The HOPEFUL TRAVELLER Page 14

  Kerren said nothing, feeling an ominous chill in the pit of her stomach. Since their evening at the Hugheses’, Adam had been busier than usual and she had not seen much of him. Cath’s remarks rankled. She remembered the feelings that Mrs. Neilson had aroused in her. There was still something about this woman that seemed, more than anything else, to indicate the gap between herself and Adam. And yet she had never seen them together. But perhaps it was the very fact that reality had drawn no boundaries that made Mrs. Neilson’s relationship with Adam seem so disturbing. She represented Kerren’s idea of the kind of woman who would appeal to Adam.

  In the end, however, she agreed to go to Wales. She took a day’s leave. It was Whit week-end and they set out on the Friday morning in a thin drizzle of rain. The streets were already being decorated with flags and bunting which hung damply in the still air. Someone had painted on a wall in The Mall ‘Ban the atom bomb’ and workmen were trying to remove the words. Kerren said, ‘It can’t be blotted out as easily as that.’

  Adam, who had been examining the car with interest, asked John: ‘How long have you known this chap?’

  ‘We were in the same outfit for a time. He was one of those characters who seem to have been waiting all their lives for a war, the kind who thrives on danger.’

  ‘And what’s he doing now?’ Adam asked.

  ‘He’s started a little business. Mechanical engineering. He said there were tremendous possibilities. He was always a bit of a line- shooter, though.’

  Adam said, ‘The Rover’s real enough. Pretty luxurious for someone who has just started a little business.’

  ‘At heart you are still a cynical newshound,’ John said. ‘You are beginning to have doubts about my friend’s integrity.’

  ‘I like his car, though.’

  ‘We all looked up to him. He was a good officer, a man you could rely on in a tight corner.’

  Adam said, ‘You have doubts about his integrity, too.’

  ‘Integrity didn’t seem important then. All that mattered was that a man could carry his load.’

  Kerren spread the map out on her knees. This would be the longest journey she had ever done by car and she cherished the thought of it, stretching ahead of her, mile after green mile of English countryside.

  ‘We shan’t go anywhere near Holly Green, shall we?’ she asked. Adam said, ‘We could do a detour. Would you like to?’

  ‘No.’

  It was too soon for that; years hence, when she could bear it, it would be too late.

  When they reached Cirencester, Adam took over at the wheel. He drove fast and Kerren, watching the car eating into those precious miles, was sorry.

  ‘I’ve heard it rumoured that other people use these roads,’ John protested.

  But Adam was enjoying himself. Some restraint had slipped from him like a heavy cloak falling unnoticed from the shoulders of a man whose entire attention is concentrated on pleasure. Kerren had a sudden intuition that he had driven fast across a great plain in Eastern Europe, glad to be free of responsibility and commitment. The feeling was so vivid that she was sure she had had a glimpse into his past. Was it his wife and family from whom he had escaped? Had there ever been a time when he was glad to leave Alison and the children behind? She had always imagined them imprisoned in an overpowering aura of happiness, like figures in a glass dome. For a moment, his marriage seemed less secure and therefore more real. Perhaps Alison had nagged him for driving too fast? She bit back her own protests and suffered the mad march of the milestones.

  In all too short a time they were leaving Gloucester behind and their journey was half-completed. Ahead, on the road to Ross, the country massed dark under a grey cloud. As the car sped through the narrow, winding lanes, she felt a change in personality, as though the Celts and not God had created those distant hills. They crossed the border in a downpour that restricted visibility. Through the steamed windows of the car, she had an occasional view of dark, smudged hills; the landscape was like a child’s painting in which the colours have been allowed to run into each other. In the car, they drew closer together, hemmed in by the rain which fell like steel needles on the bonnet. Adam hunched over the wheel humming The Land of my Fathers for John’s benefit.

  ‘It is the land of your fathers?’

  ‘A long way back.’

  John was watching the road with the unhappy concentration of a passenger who is uneasy about the driver’s behaviour.

