She got up from the chair, drawing away her hand with a sudden movement that was like a reflex action and upsetting the cup in its saucer. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘There are things to do.’ But she made no move towards the door.
‘Think about it,’ Benton said. But he had not defined precisely what it was she was to think about.
Suddenly she said: ‘Oh, there’s Joe now.’ There was a hint of relief in her voice, as though she welcomed the interruption, putting an end as it did to a situation which she was not sure quite how to handle.
She was gazing out of the window which was behind Benton. He turned and saw that a young man on an old tradesman’s bicycle had turned in at the gateway. He dismounted and began pushing the machine up the drive.
‘He’s been down to the village to fetch some groceries,’ Mrs Mace explained. ‘I make out a list and he takes it to the shop and hands it to them. They know him there and they don’t expect him to say anything, you see.’
‘Why doesn’t he say anything? Is he shy?’
Benton was still looking at the young man with the bicycle. He was big and his movements seemed clumsy. He had red hair and a wide smooth forehead and a freckled chubby face. His mouth was large and the thick blubbery lips were parted to reveal an uneven set of teeth. Benton doubted whether he was more than twenty years old, and judging by his appearance he would have concluded that the youth was of rather low intelligence; retarded perhaps.
‘He’s shy with strangers,’ Mrs Mace said, ‘but that isn’t why he doesn’t speak. He can’t, you see. He’s dumb.’
6
New Job
Benton spent the night at an inn in the village that was about a mile from Pear Tree Farm. The Red Lion was a modest establishment, but it did a little business in the bed and breakfast line. Benton had a small but comfortable room and slept well. It was only his second night away from London, yet already that other life of his which he had left behind him on walking out of Jackie Fulton’s Islington flat was beginning to take on a dreamlike quality.
Had he really taken part in all those robberies? Had he really allied himself to criminals like Dobie and Houlder? What had he in common with men such as those? True, he had welcomed the easy money and the high living, but perhaps it was like a drug on which you got hooked and which could kill you in the end.
Well, he had broken away from it now, for the moment at least; and maybe he would make the break permanent, would kick the habit and start afresh. What kind of future did he have to look forward to if he carried on as he had been doing? So far the luck had been with him and he had got away with it; but this last job had been a close shave and maybe he should take it as a warning, a presage of worse to come if he refused to take the hint and call it a day. Enough was enough.
After breakfast he stowed his suitcase in the boot of the Vauxhall and drove away from the Red Lion in the direction from which he had approached the inn the previous day. He drove quite slowly because there was no need for haste, and the fact was that he felt some misgiving regarding the action he was about to take. Indeed, he stopped the car once and had half a mind to turn it and get to hell out of there before he allowed himself to become involved in something which might lead to complications he would live to regret.
But he did not turn the car, and after a while he drove on again, and a few minutes later he had arrived at the entrance to Pear Tree Farm. This time he took the Vauxhall in through the gateway and up to the front of the house. He stopped the engine and got out and stood for a moment or two looking at the old building with its door of ancient oak and its sash windows with their dingy paint and the stone sills with lichen growing on them, wondering whether even now it was not too late to change his mind and drive away.
But whether it was or not, he did not do so. There was no one to be seen about the place, and he thought of going round to the back of the house as he had done before, but he decided to give the bell-pull under the porch another chance, and this time it brought some result. He heard a bolt being slid back, and then the door opened and Mrs Mace was there looking out at him.
‘You!’ she said; and then she seemed to be at a loss for further words.
‘Yes, me,’ Benton said. ‘You seem surprised. You were not expecting me back so soon?’
‘No.’
There was no reason why she should have expected him back at all. Benton knew it and she knew it, but she did not say so; she just stood there looking at him and waiting for him to explain why he was there.
‘Do you think,’ Benton said, ‘I could come in? There’s something I have to speak to you about.’
She hesitated only momentarily. Then she said: ‘Yes, of course, if you want to. Though I can’t think what you have to say to me.’
They went into the room where Benton had had tea the previous afternoon, and he persuaded her to sit down at the table while he took one of the chairs on the opposite side. For a few moments he gazed at her in silence; and looking at her now, he knew just why he had come, why he could not have failed to come, preposterous though the purpose of the visit might seem.
She appeared to become uneasy under his gaze and glanced away from him, but only briefly before, so it seemed, she felt compelled to look at him again.
‘I’ve come to work for you,’ Benton said.
She gave a gasp. ‘You?’
‘Yes.’
‘You wish to work for me?’
‘Yes. You need someone. This place is too much for you to look after with only Joe to help.’
‘You’re not serious,’ she said.
‘I have never been more serious in my life,’ Benton assured her.
‘But it’s impossible. Don’t you see how impossible it is?’
‘I see no impossibility whatever about it.’
‘But I couldn’t afford to employ you.’
‘I’m not asking you to pay me,’ Benton said.
She said unbelievingly: ‘You are offering to work for me for nothing?’
‘For my keep. That’s all I ask.’
