She climbed in again, pressed Tinny into life, and without a pause or
backward glance headed down the lane, her face and thoughts turned to the
far-off coast and Dymchurch.
It was Erica’s very sound theory that no “local” had stolen that coat. She
had lived all her life in a country community, and knew very well that a new
black overcoat cannot make its appearance even on the meanest back without
receiving a truly remarkable amount of attention. She knew, too, that your
countryman is not versed in the ways of pawnshops, and that a coat lying in a
car would not represent to him a possible cash value, as it would to someone
“on the road.” If he coveted it at all, it would be for possession; and the
difficulty of explaining its appearance would result in his leaving it where
it was. The coat, therefore, according to Erica’s reasoning, had been taken
by a “casual.”
This made things at once easier and more difficult. A “casual” is a much
more noticeable person than a “local,” and so easier to identify. On the
other hand, a “casual” is a movable object and difficult to track. In the
week that had passed since the theft, that coat might have traversed most of
Kent. It might now be—
Hunger gave wings to Erica’s imagination. By the time she was in sight of
Dymchurch she had, thanks to modern methods of hitchhiking and old-fashioned
methods of stowing away, placed the coat on the back of a clerk in the office
of the Mayor of Bordeaux. He was a little pale clerk with a delicate wife and
puny baby, and Erica’s heart was sore at the thought of having to take the
coat from him, even for Tisdall.
At this point Erica decided that she must eat. Fasting was good for the
imagination but bad for logic. She stepped on the brake at sight of The
Rising Sun, “good pull-up for car men, open all night.” It was a tin shed,
set down by the roadside with the inconsequence of a matchbox, painted
gamboge and violet, and set about with geraniums. The door was hospitably
open, and the sound of voices floated out on the warm air.
In the tiny interior were two very large men. The proprietor was cutting
very large slices from a very fresh loaf, and the other man was sipping very
hot liquid from a very large mug with very great noise. At sight of Erica on
the doorstep all these activities ceased abruptly.
“Good morning,” said Erica into the silence.
“Morning, miss,” said the proprietor. “Cup of tea, perhaps?”
“Well—” Erica looked around. “You haven’t any bacon, by any
chance?”
“Lovely bacon,” said the owner promptly.
“Melt in your mouth.”
“I’ll have a lot,” said Erica happily. “Egg with it, perhaps?”
“Three,” said Erica.
The owner craned his neck to see out the door, and found that she really
was alone.
“Come,” he said. “That’s something like. Nice to see a young girl that can
appreciate her vittles these days. Have a seat, miss.” He dusted an iron
chair for her with the corner of his apron. “Bacon be ready in no time. Thick
or thin?”
“Thick, please. Good morning.” This to the other man, in more particular
greeting, as she sat down and so definitely became a partner in this business
of eating and drinking. “Is that your lorry out there? I have always wanted
to drive one of those.”
“Ye’? I’ve always wanted to be a tightrope walker.”
“You’re the wrong build,” said Erica seriously. “Better stick to lorry
driving.” And the owner paused in his slicing of the bacon to laugh.
The lorry driver decided that sarcasm was wasted on so literal a mind. He
relaxed into amiability.
“Oh, well; nice to have ladies’ company for a change, eh, Bill?”
“Don’t you have lots of it?” asked Erica. “I thought lorries were very
popular.” And before the astounded man could make up his mind whether this
skinny child was being rude, provocative, or merely matter-of-fact, she went
on, “Do you give lifts to tramps, ever, by the way?”
“Never!” said the driver promptly, glad to feel his feet on firm
ground.
“That’s a pity. I’m interested in tramps.”
“Christian interest?” inquired Bill, turning the sizzling bacon in the
pan.
“No. Literary.”
“Well, now. You writing a book?”
“Not exactly. I’m gathering material for someone else. You must see a lot
of tramps, even if you don’t give them lifts,” she persisted, to the
driver.
“No time to see anyone when you’re driving that there.”
“Tell her about Harrogate Harry,” prompted Bill, breaking eggs. “I saw him
in your cab last week sometime.”
“Never saw anyone in my cab, you didn’t.”
“Oh, come unstuck, will you. The little lady’s all right. She’s not the
sort to go blabbing even if you did give an odd tramp a lift.”
