Coming up into the afternoon sunlight again, huge dazzling lights opened up inside Maud’s mind. Marvellous. She had not known how good it would feel to punish those two cruel beings. It would have been better if she could have locked Twygrist’s main door, but of course she had no keys.
There was no one around as she began to walk back to Quire, but Maud had not gone many yards when she heard the sound of tapping. She slowed her footsteps and half turned, listening. For a moment there was nothing, then it came again. Light, but insistent. Tap-tap… Tap-tap. It was probably someone carrying out some sort of work nearby: hammering nails into a roof or chopping wood.
Or a faltering hand knocking feebly on the inside of a door, trying to get out?
That was ridiculous. Even if Thomasina or Simon were tapping on the walls, Maud could not possibly hear them all the way up here. It would be a workman somewhere, and she would soon be out of earshot.
But she was not soon out of earshot. The sounds followed her as she hurried through the lanes towards Quire House. Tap-tap…Tap-tap… As she went through the gates, the sounds changed to Let-us-out… Maud shivered and went into the house, slipping up to her room unseen.
Tap-tap…Let-us-out…
The sounds stayed with her while she had her lunch in the dining room. Mrs Minching was pleased to see her downstairs at last. It was a nasty thing this influenza, wasn’t it, and it was to be hoped Miss Maud was properly recovered?
Maud said she was feeling very much better, thank you. No, she had not seen Miss Thomasina that morning, perhaps she had gone out to one of Quire’s tenants.
Several times in the hours that followed Maud had to fight not to clap her hands over her ears to shut the tapping out. Could it be those two in Twygrist?
Of course it could not. She was hearing her own guilty conscience because of what she had done. Except she did not feel any guilt.
She drowned out the sounds by playing some music.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It had been a bitter blow when, after all Donna’s care over furnishing the small flat for the two of them, Don did not want to live at home. He had not got a university place–Donna had not really thought he would, although she could have borne his absence on that account and would have enjoyed it. She had even dared to imagine herself and Don in an Oxford common room, or dancing together at the May Ball, and strolling across one of the famous quadrangles, arm in arm…
The reality had been harshly different. Don said the flat had been all right for school holidays–of course it had. But he had arranged to go with a couple of friends (what friends? Donna thought she knew all his friends) on a grape-picking tour of southern France. And then on to Spain, perhaps. There would be enough money for that, wouldn’t there? Oh, well, if not, he would manage. They were going to live very simply anyway in pensions, or they might take one of those old farmhouses for a few months. It would be great fun and he did think he was owed a little fun after the last couple of years. His French would improve immensely–he might get all kinds of work at the end of it. Not teaching, which would be too tedious for words, but translating or something like that.