She soon packed him off to take his cure and had the practice to herself. ‘Playing herself in,’ she called it, while she continued to search for a firm of practitioners who had not taken the pledge to stop the infiltration of women into the profession. One of the things that John Rudd most admired about her was her cheerful acceptance of male prejudice in the medical field, for in spite of it she preferred male doctors. ‘Women in authority,’ she told him once, ‘are usually hell-cats, like the matrons and nursing sisters I trained under before going on to take a degree in Dublin!’ She was like her father in one respect. She drove everywhere and did everything at high speed and with enormous gusto but she enjoyed her work enormously and was very proud of having wrested her M.D. from the English. Although born in Ireland she had spent part of her childhood and some of her training period in Scotland, so that her accent was of a Celtic hybrid, half County Kerry, half Lowland Scot. Her outlook and sense of humour, however, was all Irish and her long struggle to qualify had done nothing to moderate a natural ebullience. During her five years in Dublin she had lived, she told Rudd, on about fifteenpence a day, ‘doled out in threepenny bits’ by the Scots uncle who took her in when Himself (Doctor O’Keefe) had made his one-way crossing to England thirty years before. John Rudd would have liked to have satisfied his curiosity as to why O’Keefe had come here in the first place but reserved the question until he could be sure it would not give offence.
Like so many Irish patriots Maureen O’Keefe could laugh at her enthusiasm for Home Rule and even sympathise with the English for having to contend with such an indigestible morsel as Ireland. Perhaps John Rudd’s intimate knowledge of Ireland, and the fact that he had enjoyed many a day’s hunting in the West, did something to draw them closer together at a time when the agent was depressed regarding the Squire’s slow crawl back to health. She was a good talker but an even better listener and within a few days he had unburdened himself regarding his own situation and his relationship with Paul. This was touched off by a direct question she addressed to him after he had watched her encase Paul’s ribs in plaster. Before he could congratulate her on what seemed to him a very dexterous display she said, as they drove off down the drive, ‘You love the man, do you not, John? Now would you be after wantin’ to tell me why?’ and he had replied, impressed by her discernment, ‘Yes, I love him and I’d be glad to tell you why if you have the patience to listen!’
‘I have that,’ she said, whipping up the cob, ‘for it’s no more than a trotting road here,’ and as they bowled along to Four Winds on their way to dress the septic hand of a labourer, he told her of his years under the Lovells and of Paul Craddock’s sudden appearance in the Valley and how, over the last few years, they had made the estate their life. He told her too of the manner in which he had left the Army and settled in this remote corner, admitting that until Craddock had come his entire existence had seemed profitless. Then, in response to her frank questions, he described the recurring crises they had shared, culminating in Grace Craddock’s flight and the night, just before her arrival, when they had seen the spirit of the Valley at work in the cove and Paul had twice risked his life to save seven lives. It was this incident that he saw as the first fruits of their partnership and it seemed to him a bitter thing that Paul was too ill to evaluate it. ‘If I could only get that across to him I swear he’d begin to mend,’ he declared but at that she laughed, saying she knew a better tonic for the boy and that luckily it was at hand in unlimited supply. She said merrily that she had only drawn him out on the subject in order to confirm her diagnosis. ‘You’ll not be put out by what I say, John? You’ll not think me presumptuous for interfering?’
‘You’re the doctor,’ he said, ‘and any judgement you made would be based on good sense and a kind heart.’
She stopped the trap, sucked in her cheeks in a way she had and let her body slump back on her hands. ‘Paul Craddock is as strong as an ox!’ she said, ‘and there’s no reason in the world why he shouldn’t be up and about again in a fortnight, providing he looks ahead instead of brooding on what lies behind! Sure, he did a man’s job of work there in the cove, but his physical hurts aren’t important! There’s more to it than that, John, the boy’s pride is in ruins!’
‘How could you know that?’
‘I guessed it the moment I heard tell of the little baggage he married. It’s a special balm the boy needs and you can’t buy it by the pot at the pharmacy!’
