Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By)

by R. F Delderfield

  Paul thanked him and led Snowdrop out of the barn, leaving the cob for Ikey. It was almost light now and the temperature was surprisingly mild for January. He rode out of the farm gate half resolving never to enter it again but as he forded the river, and rode along the road under the wood he thought more anxiously of Grace than of Four Winds. Half-way up the drive he overtook the forlorn figure of Horace Handcock, the gardener, swathed in an immense overcoat and splashed to the waist with red mud of the paddock. Paul reined in at once and asked him if Honeyman had been alerted.

  Handcock’s red face emerged reluctantly from the folds of his coat but he brightened when he recognised the horseman.

  ‘Aye, I’ve done that! He’s on his way now, along with Matt but there’s good news for ’ee, zir! It’s a boy, and Doctor O’Keefe told Mrs Handcock they’re both doing well! May I be the first to wish ’ee good luck, zir?’

  ‘Yes, you may indeed,’ Paul said, thankfully, ‘and I’m sorry we had to get you out in the middle of the night! Mrs Craddock is bearing up?’

  ‘The missus has been in to her and ’er’s taken broth,’ Handcock told him, gleefully. ‘It all happened minutes bevore I zet out. Seven pounds odd he be, zo they zay an’ bawling like a young calf when I left, zir!’

  A great wave of gratitude engulfed Paul and he began to feel lightheaded, as though all the whisky he had swallowed earlier in the evening and the rum poured him by Eveleigh, were mounting to his brain. He thought, ‘There’s good and bad here and it’s all mixed up! Martin Codsall runs amok with a hay knife, children leap from windows in their nightshirts, a man hangs himself in a barn, but then, as counterweights, I’ve come up against Ikey’s guts, Eveleigh’s steadiness and this little character’s goodwill!’ And suddenly he felt braced and optimistic, riding into the yard where everyone was astir, and there was an air of bustle about the house. Mrs Handcock beamed at him from the top of the kitchen steps and Chivers, the groom, took Snowdrop’s bridle with an air of deference, as though the arrival of an heir improved the status of the father. He found O’Keefe supping tea in the kitchen and was at once reminded of Four Winds but he did not have the heart to wipe the smile from the housekeeper’s face by telling what had occurred. Instead he said, ‘May I go up and see her now?’ and the doctor said he could and that the specialist had agreed to accompany him to Four Winds as soon as he had washed and packed his bag. ‘Well, there’s little enough you can do over there, except certify!’ Paul told him as soon as Mrs Handcock was out of earshot and the doctor shrugged and lit his pipe. As a practitioner of nearly fifty years’ experience he was proof against the shock of violent death.

  Paul went up the stairs hesitantly, a little shy at the prospect of seeing her. Thirza, the parlourmaid, wearing the mantle of nurse as though she had been created a baroness, slipped out of the room as he entered and said smugly, ‘’E’s a praaper li’l tacker, Mr Craddock, but ’er’s had a tumble bad time, I can tell ’ee!’

  He saw that Grace, although propped up, was asleep and stole across the big room to the window where the cot stood in the angle of the wall made by the bay. The baby’s eyes were open and he looked back at Paul with a kind of shrewd interest. Newborn babies, Paul recalled, were usually brick-red, as bald as coots, and generally regarded as ugly by all but their mothers, but this child was neither red nor bald. His skin was as pale as his mother’s and his hair as dark as Grace’s but the tufts looked as though they had been stuck on his pate by a practical joker. Paul lowered his finger gently, letting it slide along the baby’s cheek and the child opened his mouth like a day-old thrush.

  He was still standing there, back to the bed, when he heard a movement from the bed and turning saw that she was not asleep after all but looking directly at him. He tiptoed over, aware of the filth on his boots and the clamminess of his clothes, noting that she looked exhausted but very composed. Her skin glowed and her two large dimples played hide and seek in the lamplight. He said, quickly, ‘I can’t kiss you, Grace. I’m filthy. I never stopped to wash but came straight up thinking you were asleep!’ He tried to say something conventional, to ask how she felt or whether she was pleased the child was a boy, but the sharp memory of Arabella’s bedroom confused him and he dropped his gaze, waiting for her to speak. She said, calmly, ‘You had to go out somewhere?’ and he told her something happened during the storm at Four Winds but that it was attended to now.

