‘Woah, now.’
Beside James, Rowan pulled gently on the reins and murmured the horse to a halt. Horses always obeyed Rowan. They stood quietly while he saddled them, and then did whatever he asked, even if it meant jumping a fence so high the edges of their hooves clipped the top. James was an adequate rider, but he preferred to be moved along the ground by his own two legs and not the four of some bulky and hairy dumb animal.
James and Rowan jumped down, and went to help Lily from the wagon. Smiling, she stepped prettily onto the ground. James and Rowan next offered their hands to the six girls in her entourage, who had sat on the wagon behind her.
‘Bugger off,’ said Sunny, who jumped down by herself.
Sunny’s posy was already coming apart, and the hem of her white dress had grass stains on it. She’d only agreed to do this, James knew, because Lily had asked her, and because the dress was pretty.
‘I’m not dancing around that sodding maypole, though,’ Sunny had announced, eliciting James’s father’s usual call for her to mind her language; these days said more for form than with any hope of a result.
‘Control your daughter,’ James’s father had demanded once.
‘She’s not a dog to be beaten,’ Sunny’s mother had replied. ‘And besides, she behaves exactly as she should — with vitality and courage and absolute honesty. She is a freethinking, independent being, beholden to no one but herself. Why would I ever want to change that?’
Sunny was like a comet, thought James. Travelling at full speed and blazing, but capable of obliterating anyone who got in her way. He was glad and relieved that Sunny had finally aired the subject of their romantic involvement, a persistent rumour, and they had both agreed they could never be together in that way. James had obviously not confessed that love for Lily was his reason, but Sunny was quite open about why she could never fancy him.
‘You’re too careful,’ she’d said. ‘I want a man who’ll throw himself headlong into life and not give a tinker’s cuss what people think, and try absolutely anything, because that’s what I intend to do. And he must be a man who’ll tell me absolutely everything he’s thinking, because, one, I can’t be bothered to mind-read and two, because I’ll be telling him absolutely everything, so he’ll have to play up and play the game or I’ll kick him off the pitch.’
It was true, thought James. He was careful. He was careful to keep inside all the things that people would not wish to see. Best that the world saw only the James Potts his father bragged about — the winner of sporting and academic prizes, the good friend of scions of English nobility, the handsome, fair boy who was now, finally, also tall. Taller than Rowan, even though his friend’s curls made them look the same height.
Lily was on her throne now, the girls in white seated on the ground around her, and James and Rowan standing at either side. Like guards, thought James, which was exactly what they needed to be. The attention that Lily had begun to receive as a result of her fame, particularly from men, was not always welcome. Though he hadn’t explicitly said it, Ellis Blythe expected Rowan and James to look after Lily. They were her friends, after all.
Sunny’s mother, being the nearest thing to nobility in the local area, stepped forward to place the floral crown on Lily’s head. This she did rather impatiently, observed James, practically ramming it over Lily’s ears. Perhaps James’s father had put her in a bad mood that morning? Not that it was necessarily a morning thing; more a permanent state of affairs.
Or perhaps his mother had been to blame? He’d heard the two women arguing in the study that morning. He’d been unable to make out what they were saying, but the tone was unmistakably one of disagreement. James had been about to inch nearer when Sunny’s mother exited, face so much like Sunny’s that James instinctively ducked as she passed him in the hallway. But Sunny’s mother did not even seem to notice him. James thought then that he’d heard his mother crying, but did not investigate. Part of him wanted to preserve her dignity. But he was reluctant for another reason, too, and the rebuke he gave himself was the same as the last word, the only word, he’d heard Sunny’s mother say before she’d stormed out. That word was ‘coward’.
In any case, James reassured himself, they were probably only arguing about trousers. Sunny’s mother had been trying to convince his mother to play in the women-versus-men football match that would be part of the village’s celebrations for the upcoming coronation. The men would dress up as women, and vice versa. It would be a hoot, Sunny’s mother said. But James’s mother never wore trousers; his father forbade it, deemed them fit only for bluestocking harpies and women of aberrant sexual mores. Skirts and blouses and cardigans — that was what James’s mother wore. That was her uniform.
The Morris dancers were starting up, hands slapping and bells a-jingle. James caught Rowan’s eye and the two shared a grin. Top hats and frock coats were bad enough but at least they didn’t have to wear bells or flap handkerchiefs.
It was a shame, thought James, that he and Rowan could not be friends for much longer. Already, they were falling into the roles Mr Potts intended for them — James as the landowner and Rowan as Old Ted’s replacement. Ted Holly was genuinely old now and his eyesight was failing, though he refused to admit it. Rowan did most of the shooting these days, killing always with one shot to ensure he caused minimum pain. Vermin needed to be controlled, he said, and James believed he meant it; gamekeepers’ blood ran strong through the generations. But no living thing deserved to suffer.