She made a fluttering gesture with her hands, as though she found the situation too much to cope with in mere words alone. ‘This is madness. You can’t mean it. You’re making fun of me.’
Benton shook his head. ‘Nothing could be further from my mind. The offer is genuine, I promise you. I wish to work for you and I am willing to work for nothing except my board and lodgings.’
‘But why, why?’
Benton gave a lift of the shoulders. ‘Should we just say because I feel the urge to do so?’
‘For no other reason?’
‘I’ve been working in London. I’m sick of that life. I’ve been looking for some kind of retreat; a refuge, you might call it.’
‘And this seems to you to be the place?’
‘I knew it had to be from the moment I spoke to you yesterday. I felt it had to be here.’
Again she said: ‘It’s impossible. It’s crazy.’
‘Are you saying you don’t want me? Is that what you’re telling me, Jean?’
The sudden use of her Christian name seemed to startle her. She made no direct answer to his question but replied uncertainly: ‘It wouldn’t work. How could it?’
‘There would be no harm in giving it a try. Tell me what harm there would be in that.’
She was silent. She was looking at him shyly, and he could see that she was trembling a little as if afraid; afraid and yet strangely eager. Her breathing had quickened and there was an added brightness in her eyes; those eyes that were the jewels in her face.
Benton spoke softly, persuasively. ‘Tell me you want me to stay. Don’t send me away from you. Say the words: “Tom, I want you to stay.” Say them.’
As if mesmerised she repeated the words. ‘Tom, I want you to stay.’
Her voice was very low, almost inaudible; but he heard it; he heard the message as clearly as if she had shouted it at him. And he laughed.
‘There! It was pretty easy, wasn’t i
t? I felt sure we could do a deal.’
He thought she was going to cry. There were tears standing in her eyes, glittering tears apparently ready to fall.
He said: ‘You were right, of course; it is madness. Maybe we’re both mad. But hell, what would life be if we never did some really crazy thing now and then? And it’ll work out; it will. You’ll see.’
It seemed to at that. It was amazing how quickly he settled in. Of course it was not as if the work was at all strange to him; the farm was a smaller edition of the one he had grown up on, except that there were no cows. There had been a small herd at one time, Jean told him, but Mr Mace had decided to get out of milk production and now the livestock consisted of pigs, a couple of nanny-goats, a few ducks and some chickens which had the run of the place and laid their eggs wherever they felt inclined to do so. Cocks crowed on the midden to greet the dawn and the tractor was twenty years old. It was all pretty rough and ready, and Benton doubted whether it was making much profit.
He got on well with Joe right from the start. Joe was rather shy at first, but he soon accepted the newcomer and seemed to look up to him as an admired elder brother. Benton found that when you talked to Joe you had to keep things simple; no long words and nothing too complicated. He could see Joe trying to understand sometimes, brow furrowed, mouth hanging open, but too often the attempt came to nothing; there was so much that was outside the scope of his limited intelligence. He made noises which were the nearest he ever came to intelligible speech, but within his limitations he was a good worker, though he had never mastered the art of driving the tractor. Jean did that when it was necessary.
‘He’s been on the farm ever since he was a boy,’ she told Benton. ‘I don’t know where he came from; he was here before I married Mr Mace. I’ve never heard of any family; he may have been an orphan. If I didn’t keep him here I don’t know what would happen to him. He’d have to go into an institution, I suppose. But he would hate that.’
Joe lived in an old shepherd’s hut on wheels. He took his meals in there by himself.
‘He won’t eat in the house,’ Jean said. ‘I don’t know why; he just won’t. You have to humour him; in many ways he’s just like a child.’
But physically there was nothing childlike about him; he was big and he was strong, really strong; he could lift with ease weights which Benton could manage only with a struggle. On one occasion when they were doing some repair work on a five-barred gate made of solid oak he lifted it off its hinges as easily as if it had been no more than a hurdle.
‘Good for you, Joe,’ Benton said. ‘You’re a strong boy, aren’t you?’
Joe grinned with delight, gratified by this praise from the older man. He would have done anything to please Benton. There were two people now to whom he showed a doglike devotion, where previously there had been just one.
‘He’s really taken to you,’ Jean said. ‘I’m so glad he has.’
‘I like him too,’ Benton said. ‘It’s a pity he can’t talk, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it is.’ But he detected an odd hesitancy in the words and wondered why there should have been any. It was almost as though she were not quite sure that she was altogether in agreement with him. Or had he simply imagined that?
One day Joe took Benton inside his hut. Benton was surprised to see how clean and tidy everything was; he had rather expected it to be a mess. There was a bunk on one side which served as a seat in daytime and there was a hinged shelf for a table. There were some wooden cupboards and there was an iron stove with a flue going up through the roof to keep the hut warm in winter, and it looked pleasantly snug and comfortable for a single young man.
‘Very nice,’ Benton said.
Joe was pleased with these words of approval; it was quite apparent that he was proud of his quarters.
