When the procession had been broken up, as she knew it would be the moment she saw the decoys march in with their Union Jack, she slipped away from the scrimmage and made across the park towards the Serpentine and it was here, away from the cheering, hysterical buffoons around the rostrum that she saw that the boy had followed her but was keeping his distance, like a cautious private detective. She sat down on the first available seat, watching him stop, edge forward uncertainly and finally touch his cap and grin in a rather rueful way, as though by no means sure of a welcome. She called, ‘All right, Ikey! What do you want?’
He came up quietly and sat down beside her. He was looking, she thought, travelworn and dishevelled, as though he had slept in his clothes. His wide Eton collar was a limp rag and his dark hair tousled. She noticed too that his boots were coated with dust and that under the dust was a stiff layer of red, Devon clay. He said, with a more cheerful grin, ‘I had a job keeping track of you, Mrs Craddock. I found the place easily enough but when you started marching there were so many ladies and they were all dressed the same.’
His accent struck her as unfamiliar. The nasal Cockney twang had been extracted from it and yet, somehow, it was not yet a normal speaking voice. She said, briefly, ‘Is Mr Craddock with you?’, and he looked very surprised and said, ‘Good Lord, no, Mrs Craddock! How could he be? Haven’t you heard?’
‘Heard what?’
‘Why about the wreck, about this!’, and he took a crumpled copy of the Daily News from his pocket and opened it. On the front page was a banner headline, the second feature of the edition. It said: ‘Westcountry Wreck Drama; Villagers Save Seven Lives,’ and underneath, in smaller type, ‘Gallant Rescues by Squire and Farmer; Five Believed Dead! He let her read the story through without comment. It was a garbled, inaccurate version but its outline was factual. In the stop press, under the heading, ‘Wreck Drama’, was a three-line paragraph reporting that Squire Craddock had been critically injured getting the last of the German sailors ashore under the cliffs. She said, sharply, ‘How bad is he? Is he likely to die?’ and Ikey admitted that he did not know for he had not come to her from Shallowford but from school, having run away early the previous morning. She looked at the newspaper again and saw that it was a day old. It did not surprise her that she should have missed the story. She seldom read anything but political news.
‘Ikey, when did this happen? And why did you run away?’
‘Three nights ago,’ he said. ‘My housemaster told me I was to stay on at school but I was coming to find you anyway—in the holidays, that is! I knew the address of your headquarters, so I rode a goods train to Paxtonbury and then caught the main line train.’
There were so many other questions she wanted to ask but she noticed now that his grin was forced and that behind it his features were drawn. She said, ‘Where did you sleep last night?’
‘I found somewhere,’ he said defensively and she remembered then that he had once been a wharfside boy. ‘Have you eaten anything?’
‘I had a meat pie, early on.’
She got up and took his hand. ‘Well, let’s get something inside you and then you can talk. After that you can sleep at my lodgings whilst I tell them where you are. They’ll be frantic and I expect the police are looking for you!’
They walked along to the Achilles statue and hailed a cab, and in a Kensington teashop she watched him eat ravenously yet with punctilious attention to his table manners. When they were going up Sloane Street to her bed-sitting room she said, ‘How do you feel now, Ikey?’ and he grinned again, this time without effort and said, ‘I feel fine, Mrs Craddock! Are we going back home now?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘that is, you are, but not until you’ve had a good sleep. I’ve got to let them know you’re safe and well, Ikey. If the Squire is as ill as they say they won’t want a thing like this worrying him, will they?’
‘No,’ said Ikey, mildly, ‘I hadn’t thought of that. How will you do it?’
