up a hill, and on the brow of the hill he sighted a clump of Scotch firs. A little farther on he saw a little old red-brick Sussex farm-house set back from the lane. A rather muddy track led up to the house. It had a wind-blown orchard and a number of brown chicken-houses dotted about a field. A gate closed the track, and on it hung a black board with Windmill Hill painted on it rather amateurishly in white letters. Moreover, just outside the gate a two-seater car stood waiting, and its number-plate bore those mystic symbols XX703.

  Redmayne hesitated. A black cloud canopy was spreading ominously above the hill. There might be some significance in that cloud. By the right-hand hedge a young oak had been felled and the trunk left lying there. He sat down on that tree.

  He waited, and in a little while he saw the girl emerge from the white door of the house and come down towards the gate. She was slim and dark and sunburnt. Her movements had a pleasant freedom. She carried her head as though she and the world were not on speaking terms.

  She did not see Redmayne until she had reached the gate. She came to a sudden pause. Her very black eyebrows seemed to draw together. Her right hand rested on the top rail of the gate.

  Redmayne stood up. Her obvious displeasure at seeing him there embarrassed him, but he had no intention of being ignored.

  He was wearing no hat, so he raised his hand in a salute.

  “I hope you don’t mind my sitting here?”

  She recognized his voice. She flung the gate open and walked through it to the car.

  “O, Mr. Branker’s tenant—I think.”

  “Yes.”

  She gave him a devastating glance over her shoulder.

  “And do you write books?”

  His reply was a creature of impulse.

  “God forbid! I just do things.”

  She had opened the door of the car, but the candour and the emphasis of his retort made her pause.

  “O, well—that’s a mercy. Friend of Mr. Branker’s?”

  “Never seen the chap.”

  “Is that so? But I suppose——”

  “Well, you see, I don’t know much about literature. I’m home on a holiday. I farm in Rhodesia.”

  “Rhodesia?”

  “Yes.”

  And then three or four heavy raindrops pattered upon the hood of the car, and she looked up at the black sky.

  “It’s going to rain like——”

  “Yes, apparently so.”

  She glanced at his unprotected figure.

  “You are an ass. Why didn’t you bring——?”

  He smiled at her.

  “O, I don’t mind a soak. But I’m keeping you.”

  She looked at him for a moment intently.

  “Yes, you are. I was going down to St. Martin’s to shop. I could drop you at the top of Pannage hill. I won’t come into the loathsome place.”

  He said, “I shouldn’t. It’s awfully decent of you. I’ll say yes and thank you.”

  The thunderstorm broke over them before she had driven half a mile, and when they came to the hill above Pannage the rain was behaving like stage rain. She pulled up, and they looked at each other, and he reached for the door handle. They had exchanged about six words during the drive.

  “Thanks—most awfully.”

  He was preparing to get out into that deluge, but she reprieved him.

  “Wait a moment. It can’t last.”

  “But I’m wasting your time.”

  Her face had a sudden fierceness.

  “O, that’s not worth worrying about. I’m selling up the farm before the autumn.”

  It seemed to him that her fierceness concealed a wound. He wanted to ask her—— But how could he ask her? He remained at her side in the car.

  “That’s rather a pity, isn’t it?”

  She gave a little shrug. She looked through the wet windscreen at the conglomeration of architectural improvisations that was Pannage.

  “Hideous, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “I knew it when there was nothing but shingle and the coastguard cottages.”

  “How lovely.”

  “It was. You just tumbled off the shingle. Another chap and I had a tent just where that prawn in aspic bungalow stands.”

  She smiled faintly.

  She said, “Have you noticed any shortage of eggs in Pannage? No. I used to supply the place with eggs. I supplied your predecessor. You ought to read that last book of his.”

  He glanced at her, hesitated, and was bold.

  “I have read it.”

  He was aware of her as a kind of young and rigid presence.

  “Like it?”

  “I thought it—an utterly rotten egg.”

  For some seconds there was silence. She appeared to be willing herself to say something.

  “Supposed to be topical, you know. Local colour, and all that. As a matter of fact, when you allow a man to be a bit of a pal you don’t expect——”

  She faltered, and he prompted her.

  “Rotten eggs.”

  “Exactly.”

  The rain was slackening, and again his movements suggested that he was about to get out of her car.

  “Rather
a foul sort of fellow. I have a feeling that the bungalow I occupy ought to be fumigated. Yes, it’s holding up now. You ought to be moving on.”

  He got out, and she made no attempt to detain him. She supposed that he might believe some of Mr. Branker’s story, and most certainly she was not going to explain or deny anything. But he stood looking at her, with one hand on the door.

  “I say, don’t think it awful cheek, but would you mind if I came up once or twice to—to buy eggs?”

  For a moment she looked as though she was tempted to slap his face, but something in his eyes appeased her.

  “Rather a long way, isn’t it?”

  “O, just a stroll. I’m long in the leg. I’d be most awfully grateful.”

  “For the eggs?”

  “Yes, of course, for the eggs.”

  She laughed, but her laughter had an edge of bitterness.

  “Well—I suppose you’re not after copy. But I’m pretty hard, you know, now. All right, but you had better bring a mackintosh.”

  He put out a hand.

  “That’s perfectly splendid of you.”

  She accepted his hand and said rather breathlessly, “You’re getting beastly wet. You had better buzz off. Cheerio.”

  He stepped back, smiled and saluted her.

  “Cheerio.”

  Before he had known her a week he had heard the whole of the story, nor was it necessary for her to explain that Mr. Branker and his book had made life at Windmill Hill seem rather impossible. Of course she knew all about the new candour and the new nakedness or naturalness and all that, but a man like Branker seemed to possess the mind of an unlicked lout. Yes, of course he was clever; he could give his loutishness a polish, make it appear witty and furiously modern, but the essential lout in Mr. Branker was limited by its very loutishness. He appeared to think that all women were raw meat from the same shop. The meat varied a little in quality, that was all. Woman and her sex were just a universal burnt offering and bloody sacrifice to the crude realist in Mr. Branker.

  She said, “Of course, if you like, you can believe that I behaved like the girl in the book——”

  “I don’t believe it.”