A Village Affair

CHAPTER SEVEN

Martin Jordan and Henry Dunne met for lunch in the White Hart in Salisbury. Henry had telephoned Martin at his office and said, rather mysteriously, that he had something to discuss and could they meet somewhere that their crowd didn't frequent. Martin said what about the White Hart as it was so large, and so they met there in the foyer, conspicuous in their moleskin trousers and tweed jackets among two busloads of spring tourists, one checking in and one out, in a welter of nylon suitcases and quilted coats in pastel colours.

Henry found them a table in the corner of the bar and went away for two pints of beer and several rounds of prawn sandwiches. When he came back he said, 'I sneaked a look at The Grey House the other day. I must say, you're doing a great job. John's a wonderful fellow, but of course he never much minds how things look.'

Martin was extremely pleased. He had worked tirelessly at weekends in the garden, and was allotting himself four hours' outside painting a week. Alice said 'Oh well done' rather absently to him, quite often, but he didn't feel she quite took in the scale of his achievements, and anyway, he liked other people to appreciate the improvements he was making. He shrugged his shoulders self-deprecatingly.

"Those mahonias had really had it-'

'Awful things. Only worth it for the scent of the flowers in March-'

'Absolutely.'

Henry took a large bite of sandwich, chewed, swallowed, took a pull at his beer and said, in a much more solemn voice, 'Martin, nice as it is to see you, this isn't just a social lunch.'

'I rather gathered that-'

'Fact is, I'm here as Sir Ralph's emissary. To test the water. To put something to you.' He took another bite. 'A proposition.'

Martin immediately and wildly thought that Sir Ralph might want to buy back The Grey House. For all the difficulties involved in getting there, now he was there he felt extremely possessive about it as well as being conscious that living there added several social cubits to his stature. He put on a soberly considering expression.

'I won't beat about the bush,' Henry said. Thing is, Sir Ralph needs a new solicitor. He's decided he must have local advice, particularly for the estate and - this is strictly in confidence - I think he's fallen out with the London lot, naming no names. He wants to change a lot of things - I'll tell you about that later - and he asked me who I would recommend. I suggested your outfit. He thought for a bit and said why not you.'

Martin was scarlet.

'I - I'm not a senior partner-'

'I said that. He said he didn't mind about that, and that one day you would be. Fact is, I think it's your living in The Grey House that's done it. He feels it would be keeping everything in the family, so to speak.'

'I haven't any experience in estate work-'

'I have.'

'I say,' Martin said, and beamed.

'Like it?'

'I'll say. That is - if I can do it-'

'Nice piece of business to brandish at your senior partners. I wouldn't like to promise, but it's my guess that estate business will lead to all personal business too in the end, Lady Unwin and all. Pitcombe Park's pet lawyer. Thing is,' he looked at Martin over the rim of his beer glass, 'it'd help me a lot, having you on my side. He can be the devil to handle, used to having his own way. Clodagh takes after him.'

Martin was full of excited generosity.

'She's amazing. She's cheered us all up like anything. Allie's quite different and the children think she's wonderful.'

That's another thing. You see, the Unwins are pleased as Punch she's taken to you all. Any friend of Clodagh's is likely to be beamed on by them but your family is exactly what they want for her. They were in a frightful state when she got back from the States, made worse, of course, by the fact she wouldn't tell them anything. Margot was all for rushing her off to some frightfully expensive trick cyclist in London to have her head seen to. But life at The Grey House seems to have done the trick for nothing. Sir Ralph said this morning he hadn't seen Clodagh in such good form for years.'

Martin, whose private thoughts about Clodagh were of a guiltily excited kind, said, well, she was the greatest fun...

'Oh, she is. But she's a bad girl too. Has those poor old parents running round in circles.' He looked at his watch. 'Can I take it that your answer is at least a preliminary yes?'

Martin said, with enormous self-control, 'You may.'

Henry got up.

'I think the next step is - I mean, before you breathe a word at your office - to see Sir Ralph together. All right by you?'

'Absolutely.'

'Saturday morning? Sorry to cut into gardening time, but it wouldn't interfere with a working week and it's the one morning I have the remotest chance of his undivided attention for three minutes at least-'

Martin rose too.

'Suits me fine.'

They went out into the foyer which was now entirely empty except for an enormously fat woman wedged in an armchair and grasping a Curry's carrier bag on what remained of her knees beyond her stomach. Outside in

St John's Street they turned instinctively to one another and shook hands.

