He was still reassuring himself along these lines when Mrs Handcock waddled in with her rich bedside manner and said, referring to the music, ‘Tiz real pretty, baint it? ’Er’s a rare maid an’ no mistake!’ and Paul smiled, knowing precisely what was in her mind, and what she and Thirza, and possibly everyone else about the house were speculating. Tonight the thought amused him and he said, in excellent imitation of her brogue. ‘Oh, giddon with ’ee Mrs ’Andcock, I dorn reckon ’er be a maid no more! I yeard tell ’er got ’erself married to someone in London but ab’m got around to braaking the news to us yet!’ and the look of pained astonishment on the housekeeper’s face was ample reward for the twinges produced by his struggles to sit upright and balance the supper tray on his knees.
Chapter Fifteen
I
The estate record book, enclosed between the Bible covers of Sir George’s photograph album, had grown into an estate encyclopaedia. Personal data, births, deaths and marriages, were still entered in Paul’s tall, sloping handwriting on the left-hand pages but on the right was a summary compiled from hundreds of jottings of how each farm was stocked and what was grown on its acreage. It could tell you, for instance, how much fallow land Eveleigh had at any one time, how many acres supported his Friesians and how many were devoted to wheat, barley, oats or root crops. It could correct Henry Pitts when the latter stated that his twelve-acre field had been given over to kale the year before last when, in fact, it had produced mangolds, or rye for green fodder. Paul set everything down there in black and white, season by season, year by year and daily access to this book had formed certain patterns in his mind, so that he thought of Periwinkle as a chicken farm, of Four Winds as the mainstay of the estate’s dairy output, of Deepdene as the principal source of market-garden produce. Similarly, everyone on the estate had a mental tag. Sam Potter was the tree-feller, Edward Derwent was the best stockman in the Valley, and his daughter Rose, Shallowford’s most accomplished horsewoman and breaker of horses. Yet, for all his passion for detail, Paul was an easy-going landlord. He had let old Honeyman have his way about sheep and suffered the Potters to farm any way they liked, for away at the back of his mind, too remote to find expression even in casual shop-talk with John Rudd, was the outline of a collective scheme in which every tenant farmer, and many of their employees, became specialists operating within self-chosen and clearly defined limits, a communal plan that would one day—perhaps a generation hence—establish the Valley as the most productive in the West. This was his dream but he was not yet fully aware of it; it was also the spring-board of his patriotism, for England beyond the Sorrel and railway line had little meaning for him, save as a kind of impersonal audience.
In four years he had still to show a credit balance and had not ceased to feed money into the estate but the amounts ploughed back grew smaller each year and by Lady Day, 1906, he was close to breaking even. He thus had cause to thank Franz Zorndorff for his insistence that he paid into Paul’s account his share in scrapyard profits, for in the first two years, when so many implements had had to be replaced and several tied cottages rebuilt in addition to routine renovations on some of the farmhouses, he had drawn heavily upon his capital whereas the original income of the estate had shrunk, partly owing to his arrangement with Eveleigh at Four Winds but also by default on the part of the Potters. Now, however, John told him that they could anticipate a steady climb towards solvency, for Will Codsall was reclaiming land north-west of his borders, Derwent paid slightly more rent for additional acreage on the cliff, Eveleigh was making a spectacular success of Four Winds, and two houses and several rebuilt cottages in Coombe Bay had been let on long leases at increased rentals.
The stock on every farm in the Valley had improved, even the Potters coming up with several fine litters of saddlebacks that thrived under the oaks on the edge of the woods. Eveleigh boasted one of the best herds in the district and Will and Elinor Codsall had recently produced a sturdy cross between Light Sussex and White Leghorn and were said to be despatching forty dozen eggs a day. Honeyman’s last lambing season had been a success owing a good deal to the exceptionally mild winter, and over at Hermitage, where the Pitts clung to the mixed economy of their ancestors, the rent was never a day overdue. Old Willoughby kept few animals at Deepdene but because of improved transport his fruit and vegetables were finding a ready market in Paxtonbury and he was also sending cut blooms to Covent Garden during part of the year. All in all, Paul decided (once he was chipped out of his plaster and could move about more comfortably), prospects seemed very fair, especially if the fine weather lasted into July and there was occasional rain at night, as there had been throughout the summer.
During the long days of June he would stand in his office, propped against the drawing-board (a position he found more comfortable than sitting) and thumb through his own and John Rudd’s notes, occasionally turning aside to write a letter, or make a ledger entry but often filling the big white pages of his Bible, for this was something that gave him a sense of achievement, his personal index to the circulation of the estate in terms of stock, crops, income and human beings. He noted, for instance, that his ‘population’ had risen sharply during the last few years. When he took over there had been six farms supporting a hundred and two men, women and children, a tally that included some forty craftsmen and casual labourers, some of them part-time workers and almost a score of them women, wives or daughters of Coombe Valley men who were not employed on the estate. Mary Willoughby at that time had seventeen children on her roll call. Now there were seven farms, supporting one hundred and nine people and Mary had twenty-five children in her farmhouse schoolroom, for the fecundity of the Valley seemed to extend to the women living in it. Elinor Codsall had produced a girl and a boy and was now expecting a third child. Joannie Potter had two girls and a boy. Pansy Tozer had a girl and a boy and Henry Pitts’ rawboned redhead had recently presented him with a great lumping boy, weighing ten-and-a-half pounds at birth. Over at Four Winds Marian Eveleigh dutifully produced an annual addition to the long family and there was also his own child, Simon, born in January, 1904. It was almost certain that Cissie and Violet Potter, still officially unclaimed, had done their share out of wedlock but their efforts were not entered in the record.
