Bramton Wick

by Elizabeth Fair

  It was a pity, in a way, that Miles was so much older than Gillian and Laura. He had never been a playmate for them. When they were small children he was already at school, he spent most of his holidays with some aunts in Devonshire, and it was only since his father’s death that he had come to take his father’s place in her mind. That is to say, she had grown to look on him as a friend, someone who could be consulted about matters beyond her own comprehension and who could be trusted to look after her interests.

  Apart from this, Miles was not a good substitute for his father. Old Mr. Corton had known her in the days of her youth, and to the end of his life he had not altered his opinion that she was a very beautiful woman. His admiration had been her last link with the golden, vanished world of the past; and it was not to be supposed that Miles could replace him in this respect.

  Thinking of old Mr. Corton and of the sad changes in Marly House, Mrs. Cole walked slowly downstairs. Laura looked anxiously at her and thought that she must be very tired indeed, but Mrs. Cole was not tired, only preoccupied. Miles was waiting for them in the hall, and took them into the library, the only room, he said, that was in use.

  “Oh, but the drawing-room,” said Mrs. Cole. “Don’t you use it at all?”

  “I prefer this room.”

  “But the drawing-room is charming,” she said plaintively, beginning to pour out the tea. “Such a pity not to use it.”

  Miles agreed politely, but pointed out that it faced north and was too large and much too cold to be comfortable.

  “Do you think the Miss Cleeves noticed that there was no tea?” Laura asked. She thought her mother was about to launch into reminiscences of the past. Laura had no real objection to reminiscences of the past, but it seemed a pity to remind Miles that he was so much worse off than his father had been.

  “I thought not. They didn’t appear concerned. But why was there no tea—surely it’s usual to have it?”

  “Didn’t Mrs. Epps tell you?”

  Laura repeated the story Mrs. Epps had told them upstairs.

  “And just think,” said Mrs. Cole, “all those plants were in pots.”

  “I knew that, Mummy. I saw a bit of a pot sticking up out of the soil.”

  “I was quite deceived; I thought they’d grown them all.”

  “Pussy Cleeve told me they had.”

  “My dear Laura, if Pussy told you that, you might have guessed at once that they were in pots.”

  “Oh, no, Miles. Haven’t you noticed that Pussy’s stories aren’t quite, quite false? There’s always a fraction that’s true.”

  “An extremely small fraction, in most cases.”

  When Miles spoke, Mrs. Cole was instantly reminded of her own conversation with Pussy. In a sense she had been thinking of it all the time; it had been at the back of her mind when she entered Marly House, when she observed the cobwebs in the bedroom and spoke of the drawing-room’s charm. Till now she had thought of Marly House as the home of old Mr. Corton, who had been her friend; now, being a mother, she could only think of it as a possible future home for her daughter Laura. Brooding over Pussy’s words, she kept giving quick surreptitious glances at Miles, who was talking to Laura about the garden party.

  “Miles has quite a penchant for dear Laura.”

  This was not the worst thing Pussy had said, but it distressed Mrs. Cole to think that, if there was any truth in it, she had not noticed it for herself.

  Of course, if one believed Pussy, Laura had no intention of marrying Miles (Mrs. Cole did not put it quite like that; she shied away from the definite verb and told herself that Laura was “not interested”). But what could Pussy know about it? She was imagining things, making it up, enjoying herself in her own way by upsetting other people. Alas, as Laura had remarked, Pussy’s stories, although magnified and perverted, had often a basis of truth, and it was not possible to dismiss this one as pure invention.

  And when had Pussy seen Miles and Laura together? Mrs. Cole cast her mind back. She remembered that Laura had met Miles in Bramworthy, the day she had gone there with Miss Garrett, but she could not remember another occasion.

  By this time they had finished tea, and Miles offered to drive them back to Woodside, but Mrs. Cole said firmly that they could perfectly well walk.

  “We could go through the park,” she said, “and across the railway by that little gate just above Bank Cottage.”

  “Oh, yes, I haven’t been that way for a long time.”

