THE LORRY LADY

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 48, 6 December 1945, Page 7

THE LORRY LADY

THE MAN ON THE BRIDGE

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CHAPTER VII,

As they strolled off she made her belated protest. “You really ought to hurry back to your camp,” she said. “I shall be alright now, and you never know what beastly men like that redheaded one will be up to.”

“I thought I explained that I intended to give him a chance. If I return too soon I may never know what he is really up to, he and Mr Lefty Sant.” “I believe they’re after something down that pit. They wouldn’t hang round a whole day- and night just for the chance of stealing your beei\” “Perhaps you’re right. I mean to have a good hunt down there myself, though I don’t anticipate finding anything more’ exciting than Norman foundations with perhaps a bit of Roman brick built in, and a potshard or two, perhaps, if I’m lucky a coin. The Fifth Legion certainly had a camp somewhere about there and T don’t think it’s location has ever been identified. It would be no end of a feather in my cap if I could establish, that it was actually on the site of Carrow.” He was obviously deeply stirred by his professional enthusiasms. His face had grown keen and thoughtful and he ceased to talk, pulling at his pipe strongly until they reached the river bank, and stood to admire the old buttressed bridge above them. She was also sitent but her thoughts were different from his, no doubt. As in prove of this he asked suddenly at last: “Do you often come along this road.” “I expect to be doing it about once a week, that is if I’m in reasonable time at Burlingliam after all, this journey. Customers soon change if you don’t keep to schedule. There’s a lot of competition these days.” “I was wondering if you would accept my hospitality again another time. You see I’ve personally found it rather jolly to have company though of course it’s been beastly for you.” “It hasn’t been beastly at all,” she protested. “I’ve enjoyed it ever so.” She bit her lip suddenly. If she wasn’t careful he’d be thinking she was keen on him. “That’s fine! I’d like to have the chance. to tell you what I find, if I do find anything down in that cellar, and’ of course the whole place is intensely interesting. I’ll send you my paper if I may when it’s written, but that won’t be for a year or two yet. I’ve got your address off the lorry.” She said yes, she would certainly like to see the paper, but ignored his earlier invitation. She was saying to herself that on no account would she make any attempt to renew the aquaintance. She was in business and could not afford to let her life be cluttered up with men. “Quarter of an hour yet,” he remarked presently after consulting his watch. “I don’t suppose it’s any good being back to the minute. Those old craftsmen take their time. We might as well sit-down..”:

They chose a spot below the bridge and he slowly filled his pipe. It was one of those warm days when early autumn makes its last fugitive effort to recall mid-summer. A few swifts still lingered,- flashing low over the shrunken river. From a willow opposite the scanty yellow leaves flickered momently down to float lazily into the deep shadows under the bridge. It was very silent and Madie found herself becoming, for no reason that she could have define, more and more embarassed. " She wondered savagely why she did not say anything and strained her imagination unccessfully to invent a remark that would not sound too utterly silly and that would' have the effect of restarting conversation. To her her' companion seemed at that moment positively distasteful, as solidly satisfied and as complacent as one of the browsing cattle on the opposite bank. At last she could sit still no longer. She jumped briskly to her feet, “I’m going to see if that job’s done,” she announced. He rose slowly. “Well, there’s no harm in seeing,” he began and glanced up at the bridge. “Why, hullo Mr Sant!” he exclaimed. From the parapet above a thin drooping figure was surveying them. He was very dusty and grey dirt seemed to emphasise the deep saturnine clefts that bracketed his tight mouth. And yet in spite of his shabbiness he looked in some undefined way ‘distinguished,’ a superior to the mob. He actually raised his weathered cap, revealing an ill-shorn grey head. “Good morniiig,” he said politely in a voice tired and rather cynical, but definitely well-bred. “You seem to have tired of excavating rather quickly. I think you are wise.” He seemed to pause from intention. “It’s far too hot for that sort of thing, of course,” he concluded. Mr Cairow seemed annoyed. “On the contrary the finer the weather the better I like it,” he asserted challengingly, then added with impressiveness. “I shall be back there inside an hour.” “Splendid,” said Sant, but in a tone that seemed contradictorily to deprecate such enthusiasm. “Have you found anything interesting?” “Plenty of things that promise to be worth investigating.” “You don’t say so! And the lady? Is she, may I ask, an enthusiast for archaeology?” “The lady drives a lorry for her living, and she is in a hurry,” said Madie beginning to move away. Mr Sant again raised his weathered

cap with fnelanclioly grace. “I wish you a. fortunate journey,” he replied. The two walked qff leaving the bent figure brooding wistfully over the slowly floating leaves, below the parapet. “What a dreadful man!” she exclaimed as soon as they were out of hearing. “He looks as if ... ” She could find no words to express her reaction to the dingy politeness of Mr Lefty Sant.

“As if he had done some atrocious crime and was actually enjoying the pangs of remorse at least that’s, how he strikes me,” her companion concluded for her. A sudden apprehension invaded her. “Oh I do think you ought to be careful,” she cried impulsively. There was an air of rightness and endurance about the village smithy that, in spite of its patched roof and ramshackle interior, seemed to confirm reassuringly the continuance of simple decent human life, a confirmation that to Madie was abundantly welcome after the recent encounter with Mr Lefty Sant. It seemed to her to deny the existence of Lefty Sants in a world that was slow and untidy with a wholesome slowness and a sort of ordered untidiness, a world where you knew within a little what was going to happen next and could be sure of yourself and of your fellows. Carrow too, appeared to be conscious of the contrast. “Seems to take the taste out of your mouth, doesn’t it?” he remarked. She had a flash of that delightful satisfaction that comes from the companionship of someone who understands- by instinct what you are feeling, the only real and intimate companionship in the world. Then she became abruptly businesslike. ' “Nearly ready?” she asked the smith. He tested the straightness of the yet warm iron against that of an honest eye, tapped it thoughtfully, and as if reluctantly, a few times with light deft hammer-strokes. “Baint much wrong with that un now,” he told her in the complacent voice of the'unhurriable craftsman. “I’ve a-took the ago out of she an’ that’s more than you can do for a man, now yet for a woman, my dear. That’s a thing as you won’t find in life, the like of a smithy where they’ll take the bends out of our hacks and out of our characters,' nor the age out of our fibres neither, I reckon.” The big lenses of his antique spectacles flashed in a beam of stray sunlight as he smiled up at her, and it became strangely hard to preserve her attitude of businesslike haste. She found herself smiling confidently hack at him. “I’m sure you’ve made a splendid job of it,’ she assured him and managed to add: “We must get it on at once. I’m terribly late as it is.” The old smith replied reprovingly. “Everyone be in a hurry nowadays,” he remarked as they moved out to the lorry that stood idly in the sunshine. “You young folks he all of a rush to get life over, seemingly. Can’t live fast enough when you be young. When you gets to my age, my dear, you'll he glad to draw out your days as so you’ll be counting them as is left to you as if they was golden sovereigns. They’m more than golden when you be young, take it from me my dear, or at least you ought to make ’em so.” She felt that she could have stayed forever there and yet on« half of her was glad to observe Carrow already, kneeling in front of the lorry—a spanner in his hand. “I’m sure you are right,” she told the smith and to Carrow she said, “Oh, please he quick. It’s nearly ten o’clock already.” He was loyally hurrying. The rod was in position in a few minutes, the nuts and washers replaced and tightened. He stood up and stretched, then crouched to eye the alignment of the wheels. “She’ll steer now,” he said, but there was a hint of despondency in his voice that made her angry with him and with herself. “Thank goodness!” she said and proceeded to restart the engine. (To be continued.)