‘When I delivered that letter at his place I thought I heard a woman talking inside.’

‘It was TV.’

‘I don’t think so. Charles, there won’t be a fight, will there? I mean his asking us not to come till today. Perhaps he’s mustered all his pals to beat us up.’

This idea had occurred to me too. ‘He has no pals.’ The woodwork class?

Hartley began to come down the stairs. I pushed Gilbert and he went out. She walked slowly, clutching the banister, as if walking were difficult. She was wearing the scarf over her head, as I had intended her to, and her face was shadowed. I would have liked her to wear a veil. It was our last moment, our last second, alone together. I took her hand and pressed it and kissed her cheek and said, as if it were something quite ordinary, ‘It’s not goodbye. You will come to me. I shall be waiting.’ She squeezed my hand but said nothing. She was not tearful. Her eyes looked far away. We went out together onto the causeway. The others were waiting by the car. It was curiously like the emergence of a bride and bride-groom.

All eyes were averted as we approached the car. I had not arranged the seating. Titus opened the rear door and I hustled Hartley in and followed her, and Titus got in next to me. The other three squashed up in the front. Hartley drew her scarf forward to veil her face. The three in front did not look round.

Peregrine, who was driving, said, ‘It’s straight on and then right?’

Gilbert said, ‘It’s through the village, I’ll direct you.’

Hartley was crushed against me. She was stiff, stiff. Titus was stiff too, his eyes staring and unseeing, his pink mouth slightly open. I could feel his fast breathing. Everyone was gazing straight ahead. I folded my hands together. The sun was shining. It was a bright day for the wedding.

We were just approaching the big rocks through which the road passed in a narrow defile, the place which I called the Khyber Pass, when a stone struck the windscreen with amazing force. Everyone in the car came abruptly out of whatever trance he was in. Then another stone struck the car and then another. Peregrine stopped. Another driver might have accelerated, but not Perry. ‘What the hell is going on? Somebody’s throwing stones at us, they’re throwing on purpose.’ He got out of the car.

We were now inside the defile with yellow rocks towering up on either side. James was saying something to Peregrine, perhaps telling him to get back into the car. I had time to think: Ben has arranged a brilliant ambush, he has chosen just the right place. Then the windscreen suddenly shattered. A sizable rock, pushed over the edge from above, had fallen directly upon it. With a sizzling report the glass became white, crackled and opaque. The rock rebounded on the radiator, dinting it, and scudded onto the road. Peregrine uttered a cry of rage.

Titus had jumped out of the car and I followed him. Gilbert stayed where he was. James moved into the driver’s seat and, with a handkerchief wrapped around his hand, punched a hole in the glass. Then he too got out.

‘There! There!’ Peregrine was shouting and pointing upward.

A stone flew past my head. I looked up and outlined against the blue sky I saw Rosina. She was kneeling on one knee on top of one of the highest rocks and had evidently provided herself beforehand with an arsenal of missiles. She was black, a black witch, wearing something that looked like a peasant woman’s shawl. I saw her snarling mouth and her teeth. It soon too became apparent that her main target was Peregrine. A stone struck him on the chest, another on the shoulder.

Instead of seeking cover he began, still bellowing, to return the fire. Stones were flying round Rosina’s head, but I think none of them hit her.

‘Who is this lady?’ said James in his rather fastidious tone.

‘Peregrine’s former wife.’

‘Need she detain us?’

‘Perry, get back in the car, get back in the car!’ I grabbed his coat tail. He pulled himself angrily away and stooped to pick up more ammunition.

A stone struck me painfully upon the hand and I returned hastily towards the car.

‘Rosina! Rosina!’ It was Titus, shouting, waving. It was like a war cry. He gesticulated and danced. I pulled him back with me. James got hold of Perry. In a moment we were all back inside and Peregrine was accelerating violently. The car flashed onward and round the curve to where the village road forked inland.

Here Peregrine stopped the car with a jerk, went round to the boot and came back with a jack with which he violently knocked out the rest of the windscreen, showering us all with white fragments of glass. He inspected the dint on the radiator. ‘What the hell is that bloody bitch doing here?’ he said, but not in a tone that seemed to require an answer. A little later he said thoughtfully, ‘She used to play cricket at school.’

The bizarre violence of the incident had left me dazed, and I returned with a sick shock to my acute consciousness of Hartley who, during the whole of the episode, had not moved, and seemed not to have noticed what was happening. Then I suddenly remembered what Gilbert had said about hearing a woman talking in the bungalow last night. Had Rosina carried out her obscene threat of going to ‘console’ Ben, and if so had that been why Ben was not ready to receive Hartley last night? How else had Rosina known we were coming? This thought filled me with confused helpless anger.

By now we had passed through the village, past the church where I had talked so shyly with Hartley so long ago, and turned up the hill towards the bungalows. Peregrine, driving savagely, was red in the face, and remained so completely absorbed in his own thoughts that he took no further active part in the proceedings and seemed scarcely to know what was going on.

When I had imagined Hartley going home I had not imagined opening the car door and ushering her out and unlatching the gate and walking up the path, at any moment of which proceedings I could have cried out ‘No! No more!’ and seized her hand and dragged her away. I did not do so. I did not touch her. She slipped off the scarf and the blue coat and slithered quickly out of the car. I opened the gate for her and followed her up the path. James followed me, then Titus looking frightened, Gilbert also looking frightened, then Peregrine in some kind of private rage.

Hartley rang the bell. Its sweet chime had scarcely sounded when there was a volley of fierce barks, followed by the sound of human cursing. A door banged and the barking was less audible. Then Ben opened the door. I think he would have liked to let her in and shut it again, only in accordance with orders issued by James I went in quickly on her heels and the others came after me.

I had, equally, not imagined the scene inside the house, or in so far as I had imagined it I had pictured either an instant fracas or else a solemn council, with Hartley somehow featuring in both. As it was, no sooner was Hartley inside the door than she vanished. In a second she had slipped away like a mouse and gone into the bedroom and shut the door. (The main bedroom that is, not the little room where I had talked to Ben.)

The dog, which seemed to be a rather large animal, went on barking as an accompaniment to what was going on in the hall. Ben had retreated to the sitting room door, Gilbert was leaning against the now closed front door, Peregrine was angrily inspecting the picture of the knight in armour, James was looking at Ben with an air of interest, and Ben and Titus were staring at each other.

Ben spoke first, ‘Well, Titus, then.’

‘Hello.’

‘You coming home with mummy, you going to stay here now?’

Titus was silent, trembling and biting his lip.

‘Going to stay here now, eh? Eh?’

Titus shook his head. He said in a strangled whisper, ‘No-I think I’ll stay-away.’

I said, ‘Titus is not my son, but I propose to adopt him.’ My voice quavered with nervousness and the words sounded unconvincing, almost frivolous. Ben ignored them. Still staring at Titus he made a violent throwing-away movement. Titus winced.

Ben was the shortest man present, but physically the most formidable. His bull neck and big shoulders seemed to be bursting the old khaki shirt which was now too small for them. His black belt was pulled in tight under a slight pot-belly, but he looked in good condition. He glowed with sunburn, his short mousy hair stood up like fur, he had recently shaved. His hands hung by his sides and he kept waggling his fingers and rising slightly on his toes as if about to perform some physical feat. The hall was stuffy as I remembered it, but the smell was different, nastier. I noticed several bowls full of dead roses. The dog had now fallen silent.

I said, ‘Did you read my letter?’

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