Four weeks had now passed since the picnic in the woods and she had not so much as glimpsed him as he rode up and down the Valley, but gossip kept her abreast of his affairs and she knew that the big house was finished and occupied, and that all manner of other changes were in the planning stage. Many times during the month she had called herself a reckless, impulsive idiot, not so much for rushing at fences as for reining back at the last moment, for although, in the early days of their friendship, she had been attracted to him as Squire Craddock, of Shallowford, a wealthy and amiable young man (who would, she supposed, have to marry someone sooner or later), the few moments in his arms beside the mere had wrought a dramatic change in her daydreams. She would now, she told herself, welcome his reappearance at High Coombe in any role, and his prophecy that she would live to regret her frankness had been miserably accurate, for it surely was this alone that condemned her to sit here inactive for as long as he cared to keep her waiting. Going back over the events of the momentous afternoon by the mere, Claire concluded that she had made three tactical mistakes in as many minutes. She had been far too forward, far too backward and ultimately, far too honest.
At the end of the fourth week she came to realise that her only hope lay in an entirely new approach, and although by no means so devious a young woman as she imagined herself to be, the plan she finally adopted had the hall-mark of first-class strategy in any kind of warfare; it was simple, direct and preserved an avenue of dignified retreat. She decided to write advising him to give a combined coronation supper-dance and house-warming for the estate tenantry and their dependants, reasoning that even a young man who had held her in his arms would have some difficulty in interpreting this as anything more than a piece of friendly, patriotic advice. If he liked the idea then he could hardly fail to ask for further advice; if he rejected it good manners alone would compel a reply.
The composition of the letter cost her a good deal of thought and effort. Four drafts went into the waste-paper basket (each was torn into fifty pieces and scrambled) and she finally settled for a simply-worded note, pointing out the obvious advantages of such a gesture at this stage of his settling-in period. She addressed him as ‘Dear Mr Craddock’ and signed herself, ‘Your sincere well-wisher, Claire Derwent’. Then she gave the letter to one of her father’s farmboys who passed Shallowford House on his way home every evening, telling him that if Mr Craddock should make him late when he called for a reply in the morning she would present his excuses to her father, a stickler for good timekeeping. The boy went off tipless, for Claire had no money in her reticule. Edward Derwent did not believe in women having money. It made them uppity and inclined to answer back.
The gull ignored the offal in the private trough of Sarah, the Derwent’s prize sow. It looked tempting and accessible from twenty feet above the sty but Sarah had a savage nature and was notoriously averse to sharing rations with uninvited callers. The gull’s new line of flight took it north-west across Shallowford Woods and there was nothing to be had in or about the mere, so it passed on, skirting the chimney pots of the big house, sailing into the cobbled yard and cocking an eye at Ikey Palfrey, polishing harness outside the tack-room and whistling the appropriate song from H.M.S. Pinafore.
Ikey always whistled at his work nowadays. He liked catchy tunes and he liked his new situation. He had a warm place to sleep, more than enough to eat, a chance to ride real horses at least twice a week and he had formed a deep but unspoken attachment for the ‘ex-Yeomanry gent’ who, for some reason that was still a mystery to Ikey, had winkled him from the scrapyard and set him down in a great country house with, as Ikey might have expressed it, ‘all the trimmings’.
Ikey had long since lost his fear of the countryside and soon replaced his familiar Thames-side landmarks with local ones, like the red, sandstone peak of Coombe Bluff, the steep green incline of Priory Wood, the lanes with broken gates and isolated trees, and the spire of Coombe Bay parish church in the distance. He got along very well with ‘the local swedes’ although, as Paul had prophesied, he had initial difficulty with their dialect. By now, however, he could not only understand the Devon brogue but could speak it like a native. Sometimes, to amuse the motherly Mrs Handcock, he would exchange nasal Cockney for the broadest Westcountry burr, interchanging words and phrases and reducing her to a quivering mass of flesh by his expert drollery. He took a careful note of everything and forgot nothing. Chivers, the rather old-maidish groom whom Paul had taken on, spoke very well of him, and said he had a natural seat and good hands, but most of Ikey’s thoughts when he was alone were concerned in one way or another, with his hero, Paul Craddock. To the boy it still seemed incredible that a man in Paul’s exalted position, virtually a king ruling a subject race, should treat him almost as an equal and sometimes, when he rode into the yard to hand over the grey, stay and chat with him about London. As a Cockney Ikey cherished his independence and this easy condescension on the Squire’s part was the mark of true greatness.
