Free Death of a Huntsman by H.E. Bates

early Spring evening when he was doing the night run from London to the West, a journey that he could do in six and a half hours, if things went well, with a full load on the truck. That night he was about half way, somewhere on the long chalk switch-backs about Salisbury, when he blew a gasket. An almost full moon was shining starkly on the slopes of white hillsides, where leafing bushes of hawthorn looked very much like shadowy herds of cattle crouched and sleeping. It was almost eleven o’clock by that time and he pulled up at the first house he saw.
    He was glad to see a light in one window and still more glad to see the twin white cups of a telephone on the side of the house and the wires running across the garden, above a neglected mass of old lilac and apple trees, in the clear moon. At first sight it did not seem to be a very large house; he was deceived by the flat brick front, by what was really a large hooded doorway that through long years had become dwarfed to a mere hole under a drab arch of dusty ivy. It was only later that he discovered that its frontal narrowness concealed a house that seemed to stretch back without ending; as ifsuccessive owners had been shamed by the flat funereal front into adding piece after piece behind, until the final glassy crown had been achieved by putting on a large hexagonal conservatory at the back.
    She came to the door with a book in her hand and wearing a dressing gown. At least, that first time, he had the idea that it was a dressing gown. Afterwards he saw her once more in the same garment, in better light, and he realized then that it was a dark blue woollen dress, old-fashioned, waistless, tied about the middle with a cord. She continually played with this cord, making motions of tying and untying it, without achieving any change in it at all.
    He apologized and raised his cap to her and asked if he might use the telephone.
    â€˜What is the matter?’ she said.
    â€˜My truck,’ he said. ‘I blew a gasket. I want to get a garage——’
    â€˜There’s no telephone here,’ she said.
    He said something about the wires going across the garden but she said:
    â€˜I had it cut off. There wasn’t much use for it. Nobody called much.’ And then: ‘There’s a box half a mile down the road.’
    He said thank you and how sorry he was for disturbing her at that time of night and asked which way the box was.
    â€˜It’s on the corner of the little road. The one on the left you passed a little way back.’ Up to that moment she had been framed with an almost faceless obscurity underthe canopy of ivy, against a background of a single electric bulb of meagre wattage that seemed to bathe the hall and staircase behind her in a kind of smoky orange varnish. Now she came out into the moonlight and said:
    â€˜I’ll just show you. Where’s your truck? Where are you from?’
    â€˜London,’ he said and he found she was looking with a sort of microscopic, eager curiosity, almost queerly, up into his face.
    â€˜London,’ she said. ‘You drive all that way? This time of night?’
    â€˜Three nights a week,’ he said.
    â€˜Where do you sleep?’
    â€˜Sleep before I start,’ he said. ‘I get five minutes doss sometimes in the cab——’
    He still could not see her face very clearly in the moonlight and now he discovered it was for two reasons. She had a habit of walking with her head down, as if she was fascinated by her hands playing with such restless indetermination with the cord of her dress. Her face too was three parts obscured by a frame of thick black hair. Afterwards he saw her hair in that particular fashion, like the dress, only once more, but that first night it gave him an impression of untidy, uneasy strength, so that he found himself suddenly glad that the telephone box was down the road.
    Then she said: ‘Does it mean your truck is stranded? Can’t you