Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By)

by R. F Delderfield

  Within two minutes of being seated in the Codsall’s airless parlour, listening to Arabella’s uninterrupted flow of domestic clichés, Paul realised that Rudd had not exaggerated in his description of Arabella as an insufferable woman. Her approach to him was at once overweening and apologetic, overbearing yet grotesquely cringing, vain to the point of idiocy, yet voluble in her demands as a long-suffering tenant, so that Rudd, after listening to her gobbling for ten minutes, cut in with a terse, ‘It’s not the slightest use burdening Mr Craddock with all this, Mrs Codsall! He hasn’t even made up his mind to buy Shallowford and if you make everything sound run down, I don’t suppose he will!’

  This remark had some effect upon her, inasmuch as she converted her flood of complaints into a detailed description of Sydney’s astonishing progress under a private tutor, at Whinmouth, whereupon Craddock, taking his cue from the agent, said, ‘I really came over to look at the farm, Mrs Codsall,’ and on that Martin bobbed up like a hare and led the way out into the sunshine with Will breathing down his neck and Mrs Codsall, still gobbling, bringing up the rear. Sydney did not follow his parents into the yard. He was a well-schooled little boy and his Sunday suit anchored him to the parlour.

  They inspected Codsall’s excellent Friesian herd, then his pigs and finally his sheep down by the river. Here Martin disappeared, seemingly into a haystack, but Arabella and Will followed every step of the way, so that Paul had the impression he was being dogged by a goose and a soft-footed St Bernard dog. Soon both he and Rudd ceased to comment, for the most innocuous remark increased the clack of Arabella’s tongue, and finally they made their escape, the honking of Arabella following them as far as the swing gate that led to the bridge. It seemed then that they had spent a long afternoon at Four Winds but on glancing at his watch Paul saw that their visit had occupied no more than forty-five minutes.

  Neither of them spoke for a while and the silence in the river meadows was like a balm but at length Rudd said, ‘One understands under what terrible provocation some murders are committed! I’ve often thought how willingly I would give evidence on Martin’s behalf, if he appeared at Paxtonbury Assizes one fine day charged with drowning that wife of his in a duckpond. Justifiable homicide! That’s what the verdict would be.’ Paul asked if he knew the cause of Arabella Codsall’s terrible volubility and he replied with a wry smile, ‘Well, I suppose I might quote our friend Donne about a woman’s mouth only being full of words when she is empty elsewhere, but it doesn’t apply in Arabella’s case. I think it has something to do with the dismal nineteenth-century cult of “self-improvement”, foisted upon us by all those crackpot writers and philosophers, like Ruskin, Bentham, and all the rest of them! Buried down here for the past two decades I’ve seen less changes than most men but what I have seen could have taught those city sociologists something! It’s a great mistake to teach everybody to read and write, Craddock, maybe the greatest mistake western civilisation has ever made, for it’ll do for us all in the end, mark my words!’

  ‘Now how can you possibly justify that?’ Paul demanded, recalling the squalor of the area beyond Tower Bridge, ‘surely some of a nation’s wealth ought to be ploughed back into its population. From what I’ve seen since I came home precious little of our industrial profits are being invested in the welfare or the fabric of the country. Isn’t a compulsory education the key to a nation’s progress?’

  ‘It’s a key all right,’ Rudd said sadly, ‘but does it unlock? When I was a boy the social scale here and in the cities was not adjustable. In the main you stayed what you were born, artisan, tradesman, professional man, gentleman. Hardly anyone in a district like this could read or write, or wanted to, but they were contented enough, they didn’t resent the patronage of people like the Lovells. They got all they needed by hard work and peasant cunning, by making themselves indispensable to their so-called betters, and they didn’t quarrel with the pattern either. People like Arabella Codsall wouldn’t have been tolerated for a moment, but that isn’t so any more. Arabella is laughed at by old-timers like Martha Pitt, but only behind her back! I’ve seen Arabella at village socials, queening it over all the other wives but impressing them, in spite of themselves. Nobody challenges her, not even you or I. And if her husband took an ashplant to her backside as he ought he’d be up before the magistrates. If Arabella hadn’t been taught to read and write would she have had the impudence to complain to us about her damned rights-of-way or her roof tiles?’

  ‘What do you think will happen in backwaters like this eventually then?’

  ‘I can tell you that, now that we have universal male suffrage. The whole edifice will come crumbling down in a single life’s span and the land, as we know it today, will go to pot, with nobody left to tend it. All the children you saw with their noses in books at Mary Willoughby’s school will drift away to the cities and become an army of frustrated little clerks and busybodies. They’ll all be Arabella Codsalls, wringing their hands over their neighbours’ possessions, living in little brick boxes with a few square feet of garden. You might regard the talkative Mrs Codsall as a local pioneer.’

  ‘Altogether too pessimistic,’ Paul argued. ‘Damn it all, we’re all subject to evolution. Things never stay the same for long, either nationally or locally.’

  ‘That’s so,’ pursued Rudd, ‘but my point is things are changing far too quickly. People can’t absorb the social and economic changes of the last century. When technology leaves the mass of population far enough behind there’s going to be a God-Almighty explosion.’

