Potter, as well as Brunt, was surprisingly informed about the customs and terminology of the Old Man.
‘So what do you propose, Albert? A posthumous charge in front of the Barmaster?’
Potter showed calculatedly strained patience.
‘If this were my case, I’d be wanting a good look inside that mine. Especially since the girl used to hang about there a lot.’
Of course, Potter was right. The fact was staring Brunt in the eyes, making him almost guilty of dereliction of duty over the last forty-eight hours.
‘All right, Albert. You can stay here one more day. I’ll take the responsibility.’
And was there the suspicion of a smile, playing somewhere beneath the black undergrowth of Potter’s beard?
‘Because any man who tackles a derelict mine single-handed is a fool. A couple doing it together are not much better. We shall need gear, Albert …’
‘Lanterns, candles, balls of string …’
‘What do we want balls of string for?’
‘Sometimes several galleries run off at a cross-roads. You unwind string behind you to find your way back.’
‘All right, Ariadne. You assemble what equipment you can. Do it without letting the village know what we are up to. I’ve got other work to do this morning, and time is creeping on.’
Brunt left the inn before there was any sign of movement from the Nadins or Mildred and passed through the village without allowing himself to be caught in conversation with anyone. After a little brief reconnaisance in the upper reaches of the Clough, he chose himself a spot not far down the track along which he had watched Beresford ride and took up a position behind a lichened pillar of rock, where he would be invisible to anyone coming down from the Fold.
For some twenty minutes he had the valley to himself. The sunshine was warmer now; a current of air played about the heavy corners of Brunt’s eyes and made him realise how tired he felt. A jackdaw, wheeling about over a pile of rubble, protested at first at his presence, but became accustomed to him within minutes. Down in the bottom of the Clough, too far away for him to hear the rush of water in the swallows under the stones, two smaller birds quarrelled, squared up to each other in mid-flight, then disappeared behind a patch of scrub to continue their primeval battle over territorial rights.
Then Brunt saw the couple coming down from the village: Mildred in front, carrying her baggage under one arm, walking in uneven steps with her eyes glued to the rough ground. She was wearing an outdoor coat that Brunt had not seen before, brown with closely spaced buttons – not new, not well styled, but the girl’s well husbanded best. Behind her, perhaps a yard and a half, walked Nadin, practised loping steps that seemed ungainly in his heavy boots, his arms swinging free, his hands empty. Brunt waited until they had drawn abreast of a gorse-bush that masked him obliquely from them. Then he stood up from his concealment and advanced to surprise them. The girl let out a little squeak and lurched sideways to prevent herself from falling.
‘We’re on our way down to the Halt,’ Nadin said, as if assuring finality.
‘There are one or two things I want to talk to her about. One or two things I’ve asked her to think over.’
‘You’ll have her miss her train,’ Nadin said, coming down beside her, and trying to place himself protectively between the two of them – impossible because of the narrowness of the track.
‘Doubtful,’ Brunt said. ‘I wouldn’t put it past Thos Beresford to wait, knowing in advance that he’s got a passenger. In any case, I’m offering her her last chance not to need that train.’
‘You’ve no call to be delaying us,’ Nadin said.
‘I’m not delaying you. I’m delaying her. You’ve no standing in her life – except as a bully, and somebody else’s toady.’
Nadin looked at Brunt as if the only next thing he knew was to come to blows. But Brunt, stocky, grotesque, ugly, was to any man’s eyes the younger and fitter man. He took a step sideways and upwards so that he was looking down at the inn-keeper; and Nadin was on the outer side of the path, the ground falling away steeply below him.
‘Your writ doesn’t run to this sort of caper, Brunt.’
‘My writ runs wherever its little legs will carry it.’
Meanwhile, the girl was looking at Brunt expectantly, puzzled, but showing no signs of fear; and astoundingly attractive, in spite of her misery. A man must be made of rock, not to be drawn to her by her sheer physical ebullience.
‘Go home!’ Brunt said to Nadin, exaggerating his contempt like a bad actor. ‘You’ve paid her off, haven’t you?’
Nadin did not move. Brunt turned to Mildred.
‘Sleepless night? So you’ve done a little thinking?’