  Somewhere beyond Monmouth they took the wrong road. Gradually the scene began to change. Tracks twisted down the hills past fields pitted with mining shafts, pockmarked by grey cottages; here and there pyramids of slag, covered with a sparse layer of grass, obstructed the view. A town spread out like grey litter strewn across the valley.

  ‘Where in God’s name is this?’ Adam asked, slowing down so that John could lean out and read the names on a signpost.

  ‘Blaenavon, Bryn Mawr . . .’ John said. ‘I remember my grandmother saying that God made Bryn Mawr late on Saturday when he was tired.’

  ‘We don’t want to go there, then.’

  Adam turned the car into a narrow road which ran along the foot of the hills. This was not, for him, a long journey and he had been lost in far worse places. As he drove, bands relaxed on the wheel, he remembered some of those pre-war expeditions. They came back to him vividly and with extreme pleasure, as though a door in a dark house had swung open revealing a sunlit garden. On either side the hedgerows moved closer, branches of trees hit the roof of the car, gradually the deep ruts in the lane filled with water and earth shifted beneath the wheels of the car. He had driven across a tributary of the Ganges in flood; the water had been around their feet and Alison had sat tight-lipped with the baby on her lap, more annoyed with him for attempting the crossing than apprehensive of the outcome. The car had lurched sickeningly and his friend’s wife had lost her false teeth. ‘What the devil are you fussing about?’ he had demanded angrily. It all came back, the irritation, the exhilaration, the incongruous hilarity. It was the first time that he had thought of Alison without her image being shadowed by tragedy.

  The wind had whipped up and the trees bowed over the streaming fields. For miles now there had been no sign of life, save an occasional glimmer from a farm muffled in the fold of a hill. John said to Kerren:

  ‘Did you know that one of the joys of driving in Wales is that you go for hundreds of miles without seeing another human being?’

  The car skidded as the lane turned sharply and Kerren fell hard against Adam’s shoulder. She drew in her breath but did not say anything.

  ‘Did I frighten you?’ he asked, looking down at her.

  ‘Well, I like life.’

  The fact was affirmed by every feature of her small determined face. He felt that he had never seen her so clearly before and in that second he knew that he had no intention of resigning her to John or to anyone else.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ John cried. ‘There’s a bridge ahead.’

  It was a hump-backed bridge across a narrow stream; beyond a steeple rose above a huddle of grey roof tops. Adam slowed the car to a sedate pace and John sighed deeply, ‘This should be it, praise be!’

  The village was a grey little place with no charm about it. When Adam opened the car door the steady sluice of the rain and the rush of the stream drowned all other sounds; the smell of the drenched fields mingled with the more rank odour of whatever had collected in overfilled gutters and blocked drains. ‘I wonder what it’s like in winter!’ Kerren said. Adam disappeared in the gloom and after a while they saw a light gleam fuzzily through rain-starred windows. He came back and eased in behind the wheel again, his raincoat squelching as he sat down.

  ‘The inn is further down the road, if you can call it a road.’

  He drove slowly, but even so sheets of water gushed up on either side of the car. John and Kerren wiped the side windows and peered out. There was a row of dark cottages leaning on each other for support and then a low building with a
sign swinging outside and a dim light from one window.

  ‘This must be it,’ John said. ‘There wouldn’t be more than one inn in a village this size, surely?’

  ‘I hope the rooms are booked,’ Adam said. ‘Did you give your friend’s name as an introduction to the establishment?’

  ‘Yes.’ John sounded uneasy. ‘The old creature – it was hard to tell whether it was male or female – didn’t respond all that warmly. But you know what long distance calls are like . . .’

  Adam grinned at Kerren. ‘If you ask me we’ve been taken for a very long ride.’ He got out of the car and this time Kerren went with him. ‘Perhaps they’ll find it more difficult to turn me away.’ She did not feel that Adam in his present mood would arouse any pity.

  The man in the saloon bar had a mottled face with cracked purple lips and bilious eyes bulging with dyspeptic disapproval; he looked as though he would have experienced no difficulty in turning away the Virgin and Child. He consulted his mother, however, by shouting through a door at the back of the bar.