'Henry,' Martin said, 'I'm really awfully grateful.' 'Fingers crossed. If it comes off, I'll be the grateful

one. See you Saturday.' And then they separated, two pairs of well-polished brown brogues going purposefully off down the

Salisbury pavements among the dawdling shoppers and

the pushchairs.

Dutifully, Alice took the children down to Dummeridge for the day. Clodagh had wanted to come, but Alice had said no.

'Please. Why not? It's another pair of hands to help with Charlie-'

'I can't explain why not, I just know I couldn't handle it. Clodagh, it's duty I'm going for, not particular pleasure.'

'What am I going to do all Thursday?'

'Make us an amazing supper to come home to,' Alice said jokingly, but knowing Clodagh would take her seriously.

'OK then. But I'll have my pound of flesh some other way.'

Alice said happily, 'I know you will.'

At least the children had been pleased about going. Natasha had dressed herself with immense care in fancy white socks and a pink plastic jewellery set, including earrings, which Gwen had given her and which Alice knew would cause Cecily real grief. James had submitted to Alice's desire to compensate for the pink earrings by substituting brown lace-ups for his prized trainers with silver flashes on the heels, and Charlie, promoted from his carrycot to an egg-shaped safety seat in the back of the car, dah-dah'd contentedly to himself while taking off his first shoes and socks and throwing them on the floor.

It was a long drive, but all three were remarkably good. Alice talked to them a lot over her shoulder, because she felt nervous, and because the first thing she was going to have to say was that they couldn't, after all, stay the night. She should have said that at the outset, but she hadn't, and now Cecily would have made up beds and told Dorothy to set up the cot and altogether it was an awful prospect and all her own fault. And then, driving through Wareham, she had thought, with sudden indignation, that she had no idea why she should feel guilty about Martin's mother. Martin never seemed to.

Once this had occurred to her, her indignation grew. She was the one who made all the running with Dummeridge, and it was a running she had now made for over a decade. Just because she had been so conscientious, they all of course expected her to go on being conscientious, so that Martin would have been amazed to be told to remember Cecily's birthday himself, or to bring the children down to see her at Dummeridge. The last mile to the house, the leafy, sun-flecked familiar mile that Alice used to drive with such a joyfully lifting heart, seemed to have lost its charm entirely. She rounded the last curve of the road, went over the little stone bridge that spanned the remains of an ancient moat and pulled up in front of the studded front door with a kind of dread.

The children squealed for release like piglets and went racing into the house shouting for Cecily. Alice followed slowly with Charlie under one arm and his discarded shoes and socks in her free hand. Natasha and James and Cecily had collided on the stairs and were hugging and chattering, and, watching them, Alice felt small and cold. Charlie stretched out of her arm towards his grandmother, so Alice put him down on the flagged floor and let him stagger across on his soft bare feet, bleating for attention.

'Darling,' Cecily said at last, reaching Alice, 'this is a highlight. I've been looking forward to it so much you can't think. Richard's coming home tonight specially, so you really are honoured. I saw him lurking about with champagne bottles and I've got a salmon trout-'

'Where'm I sleeping?' James said.

'Jimmy James. Where d'you think? In your always bed-'

James, recalled to his own babyhood language, dissolved with pleasure.

'And I,' said Natasha, turning her pink bracelet admiringly on her wrist, 'am in the blue room. Where Mummy used to sleep. In the golden bed.'

It was too late. Alice made a feeble last try.

'D'you know, I've done such a dotty thing, I've forgotten all our night things-'

Cecily, jiggling Charlie in her arms, began to laugh.

'Oh darling, how funny! But it couldn't matter less. We'll just have to put Charlie in a hot-water-bottle cover for the night. Won't we.'

The children were visibly happy. Cecily had packed their lunch up in little baskets so that they could elude the tedium of a table and also so that she could have Alice to herself while Dorothy dotingly spooned mashed carrot and liver into Charlie in the kitchen. There were two places laid for lunch in the dining room, either side of a shallow copper bowl containing a brilliant cushion of yellow-green moss studded with scyllas. Cecily helped Alice to a fragrant stew of chicken and cashew nuts, poured her a slender glass of Chablis and said, in the businesslike tone she had promised herself she would use all day, 'Now then. I want to know when you are going to start painting again. No excuses now. Your house is almost straight, the children are settled, the village clearly thinks you are wonderful, so what are you waiting for?'