  “The last time I went that way,” said Miles, “I found that Miss Selbourne had put up a sort of barricade at the foot of the embankment on her side of the railway, to keep people out of the paddock.”

  “Very high-handed of her. What did you do?”

  “Told her to take it down. The path’s a right of way. She had no business to close it.”

  “But no one ever uses it,” said Mrs. Cole.

  “Oh, but they do, Mummy. At least they use the continuation of it on our side of the river.”

  “Only because the footbridge is there. If you were to take away the footbridge, Miles, people would soon learn to go round by the road.”

  “The path,” he repeated, “is a right of way.”

  But Mrs. Cole, who had been told this so often, did not believe it. She had a hazy idea that a right of way meant a path which was absolutely necessary, the only route between one place and another, and there were alternatives to this particular path. It was hardly any farther to go round by the road. Therefore it could not be a right of way, and Miles was only being obstinate in refusing to close it. The Cortons were a stubborn race; old Mr. Corton, in his way, had been quite as obstinate as Miles. But in him it had been an excusable weakness, since it had always operated in her favour. In Miles it was a grave defect. Laura would not be happy with Miles, if ever . . .

  Mrs. Cole collected her straying thoughts, for her dear daughter was speaking to her.

  “Miles thinks we’d better go by the road, in case Miss Selbourne hasn’t taken the barricade down.”

  “But I should like to walk across the park. I’m sure Miss Selbourne will let us through the paddock.”

  Laura was surprised that her mother should express so decided a preference; she could not know that Mrs. Cole had resolved to oppose Miles in all things, great and small.

  “Very well, darling,” she answered. “But you won’t be able to say that no one uses the path.”

  The garden lay at the back of Marly House and the footpath ran just outside the boundary wall. It overlooked the garden, just as it overlooked the garden at Woodside, and could be reached by a wicket gate at the end of a grass alley. Miles walked down to the gate with them. There he said good-bye and went back to deal with an accumulation of correspondence and accounts, the inevitable accompaniment of modern farming, and most of it already a little overdue. His rooted distaste for outside interference made it a matter of principle for him to keep all civil servants waiting as long as possible for an answer. But there were limits to this game, and the limit had nearly been reached.

  Laura and her mother walked through the park, along the edge of the larch plantation, and down the hill to the railway. It was a warm, still evening, the trees cast their long shadows on the grass, and grazing sheep lifted their faces to stare blandly at the strangers. “How I like sheep,” said Laura. “They can look silly and dignified at the same time.” But Mrs. Cole thought the sheep looked only silly. “Like milkmaids in a palace—quite the wrong setting,” she murmured, fishing out of her memory some half-forgotten fairy tale.

  “No jeering at milkmaids. Don’t forget that I was a milkmaid once.”

  “Oh, Laura, that was different. In the war, I mean.”

  “Well, I quite enjoyed it—except getting up early on winter mornings.”

  “You were so far away.”

  “Mummy darling, Sussex isn’t really far. Though it does seem odd that I should have had to go and milk cows in Sussex when I could just as well have milked them here.”
r />   “Whose cows?” Mrs. Cole asked suspiciously.

  Laura looked surprised. “Well, anybody’s. Miles’s cows, or old Cayman’s, or Manley’s over at Endbury. I shouldn’t have liked that, though; Lady Masters was awfully interfering with the land girls they had there. Always hauling them off to do things for the war effort or reporting them for staying out late. She was most unpopular.”

  “I’m sure Lady Masters meant it for the best,” said Mrs. Cole. “I expect she felt responsible for them.”

  This puzzling and quite uncharacteristic tribute convinced Laura that her mother had something on her mind. Probably she was worrying about Gillian and not thinking of Lady Masters at all. To divert her from sad thoughts she began to talk brightly about the garden party.

  They crossed the railway. A steep sloping path down the embankment brought them to the stile which led into Miss Selbourne’s paddock. But when they reached it, it was evident that Miss Selbourne had paid no attention to her landlord’s command, for a crude but effective barrier of furze branches and barbed wire prevented anyone’s getting over.

