The Collected Works. Josephine Tey
in exchange for a rabbit skin.”
“No. Nothing like that. Mends teapot handles and such.”
“Oh. Does he make much?” This for the sake of keeping the driver on the subject.
“Enough to be going on with. And he cadges an old coat or a pair of boots now and then.”
Erica said nothing for a moment, and she wondered if the thumping of her heart was as audible to these two men as it was in her ears. An old coat, now and then. What should she say now? She could not say: Did he have a coat the day you saw him? That would be a complete give-away.
“He sounds interesting,” she said, at last. “Mustard, please,” to Bill. “I should like to meet him. But I suppose he is at the other end of the county by now. What day did you see him?”
“Lemme see. I picked him up outside Dymchurch and dropped him near Tonbridge. That was a week last Monday.”
So it hadn’t been Harrogate. What a pity! He had sounded so hopeful a subject, with his desire for coats and boots, his wandering ways, and his friendliness with lorry-drivers who get a man away quickly from possibly unfriendly territory. Oh, well, it was no good imagining that it was going to be as easy as this had promised to be.
Bill set down the mustard by her plate. “Not Monday,” he said. “Not that it makes any difference. But Jimmy was here unloading stores when you went by. Tuesday, it was.”
Not that it made any difference! Erica took a great mouthful of eggs and bacon to quiet her singing heart.
For a little there was silence in The Rising Sun; partly because Erica had a masculine habit of silence while she ate, partly because she had not yet made up her mind what it would be both politic and productive to say next. She was startled into anxiety when the lorry-driver thrust his mug away from him and rose to go.
“But you haven’t told me about Harrogate What’s-His-Name!”
“What is there to tell?”
“Well, a travelling china-mender must be chock full of interest. I would like to meet him and have a talk.”
“He isn’t much of a talker.”
“I’d make it worth his while.”
Bill laughed. “If you was to give Harrogate five bob, he’d talk his head off. And for ten he’ll tell you how he found the south pole.”
Erica turned to the more sympathetic one of the two.
“You know him? Does he have a home, do you know?”
“In winter he stays put, mostly, I think. But in summer he lives in a tent.”
“Living with Queenie Webster somewhere near Pembury,” put in the driver, who didn’t like the shift of interest to Bill.
He put down some coppers on the scrubbed table and moved to the door.
“And if you’re making it worth anyone’s while, I’d square Queenie first if I was you.”
“Thank you,” said Erica. “I’ll remember. Thank you for your help.”
The genuine warmth of gratitude in her voice made him pause. He stood in the doorway considering her. “Tramps are a queer taste for a girl with a healthy appetite,” he said, and went out to his lorry.
13
Erica’s healthy appetite extended to bread and marmalade and several cups of tea, but she absorbed little information with the nourishment. Bill, for all his willingness to give her anything she wanted, knew very little about Harrogate Harry. She had now to decide whether or not to leave a “warm” Dymchurch and follow the unknown and elusive Harry into the “cold” of the Tonbridge country.
“Are most tramps honest, would you say?” she asked as she was paying her bill.
“We—ll,” said Bill, thinking it out, “honest up to the point of opportunity, if you know what I mean.”
Erica knew. Not one tramp in fifty would refuse the gift of a coat lying unattended. And Harrogate Harry definitely liked to acquire coats and boots. And Harry had been in Dymchurch a week last Tuesday. Her job, therefore, was to follow the china-mender through the summer landscape until she caught up with him. If night overtook her in her search she must think of some really reassuring lie which could be telephoned to her father at Steynes to account for her absence. The need for lying caused her the first pang she had suffered so far in her self-appointed crusade; she had never needed to shut out her father from any ploy of hers. For the second time in a few hours her loyalty was divided. She had not noticed her disloyalty to Tinny; but this time she noticed and cared.
Oh, well, the day was young, and days just now were long. And Tinny might be a veteran but she was never sick or sorry. If luck held as it had begun she might still be back in her own bed at Steynes tonight. Back at Steynes—with the coat!
Her breath stopped at the very prospect.
She said good-bye to the admiring Bill, promised to recommend his breakfasts to all her friends, and set Tinny’s nose west and north through the hot flowery country. The roads were blinding now in the glare of the sky, the horizons beginning to swim. Tinny sweltered stoutly through the green furnace, and was soon as comfortable as a frying-pan. In spite of her eagerness Erica was forced every few miles to pause and open both doors while Tinny cooled. Yes, she really must get another car.
Near Kippings Cross, on the main Tonbridge road, she repeated as tactics what she had by accident found serviceable: she pulled up for lunch at a wayside hut. But this time luck was lacking in the service. The hut was kept by a jolly woman with a flow of conversation but no interest in tramps. She had all the normal woman’s intolerance of a waster, and “didn’t encourage vagrants.” Erica ate sparingly and drank her bottled coffee, glad of the temporary shade; but presently she rose and went out to find a “better place.” The “better” referring not to food but to possible information. With a self-control beyond praise she turned her eyes away from the endless tea-gardens, green and cool, with gay cloths gleaming like wet stones in the shadows. Not for her that luxury today. Tea-gardens knew nothing of tramps.
She turned down a lane to Goudhurst, and sought an inn. Inns had always china to mend, and now that she was in Harrogate’s home country, so to speak, she would surely find someone who knew him.
She ate cold underdone beef and green salad in a room as beautiful as any at Steynes, and prayed that one, at least, of the dishes on her table, should be cracked. When the tinned fruit appeared in a broken china rose-bowl she nearly whooped aloud.
Yes, the waitress agreed, it was a pretty bowl. She didn’t know if it was valuable or not, she was only there for the season (it being understood that the possible value of household goods could not interest anyone whose playground was the world). Yes, she supposed that someone local mended their china but she didn’t know. Yes, she could ask, of course.
The landlord, asked who had mended the china bowl so beautifully, said that that particular bowl was bought just as it was, in a job lot of stuff over at Matfield Green. And anyhow it was so old a mend that the man that did it was probably dead by now. But if Erica wanted a man to mend her china, there was a good travelling man who came round now and then. Palmer, by name. He could put fifty pieces together when he was sober without showing a join. But you’d got to be sure he was sober.
Erica listened to the vices and virtues of Palmer, and asked if he was the only one in the district.
The only one the landlord knew. But you couldn’t find a better than Harry.
“Harry?”
That was his name. Harrogate Harry they called him. No, the landlord did not know where he was to be found. Lived in a tent Brenchley way, so he understood. Not the