'Nothing,' Alice said coolly. 'I've started.'

Cecily stared.

'Darling!'

Two days ago.'

Cecily raised her glass.

'It's wonderful! Here's to you. Tell me all about it, exactly what happened.'

Alice was in no hurry to finish her mouthful. She said deliberately, 'Clodagh locked me into the studio. It was as simple as that. She got the children to help her and they all said I couldn't come out until teatime. At five o'clock, they unlocked the door and stood there with a chocolate cake.'

Her face was faintly glowing. It had all been so extraordinary, she had been taken completely by surprise. It had begun with Gwen coming in during the morning with a painting of a straw hat on a chair by an open french window and saying, 'I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, but this was just lying about in the spare bathroom and I picked it up and thought it was ever so pretty and then I looked and saw-'

Alice was sitting on the edge of the kitchen table sewing name-tapes on James's summer school uniform.

'Yes. I did it.'

'Mrs Jordan-'

Clodagh came over from the sink.

'Let me see.'

She turned the painting towards her and examined it.

'Hell's teeth, Alice-'

'I can't do it any more,' Alice said. 'I don't know why, I just can't, I tried and it was hopeless.'

'It's ever so clever,' Gwen said. 'Now my cousin-'

'What d'you mean, hopeless?'

'I mean that I couldn't draw or paint and so I felt rather desperate.'

'When was that?'

'About four years ago-'

'Four years? Now that's odd, because my cousin-'

'Shut up, Gwen,' Clodagh said. She peered at Alice.

'Four years is an age ago. Why don't you try again?'

'I'm afraid to.'

'Just what my cousin-'

'Afraid?' Clodagh said. 'You afraid? This is seriously good, you know, seriously.'

And then she had given the painting back to Gwen and gone back to the sink, and when she spoke again it was about a Canadian novelist called Robertson Davies that she said Alice must read. It was after lunch that it happened. Clodagh and Natasha and James had been giggling away about something and they lured Alice up to the room above the garage on the pretence of needing to find the croquet set, and simply locked her in.

'You can come out,' James had shouted, highly delighted with the whole game,'when you've painted a picture!'

At first she thought frenziedly that she couldn't, she hadn't any water, or paint rugs, but Clodagh had thought of all that. So in a curious state of being at once both exhilarated and quite calm, she had set up her easel and painted a corner of the dusty window, on whose sill John had left a half-carved duck. A couple of fronds of ivy had pushed their way in and a spider had woven a truly copybook web between the duck's head and the windowframe. She painted very fast and quite absorbedly. When they let her out she was so pleased with herself she was almost sorry they had come. She said now, with a small swagger, 'I always said I'd be able to paint at The Grey House.'

'Did you?'

'Oh yes.'

Cecily watched her. She was pleased for Alice but wished very much that it had not been Clodagh who waved the magic wand.

'It all sounds a bit melodramatic to me.'

'It was. But it worked.'

Cecily pulled herself together.

'I'm more pleased than I can say. Not least because it will get all those people off my back who think I can get them an Alice Jordan just by whistling.'

Alice took a swallow of her wine.

'I don't think I want any commissions just yet-'

'Darling, why on earth not? I thought that was the point-'

'I don't want,' Alice said, spacing the words out in a soft, even voice, 'to be beholden to anybody about anything just now. I want to be free to do what I need to do.'

'I don't think I quite understand.'

'No.'

'Could you explain?'

'No,' Alice said. 'No. I don't think I could. I just feel it very strongly.'

'Forgive me, darling,' Cecily said sharply, getting up to put a dish of big gleaming South African grapes on the table, 'but you sound like a spoiled adolescent to me.'

'I expect,' Alice said politely, 'that that is because I am not behaving exactly as you would like me to.'

Cecily sat down and pushed the grapes towards Alice.

'I have never tried to influence you in any way.'

Alice said nothing.

'If I have ever given you any kind of guidance reluctantly, mind you - it is because you asked me for it. When you came here, a gauche girl-' She stopped.

'Are you going,' Alice said serenely, 'to tell me how much I owe you? It reminds me of conversations long ago with my mother.'

Cecily held her hands together tightly to prevent herself from reaching over and slapping Alice. She closed her eyes for a second and said, 'Don't let's quarrel.'

'I don't want to.'

'No.' She opened them again and gave a small smile. 'Neither of us do.'

