Red Anger by Geoffrey Household

will give you a lift to the main road in the morning. What is it, Tessa?’
    I gathered that she had arrived from London earlier in the day and after her ride had spent the evening with friends in the village, dropping in to the Crown and Thistle. She was a tall, slim
girl with a calmly determined air which did not quite fit her bitten nails and the angry impatience which I had noticed when she thought she was alone. Her face was triangular and resembled her
mother’s, opening up like a tulip from delicate chin to a broad, high brow. I found her intensely attractive, and wondered if the left-wing opinions which Marghiloman had mentioned were
sufficiently far-out to give a shabby Portuguese half a chance.
    ‘Forrest gave me a message for you. I was to tell you the two Americans had gone off in their car after a meal and weren’t back yet. What Americans?’
    ‘Oh, they came down yesterday and are staying with him. Slung with cameras. Very humble and very persistent. You know the type. They were taking shots of the house from all angles
yesterday. Perhaps Forrest was warning me that they might turn up to look at the chimneys by moonlight. If they do, darling, give ’em a nightcap and tell them I’ve gone to
bed.’
    ‘What the hell are they doing here anyway?’
    ‘They are either carrying the benefits of civilisation into Devon or bringing back the peace of Devon to America. It depends on how some earnest professor of sociology taught them to view
thatched cottages with no drains.’
    Tessa hung around a bit talking to the Penpoles and then, as her mother showed no sign of moving, went back to the house. Mrs. Hilliard must have noticed a faint atmosphere of disapproval in the
room, but she addressed herself to me rather than the Penpoles.
    ‘I’m sorry, Willie, but one can always read in Tessa’s face whatever she doesn’t want to think.’
    Possibly—for a mother. The girl’s mouth was sensitive and uncertain at the corners, which could set nearly as hard as John’s or slightly quiver. The quiver, it’s true,
was liable to give her away in any situation which demanded a convincing mask.
    ‘You haven’t been fishing in American waters, have you, Willie?’
    It was a remark which meant nothing to John, but had definite implications for me now that she had opened my eyes to all the interest there might be in a refugee swimming ashore from a Russian
trawler fleet. I replied that she was the only American I had ever met and I could not believe she was typical.
    ‘I became what I wanted to become, Willie. And I tried to bring up Alwyn just as my two men would have wished.’
    I could only look my sympathy. Words were inadequate—and any way an impertinence—when I thought of the traitor and what the disgrace must have meant to her. She let it go at that,
and shortly afterwards went back to the house with John.
    Mrs. Penpole left me alone while she made up a bed for me and then took me upstairs to a pleasant little attic, so near to the trees that it would have tempted a squirrel. After saying goodnight
she turned in the doorway, her round, rosy face peering at me with rather the expression of my mother when she was pretending to be stern.
    ‘What I want to know, young man, is be ’ee on our side or bain’t ’ee?’
    I replied that Mrs. Hilliard seemed to think I was.
    ‘And I ’ope her’s right with ’ee actin’ as a Portugal and all. And if it be Mr. Alwyn ’ee wants to know more about, ’e’s bin under my veet like a
fourpenny rabbit since ’e were that ’igh, and I tell ’ee Mr. Alwyn couldn’t ’ave done what they’m sayin’ no more than I can stand on me ’ead no more.
The only fault ’e ’ad was to see the best in everyone.’
    I led her on to talk of her employer, asking what Mrs. Hilliard meant by her two men. Had she married twice?
    Indeed not, Mrs. Penpole said as if it were quite unthinkable. She had meant Alwyn’s father, Major Rory. Filling up the doorway, she