‘I went to find Mrs Craddock and tell her she ought to come home,’ he said.
He must have succeeded in astonishing her for she gasped and then chuckled, a rich chuckle, beginning deep in her throat so that he was prepared to share the joke to some extent.
‘He was very low,’ he explained, grinning, ‘not like he was before she ran off. I got to thinking about it and then, before he got hurt rescuing those sailors, I thought I’d … well … get her back if I could. I would have managed it without anyone missing me if it hadn’t been for Mr Rudd ringing up and telling them to keep me at school for a week!’
She was regarding him now with admiration. ‘Glory to God!’ she said, ‘but you’re a deep one and no mistake! How old are you, Ikey?’
‘Fourteen,’ he said, wondering what his age had to do with it and she added, ‘So you put it to her, just like that? What on earth did she say?’
‘She said she wasn’t ever coming back.’
‘And then?’
He licked his lips having now arrived at the most improbable part of the business. ‘Well,’ he went on, reluctantly, ‘she was nice to me and we had a talk about things. She said the person who could really cheer him up wasn’t her at all but Miss Derwent, the one was daft about him when he first came here.’
‘I see,’ she said, ‘so all you did was to hop round the corner and enlist Miss Derwent as Comforter-in-Chief?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I wrote her a letter saying the Squire was calling out for her in his deliriousness!’
‘In his deliriousness? But was he?’
‘How should I know, I wasn’t here then.’
She annoyed him then by exploding with laughter and he added as though in extenuation, ‘Well, it worked! It worked a lot quicker than I thought it would! She was down here almost at once.’
‘I’ll wager she was,’ said Maureen O’Keefe, standing with feet astride and hands on hips as she regarded him with the closest attention. ‘Well then, since it worked what are you so bothered about?’
‘It doesn’t seem right when he’s not married to her but to Mrs Craddock,’ he said and the genuine note of piety in his voice told her that it would be boorish to laugh at him again; instead she laid a hand on his shoulder, pulling him round facing her. ‘Look here, Ikey,’ she said, ‘I think you’re marvellous, do you understand? You went right to the root of things, and didn’t let the prospect of trouble for yourself stop you! Did they give you a hiding when they got you back?’
‘No,’ he said gloomily, ‘but I daresay they will when I get back to school tomorrow. Not that that bothers me, for a walloping doesn’t amount to much. What really worries me is … well … not knowing whether I did right and whether … the Squire really wants Miss Derwent around all the time.’
‘You can set your mind at rest on that,’ she said. ‘You did Squire the best turn anyone could have done him and he does like having her around, take it from me! As to getting a thrashing from your housemaster for running away you can forget that too. I’ll give you a note to take back and you’ll hear no more about it.’
‘Look here, Doctor,’ he said, wriggling out of her grasp, ‘that won’t do at all! I don’t want anyone at school to know what I ran off for and I don’t want anyone here to know, especially Squire! I wouldn’t have told you if …’
‘Don’t be so stupid,’ she said, ‘do you think I’d split on a pal? Me? The person responsible for getting him well again? I won’t breathe a word to anyone upon my honour!’
‘Not even to Mr Rudd?’
‘Least of all to him,’ she said. ‘It’ll be between you and me and for always!’
‘Well, thanks,’ he said gratefully and then, ‘I don’t reckon it would do for Miss Derwent to know Mrs Craddock read the letter first!’
‘She read it? Mrs Craddock did?’
‘Yes. I wrote it while she was there and took it back to Devon to post so as it would have the right postmark.’
‘Ikey,’ she said, ‘there’s a word you wouldn’t have heard yet that just about describes you so remember it and you can recognise yourself later on! You’re Machiavellian! Remember that—Mack-i-ah-vellian!
‘What does it mean?’ he asked and she said, gesticulating, ‘It’s having an instinctive understanding of people and how their minds work and it’s a priceless quality to possess, particularly if you ever think of going into business!’
‘I’ll not do that,’ he said, scornfully, ‘I’m going to join the cavalry!’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘then I’m afraid it won’t be much use to you. Still, it’s nice to have and I daresay it’ll help you get along with the ladies!’