‘I’ll telephone the Whinmouth police,’ she said, ‘and ask them to take a message to Mr Rudd. Then he can let the school know and after that you can take your time going back.’ He was about to protest at this but a yawn caught him unawares and while he was stifling it she said, ‘We can talk later, after I’ve done what I have to do.’ They climbed the stairs to her room overlooking the Square. It was simply but pleasantly furnished for her austerity did not extend to the deliberate sacrifice of comfort. Enough sacrifices of that kind were required in gaol. She made tea while he went behind the draw curtain to undress and when she took him a cup of tea he was sitting up in bed and blushed when she looked at his neatly folded clothes. She thought to herself, ‘Somebody is working hard on Ikey and I don’t believe it’s just Paul—he’s changed a great deal but the little ragamuffin is still there, under the straitjacket they’re knitting for him!’ She sat on the end of the bed watching him and liking what she saw, and presently said, ‘Did you really run away with the idea of finding me and taking me back with you?’
‘Yes, I did,’ he said, with another yawn, ‘it was the only way I could think of to help Squire,’ and he handed her the empty tea cup and snuggled down under the sheets. Before she had passed beyond the curtain he was asleep.
She chose a police station where she was not known and gave her real name. She took Ikey’s paper along and showed it to a serious-looking sergeant, explaining who Ikey was and saying that she would like to get a message sent through to Whinmouth police station. She would have preferred to pass the information by telegram but this would have taken longer. As it was the sergeant, gravely interested, allowed her to speak to the Whinmouth sergeant and she asked him to telephone the landlord of The Raven and tell someone to ride over to Shallowford and report to Mr Rudd that Ikey Palfrey was safe and would be coming home on the first train tomorrow. Then she asked for news of Paul and was told he was on the mend, although likely to be laid up for some weeks. The head wound, she learned, had caused severe concussion but more serious injuries included two broken ribs and a fractured arm. The serious-looking police sergeant at her elbow listened to every word, and when she had concluded the call he said, trying hard to sound nonchalant, ‘The er … gentleman concerned in the rescue is your husband, ma’am?’ and she said that was so and thanked him for his assistance but left without satisfying his curiosity. It was a long time since she had scored over a member of the Metropolitan police.
It was growing dusk when she climbed the stairs to her room again to find him still asleep. She made some vegetable soup and a ham salad, and set two places at her little table. Then she woke him, showing him where he could wash, and while he was splashing in the cubicle she told him what she had done and gave him the reassuring news from Shallowford. When they were sitting at the table she said, ‘Very well, Ikey, now I’ll listen,’ but suddenly he was tongue-tied. It had seemed so clear-cut when he had set out but now the purpose of his mission was getting blurred, and his presence here, drinking her soup and eating her ham salad after sleeping in her bed was farcical, like an elaborate practical joke that had misfired. She said, trying to reassure him, ‘Whatever you say, Ikey, will remain between the two of us! After all, you must have had very strong reasons for doing such a silly thing, particularly when you already knew the Squire had been injured and the whole Valley would be in an uproar without you adding to it!’
‘I don’t properly understand it any more, ma’am,’ he admitted. ‘I thought I did but I don’t. I suppose I just wanted to … well to help him! He’s been jolly decent to me, and it seemed right to pay back somehow. You see, he was so different when you were there and even before you came but now, well, it isn’t like it was, not for me and not for any of us! I reckoned that if you came back it would be all right again but I daresay it’s none of my business, ma’am.’
Suddenly she felt great compassion for him. If she could have been sure that it would not have embarrassed him horribly
she would have flung her arms round him and kissed him for his confusion. The honesty that prompted it seemed to her one of the most genuinely touching things she had ever witnessed and for the first time in a very long period she could have wept without shame. She said, mastering herself, ‘I can’t ever come back, Ikey, and I don’t think the Squire wants me back, not unless I changed my whole life and I can’t do that. Far too much has happened but I don’t blame you for trying. I think it was a rather wonderful thing to do and you’re quite right to look up to the Squire the way you do because he is a very good man and not simply because of what he did for you or what happened in Coombe Bay the other night. It’s just that he and I have different work to do and neither of us could do it if we went on living together in Shallowford or anywhere like Shallowford.’ She paused, adding, ‘Do you understand anything of what I’m trying to tell you, Ikey?’