  ‘It must have been important,’ she said but without irony and he answered that it had been important and that was why he had no choice but to go. ‘The baby is a lovely child,’ he said, trying to steer her away from Four Winds, ‘but it was terrible to have to go through all that, Grace! I was downstairs most of yesterday and felt absolutely useless.’

  She smiled faintly, ‘Well, I imagine you were, Paul, but that’s a husband’s prerogative. You’re pleased it’s a boy, I suppose?’

  ‘I didn’t care what it was,’ he said truthfully. ‘All day yesterday I don’t think I gave the baby a thought as anything except a source of your pain and my fear. I’m glad now, though, and happier still that it’s behind you. You’d best sleep, dear. I’ll get a bath and change and if you’re awake I’ll come up after luncheon.’ He wished that he could bend over her and kiss her but he checked the impulse, moving towards the door. He had his hand on the knob when she called, ‘Paul!’ and he turned, looking at her anxiously.

  ‘What is it, dear?’

  ‘What did happen at Four Winds?’

  ‘I’ll tell you about it later.’

  ‘But I want to know, Paul. I want to know why you’re in such a mess, and why you’re so upset. I don’t like people treating me as if I was a sick child and you should know that by now!’

  He knew it well enough and cursed himself for not stopping to wash and change and compose himself a little before blundering in here. He said, ‘Martin Codsall went off his head and took a shot at Ikey on the Dunes.’

  ‘Ikey was hurt?’

  ‘No, but Martin—well … he killed himself and we’ve sent for the police.’

  She nodded, slowly. ‘Thank you for telling me, Paul. I knew it must be something grim. So you’ve had a bad time, as well?’

  ‘It wasn’t very pleasant,’ he mumbled, ‘but go to sleep and don’t worry about it!’

  ‘Tell Thirza I’m hungry,’ she said suddenly, ‘and do impress upon everybody not to creep about the house as if I was in a decline! I’m not, you know, Daladier said I managed it pretty well, considering it was a breech birth.’

  ‘I’m sure you did,’ he said and suddenly vertigo assailed him again so that he gripped the door-knob with all his force and glanced over his shoulder to see if she had noticed. Luckily she was looking towards the window and it relieved him to see that her expression, seen in profile, was serene and even a little smug. He thought, savagely, ‘I suppose Codsall never meant much to her and why should he? But this Arabella business will have to be kept from her for a day or so and I’ll punch anyone’s head who blabs about it!’ The moment of faintness passed and he was able to go out, closing the door softly. He went along to the guest room they had prepared for him and peeled off his wet clothes, throwing them in a heap. He gave himself a vigorous towelling but he was too spent to bother with a bath and climbed into bed not expecting to sleep but soon he was snoring and they let him lie until late afternoon.

  His first thought, on waking, was not of Grace or Arabella but of Will Codsall, whom he supposed must have been told by now. He wondered how he would take it and whether he would blame himself for his desertion of a year ago, thinking, ‘If he does, then that wife of his will soon drag it out of him,’ and it occurred to him that Will might want to return to Four Winds and this would mean finding another tenant for Periwinkle. At once he remembered Eveleigh and his six children, surely the safest bet in the Valley. He lay there wondering at himself for worrying about estate routine when, a few yards away, was his wife
and son, and thought, ‘If the child was born soon after I left last night he entered the world just as Martin left,’ and the notion of simultaneous birth and death remained with him as he took his bath and went along to the big bedroom, opening the door an inch to see if she was asleep. She was awake and was combing out her hair and it seemed to him a very striking thing that she could be so engaged when, only twenty-four hours ago, she had been battling for her life and the child’s, or so it had seemed to him waiting below. He took the brush from her, imitating the long, sweeping strokes that he had first observed her make in their bedroom in Paris.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about names,’ she said. ‘Have you any particular preference?’

  ‘None at all,’ he said, ‘as a matter of fact I expected a girl.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she told him, ‘not for a moment. I always knew it was a boy all right. An athlete too I wouldn’t wonder, judging by the way he kicked out! It was probably his restlessness that caused the trouble.’