  ‘People from London saying they booked rooms. Mother.’ He added, injecting even more dubiety into his tone, ‘Say they are friends of Captain Cartwright.’

  ‘Captain Cartwright!’ Adam repeated triumphantly, as though the retention of the rank had set the seal on his interpretation of the man.

  A voice like a corncrake replied that the bookings had been made. The man behind the bar said, ‘Mother will look after you.’ He gave them a glazed smile; his suspicions were by no means allayed, they had merely gone underground. The effect, Kerren thought, was quite ghastly. She and Adam waited for the old woman while a pool of water from their dripping raincoats formed at their feet. The saloon bar was small and the counter was an L-shaped affair which also served the public bar. Through the hatch they could see the five men in the public bar, who gazed back at them with lively interest. These men, like the innkeeper, were in the process of making up their minds about the visitors. Unlike the innkeeper, they were well-disposed to all human beings, good, bad, or indifferent, so they engaged in conversation while summing up the strangers.

  ‘Bad day for a journey, wasn’t it?’ And when this had been settled, ‘How did you come, then?’

  ‘By car . . .?’ A long drawn-out vowel rising plaintively at the finish. ‘All the way from London by car . . .’

  One of the other men said something in Welsh, but the speaker was not in the least abashed. ‘Fancy,’ he went on, ‘All that petrol!’

  He looked at them with bright, black eyes which invited them to join in a joke which was now convulsing his companions. They were saved from further embarrassment by the arrival of an old woman. She looked at least a hundred, her face so gnarled that it was difficult to pick out features such as eyes, nose, mouth – except that the position of the mouth was indicated by a white pipe. In spite of her age, however, there was no impression of frailty; the creased flesh had the toughness of old leather and the bony hands which now arranged a shawl over her head were businesslike as the talons of a hawk.

  ‘Have to go outside,’ she said.

  She led them round the side of the inn and through a garden to what, it seemed, was the residential wing of the building.

  Kerren’s room was very small, with sloping ceilings and a high, narrow window in one corner which was wide open to the rain. She went across to shut the window, but discovered that it was supporting the eaves. The thin net curtains were sopping wet. The bed was some distance away, pushed against the wall. Apart from a frayed wicker chair, the only other furniture in the room was a black wooden table with a pitcher and bowl on it. The dampness and the lack of drawer space did not trouble Kerren unduly; she had spent three years in a damp Nissen hut and had been used, on leave, to living out of a suitcase. The pitcher and bowl, however, were different. They went further back in time. She put her finger in the pitcher and the ice-cold water triggered a little thrill of ecstasy. Just for a moment, she was a child again, staying in her aunt’s cottage in Donegal; if she were to lean out of the window, she would see the ruins of the Abbey of the Four Masters and beyond the waters of Donegal Bay, still and grey in the twilight. Tears came to her eyes.

  At that moment, Adam came in carrying her case.

  ‘Porter, Ma’am,’ he said, putting the case down. Then, ‘Whatever’s wrong?’

  He put his arm round her and she snuffled against his shoulder, ‘It’s this room . . .’

  ‘We’ll leave at once,’ he promised, very concerned. ‘I expect we can get somewhere in Brecon . . .’

  ‘I don’t want to leave. It’s lovely. But it makes me feel homesick . . .’

  ‘This!’

  ‘It’s so utterly peaceful. I’ve always thought it must be the most peaceful graveyard in the whole world.’

  He hugged her to him and laughed. ‘I shall never understand you. But that, I suppose, is a part of the charm.’

  When he had gone, she took her sponge bag out of her case and washed in the ice-cold water. Then she picked the bowl up and went on to the narrow landing where she met John who was just coming up the stairs.

  ‘If you’re thinking of throwing that away, you’ve a long journey,’ he informed her. ‘The privy’s at the end of the garden. And it’s no joke. Look at my trouser legs!’ They were wet almost to the knees and caked with mud. Kerren returned to her room and threw the dirty water out of the window.