“Harrogate isn’t a tramp.”
“Who is he, then?” asked Erica.
“He’s a china merchant. Traveling.”
“Oh, I know. A blue-and-white bowl in exchange for a rabbit skin.”
“No. Nothing like that. Mends teapot handles and such.”
“Oh. Does he make much?” This for the sake of keeping the driver on the
subject.
“Enough to be going on with. And he cadges an old coat or a pair of boots
now and then.”
Erica said nothing for a moment, and she wondered if the thumping of her
heart was as audible to these two men as it was in her ears. An old coat, now
and then. What should she say now? She could not say: Did he have a coat the
day you saw him? That would be a complete giveaway.
“He sounds interesting,” she said, at last. “Mustard, please,” to Bill. “I
should like to meet him. But I suppose he is at the other end of the country
by now. What day did you see him?”
“Lemme see. I picked him up outside Dymchurch and dropped him near
Ton-bridge. That was a week last Monday.”
So it hadn’t been Harrogate. What a pity! He had sounded so hopeful a
subject, with his desire for coats and boots, his wandering ways, and his
friendliness with lorry drivers who get a man away quickly from possibly
unfriendly territory. Oh, well, it was no good imagining that it was going to
be as easy as this had promised to be.
Bill set down the mustard by her plate. “Not Monday,” he said. “Not that
it makes any difference. But Jimmy was here unloading stores when you went
by. Tuesday, it was.”
Not that it made any difference! Erica took a great mouthful of eggs and
bacon to quiet her singing heart.
For a little there was silence in The Rising Sun; partly because Erica had
a masculine habit of silence while she ate, partly because she had not yet
made up her mind what it would be both politic and productive to say next.
She was startled into anxiety when the lorry driver thrust his mug away from
him and rose to go.
“But you haven’t told me about Harrogate What’s-His-Name!”
“What is there to tell?”
“Well, a traveling china-mender must be chock full of interest. I
would
like to meet him and have a talk.”
“He isn’t much of a talker.”
“I’d make it worth his while.”
Bill laughed, “If you was to give Harrogate five bob, he’d talk his head
off. And for ten he’ll tell you how he found the south pole.”
Erica turned to the more sympathetic one of the two.
“You know him? Does he have a home, do you know?”
“In winter he stays put, mostly, I think. But in summer he lives in a
tent.”
“Living with Queenie Webster somewhere near Pembury,” put in the driver,
who didn’t like the shift of interest to Bill.
He put down some coppers on the scrubbed table and moved to the door.
“And if you’re making it worth anyone’s while, I’d square Queenie first if
I was you.”
“Thank you,” said Erica. “I’ll remember. Thank you for your help.”
The genuine warmth of gratitude in her voice made him pause. He stood in
the doorway considering her. “Tramps are a queer taste for a girl with a
healthy appetite,” he said, and went out to his lorry.
ERICA’S healthy appetite extended to bread and marmalade and
several cups of tea, but she absorbed little information with the
nourishment. Bill, for all his willingness to give her anything she wanted,
knew very little about Harrogate Harry. She had now to decide whether or not
to leave a “warm” Dymchurch and follow the unknown and elusive Harry into the
“cold” of the Ton-bridge country.
“Are most tramps honest, would you say?” she asked as she was paying her
bill.
“We—ll,” said Bill, thinking it out, “honest up to the point of
opportunity, if you know what I mean.”
Erica knew. Not one tramp in fifty would refuse the gift of a coat lying
unattended. And Harrogate Harry definitely liked to acquire coats and boots.
And Harry had been in Dymchurch a week last Tuesday. Her job, therefore, was
to follow the china-mender through the summer landscape until she caught up
with him. If night overtook her in her search she must think of some really
reassuring lie which could be telephoned to her father at Steynes to account
for her absence. The need for lying caused her the first pang she had
suffered so far in her self-appointed crusade; she had never needed to shut
out her father from any ploy of hers. For the second time in a few hours her
loyalty was divided. She had not noticed her disloyalty to Tinny; but this
time she noticed and cared.
Oh, well, the day was young, and days just now were long. And Tinny might
be a veteran but she was never sick or sorry. If luck held as it had begun
she might still be back in her own bed at Steynes tonight. Back at
Steynes—
with the coat
.