‘I don’t know what to think,’ the girl said, not meeting his eyes. Nadin spoke to her.
‘You don’t have to wonder where you’ll end up if you let him do your thinking for you.’
‘Go home!’ Brunt said again. ‘Just remember you’re an innkeeper. And you rely for your living on the licensing justices. And I’m a policeman. And I’m coming back to spend a few more nights under your roof whether I’m on speaking terms with you and your wife or not. And you’re turning over in your mind how you’re going to get rid of me. Well, I’ll tell you this: you can’t. You’re not used to the law up in Piper’s Fold, are you? And if it’s Kingsey you’re afraid of, because you’re harbouring a woman who’s on the run from him, you’d better start asking yourself whether you wouldn’t be safer in my hands. As the girl is going to be.’
Nadin could find no argument. For an instant it looked as if he were going to fall back on his stupidity and repeat everything he had already said. But he simply stood silent, exhausted of ideas.
‘Go home. She has nothing more to do with you.’
True as it was, Nadin seemed psychologically incapable of tearing himself away from them. He stood looking at them, a useless man, his hands dangling, wanting to fight, but not daring to.
Brunt knew that something else was true, too – something that he had just said: the valley and the village were fundamentally lawless – nearly as lawless as in the day of the Turkish pedlar. They could be visited by magistrates, who would deal indignantly with any poacher or his like who might be brought before them. They fell under the purview of a constable, who roamed an archipelago of hamlets between Harpur Hill and Hollinsclough – and who knew to the last tittle how far he dared go, both with the Peakrels and with his own superiors. They could be descended on from time to time by the likes of Brunt. A man who worked alone and committed a major crime need not be confident of getting away with it, not now in 1875. But if the community as a whole chose to defend a secret, they could still take a chance on winning the day. Then it was the law that stood alone. And the law, for the moment, was represented by Brunt alone.
He let his eyes wander over the back-cloth, the far green, scarred flank of the valley, the limestone pillars twisted into uncouth shapes. He was standing alone against a tradition as stubborn and ignorant as the Old Man himself. He ought to have been afraid, yet he was not afraid at all. Was that because the sun was shining? Because he was going soft in his head? Was he being lulled into false confidence by the sheer stupidity of a man like Nadin? Was he forgetting that what it could not understand, the Clough could think only of destroying? Was Brunt’s imagination short-changing him?
He held out his arms for the girl to hand him her hold-all. She passed it to him and he signed to her to start climbing back up the hill. Nadin still stood in their path.
‘Go on!’ Brunt said to the girl, who took one step, hesitated and looked back at him over her shoulder.
‘Go on!’
At last Nadin stepped aside. They both walked past him. The landlord began to continue his way down the valley: intent, now, probably, on reporting events to Beresford when the Fly passed. And, freed from the sight of him, the girl began to scramble vigorously upwards. Brunt balanced her burden on his shoulder and followed.
&
nbsp; ‘I’ve found a place in the village where you can stay for a few days. That will give us time to work a few things out. But you can come and go as you please. If you really fancy chancing your arm in Derby, that’s up to you. You don’t have to ask my permission, though I’ll admit it would suit my book for you to stay here.’
They rounded a fold in the cleft. They would be in the village in another five minutes.
‘The woman you’ll be staying with is deaf. I hope you won’t find her too trying. She has a good heart.’
Mildred did not answer. She did not turn her head. Brunt had no inkling whether she had heard a word that he had said. The sunlight brought out the red tinge in her thick, dark hair.
So who was going to pay the old woman for her keep? Brunt had every reason to fear that his department’s auditors would jib at footing that kind of bill. In which case, he would simply have to fork out for himself; not the first time he had been reminded of the Good Samaritan in this valley. It went against the grain, to pay out for what ought to be the responsibility of public funds. But there had been policemen in the past, hundreds to come in the future, who would dip into their pockets to break a case.
The old woman was waiting for them at her cottage gate, took Mildred into her home as if she were a daughter of her own who had just returned on the Fly from years of profligacy in the city. She had agreed at once to Brunt’s suggestion.
‘Goodbye for now. I’ll be back later in the day.’