  She sounded calm and relaxed and he remembered reading somewhere that this was a common reaction after an aggravating labour. ‘I quite like your name,’ she went on, ‘but it’s a nuisance to have two Pauls about one house. What was your father called?’

  ‘Saul,’ he told her, grinning, ‘so that’s out of the question!’

  ‘There are too many biblical names around here already,’ she said. ‘Joshuas, Samuels, Jacobs and Micahs and most of the popular ones get shortened, all the Bills and Bobs and Walts and Dicks! No, I want him to have a two-syllable name that nobody lops. Who is your favourite historical character?’

  ‘Oliver Cromwell,’ he said, ‘but I don’t see him as “Oliver”, do you? There’s another man who always intrigued me, however—Simon de Montfort!’

  ‘That’s it!’ she exclaimed, ‘“Simon”! It’s clean and uncompromising like a … like a blade!’

  ‘All right then, “Simon” it is and I don’t know whether we can take that noise for his approval.’

  The baby had begun to whimper but before Paul could pick him up Thirza had rushed in, all rustling skirts and galvanised efficiency and looking sternly at Paul said, ‘It’s time for his feed, sir!’ but when Grace held out her arms and Paul seemed in no hurry to go the girl looked so embarrassed that Grace laughed and said, ‘Oh, don’t be so stuffy, Thirza! How do you think I got the baby anyway?’ and without more ado slipped her nightdress from her shoulder and gave the child her breast. Thirza left the room in three strides, Grace’s laughter following her down the corridor as Paul said, ‘Every convention in the book is a kind of hurdle you have to jump, isn’t it?’ and she replied, ‘Most of them, so you can tell me the truth about Codsall!’

  He was unprepared for this and growled, ‘What idiot has been telling you things while I was asleep?’

  ‘No one mentioned it,’ she said, ‘but I should be witless if I didn’t know something was being kept from me! What really happened over there?’

  He sighed, reflecting that it was never any use trying to cushion her against facts for every time he attempted it she made a fool of him.

  ‘It was a ghastly business; Codsall killed his wife with a hay knife but if you want all the gory details you can read them in the newspaper after the inquest.’ He added, however, the story of Ikey’s part in the tragedy and said how well the boy had acquitted himself, and this seemed to interest her as much as the murder. ‘We shall have to do something for that boy,’ she said, ‘and we ought to do it at once!’ and when Paul pointed out that Ikey was perfectly happy as a stable-lad she said, impatiently, ‘I daresay, but he won’t be later on! The time to start on him is now, while he’s young enough to do as he’s told.’

  ‘What can we do for him we aren’t already doing?’

  ‘We can send him to a proper school where he’ll get a real education,’ she said, emphatically, and it was useless to suggest that Ikey might be unhappy at a school where his outlook and Cockney accent would put him at a disadvantage, for her agile mind was already grooming the boy for a career and at last Paul had to admit that her plan had possibilities, for she reasoned that if Ikey could mimic anyone on the estate he could also learn to speak and behave conventionally, particularly if Paul made demands on him. He grumbled, ‘Why saddle me with the responsibility? It was your idea, not mine!’

  ‘He worships the ground you walk on,’ she said, ‘he always has and always will. Why do you suppose he tracked Codsall like that and then insisted on going back to the farm? Everyone has to have a hero and you happen to be Ikey’s, whether you like it or not, so talk it over with him and if he backs down because going away to school would mean parting from you then I’ll have a talk with him!’

  ‘You’re always in such a damned hurry,’ he said, laughing, but she replied, seriously, ‘Yes, I am, Paul, and I always will be while things like the Potter case occur so needlessly!’

  He could see very little connection between the poaching incident, Codsall’s craziness and his stable-boy’s education but reflecting that this was no time to argue with her promised to speak to Ikey after the inquest at Whinmouth, the next day. She seemed satisfied with this and handed him Simon to return to his cot. He cradled the child for a moment and she watched him, her eyes alight with secret amusement. It was curious, she thought, that women produced children but never sentimentalised over them in the manner of men. She was glad about the child but more for his sake than her own. She felt no sense of achievement, as Celia and all the other sentimental old bodies had promised, no more than relief that it now had an existence of its own and that she could retreat into her own privacy. Then, away at the back of her mind and hardly as a conscious thought at all, she wondered if it was this kind of prejudice that set her apart from other women and whether, indeed, she had any real right to a man’s protection and love.