Last spring, James, half admiring, half resenting his friend’s abilities and courage, had watched Rowan climb a towering pine and bring back from a nest a young sparrowhawk whose mother had been shot out of the sky by James’s father. Mr Potts had been pleased. The shot had been a tricky one. Rowan had raised the hawk, fed it strips of rabbit meat by hand. He’d had to hide it from Ted, who would have nailed it with grim satisfaction to his predator’s gibbet. Rowan had taught it to fly and hunt, and last month he’d taken it back to the woods and let it go. James remembered the hawk’s yellow-orange eyes, exactly the same colour as the flecks in Rowan’s own brown eyes. But while Rowan’s eyes were always kind, the hawk’s were fierce-bright as the sun, burning into him, as if it had known he was kin to the man who’d murdered its mother.
Most days, though, James enjoyed his time with Rowan, observing his friend’s skill in the gamekeeper’s craft. When they were children, Rowan used to make the woods seem magical to James, and though those fanciful childhood days were over, Rowan could still make the woods reveal its hidden treasures. Only with Rowan did James see animals and birds up close that he would never have caught sight of otherwise. Badgers and owls, and, once, a stately stag with antlers James’s father would have coveted. Rowan knew where everything edible was, wild raspberries, mushrooms, hazelnuts, and had even found a secret swimming hole, with water that came from an underground spring, so icy cold that they could barely stand a quick dip in and out. James once made it a point of honour to stay in longer than Rowan, but he paid for it by getting so cold he was terrified for a few moments that he would shiver himself to death. But Rowan lent him his shirt and rubbed his back and limbs until the feeling came back. James appreciated that Rowan never once called him an idiot.
To think, only a couple of years ago James had resented how much time Rowan spent with Lily. Though neither of them was yet fifteen, both Rowan and Lily had now left school. When she was not accompanying James’s father on Potts publicity tours, Lily worked on the farm, tending the dairy cows. Rowan still did odd jobs for Ellis Blythe but less and less often. Gamekeeping took all his time now. Sunny was still studying at home, but had been roped into volunteer work by her mother, who’d joined the local branch of the Women’s Institute, an organisation she admired for being independent of the church.
So even though James was only home for the holidays, he and Rowan saw more of each other than any of the four. In fact, they were better friends than they’d been when they were children. Back then,
James had always felt Rowan to be wary of him. Or had he been wary of Old Ted, who would have come down so very hard on Rowan if there’d been any hint of misbehaviour? There were many times James knew he could have made Rowan do anything he wanted, simply by threatening to tell on him to Old Ted.
He was glad he never had. It was better to have Rowan as a friend. All too soon their relationship would become purely professional — a master and his employee. It was a shame, thought James, but that was life.
A group of village boys had set up the maypole, and came now to tell the May Queen’s entourage that they could dance around it, which the girls skipped off to do, dragging along a protesting Sunny. The boys were supposed to join them, but instead one of them snuck behind Rowan and tipped his top hat off his head. The others pointed and jeered. James waited to see if Rowan would respond, but all he did was pick up the hat and put it back on. It was immediately taken off his head again, this time by an apple core. Rowan picked up the hat, but held it by the brim. He kept his back to the boys, and James could see that he was bracing himself for the next assault.
It occurred to James that if Rowan did not have him as a friend, then he would have none. Until recently, James had thought Rowan was not popular with the local boys because he was the gamekeeper’s grandson. Old Ted had banned children from his woods ever since little Billy Curry lost his leg. Old Ted put the blame for that squarely on Billy himself — and James knew Rowan had also copped it. He’d been beaten with Ted’s ash stick for not keeping the children out. After that, Rowan had only let James, Sunny and Lily play in the woods, and only because he knew they could do it secretly, covertly. Any other children, he saw off with a gun, same as Old Ted did. And that, James had thought, was the reason other boys did not like him.
But this last Easter break, James had been on the farm, sketching the outside of the barn. Two of Ellis Blythe’s workers, a man called Wilkes and another called Oby, had been inside. They’d probably been sent there to fork hay, but they’d been sitting instead on the bales, smoking an acrid tobacco. They were both new, and James knew Farmer Blythe did not much like either of them, but he’d had no choice but to hire them. The shortage of farm workers was now chronic, all over the country. James’s father had heard reports of farmers even advertising for men on the cinema screens. Even he, the great promoter, could not quite believe it. Oby was large and placid and borderline simple. Wilkes was small, pointy and dirty and stood in a hunched S-shape, like a crouching goblin. James found him unpleasant in every respect. Neither man had known he was there, and James had been careful to keep it that way.
Wilkes had been talking about Old Ted. Muttering and spitting, really, thought James. Oby was saying nothing, which was usual. Wilkes was telling how he’d been caught poaching hares.
‘It got in my loop, see, but ’twas its legs got caught, not its neck, and bloody thing started to scream. Hares scream like a bloody woman being murdered. I broke its neck but too late. Old sod came running. Good thing we’re needed here so bad or he’d have had me down the clink, fast as look at yer. The big man had to fair beg to get me off.’
