He stood at the drawing-room bay-window (of which each large pane had
been marked with the mystic sign of a white circle by triumphant
glaziers), and looked across the enclosed fragment of clayey field that
ultimately would be the garden. The house was at the corner of
Trafalgar Road and a side-street that had lobbied cottages down its
slope. The garden was oblong, with its length parallel to Trafalgar
Road, and separated from the pavement only by a high wall. The upper
end of the garden was blocked by the first of three new houses which
Osmond Orgreave was building in a terrace. These houses had their main
fronts on the street; they were quite as commodious as the Clayhangers',
but much inferior in garden-space; their bits of flower-plots lay behind
them. And away behind their flower-plots, with double entrance-gates in
another side street, stretched the grounds of Osmond Orgreave, his house
in the sheltered middle thereof. He had got, cheaply, one of the older
residential properties of the district, Georgian, of a recognisable
style, relic of the days when manufacturers formed a class entirely
apart from their operatives; even as far back as 1880 any operative
might with luck become an employer. The south-east corner of the
Clayhanger garden touched the north-west corner of the domains of
Orgreave; for a few feet the two gardens were actually contiguous, with
naught but an old untidy thorn hedge between them; this hedge was to be
replaced by a wall that would match the topmost of the lobbied cottages
which bounded the view of the Clayhangers to the east.
From the bay-window Edwin could see over the hedge, and also through it,
on to the croquet lawn of the Orgreaves. Croquet was then in its first
avatar; nothing was more dashing than croquet. With rag-balls and
home-made mallets the Clayhanger children had imitated croquet in their
yard in the seventies. The Orgreaves played real croquet; one of them
had shone in a tournament at Buxton. Edwin noticed a figure on the
gravel between the lawn and the hedge. He knew it to be Janet, by the
crimson frock. But he had no notion that Janet had stationed herself in
that quarter with intent to waylay him. He could not have credited her
with such a purpose. Nor could his modesty have believed that he was
important enough to employ the talent of the Orgreaves for agreeable
chicane. The fact was that Janet had been espying him for a quarter of
an hour. When at length she waved her hand to him, it did not occur to
him to suppose that she was waving her hand to him; he merely wondered
what peculiar thing she was doing. Then he blushed as she waved again,
and he knew first from the blood in his face that Janet was making a
signal, and that it was to himself that the signal was directed: his
body had told his mind; this was very odd.
Of course he was obliged to go out; and he went, muttering to himself.