Castle Orchard

by E A Dineley

  ‘I am the second senior lieutenant,’ he said. ‘So I have to carry the colours.’

  Robert, who was wearing the old red coat of a soldier of the line, said, ‘Well, Arthur, we have come to make you our prisoner unless you can run away quick.’

  ‘I’m going indoors,’ Phil said.

  ‘Oh no, you are not. That would be cheating.’

  ‘Cheating, cheating, cheating,’ Frankie called, twirling his colours about.

  ‘Cowardy cowardy cheat,’ said James.

  ‘Cowardy cowardy cheat,’ Jacky repeated.

  ‘We will tell in school,’ Stevey sang out, wiping the mouthpiece of his trumpet on the leg of his trousers.

  ‘What is the French?’ Jacky whispered to James.

  ‘I think it’s Phil,’ James answered, equally puzzled.

  Phil eyed the distance to the door.

  Frankie said, ‘I sticks me bayonet right into ’is belly an’ sort o’ jerks it up.’

  Stevey said, ‘An’ the bodies in the breaches is right heaped up seven deep, is swollen an’ turned black.’

  Robert, watching Phil, said, ‘What are you holding?’

  ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  ‘It’s mine. It’s treasure.’ Phil clutched his hands to his jacket.

  ‘What sort of treasure? I bet it’s rubbish.’

  ‘It’s real treasure. I found it in the castle, under a stone.’

  Having said this, Phil made a sudden dart in the direction of the door but Robert stuck out his boot and tripped him so he sprawled on the gravel. He then rolled him over with his foot. Phil unclasped his hands and displayed a crown piece, three shillings and a sixpence.

  Robert took the crown piece and examined it. He said, ‘Why, you little silly, it’s not treasure. It’s an ordinary crown piece with the King on it.’

  ‘It’s my treasure,’ Phil said, getting up carefully, rubbing his elbows, bruised. The tears started to run down his cheeks. ‘It’s mine, it’s mine. I found it for my mother.’

  ‘If you found it in the castle, then it belongs to Captain Allington. Everything is his now. Your mother will have to give it to him. Hasn’t your mother any money of her own?’

  ‘There wasn’t any money at Michaelmas.’

  ‘Your mother will have to beg. She will have to go in the street and ask people for money. Her clothes are all patched as it is.’

  ‘You can buy ever so many things with a crown,’ Stevey reflected, envious.

  Robert handed the crown back to Phil, who hastily put it in his pocket.

  Frankie said, ‘Ain’t you going to keep it?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ Robert replied, shocked. ‘That would be stealing.’

  He turned his back on Phil and ordered his little troop to march. He had it in his mind to inspect the castle ruins for himself.

  Phil, from the safety of the front door, shouted, ‘Captain Allington was at Waterloo. He was nearly dead. That’s what Pride told Annie and Annie told me. He was in Spain for years and then he was at Waterloo. So there! And he’s mine, not yours . . . so there!’

  As Phil’s voice reached a crescendo, all the Conway boys turned, round-eyed. Even Robert could think of nothing to say.

  After dinner, Emmy went to bed and Mrs Arthur read Ivanhoe to Phil. They sat on the sofa, Phil lolling against his mother, his head on her shoulder. They had lit a small fire.

  There was a light tap on the door. Captain Allington walked in. He said, ‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ and then went to the fireplace and put on more wood. ‘You may as well be warm. There’s plenty of wood.’

  Mrs Arthur thought how kind he was. She was thinking of the conversation she had had with him that morning. She wished the painful subject of gambling and of his acquiring Castle Orchard had never arisen; her criticism seemed churlish but at the same time it could not be retracted.

  ‘That side-saddle in the harness room,’ he said. ‘I was wondering if it was yours?’

  ‘I expect it is. I used to ride.’ Mrs Arthur thought of the roan mare that had been her solace in the long, lonely days at Castle Orchard. They could afford a groom then, but groom and horse had all disappeared, after one Lady Day when Johnny had been down from London. He had never said anything – that was not his way – but he would have seen the mare as a means of getting a few guineas into his pocket. She was only surprised he had overlooked the saddle.

