slowly without success. She was kneeling in the kitchen again, peering hopefully under the sink, when she heard someone enter the house. She got to her feet slowly, her heart beating an uneasy tattoo, eyeing the man who was standing at the kitchen door, looking at her. She was a big girl, but he more than matched her for size—a head taller for a start and with broad shoulders, massive in a sheepskin jacket, and as far as she could see in the dim light, exceedingly handsome. She waited uncertainly; she had been a fool to have left the front door on the latch, but probably he was just a casual passer-by. She said coolly: ‘I have no idea who you are, but this is my house and I must ask you to leave it.’
He came right into the kitchen. ‘A very hoity-toity speech,’ he remarked in an English as perfect as her own, ‘quite wasted on me and useless to anyone else around here—they wouldn’t have understood a word of it.’
‘Who are you?’ She stood her ground although the instinct to move back was strong, but she was annoyed at being called hoity-toity, so that she lifted her pretty, determined chin and looked down her fine nose at him.
‘Your landlord.’ He laughed without amusement and she said at once:
‘You’re mistaken, this house is mine. My aunt, Miss Brodie, left it to me.’
He sighed loudly. ‘I have neither the time nor the patience to mull over the intricacies of leasehold property. Take my word for it that I own the lease of this house, Miss Henrietta Brodie.’
She gave him a startled glance. How had he known her name was Henrietta? she longed to ask, but instead, ‘You still haven’t told me who you are,’ she reminded him coldly.
For some reason this amused him. ‘Van Hessel—Marnix van Hessel.’
‘And how did you know that I was here?’
‘My dear good young woman, this is a very small village. Willemse the greengrocer was putting his van away when he saw you arrive—he came to tell my housekeeper, who told me. In a community of this size we all tend to mind each other’s business.’
She was annoyed again. ‘Or indulge your curiosity.’
His eyes—grey, she thought, but wasn’t sure—narrowed. ‘You have a nasty sharp tongue,’ he observed. ‘I am not in the least curious about you—why should I be? But since it was I who ordered the electricity and gas and water to be turned off, it seemed that the least I could do was to come and turn them on again.’
He stood quite still, staring at her, and after a moment or two she said awkwardly: ‘Well, thank you…I should be glad…it is a little chilly…’
He gave a short laugh. ‘It’s damned cold.’ He walked past her into the scullery and she was aware once more of his great size as he bent to go through the door. She stood still, holding the candle aloft while he opened a cupboard high up on the wall. ‘Try the lights,’ he advised her.
The little kitchen sprang into instant view and she looked around her with relief and a good deal of interest, but she was given no time in which to indulge her curiosity. ‘Turn on the gas,’ he commanded. That worked too, and so, presently, did the water. Tea, thought Henrietta, a hot water bottle and bed, while aloud she said civilly: ‘Thank you very much, I can…’ She was interrupted.
‘I’ll get the stove going, there should be coal and wood outside.’
She tried again. ‘Please don’t bother, I shall…’ and was silenced by his: ‘Of course it’s a bother, but I wouldn’t leave a dog to shiver to death on a night like this.’
She bristled, her dark eyes sparkling with temper. She said in a voice made high by her strong feelings: ‘I’m obliged to you for your help, Mr van Hessel, but I can manage very well—don’t let me keep you.’
He flung open the back door, his torch cutting a swathe through the blackness outside, the icy wind rushing in to set her shivering again. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ he said pleasantly as he went out. ‘Go upstairs and unpack.’
Over the years of being without a family she had achieved a fine independence, so it was all the more surprising to her to find herself climbing a miniature staircase with her overnight bag. There were two bedrooms, she discovered, with a large landing between them. They faced front and back and she chose the back room, pleased with the simplicity of its furnishings; a narrow bed, a chest of drawers with a mirror above it, a basket chair, well cushioned, and bright rugs on the polished floor. The curtains, she noted as she pulled them to, were shabby now, but the fabric had once been good. The other room was almost identical; she pulled the curtains here too and lingered to explore the landing. There was a cupboard built into one of its walls, full, she discovered to her delight, to its brim with bed linen, blankets and everything she could need for the house, there were even two old-fashioned eiderdowns, a little faded but whole. Henrietta sighed with deep satisfaction and went back downstairs.
Mr van Hessel might be an ill-tempered man, but he was handy at lighting a stove. It was crackling well and already its heat was taking the sharp chill off the room. There was a scuttle of coals too and as she entered he came in with an armful of small logs which he stacked tidily in a corner. When he had done this, he stood up, studying her in a cool way which annoyed her very much. ‘You look as though you could do with a good hot supper,’ he observed.
‘I stopped on my way here.’ She had spoken too quickly and he had seen that. He moved to the door. ‘And that’s a lie if ever I heard one,’ he told her, ‘but as it’s obviously intended to warn me off inviting you to a meal, I’ll take the hint. Good night.’
He had gone, and the room looked bare without him. She went into the kitchen, found the kettle and put it on to boil for a cup of tea while she considered her visitor—a large, domineering man, used to giving orders and getting his own way, and if he owned the lease of the house, why hadn’t Mr Boggett told her about him? She knew very little about ground rents and such things. She wondered now, a little uneasily, if she would be able to afford to pay it. Presumably she would have to ask Mr van Hessel how much it was. It seemed likely that she would see him again; he must live close by, for he had come—and gone—on foot. Perhaps he lived on the other side of the square where the houses, as she had passed them in the dark, had appeared larger, though it was hard to imagine him in a small village house.
She made the tea and rooted through her stores for a tin of baked beans and a packet of soup; a proper hot supper would have been nice, she thought wistfully, but he had offered it in much the same way as he might have offered a bone to a hungry dog. She ate her beans, drained the teapot and went upstairs to make her bed. It wasn’t late, but she was longing for sleep; she went downstairs again, made up the stove, had a shower in the tiny cubicle squeezed into the scullery, and went to her bed with both eiderdowns on top of her and a hot water bottle as well.
It wasn’t quite light when she woke, although her watch told her that it was eight o’clock. She got up and drew back the curtains to see what lay behind the house; a garden, small and brick-walled to a height of six feet, a mere plot of neglected grass with a tangle of rose bushes in one corner. The scullery roof was just below her window and beyond that there was a brick lean-to shed, where presumably her visitor of the night before had found the coal. But beyond that she could see very little; identical sized gardens on either side of her, incredibly neat, and a dense row of conifers, screening whatever lay beyond the back walls of the row of little houses. She would find out, she promised herself, dressing rapidly in sweater and slacks before going down to rake out the stove and make it up again and to the kitchen to get her breakfast. Tea and porridge and tinned milk; presently she would find the village shop. She washed up, made
