“I don’t believe anything really exciting begins before one-thirty,” she said. “Don’t you think it might be a good thing if we had lunch first?”
“Come on, then,” said Henry, leading the way briskly towards one of the marquees, outside which a gang of shrill-voiced women with rolled-up sleeves was washing plates in frenzied haste and tubs of very dubiously clean water. They worked to such an accompaniment of crashing crockery that Kate was amazed to see anything emerge whole from the tubs into which it was flung with cheerful abandon. Every now and then a waitress dashed from the marquee and shot a ftesh consignment into the water, while the washers-up juggled the clean plates into piles like stage professionals.
Virginia, always friendly and interested, pattered over to speak to them, and was received with a deafening increase of yells. “Eh, whit a fricht I’ve got!” screeched one enormous woman, whose apron would have made a mainsail. “I near drappit a’ thae dishes!” “Dinna dae that, Elsie!” bawled her next-door neighbour. “They’re clean anes.”
Henry called to Virginia, but in vain. She was entranced by the company in which she now found herself the centre of attraction, growled and made playful snaps at their heels, and finally proceeded to pounce upon and worry a dishcloth so well-used that Kate felt faintly sick at sight of it.
“Virginia!” roared Henry in the voice which all dog-owners resort to sooner or later, and which their dogs can invariably gauge at exactly its true value. “Virginia! Come here!”
Virginia gave a start of affected surprise. “Dear me, did I hear someone mention my name?” she said, her soft ears pricked, her teeth still clenched on the dirtiest portion of the dish-cloth. “Well, I must go and see what he wants, girls, I suppose. It’s the owner.” She gave her treasure a last regretful shake before dropping it, and toddled back with a careworn expression to her master.
“Naughty girl,” said Henry in loving tones. “Isn’t she sweet, Kate?”
But Kate’s horrified gaze was riveted on the fat woman, who, without an instant’s hesitation, had seized the dish-cloth from the grass where Virginia had left it, and begun to dry glasses with it at top speed.
“Henry,” said Kate faintly, “do let’s have lunch quickly, before they start using the washed-up plates and things. With luck we may get ones that haven’t seen those tubs and towels.”
“I expect,” said Henry, hastening his steps obligingly.
“That they’re every bit as dirty in hotels and restaurants.”
“Very likely,” retorted Kate. “But at least I don’t see them doing it there!”
“Lunch-tickets half a crown, please,” intoned a young man with a weary air, seated behind a small table at the entrance to the big tent. While Henry in a lordly manner pulled a ten-shilling note from his pocket and waited for change, Kate peered inside. The dim and odorous place was a seething mob of people, some sitting chewing as placidly as cows in a field, some trying to push their way out, others struggling to find seats at the long trestle tables. Among them flitted the waitresses, carrying laden plates and brimming glasses as though they were in an empty room.
“Come on,” said Henry, and dived in between two large tweed figures who were standing, deep in argument, their broad backs to the doorway. Kate meekly followed, but as she made her plunge, the two leaned towards each other, and she was jammed in the middle, “like a piece of ham in a sandwich,” as Henry described it.
There was a torrent of apology and explanation, all delivered without movement on the part of the tweed persons, so that Kate was held prisoner while they boomed above her head. “No idea there was anyone there. Very sorry indeed, miss, if we squeezed ye a bit.” “A fine-looking lass, too!”
Kate, feeling that these personalities were liable to become embarrassing, especially as they were uttered in voices that resounded throughout the tent, gave a frantic wriggle and succeeded in breaking away from between them.
“Oh, do come on!” shouted Henry, dancing with impatience. “I’ve got two places for us if you hurry.”
They were the last two seats at the end of a bench plated on a slope. The table sloped down towards them, and it was far from easy to keep from falling backwards off the bench onto the grass, but Henry was triumphant, and had already ordered two portions of veal and ham pie, with plum tart to follow.
After this meal, which seemed to consist mainly of very solid pastry, and was washed down with ginger beer, luke-warm and soapy, Kate staggered rather than walked out into the fresh air again. Henry and the effervescent Virginia, apparently revived by their lunch, bounded after her. There was a blast of music from a gramophone mounted in a van, with a loudspeaker attached, and a hoarse voice proclaimed: “The Competeetion in Scottish Country Dencing for school-children will now commence!”