  ‘I was wondering if you would do me a favour.’

  Mrs Arthur was delighted to think there was something she could do for him. ‘Of course. I’m so much in your debt.’

  ‘The agent knows I don’t intend to keep him long; it was fair to tell him, but he now doesn’t give me sufficient time. I want to get a better grasp on the boundaries between the farms. It occurred to me, if you could ride, you could show me yourself. But perhaps you don’t know them?’

  ‘I know them perfectly well.’ Mrs Arthur paused. She then felt, looking at his face, which he had the ability to make most remarkably expressionless, a useful thing at the gaming tables, that he had set her a tiny trap, into which she had plunged. She did not feel she could refuse him, but was he not a dangerous man, even more dangerous than Johnny Arthur had been at the age of twenty?

  Allington said, ‘That saddle fits my grey. He’s well behaved.’

  ‘I haven’t ridden for quite a few years.’

  ‘Time to start again. You would be doing me a service.’

  Mrs Arthur knew she could not refuse him, though she did not see herself as being of the least use to him. She thought of her years of incarceration at Castle Orchard.

  She was about to reply when Phil said, ‘I must give my treasure to Captain Allington.’ He drew out of his pocket the crown piece, the three shillings and the sixpence.

  Allington now took the chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, perfectly at home, it seemed, but was it not his in which to feel at home?

  Phil went to stand by him, the coins in the palm of his hand. ‘My treasure. It was there under a stone. I gave it to my mother but she said as Castle Orchard belongs to you, the treasure is yours.’

  ‘That was a tiresome thing for your mother to say.’

  ‘Yes, I thought that.’

  ‘I most certainly refuse it. I shall give it to you and you shall give it to your mother.’

  Mrs Arthur said, ‘If Captain Allington won’t take it, Phil, you must thank him and put it in your moneybox.’

  ‘But I only went to look for it so I could give it to you,’ Phil said sadly.

  ‘In that case, dearest, I shall take it.’ Mrs Arthur thought how it was not a large sum but useful. She thought of the journey to Westcott Park – if that journey were to be made – the coach tuppence a mile. She thought, with the little bit she had, it would be enough, but there would be nothing left over and there were other things needed.

  Phil pressed the money gleefully into Mrs Arthur’s hand.

  ‘Perhaps it should be a loan, Phil,’ she said. ‘We could write it down: Mrs Arthur owes Philip Arthur eight shillings and sixpence. That would be an IOU but we shouldn’t make a habit of it, for we would too easily get into debt.’

  ‘No, I don’t want it. It’s for you.’

  Allington felt enlightened as to exactly how short of money Mrs Arthur was, or she would never have allowed herself to accept it. He wished he was in the habit of carrying a greater sum in his pocket.

  Phil said, ‘Are you disappointed it’s not really old treasure?’

  ‘No, modern treasure is much more useful. It’s kind of Captain Allington to let you have it. I expect some antiquarian visiting the ruins, for they do from time to time, flung down his coat on a hot day, and all his change rolled out.’

  Allington said, standing up, ‘What time would suit you tomorrow? Would the latter part of the morning do? I could have Dan bring the horses round at eleven o’clock.’

  ‘If that is convenient for you.’ Though she had not actually agreed, ag
ree she must.

  Phil crept into his mother’s lap. He wished he was as little as Emmy and closed his eyes to see himself so small, too small ever to grow up. He then thought of his treasure. He had never closely scrutinised any money before and he wondered why it was the King, whom he had thought to be a dressy person, like his father, wore only some leaves in his hair.

  He said to Mrs Arthur, ‘No shirt, no neckcloth, does he wear no clothes at all?’

  ‘Who, dearest?’

  ‘King George.’

  ‘He wears a laurel wreath.’

  Allington looked at Phil. The child was draped in his mother’s arms; his thin legs dangled nearly to the floor, exposed from the rucking up of his trousers, and one of his little, heelless slippers was halfway across the carpet. He really was too old to sit in his mother’s lap.

  Allington said, ‘Why are your legs bruised, Phil?’