  There was no one in sight. The whitewashing of the kennels was finished, Miss Selbourne and Miss Garrett had retired into Bank Cottage, and although the dogs were barking, they barked so frequently and with so little reason that their owners were perfectly accustomed to it and never thought of looking out.

  “We must go down to the house,” said Laura. “Perhaps there’s a way through, lower down.”

  Certainly there was a well-marked track along the foot of the embankment, and when they neared the house they saw there was a new stile there, close to the back door. Mrs. Cole, whose sympathies on the question of public footpaths were all with Miss Selbourne, felt that she had done wrong to come this way, and talked of going back. But Laura was firm; she pointed out that it was Miss Selbourne’s fault that they were forced to trespass in her garden. They climbed over the stile—so rickety and precarious that it was obviously the work of Miss Selbourne and Miss Garrett themselves—and walked quietly past the house towards the gate.

  At this moment, from within the house, a fearful uproar broke out. The yelping of one or more dogs, the crash of broken glass and the clang of falling metal, the loud booming voice of Miss Garrett and the shrill agitated voice of Miss Selbourne combined to suggest that murder was being done, or at least that some major domestic calamity had occurred. Mrs. Cole and her daughter paused; then, as the noise began to subside, they both decided that it would be more tactful to go on. But they had been seen. The back door opened and Miss Selbourne appeared, uninjured but looking a little flushed.

  Mrs. Cole hurriedly began to explain why they were there. Miss Selbourne said they had been forced to block up the stile because people might come in that way by night and steal the dogs. She did not say that Miles Corton had told her to remove the barricade. She seemed not to know or care that it was a right of way. Mrs. Cole felt that Miss Selbourne was a very nice woman, in spite of the dogs and her dreadful dungarees. She resolved to ask her to tea.

  Miss Selbourne glanced rather anxiously through the open door behind her. “Will you come in?” she asked. “Or perhaps, if you don’t mind, you’d better not. We’ve just had rather an upset.”

  Mrs. Cole looked sympathetic, and Laura said they had heard it.

  “Yes, it must have sounded very alarming. Tiger trod on one of the dogs, and then she dropped the tray.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Laura said a few minutes later, when they had parted from Miss Selbourne and were walking up the lane. “It sounded much more as if she’d thrown something at the dogs. But she’d never do that. Perhaps she threw it at Miss Selbourne and hit a dog by mistake.”

  “What nonsense! Everybody drops things; what could be more natural—especially with dogs getting under one’s feet?”

  “But she was swearing, and the curses and the crash came first, before the yelps of injured dogs.”

  Mrs. Cole laughed indulgently. Nice people did not throw things at one another, or curse and swear.

  Laura said, “Poor Miles.”

  Mrs. Cole stopped laughing and asked her daughter what she meant.

  “He’s a good, kind landlord, but he’s got such peculiar tenants. It seems bad luck. I’m sure the Misses Cleeve never pay any rent, and Miss Selbourne blocks up his right of way, and we’re always coming on him for advice and help.”

  “It’s very easy to say ‘poor Miles,’ and feel sorry for people,” said Mrs. Cole, speaking rapidly and rather incoherently as she always did when she presumed to criticize her daughters, “but you mustn’t let it get into a habit, Laura darling. I’ve noticed you do and so has Gillian. There’s no reason whatever to feel sorry for Miles Corton. He has everything he needs, and I can’t see that he’s a better landlord than anyone else. He takes very little trouble—not a bit like his father. Please don’t call him ‘poor Miles.’”

  Chapter Thirteen

  August, September—how fast the days went by! Soon it would be October. Next Tuesday—no, next Wednesday! Mrs. Worthy picked up a pencil and scratched out yesterday’s date on the kitchen calendar. Long ago, like every other schoolgirl, she had hastened the end of term by making calendars on squared graph paper and ticking off each day as it ended, and she still kept up the habit, although there was now no holiday, no festival, to look forward to. Three months—longer—since Jocelyn’s arrival, and here he was still, and here he would stay, she felt, forever, unless Curtis turned him out of the house, which he would never do because, after all, Jocelyn was poor Armitage’s son and blood was thicker than water.

