She listened with little change of expression but her pallor intensified a little, and her jawline moved as the small chin hardened. Her inflexibility made him uncomfortable so that he reached for her tea-cup, saying, ‘I’m sorry, it’s bad manners on my part to say that when we hardly know one another. It’s just that—well—we don’t seem to make much progress, do we? Let me give you another cup of tea.’
When he had refilled the cup and handed it to her he was surprised to see that she looked far more at ease than he felt.
‘I don’t blame you a bit, Mr Craddock. The fact is, all the Lovells are odd, and I’m odder than most! Don’t apologise for your breach of manners, I should do that, not you. You’re wrong about something, however, I don’t resent you being here. I did before I met you but I don’t now. You’ll make a better job of Shallowford than they did, anyone can see that with half an eye, if only because you’re an optimist. Coming here doesn’t make me unhappy either. I expected it to but it didn’t, or not after that second time, when you bought the screen. I suppose I’m curious and that’s understandable. I once thought I should be running the house.’
‘Were you in love with Ralph Lovell?’
‘No, never.’
‘But he was with you?’
‘I’m afraid not, and he didn’t ever pretend to be, but don’t ask me to explain the mystique of dynastic marriages, or “arrangements”. It has to do with money, I suppose, but there’s more to it than that. Ralph and I grew up with the thing more or less settled.’
‘But didn’t you even like the man?’ he persisted, but before she could reply they both heard the rattle of wheels on the gravel outside and then the heavy creak of the door and a ring of laughter followed by Ikey’s explosive ‘Cor! What a carry-on!’
Her expression changed at once and she said, pulling on her gloves, ‘I must go now, the rain’s stopped,’ and when he protested, saying it was only Claire Derwent and the stable lad returning with the fireworks, she brushed aside his courtesies and hurried into the hall.
‘I can get Chivers to drive you back, and take the bicycle in the trap,’ he argued, but she shook her head and opened the door.
‘No, I’ve got a lamp and it’s all downhill. Thank you for everything, Mr Craddock, and I’ll see you on the night. Post the invitation and I’ll warn Celia it’s coming. Good-bye, and thank you!’ and in a swirl of skirts she was gone, yanking the machine round, hoisting herself on to the pedal and thence into the saddle without even stopping to light the lamp on the handlebars.
He called good-bye when she was half-way across the forecourt, noting that she seemed equally at home on a bicycle as riding side-saddle on a horse, and then Claire, her skirt splashed with red mud, came through the kitchen arch and he saw that despite her wetting she was in high spirits and grabbing his hands said, ‘We got soaked, both of us! Just look! But we got the most wonderful fireworks you’ve ever seen and I wrapped them in an oilskin as soon as the rain came down. Ikey’s unpacking them now and putting them in the still-room. Is there any of your tea left, while Mrs Handcock makes fresh?’
He felt a little bewildered; the contrast between them was so great. ‘I’ve had a visitor,’ he said, taking her into the study and removing the fireguard so that she could enjoy the full benefit of the heat. ‘Someone else came in out of the storm, and had to be warmed inside and dried off outside.’
‘Oh, who was that?’
‘Grace Lovell, the girl who was to have married Ralph.’
‘Her? What on earth did she want?’
He was too preoccupied to notice that the laughter left her eyes, or that her voice now had an edge.
‘I told you, she came in out of the storm, she was riding a bicycle and wearing one of those awful cycling costumes. I gave her tea and muffins, it was the least I could do, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it was,’ she admitted doubtfully, and then, ‘Didn’t you bid for something for her at the sale?’
‘A nursery screen she seemed to want. She was mooning over it the night I first arrived. Do you know her? She seems to know you and Rose.’
‘I know her father is a bad hat, and she gets on better with her stepmother than with her father. What did you talk about besides me?’
He did not miss the reproof this time but met it good-humouredly.
‘She implied that you were the Belle of Sorrel Valley, and I said I had heard as much but thought it rather undignified for the Squire to compete with all the other chawbacons in the Valley! I said you were employed here as an apprentice parlourmaid, but had agreed to help out as an interior decorator for the party. She said—’ but by now she was mollified and flaring her skirts to the blaze, said, laughing, ‘I don’t believe either of you mentioned me! She was probably too busy telling you you’d never make a go of this place. That was what everyone of them except me believed when you came.’ Then, changing the subject very pointedly, ‘That cob Rose sold you is a corker! He didn’t drop below a trot all the way from Teazel Bridge, and I didn’t have to flick the whip once!’
Over her shoulder he saw her reflection in the fireplace mirror. In the bright lamplight her cheeks glowed and her eyes shone with health. He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled so that her weight rested on him lightly and he could kiss the damp coil of hair above her ear.