  Phil jumped up, staring wildly at Allington, and then hastily tugged at his trousers to hide his battered shins.

  Allington, seeing one of Phil’s toy soldiers on a table, picked it up. It was a meagre thing, cut out from card, but brightly coloured. He turned it over in his hand, examining it for the detail of the uniform.

  He said, ‘How gaudily we go to war, with what splendour of lace, silver and gold, scarlet jackets, pelisses edged with fur, officer’s sashes seven foot long. What fanciful trimmings, rosettes, cordings in silk, the gold epaulet with a garter star.’

  Phil said, emboldened, ‘I want to be a soldier.’

  Allington put the toy back on the table. ‘You think you want to be a soldier. I will tell you how it is. I wore my uniform at certain times, for weeks, even months together, day and night. It was soaked in rain and snow, it was bleached by the sun, it was torn and patched, shapeless, filthy and threadbare, and I, I was half-starved and so were my men.’

  ‘All the time?’

  ‘No. We got into cantonments, we got new clothes, the commissariat caught up with the army. We had our inedible lumps of beef. We even occasionally got paid. I have been down to my last dollar and afraid to spend it.’

  Phil was silent for a while and then he said, ‘I still want to be a soldier.’

  He wished he could say why but Captain Allington did not ask him why and his mother told him it was time he went to bed.

  When he had gone, Allington said, ‘I should like to discourage him.’ He started to quote Bunyan, ‘“Who so beset him round/ With dismal Stories/ Do but themselves confound;/ His strength the more is.” I could have told him more dismal stories than I did.’

  ‘But did you dislike it so very much yourself?’

  ‘No. Though it was not the career I had wished for, I was happy – very happy.’

  ‘But you would discourage Phil. Well, so do I, but I wonder you should.’

  Allington thought of how the boy would be at the mercy of his fellow officers, let alone the men, but he did not feel he could say it. Shortly after, he returned to the lodge.

  Mrs Arthur watched him go. Was she not keeping him from his own house? She had a letter from Louisa which she now read for the second time.

  Dearest, dearest Caro,

  Please, please come. We are so worried about you. We cannot imagine what detains you. Mr Westcott says his coach and horses are entirely at your disposal. The journey takes less than a day . . .

  The letter continued in the same vein.

  Mrs Arthur went to the window and opened the curtain a little. There was a tiny flicker of light in the distance that immediately went out; she took it to be the candle in the lodge. She began to consider Mr Westcott’s coach and horses, but even more, the tipping of his coachman.

  Captain Allington rode one of his two hunters, both gangly, temperamental thoroughbreds with sprightly, uncertain ways, Mrs Arthur supposed least calculated to suit a man with a lame leg. She was pleased to find her riding habit, though a little shabby, still fitted her. Dan had put her up on the grey, adjusted the stirrup and the girth, before mounting the second of the hunters and following along behind. It was sunny and bright. She glanced at Allington and he smiled at her. She thought he was pleased with himself for getting her out, but she couldn’t imagine why, for it was soon evident, as far as knowledge of the lie of the land went, he knew everything. Initially, he made a little pretence it was otherwise. As for herself, she had forgotten how it was that Castle Orchard had been her prison because she could go no further than the distance she could walk. Now favourite views, once so familiar, opened before her, the sweep of the downs, the woods all rust and gold, the river and the white chalk tracks. She was also aware that Captain Allington was an agreeable companion. Had she not been restricted to the society of dear Annie and the children, the rector and his brother? She thought he ought to find her dull. Was he not accustomed to London society and gentlemen’s clubs?

  She asked him how he had come to employ Dan.

  ‘He was born in Cornwall, at St Jude, as I was myself, and always employed there. He wasn’t born deaf; he was ill as a small child. I pinched him from one of my stepbrothers. If you employ Pride, Dan is a great respite.’

  Not only had Allington learned the lie of the land, he seemed to know every secret route, the quiet ways where no one came. They moved silently on the soft turf from one place to another, skirting farms and wayside cottages. She understood he had no intention of their being seen.

  Mrs Arthur said, ‘You know the land better than I do.’

