terrace below, and then went on down to the courtyard of the hotel. The waiter followed them, carrying their luggage. Quillan stood up.
Miss Ticher imagined ironing his blazer. She imagined his face as a child. For a moment, affected as she afterwards thought by the red aperitif, it seemed that Miss Grimshaw was the stranger: Miss Grimshaw was a round woman, unknown to either of them, who had materialized suddenly, looking for a chat. Having no one’s blazer to iron herself, Miss Grimshaw was jealous, for in her life she had known only friendship.
‘In 1934,’ said Miss Ticher, ‘when you were five months old, Mr Quillan, I was still hopeful of marriage. A few years later I would have understood the woman who wished to take you from your pram.’
Miss Ticher’s face was crimson as she spoke those words. She saw Miss Grimshaw looking at it. She saw her looking at her as she clambered to her feet and held a hand out to the detective. ‘Goodbye,’ Miss Ticher said. ‘It was nice to hear your childhood memories.’
He went away in his abrupt manner. They watched him walking the length of the terrace. Miss Ticher watched his descent to the courtyard.
‘My dear,’ said Miss Grimshaw with her laugh, ‘he bowled you over.’ The story for the common-room was even better now. ‘A fat man,’ Miss Grimshaw heard herself saying on the first evening of term, ‘who talked to Agnes about his childhood memories in a place called Youghal. He had fantasies as well, about some woman pilfering him from his pram, as though a woman would. In her tipsiness Agnes entered into all of it. I thought she’d cry.’
Miss Ticher sat down and sipped the drink the man had bought her. Miss Grimshaw said:
‘Thank heavens he’s not staying here.’
‘You shouldn’t have said he made up that story.’
‘Why ever not?’
You hurt him.’
‘Hurt him?’ cried Miss Grimshaw.
‘He’s the victim of his wretched childhood –’
‘You’re tipsy, Agnes.’
Miss Ticher drank the last of her red aperitif, and Miss Grimshaw glared through her shining spectacles, thinking that her friend looked as if she’d just put down a cheap romantic novel.
‘It’s time for lunch,’ announced Miss Grimshaw snappishly, rising to her feet. ‘Come on now.’
Miss Ticher shook her head. ‘Near the lighthouse there’s a shop,’ she said, ‘that sold in those days Rainbow Toffees. A woman like you or me might have seen there a child who ran away from loneliness.’
‘Lunch, dear,’ said Miss Grimshaw.
‘How very cruel the world is.’
Miss Grimshaw, who in reply had been about to say with asperity that no one must let emotional nonsense play tricks on the imagination, instead said nothing at all. Three unnamed drinks and the conversation of a grubby detective had taken an absurd toll of Agnes Ticher in the broad light of day. Miss Grimshaw no longer wished to think about the matter; she did not wish to recall the words that Agnes Ticher in her tipsiness had spoken, nor ever now to retail the episode in the common-room; it was better not to dwell on any of it. They were, after all, friends and there could remain unspoken secrets between them.
‘It is all second best,’ said the voice of Agnes Ticher, but when Miss Grimshaw looked at her friend she knew that Miss Ticher had not spoken. Miss Grimshaw went away, jangling the shells in the yellow plastic bag and screening from her mind the thoughts that were attempting to invade it. There was a smell of garlic on the air, and from the kitchen came the rich odour of the local bouillabaisse, the favourite dish of both of them.
In a public library, looking through the appropriate columns in a businesslike way, Mr Jeffs came across the Hammonds’ advertisement in
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Hammond vaguely, ‘I think this table is still for sale. Let me just go and look.’
Mr Jeffs saw her in his mind’s eye going to look. He visualized a fattish, middle-aged woman with light-blue hair, and shapely legs coming out of narrow shoes.
‘It is my husband’s affair, really,’ explained Mrs Hammond. ‘Or I suppose it is. Although strictly speaking the table is my property. Left to me by my grandmother. Yes, it’s still there. No one, I’m sure, has yet made an offer for this table.’
‘In that case –’ said Mr Jeffs.
‘It was foolish of me to imagine that my husband might have had an offer, or that he might have sold it. He would naturally not have done so without consultation between us. It being my table, really. Although he worded the, advertisement and saw to putting it in the paper. I have a daughter at the toddling stage, Mr Jeffs. I’m often too exhausted to think about the composition of advertisements.’
‘A little daughter. Well, that is nice,’ said Mr Jeffs, looking at the ceiling and not smiling. ‘You’re kept busy, eh?’
‘Why not come round if the table interests? It’s completely genuine and is often commented upon.’
‘I will do that,’ announced Mr Jeffs, naming an hour.
Replacing the receiver, Mr Jeffs, a small man, a dealer in furniture, considered the voice of Mrs Hammond. He wondered if the voice belonged to a woman who knew her p’s and q’s where antique furniture was concerned. He had been wrong, quite clearly, to have seen her as middle-aged and plumpish. She was younger if she had a toddling child, and because she had spoken of exhaustion he visualized her again, this time in soft slippers, with a strand of hair across her forehead. ‘It’s a cultured voice,’ said Mr Jeffs to himself and went on to believe that there was money in the Hammond house, and probably a maid or two, in spite of the protest about exhaustion. Mr Jeffs, who had made his small fortune through his attention to such nagging details, walked on the bare boards of his
