Daphne du Maurier - Hungry Hill

Aunt Lizette considered this a moment, then shook her head again.

"It wouldn't be moral," she said solemnly.

John-Henry laughed.

"Anyway," he said, "wet or fine, moral or immoral, I propose to go down to Doonhaven within the next day or so, and visit Clonmere. I haven't been down there, you know, since before the war, just before Granpie died. It's probably falling to bits, although the people at the gate-house are supposed to look after it."

"And what will you do?" said Aunt Lizette, "when you get there?"

John-Henry smiled, and stretched out his legs under the tea-table.

"I shall live there," he said. "I may telegraph mother to come down and join me. Do you know, all the time I was in the Navy, and the war was going on, it was the only thing that was real to me? The Mediterranean, the Dardanelles, none of it seemed to sink in. I kept thinking, "This overgrown sub who sweats his guts out in an engine-room and then goes ashore at Malta and overstays his leave, isn't John-Henry at all. The real John-Henry is standing in front of Clonmere, looking across the creek to Hungry Hill. And that's where I belong. That's where my roots are, that's where I was born and bred."

Aunt Lizette put on her spectacles and, moving to the window, took up her crochet.

"I was born there too," she said, "but my childhood was spent in London. And then, when I was ten, and your aunt Molly married, we all went home for Christmas. I shall never forget my first sight of the hills, and the colour of the water in Mundy Bay, and the old paddle-steamer coming in to Doonhaven." She was silent for a moment, bending over her work. "But it's a great big house for a young man to live in all alone," she said.

"There'll be heaps to do," said John-Henry, "to get it right again. The woods will need clearing, and the gardens put in order. No half-measures for me, Aunt Lizette. I'm not a sub in an engine-room any longer. I'm going to be John-Henry Brodrick of Clonmere, and damn all comers! No, not damn all comers, because I like the people, and I want them to like me. And you shall have the best spare-room, Aunt Lizette, and when you come to stay we'll have a big turf fire lit in the great hall to welcome you."

"You don't propose living in the new wing, do you?" she said.

"Why not? My grandfather built it to be lived in, didn't he?"

"Yes, fifty years ago, when there were servants by the score, and carriages, and horses, and the mines working night and day on Hungry Hill.

Doonhaven is only a sleepy village now, with no one to work for you, and the people shooting one another, as likely as not. Ah, now… Do you hear that?"

As she spoke there was a sound of tramping feet at the end of the terrace, where it opened on to the road.

John-Henry leant out of the window beside his aunt.

Soldiers were going past in the main street, and in the midst of them two men in civilian clothes, with their hands behind them, their caps pulled down low over their eyes. A little crowd had collected on the pavement to watch them pass. A woman shouted out abuse at the soldiers, and one of them, mounted, rode towards the crowd, pressing them back. The tramp of marching feet passed on…

"Ourselves Alone," whispered John-Henry, "and if you found one of them, your Meggie's brother, let's say, hiding in the kitchen, would you call in the soldiers and give him up?"

"He might have murdered innocent people. It would be my duty to give him up," said Aunt Lizette firmly.

"You haven't answered my question," persisted John-Henry. "Would you give him up to the soldiers?"

She looked sideways at him, the dark eyes blinking behind her spectacles.

"I might then," she said softly, "but I'd sign my name to a petition to save him afterwards, all the same."

A shower of rain spattered the windows, and the sky darkened.

"Where are you staying?" she asked him.

"At the Metropole Hotel," he told her.

"Then, dear boy, you'd best be getting back.

You don't want to be out in the streets at dusk.

How will you get down to Doonhaven when you go? I don't know that the trains are running, or if the steamer goes from Mundy."

"I've got my car, Aunt Lizette."

"You be careful, or they'll take it from you, and you trussed up like a fowl in the bottom of it-if you're not lying in a ditch with a bullet in your back."

"Maybe I'll join the rebels," he said, mischief in his eyes.

He kissed her goodbye, and went back through the silent streets to his hotel. There were sentries everywhere now, and he was challenged three times. The people were off the streets. The blinds were drawn across the windows of the houses. John-Henry went into the bar of the hotel. It was empty, except for the bartender and one young fellow of about his own age, or a little older, sitting in the corner, reading a newspaper. He glanced up when John-Henry entered, and then looked hard at him, with that questing stare of recognition which a man wears upon his face when he sees someone after a spate of years and has difficulty in finding a name. John-Henry turned his back, and ordered a whisky-and-soda.

"There's been a bit of trouble this afternoon, hasn't there?" he said to the bartender.

The fellow wiped a glass with a napkin, and glanced imperceptibly at the man in the corner, who had resumed his reading of the newspaper.

"Three people killed in the square," he said quietly, "or so I am told. I don't know anything about it. I've been in the hotel all day."

He went to the other end of the bar, and pretended to be busy with some glasses.

"Scared," thought John-Henry. "If he says a word more the chap reading a newspaper may inform against him. Where the devil have I seen that man before?"

But the newspaper was up in front of his face.

John-Henry sipped his whisky-and-soda, and thought about his aunt Lizette living all alone in her flat in the terrace, the youngest and most frail of all her family, and the last survivor-both Aunt Kitty and Aunt Molly had died during the war, in early middle-age. We're a funny family, he thought, we either go quickly, or live to a rude old age. Grandfather Henry Brodrick was getting on for eighty when he died in Brighton. And his wife wouldn't let him be brought across the water and buried at Ardmore, she wanted him in the big white cemetery at Brighton. John-Henry remembered the letter coming from his mother when he was at Dartmouth, telling him that his grandfather had died, and in the holidays they had gone and picnicked at Clonmere and dreamt dreams about the future. The war came so swiftly, spilling the dreams…

The door of the bar swung open, and three officers came in. They were laughing and joking.

"I tell you it's true," said one of them. "A whole party was over in London a year or so ago, and asked to see Casement's grave. They had brought wreaths and flowers and heaven knows what else. And the governor of the place hoodwinked 'em and showed them where Crippen or some chap was buried, and they went down on their knees and crossed themselves, and said "Hail Mary." Funniest thing you ever saw, said the governor."

The officers leant against the bar and ordered drinks.

"They're not human," said another. "We ought to have orders to shoot the lot. They're the scum of the earth, and always have been."

The first officer glanced across at John-Henry.

He had merry eyes, for all his hard mouth.

"What are you drinking?" he said.

"The spirit of the country," said John-Henry, raising his glass.

"You'd better have one with us, then," said the officer, laughing. "It's the thing we are trying to down."

He put his hat on the bar, and John-Henry looked at it closely. The hated emblem of a hated band. Yet the man seemed harmless enough, and was only doing his duty, and obeying orders.