‘Are you staying on?’
‘Yes, please. Tonight at any rate.’
‘That’s another shilling.’
I handed it over and asked where Daisy was.
‘Over there blackberrying.’
Screams of laughter from the hedge, where a group of London girls were discovering that blackberries had prickles attached. Daisy wasn’t laughing though. She was standing there holding a big saucepan while the others threw the berries into it, but her head was bent and she took no interest in what was happening round her. I begged an envelope from the Lancastrian, found pencil and paper in my bag and knelt by one of the old pews in the dairy to write a note to Emmeline. ‘Please send the picture by somebody discreet and reliable as soon as possible. I shall meet trains from London at Chipping Norton Junction from Monday late afternoon onwards, through Tuesday.’ The less said the better. Emmeline would not approve my methods, but if all went well she need never know about them.
By the time I’d got the envelope sealed and grubbed in my purse for a stamp, the London girls had arrived in the dairy, mouths and fingers stained purple. Most were returning on the evening train and there was a lot of giggling about how they were going to carry their squashy harvest with them. One tipped a lot of them into her felt hat saying she hated it anyway and didn’t mind going home bare-headed. All the time Daisy watched from a shadowy corner where she’d stowed herself as if these cheerful people were things from another planet. The girl with the blackberry hat was quite happy to post the letter for me when they got to Paddington. That meant, with luck, that it would get to Clement’s Inn tomorrow morning and even if Emmeline acted promptly, as she probably would, the messenger with the picture couldn’t arrive before the evening, which gave me most of twenty-four hours to kill.
Luckily Max Blume had decided to stay on too. I met him in the supper queue. With only two dozen or so of us left, we were all eating at the schoolhouse now. When we’d collected our plates of stew and found a place on our own at the end of a trestle table I asked him if he wasn’t needed back in London.
‘Yes, but there are interesting things happening here.’
‘Daisy Smith and Daniel Venn?’
Not Max’s usual line. He shook his head and my conscience, guilty in advance, made me think he’d guessed I was seriously considering burglary. I was wrong.
‘I’ve been finding out more about Harry Hawthorne, talking to him and to other people about him. He interests me.’
‘He was in typical form last night.’
‘The dancing and the beer and so on? Oh yes, Happy Harry, your genuine working-class rebel, not too sound on political economy but heart in the right place. Wants to use capitalists for maypoles and strangle them with red ribbons but always kind to children and puppy dogs. Just the kind of revolutionary the English think they can cope with.’
‘You think that underrates him?’
‘Yes. Under all the rhetoric and capering there’s a much more intelligent man than people think – and a much colder one too. He’s ambitious and he knows exactly the effect he has on people. If he makes what looks like an impulsive move you can be pretty certain he’s worked it out carefully in advance.’
I remembered Harry Hawthorne and Daniel sitting heads together by the bonfire, just before the bombshell, and saw where Max was driving.
‘Like the engagement?’
‘Exactly.’
‘But he didn’t have time. Daniel and Daisy had only arrived a few hours before.’
‘You don’t need much rime if your mind moves quickly,’ Max said. ‘And his does. You must have noticed that he was encouraging Daniel, practically pitched him into it.’
‘Daniel didn’t need much encouragement. He was already deep into playing the rescuer.’
‘All right, he couldn’t have known that Daniel would arrive with Daisy in tow, but once it had happened he knew exactly how to use it for his own ends.’
‘What advantage could it possibly be to him – apart from simple mischief making?’
‘In this case, complicated mischief making. It was all part of the great plan to embarrass Oliver and Adam Venn.’
‘Like that visit to Carol Venn’s workshop?’
‘Yes. He never misses a chance.’
‘But they’re being quite generous to him and the Scipians, letting them camp on their land.’
‘Through gritted teeth.’
‘Quite elegantly gritted.’
‘Oh, I dare say they managed polite smiles once the thing was a fait accompli. But it wasn’t Oliver or Adam who invited them, it was young Daniel. And once the invitation was given they had to go along with it or face the embarrassment of being socialists throwing other socialists off their land. That’s their weak point, fearing embarrassment. Hawthorne saw that.’
