‘No, I don’t need them. I’m only going to make a sketch and a note of the colours. It’s enough for my kind of work. I can do the painting sitting on the balcony of the cabin.’
With Hermione’s help she managed the downward slope without too much difficulty and settled herself to her sketching. Hermione sat down and took out her cigarettes. She watched the artist at work for a bit and then said,
‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to do a bit of exploring. You’ll be all right, won’t you?’
‘Oh, yes. I’ve got the view I want. I shall need about half an hour.’
‘Good. I shan’t be long.’ She followed the path on her side of the beck and was soon mounting steadily. The path twisted and serpentined through dead bracken, grew rougher and then narrower. She stopped and looked back once or twice. Sometimes she could get a sight of Tamsin, sometimes the artist was hidden from view when the path took one of its sharp bends. The hillside was strewn with limestone boulders which looked like grey-fleeced wethers among the brown bracken. As she mounted she could see further hills.
She was gone for much longer than she had intended. When she returned by the same route — there was no other — it was to find that Tamsin had company, an eventuality she had not bargained for. Standing behind Tamsin and watching her at work was a sturdily-built man, hardly more than a youth, dressed in shorts, a leather jacket and heavy shoes. He had a rucksack on his shoulders and was wearing a rather rakish Tyrolean hat with a little red feather in it.
Hermione walked up to him.
‘Have you my friend’s permission to stand here and look over her shoulder?’ she asked.
‘It’s all right,’ said Tamsin without looking up. ‘He isn’t bothering me and I’ve nearly finished all I can do here.’
‘I could show her some better bits than this,’ said the youth. ‘I live around here and I know the moors pretty well. What would you say to a farm?’
‘A moorland farm?’ asked Tamsin.
‘Yes. That is to say, the farm itself is in a valley with pasture for sheep, but the moors rise right behind it, and it’s a really beautiful setting for a picture.’
‘How far is it?’ asked Hermione.
‘A dozen miles or so, the way I shall show you. There are one or two bits an artist might like to see on the way. Have you come far?’
‘No. We’ve got a holiday cabin in the Forestry Commission’s woods,’ replied Tamsin.
‘Oh, that’s all right, then. When you’ve seen the farm, I can show you a short cut home. All main road, once you come up out of the valley. All you have to do is to look out for a signpost to Gledge End. You can easily find your way from there. By the way, my name is Adam Penshaw.’
‘Tamsin Lindsay and this is Hermione Lestrange.’
A dozen miles across the moor they came to a village. It was stone-built and almost hidden away among tall trees in their autumn colouring. It had a small, squat-towered church and out beyond it, where the road rose again, was a lonely public house with a thatched entrance-porch and two of its four upstairs windows bricked up.
‘Shouldn’t think they get much custom there,’ said Hermione, as they passed it and the car took a winding, uphill road back on to the moor. ‘It’s very much isolated.’
‘Oh, it’s not all that far from the village,’ said the youth. ‘It used to be the shepherds’ pub when there were more sheep about than there are now.’
‘I think it would make a picture,’ said Tamsin. ‘One day we must have a drink there.’
The road still rose and around it, in front and on both sides, was the emptiness of the moor. On they went, up and over the hill, and Hermione was about to ask how much further they had to go when the countryside began to change. As they dipped down into the valley, the moor still rose away to the right, but there were some trees on grassy hillocks and when they reached a farm there were sheep and one or two cows grazing the sloping pastures.
The farm buildings were few. There was the farmhouse itself, red-roofed and with three chimneys. A small barn was behind it and almost adjoining the house on the side furthest from the travellers was a cattle-shed with some of the roof-tiles missing and with the farmyard midden in front of it.
Hermione stopped the car and Adam leaned forward from the back seat and asked, ‘Well, what about it, Tamsin? Do you want to get out and make a sketch?’
‘Not now,’ she said, ‘but perhaps another time.’
‘Look here, how much further are you taking us?’ asked Hermione. ‘I’m not a bit keen on driving over moorland roads after dark.’
‘Oh, you’ve seen nothing yet. Just press on a bit.’
They left the farm behind and the road mounted to the moors again. Hermione began to feel more and more dubious about the route they were taking and when the road made a hairpin bend she was moved to expostulate.
‘Oh, look here!’ she said. ‘You told us it was about twelve miles. We must have done twice that already.’
‘Ah, but you haven’t seen the view I wanted Tamsin to get. We’re almost at the junction with the main road to Gledge End. Pull up here and take a look.’
Hermione drew up at the side of the road. As soon as she had done so, the youth picked up his rucksack, which he had unslung and placed beside him on the back seat, and hopped smartly out of the car.
‘Thanks a lot for the lift,’ he said. ‘I’m staying just over there.’ He indicated a large house about two hundred yards away to the left. ‘Be seeing you.’
‘I don’t think he will!’ said Hermione furiously. ‘I’ve a good mind to get out and heave a rock at him. Of all the nerve! All he wanted was a lift home. Why couldn’t he have said so, instead of leading us this dance? Now what do we do?’
‘Keep straight on and hope he was telling us the truth about the main Gledge End road,’ said Tamsin.
‘We must be nearly at the coast!’
This proved to be the case, and when they reached the town which was signposted Long Cove Bay, there was the turning to Gledge End which the youth had promised.
‘I don’t altogether blame him,’ said Tamsin, waiting to make the remark until she deduced that Hermione had simmered down. ‘I suppose he’d have had to sleep in the heather if he hadn’t met us, and it’s not the best time of year to do that.’
Hermione snorted and made no attempt at any other reply. All the same, the main road, making some magnificent sweeps around the higher parts of the moor, was broad and well-surfaced and she realised that there was no need to go into Gledge End, for she found a narrow turning to Wayland and it was not quite dark by the time they stopped the car outside the cabin and the other two had come out to help Tamsin up the steps.
‘You’re later than we expected,’ said Erica. ‘We almost thought of sending out a search-party.’
‘We fell among thieves,’ said Tamsin. ‘Well, there was one thief, anyway. He stole our time and our petrol. Wait until Hermione gets back from the carpark and then we’ll tell you all about it.’
‘You ought to have come with us to Long Cove Bay. It’s a delightful fishing-village built in steps and slopes and all queer little corners and nooks and crannies. You’d love it. There must be lots of bits you’d like to sketch.’
‘Thanks. I think we’ve been to it, near enough. I wouldn’t mind going there again, but Hermy One is livid about this wretched youth who hi-jacked us into giving him a lift, so I don’t think I’ll suggest it at present.’
Hermione returned from the carpark with her equanimity restored. She had encountered John Trent, told him the story and they had laughed about it. She had mentioned the large house for which the youth had been making after he had jumped out of the car and she had described the rest of the locality and the turning on to the main road to Gledge End.
‘John says the house is a Youth Hostel,’ she concluded, ‘and the beastly boy would never have made it if we hadn’t picked him up, so I suppose we did our good deed for the day, however inadvertently. Oh, and John says that it’s worthwhile to take a look at the big notice-board in the reception centre from time to time, especially if the weather turns wet, because there is often some sort of entertainment laid on for the cabin people.’
‘Well, I expect it would only be a sing-song or the local pop group,’ said Isobel, ‘but it might make a change from sitting indoors and listening to the rain on the roof.’