Alice rose.

'May I use the telephone? There's something I forgot to tell Clodagh about Martin's supper.'

'What has Clodagh to do with Martin's supper?'

'She offered to get supper for him,' said Alice as if it were the most natural thing in the world, 'because I am here.'

She went away to the kitchen telephone and rang The Grey House. There was no reply. She dialled the Park and Lady Unwin answered and was excessively friendly and said she would fetch Clodagh at once.

'I've lost,' Alice said. 'I've got to stay. Outmanoeuvred.'

'Alice,' Clodagh said. 'You're pathetic. How old are you? And I was going to do my Upper East Side Swank Foodie's Fish Curry.'

'Could you do it for Martin?'

'OK.'

'Clodagh. I'm really sorry.'

'Me too.'

'I'd better go. I'm so grateful.'

'What for? For feeding the family lawyer?'

'What?'

Tee hee,' Clodagh said. 'Serve you right for staying away. See you tomorrow-'

'What about the family lawyer?'

'I couldn't possibly,' Clodagh said, 'tell you a state secret over the telephone,' and she put the receiver down.

Alice went out into the garden where Cecily and the children were feeding the goldfish with special grains out of a little plastic cylinder.

'I hate him,' James was saying, peering into the water, 'his face is all gobbly-'

'Just like yours, my dear,' Natasha said, tossing her head to feel her earrings swing.

'All well?' Cecily said to Alice.

'Perfectly. She's going to make him a fish curry.'

'I'll make you into a curry!' James shouted excitedly at the pool. 'That's what I'll do! I'll make you into a curry!'

Natasha put her hand in her grandmother's.

'Sometimes, I'm afraid, Charlie eats beetles.'

'Does he, darling?'

Natasha sighed.

'Oh yes. He's a great responsibility. Can we go to the sea?'

It was a long, long afternoon. Alice could not believe the strength of her wishing to be at home. She looked at familiar, beloved Dummeridge in the glory of its spring garden, as if through the wrong end of a telescope, tiny, remote and impersonal. When Richard returned, she kissed him with unusual warmth and Cecily, noticing this, said before she could stop herself, 'And what has he done to deserve all this?'

'She thinks I'm going to open some champagne for her,' Richard said. 'And she's right.'

Dinner was better because Richard was determined, it seemed, to keep things impersonal. He talked about the Middle East, made Cecily talk about her last trip to America - 'Potagers are now sweeping Georgetown like measles' - and when the talk inevitably drifted round to the state of things at Pitcombe, he said, 'Guess who rang today.'

Cecily, fetching a wedge of perfect Brie from the sideboard, said, 'Who?' without interest.

'Anthony.'

'Anthony!'

'Coming home,' Richard said. 'Changing continents, changing jobs-'

'Why didn't he ring here? Why didn't he ring me?'

'I expect he will-'

'How odd,' Alice said. 'I haven't seen Anthony for almost ten years. Ten years in the Far East. Before the children-'

'He sent you his love,' Richard said to Alice.

'Me?'

'Dangerous stuff, Anthony's love-'

Cecily said, 'When is all this happening?'

'Soon. A few weeks.'

'I see. My eldest son chooses to come home after a decade at a fortnight's notice and does not seem to think it necessary to inform me.'

'He rang me with the facts,' Richard said, pouring more wine. 'I expect he will ring you for analysis and interpretation.'

Cecily drew in her breath, but she said nothing more except, after a pause, 'Darling Alice, tell Richard what's happening to Martin tonight. Too amusing-'

Richard looked at Alice. She took a leisuredly swallow of wine, returned his look and said, without any emphasis, 'He's being fed fish curry by the youngest child of Pitcombe Park.'

Richard's mouth twitched.

'Is he now.'

Alice nodded.

'I promise you.'

'Isn't that,' Richard said measuredly, 'something.'

But Alice couldn't reply because she was suddenly seized with a helpless fit of giggles.