‘No,’ he said, stubbornly, ‘I don’t reckon I do, ma’am. Married people live together for always, don’t they?’
She tried another approach. ‘What do you believe in most, Ikey. I mean … what idea? What’s terribly important to you, apart from Squire Craddock? Would it be your new school?’
He considered the question carefully, as though resolved to give as truthful an answer as his understanding of it permitted. ‘I suppose, England,’ he said finally, and then, doubtfully, ‘is that what you meant, Mrs Craddock?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s exactly what I mean and now see if you can follow me a little further. England is your country and it’s very important to you. So it is to me and to the Squire, only we don’t all have the same ideas of how to work for it, or make it a better place for everyone to live in.’
His eyes never left hers as he said, ‘I can’t see what that’s got to do with you and Squire, ma’am.’
‘Oh yes, you can, if you think, Ikey. You’re very sharp! If you weren’t you wouldn’t have got the idea of coming to find me in the first place and even if you had you could never have found your way here alone. What I’m trying to say is this—the Squire and I don’t live separate lives because we’ve quarrelled in the way that lots of married people quarrel. It’s just that he wants the old kind of England and I want a very different one. When married people think as opposite as that they cease to get any pleasure out of one another’s company.’
‘You mean you ran away just to join the suffragettes?’ he asked, incredulously.
‘Not exactly,’ she said, smiling, ‘but that was what decided me. I really left because there was no real place for me in the Valley and I believe Squire understands that now. If you give him time I don’t think he’ll continue to hold it against me!’
‘Then why is he so miserable?’ demanded Ikey and she said, quickly, ‘Because he’s very lonely! You’re away at school most of the time and Shallowford is a big empty house for a man to live in alone. Besides, I don’t believe he is miserable all the time or not when he’s out in the open. Maybe he’ll marry again!’
‘How could he do that when he’s married to you?’
‘People can get unmarried—divorced, and I’ve already gone into that, although he doesn’t know about it yet. I suppose it must sound terribly complicated to you, Ikey, so you’ll just have to take my word for it until you’re older! It wouldn’t be the slightest good my coming home simply because he was injured. You see, I believe in what I’m doing here, with all my heart and soul, just as much as Squire believes in what he’s doing, and besides, I wouldn’t want to live in the country again.’ She paused. ‘Have I made any kind of sense to you?’
‘Yes, I reckon you have,’ he said, slowly, ‘but it doesn’t help much, does it?’
‘I believe you might help straighten things out,’ she said, ‘but you would have to give me your word of honour never to tell a soul, not even the Squire, that I had a hand in it!’ and she paused, looking at him speculatively, scrutinising and ultimately sanctioning an idea that had occurred to her with disconcerting suddenness. ‘Do you remember Farmer Derwent’s daughter? Claire, the pretty one?’
‘Yes, of course,’ he said, ‘she used to ride a lot with Squire. She was always over the big house before …’ He was going to say ‘before you came’ but checked himself, feeling this might annoy her and said instead, ‘before I started taking lessons in Paxtonbury.’
‘That’s right,’ she said, ‘and since we seem to have so many secrets now, Ikey, I’ll let you into another. If the Squire hadn’t married me he would have almost certainly married Claire Derwent! It was me who stopped him marrying her but she’s still very much in love with him.’
‘How do you know that?’ he demanded, unequivocally.
‘Well, I do know,’ she said, ‘and what’s more I know where she is at the moment. She’s running a tea-shop quite near here. She owns it but she also trains as a nurse. I met her by accident some time ago and we … well, we talked! It was before the news got around that I had run away and she thought I was up here on a visit. She’s the one you ought to spirit back to Shallowford, not me.’
A small bubble of mischief popped through the crust of his bewilderment and he said, with an engaging grin, ‘You mean, he might fall in love with her again and marry her?’
