Red Anger by Geoffrey Household Page A

gave me then and there a sketch of the family history.
The Hilliards had been prosperous farmers at Cleder’s Priory, father to son for eight generations until the last Hilliard who had become a man of mark in South Devon—partly due to a
university education, partly to his interest in all the classless sports of horsemen. And gloriously classless he seems to have been, equally at home with labourers, the neighbouring farmers and
the county magnates.
    ‘’Ee could meet anyone at his table, me dear,’ she said. ‘And them as was ’mazed by it, well, they doant come again and good riddance. Too good for this world
’e was and the Lord took ’im early.’
    So much for Hilliard—and as fair a time as another to fill in the youth of Eudora though from later knowledge. She had been as much in revolt against wealthy, stock-broking parents as any
hippies of today, and with more reason considering all the economic miseries of America in the nineteen-thirties. She met the brothers-in-law, Hilliard and Major Rory, when they were running a
refugee camp for Spanish republican children on the Devon coast and were both desolated by the loss of Hilliard’s sister who had broken her neck in the hunting field. Eudora was weary, I
think, of protests and marchings, of anarchist sacrifice and communist treachery; she was ready to see that integrity and deep love of fellow men were not the exclusive possessions of the left. So
she married Hilliard and surrendered herself to the simplicity of his country life. When Major Rory was killed at Dunkirk, his thirteen-year-old-son, Alwyn, made his home with the Hilliards.
    ‘Mrs. Hilliard seems to have fallen in love with England,’ I said.
    ‘That’s as may be, Mr. Willie, but us zurely fell in love with she.’
    I slept soundly, though not quite off guard since I’d heard John creep into the cottage just before dawn and wondered why he and Mrs. Hilliard had stayed up so very late. I was woken up by
Amy Penpole with a breakfast tray. When I apologised for not being up and about already, she reminded me that I was supposed to have gone off with the baker’s van and so I should stay where I
was and not come downstairs.
    I sat there trying to plan what I ought to do and how I could disentangle Eudora Hilliard from all the embarrassment I had caused her and myself from whatever mess I was in. I was not supposed
to show myself in Molesworthy or at the house or even at the Penpoles’ cottage. Tessa was being deliberately deceived about me. The pretence of being a Portuguese was finished. Obviously
Ionel Petrescu must be removed as far as possible from everyone who wanted a serious talk with him. If Mrs. Hilliard was right and he was believed to have secrets of Russian trawlers, it was
surprising that he had been put through such a perfunctory interrogation in London.
    She turned up in the middle of the morning looking worn and old, and bringing Sack-and-Sugar with her for comfort. He was annoyed at not being allowed to walk and was wriggling furiously in the
poacher’s pocket of her tweed coat.
    She asked me if Amy was looking after me all right and agreed that I had better stay up in the attic for the time being.
    ‘Are you sure you have told me everything?’
    I said that I had told her everything I knew and it would all be clearer if we knew who ‘they’ were. When could she ask her friend?
    ‘I asked him last night. He said he would have to think it over but meanwhile you had better get out of here. What do you yourself think you ought to do?’
    ‘Leave tonight. No one saw me arrive and no one will see me go.’
    ‘If you don’t lose your way in the dark. Let’s see what Sack has to say.’
    She put him down on the floor of the attic. He humped himself round the angle between floor and wall examining everything and then climbed to my shoulder, opening with his claws a shallow
scratch on my neck which he proceeded to lick with enjoyment. Ferrets can’t help it. The