James had heard a dry wheeze he assumed was a chuckle. But when Wilkes had next spoken, his words were spat out, sibilant and vicious.
‘Don’t know why he’s so high and mighty, the old sod. That daughter of his weren’t nothing but a whore is what I’ve been told, and that boy’s a whore’s bastard. T’aint right for him to put hisself above God-fearing folk. He’s no better than any of us.’
Sunny had told him that Rowan’s mother and father had never been married. To James, this had been of only minor interest and he’d never thought further about the implications. Until now.
This time the missile was a lump of horse dung and it hit Rowan squarely in the back. James heard Lily wail and, from over by the maypole, Sunny’s yell of ‘Oi!’ as she dropped her ribbon and came running.
But James had already taken charge. He stood between Rowan and the boys.
‘Leave him.’
He did not have to worry whether they would obey him; he knew they would. Their fathers were village merchants and innkeepers and smithies, and they depended on the patronage of the big house for a goodly share of their income. One word from James to his father and that patronage could easily be withdrawn. His mother would not like it, but she would have no choice. Another village would get their business.
Sunny skidded up, fists raised and at the ready, but James grabbed her and held her back.
‘Sunny-y.’
It was Lily, in tears. Sunny wriggled out of James’s grip, and clambered up onto the throne to comfort her. For a moment, James went rigid with envy, but then Sunny said: ‘Don’t mind those stupid boys. James has sent them running off with their tails between their legs—’ she shouted after them ‘—like the mongrels they are!’
Chest swelling, James felt noble enough to get out his handkerchief and do his best to brush Rowan’s jacket free of dung.
‘Thanks,’ said Rowan, subdued.
‘Good thing it wasn’t cow shit,’ said James. ‘This stuff’s mainly hay.’
‘The May Day committee organised the suit for me — I’ll be in trouble for dirtying it.’
‘Then we’ll swap coats. No one will punish me.’
‘Thanks.’ Rowan turned, began to take the coat off.
‘Why didn’t you fight back?’ James asked, as they swapped. ‘They’re cowards and weaklings. The two of us, ably abetted by Miss Jack Dempsey up there, could have taken them easily.’
‘I won’t fight,’ said Rowan. ‘I won’t — I don’t want to — hurt anyone.’
‘But it’s all right for others to hurt you?’
‘That’s their choice.’ Rowan’s face was pale but his mouth was firm. ‘I’ve made mine.’
James supposed it was fair enough — when you’d suffered as many beatings as Rowan had, felt that much pain, it wasn’t surprising that you’d be reluctant to inflict it.
When they were children, James recalled, it was Rowan who used to make James feel safe. And now, it seemed, it was Rowan who would not stay safe without him. But James wouldn’t always be around, would he? And as Rowan had said, it was his choice. All James could do was accept it, and hope for the best.
On the positive side, Rowan owed him one, and James knew, if the day came, his friend would feel obliged to repay the debt.
CHAPTER 18
early May
‘Should a May Queen be called Tyler?’ said Edward. ‘Shouldn’t she be Ada, or Eliza, or something of that nature?’
He wiped his hands on a white cloth napkin — part of the picnic set Sunny had brought along. It was a motoring set from the 1920s, a leather-strapped hamper with everything you needed for roadside dining stacked inside with neat ingenuity — cutlery, cups, glasses, plates, jars and containers, and a tiny kerosene burner for the teapot. The cutlery and fastenings were hallmarked silver. It had been given to Sir Peregrine along with his first car, apparently. He and Sunny had used it ever since.
Edward had dressed as if he’d intended to match it, in light brown soft trousers, a cream shirt and matching jersey, and a tan felt hat like a fedora. He was Gatsby, Sebastian Flyte and the talented Ripley all in one. April felt like a dowdy sparrow next to him. Or a dunnock — a bird whose identity she’d just learned from another book Sunny had lent her. She had not yet spotted one. It was all very well looking at pictures in books, but when a small brown bird swooped past at speed, it looked very much like the other small brown bird that had swooped past a moment before. Many British birds seemed to be small and brown. It would be a while, April felt, before she knew her chiffchaff from her stonechat.
Sunny had returned from Greece with a tan that made her eyes glow like blue topaz. Her hair had an added salt-bright whiteness. She wore a cotton maillot sweater in cream and navy over cream trousers. April thought she had never seen a healthier, or more elegantly dressed, octogenarian.
Once upon a time, April tho
ught, she, too, would have been sitting there on the tartan picnic blanket in nice clothes, a rose-patterned dress and pink cardigan, with painted toes and silver sandals, and the daisy diamante clip that had been her mother’s in her hair. Perhaps some girl was wearing that clip now, out dancing at night on the other side of the world, having snatched it up with glee at the Salvation Army shop that had received all of April’s pretty things.
In a normal frame of mind, April would not have come today, but the restlessness during the whole of Saturday and that morning had been so horribly, tormentingly bad that when Edward knocked on the cottage door and invited her to the May Day fête, April had been in the back of the Alvis before he’d had time to finish the sentence.
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