‘Still, he’s got what he wanted. He’s here with the summer school. Why not leave it at that?’
‘Because the camp was only stage two in the campaign. Stage one, he meets Daniel at some folk-dancing event, mentions in the middle of the hey wassailing, or whatever it is these people do, that the Scipians need a place for their camp and Daniel puts the ancestral acres at his disposal. Stage two, the camp. Stage three, the unexpected opportunity to get Daniel engaged to a girl from the agricultural working class.’
‘But why this great campaign against the Venns? It’s a nice house they’ve got here, but it’s not exactly Versailles.’
‘Because Hawthorne thinks Oliver and Adam owe him money.’
‘What!’
‘Not him personally, but the whole socialist movement. It all goes back to Philomena Venn’s will.’
‘Philomena’s?’ I jumped, sending an undercooked carrot rocketing off my fork. Luckily Max was too busy explaining to notice.
‘Yes. She was wealthy in her own right. She left five thousand pounds to the Fabians, with the proviso that it was to be used for the education in socialist principles of working people below the age of twenty-one. Hawthorne maintains that’s the job the Scipians are doing, so the money should come to them. Only Oliver’s an ex-treasurer of the Fabians and Adam’s a lawyer and they don’t see it that way. It’s the sort of dispute that could go on for years.’
* * *
We finished as much as we could of the stew. As I helped with the communal washing-up I thought over what Max had told me and the irony that Philomena’s good socialist bequests seemed to be causing trouble all round. The common factor was that the Venns seemed very reluctant to part with money or valuables. They deserved a little breaking and entering in a good cause. Or perhaps I was only trying to find reasons for a decision I’d already made. When it was getting dusk Daniel reappeared, looking chastened. He had a few words with Daisy on her own, which seemed to leave neither of them happier, then came over to me.
‘Have you thought yet?’
‘I’ve sent for the picture. It might be tomorrow, if we’re lucky.’
‘Make it tomorrow if you can.’
I explained it wasn’t up to me but he was too keyed up and nervy to listen. Later, as we sat around on benches in what had been the school yard, somebody found a few bottles of beer, Daisy unwrapped her violin and there was music. No dancing this time though and no wildness, mainly sad ballads in Daniel’s good tenor voice. There was one I’d heard before, ‘A varmer he lived in the West Countree (With a hey down, bow down) And he had daughters one, two and three (And I’ll be true to my love if my love’11 be true to me.)’ Now and again he’d forget the words and Daisy would prompt him in that authoritative way that she had only when music and dancing were concerned. ‘They hanged the miller beside his own gate, for drowning the varmer’s daughter Kate. The sister she—’ What was it, Daisy? ‘The sister she fled beyond the seas And died an old maid among black savagees (And I’ll be true to my love, if my love’ll be true to me.)’ Around ten o’clock, Daniel said good night to Daisy and came over to me.
‘Does somebody always end up getting hanged?’ I
asked him.
‘What?’
‘In folk-songs. That’s two so far.’
I think he’d intended to have another chat about burglary but this distracted him, as I’d intended.
‘I’d never thought about it. I suppose it does happen quite a lot, come to think of it. But then they were wild times.’
He said good night and started back over the dark field to the house, whistling dolefully. With most of the women gone home there were only half a dozen or so of us sleeping in the old dairy so I swapped my plank bed for a more comfortable straw pallet against the wall. As it happened, Daisy was sleeping on another pallet not far away. We’d left a little oil lamp burning on a table in case anybody needed to go outdoors to the yard during the night. By the light of it, I saw that she’d put her cloth-wrapped fiddle carefully between herself and the wall then had curled up under the blanket like a small child, face to the fiddle, legs drawn up to her chest.
There were the usual sighs and snores through the night of people sleeping uneasily. At some point the oil ran out and the lamp died. I dozed for a while, then was jerked wide awake by a scream from somewhere near me. ‘No. No, don’t let him take me. Don’t let him take me!’