‘You look prettier than ever when you’re soaked through,’ he said. ‘I was an ass to send Ikey. If I’d have driven we could have stopped somewhere, until the rain eased off,’ and he would have turned her and kissed her lips if, at that moment, they had not heard the rattle of crockery outside as Mrs Handcock bustled in, barging the door open with her enormous hips and exclaiming, ‘Mazed you be! Sixteen mile there, sixteen mile back, an’ all ter vetch a bundle o’ Roman candles! You too, Mr Craddock, surely youm old enough to know better! That Palfrey varmint coming into my kitchen drippin’ wet, an’ Miss Claire here like to catch her death!’ She swept the corner of the table clear and set down the tray with a crash. ‘There, get a hot drink inside ’ee and then strip they wet things off an’ give ’em to me to dry!’ And so the moment passed, and Claire began to chatter gaily about the fireworks, the storm and the wonderful paces of the new cob but he was not really listening, finding that his mind, unaccountably, was elsewhere, following a small figure in a bicycling costume down the long hill into Coombe Bay, up the harbour slope to an ugly Victorian villa and into a room where the screen might remind her of him. And Claire, although she continued to chatter of fireworks, was half aware of the fact.
II
At ten minutes to midnight, on a clear September night, the Shallowford House Coronation Supper-Dance and Soirée had run about half its course. Dancing had been promised until dawn to those who intended to stay, but already, four hours after the opening Paul Jones, the party had lost the brittle civilities that had bedevilled its first hour or so.
The sluggish start had been no fault of the musicians. Mary Willoughby at the piano, and the two biblical shepherds, Matt and Luke, as fiddlers, had played with gusto from the moment Paul made a formal round of the ballroom, hall and terrace and coaxed self-conscious couples on to the floor. Now, after a noisy set of Lancers, the Boston Two-Step, two waltzes and a break for ices, the atmosphere had thawed a great deal and Claire had made up her mind that the event was building into a spectacular success. A second Paul Jones was a riot, even Mrs Codsall joining the ring to be caught by a grinning and half-tipsy Tamer Potter, who swung her round the floor at such a speed that she had no chance to escape nor breath to protest.
From the forecourt the din rose like a waterspout, soaring into the night sky and making every roosting bird in the Home Farm coverts fidget. Standing half-way down the drive the tinkle of piano and the scrape of violins were puny, intermittent sounds all but submerged in the roar of voices and crash of feet, in sudden shrieks of laughter and the long rolling clatter of crockery, as Mrs Handcock a
nd her sweating team plunged mugs and ice-cream plates into vats of near-boiling water.
Almost everybody in the Valley was now inside the house or, in extreme cases (like that of seventeen-year-old Violet Potter), in the shrubberies surrounding the house, but Claire had badly underestimated the final tally of guests, for labourers’ wives from the Gilroy Estate had been recruited as Sorrel Valley babyminders. The only family so far unrepresented was the Bruce Lovells, of Coombe Bay, who had sent a message to say they would be late. Paul was too busy and far too elated to miss them, and Claire privately hoped they would not appear after all, for she had not quite forgotten Paul’s vacant look after Grace Lovell had cycled home the night she had returned with the fireworks. It was not a serious worry, however. She too had her hands full, supervising the staff, the refreshments and even the run on the cloakrooms, and re-introducing Paul to late arrivals, whispering their names to him when they were still out of earshot.
The Potters had arrived en masse in a farm cart, every single one of them, including the pregnant Joannie (who spared the company’s blushes by staying to help in the kitchen) and Hazel, the youngest Potter girl, who found herself a seat high up on a pedestal shorn of its bust and moved well back against the billiard racks. From here she could look down on the throng with her large, wonder-struck eyes, unnoticed by anyone except Ikey Palfrey, who, in his uncomfortably stiff collar prescribed by Chivers, the groom, had spotted her perch and staring up at her, shouted, ‘You look like a statcher up there, kid!’ a remark, which, although made with friendly intent, caused Hazel to shoot out her tongue and put her thumb to her nose, a gesture that made Ikey slightly homesick for Bermondsey.
All the Derwents, together with their staff, were present, as were the four Willoughbys and the four Codsalls, with their hired hands. Three waggonettes had driven over from Coombe Bay, bringing many of the tradesmen and all the artisans, including Eph Morgan, who was already engaged in disputation with Derwent’s foreman, Gregory, concerning the advantages of free trade over tariff reform. They could hardly hear one another but were enjoying themselves, for Gregory was the honorary treasurer of the Whinmouth Conservative and Unionist Association and considered it his duty to engage the Radical, even at a coronation ball.
