getting crocked, and the bicyclists were forever moaning about it. To see the damage self-inflicted put the whole thing on its head.
‘Clover Wood is that way,’ I said, pointing directly over-opposite.
This time, I found a track rather than crashing on through the undergrowth, and I led the wife along it. Wherever the path divided, we took the wider route, but these would become narrow after a while, and we’d end in a jam of trees and thorn bushes. We pressed on through narrow gaps until we did at last strike another good-sized track. It was lined with tall everlastings of a very dark green, and by rights ought to have led to a blank-faced tomb or cemetery. In fact it led to a perfectly round clearing: a Piccadilly Circus of the woods with a fallen log in its centre, two people sitting on the log and two bicycles on the ground hard by. I knew that one bicycle would be punctured, the other not. We were about fifty yards short of the couple, who were the bicyclist from The Angel and a young woman I’d never set eyes on before. Their voices carried along the track, and I motioned the wife into a gap between two of the everlastings. I stepped in after her, and watched the couple.
The fellow’s arm was around the waist of the young woman. It rested there rather guiltily — that arm knew it was taking a liberty — and the conversation went stiffly.
‘It is a very happy chance that you came along, Dora,’ the fellow said.
‘But I don’t have a puncture repair outfit,’ said the woman.
‘Even so,’ said the bicyclist.
(‘That’s very magnanimous of him,’ whispered the wife, as a silence fell between the two on the tree trunk.)
‘There’s practically everything but a puncture repair outfit in my saddle-bag,’ the young woman eventually said.
‘I’ll take it into the blacksmith’s again tomorrow,’ said the man. ‘I tried him yesterday but he wasn’t about.’
‘Do blacksmiths fix punctures?’ asked his companion. ‘After all, I’d have thought it was a rather delicate operation and they’re all fires and hammers.’
‘He might be able to fettle up a couple of tyre levers,’ the fellow said.
‘Why do you need a tyre lever?’
‘For levering off the tyre. It’s very hard to get the modern Dunlops over the wheel rim without one.’
‘Oh.’
And they sat silent once again.
(‘He’ll lose all feeling in that arm of his,’ I whispered to the wife.)
‘I don’t suppose that you find bicycles very interesting as a topic of conversation,’ the bicyclist said, after a further minute.
‘Well,’ said the young woman, ‘I’d rather ride them than talk about them.’
‘That goes for so many things, don’t you find?’ asked the bicyclist, who immediately coloured up. He was getting nowhere fast with his spooning.
‘You see, my original plan,’ he went on, ‘as I think you knew, was to make for Helmsley after spending just Friday night at The Angel. It was only the condition of the machine that made me hang on here.’
‘I come along this track most Sundays about this time,’ Dora said with a sort of sigh.
You don’t want them sighing at this stage, I thought. But the fellow answered her sigh with a sigh of his own, followed by the remark: ‘Well, no fear of an interruption here.’
And somehow that did the trick, for after an interval of staring forward in silence they both turned towards each other and began kissing, which they continued to do as the wife crept off the way we’d come with me following, and as the Adenwold church bells began striking three.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Come five o’clock, we were watching the cricket game.
I stood on the boundary by the three poplars; the wife, being restless, was making a circuit of the ground. I was thinking about how, coming out of the woods, we’d struck two of the coppers in the search party. I’d asked them whether they’d come upon any scent of ‘their quarry’, and one of the two had said, ‘The quarry? That’s over yonder, en’t it?’ which had made me think John Lambert might yet escape them.
We’d just given up a hunt of our own: for young Mervyn. Our best hope seemed to be to find him and hustle him into saying what he knew, but Mervyn was not at his set-up and had evidently not returned to The Angel, for we’d come across Mrs Handley who’d told us that she was also searching for him. She had not been over-anxious, though: the boy was allowed the run of the woods and fields, and would often tramp off to East or West Adenwold and stay out all day.
The cricket game was being played against a great wall of grey sky that was darkening by the minute, and which made the players’ whites seem to glow. A woman I’d never seen before stood by the pavilion twirling a lacy parasol, and I thought: That’ll have to do duty as an umbrella before long. A second charabanc had brought the second team (the two motors were now drawn up alongside the pavilion), and she must have come in with them.
The first innings had ended after a shockingly short period of time, and the Reverend Ridley was giving directions to his team, who — having batted and scored thirty-six — were now about to go out and field.
The pep talk concluded, some of the players performed physical jerks as they strode out, for all the world as if they were about to do something strenuous. There might have been raindrops already flying, or it might just have been the colour of the sky that made me think so.
The players were now all arranged.
A fast bowler ran up and, reaching the wicket, leapt and pedalled his legs as though cycling — seeming, as he rose, to make the shape of a sea-horse in the air. He landed running; the ball flew past the batsman, who turned and watched it rise into the hands of the wicket keeper, who, having caught it, chucked it to another fielder and gave the batsman the evil eye for a while.
Then it all started again.
The wife was now at my shoulder on the boundary.
I asked her: ‘Did you hear what the vicar was saying?’
‘Something to someone about not sending a lot down on the leg side to Pepper. He said they’d be absolutely slaughtered if Pepper got a lot to leg. He’d only have to start glancing at their legs, and they’d all be finished.’
‘I expect Pepper’s the man in bat just now,’ I said. ‘What are the teams called, do you know?’
‘The Enemies and the Friends,’ the wife said, in a vague sort of way.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think you can have that right.’
The wife, pointing at the umpire, asked, ‘Why is the referee wearing two hats? It’s not sunny and he’s wearing two sun hats.’
‘That’s exactly why he’s wearing two,’ I said.
A third ball was bowled. The wicket keeper failed to stop it, and he looked down at his white boots as if he’d never seen them before while another fellow went into the woods to collect the ball.
‘The umpire might end up wearing any number of hats and woollens,’ I said. ‘The players give him whatever they don’t need.’
Another ball was bowled, and the batsman stopped it dead. He did the same again twice more, and then there was a general collapse into chaos as everyone began walking long distances in different directions.
‘What’s going on now?’ said the wife, sounding quite alarmed.
‘End of the over,’ I said.
At the end of the disturbance another bowler stood ready, but the wife was still interested in the umpire.
‘He’s the man in charge of the game?’
‘He is.’
‘How can he command any respect if he’s wearing two hats?’
‘I suppose he must rely on force of character.’
