Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By)

by R. F Delderfield

  The boy must have moved at fantastic speed, for when Craddock turned his head he was missing from his seat on the shaft and Craddock could only suppose him to have been thrown down between the footboard and the hind-quarters of the frantic horse. He turned to run down the steps but at that moment he saw the boy bob up on the far side and spring on the animal’s back, where he hung on with his knees as he tore off his jacket, leaned far over the neck and flung it over the animal’s head, holding it there as his body was flung backwards and forwards by the violent heaves. Gradually the animal quietened, straining outward away from the ramp and then, after what seemed to Craddock a long interval, the checker came running round to the far side of the queue and grabbed the bridle, throwing his weight on the horse’s head and then wheeling the cart out of line away from the ramp, so that the carter could rise shakily to his knees and stagger past his own vehicle to the weighbridge. The boy with the mouth-organ then swung his legs and slid to the ground and Craddock, to his amazement, saw that he was not only grinning, but still had his harmonica clutched in his right hand.

  ‘Serve yer bloody well ri’!’ he jeered at the man, ‘doncher know better’n to come on ’er from the blind side?’ whereupon he perched himself on a bollard besides the scales and at once proceeded to suck at his mouth-organ, until such time as the foremost cart moved off the weighbridge and it was his turn to follow it across the grating.

  Craddock, spellbound by the incident, now saw that Franz was standing beside him.

  ‘That boy!’ he said, ‘I’ve never seen anyone react as quickly and intelligently! Who is he? I … I’d like to give him something.’

  Franz glanced into the yard.

  ‘I heard a lot of shouting,’ he said, ‘what happened?’ and when Craddock described the incident he said, carelessly, ‘Oh, they’re always getting and giving hard knocks down there. You don’t have to come here distributing your largesse’ and plunging a hand into his pocket, he called over the guard rail— ‘Here, boy! That’s one of Sophie’s horses, isn’t it?’ and the boy grinned up at them and said, ‘Yerse, Mr Zorndorff, it’s ole Betty, an’ she’s blind in one eye! Foster come up on ’er blind side so she turned nasty! She’s orlri’ now tho’, Mr Zorndorff!’ but when Zorndorff continued to frown he lost a little of his perkiness, pocketed his harmonica and ran over to help the men clearing away the litter that had spilled on to the carriageway.

  ‘Never mind that, come up here at once, you rascal!’ Zorndorff called, and the boy, looking like a pupil answering a headmaster’s summons, came slowly up the steps to the platform and stood before them, now looking furtive and dejected.

  ‘You’re one of Sophie Palfrey’s boys yourself, aren’t you?’ asked Franz sharply and the boy nodded, throwing back his mop of hair and converting the gesture into a surreptitious wipe of his nose. ‘I’m the oldest. Me Dad’s laid orf fer a bit, so Ma said to load up an’ bring what was waiting out back from las’ week!’

  ‘All right,’ said Zorndorff, gruffly, ‘I’m not blaming you for what happened but that horse of your mother’s is past working and we’ll have trouble with the inspector if you don’t send her to the knacker’s and get another. You’d best tell your mother that, you understand? Here …’ and he tossed the boy a coin, which the child caught expertly and thrust into his pocket.

  ‘Cor, thanks, Mr Zorndorff,’ he said, carefree again, and skipped down the steps to help reload his cart.

  ‘What did you give him?’ asked Craddock, a little annoyed by Zorndorff’s cavalier handling of the situation, and when Franz told him sixpence he said it wasn’t enough, whereupon Franz turned on him fiercely and said, ‘It’s more than enough! You don’t know these people! Show them kindness and they’d be on top of you, with their tricks and excuses in two minutes! I know that family well. As a matter of fact that boy is a relation of a sort.’

  ‘A relation?’

  ‘He’s one of Sophie Carrilovic’s brood. She came over here and married a tanner called Palfrey, a thorough-going scoundrel who drinks all he earns and beats her regularly every Saturday night. She’s a Croat, one of the many who got word of me and migrated for pickings! It happens with every expatriate, the moment he gets his head above water! I’ve had them clamouring for work and somewhere to live for years, and at first I did what I could, remembering my own troubles, but there comes a time when a man has to harden his heart or go under.’