‘I shan’t ever marry either,’ he said, firmly, ‘it muddles things up so!’
‘Well, it needn’t,’ she said, ‘but while we’re on the subject I’ll let you into my secret. I think it very likely that Squire will marry Miss Derwent in the end. You see if I’m not right.’
He stared at her in amazement. ‘How could he do that?’ he said and then remembered what Grace Craddock had said about ‘getting unmarried’, a remark he had not taken seriously at the time.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘we won’t go into it right now but it’ll happen about this time next year, maybe. The thing is, if it does, what would you think about it?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, slowly, ‘Miss Derwent and me always got along. She’s a sport and I like her all right but I liked Mrs Craddock. One time everyone up at the big house thought Squire and Miss Derwent would marry so I suppose it would work out all right!’
He began to wonder if, after all, there might be some kind of pattern to the strange behaviour of adults, even if it was so complex that it could not be related to everyday life. He said, ‘She’d fit in better, I mean, she belongs and somehow Mrs Craddock never did, did she? She was well … a town person!’
‘You’ve hit the nail on the head again,’ she said and unlooping the cob’s reins hoisted herself on to the box. ‘Would you like to finish the round with me, Ikey?’
‘No,’ he told her, suddenly feeling a glorious sense of release, ‘I think I’ll cross Hermitage and cut through the woods to the mere. We’ve got woods round the school but they’re not like our woods, mostly just pine where nothing much grows.’
She lifted her whip in respectful salute and rolled across the bridge towards Four Winds. He looked after her a moment and then ran across the road, scrambled up the bank and disappeared into the ash thickets on the river side of Hermitage Wood as she drove to Four Winds at a spanking speed. ‘Well,’ she said to herself as she clipped through the gate, ‘I came here thinking a country practice might be dull, but I’m learning otherwise and that’s for sure!’
VI
He was aware of her less as a nurse and a personable young woman with a glowing complexion and corn-coloured hair, than as an agent whose presence completed a cycle of years, beginning with the long weeks of drought when he had first ridden about the Valley in her company, and ending in another spell of unbroken sunshine that followed the mild spring and promised a record crop providing sufficient rain fell by the first week of July. Thus, in a sense, she was impersonal, not a woman at all but a spirit of the Valley unexpectedly restored to him and bringing the promise of better times.
He did not remember her as a tranquil person. Spirited and joyous perhaps, and always eager for laughter but certainly not a woman who could communicate repose. Yet she was so now and sometimes he wondered what experience outside the Valley had changed her, calming her without making her moody and withdrawn. Her stillness was now an essential part of her, like her watchful blue eyes and a head of hair that was sometimes gold, sometimes almost auburn and sometimes the bronze shade of the sea an hour or so before sunset. He would watch her for long minutes as she stood by the tall window, supposing him to be taking his afternoon nap although in fact he seldom did ta
ke it, but maintained the pretence of doing so for a fortnight or more in order that he could study her through half-closed eyes when she thought herself unobserved. He would lie still and wonder about her, comparing her in a thousand ways to Grace and pondering questions that never suggested themselves during their brief conversation in the evenings. Privately he thought it odd that she should sit here at all through the short nights, for once he became accustomed to the awkwardness of his posture caused by the splint and the plaster that itched so mercilessly, he felt he no longer needed a night nurse and wondered why the woman doctor John Rudd had introduced into the house insisted someone should watch him until splint and plaster were removed. He did not quarrel with the decision, however, because Claire’s presence gave him something to think about and he much preferred her to a stranger.