Parson Bull looked in for an hour or so but left early, despite generous brandies. The vicar was a little confused by an event that, so far as he could recall, had no precedent in Valley history. He supposed there was nothing basically wrong with farmers and their hired hands making brief holiday once in a while, and there was, of course, a loyal excuse to be found in the coronation but at the back of his mind he found new Squire’s common touch disconcerting and he was not easily disconcerted. Anyone else, he thought, as he drove off, could have been scolded in public for encouraging so much dangerous familiarity inside the walls of the manor but it was difficult to challenge a man who held the gift of part of his own living in his hand, and that in coronation year, so all he said to Paul on leaving was, ‘Well, don’t let ’em drink too much, Craddock! If you do you’ll regret it for there’s no holding one of ’em once they’re well liquored!’ The admonition annoyed Claire who said, tartly, ‘That’s rich, coming from him, a sponge in a dog-collar!’, and she flounced off to confer with Mrs Handcock on the supper relays.
Paul, primed in advance, chose a fresh partner every time and steadily worked his way through a rota of Mrs Codsall, who was in rare good humour, Rose Derwent, who found it difficult to allow herself to be led after breaking so many horses, Meg Potter, the stern-faced gypsy, who marched round the room like a Hanoverian Grenadier, and the shy, eager Elinor Willoughby, who blushed scarlet when he took her hand, and mumbled replies to all his polite remarks. After that he joined Eph Morgan’s set for the Lancers, and when it was over, perspiring from his enormous exertions, he sought out Claire and dragged her on to the floor for the Military One-Step. ‘I’ve earned more than this tame dance,’ he said, swinging her round in a final flourish and she replied, breathlessly. ‘We’re not going home yet, are we?’ and he left her to announce that, after the statue dance (which carried a prize), there would be first supper for those who were not remaining until morning and after that fireworks in the paddock, and finally a second supper for the bitter-enders. There was a good deal of ooing and aahing at this, and when the orchestra climbed down about forty of the middle-aged guests pushed their way into the hall, where a buffet supper was laid for them on trestle tables reaching from the hall door to the porch. After a hasty swig of lemonade the tireless trio returned to play supper music but the piano and fiddles were soon swamped in the roar of conversation and the rattle and clash of plates, cups, spoons and forks.
Mrs Arabella Codsall was holding court below the big fireplace. Words flowed from her with her usual spontaneity but her tone was comparatively honeyed, for her subject was the new Squire, and she wanted it known that, so far, she wholly approved of him and all his works. There were some present, she qualified, that Mr Craddock might well have overlooked when compiling the invitation list. Nobody, for instance, would have missed that scoundrel Potter and his draggle-tailed brood but she supposed that dear King Edward, God bless him, had been called to rule over even such as these and she was ready to forgive a new man’s difficulty in assessing the Potters and the Willoughbys for what they were. Martin Codsall, much embarrassed, whispered, ‘Shush, Mother!’ but as Arabella’s audience consisted of Martha Pitts, and the din was so great that even she heard less than half the words uttered, the warning was unnecessary.
Arabella Codsall’s good humour was due, in the main, to the absence of her errant son Will but had she been privileged to see round corners it is doubtful whether any amount of cider cup would have prevented a shift in the wind. At the moment Will Codsall and Elinor Willoughby were face to face in the shadow of a stone buttress on the east wing, as far as they could get from the ballroom without breaking cover, and Elinor was having some difficulty in preventing a scene that would have anticipated the promised fireworks display.
‘Dornee think I’d like ’ee to cum inzide, an’ ave ’ee swing me round, Will?’ she said earnestly, ‘but where’s the zense in it? Your mother’ll up an’ leave an’ new Squire will want to know why, and where will us be then?’
‘Dammit, woman, she knows I’m livin’ over your place, don’t ’er?’ demanded Will. ‘Us ’ave made sure us can’t get married ’til January, when I’m twenty-one, unless us goes to court and if us does that the whole Valley’ll know anyways!’
‘I daresay,’ Elinor said shrewdly, ‘but let ’em get to know in dribs and drabs, not all at once with us bang in the middle of it! No, Will, us’ve talked it over with father, and he’s promised to marry us in chapel on your birthday, so do ’ee let well alone an’ go along home to baid, like you promised me!’
The distant music and the softness of her body under the little gingham dress she wore, tested his resolution but he abandoned his protests and kissed her almost reverently on both eyes and the tip of her nose. Then, with a desolate, Oh, Will …!’, she left him but he did not return home, as he had promised. Instead he continued to skulk within earshot of the party, scowling at the rustlings and gigglings that emerged from the rhododendron walk where Pansy Potter was sporting with a young fisherman from Coombe Bay—‘Having her turn’—as she put it, for the Potter girls, although enjoying far more personal freedom than any of their contemporaries, realised that Tamer would disapprove of a family exodus from the ballroom and had agreed to take the air one at a time. Violet and Cissie were now back in the house and Pansy would be returning shortly in order to let Cissie take another stroll, perhaps with the same young man. The Potter girls were practical Communists. They shared men much as they shared rabbit pie, helping themselves to wedges whenever they felt like it.
