The Comforters

So, on the day of the picnic she was especially happy to discuss the Baron’s latest fantasy with Helena.

‘He must have built up a theory,’ said Helena, ‘on rumours and suspicions. I hate,’ she said with unusual force, ‘doubt and suspicion.’

Caroline thought, ‘She is worried about Mrs Hogg. The affair in the car is pressing on her mind. Poor Helena! Perhaps she would not at all like to know things clearly.’

Laurence lay listening to their voices, contentedly oblivious of what they said. He was too somnolent in the warmth of the sun to take part in the conversation and too enchanted by his sense of the summer day to waste it in sleep. He watched the movements of a young fat woman on a houseboat moored nearby. Every now and then she would disappear into the cabin to fetch something. First a bright scarf to protect her head from the sun. Then a cushion. Next she went below for so long a time, as it seemed to Laurence, that he thought she was never coming back. But she did emerge again, with a cup of tea. She drank it propped tubbily on the tiny bridge of the boat. Laurence spent his pleasurable idleness of long meaningless moments in following every sip. He wished the houseboat were his. He wondered where the man of the house could be, for he was sure there must be a man, referred to by Tubby as ‘my friend’. Laurence wished it were possible for him to go on lying drowsily by the river and at the same time to poke about in the cabin of the boat, to pry into the cooking arrangements, the bunks, the engine. A little rowing boat which lay alongside caught Laurence’s fancy.

It came home to him that Caroline was saying, ‘I’ll start the kettle for tea.’

She had lit the spirit stove when Helena said, ‘Thunder.’

‘No,’ said Laurence. ‘Couldn’t be. I was just thinking,’ he said, ‘we might be able to borrow that little boat and row over to the other side. —’

‘I thought I heard a rumble,’ Caroline said.

‘No.’

‘It’s quarter past four,’ Helena said. ‘I wonder where Georgina has got to?’

‘Spirited away,’ said Laurence remarkably.

Helena roused him to scout round for Georgina.

‘I’m sure it’s going to rain,’ she said.

The sky had clouded, and in spite of Laurence’s protests the barking of distant thunder was undeniable.

‘The thunder’s miles away over the downs,’ Laurence said, ‘it will miss the valley.’ Nevertheless, he went off in search of Mrs Hogg, pausing on the way to look more closely at the houseboat. The plump girl had gone inside.

Caroline and Helena started to move their rugs and tea-cups into the cars.

‘Even if we miss the storm,’ Helena said, ‘it will certainly set in to rain within the next ten minutes.—’

Suddenly they caught sight of the Baron on the opposite bank. He shouted something, but he was too far from them to be heard. With his hands describing a circuit he conveyed that he was coming back by the bridge.

‘He’ll get soaked,’ Caroline said. ‘Poor Willi!’ But before he set off again she waved him to stop.

‘I’ll ask for the boat,’ she said, ‘and row him over.’

‘That would be nice,’ Helena said. ‘Sure you can manage it?’

But Caroline, with Laurence’s raincoat over her shoulders, was away to the houseboat. The Baron stood perplexed for a moment. He saw Caroline bend down and knock at the little window. He understood the plan, then, and waited. In a few minutes Caroline signed to him that she had the owner’s permission to use the boat.

The rain had started, but it was light and the river calm. Caroline reached him within a few moments. He climbed into the boat and took the oars from her.

‘I got a sight of Hogarth,’ he said immediately, ‘alias Hogg, but he was in disguise. Quite a different appearance from the man I saw conducting the Black Mass. In the circumstances I did not address him, it was too frightening. —’

‘How did you know it was Mervyn Hogarth, then?’

‘I asked one of the lay-brothers. He confirmed that Mervyn Hogarth was staying there, and pointed him out. They believe he is come to the Abbey for the fishing.’

‘What fishing?’

‘Apparently the Abbey rents out a strip of fishing ground. They put up the anglers in the Abbey,’ said the Baron. ‘Little do they know whom they are harbouring. Hogarth alias Hogg,’ he said.

‘I think you are mixed up, Willi.’ Caroline pulled the raincoat over her head and patted her hair beneath it. ‘The man at the Black Mass must have been a different Hogarth.’

‘Oh no, he was named Hogg. Hogarth is the daytime name. I know for a fact that Mervyn Hogarth was born Mervyn Hogg.’

‘The man at the Black Mass must have been a different Hogg.’

‘I have the whole picture, which you have not,’ the Baron said. ‘This afternoon, as I was leaving the Abbey grounds I saw the witch, Mrs Hogg, entering them. I turned back and followed her. I saw —actually saw, Caroline — Mrs Hogg approaching Hogarth. He was doing something to a fishing rod at the time. He recognized her of course. He looked very miserable. They exchanged a few words. Soon, he walked away and left her. The couple are clearly known to each other.—’

They had landed. Caroline thanked the woman while the Baron tied up the boat.

‘There’s no sign of Georgina,’ Helena said as they reached her car. ‘Laurence has been back and he’s gone off again to search for her. What a nuisance.

‘She was over at the Abbey,’ said the Baron. ‘I left her there half an hour ago.’