Gulls do not have the weakness of magpies and the glitter of Ikey’s polished harness made no appeal to the bird. Soon it flapped over the steep roof and into the forecourt, where the Squire himself was sitting on the balustrade of the terrace munching a pasty as he studied a map that fluttered in the strong gusts blowing from the sea. Rudd, the agent, was beside him but neither man seemed aware of the fact that this was not the best place to study a map measuring three feet by two but they persisted, talking to one another in earnest tones, as the gull edged warily along the balustrade towards the plate on which lay the Squire’s half-eaten pasty. Here were pickings to be snatched from men who deserved to lose them and as soon as it was confident the snatch could be carried out with safety the gull swooped and was gone, Rudd shouting an oath and Paul throwing back his head to laugh at the bird’s impudence. Then he forgot about the gull and returned to the map, which was one of the reasons why Claire had been left without word of him.
There were other reasons, the chief being that Paul felt that the next approach should come from her. As the memory of the frolic in Shallowford Woods receded it became no more than an embarrassing moment that he preferred to forget, along with all the self-righteous nonsense she had talked trying to explain it away. If she said she had set out to compromise him in order that he would marry her he was prepared to believe her but he was not, at the moment, in the mood to consider marrying anyone, being far too deeply engrossed in his work and in Shallowford. He had discovered that he loved the house now that it was warm, habitable and purged of its gloomy Lovell associations. He liked his big, sunny bedroom and the high-ceilinged reception-rooms, where his few pieces of furniture looked very much at home, but best of all he liked his snug, red-curtained library, with its shelves of leather-bound books smelling of comfort, leisure and repose and here he spent his evenings with John Rudd for company, learning about crops and soil and livestock and exchanging stories of African wars separated by half a generation. He liked his staff, who were polite without being servile, and well-trained without being officious. His wound troubled him hardly at all and there was so much to do and so much to learn in this new world that there was always an overspill of jobs awaiting his attention. He thought about Claire now and again but by no means as often as she thought about him. He also pondered, at a somewhat deeper level, Grace Lovell, who had disappeared as completely as if she had emigrated to Australia. Sometimes he thought of them together, comparing their dissimilar natures, the one buoyant and frank, the other withdrawn and secretive. Then, about three weeks ago, Rudd had come in with news of the death of old Hardcastle, the moorside freeholder whose widow was prepared to sell the smallholding, so they went over and measured out the sixty-odd acres, and inspected the ruinous premises and the resultant negotiations had occupied nearly a week, during which time he had not thought of Grace or Claire at all.
‘How does it compare with our calculations, John?’ Paul asked, and Rudd replied ‘It’s an acre or two out in the ea
st and north. These old estate maps are mostly guesswork. When we get time we ought to resurvey the entire Valley and bring the property in line with the national ordnance maps. I could do it myself, with a bit of help from you.’
‘You see now why I talked you into a three-year contract,’ said Paul grinning. ‘Very well, but it’s a job for spring or summer, I wouldn’t care to footslog over the fields from now on. Let’s go into the office and trace the adjustments.’
They tramped inside out of the wind and Mrs Handcock brought them their morning beer. Sir George Lovell would have had difficulty in recognising his former dark-room for it was freshly painted in green, fitted with a small fireplace, a drawing board and had two walls of new shelves and cupboards, together with a large safe for estate documents. The two men settled down over the parchment absorbed and content.