Kate and Henry, pressing towards the announcement, found themselves at a railed-off circular piece of ground, with a small dancing-floor of boards in the middle. Teams of small children, shepherded by school-teachers who ran round their charges like anxious hens, stood solemnly by awaiting their turn. A snuffy elderly man in a Trilby hat at least two sizes too small for him took his seat impressively on an inadequate camp-stool.
“That must be the judge,” murmured Kate.
“What, him? He doesn’t look as if he’d been much good at dancing even in his prime, and he must have forgotten all about it by now, at his age,” was Henry’s disparaging rejoinder, delivered in clarion tones, which evidently came all too clearly to the judge’s ears, for he frowned reprovingly in their direction, and shifted uncomfortably on his rickety stool.
Fortunately before Henry could say anything more, the first team of children appeared on the platform, acutely conscious of the lonely splendour of their position, and at the same instant such a roar of country-dance music issued from the loud-speaker that nothing else could be heard. During the interval between the second and third dances, a fluttering voice addressed Kate. “Such dear little things,” it said. “Such sweetly pretty dancers.”
Looking round and down, Kate saw Miss Milligan, whose eager eyes were fixed in avid curiosity, not on the dear little dancers, but on herself. In her innocence Kate supposed this was due to the fact that she had come from Soonhope. She could not guess that Mima, discovered by her mistress trying to stuff the shattered remains of a Spode teacup which had come away in her hand, into a convenient mouse-hole below the kitchen sink, had diverted the wrath to come by telling Miss Milligan how she had seen Kate with Robin Anstruther walking up the road after midnight, and adding the interesting detail that she had ‘heard tell’ that Miss Heron had danced with a ploughman at Baro Fair. Even the kindest of women, if her interest in living is only kept alive by gossip, could not be expected to hear such momentous news unmoved, and Miss Milligan fed on gossip. So she now stared at Kate as if she must bear some traces of her midnight ramble, with such intense interest that the object of her attention became restive.
“I hope your mother is well, Miss Milligan?” she asked politely.
“Oh, yes, indeed, thank you. Mamma is very well, very well indeed,” answered Miss Milligan. In fact Mamma, who had interviewed Mima herself and had sent her daughter to the Show to see if anything else of moment could be seen or heard, was in a state of such extreme vitality, not to say irritability, that Flora would have been exhausted had this temporary means of escape not been opened to her.
“Very well, very, very well,” she went on in an excited bleat, so reminiscent of the Sheep in Through the Looking Glass that Kate had to bite her lips to stop a smile.
“And are the gentlemen not with you? Are you all alone?” pursued Miss Milligan archly.
“The gentlemen,” said Kate with praiseworthy gravity, “are out killing partridges, but I am not all alone.”
“Ah, yes, the poor sweet little birds, but so good to eat,” murmured Miss Milligan vaguely, and added much more sharply: “Then who is with you?”
“Henry Lockhart. The youngest,” said Kate. She turned to
her cavalier, who was vainly trying to broaden Virginia’s mind by showing her the dancing. “Henry, I’m sure you must remember Miss Milligan?”
“D’you do?” muttered Henry gruffly.
“How do you do, Henry? And how are your dear Mamma and—er, your Papa?”
A gleam of devilish amusement flickered in Henry’s eyes and was gone. “As well as can be expected, thank you,” he answered with mournful solemnity.
This unexpected rejoinder silenced Miss Milligan for the moment, but as Kate, seizing him by the arm and hurrying him a way before he could commit further indiscretions, said to him: “Henry, how could you do it? That remark of yours will be all over Haystoun by to-night.”
“I know, “ he said cheerfully. “That’s why I said it. And they’re quite well, and that’s to be expected, isn’t it? Oh, never mind the old girl, Kate. Let’s go and see the ponies.”