  ‘I thought you might tell me something more, some little byway I hadn’t discovered,’ he replied.

  She did not believe him but she chose to ignore it.

  He then said, ‘You learn a lot campaigning. I spent plenty of time behind the French lines.’

  ‘Wasn’t that very dangerous?’

  ‘Yes, but less so if you wore your uniform. You wore your cloak over the top, to hide the red of your jacket. There was the initial danger of being shot. Your best hope was to be taken prisoner if things went wrong.’

  ‘And if you hadn’t your uniform on?’

  ‘Then a mistake or a betrayal cost you your life.’

  Mrs Arthur knew, without asking him, that he had been thus employed. The thought of it was so disturbing she involuntarily clutched at the mane of the long-tailed grey. How could she, as a woman, ever comprehend the horrors that had been daily life to men such as Captain Allington?

  The grey horse went along quietly, smoothly. Captain Allington seemed content they should do no more than walk. His dancing, jingling thoroughbred had also settled to a gentle pace.

  Mrs Arthur said, ‘You must speak good French.’

  ‘I speak French, as you would expect. When I joined up, a mere boy, I knew I would be going with the regiment straight out to the Peninsula. I was ambitious. It had occurred to me that if the Army was to be my career and I with no money and little influence, I had to draw attention to myself. I arrived in winter, which was fortunate, because it gave me time to study. I had Mordant’s Spanish Crammer and Guthrie’s for the Portuguese, but I was, of course, able to practise on the natives. I was considered a very dry fellow. Why say I was a boy, when children as young as Phil are officers at sea?’

  She said, ‘Weren’t you afraid?’

  Allington laughed. She thought how laughter, like his smile, so lit his face and altered it.

  He said, ‘What a very feminine approach. Tense, yes, afraid, no.’

  ‘Pride was afraid.’

  ‘Pride was very ill-suited to soldiering.’ Allington started, after a moment, to say more. ‘One obeys orders, does one’s duty, upholds the regiment . . . the regimental band plays us into action. As an ensign I carried the colours. How they tug and pull in the wind, enough to send a lad over. They’re a target for the enemy, but in those days I was lucky. Some of the men took to religion, very holy and evangelical, but I never could see how they squared it with their duties as a soldier. The need to laugh and joke in the face of death was more appreciated than prayers.’
/>   As he spoke, Mrs Arthur saw this boy he had been, intensely active, over-clever, no tuft of white in his hair, no scars, such as she had glimpsed on his arms when he had rolled back his sleeves to pick apples.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Allington said, ‘I would reflect on it. I liked to go off on my own, in the peace of the evening, the campfires lit below, the pungent odours of Spanish vegetation in my nose. The donkeys, the mules from the baggage train might set up a serenading. Rather better, the King’s German Legion would sing their native airs and tug your heartstrings. The British soldier seems only to be able to sing something coarse when drunk, but the Germans . . . I would sometimes think of my mother and be almost glad she didn’t live to see me grow up; she would have died a thousand deaths on my behalf. So many companions lost, so many, it made me wonder if the soul flew to its Maker with the swift beauty of a swallow, a rainbow arc of joy . . . or whether it flew there at all.’ He glanced at Mrs Arthur, turning sharply in his saddle to see if he shocked her, but she was pensive rather than shocked.

  As they rode along the quiet, undulating downs in their varying shades of grey and green, Allington said, ‘You might not suppose there is any connecting link between these hills and Spain, but I know the wild thyme grows here. I’ve smelled it crushed underfoot. I liked to course my greyhounds in Spain and Portugal. To get a hare or two added to the comfort of the mess.’

  He spoke of the difficulties of the commissariat struggling with squeaking, groaning bullock carts of flour and biscuit, ale or rum for a hundred thousand men, a whole army shifting without apparent rhyme or reason in various divisions from Portugal to Spain and back again, the roads unspeakable. It was easy for a regiment to outmanoeuvre its luggage and supplies, the price of local produce high and the wages in arrears. He said, if you were wounded and had no money for better food, it could be the end of you, but you were in as much danger from fever and dysentery. He told of dust, of mules, of baggage trains and of the unbearable sun.