Brunt was anxious to get to Potter, to see what ropes and lanterns he had assembled. The girl, he thought, would be ready now to talk, but he wanted readiness to develop into urgency. He believed that the urgency would be hastened by the frustration of talking to the old woman. And he wanted Mildred to be affected by the cool silence of the cottage. But she did not want to wait.
‘Sergeant Brunt, you’re going away? There are things I’ve got to tell you.’
‘I’ll be back presently.’
‘No, now.’
Tears that she could not check began to run down her cheeks; not the burning drought of yesterday’s resentment. The old woman was brewing tea from her meagre larder. Brunt drew up a rush-covered chair for himself at the table.
Chapter Eleven
‘Perhaps you’ve never been to Bristol, Sergeant Brunt?’
‘I’ve been in other places, perhaps some of them worse.’
Mildred shook her head with unassailable certainty.
‘There’s no place worse than Bristol. I can remember the miseries of Bristol when I was only three years old. I can remember it as clearly as a picture. I can remember sitting on the stairs because we could not get into our room. My mother had gone off somewhere, and for some reason or other she had taken the key. She did go off sometimes, and we never knew how long it was going to be for. My father, he went off for even longer spells. And in between, my mother brought new fathers for us home; at least, that’s what she tried to tell us.’
Mildred laughed cynically.
‘When I think of some of those men that she brought home, it makes me realise why we were always glad to see our own father back. I remember sitting on those stairs. I couldn’t tell you where in Bristol the building was, but I can still see those stairs. There’s a certain smell, I don’t know what it is. You don’t get it in Piper’s Fold. But if I were to smell it again, like I did once in Derby, when we were on our way here, I’d think I was back on those stairs.’
Rotting woodwork and fly-blown remnants of old food, damp plaster, leaking sewage; she wouldn’t be smelling it here, in this cottage kitchen. The little house smelled of bread and ironing, drying herbs and a curl of blue wood-smoke escaping from the grate.
‘I suppose we were hungry, and we must have been tired, but most of all I know that we were scared – yet I was too young to know about being scared. I was scared because I knew the others were. I’ve often tried to work out how many of us there were on those stairs that night, but I’ve never been absolutely certain. I know that I must have been the youngest bar two. And there was one little bit of heaven that we were cottoning on to, cottoning on to it because it was a sudden idea that had gone from mouth to mouth: the Poor House. We’d been frightened silly of the Poor House all our lives: my mother used to threaten us with it, when she was desperate to get her way about something. Now, suddenly, the Poor House was warm and dry, and they’d give us something to eat and drink. My brother Michael – he’d be nine or ten and he wasn’t even supposed to be in charge of us – my sister Aileen was in charge of us, but Michael had a way, sometimes, of making all the others listen to him. He said he was going round to the Poor House to ask them to take us in. But then he came back and it was no good, they wouldn’t have us. He’d even been to see Mr Stevenson, and I don’t know now who Mr Stevenson was, but it had been brave of Michael to go and knock on his door. And Mr Stevenson went round with Michael to the Poor House, but they wouldn’t take us in, not even for him. I don’t know how it all ended up. I must have fallen asleep. I can’t remember now where I woke up, but somehow things must have got better before they got worse again.’
The old woman had made a pot of tea and was sitting in her own chair, rocking it gently. It was doubtful how much she could follow of what was being said, but her eyes were fixed solemnly on Mildred’s face. Perhaps there was something more expressive than words that she could understand.
‘You don’t know how bad Bristol is, Sergeant Brunt. These people here in Piper’s Fold – they think they’re rough. They’re proud of themselves whenever they can kid each other that they’re breaking the law. They don’t know what breaking the law is. They make me laugh. I could tell you stories about Bristol: I could tell you about an old man of seventy-two who got six months’hard labour for interfering with his own grandchild, only eight. And he’d had her by his own daughter.’
Brunt could have capped the story, but he held his tongue. There was a certain charm, still, about her anger. She was a girl of passionate standards. Whence had she derived them, and how had she managed to maintain them? He was not going to risk impeding the flow by any interruption.