They went and saw the ponies: musical ride, bending race, potato race, and all; they saw the serious collies being judged by even more serious shepherds, who examined their every point with infinite care; and they had some difficulty in getting Virginia away from them, for she suddenly became coquettish and flaunted her charms so brazenly that they left to an outburst of canine lamentation; then, Kate rather weary, Henry still fresh as a daisy, they sought the sheep dog trials. Once there, it was plain that Henry would not be willing to move for a long time. He was enthralled by the uncanny prescience of the shaggy black-and-white collies, not much to look at, for these were working dogs pure and simple, which each brought their three sheep up to the pen between two posts with no further assistance from their masters than a wave or an occasional shrill whistle. Kate, feeling thankful that there was a prospect of rest, unfolded the shooting-stick which so far had proved more of a burden than a help, and perched herself on it.
The crowd began to thicken. Where, half an hour earlier, it had been largely composed of shepherds and farmers with their friends, it was now increased by the arrival of men in plus fours or riding-breeches, smartly tweeded women, girls with tiny skull caps on their curled hair and strings of small but obviously authentic pearls on the necks of their hand-knitted jumpers. It amused Kate to look at their feet. Where all were dressed more or less alike as far down as their skirts, the only variation to this uniform of suits and high-necked woollies was to be seen in shoes. There were high-heeled brown-and-white pumps, there were Newmarket boots, there were stout brogues laced round slender ankles. Cigarettes were lighted, the reddened tips thrown on the grass to be trampled out were stared at with disapproving interest by the older shepherds. There was a buzz of well-bred voices, laughter and conversation.
“Whose dog is this now? Number thirty-three. Look in the catalogue, Jim dear, will you? . . . Of course, it’s James Brown from Redheugh. I thought I recognized him. Dear old man, I hope he wins. . . . Oh, look, isn’t that Uncle Tim’s shepherd in the brown cap?”
It was all very friendly and pleasant, and Kate began to wish that someone she knew would appear. For the first time it struck her that, coming from Soonhope, she might be looked at with more curiosity than friendliness, and she hoped, as much for Henry’s sake as her own, that no awkward meeting would take place. While she was thinking, she absently noticed that a pair of exceedingly elegant shoes, punched white buckskin with dark brown trimmings, long and narrow, and evidently of American design, was coming very close. They halted just beside her own plain brown brogues, and a voice said: “Isn’t it Kate Heron?”
Kate looked up into a charming face under a rather wide brimmed felt hat. The soft white hair, the beautiful long blue eyes fringed with black, the wild-rose complexion and tall willowy figure, could only belong to one person.
“Lady Charteris?” she said, rising from the shooting-stick, and taking the hand held out to her. “How nice of you remember me.”
“I thought I wasn’t mistaken. Tell me, are you staying with the Lockharts? I heard that they had come back to Soonhope, and I am so glad,” said Lady Charteris in her slow, rather deep voice. “Aren’t any of them here this afternoon? I want to see them again.”
Nothing awkward about this meeting, anyhow, thought Kate gratefully as she pointed out Henry and explained that his mother and sister had probably reached the Show by this time.
“Dear me, is that tall creature Henry? I should never have recognized him. He was a little boy in shorts when I last went to Soonhope. And the girl. Isn’t she grown-up by this time? I seem to remember that she and my Sybil are much of an age.”
“Anne is nineteen,” said Kate. She leaned forward and poked Henry with her shooting-stick. Henry, deep in conversation with an elderly farmer, merely wriggled, and paid no attention until the third prod, which was a shrewd one, impatiently delivered. Then he turned and came slowly and reluctantly towards her. “Kate, do you know what he was telling me?” he began eagerly.
“Lady Charteris, this is Henry Lockhart,” said Kate, ruthlessly interrupting the sheep-dog enthusiast.
“How d’you do?” said Henry, and looked with some dismay at the beautiful cream-coloured glove which Lady Charteris extended to him. “Really I’d better not,’ he said hastily. “My hands are a bit doggy. Do you know what that man was telling me?”
“I hope you are going to tell us,” said Lady Charteris with a smile which had always created havoc, and made a deep impression on Henry.
“Well, if you’re interested,” he said gratified. “He says that the dogs that go in for the big sheep-dog trials, the international ones, you know, are trained on chickens!”
