Buried for Pleasure Read Free

with a mole, behind which an angry sky suggested the approach of a tornado. And the rest of the available space, which was considerable, was taken up with a stormy sea, flecked with white horses, upon which a number of sailing-ships were proceeding in various directions.
    This spirited depiction, Fen was to learn, provided an inexhaustible topic of argument among the habitués of the inn. From the seaman’s point of view, no such scene had ever existed, or could ever exist, on God’s earth. But this possibility did not seem to have occurred to anyone at Sanford Angelorum. It was the faith of the inhabitants that if the artist had painted it thus, it must have been thus. And tortuous and implausible modes of navigation had consequently to be postulated in order to explain what was going on. These, it is true, were generally couched in terms which by speakers and auditors alike were only imperfectly understood; but the average Englishman will no more admit ignorance of seafaring matters than he will admit ignorance of women.
    â€˜No, no; I tell ’ee, that schooner, ’er’s luffin’ on the lee shore.’
    â€˜What about the brig, then? What about the brig?’
    â€˜That’s no brig, Fred, ’er’s a ketch.’
    â€˜â€™Er wouldn’t be fully rigged, not if ’er was luffing.’
    â€˜Look ’ere, take that direction as north, see, and that means the wind’s nor’-nor’-east.’
    â€˜Then ’ow the ’ell d’you account for that wave breaking over the mole?’
    â€˜That’s a current.’
    â€˜Current, ’e says. Don’t be bloody daft, Bert, ’ow can a wave be a current?’
    â€˜ Current . That’s a good one.’
    At the moment when Fen first set eyes on this object, however, it had temporarily lost its hold on the interest of the inn’s clients. This was due to the presence of an elderly lady in a ginger wig who, surrounded by a circle of listeners, was sitting in a collapsed posture on a chair, engaged, between sips of brandy, in vehement and imprecise narration.
    â€˜Frightened?’ she was saying. ‘Nearly fell dead in me tracks, I did. There ’e were, all white and nekked, lurking be’ind that clump of gorse by Sweeting’s Farm. And jist as I passes by, out’e jumps at me and “Boo!” ’e says, “Boo!”’
    At this, an oafish youth giggled feebly.
    â€˜And what ’appened then?’ someone demanded.
    â€˜I struck at ’im,’ the elderly lady replied, striking illustratively at the air, ‘with me brolly.’
    â€˜Did you ’it ’im?’
    â€˜No,’ she admitted with evident reluctance. ‘’E slipped away from me reach, and off ’e went before you could say “knife”. And ’ow I staggered ’ere I shall never know, not to me dying day. Yes, thank you, Mrs ’Erbert, I’ll ’ave another, if you please.’
    â€˜â€™E must ’a’ bin a exhibitor,’ someone volunteered. ‘People as goes about showing thesselves in the altogether is called exhibitors.’
    But this information, savouring as it did of intellectual snobbery, failed to provoke much interest. A middle-aged, bovine, nervous-looking man in the uniform of a police constable, who was standing by with a note-book in his hand, said:
    â€˜Well, us all knows what ’tis, I s’pose. ’Tis one o’ they loonies escaped from up at ’all.’
    â€˜These ten years,’ said a gloomy-looking old man, ‘I’ve known that’d ’appen. ’Aven’t I said it, time and time again?’
    The disgusted silence with which this rhetorical question was received indicated forcibly that he had; with just such repugnance must Cassandra have been regarded at the fall of Troy, for there is something distinctly irritating about a person with an obsession who turns out in the face