Daisy. We were all awake in the grey of pre-dawn, getting out from makeshift beds with a clattering of planks and cries of what was up, what was happening? I was nearest to Daisy so got to her first and she struggled, trying to push me away. ‘No, no, no!’ I pinioned her as gently as I could in the blanket, talking to her all the time, telling her that it was all right, she was safe, we’d protect her. She stopped struggling but was trembling so violently” that I could feel it vibrating through my own body. Somebody managed to find a candle and light it and that seemed to help. At least we could look round the room and tell her truthfully that there was nobody there. The woman whose bed was nearest the door was sure nobody had come in and nothing could have come near Daisy without disturbing the rest of us who slept round her.
‘Nightmare.’
‘She’s had a nightmare, poor thing.’
‘Leave the candle on the table. She doesn’t like the dark.’
So we hugged Daisy, reassured and settled her and I moved my pallet closer to hers so that, for what was left of the night, she could reach out and grab me if the fear came back. As we were falling asleep again she murmured so softly that I could only just hear, ‘I thought he’d come for me. I thought he’d come to take me back.’ I whispered that he wasn’t there, that we’d all protect her. Like the rest, I knew it had been a nightmare. Unlike them, I knew from Daniel what her nightmare was.
Chapter Seven
NEXT MORNING DAISY WAS PALE AND quiet but that was normal with her and nobody said anything about the scare in the night. We all trooped over to the old schoolhouse for breakfast of bread and tea. Harry Hawthorne shambled out of the men’s sleeping quarters like a dishevelled bear from its cave, drank three mugs of tea and teased Daisy gently about where her young man had got to.
Around ten o’clock Daniel arrived with the look of a man who hadn’t slept much and a pocketful of tin whistles. It turned out that Hawthorne had ordered him to give the Scipians an illustrated talk on Everyman’s Music. As we all moved over to the big tent where lectures were held he trailed behind the others, obviously waiting for me.
‘Well, is it tonight?’
‘I shan’t know till later. The earliest anybody could get here with the other picture would be late afternoon.’
‘How will I know?’
I said I supposed he’d be down at the camp again in the evening and I’d try to get word to him then. Through a not very restful night I’d been giving some thought to my new career. Mostly to its drawbacks. ‘I suppose you realise,’ I said, ‘that I’ll be carrying a valuable painting through fields at the dead of night.’
‘Can’t you cut it out of its frame and roll it up?’
I knew that was what proper picture thieves were supposed to do, but the thought of putting a knife even to the edge of it terrified me. I could practically hear the squeals of the beautiful young man at Christie’s.
‘No, I’ll take it in its frame. But it will have to be properly wrapped up and I can’t risk doing that in your uncle’s study.’
‘So what will you do?’
‘It’s a question of what you do. There’s a summerhouse at the back of your garden. It doesn’t look as if it’s used much.’
‘It isn’t.’
‘Could you leave me a sheet or a thin blanket there, and some string? A paraffin lamp and matches too, if you can.’
‘Yes.’
‘Another thing – if the fake picture arrives this evening, I’m going to have to find somewhere to put it until after eleven when your uncle’s asleep. I thought the summerhouse for that too.’
‘How will you get it there?’
‘Up the fields and in at the back gate.’
It would be a useful rehearsal for the more intimidating task of taking the real picture back down by the same route.
By now everybody else, including Daisy, had disappeared inside the tent. Hawthorne called, ‘Come on, Daniel. We’re waiting.’
