scarf.
Her hair was as long, as golden and nearly as thick as Lyn’s. It fell down over her shoulders and she pushed it back away from her face. She laughed at his look of consternation. It wasn’t Lyn’s face at all but sharp and knowing, the nose sprinkled with freckles, the eyes a cat’s green.
‘I can’t tie my head up for the rest of my life,’ she said.
She was holding her empty glass. Stephen didn’t want to have to buy her another drink. He had begun to feel uneasy, taking a woman into a pub, buying a drink for her, being seen with her perhaps. It had never happened to him before and he felt it wasn’t quite a fair way to behave to Lyn.
‘Time I was on my way.’
She seemed surprised. ‘Let me buy you one.’
‘No, no, of course not,’ he said. ‘I’ve a long walk ahead of me.’
In spite of what he had just said he might have shirked it if the 6.15 bus hadn’t just gone. He set off but it was wearisome to have to stick to the road. What did Malm’s parting shot mean? That he was forbidden the moor? For how long? And what possible right had the police to lay such injunctions on an innocent man? Stephen had the impotent, resentful, revengeful feeling about that which a lover has when warned by more powerful authority off a girl. And he shared that lover’s certainty that if he obeyed his life wouldn’t be worth living. There was no time, since the departure of his mother, when the moor had not been to him a refuge, a domain, and in some curious way, a closer friend than any human being. It brought him a hollow, slightly sick, sensation to think of being estranged from it.
He must keep to the road. To the left of him now were the Foinmen, to the right the Banks of Knamber,but he must not go among the standing stones nor the birch trees, it was as if an invisible wall had been erected between them and him. And this had been brought about by the murderer of those girls, this man who had usurped Vangmoor and made himself a greater master of it than he.
It was a beautiful evening, the air soft and hushed, the distant hills floating in a bluish haze. But Stephen kept his eyes on the white road ahead as if he were a blinkered horse or as if there were rows of houses, identical and dull-facaded, on either side of him. At the stop nearest to Knamber Hole he waited and caught the 7.15 bus.
8
Next day
the CID sent for him again.
This time it was like a psychotherapy session, or what Stephen imagined such a session would be, only with three psychiatrists and one patient-victim. Manciple wasn’t there. Instead of him there was a chief inspector called Hook. Hook did most of the talking. It was easy to see he had been called in because he was used to this kind of thing, to asking the right kind of cutting-through-to-the-bone questions and perhaps to breaking men. Only you couldn’t break and confess when you had done nothing.
Hook wanted Stephen’s life described to him. He wanted Stephen to say exactly what he did on one typical day. What was there so special about the moor that he was so attached to it? Was it a fact that he was accustomed to ten- or even twenty-milewalks? How long had he been married? Why had he no children?
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’
‘You’re not ashamed to tell us, are you? There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Some would say there are too many people in this world without you adding to them.’
‘Let’s say that’s the answer, then.’
Hook said he understood, he had been told, that Stephen was a grandson of Tace the Vangmoor novelist. How had that come about since Tace had apparently been childless? Oh, through an
illegitimate
child? He was by way of being an illegitimate grandson of Tace’s?
Coffee and biscuits arrived at ten. It was a misty morning and to Stephen’s relief the sun was sluggish in appearing. The room was cool and smelt of some sort of antiseptic that had been used in the water when the floor was washed. Troth had a
Her hair was as long, as golden and nearly as thick as Lyn’s. It fell down over her shoulders and she pushed it back away from her face. She laughed at his look of consternation. It wasn’t Lyn’s face at all but sharp and knowing, the nose sprinkled with freckles, the eyes a cat’s green.
‘I can’t tie my head up for the rest of my life,’ she said.
She was holding her empty glass. Stephen didn’t want to have to buy her another drink. He had begun to feel uneasy, taking a woman into a pub, buying a drink for her, being seen with her perhaps. It had never happened to him before and he felt it wasn’t quite a fair way to behave to Lyn.
‘Time I was on my way.’
She seemed surprised. ‘Let me buy you one.’
‘No, no, of course not,’ he said. ‘I’ve a long walk ahead of me.’
In spite of what he had just said he might have shirked it if the 6.15 bus hadn’t just gone. He set off but it was wearisome to have to stick to the road. What did Malm’s parting shot mean? That he was forbidden the moor? For how long? And what possible right had the police to lay such injunctions on an innocent man? Stephen had the impotent, resentful, revengeful feeling about that which a lover has when warned by more powerful authority off a girl. And he shared that lover’s certainty that if he obeyed his life wouldn’t be worth living. There was no time, since the departure of his mother, when the moor had not been to him a refuge, a domain, and in some curious way, a closer friend than any human being. It brought him a hollow, slightly sick, sensation to think of being estranged from it.
He must keep to the road. To the left of him now were the Foinmen, to the right the Banks of Knamber,but he must not go among the standing stones nor the birch trees, it was as if an invisible wall had been erected between them and him. And this had been brought about by the murderer of those girls, this man who had usurped Vangmoor and made himself a greater master of it than he.
It was a beautiful evening, the air soft and hushed, the distant hills floating in a bluish haze. But Stephen kept his eyes on the white road ahead as if he were a blinkered horse or as if there were rows of houses, identical and dull-facaded, on either side of him. At the stop nearest to Knamber Hole he waited and caught the 7.15 bus.
8
Next day
the CID sent for him again.
This time it was like a psychotherapy session, or what Stephen imagined such a session would be, only with three psychiatrists and one patient-victim. Manciple wasn’t there. Instead of him there was a chief inspector called Hook. Hook did most of the talking. It was easy to see he had been called in because he was used to this kind of thing, to asking the right kind of cutting-through-to-the-bone questions and perhaps to breaking men. Only you couldn’t break and confess when you had done nothing.
Hook wanted Stephen’s life described to him. He wanted Stephen to say exactly what he did on one typical day. What was there so special about the moor that he was so attached to it? Was it a fact that he was accustomed to ten- or even twenty-milewalks? How long had he been married? Why had he no children?
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’
‘You’re not ashamed to tell us, are you? There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Some would say there are too many people in this world without you adding to them.’
‘Let’s say that’s the answer, then.’
Hook said he understood, he had been told, that Stephen was a grandson of Tace the Vangmoor novelist. How had that come about since Tace had apparently been childless? Oh, through an
illegitimate
child? He was by way of being an illegitimate grandson of Tace’s?
Coffee and biscuits arrived at ten. It was a misty morning and to Stephen’s relief the sun was sluggish in appearing. The room was cool and smelt of some sort of antiseptic that had been used in the water when the floor was washed. Troth had a
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