Half a pasty had by no means satisfied the gull’s hunger and after disposing of the titbit at the summit of one of the avenue gateposts it took off again, heading due north on the edge of the wind. Its flight led over Priory Wood and on to the plateau of Hermitage Farm, where the Pitts family were discussing new Squire’s recent acquisition of the Hardcastle smallholding just north of their boundary. The gull saw nothing of them, for they were all inside the house but as it was not interested in unploughed land it flew on over the Hermitage fields seeking a worm, or an antagonist less formidable than the Derwents’ prize sow. A small piece of luck came its way. Earlier that day young Henry Pitts carrying two swill buckets to his sties, had staggered in a strong gust of wind and spilled a pool of swill on the path. A few other gulls were already there and the lone bird joined them, ignoring their clamour.
Inside the big kitchen old Arthur Pitts was discussing his son’s proposal to apply to new Squire for permission to absorb the Hardcastle smallholding into their acreage, offering an increase of thirty pounds a year in rent, but the older man would have none of it. His main interest had always been in market gardening and he had but a poor opinion of old Hardcastle’s skill as a farmer.
‘Us have got as much as us can handle now,’ he told his son, ‘and any money I lay out is going to be for a hot-house over by the hives. You can make a dam’ sight more on early veg than on grazing sheep or fattening beef on that bit o’ rough land!’
Young Henry had respect for his father’s professional opinions, having seen Hermitage grow from a parcel of land not much larger than the Hardcastle holding into the second-best farm in the Valley.
‘Arr,’ he said, gulping a pint of Martha’s steaming cocoa, ‘it was on’y a notion I had, but what’ll young Squire do with the plaace, now ’er’s got his claws into it?’
‘He’ll make it pay,’ said Arthur, sagely, ‘that’s what he’ll do with it! For dornt none of you yerabouts underestimate that young feller-me-lad! ’Er knows nowt about farming as yet, but like most lads with money at the back of him he’s willin’ to listen an’ willin’ to learn, and John Rudd’ll be better’n a father to him! What did you think of him, Mother?’
‘A praper young man, when he’s worked through his fancy ideas,’ said Martha, and young Henry, finishing his cocoa, winked at his father over the rim of his mug. They were a happy, well-adjusted trio and the keynote of life in the Hermitage kitchen had always been tolerance.
‘There’s one change he’ll have to make soon if he really zettles isself in the gurt, empty house,’ Martha went on, gathering plates and crashing them into the vast tub she used for washing-up.
‘Ar, an’ what’s that, Mother?’ Arthur demanded, well knowing the answer.
‘A wife, an one who knows her bizness,’ said Martha, and she sighed for it was always a matter of regret to her that Henry, now twenty-four, was still a bachelor and seemed likely to remain one. She would have welcomed a buxom daughter to share her enormous kitchen and she sometimes hungered for grandchildren.
Henry might have taken her point and advanced a time-honoured defence based on a preference for his mother’s cooking but at that moment the gulls outside began a furious quarrel over the shrinking remains of the swill, and shouting ‘They dratted gulls again!’ he grabbed his rook-rifle and, loading as he ran, charged into the yard and fired into the squabbling group but he aimed to scare, not to kill. He was not only a warm-hearted young man but a superstitious one and he knew that every time a seagull died a sailor was drowned, their souls being interchangeable.
The gulls rose in a screaming cloud, circled and flew south in convoy. They read the weather signs and knew that within an hour the wind would abate and they could resume fishing on the beach, where food was plentiful. As they beat into the wind they flew over the Codsall homestead, their quarrel forgotten but as they passed it was taken up in the kitchen of Four Winds where the smouldering resentment of Will Codsall had finally flared up, and he and his mother faced one another over the long oak table, with poor Martin caught between the hammer of his son’s frustration and the anvil of his wife’s furious obstinacy.
‘You c’n take it or leave it, Mother,’ Will was shouting, ‘and that’s the last you’ll yer from me on the subject! Either me and my Elinor put up the banns on Sunday, an’ fix a day this side o’ Michaelmas, or I march out o’ here and won’t wait until Michaelmas to do it, neither!’