  ‘But the boy’s speed and courage saved that carter’s life,’ Paul protested.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ Franz grunted, ‘but something of that kind happens here every day of the week. They have a saying, south of the river; there are only two kinds of folk—the quick and the dead! Damn it, man, the mortality rate among children of his kind is forty per cent up to the age of five and it doesn’t depreciate much in the next ten years.’

  Craddock was silent and they moved into the office, an airless little building, littered with spiked invoices, price-lists and grimy box files. Here, and among all that debris below, thought Craddock, his father had lived out his life, accumulating thousands of pounds but ultimately bursting his heart lifting a piece of rubbish from a cart. It seemed a pitiful waste of energy and initiative, and his wife, the woman Craddock had never known, must have loathed it, and perhaps taken refuge in dreams of open country until the day she died. Down here, he reflected, the children of the poor fought for coppers, risking their lives handling half-blind horses and counting the acquisition of an extra sixpence a triumph. He thought again of all the men who had died in South Africa to maintain the momentum of the machine that opportunists like Franz Zorndorff thought of as a modern, highly-industrialised­ state. Well, at least the volunteers in South Africa had spent their final moments breathing fresh air, and under a sun that was not blotted out by sulphurous smoke and floating smuts but surely—surely to God there was a compromise between the England of yesterday, with its fat farms and thriving local industries, and the grinding, impersonal money-machine that England had become in the last few decades? Surely somewhere, somehow, the industrial skills of the Watts and Stephensons and Faradays could be applied to a land that could still grow good corn and breed the best cattle in Europe? He said, deliberately:

  ‘Well, coming here has resolved any doubts I had, Uncle Franz. I’ll sell all my interests in this graveyard at once! I’ll accept whatever terms you propose, purchase over a period, or money down for a bargain price outright! And I won’t have second thoughts on this! You can get the lawyers to make out the papers tomorrow.’

  He expected immediate protests, arguments, scorn, for down here, safe on his home ground, there was an edge to the Croat that was blunted in the West End, but Zorndorff only sighed and, lifting his case, spilled its contents on to the littered trestle table, poking among the papers until he found a slim clip of letters, with a buff telegram form on top. He said, with a shrug, ‘I had no real hope you would recant but at least I’ve done my duty by your father; it was always his wish you would take over this place and perhaps mould it into something as profitable but somewhat more conventional. However, I suppose I have a duty to your mother as well. You never knew her, did you?’

  ‘No,’ Paul said, ‘and very little about her, except that she was a countrywoman.’

  ‘She came, I believe, from somewhere in the Severn Valley but I am not familiar with the English provinces. That would be a hundred miles or so due east of this Shallowford place you wrote about? Well,’ he smiled his thin smile, ‘what is a hundred miles to a plough-boy, eh? You’ll see that I have secured an option on the place. You can go and look it over tomorrow, now that the Coronation is cancelled!’ and he handed Paul the papers which included the original advertisement from the Illustrated London News. Paul glanced at the telegram. All it said was, ‘Will meet Lieutenant Craddock Sorrel Halt 3.30 p.m. 24th instant. Latest information is thirteen thousand acceptable. Will confirm later. John Rudd, Agent.’

 
‘What the devil does it mean, Uncle Franz? It doesn’t make sense! I asked for a price on one of the farms, not the entire damned acreage and house!’

  ‘My boy,’ Franz said, ‘I told you your father found it impossible to stop thinking in sixpences. If you must farm then farm big! Don’t nibble! Take the biggest bite offered you! And when you get there don’t let this joker of an agent bluff you. They’ll take thirteen thousand gladly, if only to save the extra delay in selling off by lots. It’s clearly the best offer they’ve had. I should have stuck fast at twelve!’

  ‘But hang it,’ Paul exclaimed, exasperation with the Croat’s patronage overcoming his nervousness, ‘I haven’t got more than five thousand, have I? And I don’t know a damned thing about running an estate of this size! My idea was to learn farming, not set up as a squire over thirteen hundred acres!’