  Adam and John were in the saloon bar when she came down the stairs a quarter of an hour later. John looked at her with that quick, lively interest which had disconcerted her when she first met him.

  ‘I’m getting old!’ he informed her cheerfully. ‘I’ve discovered that I like my creature comforts.’

  He did not look old; he looked very young and gay and hopeful, and she felt an odd little pang for him. Adam was at the bar; he half-turned to ask what she was drinking. He looked comfortable in a rather crumpled tweed suit and very much at his ease, as though he had lived all his life in this village. She was aware that John was watching her.

  ‘Adam is happy,’ she said, feeling she must say something.

  ‘Yes,’ John said. ‘I think he is.’

  Adam came back with their drinks. The saloon bar was very constricted, just a bay window, a fireplace with no fire, and the counter rammed along one wall. Kerren sat on the window seat and looked into the yard. A sheepdog sidled in the door and shook himself at her feet. She patted his damp coat but he took no notice of her.

  Adam said, ‘He wants his supper, that’s all he’s interested in.’

  He sat opposite to her on a narrow, high-backed armchair; there was not much room and their knees pressed together. John refused the remaining chair because he said he was glad to stretch his legs.

  ‘Here’s to a good week-end,’ he said.

  They drank to this. Then Kerren said, ‘Perhaps we should drink to absent friends?’

  ‘Captain Cartwright, in particular!’ Adam raised his glass, but John frowned into his.

  ‘They don’t seem anxious to talk about him here. I can’t make it out.’

  The innkeeper was talking to the dog, who was called Billy; but he was also watching the three of them. The men in the public bar cast glances in their direction from time to time.

  ‘They’re still summing us up,’ Adam opined.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling they’re laughing at us,’ Kerren said.

  ‘Not mine host. He is making a very serious assessment of our characters.’ Adam put his glass down and took out a packet of cigarettes. ‘What do you think he wants us to be – goodies or baddies?’

  ‘You’re imagining things,’ John said. ‘He’s got a bad liver. It’s the way he always looks.’

  They had another drink. Adam motioned to Kerren to make room for him on the window seat.

  ‘Be sociable, Kerren. That chair isn’t made for anyone my size.’

  Two young men came in, shaking raincoats. They nodded to Kerren and Adam and went across to the counter. The
sheepdog edged the door back with his nose and went out. The innkeeper had turned on the wireless and the two young men leant across the counter, listening. It was just after nine o’clock and the announcer was giving information about preparations for the victory parade.

  ‘Wish you were there, Taff?’ one of the young men said.

  ‘I’ll tell you the answer to that,’ Taff said. ‘I’ll tell you the answer if you really want to know, somewhere outside where there aren’t any ladies present.’

  Another car had drawn up outside and several people were getting out. Kerren watched two women picking their way on high heels across the muddy yard. The party stood bunched up outside for a moment, then one of the women said, ‘I told you the Red Lion at Llangorse would have been better, Trev.’

  ‘I didn’t have that much petrol, Bronwyn.’

  They came in. The women were smartly dressed and one of them wore a pink hat. They looked very out of place, but Kerren noticed that the regulars evinced little interest in them. One of the men at the public bar counter caught her eye and winked. She felt as though she had been accepted into an exclusive brotherhood, the nature of which was not clear to her.

  The two women were arguing over the one vacant chair. ‘You sit down, Bronwyn,’ said the woman with the pink hat. ‘No. You sit down, Ennis.’ Adam and Kerren stood up. ‘We’re just going,’ Adam said.

  ‘I must go outside,’ Kerren said to John. ‘Show me the way.’

  As Kerren and John went out the two women were arguing as to who should sit in the armchair.

  The lavatory was at the back of the inn, through a wicket gate and across the drenched garden. The door did not shut, so John stood guard for her, leaning over the wicket gate. The rain was hard, driving slantwise, stinging his face. The sheepdog padded across the yard and poked his nose against John’s hand, demanding attention now that he had been fed.

  ‘It’s too late for that, Billy,’ John said. ‘Too late.’