‘I know nothing about her, Mr Williams.’
‘Then I’ll tell you something, ma’am. She’s been off on the spree, childer an’ all, to Bron Fair. Slept the night at the Harley Arms, Redlake, with that lodger chap. What do you think of that?’
Mrs Malpas blenched. ‘That’s your story, Mr Williams, but there’s no need to believe you, thanks be!’
‘But seeing’s believing, ma’am,’ said Williams heavily. ‘And I seen. What is it I owe you now?’
She gasped: ‘Sixpence,’ and took the money. Williams gave her a cheery good-night. He wondered at the way in which she had taken his scandal. ‘A proper hard old case, an’ no mistake!’ he thought. Mrs Malpas, forgetful of economy, left the light burning and went straight in to her husband. In moments of stress, even though she despised him and knew that he hardly understood her, she would use him as a dummy on which to vent her feelings.
‘Dad, dad!’ she cried. ‘That was Mr Williams of the Pentre.’
‘Ay, mother . . . good land, good land! Williams. . . . Ay.’
‘He has a tale of our George’s wife. She’s going on with that Fellows as lodges with them, the one that brought trouble on George. They was caught the two on them, at the Harley Arms, Redlake. You know . . .’
The old man, who was now awake, mumbled something about that being in the nature of things when a young woman was left too long to herself. She picked up the word furiously.
‘Nature!’ she cried. ‘It’s the nature of a brute beast, not the nature of a Christian woman! It’s the bad blood in her!’