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?” enquired 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. Travelling.”
“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 give-away.
“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 county by now. What day did you see him?”
“Lemme see. I picked him up outside Dymchurch and dropped him near Tonbridge. 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 travelling 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.
13
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 Tonbridge country.