As it happened Tamer had not missed them. He was in the yard with Sam, enjoying real beer from his own cask that he had brought along in the cart and offloaded into an outhou
se. Tamer distrusted other people’s liquor and on occasions such as this liked to top off every now and again with a brew on which he could rely. He was also glad of the opportunity to have a chat with Sam, always his favourite, and father and son were discoursing on the local changes that had been wrought since the end of the summer drought.
‘Be’m proper mazed do ’ee think, Sam?’ Tamer asked, nodding towards the house, ‘Is ’e goin’ to keep this up, or will us vind us all have to pay for it, bimeby?’ He found it difficult to believe that benevolence, on the scale practised by new Squire, could endure unless it was buttressed by an increase of rents all round but Sam reassured him. ‘Dornee worry about Mr Craddock, Father! He’s got religion, I reckon, on’y it don’t show like it do in looneys like ol’ Willoughby, who won’t part with a bushel of maize unless youm prepared to pay in prayers an’ hymns! No, he’s different, for he don’t want nothin’ back for it, if you get my meaning! Think on this now—he rides up to my cottage a week ago and asks after Joannie, saying our tacker will be the first born to a tenant zince he took over. Brought along a bag o’ seed for the patch and told her she was to have all the milk an’ eggs she liked from the Home Farm, until we was zettled in, and had goats an’ vowls set up at the back! Now could a man zay fairer than that? And him a gentleman, already paying for the roof over our heads?’
‘No,’ said Tamer, impressed but not wholly convinced, ‘I don’t reckon he could, but to be on the zafe zide you’d best ask him to stand in as godfather when Joannie’s nipper shows up! That way mebbe you’ll get free milk an’ eggs for the rest of your life!’
Sam nodded, admiring his father’s far-sightedness. ‘Reckon I’ll do that, Father,’ he said, ‘and now me an’ Joannie had best get back along. Us can’t bump along over they ol’ tracks, with her zo near her time,’ and he carried Tamer’s cask back to the outhouse and camouflaged it with straw.
Meg Potter sat with her back against the cue-rack, under the spot where Hazel squatted on her pedestal. Her expression was inscrutable, so that it was difficult to tell whether or not she was enjoying the spectacle of the dancers or despising their enthusiasm for the polka. The tactics of her elder daughters to mask their constant comings and goings had not fooled her for a moment but she was not concerned with their reputations or whether their repeated disappearances into the shrubberies resulted, nine months hence, in the appearance of yet another mouth to feed in the Dell. She took an extraordinarily broad view of life, all life, not simply that part of it prescribed by changing codes of social behaviour, for although she had left her tribe at sixteen to settle as the wife of a squatter, she was still very much a gypsy, with a gypsy’s contempt for settled living. As long as the girls provided enough pence for necessities it was all she asked of them, or of her husband and sons. She was loyal to their clan but she did not love or respect them as individuals. All her respect was reserved for her second son Smut, who alone had inherited the spirit of her ancestors and was ready to challenge authority in every form and remain wholly free, not partially so, like her husband and the others. Smut had always been the exception. He looked like a gypsy, with his crow-black hair, swarthy complexion, and his curious, bouncy walk, as though wherever he trod he anticipated the snap of a mantrap. Mantraps were against the law now or so they said but Meg didn’t believe it. A man like Lord Gilroy probably sowed them in his coverts, just as he was known to have issued orders to his keepers to shoot poachers on sight, but these hazards did not keep Meg awake at night, when Smut was out across the Teazel. She had faith in his skill and speed, in his ability to hear and interpret any movement in any patch of undergrowth and judge the thickness of shadows, and the distance of sounds. Smut could smell a Gilroy keeper at seventy yards, and move over the ground at night faster than any fox and almost as silently. So she sat erect, watching her favourite child casting his spell over Margy Voysey, the Coombe Bay butcher’s daughter, reflecting that he was a rare boy for his work, for even on a gala night such as this his mind was on his markets. She wondered if Smut would ever marry and decided that if he did he might do worse than pick someone like Margy, who could at least provide a legitimate outlet for his game. She watched him take the dumpy butcher’s daughter by the hand and lead her gallantly on to the floor, and then she fell to a contemplation of ballroom dancing in general. It was not really dancing at all, she decided, just a sweaty clasping and a prancing about, like a lot of fox cubs at play. She could remember real dancing, in the light of pine torches and great, blazing fires, on the occasion of gypsy weddings long ago and for a moment she regretted the passage of the years. Then Smut and his partner swept by and her eyes glowed with pride; Smut was worth all the hard work and loss of freedom of the last two decades.
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 18
