The Black Diamond

by Francis Brett Young

The Ninth Chapter

In the first moment of his loss he did not feel like retracing his steps. When he reached the main road he turned his face westward once more and set off walking as hard as the heat would allow him. He passed through a land of almost monotonous green, stopping once or twice to drink a pint of beer at a pub in one of the many half-timbered villages that straggled along the road. In the afternoon he reached a crest crowned with a plantation of smooth trunked beeches from which he could see the chimneys of an industrial town. This, he decided, must be Kidderminster, or, as the farmer’s man had called it, Kiddy. Once or twice in his life he had played football there for Mawne United, but in these excursions he had never noticed anything but the squalid streets between the station and the football ground. There was a workhouse in Kidderminster, as he had been told, but he was not yet in need of workhouses. The landlord of the last inn had found out that he was going into Wales, and had pointed out to him the rampart of the Malverns, dim-blue in the heat, as marking the course of his road. The idea of finding employment in the country now pleased him little. The sooner he reached the coal valleys, with the remains of his money, the better. From his new point of vantage the hills were still visible, floating like cragged islands in the haze. He left the smoke of Kidderminster on his right hand and forsook the road for a narrower lane that seemed to run in the direction that he wanted to follow. When evening came he was still walking south-west. Now the Malverns, whenever he saw them were etched black against a background of flame. The air was cool and sweeter. It was such an evening as Tiger would have loved, and his loneliness, which had been numbed by the heat, returned to him.

He must by this time have walked more than twenty miles since daybreak, and he was tired and hungry. Soon after sunset he turned in to an inviting public-house that stood alone on a straight length of road running between meagre oak-trees. The landlord was an aged man crippled with rheumatism who sat grasping two sticks in a chair beside the hearth of the taproom. He looked suspiciously at Abner and told his daughter, an angular woman of forty who did all the housework, to attend to him. This woman gave him clearly to understand that they didn’t like strangers and said that they could give him nothing to eat but bread and cheese. He accepted this gratefully and settled down to his supper under the grudging eyes of the old man.

The inn seemed a lonely and neglected place, for the road on which it was situate had fallen into disuse. Abner, however, was glad of a rest, and sat on smoking and drinking beer for the good of the house when he had finished his supper. The ale was good and put him in a happier frame of mind, so that he no longer found the silence of the old man uncomfortable. A little later a number of farm-labourers drifted in and ordered their quarts: a solemn and gloomy company who spoke little and in a language that Abner did not understand. He tried to put some life into them by standing treat, but even this order did not arouse the least enthusiasm in the landlord’s daughter, who might reasonably have felt that things were looking up, or in the company. These people were silent drinkers who sat in pairs, taking alternate swigs from the quart pot that stood between them. They looked upon Abner, this stranger from beyond the hills, as peaceful border farmers might have regarded a northern marauder. They drank his beer; but that was all that they could do for him. The light failed, but no lamp was lit in the taproom, and one by one the customers bade the landlord good-night and stole away like shadows. The woman put her head into the room from time to time as if she hoped to find that he was gone, and the old man sat by the fireplace saying nothing. Abner was sleepy and when she next appeared asked her if she could find him a bed. ‘Anything’ll do for me,’ he said. ‘I can shake down anywhere you like.’

For the first time since Abner had seen her she was really positive. ‘We never do such a thing, do we, father?’ she cried. The old man did not appear to have heard her.

‘I bain’t one to make trouble,’ Abner said.

She wagged her head violently. ‘We never do such a thing,’ she repeated. She shook the old man’s shoulder. ‘Father, ’e says ’e wants to sleep ’ere!’

‘We don’t sleep no strangers,’ said he. ‘We don’t sleep no one. Not in a solitary place like this. You’d best be goin’, young man. Time to lock up . . . time to lock up.’

Abner asked him where he could go, but neither of them seemed inclined to help him. They knew of no house that would take strangers, and the nearest village, Harverton Priors, was more than three miles away. Even if he went there, they said, it was unlikely that he would be taken in. ‘We’m not accustomed to strangers, these parts,’ the woman kept on saying. She followed him like an anxious but impotent dog, edging him away from the counter as if she thought he had designs on the till. He bought an ounce of tobacco and departed. When she had got him out of the door he heard a key turn in the lock and this taciturn person beginning to talk fast in an excited whisper to the old man in the corner. Abner laughed. Thanks to the excellence of their beer he was at peace with the world.

By this time he was getting used to finding himself an object of suspicion. He determined to give Harverton Priors a miss, for at this time of night it was probable that the whole village would be asleep, and to turn in for the night in the first isolated barn that he found. Failing that there was no reason why he shouldn’t sleep in a dry ditch. His father had often done so unintentionally and so far seemed none the worse for it.