  “Gwennie!” shouted Major Worthy from the hall. “Gwennie!”

  When Mrs. Worthy got there she found him standing tense and alert, like a well-trained police dog, above a muddy pair of shoes, a damp golf jacket, and a disintegrating ball of string. “What’s all this?” he asked. “That young feller left it here?” He had lately taken to speaking of Jocelyn in this way, as if he was some stranger billeted on them.

  “I’m afraid they must be Jocelyn’s. Yes, they are, I remember now, it was raining when he came in this morning and I said to him, Jocelyn, leave your wet things outside. Of course I meant in the porch or the lobby, but he doesn’t think. Now what did he want the string for?” said Mrs. Worthy, beginning to wind it up. “I remember he asked me for some string. He came into the kitchen and—”

  “Young feller ought to be in the Army,” said Major Worthy.

  “But he’s been in the Army, Curtis.”

  “Lot of good it did him!”

  Mrs. Worthy saw that he was seriously upset. The effect of having Jocelyn to live with them was cumulative, every now and then something happened which reminded Major Worthy of all he had had to put up with; if he appeared unduly annoyed it was because it was really a retrospective annoyance, divisible among numerous causes. Mrs. Worthy perfectly understood this, and she listened patiently while he said what he thought of his nephew’s untidiness, his bad manners, his everlasting slouching and shambling.

  “Needs to be made to work,” said Major Worthy. “Work or starve. Phui!”

  But Curtis was too good-natured to say these things to Jocelyn himself. He said them instead to his wife. And after it was all over Jocelyn would still be there, slouching and shambling and eating more than his rations. It did no good. And it was positively bad for Curtis to get so excited; he was a delicate man and the doctors all said he was not to be worried. Having pacified him, Mrs. Worthy went back to the kitchen, where she rescued a cake from the oven and decided that Jocelyn must be made to work. Any work, never mind about fruit farming or engineering, they would take too long to get started and the important thing was that he should start at once. Any work—for even if he had to live with them, he would be away all day if he was working—and surely there must be work, even driving a van or sweeping the roads.

  Just before tea she saw Jocelyn going past the window. She tapped on the glass and beckoned him into the kitchen.
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  “New cake for tea?” Jocelyn asked amiably. When food was the subject of conversation he could be quite animated.

  “Where have you been? I wanted you to post my letters.”

  “Sorry, Aunt Gwennie. I’ve been down at Woodside. They’re digging up the garden.”

  “Well, your uncle has often asked you to help him with the digging here—only yesterday I heard him telling you about the herbaceous border. I must say—”

  “Aunt Gwennie, you remember about the dance?”

  “Don’t interrupt me.”

  Jocelyn goggled; he perceived, dimly, that his Aunt Gwennie was angry with him. “Sorry,” he repeated, “but you see, it’s about the dance.”

  “What dance?”

  Jocelyn explained that it was the Conservative dance at Bramworthy. She had told him she would find him a partner and get another ticket, but now he had found a partner for himself. He had asked Gillian to go to the dance.

  “So about the ticket, Aunt Gwennie. Have you got it yet? Because it’s next Saturday. And I’ll have to have the car, because they haven’t got one.”

  If Mrs. Worthy had not been so angry she would have remembered that this was to be his birthday treat. But Curtis had been seriously upset, her own afternoon interrupted, and here was Jocelyn simply assuming that he could have the car.

  “No,” she said, “you can’t have the car. And if you want another ticket you must buy it for yourself. I’m sorry, Jocelyn, but you must remember that your uncle and I are not rich people—that is, we can’t afford to throw money away. Not that I grudge you anything, I know young people like dances and so on, and I’ve no objection to them myself. I’m sure this will be a good dance—”

  “But Aunt Gwennie! I’ve asked her. And I haven’t any money to buy a ticket.”

  “That’s your own fault,” Mrs. Worthy told him. “You must get a job. And don’t stand there gaping.”