Children were escorted to and from schools by parents if any quiet street were on the journey.
Bomb-sites and playgrounds became unusually still. Pet shops all overLondondid a booming trade in cats and dogs. Poisons were laid by the experts, but the victims were always mice or the usual smaller rat.
Not one large, black rat was found.
People soon began to lose interest, as other news hit the headlines. Stories of rape, robbery, and arson, political and non-political, took over as conversation points. Although the search still went on, chemicals laid to poison the rats, and still nothing was found, no deaths occurred, the matter was considered to have been dealt with. Foskins was still uneasy, and made sure his department was following the matter right through to the end; the end being the extinction of any vermin likely to cause damage to persons or property. It soon became apparent, however, that it would be a virtually impossible task unless more government aid was given, but as the outcry dwindled, so did talk of money from the exchequer’s purse.
Chapter Eight
On Friday evening, Harris and Judy drove down to Walton in their battered old Hillman Minx. Judy’s aunt made a great fuss of them when they arrived and provedherself to be not as silly as Harris believed by showing them into a quaint, but comfortable room with a double bed. She left them as they unpacked their one case, all three of them smiling inanely at each other.
‘Well, well, good old Aunt Hazel,’ grinned Harris as Judy flopped on to the ancient quilt, whooping with glee.
‘She always was my favourite aunt,’ she giggled, as Harris stretched beside her.
She smacked his exploring hands. ‘Come on, let’s unpack and go down before she regrets giving us a room together because of lack of company.’
When they went downstairs, Judy’s aunt had opened a bottle of sherry. She poured them a drink and bade them sit down on a soft, flower-patterned sofa, seating herself in an armchair opposite them. As she chattered on, questioning them about their jobs, gossiping about her neighbours, reliving the times she’d had with Judy’s mother, Harris felt him-self relaxing.
His arm found its way around Judy’s shoulders, her ringers found his. He laughed at the silliest topics of Aunt Hazel, losing himself in the charm and the enclosed world of village life. He found himself deeply interested in the vicar’s jumble sale tomorrow morning; the widow next door’s fancy-man; the donkey-derby held last week. He found himself laughing not at the old aunt, but with her, envying the uncomplicated life she led.
At half-past ten, she suggested that the young couple should go for a brief stroll before going tobed, the exercise would make ~em sleep better. They walled arm in’ arm through the quiet village, both sensing the feeling of peace within each other.
‘Deep breaths,’ said Harris, taking in a huge lungful of air.
They both took several more exaggerated deep breaths, faces raised towards the million visible stars, finally bursting into laughter at their own earnest efforts. They walked on, the stillness around them mellowing their already soft mood.
‘Maybe I could get a position in a school outsideLondon,’ mused Harris. ‘In a village like this. Or maybe even open a post office. What do you think?’
Judy smiled back at him, knowing how he loved to dream like this. He was a city person basically, although often he told her how he disliked it. ‘All right, and I’ll open a little dress shop, you know, all tweeds and woollies. But I don’t know what the vicar would say about us living together.
He’d probably think I was a scarlet woman.’
‘Well, we could humour him and get married.’
They stopped walking and Judy turned round to face him,
‘You make any more offers like that, Harris, and I’ll make you stick to them.’
When they returned to Aunt Hazel’s, they found hot toast and drinking chocolate waiting for them. The old aunt fluttered around in a long dressing gown, still chattering on about anything that came into her head, then bade them goodnight and disappeared up the stairs.
‘She’s lovely,’ grinned Harris, sipping his hot chocolate.
‘She’d drive me mad, but she’s lovely.’
When they finally went upstairs, they discovered a hot-water bottle tucked into the bed and a fire alight in the hearth. Harris couldn’t stop smiling as they undressed. It was a long time since either of them had been spoilt and it was nice now that they were being spoilt together.
He climbed in beside Judy and drew her warm body towards him. ‘I wish we could stay longer. I’m going to hate going back.’
‘Let’s enjoy what we’ve got, darling. We’ve got the whole weekend.’ Judy’s sensitive fingers glided down his back causing him to shiver. They crept, round to his thigh and then up.
‘Judy, Judy, Judy,’ Cary Grant voice. ‘What would the vicar say?’
The next day they were awakened by a careful tap on the door. Aunt Hazel entered with a tray of tea and biscuits and the morning paper for Harris. They thanked her trying to keepthemselves covered up as she bustled about the room, drawing the curtains, retrieving the cast-out hot-water bottle.
As she rambled on with her inexhaustible comments on the weather, the neighbours and the state of Mrs Green’s cabbage patch, Judy began pinching Harris’ naked bottom beneath the blankets. Trying hard not to yelp, he grabbed her wrist and sat on her hand. Then he began plucking at the small mound of hair between her thighs.
When Judy could no longer refrain from crying out loud,
She had to explain to her surprised aunt, between fits of laughter, that she had cramp in her foot. Aunt Hazel’s hand shot beneath the bedclothes, grabbed Judy’s foot and began rubbing vigorously. By this tune, Harris was choking with glee and had to hide behind his trembling newspaper.
At ten, they dressed and went down to breakfast. The aunt asked them what they were going to do with themselves all day, suggesting they might like to come along to the jumble-sale. They excused themselves by saying they wanted to drive intoStratfordto have a look around, and would probably stay there for lunch. After warning them to be careful of the roads, she perched a jaunty straw hat on her head, grabbed her shopping basket and waved her goodbyes, turning at the garden gate to wave at them again.
They washed the dishes and while Judy remade their bed, Harris cleared the grate downstairs and a new fire was laid. Although he couldn’t imagine why the old girl would want a fire in this weather, he had to admit it made a welcoming sight in the evening.
Eventually, they climbed into their car and drove towards
Stratford, singing at the top of their voices as they made their way along the country lanes.
As soon as Harris had trouble in finding a parking space he began to regret their visit to the old town ofStratford.
It was flooded with people, cars and coaches. He’d never been there before and had expected to find quaint, olde-worlde, oak-beamed houses in cobbled streets. Angry with himself for hisnaivete , for not realising a tourist- attraction centre like this must surely be spoiled by commercialism he finally found a back street to park in. Walking towards the Royal Shakespeare Theatre he saw that many of the streets had managed to retain their old charm, after all, but it was the throngs of people, multi-racial accents, that destroyed any hope of atmosphere. And the nearer the theatre they got, so the noisier the streets became.
A thin, sallow-looking round-shouldered man in an open- necked, short-sleeved, floppy shirt, camera hanging on his flat chest: ‘Are you coomin’,: Ilda?’
The droning reply, from a plump, bespectacled woman emerging from a shop doorway, clutching a dozen Stratford-on-Avon postcards. ‘Wait, oop,wait oop.’
An obvious Yank, short-cropped hair, checked jacket, inevitable camera: ‘Will ya look at that, Immogene. Quick, while I take a shot.’
Immogene posing self-consciously before an oaked beamed shop with a thatched roof, licking an ice cream, magnified eyes peering through blue-tinted butterfly glasses:
’Wilya’ hurry up, Mervyn, I feel stupid.’
They arrived at the Theatre, a heavy depressing building, and found it closed.