“Never!” cried both his hearers in genuine astonishment. Kate at least picturing these pampered collies dining off roast chicken every day.
“He says so, and he seems to know all about it. You see, they don’t need to run so far as if they were herding sheep, and chickens are much easier to drive,” said Henry, his face aglow. “And Kate, don’t you think I could teach Virginia with hens? She’s a sort of—sort of sheep-dog, you know.”
It seemed to Kate that there would be a considerable lowering of the fowl population if the volatile Virginia were deliberately incited to chase them; but she hesitated, unwilling to hurt Henry’s feelings, and was spared the necessity of having to answer by the appearance of her mother, Lucy and Anne.
“Here you are!” said Lucy briskly. “‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“I told you that Henry would be sure to be at the farthest possible point,” said Anne languidly. “And I was right, wasn’t I, Henry?”
Henry favoured her with a long slow look. “No wonder it was ages before you got here,” he said amiably. “You’ve been giving your mug an extra coat, haven’t you?”
“Pig,” said his sister without rancour.
Privately Kate thought it rather a pity that Anne should have decorated quite so freely with lipstick, rouge, and mascara. It was a charming face, even when plain and unadorned. But after all, one had to be in the fashion, and Anne certainly looked very well in green tweeds with a rakish little green suède cap cocked on her mahogany curls.
Lucy, in blue, was more like a Dresden china figure than ever. Her first faint defensive air had melted to genuine pleasure under the warmth and charm of Lady Charteris’s friendly greeting.
“Lucy dear! How very nice to see you again, though it is quite absurd to think of you as the mother of those two.”
Lucy smiled. “Do you know my husband’s cousin, Mrs. Heron? Of course you do, how silly of me! But, my dear Vera, you have worn so much better than I have, really. You don’t look a day older than when I first met you.”
“Couldn’t we go? We must be missing no end of things, and besides, there’s Virginia,” muttered Henry in a hoarse aside to Kate, whom he considered his special companion for the day at least. “It wouldn’t be rude. They’re jabbering so hard that they’ll never notice.”
This seemed true, though impolitely put. Leaving Lucy and Lady Charteris deep in arrangements for ‘their young people’ to me
et, while Mrs. Heron looked at the sheep-dog trials and Anne seemed content enough to stand by, Kate allowed herself to be hauled away by the anxious Henry. Having seen the sheep-dogs, he now proposed to see the sheep themselves, and made across the field towards the pens like an arrow from the bow. It was unfortunate that the shortest way led straight over the track where flat-racing was just about to begin. As Henry said afterwards with righteous indignation: “How was I to know what those silly little flags were for? It’s the stupidest thing I ever heard of to have the quarter-mile round and round in the middle of everything else.”
Stupid or nor, this was the time-honoured method employed at Haystoun Show. Just as Henry reached the sacred circle marked by the silly little flags, a pistol was fired, and a bellow of enthusiasm from hundreds of spectators announced the start of the quarter-mile. Kate, realizing that she was in the danger-zone, fell back, but Henry went on, and Virginia, not quite so close to his heels as she might have been, was appalled to see a rush of wild figures, bare hairy legs working like pistons, spiked shoes spurning the ground, bear down upon her. In this crisis she lost her head completely, and deaf to Henry’s shouts, turned and fled blindly among the legs of the justly incensed runners. Two jumped over her, the third she nearly upset, causing him to lose his place In the race, and then she was gone like a streak of dark grey lightning among the crowds on the other side of the track.
“Dod! That ane’s a rinner, richt eneuch!” said a beery voice close to Kate. “It’s a peety they hadna a quarter-mile for the dowgs!”
Kate did not wait to answer him, but ran as fast as she could in the direction that Virginia had taken, Henry galloping ahead of her, the sheep, the Show, his dignity, everything forgotten except his darling Virginia.
Several cars, belonging to stewards, judges, or other important persons, had been parked on the Show ground, and Henry, who had stopped running, was peering into each as he passed it. Kate came up to him and said breathlessly: “Oh, Henry, I’m so sorry! Poor Virginia—”
Yoked with a Lamb Page 15