After a time her tranquility communicated itself to him so that he found he was able to think of Grace, and Martin Codsall, and Smut, and poor old Tamer objectively, and was even able to regard the misgivings they aroused as a by-product of illness and high temperature, like the fantasies of his long spell in hospital. He got accustomed to her neat ways and patient method of hoisting him this way and that, and even to her shaving him each morning. Soon, in a sense, he began to enjoy his comparative helplessness for it was very pleasant to lie here with nothing to do but read and think abstract thoughts. The doctor told him that the plaster would have to remain at least a month and at first this had exasperated him for he had sharp memories of the boredom of sickbed life, but soon he was more than resigned to it and Claire Derwent’s presence reconciled him to inaction. It was Claire who encouraged him to pick up the threads of everyday life about the house and here she had the power to surprise him, first in the matter of her piano playing, then as the only person at Shallowford capable of overcoming young Simon’s distaste of the sickroom.
He knew nothing of music and had been curious to learn who was playing the old upright piano in the drawing-room one evening, just before she came on duty. The piano had stood there since Lovell’s day and nobody had played it since the Coronation soirée. When she admitted it was she and told him the instrument needed tuning, he was astonished. Nobody had ever told him that she could play.
‘Who taught you?’ he wanted to know and she said that her mother had given her elementary lessons but after her death she had taught herself to play by ear. Now she was able, in her own phrase, to tinkle up and down and pick out a tune providing the basic chords had stuck!
‘It sounded pleasant enough from up here,’ he said. ‘Go down and play again and leave both doors open.’
She seemed mildly embarrassed by the request but she went and the muted melodies of Strauss waltzes and popular student songs reached him from the stair-well. He said, when she returned, ‘That was delightful! I’ll persuade Doctor O’Keefe to prescribe it night and morning!’ and she said, laughing, ‘It wasn’t really playing at all! You must have a dreadful ear, as bad as Simon’s!’
‘Have you played for Simon?’
Yes, she said, now and again when he was particularly tiresome but he was only interested in discords and the squeak of the pedals.
‘How is the poor kid?’ he asked and for a moment her tranquility deserted her and she said, sharply, ‘He’s playing Thirza Tremlett up. You ought to have him in here and talk to him, so that he knows you mean it.’
‘Oh, come, he’s only two and a half,’ Paul protested, ‘and besides, he won’t come in here while I’m trussed up like this. We’ve tried it and he nearly screamed the place down!’
‘That depends on the approach,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t make a fuss if I was here!’
‘Very well,’ Paul said, ‘go and get him and I’ll wager he kicks up the devil of a row!’
She went out at once and returned a few minutes later leading the child by the hand. He looked uneasy but subdued, staring at Paul with Grace’s expression and a finger in his mouth. Paul thought, not for the first time, ‘He’s all hers, there’s hardly a trace of me about him. He’s got her looks and her obstinacy but Claire seems to know how to manage him.’ Claire said, addressing the boy, ‘Well, there he is, Simon, and he isn’t so frightening after all, is he? He got hurt saving people from drowning and it isn’t very kind to leave him on his own all day! He’d come and see you if you were hurt and had to stay in bed!’
The boy considered this, regarding the patient thoughtfully and presently he put out his hand and scratched the plaster where it showed under Paul’s open nightshirt. Then, to Paul’s surprise, he chuckled and said, ‘You could write on it! You could, couldn’t you, Auntie Claire?’
‘Yes, you could indeed,’ Claire said, picking up a pencil from the bedside table. ‘Draw something. It’ll give Daddy something to look at when he’s bored.’
The boy took the pencil, sucked it a moment and then, with neat, careful strokes, drew a crude sketch of a sailing boat. Paul laughed so heartily that his sore ribs gave a twinge and the laugh ended in a gasp, whereupon Claire lifted Simon down and said, ‘All right, run along now but don’t forget to come in and say hello in the morning and good night when you go to bed! Go on, off with you!’ and she patted his rump and shooed him out.
‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Paul said, ‘I’ve never seen him behave like that before! You must have a flair for children, Claire. I’ve hardly been able to approach the boy since Grace went.’
‘That’s not wholly your fault,’ she said, ‘it’s the fault of the women about the place. Thirza spoils him, so does Mrs Handcock and so do all the maids and Chivers, the groom. A child getting that much attention is naturally going to bellow every time something doesn’t please him. You’ll have to look into the Simon situation when you’re up and about again.’