‘Baggage or not,’ said John glumly, ‘he’s still in love with that madcap and neither you nor I can do a thing about it.’
‘You think not?’ she said. ‘Then you’ve a thicker head than I suspected, John! I was five and a half years working for my degree and there was nothing in the lectures about broken hearts. Maybe there will be when there are more women in the field but there isn’t yet! We still leave it all to the ladies of the circulating libraries, who make a very good living out of it I’m told. Do you pay no account to this other girl—the one who rushed down from London the moment she heard of his plight?’
‘Claire Derwent? Don’t be misled by her—they’re old friends and I daresay after reading the papers she …’
‘If you think she came simply because he was laid up with broken ribs and pneumonia, John, you must have your nose so deep in the soil that you’ll end up down a rabbit hole!’
‘Oh, he was fond of her but mildly I’d say and before he married Grace. It never amounted to anything serious.’
‘It’s taking a serious turn right now,’ she said, ‘and I mean to give it a push! Why do you suppose I engaged Miss Derwent, in preference to a real nurse from Paxtonbury? Did you think I was impressed by her having played nursing games at a V.A.D. lecture course?’
‘Well, to tell the truth I was a bit sceptical,’ he admitted, chuckling, ‘for I made sure you would get a professional in for night work. After all, he can afford it and you can’t be on the spot all the time.’
‘John,’ she said, with Irish mock solemnity, ‘I’ll tell you something else about the patient and I’ll risk shocking you! It’s a little night work the boy needs, bless him, and given time and patience on both side I think he’ll get it!’
He laughed outright at this, one of the few honest guffaws since his garrison days in Ireland twenty-five years ago. ‘Maureen O’Keefe,’ he said, in a very fair imitation of her brogue, ‘as Almighty God’s me witness it’s a brazen, scheming hussy you are and I have it in mind to pass your prescription to a medical council and plaised they’d be to get shut of ye!’
‘You do that, m’boy,’ she replied, ‘and I’ll argue the diagnosis before any number of them! Now will you not admit it’s high time the country had more of us petticoat quacks? And what’s so different about my prescription either? Sure, it’s no more than the mixture as before!’ and she cracked the whip and pulled the cob back on to the river road. It was a week before he learned how to look impassive when listening to Maureen’s solemn and detailed instructions to ‘Nurse’ Derwent, when she reported for night duty after the evening visits.
The situation in the sick-room linked agent and doctor in conspiracy for as Paul’s wounds began to heal and he could move around a little John found himself studying the relationship between patient and nurse with an attention that sometimes made him nervous. It seemed to him that both Paul and Claire were very much on their guard, as though determined to keep their distance but when he mentioned this to Maureen she scolded him, saying that he would do well to keep away from the sick-room when Claire was on duty. If the girl got so much as an inkling what was expected of her she would be over the hills and far away in a flash. He took her advice and thereafter confined his visits to daylight hours but he went on worrying all the same and presently it occurred to him that the boy Ikey might be able to supply a clue regarding the latest situation between Paul and Grace. In the turmoil surrounding Ikey’s return he had not exchanged more than a few gruff words with him,
whereas Ikey had kept out of his way, probably anticipating a rebuke. John waylaid him one morning in the orchard and called, sharply, ‘Hi there! I want a word with you, young feller-me-lad,’ and when the boy put on a virtuous expression, added, ‘You don’t fool me! I haven’t forgotten all that extra trouble you caused us skipping to London like that and I hope you get a hiding for it when you get back to school tomorrow!’
‘I daresay I will, sir,’ the boy said, but so cheerfully that John at once suspected the boy was laughing at him.
‘What in the name of God possessed you to do such a thing?’ he demanded. ‘You must have known we had enough trouble on our hands and that having you home only made work for everybody!’
‘I know that,’ said the boy, enigmatically, ‘but it was something I had to do!’ Then, more doggedly, ‘I can’t tell you, sir! I’d like to but I can’t. I promised, you see.’
John said, coldly, ‘Will you tell me why you went to Mrs Craddock? Did she send for you?’
‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘it was all my idea. She was surprised to see me and sent me back the next day.’
‘How the devil did you know where to find her?’
‘I read it in the newspaper, Mr Rudd.’
‘You found her address in a paper?’
‘No sir, just where those suffragettes met. I guessed she’d be there and—well, she was, sir.’
Curiosity tormented him but his army training stopped him bullying the truth from the boy. He had heard cornered troops use this stalling technique in the orderly room and had, in fact, used it himself when he was Ikey’s age. The boy, he was sure, was not being evasive out of cussedness but from motives which he regarded as honourable, loyalty to a comrade perhaps, or maybe loyalty to Grace. He said, with a pretence of bad grace, ‘Very well, Ikey, I daresay the Squire will want to know all about it when he is better. After all, you’re his responsibility, not mine!’ and he walked back to the stable-yard. When he looked over his shoulder, however, the boy was still standing where he had left him and his expression suggested a certain amount of distress and uncertainty. For no reason that he could think of the interview both puzzled and disturbed Rudd but when he saw Maureen’s trap enter the yard he shrugged off his doubts muttering, ‘I daresay it’s all trivial enough but how the devil is a boy to know that at his age?’
V
John Rudd was correct in surmising that his questions had upset Ikey. In fact, one way and another these holidays had been a disconsolate period apart from the hours spent in Hazel Potter’s company. The rush to London, the tracking down of Mrs Craddock, the dramatic switch to Claire Derwent and the luring of her to Devon, had seemed achievements at the time and when Claire actually arrived he had enjoyed a moment of triumph. But since then events had slipped and slithered beyond his comprehension and the more he contemplated the adult world the more baffling and illogical it became, lacking the fixed loyalties that regulated the world of school and stable-yard. He suffered badly from lack of a confidant and, as the days passed, with Squire in the sick-room and Claire Derwent spending her nights at the big house, Ikey’s elation began to moderate so that he passed from bewilderment to a permanent state of anxiety, seeing himself as the author of a plot that had gone awry and might ultimately touch off a domestic explosion involving everybody concerned and himself most of all. He could make nothing of the situation. The Squire, presumably, was still married to his wife, who had not only refused to visit him when he lay critically ill but had actually connived at the introduction of another woman into the house. It was this that ran counter to all Ikey’s conceptions of the married state, indeed, to his conception of human nature. He was familiar with sporadic domestic eruptions in the backstreets but wives south of the Thames, however resentful and vituperative they felt towards their husbands, stopped far short of encouraging rivals. They would, he reflected, be more likely to tear the clothes from their backs and claw out handfuls of hair, at which stage, in Ikey’s experience, husbands usually intervened and tempers were cooled in the nearest four-ale bar. And there was another aspect of the affair that bewildered him. He would have thought that Claire Derwent, once installed, would have been sure to seek him out and question him very closely about that letter but not only had she failed to do this, she had gone out of her way to avoid him and had, in fact, not addressed a word to him since her arrival. He could get little reassurance from Mrs Handcock or Thirza Tremlett regarding Squire’s health and yet they were forever whispering together and he guessed that their furtive confidences concerned Claire Derwent’s more or less permanent presence in the house. He would have talked it over with Gappy, the gardener’s boy and former room-mate over the stable, but since going away to school his relationship with Gappy had changed and Gappy now regarded him as one of the gentry, hardly less exalted than the Squire and had even taken to addressing him as ‘Young Sir’, a form of address that made Ikey blush. After John Rudd’s crusty interrogation he wandered away along the river bank towards Codsall Bridge, having considered but rejected the idea of seeking Hazel Potter’s advice. With the best will in the world, he decided, Hazel could be of no assistance here and having decided this he again envied her her freedom and from this it was a short step to gloomy contemplation of his own changed status in the Valley and a conviction that it might be better for his peace of mind if, the moment the Squire was approachable, he applied for reinstatement as stable-boy. He drifted along the path beside the river, hands deep in pockets, forehead creased with melancholy, reflecting that here was a rotten end to a thoroughly rotten holiday.