‘My sister Aileen went off on the night train to London when she was thirteen. There were stories about the wealth and magic that that train could whisk you off to, and nobody believed them, not even those that went. But Aileen, of course, didn’t go of her own accord. She went because money changed hands all along the line, and there was even a pound or two of it left over for my mother before the line ran out. There was good money – and I reckon there still is – for any country girl in London who was still fresh. You know what I mean? There weren’t all that many of them still fresh by the time they were thirteen. But there were ways and means of passing yourself off as a beginner, even if you weren’t – and not too difficult if the man happened to be drunk, as he usually was. And you won’t perhaps believe this, Sergeant Brunt – it wasn’t men who were running the traffic – not, at any rate, from the Bristol end. It was women. Two of them, Mrs Elliot and Miss Carpenter, looking for all the world as if they’d strayed out of a missionary lecture. They had a compartment twice a month on the night train for London out of Bristol, looking as if they were taking their little band of cherubs to a Charity School.’
On the wall of the cottage was a framed print of a picture called The Squire’s Call: a hygenically scrubbed and immaculately dressed young villager’s wife, cutting a slice of cake at the table for a benevolent old patriarch, sitting ram-rod straight in the only armchair.
‘When Aileen went, I knew that my own turn would come – even though my mother would sometimes tell me, those times that she felt like talking to me, that she hoped things would change, and I wouldn’t have to go. Things change, Sergeant Brunt? Things never will change, will they, unless you set yourself to try to make them change? But I mustn’t ramble. The night train. I got so that I was looking forward to it, because I knew what I was going to do, and I thought it was going to be so simple. Go to London with Mrs Elliot
and Miss Carpenter? There were men in London who’d pay twenty pounds in notes – most of it to Mrs Elliot and Miss Carpenter – to spend a night with a girl who hadn’t been with a man before. Very fine; and once a girl had been with a man, what then? That was when I decided I was going to choose my own man, in my own time. I’d seen enough of the men that my mother had brought home. I suppose I always have been a rebel. There may have been times when I haven’t done myself the best turn that I might have done. But there’s one thing that I’ve had my own way about till now.’
Brunt thought he was beginning to understand the nature of her pride and determination. It wasn’t something that anyone had taught her. It wasn’t virtue, in the moralising sense. It was something more like sheer bloody obstinacy.
‘Of course, I had several plans up my sleeve about how I was going to give them the slip off that train.’ Mildred laughed.
‘My God, when I think of how little I knew! London was just somewhere for me that lay at the other end of the earth. I couldn’t have told you the names of three big towns that we’d pass on the way. If things had been left to the way I’d planned them, I wouldn’t have ended up far from the end of the track myself. It didn’t even occur to me that those two bitches, the missionaries – I still think of them as missionaries – would be on the look-out for one of us to try to escape. I must have thought of myself as the most original minded kid of twelve in the country. However, escape I did – but only because I was lucky. There was no planning about it, the way it worked out in the end. We stopped somewhere. There were oil-lamps and porters’ barrows, and steam coming up from somewhere under the running-boards, and we were going to be there twenty minutes while they coupled another engine on. And Mrs Elliot and Miss Carpenter trooped us out – there were four of us on this trip – so that we could go to the lavatory while they stood guard at the door. I was beginning to be scared, to tell you the truth. I’d been looking for chances all night, but there hadn’t been any. I’d even got to the state of thinking of opening the carriage door and hurling myself out beside the track. Not that I would have done, but my mind was spinning round like mad. Then suddenly, on that station, Gloucester it was, I found that I’d got parted from the others. I’ve no idea to this day how it happened. It can only have been for a split second, but by God I moved fast. There was a lot of noise, and people coming and going all over the place. Mrs Elliot was not finding it easy to keep our group together. There was one girl who was forever wanting to stop and look at things, and she was being dragged along by one wrist. I think a porter must have barged right through the middle of us with his trolley. And then somebody walking the other way must have widened the gap between us. Once it did happen, it could so easily happen, if you see what I mean. And the moment I saw that I was on my own, I really did start looking after myself. I moved sideways and fast, got myself on to another platform, crouched down in a space between two stacks of wooden crates. I heard Mrs Elliot shrieking, trying to get the guard to hold back the train. He wouldn’t. I heard him blow his whistle, and I’ve never heard music like that in my life since.’
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