I left him at the entrance, walked away with the chorus of John Barleycorn fading in the distance and spent the next hour or so making myself familiar with fields and footpaths around the village, plotting as inconspicuous a route as possible from the railway halt to the Venns’ back gate. It consisted of a few hundred yards of road, a cart track, four fields, three gates and a stile. The thought of all that twice over, once with the false Odalisque and again with the true one, was so discouraging that I’d have called off the whole thing if I hadn’t already sent the letter summoning her. Cravenly, I even hoped the blackberry hat girl had forgotten to post it. The next part of the preparations involved a trip to the village shop. It had occurred to me that oil lamps and valuable paintings might not be a good combination and a battery-powered flashlight would be a great help in an art robber’s life. The woman behind the counter was friendly enough but mildly shocked at the idea that her crowded shelves would have anything so newfangled.
‘Chipping Norton would be your nearest, or if you could wait till tomorrow you could have a word with Mr Bestley.’
‘He sells flashlights?’
‘No, he runs the carrier’s cart. Tuesdays and Fridays, he’ll fetch nearly anything as long as you pay him in advance.’
So, with plenty of time to spare, I took the train a few stops along the line to Chipping Norton and managed to buy a battery-powered bicycle lamp, rather bulky but giving a fair beam of light. Then I had lunch and, still with time to spare, caught a train back along the line to the junction with the express route from London.
* * *
I’d proposed the junction rather than the local halt in my letter to the office on the grounds that the messenger with the picture would attract less attention at a busier place. She could deliver it and take the next train back to town without being involved in any illegality or embarrassment if the thing went wrong.
Trains came and went without any sign of a discreet person with an indiscreet picture and I began to think it wouldn’t arrive till the next day, which was a relief in a way but meant another earnest evening and uncomfortable night with the Scipians. Towards the end of the afternoon a London express drew in – also without result – until the moment after it began to pull out. It picked up speed from walking to running pace then stopped with a hiss of steam and banging and clattering of couplings with the last carriage just alongside the platform. Before it came to a halt a door opened, nearly knocking me off my feet, and a huge paper parcel came flying out, with an angry female voice shouting from somewhere behind it.
‘Well, it’s not my fault. I told you to tell me when we got there.’
Above the hiss and clatter, an equally angry male voice from the train was saying something about fines and emergencies. A pair of fashionably shod feet hit the platform below the parcel and a face emerged ro
und the side of it, bright-eyed and wild-haired, with a smudged nose.
‘Good afternoon. It’s Miss Bray, isn’t it? Would you hold this?’
The new arrival propped the parcel up against me before I could say anything and went on arguing with the man in railway uniform hanging out of the guard’s van.
‘It was an emergency. This is a valuable picture and it’s needed urgently.’
I thought if this was their idea of discretion at Clement’s Inn, I was lucky they hadn’t sent banners and a brass band as well.
‘It’s not me delaying the confounded train anyway, it’s you. Oh go on, for heaven’s sake.’
She flapped her hand at the train driver, who was craning out of his cab to see what was going on behind him. Amazingly, he made a gesture that might have been an ironic salute and did drive on, with the guard shaking his fist at us from the open door of his van as he was carried away. She stood on the platform, cheeks flushed, grinning in triumph.
‘At least I got it here.’
I’d never seen her before. She couldn’t have been much older than twenty; not tall, she was as slim as a cigarette. Her face was like a pretty street urchin’s, surrounded by the kind of dark wiry curls that are designed by nature to ping hairpins out of place like water drops from a dog shaking itself, and sure enough her hair was coming down. If she’d started the day with a hat it must have got left on the train. In spite of my annoyance, it was hard not to look at her and laugh, partly because of the contrast between her appearance and her voice. It was unmistakably upper class and had the tone of a family who’d been telling other people what to do since the Conqueror landed. I put out my right hand, keeping the parcel upright with my left. Her ungloved grip was muscular. She probably played a lot of lawn tennis.
‘You’re…?’
‘Roberta Fieldfare, but for goodness sake call me Bobbie.’
‘Have you been with us long?’
‘Three days. My mother took me along on Saturday to help with addressing envelopes. Then this morning they asked her to bring this down to you in no end of a hurry, only she couldn’t because she’d got an appointment in town, so I said I would. I was sick of envelopes by then, anyway. Actions not words, that’s what I say.’
Blood on the Wood Page 8