‘Why did you say “again”?’ she said sharply and he said, half-apologetically, ‘Well, they were laying odds on it when I was a stable-boy!’
‘Who were?’
‘All of them, Handcock the gardener, Chivers the groom, and the rest! Mrs Handcock was sure Squire would marry Claire Derwent and I remember her and Thirza grumbling about it in the kitchen.’ He grinned again. ‘She clouted me for telling Chivers what they said!’
She noticed something new about him as he said this, that his loyalty was wholly Paul’s. Her patience and cosseting had made no impression upon him, for he did not see her as an individual, or even as Paul’s legal wife, but merely as a possible means of improving the humour of his hero, Squire Craddock. She realised something else—that she had grossly underestimated his intelligence and had been wrong to deal with him as one might deal with a child. He was not a child—in many ways he was far more mature than Paul and seemed almost to be mocking her as he said, ‘And how would I go about that, Mrs Craddock?’ His cold-bloodedness, his apparent readiness to regard her as something expendable was chastening.
‘You came to me out of the blue so you’d better do the same to her, Ikey,’ she said and got up, with the intention of checking on Claire Derwent’s address in the directory she used for canvassing. The initiative, however, had now passed to him. He seemed to be considering the matter with clinical detachment.
‘That wouldn’t do at all,’ he said finally, ‘not now you’ve told them where I am. If Miss Derwent got to know I’d been here first she wouldn’t believe a word I said! No, that wouldn’t work, or not with a lady!’
He seemed to imply that her sex was not so much tiresome as possibly devious, and while this might have enraged her had he been a grown man she found herself admiring his easy familiarity with human weaknesses, so much so that she felt she had done her part by reminding him of Claire Derwent’s existence and could safely leave the mechanics of intrigue to him. When she spoke again she was the pupil, he the instructor.
‘What new mischief are you planning now, Ikey?’
‘It would have to be done by a letter,’ he said slowly, ‘and the letter would have to be posted in Shallowford. I could write it here tho’, and you could read it. Then I could post it as soon as I get home and it would have a local postmark on it and she wouldn’t suspect.’ He had clearly made up his mind on the essentials. ‘Could you lend me a sheet of paper and pen and ink, ma’am?’
She gave him some plain writing paper, a pen and a bottle of ink, and left him to himself while she cleared the supper things. All the time she was washing up and drying he was bent over his task, his pen scratching away, his tongue peeping from between his tee
th in the effort of concentration. When she had finished she lit the gas fire and sat beside it, pretending to read but actually giving him her whole attention. At last he straightened up and handed her the paper, now covered with his half-formed schoolboy scrawl and signed, ‘Ikey Palfrey’ and in brackets, below the signature, ‘the one you may remember as stable-boy!’ The naiveté of this afterthought made her smile but the letter itself was by no means naïve but a little masterpiece of special pleading. If she knew Claire Derwent as well as she thought she did the girl would find it irresistible. Ikey had written:
‘Dear Miss Derwent, I got your address from the Xmas Card you sent Squire. You may think it rood of me to write like this but I take the chance because I love Squire and can’t think of any other way to help. You will have hird all about how he and Tamer Potter rescued the German sailors, and how he got badly hurt and is still laid up, also how Mrs Craddock run off a year ago and hasn’t been seen since. Well Miss Derwent, now I come to the mane thing. I was in and out of his room before he began to come round from the whack on the head and he kept asking for you, not nowing it of course but calling out your name as if you was in the room. I asked Mrs Handcock about it and she said maybe he was remembering all the good times when I used to saddle up for him and you rode in the woods I thought you might like to know about this so you could call in and cheer him up a bit if you were down this way to see Miss Rose or Farmer Derwent soon. I know he would like that because he’s been very low lately, nothing like he was in the old days so again appollergising for writing and hoping you are well as I am since Squire sent me to school Respectfully, Ikey Palfrey.’
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 52