  ‘What kind of explosion?’

  ‘How do I know? Go back to your history books. A revolution of some kind, or a war.’

  ‘We’ve just finished a war,’ Paul argued, ‘and it hasn’t turned civilisation inside out.’

  ‘I’m not talking about colonial wars,’ Rudd said, ‘I’m talking about Armageddon.’

  They rode on in silence for a spell, the flashing stream on their left and the church spire of Coombe Bay rising clear of Codsall’s corn-stalks. It occurred to Paul that there was an affinity of a kind between Rudd and Zorndorff, both of an age, both addicted to sensational generalisations. He wondered what each man expected of him, and whether Rudd would be interested in Zorndorff’s advocacy of the purchase of the estate but before he could continue the discussion they entered the steep village street of Coombe Bay and he found himself looking about him for any signs of Grace Lovell riding her neat bay mare.

  There were none. Coombe Bay was deep in its afternoon siesta and the broad, single street was quite deserted. It was not much of a village, a double row of thatched cottages curving away from the river and, lower down, a straggle of tiny shops, and a few Georgian terrace houses, with window boxes and polished knockers.

  Rudd told him that the estate owned some of these houses, let at fifty pounds a year, and that a larger house on the headland was occupied by Grace Lovell’s father, the family parasite. They ambled down to the beach where the Sorrel, no more than thirty feet across, gushed into the sea under a rounded, sandstone bluff. There was a boat shelter, one or two blue jerseyed fishermen pottering about their nets, and further west, where the sand swept in a wide curve as far as a landslip, some children paddling and shrimping under the breakwater. It was all very quiet and still under the hot afternoon sun, so quiet that Paul could hear the plash of tiny wavelets falling on the white sand. They sat there resting the horses and Paul would have liked to have dismounted and bathed his stiff leg in the sea but was too lazy to dismount and pull off his boots. Presently a yellow gig, driven at a spanking pace, swept out of the High Street and turned west along the waterfront, disappearing up a side-street beyond the inn, which had a double-headed bird on its signboard and the name ‘The Raven’ in Gothic lettering.

  ‘That’s Doctor O’Keefe,’ Rudd said, ‘he never drives that poor beast at anything under a canter. He does it to spread the impression that he’s conscientious when, in fact
, he’s usually half-­pickled. He’s a likeable old rascal though, and I daresay you’ll meet him if you stay long enough. Came here years ago, after some kind of scandal in his native Dublin but he’s a good doctor, drunk or sober. I’ve seen him do some remarkable patchwork in my time here,’ and then, as though he had suddenly made up his mind to be done with small talk and come to the point, ‘How do you feel about the place as a whole, Mr Craddock? Is it anything like you imagined? Are you still serious about taking up your option?’

  ‘Which question do you want answered first?’ Paul asked, smiling, but Rudd said, rather peevishly, ‘It makes small enough odds to me one way or the other. You won’t need an overseer like me if you intend living here and not leaving us to our own devices for years on end like the Lovells.’

  ‘Well,’ said Paul, ‘as to making up my mind I’d rather leave it until tomorrow if you’ve no objections. I’d like to think over what I’ve seen so far and I owe it to Mr Zorndorff to discuss it with him. Is there a telephone on the estate?’

  ‘Good God, no!’ said Rudd, ‘what would anybody here want with a telephone? The nearest one is in Whinmouth Post Office, nine miles to the west.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Paul, ‘I’ll decide before the sale opens tomorrow. As to what I feel about the place, I admit it intrigues me. It’s so utterly unlike anything I imagined after reading that article in the Illustrated London News’

  ‘Can’t you be a bit more specific?’ asked Rudd, and because he seemed genuinely concerned Paul added, ‘I think it’s a private world, populated by a few hundred castaways from a wreck about a century ago! On your own admission its commercial prospects are very thin but frankly I’m not much concerned about that. I should expect to put money into any property I took and it boils down to this in the end; but what kind of person are these farmers and their families looking for as a landlord, or “squire” if you like? What would be his responsibilities to them? Or theirs to him? Wouldn’t they prefer to buy their farms cash down or over a period? Do they really want a city stranger breathing down their necks?’

  Rudd’s spurt of irritation had spent itself, as it usually did in a matter of seconds.

  ‘How can I answer that?’ he said, smiling. ‘They haven’t confided in me all the time I’ve been here. I was little more than a rent-collector for the Lovells.’

  ‘That isn’t quite true,’ Paul told him, ‘because it’s obvious that you’ve formed an opinion about every one of them. Is Derwent the only one keen to become a freeholder? Wouldn’t Mrs Codsall jump at the chance of being her own squireen?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Rudd, ‘she likes the link with Quality, you being Quality if you follow me. Derwent is an exception, and I daresay he’d quibble at the price you asked him. Neither Potter nor Willoughby would care to stand on their own feet, and Arthur Pitt is happy with things as they are. No, they’d jog along if they got a man prepared to put the estate in order. They’d all rather leech on somebody like you, so I’m afraid you would have the monopoly of obligations, Mr Craddock.’