He knew that what she said was true, that the staff did spoil the child outrageously, particularly since Grace had left and also that Thirza, his nanny, had come to regard Simon as a personal possession but it was obvious that the child had respect for ‘Auntie’ Claire.
‘You’ve changed a great deal since you went away,’ he said.
‘You’ve changed yourself,’ she told him cheerfully, ‘and not altogether for the better!’
‘Well, at least you don’t over indulge me in goo-goo invalid talk,’ he said, smiling. ‘What changes, particularly?’
She looked down at him coolly, perhaps considering whether or not he was prepared to digest home truths and apparently decided that he was, for she said, ‘What I liked about you when you first came here was your enthusiasm for people rather than ideas. You didn’t settle here simply because you liked unspoiled country but because you were lonely and found a couple of hundred ready-made friends. It was your warm approach to people like Rose, the Codsalls, the Pitts, and the Potters that gave you a flying start but if you don’t watch out you’ll lose all the headway you made! Then you’ll stay here not because you want to but from force of habit and from lack of an alternative and I think that would be a shame.’
‘You really think I made headway then?’
‘Good heavens, of course you did, tremendous headway!’ she snapped, ‘and that remark only illustrates what I’m trying to say! You see setbacks of the kind anyone attempting anything new is bound to encounter as … well … as personal failures but what’s so disappointing is that you are beginning to hug them to yourself like a hypochondriac! Why don’t you try balancing them against your successes? There isn’t a person about here who doesn’t wish you well and that’s very different from feeling sorry for you!’ She stopped and he noticed to his surprise that she was blushing. ‘I’m sorry,’ she added, ‘it’s really no concern of mine, is it? What would you like for supper tonight?’
‘A straight talk,’ he said, writhing himself into a more upright position, ‘finish what you were going to say! I’m still cock of the roost round here but nobody talks to me any more, not even old John.’
She sat dow
n beside him saying, ‘You’re a natural optimist, Paul, but lately you’ve been hard at work converting yourself into a pessimist, just like my father! There isn’t so much enthusiasm about that we can spare it, least of all in a place like this, while everyone in the big world outside is making money and mistaking it for progress! All right, you took a toss over Martin Codsall, and another over Smut Potter. Then your wife walked out on you and from what I hear you’ve been sulking ever since, or at least until the wreck. But things like that happen to everyone who lives anything but a fenced-in life. They shouldn’t stop a man with your kind of enterprise, at least, not at your age! Perhaps you don’t realise it but you’ve already made a name for yourself round here and not only because you fished seven people off that rock! Folk round here believe in you and believe in what you’re trying to do, although some of them don’t really understand it yet. My advice, for what it’s worth, is that you should go right on doing it, not gloomily and doggedly, the way you have since Grace left you the way you began, with a sense of fun and adventure, do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ he said slowly, ‘that’s easy to understand, Claire, but by God I badly needed someone to spell it out for me!’ He was going on to defend himself by citing the loneliness of authority but before he could phrase it the sentiment seemed pretentious in the face of her outspokenness so he held his tongue and said: ‘I’ll have supper now, Claire, and when Mrs Handcock brings it up stay down there and play some more. I haven’t much musical taste but your playing stimulates thought and maybe it’s time I did some real thinking!’
She left him and went down to the kitchen and a few moments later he heard the tinkle of the untuned piano. She had, he thought, a very light touch, as though youth came out of the tops of her fingers coaxing melody from a battered old instrument that he would have thrown out long since if it had come to his notice. He thought, ‘She’s a damned good sort to bother with me after all that’s happened and I hope she doesn’t take it into her head to fly off again as soon as I’m out of this blasted straitjacket!’ The flesh under the plaster itched and in twisting to seek relief he noticed Simon’s drawing. ‘She’s right about the kid too,’ he mused, ‘and I won’t wait until I’m up before doing something to sort that out. I’ll get Mary Willoughby over and talk her into occupying the boy’s mind with the alphabet or something and after that I’ll draw up some kind of programme for him, for as long as they treat him like a baby he’ll stay one!’
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 56