  ‘Oh, you’ll learn,’ Zorndorff said, with maddening unconcern. ‘This agent seems to know his business and doubtless he’ll stay on for a year or two. As to the money, you can leave that side of it to me. I’ll waive a point and release another eight thousand, plus a working capital of a thousand or two to tide you over until the rents come in. As to disposing of your share in this bone-yard, you’ll find me far less co-operative! You’ll keep your interest as long as I think fit, and remember, you can’t sell to anyone but me until your twenty-eighth birthday and I daresay you’ll be very glad of the income during the intervening period! It looks to me as if the place is badly run down.’

  Paul sat on one of the office stools, trying to grapple with the magnitude of the new situation and finding it difficult not to succumb to panic.

  ‘How far am I committed?’ he demanded and the Jew, looking at him kindly, said, ‘You aren’t committed at all. This is an option, not a contract, boy. Go down and look at it. Ride about, ask questions, listen at keyholes if necessary. With this amount of money involved any safety device is permissible! But I’ll tell you one thing! Don’t come back here and admit that your nerve isn’t equal to it, and start hedging your bets by becoming a penny-piece freeholder among a crowd of tenant-farmers, all of whom, I daresay, would buy their land if they had the guts and capital! If you do that you’ll soon be squeezed out and make a mess of it. In other words, stay there as boss or not at all! There’s only one way to farm in this country—on a big scale, with lesser men doing all the donkey work. That talk of starting at the bottom is put about by people at the top; those at the bottom stay there!’

  ‘You didn’t!’ Paul argued, chuckling in spite of himself, ‘my father told me the pair of you started with a working capital of less than a hundred!’

  ‘Ah,’ Zorndorff said, ‘that was before this country sold its soul to the devil! It’s very different nowadays. The day of the small man is over, I’m afraid!’ He pointed through the begrimed window to the weighbridge, where the line of carters was still waiting their turn. ‘Do you imagine any of those ruffians will ever sip brandy in St James’, as we did today? Only if there is another war, on a far vaster scale than the South African affair, and then only the gamblers among them.’

  ‘Why are you so eager to push me into this?’ Paul asked, suddenly, ‘you know it can never make money, not as you understand money?’

  Franz said, shrugging, ‘That’s so, but apart from propitiating one’s involuntary sleeping partner and one’s sole, solvent nephew, I like a young man to follow his destiny even if it leads to the Official Receiver!’

  It was some kind of answer but it was very far from being a complete or even an honest answer. Franz Zorndorff’s contempt for sentiment was genuine enough, but as he looked sidelong at Paul Craddock’s strong, narrow face and obstinate mouth it was not of his old friend that he thought but of the stately, aloof woman, who had been Josh Craddock’s country-bred wife. He fancied that, for the first time in all the years that had passed since he and Josh had thrown down their challenge to the world, she was regarding him with tolerance, or at least without disdain.

  Chapter Two

  I

  John Rudd recognised him the moment the little train emerged from the cutting, a lean young man with a rather sallow face, head and shoulders thrust enquiringly through the window of a first-class compartment. Recognition did nothing to reassure the chunky, ruddy-faced man sitting the piebald cob and holding the grey gelding by a leading rein. Rudd thought, as the face disappeared, and the train ran alongside the platform, ‘That’s him all right, an ex-Yeomanry show-off, still wearing uniform a month after peace has been signed! A kid too, by the look of him, with plenty of somebody else’s money to burn, and all the answers in his narrow little head!’, and he kicked the flanks of the cob and moved forward, deciding that he would be damned before he dismounted and went into the booking-office to help the Prospect with his luggage. He couldn’t carry it anyway, since the idiot had told the Jewboy to wire asking for horses, and why should he have done that? Probably in order to cut a dash in his uniform so that now the luggage would have to come over on the carrier’s cart, a service that would cost him a florin. Rudd waited, glumly, more than ever convinced that he would be paid off and turned loose within the next month or so. After all, an ex-Yeomanry poop would not be likely to need an agent to run a six-farm estate. He would be sure to imagine he could do the job better himself.