He had always preferred the Sorrel banks to any other corner of the estate, except perhaps the green depths of the woods near the islet. Last term the English master had introduced him to a poem called ‘A Boy’s Song’, and the lea, described therein, seemed to Ikey to refer to this particular reach of the river. Recollection of the verses, however, only served to deepen his gloom for he had no Billy with whom to share his enthusiasm for the darting trout and the tremble of tree shadows over the pike pool. He stood leaning on the rail of the bridge staring down into the clear water like a man contemplating suicide and was so drenched in self-pity that he did not hear the whirr of the trap wheels or turn aside when hooves beat on the planking. The first indication he had of the presence of the lady-doctor was her hail of, ‘Hi, boy! You, boy!’ and then he turned and flattened himself against the rail, supposing himself an obstruction to her passage. She did not advance, however, but stared down at him, her eyes glinting with amusement.
‘You’re from the big house, aren’t you?’ she asked, and when he admitted that he was, ‘Aren’t you a relative of Squire Craddock’s?’
Now this was not a simple question to answer. At school the Squire was his stepbrother but he had never made such an impudent claim on home ground, so he said, evasively, ‘I’m Ikey Palfrey and I used to work yonder but now Squire sends me to school!’
‘That’s it,’ she said, triumphantly, ‘I knew you belonged! I don’t forget faces that easily. Squire adopted you, didn’t he?’
‘He sends me to school,’ Ikey repeated obstinately, privately thinking her a very nosey woman and wishing she would stop pestering him.
‘All right, have it your own way,’ she said cheerfully and then, to his dismay, she hoisted herself from the box, looped the reins round a post and joined him in contemplation of the water.
‘Any fish down there?’ she said casually.
‘Trout,’ he told her, ‘and sometimes grayling but Squire won’t let it off. Anyone can fish free so long as they work on the estate.’
‘Ah,’ she said, with an air of satisfaction, ‘the Squire’s a sensible man! And a good one to work for I’m told.’
‘Yes, he is,’ said Ikey, somewhat mollified, ‘the best! Anyone will tell you that, Doctor.’
They remained side by side squinting down at the stream and presently he saw, or thought he saw, a chance to reli
eve at least one of his private anxieties. He said, bluntly, ‘Is he going to get better? Really better?’
‘Why, of course he is! He’ll be out and about as soon as we get the plaster off his ribs and his arm out of splints. He’s through the worst of it.’
He felt himself warming towards her, so much so that he was tempted to break the first seal of his confessional and said, ‘You … you heard about me running away to London when it happened? They all said it was a bad thing to do but I didn’t mean to cause Mr Rudd or anyone any trouble. I … I had an idea, that’s all’
She said, with elaborate unconcern, ‘You did? Well then you must have a clear conscience so don’t bother!’ And then, even more casually, ‘What kind of idea?’
‘A daft one it turned out,’ he said, beginning to suspect that he had already said too much.
They fell silent again and perhaps two minutes passed before she said, suddenly, ‘Look here, Ikey, if you want to get anything off your chest get it off and it won’t go any further! If you don’t then I’m not in the least worried. It’s a fine spring day and a boy of your age ought to enjoy it! No dam’ sense in taking troubles seriously at your age!’
The advice, and the fashion in which it was offered, levelled them in a way that astonished him for he might have been leaning on the rail alongside one of his Third Form cronies. This woman, whom everybody for miles around regarded as a freak, seemed far more approachable than, say, one of the prefects at school. He put a finger in his mouth and pulled at his lower lip, screwing up his face in an effort to assess her trustworthiness and then, as he recalled his miserable confusion of mind, he made a decision in her favour. ‘I can’t explain how it all happened,’ he said, ‘but it was me that began it! Now I don’t know whether I did right or wrong and that’s a fact, Doctor!’
‘All right,’ she said, equably, ‘suppose you explain and leave me to sort it out for you? Why did you run off to London, instead of staying at school until you were sent for?’
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 55
