answer her questions, without their realising what she was up to; and naturally, if it once got around the village that she was interviewing them for her thesis and writing-up everything they said aboutthe “haunted” cottage, then their reactions to her questions would no longer be “spontaneous and unbiased”.
Her phrase, not mine. For it seemed to me (though of course I didn’t tell her so) that their reactions were probably pretty suspect anyway. Not that I’d ever seen her in action: the hours she spent on “field-work” (as she called this business of chatting-up startled yokels leaning over gates) seemed always to be just exactly those same hours that I spent brooding over my typewriter in my room above the saloon-bar, and so I can’t speak with authority, I can only guess. But my guess was that the yokels, having recovered from their first stupefaction, would have fixed their rustic gaze on that smashing head of hair and on those wide, green-flecked eyes, and would have proceeded to do whatever it seemed necessary to do to keep the goods around. Yokels aren’t stupid—that I have learned—and as soon as they discovered that what kept her chatting them up was a bit of well-chosen grue about Green End Cottage, why, then, a bit of grue they’d give her, tailored to the occasion. They wouldn’t be short of plots; after all, they all watched television, and their knowledge of Village Superstitions probably matched hers easily, werewolf for werewolf.
But I am digressing. The validity or otherwise of Theresa’s research methods was irrelevant to my immediate predicament. The point is that I had promised—no matter how light-heartedly—that I would keep the subject of her thesis secret; and so now, confronted by Miss Fry and her outrageous accusations, I was left with no way of defending myself. To have pointed out to Miss Fry that if Theresa was scared (and I happened to know she wasn’t) then she must be scaring herself, with her own research project—this would have been a breach of trust of which I’m not capable: not when the trusting is done by a beautiful girl, anyway.
So, “Er …” I said; and, “Um … well … you …” I must have sounded guilty as hell. Miss Fry simply overrode my feeble protestations, and in a loud, overbearing voice, which carried from one end of the village street to the other, she got on with the case against me. How dared I use my talent for fiction (yes, it had got around that I had come here to write)—how dared I use thistalent for the perverted purpose of terrifying a suggestible young girl? (Theresa suggestible—I should be so lucky!) and trying to frighten her into giving up her tenancy of the cottage! Only a couple of mornings ago, before Miss Fry was even out of bed, it seemed that the poor girl had come knocking on her door in a state of near-hysteria, babbling of disembodied voices, of skeleton knuckles rapping on the window, of phantom footsteps and demonic howlings round and about the cottage …
And so on and so on. I knew it was all lies, because I’d seen Theresa both yesterday and the day before, and hadn’t heard a word about any of it. Why Miss Fry should go to the trouble of concocting this ludicrous rigmarole I couldn’t imagine; maybe old maids of sixty were like that? The one thing that did get me on the raw, though, was the implication that I —a serious and up-and-coming novelist in the Social Realism tradition—could possibly, in any circumstances whatever, have employed my “Talent for fiction” on such a load of out-dated Gothick balderdash! I was outraged, I felt professionally insulted, and I turned on Miss Fry in a sort of impotent fury—impotent because I couldn’t say any of the things I really wanted to without breaking my promise to Theresa.
Still, I did my best. I didn’t exactly call her a meddling old fool—something in those snapping, Colonel’s daughter eyes precluded such language—but I think the idea must
Her phrase, not mine. For it seemed to me (though of course I didn’t tell her so) that their reactions were probably pretty suspect anyway. Not that I’d ever seen her in action: the hours she spent on “field-work” (as she called this business of chatting-up startled yokels leaning over gates) seemed always to be just exactly those same hours that I spent brooding over my typewriter in my room above the saloon-bar, and so I can’t speak with authority, I can only guess. But my guess was that the yokels, having recovered from their first stupefaction, would have fixed their rustic gaze on that smashing head of hair and on those wide, green-flecked eyes, and would have proceeded to do whatever it seemed necessary to do to keep the goods around. Yokels aren’t stupid—that I have learned—and as soon as they discovered that what kept her chatting them up was a bit of well-chosen grue about Green End Cottage, why, then, a bit of grue they’d give her, tailored to the occasion. They wouldn’t be short of plots; after all, they all watched television, and their knowledge of Village Superstitions probably matched hers easily, werewolf for werewolf.
But I am digressing. The validity or otherwise of Theresa’s research methods was irrelevant to my immediate predicament. The point is that I had promised—no matter how light-heartedly—that I would keep the subject of her thesis secret; and so now, confronted by Miss Fry and her outrageous accusations, I was left with no way of defending myself. To have pointed out to Miss Fry that if Theresa was scared (and I happened to know she wasn’t) then she must be scaring herself, with her own research project—this would have been a breach of trust of which I’m not capable: not when the trusting is done by a beautiful girl, anyway.
So, “Er …” I said; and, “Um … well … you …” I must have sounded guilty as hell. Miss Fry simply overrode my feeble protestations, and in a loud, overbearing voice, which carried from one end of the village street to the other, she got on with the case against me. How dared I use my talent for fiction (yes, it had got around that I had come here to write)—how dared I use thistalent for the perverted purpose of terrifying a suggestible young girl? (Theresa suggestible—I should be so lucky!) and trying to frighten her into giving up her tenancy of the cottage! Only a couple of mornings ago, before Miss Fry was even out of bed, it seemed that the poor girl had come knocking on her door in a state of near-hysteria, babbling of disembodied voices, of skeleton knuckles rapping on the window, of phantom footsteps and demonic howlings round and about the cottage …
And so on and so on. I knew it was all lies, because I’d seen Theresa both yesterday and the day before, and hadn’t heard a word about any of it. Why Miss Fry should go to the trouble of concocting this ludicrous rigmarole I couldn’t imagine; maybe old maids of sixty were like that? The one thing that did get me on the raw, though, was the implication that I —a serious and up-and-coming novelist in the Social Realism tradition—could possibly, in any circumstances whatever, have employed my “Talent for fiction” on such a load of out-dated Gothick balderdash! I was outraged, I felt professionally insulted, and I turned on Miss Fry in a sort of impotent fury—impotent because I couldn’t say any of the things I really wanted to without breaking my promise to Theresa.
Still, I did my best. I didn’t exactly call her a meddling old fool—something in those snapping, Colonel’s daughter eyes precluded such language—but I think the idea must
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