‘Neither! Neither!’ sang Arabella, in her high whining voice, ‘you’re already beginning to talk like her! Would anyone ever know you were something a bit better than the yokels who swarm in this Valley? It’s a wonderful catch for her I daresay, but what’ll she bring with her apart from bad blood? It isn’t as if you were kept from the girls, as all the young men were in my day! There was that nice, refined Miss Agate as I asked here to tea in the summer, daughter of a solicitor if you please, who spoke up like a lady, and had a decent education!’
‘Aye,’ said Will, grimly, ‘and a face like one of our bliddy Friesian cows and she wouldn’t ha’ taaken a second look at us Valley folk if her mother coulder found her a man back in Whinmouth!’
‘You’re coarse-minded too,’ Arabella shrieked, ‘and it makes me shudder to think what kind of children you and that Willoughby girl would raise between you!’
‘Couldn’t we have Willoughby over and talk to him?’ suggested Martin—‘courageously for him, for he knew very well the remark would direct the tide of his wife’s scorn from son to father.
‘No, we couldn’t!’ snapped Arabella, ‘for I won’t give house-room to one o’ them Nonconformist Radicals! What are you thinking of, both of you? During the war that man Willoughby prayed in public for the Boers, didn’t he, and was pelted for doing it! Have him up here for a talk? What about, might I ask? Our eldest boy and his chit of a daughter getting wed before Christmas and from then on we should be related! Related! To a Coombe family if you please! What have I ever done to deserve this? Haven’t I been a good wife and mother to you all? Hasn’t this farm been stocked on my father’s money? Don’t anyone realise how I should feel to see everything I’ve worked for pass to the daughter of a psalm-singing smallholder, scratching a living out of his chapel collection plate and a few moulting hens?’
Martin Codsall considered this, wondering how far it was from the truth, for the Willoughbys, although poor, had never been regarded as anything other than harmless, respectable people and the bitterness of his wife’s prejudice against them puzzled him. It might, he reflected, be a pleasant change to hear another woman’s voice raised in the kitchen, and personally he had nothing whatever against his son marrying into a Coombe family, so long as it wasn’t to a Potter. He would have preferred it to be a pretty girl like Claire Derwent, who had made his mouth water when he watched her waltzing at the Victory Ball in the Whinmouth Assembly Rooms last May, but Will would be of age in a month and could marry whom he pleased, so where was the sense in making such an issue of it? He said, again in a low voice, ‘I don’t want to lose our Will, Mother, I couldn’t get along without him. It would mean taking on another ma
n and another boy, and veeding ’em both, six days a week!’ He thought this appeal to her pocket might make her think twice but he was wrong, for Will’s revolt plucked at the taproots of her authority and in a way she was enjoying the dispute that must end in Will’s unconditional surrender. She glanced at the white-faced Sydney, listening to every word and snapped. ‘Eat up your pie, and sit up straight, Sydney!’ Then, like a boxer flexing his muscles before advancing to the centre of the ring, ‘If Will was so inconsiderate as to run contrary to my wishes I wouldn’t receive him into the house again, or his wife either! “Either” you’ll notice, not “neither”!’ and as though this was her final word on the subject she dabbed her lips with the napkin and cut into another portion of shepherd’s pie.
There was a silence, Martin and Sydney looking down at their plates, Arabella looking past them at a brass warming pan over the fireplace. Then two sharp sounds were heard simultaneously, the scrape of Will’s chair and the warning rattle of Arabella’s cuckoo clock, which always made this sound a second before its doors flew open and the bird bobbed out to cry the hour.
‘That’s all I wanted to be sure of, Mother,’ Will said, ‘I’ll be goin’ along now, and don’t neither of you come making a scene over at Deepdene when I’m zettled in! If you do I’ll come back and do mischief!’
Arabella dropped her knife and fork and half rose to her feet as Martin stretched out his hand, as though to detain Will by force. Sydney remained quite still, masticating his mouthful of pie the requisite thirty-two times before swallowing.
‘You go and I’ll harness the trap and come straight over to fetch you back!’ shouted Arabella. ‘I’ll make such a fool of you you’ll be the laughing stock of the Valley. You an’ that girl too!’
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 15