On his way home from the office, Martin stopped at Pitcombe shop to buy seeds and brown garden twine. He was slightly irritated that Cecily had landed him with Stuart Mott who was the kind of gardener whose surface friendliness concealed a sneering contempt for any employer's opinion. If it wasn't for Stuart, Martin would not now be buying carrot and cabbage seed, both of which he considered wasteful to grow and dull to eat. He had meant to start Stuart's employment with the friendly firmness he had heard his father use to junior colleagues on the telephone, but Stuart's faintly curled lip had thrown him off key from the outset. When Cecily had telephoned him the other night with some idiotic objection to Clodagh as a friend of the family, Martin had been so aggrieved with her over her interference about Stuart that he had been quite short with her and the call had ended very coolly on both sides. Of course, being Martin, he had repented of this and had rung back to say sorry and his mother had said she quite understood, they were all clearly rather on edge just now, and no wonder. When she said that, Martin's regret quite evaporated and he wished he hadn't bothered to apologize. Standing in the shop now, spinning a rickety wire rack of seed packets, he felt indignation bubbling comfortably up in him all over again. This was aggravated further by Mr Finch coming stealthily up to him - he knew Martin was no candidate for bursts of lyric poetry - and saying, 'You've an exotic supper to look forward to tonight, Mr Jordan.' Martin said, without looking up from the printed merits of Nantes Express carrots, 'Have I?'

Lettice Deverel, who disapproved exceedingly of Mr Finch's separate and obnoxious manner to his upperand working-class customers, and who was halfobscured by a plywood unit of paper plates and doilies, said firmly, 'Mr Jordan's supper is no concern of yours, Mr Finch.'

Mr Finch tiptoed back to his counter and began to make an unnecessary pyramid of nougat bars.

'Miss Clodagh was in this afternoon,' he said in self-justifying tones, 'buying nutmeg and cinnamon. She told me they were to put in Mr Jordan's supper because Mrs Jordan is away taking the children to their grandmother.'

Lettice Deverel emerged and put a packet of sunflower seeds for the parrot down in front of Mr Finch.

'Two wrongs don't make a right, Mr Finch.'

'Seems to me,' Martin said in a jocular voice, coming forward with his seeds, 'that everyone round here knows all about my supper but me.'

'Village life, Mr Jordan,' Lettice Deverel said.

Martin offered Mr Finch a five pound note.

'Is Miss Glodagh getting supper for me, then?'

'I couldn't,' said Mr Finch in offended tones, taking the note between finger and thumb, 'possibly say.'

Lettice and Martin emerged into the street together.

'He's a dreadful fellow,' Lettice said, jerking her head backwards, 'but then, running a village shop is enough to addle the sanest wits.'

Martin laughed.

'He's not so bad. Made me rather look forward to my evening.' He bent to open his car door. 'Can I give you a lift?'

Lettice shook her head.

Thanks, but no. My conscience is burdened by the fruit cake I ate for tea and will only be quieted by a little vigorous exercise.' She looked at Martin with sudden keenness. The whole village will know you and Clodagh had dinner together by tomorrow. Take no notice. Tell Clodagh from me that it's time she went off and got herself a proper job. A job where she is stretched.'

Martin got into the car and started it and went slowly up the hill. As he passed Lettice, she brandished her thumb stick at him, and a bit further on he passed Stuart Mott talking to Sir Ralph's tractor driver, both of whom gave a brief, unsmiling nod. When he turned into his own drive, the kitten raced across his path in its usual ritual kamikaze greeting, and there - his insides gave a brief and pleasurable lurch - was Clodagh, taking washing off the line in the orchard beyond. She was wearing jeans and a black jacket embroidered with big, rough, silver stars.

He got out of the car and went to lean on the orchard fence. It was a soft pale early evening and some of the fat buds on the apple trees were beginning to split over the bursting pinkness within. The air, having smelled of cold or mud for months, smelled of damp earth. The hens were muttering about in the grass around Clodagh's feet. Last weekend, she had shown Martin how to measure their progress in coming into their first lay by the number of fingers you could place between the pelvic bone and the breast bone. 'Not yet,' she had said, 'it ought to be four fingers. But coming on.' He bent over the fence to make clucking noises at the hens, of which they sensibly took no notice, and then he said to Clodagh's galaxied back, 'What's going on?'

'Don't sound so thrilled,' Clodagh said, dropping the last garments into the basket at her feet. 'Alice meant to get home but your mother had killed the fatted calf so she couldn't. And you aren't deemed capable of scrambling your own eggs.'

'Wouldn't dream of it,' Martin said, opening the gate for her, 'if you're the alternative.'

'You have very bizarre fish instead.'

'Wonderful.'

He followed her into the house and the kitten joined them, mewing faintly in anticipation of supper. Clodagh stopped and scooped it up and dumped it on the laundry.

