Free Death of a Huntsman by H.E. Bates Page B

first and then forgetting again. In this distracted fashion it was some time before she remembered she had promised him some food.
    â€˜I’m sorry. What would you like? Meat or something? Some cheese?’
    â€˜Cheese,’ he said, ‘thank you.’
    She went away and came back after some moments with the bone of a leg of lamb and a loaf of bread and a big bone-handled carving knife. She held the bone in one hand and sliced off chunks of meat with the other and laid them between pieces of bread.
    â€˜You remind me of somebody,’ she said. ‘I’ve got an idea I’ve seen you before.’
    â€˜Perhaps going by in the truck,’ he said.
    â€˜No,’ she said, ‘it couldn’t be that.’
    She seemed to lapse into a momentary coma of thought, disturbed, stubbing her cigarette absently into a saucer, her head down.
    â€˜Tell me about yourself,’ she said. ‘I know you live in London and you come by three nights a week. What else? Where do you live?’
    â€˜Paddington.’
    â€˜Married?’
    â€˜No,’ he said. ‘Not me.’
    â€˜Not you?’ she said. ‘A young fellow like you?’
    â€˜Pick ’em up and lay ’em down,’ he said, ‘that’s me for the moment. I don’t want to get tied up. Who wants a night driver anyway? They want you home and in bed.’
    She laughed for the first time. Her voice had been pitched rather low, much as if she had become fixed in the habit of talking to herself, but the laugh was several notes higher, lifting, rather delicate, a pleasant singing spring of relief.
    â€˜You make me laugh,’ she said.
    She turned up the flame of the spirit kettle and then poured more water on the tea. She filled his cup and her own again and said:
    â€˜When will you be going back?’
    â€˜Ought to be going back tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Depends on the gasket.’
    â€˜It’s funny about people,’ she said. ‘You coming by here hundreds of times and then you suddenly have trouble and come in and here we are talking.’
    It was after midnight when the breakdown truck arrived. As he walked out into the road with the driver he had an impression that she was coming too, but when he turned she had gone from the doorway and back into the house.
    It was while he and the driver were still fixing the tow-chain that he heard her coming across the road. She was running with light, almost palpitating steps and she had a vacuum flask and a paper parcel in her hands.
    â€˜I almost thought I wouldn’t catch you,’ she said. ‘It’s just a flask of tea and the lamb-bone. You can have it at the garage while you wait. I saw how you tucked into the lamb——’
    â€˜That’s kind of you,’ he said.
    â€˜Not a bit. You can bring the flask back when you come by again. I’d be glad of it back.’
    She stood in the road, huddled, thoughtful, watching the two of them hitching the tow-chain, for about ten minutes longer. Her face was dead white in the moon. When the chain was fixed and just before he got up into the cab he thanked her again and said good-night. She lifted a thin arm in farewell and at the same moment he heard from the direction of the house a man’s voice calling, in a snapped, thin screech, what he afterwards knew was her Christian name:
    â€˜Francie! Francie! For heaven’s sake where are you?—Francie!’
    And as if it had nothing to do with her or she had not heard it or did not care if she heard it she stood impassively by the trucks and said to him up in the cab:
    â€˜Don’t forget the flask, will you? I shall be here.’
    Before he could speak the voice screeched for her again but she still stood there, unmoved, in impassive indifference, waiting for the trucks to go. He called down that he would not forget the flask. In that moment he sawher smile again and that was how he came to see her for the