The God of the Hive - Laurie R. King [41]
He no doubt thought to distract me from the purchases at the bottom of the pack: a set of jackstones, collected in a red cotton bag, and a small soft doll that he slipped into Estelle’s hand. I’d have had to be considerably farther away than the clearing to miss her squeals of pleasure.
I gave up and carried the newspaper outside.
Monday, 1 September. I ran my eyes methodically down what Holmes called the agony columns of small adverts and messages. Two or three posts attracted my attention—one for the health benefits of honey, the other a notice for a ladies’ motoring school, since my skills at the wheel were a longtime source of criticism from my partner—but in the end I decided that neither held hidden meaning.
For lack of better entertainment, I read the paper all the way to the shipping news, paying particular attention to reports of a terrible earthquake in Japan—I hoped the friends we had made there in the spring were safe. I folded it neatly to give to Javitz, thinking that he, too, might appreciate a reminder that the outer world had not faded away.
But when I had finished, there was nothing for it but to go back inside and join my granddaughter’s dollies’ tea-party.
Complete with iced biscuits, bought for the purpose by an unrepentant wild man of the woods.
Tuesday morning, my head was clear and my bruises healing. Goodman was gone when we woke, but returned while the morning was young. Later, he and I set out together in the opposite direction from his previous day’s trek, leaving Estelle in the care of Javitz—or perhaps viceversa. I had spent the evening making adjustments to the skirt, thinking it might render me less noticeable than a pair of trousers with a ripped knee and ground-in soil, but it was not a garment readily suited for a rough walk through the woods, and I was forced to stop every few minutes to disentangle the tweed from a snagging bramble or branch.
I also noticed two more of the bent-branch booby-traps. Robin Goodfellow he might be, but this hermit had no intention of permitting others to come upon him unawares.
After five miles, we came to a high wall with a narrow metal gate. The gate was speckled with rust; the sturdy padlock was not.
“I need to go into the village alone,” I told him, brushing my skirt and checking that my boots were not too caked with mud.
“A woman by herself would stand out almost as much as a woman with me,” he said, pocketing the key and pushing open the gate.
I glanced at him, surprised at this perceptive remark from a man who showed less sign of interest in the mores and customs of the outer world than the hedgehog might have done. “By myself I can invent a reason for being there. With you, there’s no chance.”
“As you wish. How long will you be?”
“An hour at most. You’re certain there’s a telegraph office?”
“There’s a post office,” he replied. “It has a telegraph.”
“If the telegraphist isn’t off fishing or caring for his aged mother, you mean?”
“Buy some milk, for the child. And I think she needs another warm garment—”
“Oh for heaven’s sake,” I said. “Look, you will be here when I return, right?”
“Or in the village.”
“Well, just wait half an hour before you come in. And if you see me, don’t give on that we know each other.”
I stepped out onto the road and marched into the village.
I was, I realised, in luck: The village was on a lake, and the lake was on the Picturesque Sites of Olde England tours. A steamer had recently deposited a load of earnest sight-seers, all of them wearing sensible shoes and clutching guide-books and pamphlets. I did not fit in, precisely, lacking hat, book, and earnest expression, but being one stranger in the vicinity of a dozen others made invisibility easier.
In the village shop, I gathered up three post-cards, a copy of the day’s Times, and a tin of travelling sweets, then stood in the queue to buy stamps. Once there, I enquired about sending a telegram. The rather befuddled but undeniably picturesque woman in charge of the village’s postal service admitted that there was a telegraphic device