'You pig, cat. You've known there was fish in the house, all day, haven't you.'

'The whole village is talking about us. Apparently, you told Mr Finch you were getting supper for me.'

'Yippee,' Clodagh said. 'At least it'll take their minds off Pa's rent rises-'

'Rent rises?'

'I do believe he's putting up cottage rents a whole three pounds a week.' She put the basket down on the kitchen table and picked out the kitten, who began at once to purr like a generator. 'Anyway, you'll know all about that soon, won't you. As our new family lawyer?'

Martin frowned. Spontaneity was one thing, indiscretion quite another. He hadn't even been up to the Park to see Sir Ralph.

'What do you know about that-'

'Quite a bit.'

'I suppose your father talks to you?'

'Yes, he does. But this is different. This was my idea.'

'Your idea? But Henry-'

'Henry suggested your firm. I suggested you. Simple as that.'

Martin was not at all sure if he was pleased about this. Being beholden to Sir Ralph for a benevolent idea was one thing, but to feel you were simply the result of a chance and frivolous notion of Clodagh's was another.

'You're frowning,' Clodagh said.

'You make the whole thing sound so - so off the cuff-'

'It was, rather.'

Martin said stiffly, 'I don't like that.'

Clodagh watched him.

'If it had been a man, my father or my brother, you wouldn't mind. It's only because a woman suggested it, you feel insulted.'

'No.'

Clodagh went off to the larder and came back carrying a covered plate and an onion. Martin was still standing rather woodenly by the kitchen table. She put down the plate and the onion and came up to him.

'Just because I thought of you,' she said, 'doesn't mean it's a silly suggestion. Pa wouldn't have taken it up if it were silly, even for me. He was really thrilled. I promise you. You'll see, when you go and talk to him.'

Martin looked at her warily. His gaze was defensive.

'I don't like favours.'

'Martin-'

'I like to earn my way-'

'But you are! Why should anyone offer you this if they didn't think you'd be good at it? And good for us?'

And then Martin, in some confusion of feeling and propelled by an urgency he was suddenly quite unable to control, leaned forward and kissed her. He then put his arms round her and held her very hard against him and bent his head to kiss her again. She said, very quietly, 'No.'

He smiled at her. He thought he was in charge.

'Why no? I want to, you want-'

'Because,' Clodagh said, bending her head away, 'I love Alice. You see.'

He dropped his arms at once and turned away. He could feel his face grow fiery with shame and humiliation. He had broken his own rules.

He mumbled, 'So do I.'

'I know you do.'

'Sorry,' he said. 'Sorry. I don't know what came-'

'Shh,' she said. She came over and took his hand. 'Forget it.'

He thrust his chin out and removed his hand from hers.

'I think I will scramble my own eggs.'

Clodagh sighed.

'As you wish.'

She picked up the plate and the onion and took them back to the larder and returned with a wicker basket of eggs.

'I'll just feed Balloon.'

'It's all right,' Martin said, desperate both for her to go and for a drink.

'Martin,' Clodagh said, and her voice was kind, 'no big deal. It simply didn't happen,' and then she went out through the stable door and after a while he heard her car start up and drive away and then Balloon came and pleaded penetratingly for food.

Later, when he had poured himself a drink and fed the kitten, he went into his study and sat in the spring dusk and was very miserable. He was bitterly ashamed of himself, both for abusing Alice's absence and for choosing someone who, by her own admission, was capable of better loyalty to Alice than her own husband was. He tried to comfort himself by remembering how unresponsive Alice had been recently - it was literally weeks since they had made love - but it was thin comfort and he had no faith in it. He wondered if he was going to be able to face Sir Ralph on Saturday because he felt his folly might be written on his brow for all to see. Not only had he behaved badly, but he had been rebuffed and rebuked. Martin was not a flirtatious man because he didn't have the confidence to be one. He knew he feared rejection and that that fear made him unadventurous, and because he disliked very much being both unconfident and unenterprising and saw no way to remedy either, he sat in the deepening gloom and let his shame stagnate into bitterness. He had far too much whisky while this happened, and then grew maudlin, and wandered about the empty house and forgot his eggs altogether. He went over and over the little incident, foolishly and pointlessly, and finally went to bed in a very bad way indeed, forgetting to lock up downstairs so that Balloon, finding the larder door unsecured, levered his way in and achieved his ambition of three-quarters of a pound of monkfish.