  III

  The inquest produced no surprises. It was a survey of known facts, volunteered by a short procession of witnesses, beginning with Doctor O’Keefe, who said he had treated Martin Codsall over the last year for headaches and had cautioned him on the probable results of his excessive drinking. He also mentioned the strain of eccentricity in previous Codsalls he had known, notably Martin’s father, and when he was talking of this Paul glanced at Will Codsall, who was sitting on the witnesses’ bench between his wife Elinor and the stolid Eveleigh but Will did not seem to resent this implication but merely blinked and absentmindedly scratched his chin so that Paul thought, ‘Nobody ever asks the important questions or digs for the real facts, like Arabella’s eternal nagging or Martin’s terrible sense of inferiority, engendered by years and years of denigration.’ He gave his own evidence briefly, as did Eveleigh, and was glad when the Coroner complimented Ikey on his dogged pursuit of the deceased and his prompt rescue of the hysterical Sydney. It was over and done with inside an hour and outside the little court Will Codsall told Paul that the funeral would be at Coombe Bay parish church the next day, murderer and victim being buried in the same family grave, despite a rumour that Parson Bull would prohibit it. His family, he said, had been churchwardens at Coombe Bay for more than a century and having regard to Martin’s mental illness Parson Bull agreed to stretch a point. Elinor stood by tight-lipped while they talked, only joining in when Paul asked Will if he would like to return to Four Winds as master.

  ‘No,’ she snapped, ‘’er woulden, an’ you can taake that as vinal, Squire! Thankee all the zame but tiz “No”! Four Winds be a bad plaace an’ us is better off where us be, at Periwinkle!’

  Paul agreed but noticing that Will looked shifty thought it right to press the point somewhat.

  ‘There’s no comparison between Four Winds and Periwinkle as farms, Elinor,’ he said. ‘One is well established and close on 350 acres, the other a mere sixty, enclosed by Pitts’ land and the moor.’

  ‘It’s no odds,’ she said stubbornly, ‘us want none of it, do us, Will?’

 
‘No, I reckon not,’ Will said, slowly, ‘we’m zettled enough, Mr Craddock,’ and Paul pondered the tendency of Codsall males to let their women speak on their behalf as Elinor added, ‘As to what that old vool in there said about the family being mazed, I don’t reckon nothing to that! Will baint mazed, nor my little Mark neither! A man’s what he maakes of himself to my mind, or what his woman maakes of ’un!’

  ‘I daresay you’re right about that, Elinor,’ said Paul, and thought how much luckier Will had been in his wife than Martin. ‘Stay on at Periwinkle and good luck to you both! Will you be taking young Sydney to live with you now?’

  Elinor glanced at Will. It was plain that she did not relish the prospect but she said slowly, ‘I reckon that’d be our duty, Squire, providing he wants to come, but he’ll never maake a varmer, he’s too set on book-larnin’. Maybe whoever moved into Four Winds would board him. He don’t eat much and he’s at school most o’ the time.’

  ‘Then leave Sydney to me,’ Paul said and went across to the black-browed foreman, Eveleigh, who was adjusting the harness of his pony and deliberately avoiding involvement in the conference.

  ‘Suppose I transferred the tenancy of Four Winds to you, Eveleigh?’ he asked and the man’s head came up so sharply that the pony shied. To cover his agitation Eveleigh shouted, ‘Quiet, damn you! Stand still, boy’ and glanced across at Will and Elinor, now on the point of moving off.

  ‘That wouldn’t be right, would it, sir?’ he asked, ‘not with Will ’aving to make do on sixty acres o’ rough land?’

  ‘Will doesn’t want the farm,’ Paul told him, ‘I’ve just offered it to him. He’ll have the contents, of course, and some of the stock no doubt, for Martin probably left a will but he’s only got sixty acres and I daresay you could come to some arrangement with him and buy stock over a period? Or perhaps you could split the Friesian herd between you? The point is, how would you feel about running Four Winds?’