15

HEARTS. This is all about hearts, restless or yearning, broken or bleeding.

Saturday, 15 March 1930 Such a busy time. I bought some material yesterday and arranged for the woman Joseph found for me to run up a summer dress suitable for the country. I have given my notice at the Rushmere and made arrangements for Aunt’s furniture to come out of store and be taken to Morthams. Not just furniture, of course-there’s the china, the cutlery, the pictures and heaven knows what. I can hardly remember! We shall be at sixes and sevens for weeks, if not months, while we sort everything out. I explained the suddenness of my marriage by saying that Major Serridge may have to go abroad at very short notice, and naturally I should want to go with him. Cards, good wishes, etc. from all and sundry. Old Miss Beale said: “Good for you, my dear. Get out while you can. Otherwise the shades of the prison house will close in around you.” But then she cackled in a very unsettling way. I must be honest and say it’s been an unsettling time altogether. What happened at the Alforde Arms on Tuesday made it worse. I know Joseph was all contrition in the morning, but still it hurt. But I suppose we women have always had that cross to bear. The simple fact is that men are different from us. But at least I know that now. Really know. Just to show that everything is all right between us I have ordered a car for him. We chose it together. He was so pleased, just like a little boy! It is a second-hand Austin 7, a nice shade of blue that goes with his eyes. We shall look very smart as we motor through the countryside in our own car. I broke down in floods of tears again when he telephoned this evening. There I was in the little booth in the hall, hoping against hope that no one would notice me crying my head off. He was so gentle and loving. Tuesday night has had the strange effect of making me love him even more. How mysterious are the ways of Love! I should tear out my heart and bring it to him if it brought him a moment’s happiness. My heart is yours, my darling, how I wish you could keep it in your pocket, fluttering and beating like a bird beside yours, and my heart would warm itself with your love for ever and ever. I wish I could send you my heart in the post and you could keep it safe beside you for always. How silly I am. Sometimes he makes me feel seventeen again.

Hearts by post. There’s an idea.

A voice at his elbow said, “Mister? Mister?”

Startled, Rory looked round and down. His eyes met those of a small boy standing in the angle between the Vicarage gatepost and the garden wall. It was the one who had been whittling a stick outside the Alforde Arms, and perhaps the one in the field near Morthams Farm. He wore a jacket which was too small for him and buttoned up to the chin. His cap was squashed down over his hair, which was ragged and curly. His shorts reached below the knees. There was something slimy on the lower half of his face. As Rory watched, the boy wiped the back of his jacket sleeve under his nose. His eyes were large, brown and long-lashed, as beautiful as a cow’s. It looked as though his tongue was too big for his mouth, despite those big, slack lips.

Rory fumbled for a penny. “What is it?”

The boy thrust out his hand. In it was a dirty piece of paper, much folded. Rory took it and gave the penny to the boy, who spat on the coin and frowned. He waited while Rory unfolded the piece of paper. It was a note written in pencil.

MR. WENTWOOD, Could I have a word with you before you go. The boy will bring you. Something most particular to say. Sorry to write but its better that Vicar dont see us.

There was a signature underneath but it was illegible. Rory looked up the drive. Mr. Gladwyn’s round head was bent over his desk in the window of the study.

“Who gave you this?” he asked.

The boy muttered something unintelligible. He pointed a grubby finger down the lane.

“Mrs. Narton?”

The boy shook his head. The finger moved toward the left.

“Somebody at Morthams Farm? Not Mr. Serridge?”

The boy shook his head more violently than before. Rory fancied there was panic in the lad’s face. He muttered a monosyllable twice and finally it made some sort of sense. Barn. Barn. The finger was pointing toward a sagging roof visible perhaps a couple of hundred yards away beyond the boundary hedge along the lane. The boy took Rory’s arm and tugged gently.

Rory set out with him. There seemed no harm in following the lad and trying to find out what this was all about. He pulled at Rory’s arm again, urging him to go faster. He might be mentally or physically deficient in some way but he seemed to have a very clear idea of what he wanted. He led the way over the stile and along the line of the hedgerow. The barn stood at the top of a newly ploughed field on the far side of another hedge.

Close to, the building proved to be not so much a barn as a tumbledown shed of brick and timber. Its roof had lost its tiles at one end and been patched with corrugated iron. The big double doors were held in place by a heavy bar secured to the wall with a padlock. The boy darted through a gap in the hedge beside the building and beckoned. Rory hung back. The boy vanished round the corner of the barn.

Rory scrambled reluctantly through the hedge and followed. Set in the wall opposite the double doors was another, much smaller door, and it was ajar. Beside it stood a woman wearing a headscarf and a long brown raincoat. She was smoking a cigarette with quick, impatient movements. She stared without smiling at Rory. The boy ran up to her and nuzzled against her. She patted his head as though he were a dog.

For a moment Rory didn’t recognize her. She threw away the cigarette.

“Rebecca, sir,” she said. “Rebecca Proctor. Mr. Gladwyn’s parlourmaid at the Vicarage.”

“Of course. Hello.”

Without her uniform, she looked completely different-tough and competent, entirely at home with herself.

“Thank you for coming. I had to send our Robbie. He’s my sister’s boy. Not quite, you know.” One hand was still resting on the boy’s head. With the other she tapped the side of her own head. “He’s a good lad, aren’t you, Robbie?”

He gave her a gap-toothed smile, responding as much to the tone as to the words.

Rory said, “What’s all this about? Why couldn’t you have said something at the Vicarage if you wanted to see me?”

“Mr. Gladwyn said we weren’t to talk to you. More than my place is worth if he sees me with you. He’s a good master too, not like some, but he’s that strict, you wouldn’t believe. I can’t afford to lose my job because if I do, this one and his ma won’t be able to live. Won’t be able to eat, won’t have a roof over their heads. And if that happens they won’t be together anymore because they’ll put the boy in a home and my sister in a loony bin.” The woman stared at Rory. “I’m sorry to go on, sir, but it’s better you know where I stand. I don’t want it coming out that you’ve talked to me.”

“All right.”

“We’ll go inside,” she said. “Otherwise somebody passing might see us or hear us, and if that happens it will be all over the village before you can say knife.”

Robbie pushed the door fully open and led his aunt inside. Rory followed. There was more light than he expected, some from the doorway, some from holes in the roof and some from two window openings, one in each gable wall, which had been roughly boarded over. There was an earth floor under their feet, quite dry, and a pile of straw in the corner. The place smelled of must and stale tobacco.

“This is on Mr. Serridge’s farm,” Rebecca Proctor said. “Morthams. Did you know that?”

Rory shook his head.

“Don’t worry. Serridge won’t come here. No one comes here any more. That’s why Robbie comes, see-it’s safe. They bully him something terrible in the village. Bleeding kids.” As she spoke, her voice was becoming rougher, more countrified, as if she had abandoned the smooth, respectful tones of her profession along with its uniform. “Anyhow, I wanted you to see this place. It’s where it happened, you see.”