There were, of course, more sombre entries in the book, one relating to the Four Winds tragedy, another to the death of old Tamer Potter, but deaths were lagging far behind births, for people seemed to live to incredible ages on this side of the Sorrel. There was one entry, dated March 20th, 1905, marking the hundredth birthday of old Floss Timberlake, the estate sawyer’s grandmother, who had been born the year of Trafalgar. Paul sometimes called in on the old lady, who lived in a cottage close to the Home Farm, and found her enjoying a clay-pipe and berating her long-suffering daughter, aged eighty, whom she continued to treat as a child in a pinafore. In Coombe Bay there were three nonagenarians and Arthur Pitts’ father, who still lived at Hermitage but never left his room now, claimed to be as old as young Floss Timberlake. Arthur said this was nonsense for it made him out to be eighty, whereas records at the parish church showed that he was only sixty-nine.
Paul did not spend all his time in the office during the latter part of his convalescence for Maureen O’Keefe was no coddler of invalids and told him that by far the best way to heal his cracked ribs was to keep them at work, no matter how painful it proved and that, providing he was careful, he could ride Snowdrop at a walk. His arm was fully healed, and apart from stiffness gave him no trouble at all, but despite his eagerness to get about and take advantage of the long spell of fine weather he found that he tired very quickly after more than five weeks in bed and at first was subject to occasional spells of dizziness, so that on the doctor’s instructions Claire Derwent acted as escort when he went afield on horseback or on foot. Her orders in this respect were so peremptory that John Rudd, that most cautious of suitors, went so far as to warn her one day when they watched Paul and Claire walk the
ir horses down the drive and cross the ford to the river road, with the intention of going as far as the landslip at Nun’s Head and taking a swim.
‘Look here, old girl,’ he said (having progressed this far in the last few weeks), ‘I’m not at all sure you ought to encourage that in the circumstances!’
‘What? Forbid them a health-giving bathe on a day like this?’ she said, innocently, but he replied, ‘You know damned well I’m not referring to the curative properties of salt water! You are determined to throw those two together willy-nilly and one ought to remember that he’s still a married man and she has a reputation to protect!’
‘Oh, stuff and nonsense,’ she burst out, ‘you talk just like one of those circulating library queens! Who gives a damn about reputations around here? She’s good for him, any fool can see that, and as for his wife, is she likely to object?’
‘She might. She might even have them spied on for grounds for divorce!’ he argued but this was too much for Maureen, who exploded with laughter and was tempted to break faith with Ikey by explaining Grace’s part in luring Claire back to the Valley. She checked herself in time, however, and said, ‘Well, you should be the last to come forward with that kind of pious notion, John Rudd! Everyone in the Valley is gossiping about you and me and heaven knows we give them all the ammunition they need!’
‘Ah, that’s different,’ he said, secretly delighted by her admission, ‘for I’m a widower and you’re old enough to look to yourself in that respect! All the same,’ he added, as an afterthought, ‘we could easily put a stop to their gossip, Maureen!’
He had not meant to make such an informal proposal, not here, on a bright June morning, as they walked down the drive to where her cob was tethered. It had slipped past his tongue before he could stop it but now it was done he was relieved when she neither laughed at him nor so much as checked her stride but only said, calmly, ‘So you’d be after making an honest woman of me, John? You’d like us to be married, providing, of course, I decided to stay down here and give up all idea of joining a city practice?’
‘I should like that very much, my dear,’ he said, ‘but you don’t have to commit yourself to a country practice. My contract with Paul Craddock has run out and we haven’t got round to renewing it yet. I’ve got a little money, never having spent much down here and I daresay I could find part-time work wherever you went. I could do your accounts, too, and make sure you didn’t work sixteen hours a day for nothing.’
She stopped as they reached the gate of his lodge. ‘You would be prepared to leave here? To let Young Lochinvar manage by himself?’
‘Why not? He’s quite capable of doing so! For a town-bred man he’s learned more of estate management in four years than the Lovells acquired in two generations. The point is he’s genuinely interested and doesn’t really need me now, or won’t by this time next year.’
‘But, John,’ she said, and he had never heard her speak so softly, ‘I’m well on the way to being an old maid and I’m also a freak, with far more dangerous ideas about women’s rights than the laddie’s wife! I’m not much to look at either and you know well enough my job would always come first.’
‘You’re the most intelligent woman I’ve ever had the luck to meet,’ he said, ‘and as for being an old maid, you’ve no qualifications for the role! You’re thirty-four—you told me that the first day we met—whereas I’m fifty-two but we’re both fit and in our right minds. Incidentally, you’re as handsome a woman as Claire Derwent in your way, so don’t get to thinking otherwise!’