One thing that surprised Benton more than the general tidiness was the fact that standing in one corner of the hut was a double-barrelled twelve-bore shotgun. It was an old one but there was no rust on the metal and it appeared to be in good working order. He made no remark on it to Joe but he mentioned it later to Jean.
‘Joe showed me his hut. There’s a shotgun in there. Did you know?’
‘Oh, yes. Fred gave it to him to shoot the pigeons and rooks.’
‘So he can use a gun?’
‘Yes. Fred taught him and he’s quite good with it, though he doesn’t often use it now.’
‘Do you think it’s safe to let him have it?’
She seemed surprised by the question. ‘Safe! Why shouldn’t it be? Are you afraid he might shoot someone with it? He’d never do that. Not Joe. He’s very careful.’
Benton had to accept her word for that, but he still thought it a trifle odd. Apparently Joe could manage a twelve-bore but not a tractor; but of course the gun was a simpler piece of mechanism.
Benton himself had moved into one of the spare bedrooms in the house. He ate his meals in the kitchen with Jean, and at first she seemed to regard him with that nervous shyness she had exhibited at their first meeting. But this soon wore off and she became gradually more at ease with him, though now and then he would still detect a slightly quizzical frown on her face or catch a look cast askance, which seemed to ask the question concerning who and what he was, this man who had walked so unexpectedly and uninvited into her life.
He had told her little about himself and she had done no probing. He wondered what her reaction would have been if he had revealed that he was a criminal wanted by the police; that he had been involved recently in the killing of two men. Would she have recoiled from him in horror and aversion? Perhaps. No; more than perhaps; almost certainly she would.
And that was why he would not tell her. Ever.
He wondered whether she locked her bedroom door at night. He tried to put the question out of his mind, but failed. He lay awake for hours thinking about her, wondering whether she was lying awake thinking about him.
On the third day after moving in he announced that he would have to get more suitable gear for wearing about the farm: overalls, gumboots and some check work-shirts; the clothes he had brought from London were totally wrong for the job he was now doing.
‘I’ll take the car into Norwich. Would you like to come along for the ride?’
She thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. No; it’ll be better if you go by yourself.’
He failed to see why it would be better, but he made no attempt to persuade her. He set off early in the afternoon and arrived in the city soon after three o’clock. It was years since he had last been to Norwich and he spent some time wandering round the old streets and alleyways that he remembered from the days of his boyhood. Much had changed; some of the shopping areas had been closed to motor traffic so that pedestrians could walk there without fear of injury; but there was more that had remained unchanged and would continue to do so: the cathedral, the castle, the guildhall …
When finally he had bought what he needed it was late in the afternoon but after some hesitation he decided to go out of his way and pay a visit to the place of his birth. He doubted whether he would be welcomed with the fatted calf or even with open arms, but he would go nevertheless just to see what the farm looked like and what changes had been made there since the death of his father.
When he arrived the first thing he noticed was that a modern bungalow had been built at the corner of the thirty-acre. There was a patch of shingle in front of it, flanked by beds of young shrubs and flowers. A blue Metro was parked on the shingle but there was no one in sight.
He wondered who could be living in the bungalow, but he did not stop to inquire; he drove on down the lane until he came to the farm entrance. He took the Vauxhall in and parked it at the front of the house and got out.
There was no one about and he thought of going to the front door and hammering on it with the iron knocker that was made in the form of a laurel wreath, but he had never done that in his life and he could not bring
himself to start now. Instead, he walked round to the rear and pushed open the back door and gave a shout.
‘Anyone at home?’
He had a surprise then, for the person who appeared in answer to his call was a woman, and as soon as she saw him she stopped dead in her tracks and gave a gasp.
‘Tom!’ she said.
He felt like gasping himself, because she of all people was surely the one he had least expected to come to the door to greet him.
‘Molly!’
She had changed. He would have had difficulty in describing precisely in what way, but there was certainly a change from the Molly Secker he had known; she seemed more subdued, the hair was under better control, and perhaps there was less of that roguish glint in her eyes than he remembered. Yet he knew her at once, and when she spoke again it was with a hint of the old mockery.
‘Surprised, Tom?’
‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘I am. Is your mother here?’
‘No. Why should she be?’
‘You haven’t taken her job?’
‘Not really, no,’ she said. And then: ‘Can’t you guess?’
Benton was puzzled. ‘Guess what?’
She held out her left hand and he could see the gold ring on her second finger. ‘I’m your sister-in-law.’
‘Good God! So you married Dan after all.’
‘Yes, I married him after all. That’s something you would never have expected, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he said. After all the things she had said about Dan she had married him in the end. And in spite of that episode in the hayloft he had married her. Amazing.
But after all, was it so surprising really? Dan had wanted her, had been crazy about her, and no doubt she had had an eye to the main chance; being the wife of a farmer would have seemed a step up in the world for her.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’d better come in. Dan’ll likely be here before long.’
They went into the living-room, which was no advertisement for Molly’s housewifely qualities; it was more untidy now than it had been in the old days when there had only been Mrs Secker coming in daily to do the chores.
Dishonour Among Thieves Page 6