He got to his feet. There was one further benefit from his visit that he intended to have.
‘I’ll just have a word with the gaffer,’ he said easily. ‘About the firewood.’ There was a beautiful lot of wood lying along the edge of the Lynwood shrubbery where the jobbing gardener, Ned Pritchard, had piled it two days ago.
Matt had marked the wood for his own. It would burn very nicely in the kitchen of his little cottage.
‘You certainly will not ask Mr Foster about the firewood,’ Alma said. ‘I won’t have any kin of mine coming here cadging.’
She saw nothing amiss in diverting a certain amount of Mr Foster’s food and drink towards her uncle in the course of his frequent calls at Lynwood. That was straightforward perks and nothing to be ashamed of.
And she made no secret of the pie or spiced fruit-loaf that she carried in her basket when she called in at Matt’s cottage. But that was quite definitely as far as she would
‘Miss Vera wouldn’t mind if I had the wood,’ Matt said. ‘Her Dad would have let me have it if he was still alive. A fine old gentleman, Mr Murdoch, I always got on well with him.’
‘And Mr Foster’s a first-class employer,’ Alma retorted. ‘I get on well with him. And I mean to keep on getting on well with him. You’re not asking him for that wood.’
‘Ned Pritchard’ll have it if I don’t,’ Matt said with resigned protest.
‘That’s up to Mr Foster. It’s his wood, he can do what he pleases with it.’
Matt pulled on his jacket with its deep and well-used pockets not immediately visible to the questioning eye. He picked up his cup.
‘Now mind,’ Alma said as he opened the door. ‘One word about that wood and you’ll have me to reckon with.’
‘I shan’t say anything.’ He’d already set his mind on another and equally fertile source of free fuel. No need to mention the fact to Alma. She was a dear girl but she did go on a bit.
‘You’ll be looking in at the cottage this afternoon?’ he asked.
She gave a nod. ‘I’ll see you as usual.’
‘This is your night for sleeping out at Pinetrees?’
‘That’s right.’ She came out of the kitchen and stood beside him on the doorstep, looking out at the mellow day.
‘It’s a lovely time of year,’ Matt said with deep pleasure. ‘The pheasants will be fine and fat now.’
She gave him a sharp slap on the arm. ‘Don’t let me hear of you poaching,’ she said fiercely.
Not that he’d ever actually been hauled up into court and charged with poaching, and not that he’d ever admitted such an activity to her, but she had grave suspicions all the same. He gave her a reassuring grin and she turned back into the kitchen.
Matt walked along the side of the house and saw Mr Foster backing his car out of the garage. Matt couldn’t help himself, he took a chance; no need for Alma to know if it didn’t come off. He went up to the car and stooped by the window.
‘All right if I take that bit of wood?’ he said amiably to Mr Foster. ‘I’ll give you an hour or two in the garden for it.’
Gerald Foster turned from his own preoccupations and was momentarily irritated by the cheerful cadginess of Bateman, Matt’s happy assumption that other men strove so that he could help himself to the fruits of their labours.
At another time Gerald might easily have nodded agreement, might have been no more than mildly amused by Bateman’s cheek. But now he said curtly, ‘It’s certainly not all right. You leave that wood where it is. Ned Pritchard is to have it. He chopped it down.’ Gerald began to turn his car.
‘That’s all right, Mr Foster,’ Matt said genially. ‘No offence intended and none taken, I hope.’ Gerald merely nodded and grunted in reply and Matt went swinging off down the drive.
He whistled as he strode along the road. He walked with a strong upright carriage, jaunty and free. He was still agile and quick on his feet in spite of his sixty-nine years.
All his life he’d been a country lad, wouldn’t give you tuppence for the town. He disapproved of almost every change that had taken place in his lifetime. He ignored the greater part of those changes and lived his life in a manner not much different from the way his father had lived his.
Matt lived in the cottage where he had been born; during his working life he’d been a labourer in the local quarry where his father and grandfather had worked before him.
In Matt’s eyes the village of Abberley was the centre of the universe. He’d grown up with the strong conviction – passed on to him from his father – that disaster would surely strike any man rash enough to wander far from his native sod.
He had set foot in the neighbouring town of Cannonbridge no more than a couple of dozen times in his life. He’d been further afield than that only once, in the days when his Dad was alive.
The Vicar had organized a coach outing to the seaside on the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of King George the Fifth. Matt’s Dad had prophesied disaster for the outing, and Matt’s Dad had been right.
Matt was sick on the coach going to the sea and even more sick on the coach coming back. As he finally staggered off the coach at the end of the day he vowed never again to set foot on anything more venturesome than the bus into Cannonbridge.
He glanced about him now as he swung along. I’ll slip on up to Farmer Jauncey’s top field, he decided. Plenty of good wood up there and Jauncey didn’t mind him slipping along once in a way to help himself.
Matt was as vigilant and observant as any professional gamekeeper and in return for the blind eye turned on his own pursuits by local landowners he made sure no gangs of townee villains came on to their terrain to plunder and steal in quantities Matt couldn’t and wouldn’t have shifted in a dozen lifetimes of semi-honest endeavour.
He reached the top field and surveyed the ground. He would just take enough wood now to be going on with, he could come back again later.
His sharp eyes spotted some droppings under a tree and he stood for a minute or two staring up into the branches with keen interest.
Then he pulled a length of stout rope from one of his pockets and began to pile up a nice selection of boughs, ready to sling the bundle across his shoulders.
It was still not quite ten o’clock. Miss Jordan went quietly up from the kitchen where she had been drinking coffee with Alma and softly opened the door of Mrs Foster’s bedroom.
She peeped in to see if Mrs Foster was settling down for her nap. But Vera was still wakeful; she heard the whisper of the door.
‘I’m not asleep,’ she said loudly. ‘Come in.’
Miss Jordan went into the room. ‘Would you like your hot chocolate now?’ she asked. Vera was very fond of hot sweet drinks, chocolate in particular.
‘No, I’ll have it later. I want you to phone Doctor Tredgold now, I don’t feel at all well.’
Miss Jordan glanced at her watch. ‘You must phone him right away,’ Vera insisted. The doctor was a stickler about time. He liked all house calls to be notified before ten o’clock.
‘I can’t in all honesty tell him,’ Miss Jordan said with a small sigh, ‘that I think he ought to call. I can’t see that you need him. He’s a very busy man.’
Tredgold was no longer young and his temper wasn’t sweetening with advancing years. But Vera wouldn’t dream of changing doctors. He’d been her father’s doctor, her own doctor since she was a child of seven.
She began to struggle up in the bed. ‘If you don’t