It was the first time he had ever seen her blush and it gave him confidence. He went on, lifting her hand from the iron knob of the gate, ‘Did I know anything of your character or qualifications that first day you took tea with me here, when I was desperate with worry about all that had happened down in the cove? I didn’t care a straw what you were—an actuary, a governess or an Irish seamstress! You put me on an even keel in ten minutes and I said to myself, “Now there’s what they mean when they talk about Irish charm!” I could have proposed on the spot and that’s the truth of the matter!’
The blush faded as she said, in a businesslike tone, ‘Come inside a minute, John!’ and pulled him into the porch and then, without closing the door, into his untidy parlour, with its bachelor jumble littering table, armchair and sofa. The impetus of his declaration had spent itself and he seemed bewildered. She said, bluntly, ‘Now what is it you’re looking for, John? You’ve been twenty years a widower so how do you expect a dedicated woman like me to give you back two decades? Tell me true, John Rudd, wouldn’t you be scared out of your wits if I took you up on this, put the city out of mind and agreed to marry you next week or the week after?’
‘No,’ he said, deliberately, ‘that I wouldn’t! A man doesn’t have emotional impulses at my age and neither does a woman of your experience respond to them! I was deeply in love with my wife, but I don’t expect to recapture that kind of feeling at my age. This is something quite different and I’m not going to dress it up in fancy language. I was lonely and crotchety during my time here with the Lovells, and I owe my fresh start to Paul Craddock. But when he married I was lonely again, and after his wife left him I was lonely and miserable into the bargain. Your coming here was a kind of miracle, a third start in middle age, which is something no man has a right to expect. I’d make you a good husband and I think we should suit one another. I’m interested in your work and I envy your self-confidence and high spirits, two things I’ve always lacked. However, if you think the idea is ridiculous, say so. You won’t give offence to me and we can remain good friends and leave it at that!’
Her laugh seemed to fill the stuffy little room and momentarily he was disconcerted but then he saw that there was no derision in her merriment and that she looked younger and prettier than he would have thought possible.
‘John,’ she said, taking his hands, ‘I like it so much better when you speak off the cuff and forget to rationalise! Sure I’ll marry you, the moment you give the word but I’m not so long in the tooth as to seek nothing better in marriage than twilight companionship! You make it sound so damned dull, so you do, and this is to prove there’s a chance it might have its livelier moments!’ and she gave him a resounding kiss on each cheek, after which she skipped over to the corner cupboard where he kept his drinks and poured a couple of stiff whiskies, bringing them back to him and raising her glass with the toast, ‘Here’s to us, John, and bless you for everything but your modesty!’
II
The bay was as smooth and as flat as a silver platter and looked just like one from the top of the drowsy village street but when they had gone down the slipway and walked the horses along the tideline, the water lost its silvery gloss and turned forget-me-not-blue inshore, with great belts of emerald-green under the sandbanks of the bar. Everything on the beach was lazy in the hot, morning sun. Gulls idled about the pools pecking listlessly at their catches and two of Tom Williams’ boats, a mile out to sea, were stationary specks and seemingly unmanned, which told Paul that Tom and his crews had dropped anchor, set their lines and gone to sleep until the sun should pass beyond the headland that marked the outfall of the Teazel.
There was not a soul about on the beach and when the horses reached the shade of the giant boulders, scattered like giant’s marbles for more than a quarter-mile below the largest landslip, they were reluctant to leave it, so Paul found a tiny bay backed by steep rocks where there was a rock pool half-way up the beach. It was a pleasant place to linger so they unsaddled and let the horses potter about in the shallows, while Paul peeled off jacket and shirt and stretched beside the pool, luxuriating in the sun and saying this was something he had longed to do throughout his weeks of confinement.
She stood on the far side of the pool smiling at him and presently she called, ‘Are you a swimmer, Paul?’ and he told her he was not but could thresh about in a calm sea and enjoy it, providing the water was lukew
arm. ‘This pool has a Table Bay temperature,’ he told her, ‘so I’m having my dip right here. Do you swim?’
‘Yes,’ she said, pensively, ‘Rose and I used to come here often when we were children. My mother could swim like a fish, and taught us when we were still toddlers. I often wonder where she learned to swim as well as she did, for she wasn’t a local girl. Father was always vain about her horsemanship but he thought sea-bathing unladylike and often told her so but she never let his old-fashioned notions worry her. She was an extraordinary woman in her way, Paul. All the older people in the Valley still remember her, some of them more vividly than Rose and I.’
He recalled then the little Rudd had told him about the dashing first Mrs Derwent and for the first time realised that Claire and her sister Rose must have been old enough to recall the day their mother had fallen to her death at a jump over the Heronslea border. He would have asked her more about it but it was neither a time nor place to probe disagreeable memories so he said, ‘Well, here goes! I’ll paddle about as Doctor Maureen advised and then sunbathe,’ and she took the hint and wandered further down the beach towards the horses while he slipped out of the rest of his clothes and lowered himself gently into the pool.
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 57