  ‘Well, that’s honest enough,’ Paul said, ‘and I’ll bear it in mind when I give you my answer tomorrow. Have you got a hip bath up at the lodge? I’ve overdone it a bit I think, and I’d like to soak this leg and take it easy for the rest of the day.’

  Rudd was instantly solicitous and swung his cob around.

  ‘I’m an idiot!’ he exclaimed, ‘I ought to have thought of that but the truth is I’ve enjoyed myself today in an odd sort of way. It’s long enough since I saw Shallowford tenants hang out flags. We’ll go home and Mrs Handcock will fix you up with some soda.’

  An hour later Paul was enjoying a soda soak in the wash-house behind the lodge and after a high tea, and a smoke in the parlour, the ache of his wound left him and he surrendered to a pleasant drowsiness as the shadows moved across the paddocks. Rudd, sharing the silence with him, avoided reopening discussion on the sale but when Paul, on the point of going to bed, asked if the grey would be available early in the morning he promised to have Honeyman’s lad see to it and tether the horse in the yard behind the wash-house by six-thirty. Paul thanked him and after a moment’s hesitation said, ‘I should like to own that horse in any case, Mr Rudd. He isn’t included in the sale, is he?’ and Rudd said no, although the stable tack was, adding that Ralph Lovell had bought the gelding for fifty pounds shortly before he left for South Africa.

  ‘I’d gladly give that for him,’ Paul said, ‘he’s quiet and very well-mannered for a young horse, and I don’t intend to take any chances until my leg is right.’

  ‘Then consider it sold,’ Rudd said, ‘you might go further and fare a great deal worse!’, and with that Paul left him sitting in his big armchair, looking out of the open window across the paddock. ‘It’s odd,’ he thought, as he mounted the little stair to his room, ‘but the prospect of leaving here is making him miserable notwithstanding all his grousing about the Lovells.’

  Chapter Three

  I

  The cock at the Home Farm awakened him soon after first light and on going to the window he saw that it promised to be another scorcher. A curtain of pale, blue mist veiled the downslope to the sea and wisps of cloud, coral pink over the sandstone cliff of the Coombe, were translucent and very still. Over in the rhododendron thickets the bird chorus was beginning and as Paul dressed the steady rhythm of its twitter built into a continuous murmur, like the patter of rain on glass. He stood at the window sniffing the morning and thinking that this might be a day he would remember all his life, yet he was free of qualms and felt as fit as he ever remembered, with little stiffness resulting from his twenty-mile ride the previous day.

  The grey was tethered to the rail of the big paddock, stirrups high on the leathers, reins tucked under the crupper, and as he climbed into the saddle he thought that Honeyman’s boy must be a very early riser, for it was still only six-forty and the boy was already a figure on the skyline, plodding the mile or so back to the farm.

  He crossed the ford, now barely two inches deep, and followed the track they had taken to Coombe Bay the previous afternoon, and it was only when the spire of the parish church showed above the corn that he realised why he was riding this way. His memory of the Lovell girl was no more than a vague impression of dark curls growing close to a small, neat head, and the swell of a sturdy figure under the blue riding habit, yet this was enough to persuade him, now that he was alone, that the girl was linked to his ultimate decision and somehow the conclusion did not seem illogical or facetious. By the time he was half-way down the village street, and passing the gardens of the Georgian houses, he had ceased to make excuses for himself and looked eagerly across to the wooded slope that enclosed the village on the east, searching for the house where Rudd had said she and her father lived, overlooking the harbour. He could see a couple of detached houses, each half-hidden in trees and facing due south but there was no sign that anyone else was astir, although from somewhere in the yards behind the cottages he could hear the scrape of boots on cobbles and the metallic clank of a pail.

  There was more activity down by the waterfront. Fishermen were at work hauling a boat down to the water’s edge and far out across the bay he could see two or three other small craft, pulling into the sun. Gulls flew squawking from the harbour wall when he edged his horse down the slipway, and along the beach to the hillocks beyond high-water mark, but the long, curving shore was deserted. As he climbed the hummocks to a sandy plateau above the tideline he made another effort to concentrate his thoughts on what he would say to Rudd at breakfast, or what he should write to Zorndorff that evening. He had a sensitive man’s horror of appearing ridiculous in public and an awareness of his unfitness for responsibilities of this kind. Rudd had warned him that he would have a monopoly of responsibility in this small, tight community, made up of such unpredictable people as the sly Tamer Potter, uncompromising Derwent, and the voluble Arabella Codsall, their families and their
hired hands. How many were there for heaven’s sake—thirty, fifty, a hundred? And who knew what currents of jealousy and rancour lay in wait for him under their smiles of welcome and deferential greetings? Of the families he had met only one, the Pitts of Hermitage, seemed uncomplicated, whereas the Potters and Codsalls might present all manner of problems to an inexperienced young man savouring his first taste of authority. He sat astride the patient grey, his eyes squinting into the sun so that it was not until the horse threw up his head and whinnied that he was aware of movement below and to his right, where the white sand stretched as far as the distant landslip.