  Craddock had seen Rudd and been intimidated by the man’s moody stare, and the squareness of his seat on the piebald. He looked like a man who knew his business but also a person unlikely to give unprejudiced advice on matters involving his personal future. Craddock slipped on his rucksack, all the luggage he had brought with him, and left the train, noting that nobody else got out at the halt but that his arrival caused a ripple among Station­master, porter and two or three idlers sunning themselves on platform seats. They looked at him incuriously but steadily, so that he had to walk the gauntlet of their stares, surrendering his ticket and stalking through the booking-hall and into the station-­yard, which was more like a garden with its tall hollyhocks, sun­flowers and neat beds of geranium growing under the stationmaster’s windows. Rudd touched his low-crowned hat.

  ‘Lieutenant Craddock?’

  ‘Only “lieutenant” until the first week of July,’ Craddock said, making a determined effort to smile as he shook the agent’s hand. ‘I’m in uniform because I was discharged from hospital yesterday and didn’t stop to buy civilian togs.’

  Rudd surveyed him coolly, a little disconcerted by his youth and cordiality. ‘Maybe I’m wrong,’ he reflected, ‘maybe he’s a poop that can be handled with a little care,’ and he nodded briefly, swinging his leg over the cob and dismounting to slip the gelding’s stirrup-irons down the leathers.

  ‘She’s fat but you’ll find her comfortable, Mr Craddock. Been out to grass since early spring. Nobody to hunt her back end of the season,’ and he stood holding the crupper, while Craddock hoisted his stiff leg across the grey’s back. He managed it but not without grimace and Rudd said, casually, ‘You got it in the leg then?’

  ‘Knee joint,’ Craddock told him, ‘it doesn’t look much but it’s given everybody a hell of a lot of trouble.’

  This seemed all there was to say so they set off down the curving white road side by side. It was not until they had crossed the main highway, and pushed on down a stony track leading across a wide stretch of gorse moor, that Rudd spoke again. To Craddock, who still found him intimidating, he seemed to do so with reluctance.

  ‘Maybe it was a good idea riding back. At least I can show you some of the country before you look at maps. Our boundary begins down there in the hollow, a mile or so on. We shall go pretty well the entire length of our western border and pass two of the farms, Hermitage and Four Winds, both around three-fifty acres.’

  ‘How far is it?’ Craddock asked for something to say, and Rudd told him that the distance from Shallowford to Sorrel Halt, their nearest rail point, was a little over six miles. ‘It would have been much shorter,’
he added, ‘if the family hadn’t opposed the Great Western Railway crossing their land. As it is the branch line was kept to the far side of that main road that we crossed just now. That’s one reason that has kept us in the Middle Ages.’

  He said this with a sneer and Craddock looked at him again, noting the firm flesh of his jaw which had the strength of a steel trap and the bleakness of hard, light blue eyes, now gazing straight ahead. He looked and rode, thought Craddock, as though he had seen service in a cavalry regiment and he might have been a year or so short of fifty. He said, with curiosity, ‘Have you been in the Army, Mr Rudd?’

  The agent’s reaction was immediate. He swung round so sharply that the cob threw up its head and pranced a step or two as Craddock’s grey, evidently accustomed to its tantrums, neatly side-stepped giving Craddock’s leg a sharp twinge. They stopped, half-facing one another.

  ‘So they haven’t lost much time telling you!’ snapped Rudd and Craddock saw that his cheekbones were a network of tiny blue veins and that a pulse beat in his temples. He decided that he disliked the man on sight and replied, crisply, ‘Nobody’s told me anything, Mr Rudd. I explained that I was in hospital until forty-eight hours ago. All the arrangements were made by my father’s executor, Mr Franz Zorndorff, and neither he nor I have met or corresponded with anyone down here, save yourself.’

  The anger went out of the agent’s face and he looked confused and shamefaced. He gave the reins a twitch and they moved on.

  ‘Then I beg your pardon,’ he said after a pause, ‘I had no cause to say anything like that, no cause at all! Damned bad manners on my part! I apologise, Mr Craddock.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Paul, his resentment ebbing, for the man now looked both depressed and uneasy, ‘we’ll forget I asked, except to say that it was a perfectly innocent remark on my part. While we are at it, however, am I right in imagining you resent me coming here? If so, it might help us both if you explained why?’