Her breath stopped at the very prospect.
She said good-bye to the admiring Bill, promised to recommend his
breakfasts to all her friends, and set Tinny’s nose west and north through
the hot flowery country. The roads were blinding now in the glare of the sky,
the horizons beginning to swim. Tinny sweltered stoutly through the green
furnace, and was soon as comfortable as a frying pan. In spite of her
eagerness Erica was forced every few miles to pause and open both doors while
Tinny cooled. Yes, she really must get another car.
Near Kippings Cross, on the main Ton-bridge road, she repeated as tactics
what she had by accident found serviceable: she pulled up for lunch at a
wayside hut. But this time luck was lacking in the service. The hut was kept
by a jolly woman with a flow of conversation but no interest in tramps. She
had all the normal woman’s intolerance of a waster, and “didn’t encourage
vagrants.” Erica ate sparingly and drank her bottled coffee, glad of the
temporary shade; but presently she rose and went out to find a “better
place.” The “better” referring not to food but to possible information. With
a self-control beyond praise she turned her eyes away from the endless tea
gardens, green and cool, with gay cloths gleaming like wet stones in the
shadows. Not for her that luxury today. Tea gardens knew nothing of
tramps.
She turned down a lane to Goudhurst, and sought an inn. Inns had always
china to mend, and now that she was in Harrogate’s home country, so to speak,
she would surely find someone who knew him.
She ate cold underdone beef and green salad in a room as beautiful as any
at Steynes, and prayed that one, at least, of the dishes on her table, should
be cracked. When the tinned fruit appeared in a broken china rose-bowl she
nearly whooped aloud.
Yes, the waitress agreed, it was a pretty bowl. She didn’t know if it was
valuable or not, she was only there for the season (it being understood that
the possible value of household goods could not interest anyone whose
playground was the world). Yes, she supposed that someone local mended their
china but she didn’t know. Yes, she
could
ask, of course.
The landlord, asked who had mended the china bowl so beautifully, said
that that particular bowl was bought just as it was, in a job lot of stuff
over at Matfield Green. And anyhow it was so old a mend that the man that did
it was probably dead by now. But if Erica wanted a man to mend her china,
there was a good traveling man who came around now and then. Palmer, by name.
He could put fifty pieces together when he was sober without showing a join.
But you’d got to be sure he was sober.
Erica listened to the vices and virtues of Palmer, and asked if he was the
only one in the district.
The only one the landlord knew. But you couldn’t find a better than
Harry.
“Harry?”
That was his name. Harrogate Harry they called him. No, the landlord did
not know where he was to be found. Lived in a tent Brenchley way, so he
understood. Not the kind of household that Erica had better visit alone, he
thought he had better say. Harry was no example as a citizen.
Erica went out into the heat encouraged by the news that for days,
sometimes weeks, together, Harry did not stir away from his temporary home.
As soon as he made a little extra money, he sat back and drank it.
Well, if one is going to interview a china-mender one’s first necessity is
broken china. Erica drove into Tunbridge Wells, hoping that the great-aunt
who lived somberly in Calverly Park was sleeping off her forbidden pastry and
not promenading under the lime trees, and in an antique shop spent some of
Kindness’s coffin money on a frivolous little porcelain figure of a dancer.
She drove back to Pembury and in the afternoon quiet of a deep lane proceeded
to drop the dancer with abandon on the running board of the car. But the
dancer was tough. Even when Erica took her firmly by the feet and tapped her
on the jamb of the door, she remained whole. In the end, afraid that greater
violence might shatter her completely, she snapped off an arm with her finger
and thumb, and there was her passport to Harrogate Harry.
You cannot ask questions about a vague tramp who, you think, may have
stolen a coat. But to look for a china-mender is quite a legitimate search,
involving no surprise or suspicion in the minds of the questioned. It took
Erica only ninety minutes to come face-to-face with Harrogate. It would have
taken her less, but the tent was a long way from any made road; first up a
cart track through woods, a track impassable even for the versatile Tinny,
then across an open piece of gorse land with far views of the Medway valley,
and into a second wood to a clearing at its further edge, where a stream ran
down to a dark pool.