Imaginative Experience by Mary Wesley Page A

became some sort of domestic, I mean, really!’ Madge almost whispered.
    ‘Ah.’
    ‘Clodagh says, and I am inclined to agree, that she found her proper level and that Giles should have left her there.’
    ‘Indeed.’ Maurice moved towards the door.
    ‘Shall you go and see Clodagh?’ Madge tried to delay him.
    ‘Another time. I don’t want to intrude.’
    ‘What shall I tell her?’
    ‘A friend’—he had reached the door—‘and my deepest sympathy.’ He made his escape.
    Walking back to his car, Maurice mulled over information gained and wondered to what possible use he could put it.
    He drove slowly out of the village. He would go west to the Exe estuary, see whether the avocets had arrived, put up at the pub at Starcross, eat some oysters. He passed the cemetery and Madge Brownlow’s cottage; the front door was closed and the curtains drawn, though the sun was not yet set. By contrast there was activity in the garden of the cottage next door. Clodagh May was piling weeds into a barrow.
    Maurice slowed to a stop, rolled down his window and said, ‘Good afternoon.’
    Clodagh May was as tall as her daughter but there the resemblance ended; her hair was auburn, she had heavily lidded pale blue eyes, a Grecian nose and a large mouth turning down at the corners from the effort of heaving wet weeds into a barrow already overloaded. She looked, Maurice thought, a bit of all right. She said, ‘You have been visiting Madge Brownlow.’
    Maurice said, ‘Yes,’ and switched off his engine.
    ‘She’s watching Neighbours.’ Clodagh May nodded towards the drawn curtains. ‘She’s addicted to soaps.’
    Maurice got out of his car. ‘Could I give you a hand with that barrow?’ He put a hand on the garden gate.
    ‘Are you the man from the Pru?’ Clodagh May dropped her forkful of weeds onto an ill-balanced load.
    ‘I was a friend of Giles,’ said Maurice. ‘My name is Maurice Benson.’
    ‘I never heard him mention you.’ Clodagh May pushed the prongs of her fork hard into the pile of weeds. ‘Weeds!’
    ‘Long ago. We rather lost touch. I only heard the other day that—’
    ‘It was all in the papers. Ghastly, absolutely ghastly.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘He always did the heavy work for me.’ She gripped the handles of the barrow.
    ‘Please. Let me.’ Maurice pushed the gate open. ‘Where do you want it to go?’
    Clodagh May stood aside. ‘Round the back onto the compost heap. Thanks.’ She led the way. Maurice followed pushing the barrow, which was extremely heavy.
    ‘You should not do this, you might strain your back,’ he said.
    The woman gave a short laugh and, pointing, said, ‘The compost heap is down there. Don’t let the barrow run away with you, it always did with Giles.’ She stood watching while he trundled the barrow down a steep incline, tipped its contents onto the compost heap and then forked them evenly into place.
    ‘You can leave the barrow there.’ Clodagh May raised her voice.
    ‘Right.’ Maurice tipped the barrow on its side and walked back up the path.
    ‘So you know about compost.’ She took the fork from him and leaned it against the house. ‘You’ve earned yourself a drink. How did you come to know Giles?’
    ‘It was before his marriage—er—quite some time ago,’ Maurice murmured.
    ‘Oh,’ she said, the Oh sounding like Ugh!
    ‘Could you—um—could you tell me—er—if it’s not too—er—put me in the picture? As a friend, I’d like to be up to date.’
    ‘A disaster.’ She opened a french window. ‘Come in, wipe your feet.’
    ‘Such an—’
    ‘I mean the marriage. Come in. I don’t know what Madge told you, she has been known to be discreet.’
    So that’s discretion. Maurice followed Clodagh May into the house. ‘What a pretty room—’
    ‘Yes. Giles had such taste.’
    ‘She told me the bare facts, that Giles married your daughter—’
    ‘That girl—’ Clodagh May curdled the word girl into an epithet. ‘You’d better sit