He smiled. “Hardly. At least we shall have to winter in our cottage.”
“Yes, the cottage...Tell me about the cottage, Jack.”
“You shall see it for yourself very soon. White walls thatch—little windows under the eaves. And central heating!”
“Marvellous!”
“And scarcely a soul within hail.”
“Whereabouts is it, Jack?”
“You’ll see.”
“Tell me.”
“That’s enough, my girl. You’re sailing under sealed orders. Just leave everything to the navigator!”
“What an old tease you are!”
That evening, after she had waved goodbye to Trelawney when he looked back from the other side of the ticket barrier, Miss Teatime did not immediately leave the booking hall. She waited, listening for the arrival of the Brocklestone train. Only when she had heard the last of its departing coaches rattle over the level crossing at the station’s east end, did she walk out into the forecourt and make her way to the car.
She got in and put the map on the seat beside her, together with the list of the train’s stopping places.
The first of these was Pennick, a village just beyond the outskirts of Flaxborough, whose expansion would eventually absorb it as a suburb.
The Pennick road ran almost parallel to the railway. Its first mile, while fairly free of traffic at this time of the evening, was lined with houses and shops. It was within the speed restriction area, and Miss Teatime was careful to observe the limit, give or take twenty miles an hour, until she saw the crossed white discs at the beginning of a comparatively sparsely built-up stretch of ascending road. Then she let the Renault hum happily into the eighties.
A series of three sharp double bends constrained her to drop gear and halve the car’s pace, but on emerging from the last corner she found herself at the start of a straight descent into Pennick village.
The station could be seen quite clearly. It stood on its own, a little to the right of the village and connected to its main street by a fenced path. The train from Flaxborough was just drawing in.
Ten seconds later, Miss Teatime’s car stopped precisely opposite the station path.
The first passenger was coming out of the door of the little booking office. A woman, carrying a shopping basket. Two young men followed, then another woman with a little girl. No one else. Behind a window in the station, a shutter-like movement of light and shade grew faster and faster; then suddenly the window showed clear daylight. The train had gone.
Hambourne was its next stop, about two miles farther on. The map suggested the road to be fairly free of complications. Miss Teatime set off again.
Once beyond the last of Pennick’s cottages, she saw with surprise just how straight the road was. It might have been built as a third rail track. Hambourne was actually in view, a tiny cluster of russet-coloured roofs, glowing in the last of the sun.
Here it would have been simple enough to pass the train, but she decided against doing so. Rail passengers had nothing to do except look out of their windows and even at twenty or thirty yards it was not difficult to recognize the driver of an overtaking car. So she drove slowly into Hambourne and again was able to pick a vantage point near its station before any travellers made an appearance.
There were two. Neither was the commander.
She drew another blank at North Gosby.
Between there and Strawbridge, she encountered an almost disastrous hold-up in the form of a flock of sheep that was being driven along the road to fresh pasturage. This lost her five minutes, and only a hazardous, if exhilarating, passage through Gosby Vale at a fraction over ninety saved her from missing Strawbridge’s homecomers altogether.
By the time she reached Moldham it was decidedly dusk and she was alarmed to find that the railway line, together with Moldham Halt, had somehow contrived to put between themselves and the road a broad and seemingly bridgeless canal. Helplessly, she watched the train come to a stop on the far side of the water.
Then, almost at once, it moved on. She had not heard a single door slam. Moldham, apparently, had sent none of its sons and daughters to the big town that day.
Miss Teatime switched on the lamp behind the driving mirror and consulted her map.
Only Benstone Ferry now, then Chalmsbury Town. Its true that the train went on from Chalmsbury to Brocklestone, but that was nearly thirty miles farther on. Surely Trelawney did not come all
Darkness steadily deepened as she drove the five miles to Benstone. It spread out from the hollows in the fields and gathered beneath hedges. The road, winding now, and with a disconcerting way of slipping suddenly away to right or left as if alarmed by her headlights, was of the greyness of grey cats. She could defeat it only by remaining constantly alert and using the lower gears to whip the car into pursuit of every advantage that its lights revealed. The Renault’s cornering, she told herself happily, was tight as a turd in a trumpet.
Even so, on such a road at this time of day there was no better than an even chance of reaching Benstone Ferry before the train. Would there still be a waterway between her and the line? She would need to have another look at the map as soon as she got to the village.
A long mass of darkness loomed up on her left. She was passing a plantation. A brown blob moved erratically from the side of the road ahead. It was in her path, creeping first one way and then another. She braked, dropped into second gear and skirted round it, smiling at the glimpse she had had of tiny eyes and a wet boot-button snout. Hedgehogs, she considered, were very endearing creatures.
Against the glimmering west, the black peaks of roadside cottages began to appear. An isolated street
