It was deliciously warm and the water soothed the sore belt of flesh where the plaster had been. Presently he struck out and crossed the pool, using a clumsy sidestroke and telling himself that he had been a fool to let four summers pass without once coming down here to swim. He had been splashing about for half-an-hour before she returned carrying a parcel wrapped in oilskin.
‘What’s that?’ he called, ‘you didn’t say we’d picnic. I was going to suggest lunch at The Raven on the way back.’
‘It isn’t food, greedy,’ she told him, ‘it’s only my bathing costume. It’s a hideous thing and one might as well try and swim in a crinoline! You men don’t know how lucky you are being able to bathe in a single costume. Just look at it!’ and she held it up, a voluminous garment in heavy serge, with sleeves and wide ornamental frills ending in bloomers tied with ribbon just above the knee.
‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, laughing. ‘I’ve seen pictures of them in the newspapers but I didn’t think people actually swam in them! Won’t it drag you down?’
‘I’ll chance it. Will you be a perfect gentleman and watch the horses for a few minutes?’
‘Not me,’ he said, ‘I’ll wait and watch you go in and I wish I had old Sir George’s camera! You’ll look ravishing in that outfit!’
She made a face at him and went off behind the shoulder of the rock, emerging after an interval in the costume, with her hair crammed under a mob cap of the kind that Lovell’s housemaids had worn but Paul had long since banished. It was odd, he thought, that she could enhance a costume as sexless as that, investing it with an element of comedy. The only parts of her exposed were face, shins, feet and hands, five pink and white patches relieving yards of navy-blue worsted. He said, regretfully, ‘They don’t leave much to chance, do they? Do all the girls dress like that when they bathe from the machines at Folkestone and Margate?’
‘More or less,’ she said, ‘but the men don’t see them because usually they’re shooed to the far end of the beach. Only the really go-ahead resorts allow mixed bathing and as for what I’m doing right now, I’d be drummed out of society altogether in any self-respecting Spa if it got about that I’d actually shared a rock pool with a man and him married into the bargain! Well, as you said, here goes!’ and she poised herself on a rock three feet above the water and plunged, very expertly he thought considering her handicap but the dive did not astonish him so much as the pace at which she raced the length of the pool, turned, disappeared under water and swam back to him with a powerful over-arm stroke.
‘By George, you make my efforts look silly!’ he said admiringly as she went up and down again with a back stroke, climbed out and plopped herself breathlessly beside him.
‘I was always a lot better than Rose,’ she said. ‘Mother made up her mind to produce the best horsewoman and the best swimmer in the county. She was only interested in bests and as far as Rose is concerned she succeeded but I don’t think I could have learned to swim in this outfit. She used to let us swim in the nude. Nobody ever comes here except an occasional beachcomber from Coombe Bay but of course we had to keep it from father.’
‘She sounds a great deal of fun,’ Paul said and then, throwing his towel over his shoulders, ‘Look here, if I promise not to play Peeping Tom would you like to take it off and have a real swim? I can see you’re longing to!’
‘All right,’ she said, doubtfully, ‘if I can trust you not to cheat. Go along the beach to where the landslip begins and stand guard. No one can come from the west because low tide doesn’t clear the point and Tom Williams is way out of range.’
‘Perhaps he has a telescope,’ Paul said and she replied, ‘If he has good luck to him!’
He picked his way over the boulders to an empty stretch of sand and was still standing there, presenting a chivalrous back, when she called and he rejoined her to find her dressed with her great mass of golden hair tousled and loose about her shoulders. She said, ‘It was wonderful! I felt a little girl again and I could almost hear mother laughing at us! Lend me your towel and I’ll try and do something with my hair. It’ll have to dry before I can show my face in Coombe Bay or the truth will have run as far as the railway line by sunset!’
He said, handing her the towel, ‘Do we have to bother that much about gossip, Claire?’ and she replied, without looking at him, ‘Yes, Paul, I’m afraid we do! If we stopped caring there’s an end to the fun we’re having and the prospect of more in the future.’
‘You mean your father?’ he said, remembering Edward Derwent’s coolness towards him that had been maintained until the night of the wreck but she said, calmly, ‘No, Paul, nothing whatever to do with Father! And nothing to do with anyone else in the Valley, except you and me, but me especially! I wouldn’t care to go through that experience again and if I thought I was likely to I should go back to London tomorrow.’
It was the first real indication he had had that she had suffered on his account, having always regarded her flight from the Valley as an exhibition of pique.
‘I didn’t mean to act shabbily, Claire,’ he said. ‘It honestly didn’t occur to me that you were hurt.’
‘If I was I had no one but myself to blame,’ she said, ‘and it didn’t take me long to realise that! In any case, I imagine you’ve since been hurt a great deal more, so let’s forget about it and get lunch at The Raven.’
She got up and went down the beach to collect the horses, leading them back to him where he stood beside the pool. The sun still shone but for him at least the sparkle had gone from the day. As she was saddling up, he said, ‘You only met Grace that once—the time you came over to tea. Didn’t Rose write to you and fill in the blanks?’
‘No,’ said Claire, sharply, ‘Rose did not! She isn’t given to tittle-tattle! All I heard was that …’ She stopped and addressed herself to tightening the girths so that he said, impatiently, ‘Well? What did you hear?’
‘That you weren’t getting along,’ she said, briefly, ‘but do let’s stop discussing it, Paul.’
‘No,’ he said, suddenly exasperated with the conspiracy of silence regarding Grace and irritated that it should run all his personal relationships into cul-de-sacs where the mere mention of her was regarded as unmannerly. ‘I’m over it now and I haven’t forgotten what you said about making a fresh start. How can I do that if everyone shies away from the subject the way John Rudd and Mrs Handcock always do, the way you are doing right now? Grace isn’t ever coming back so we can all stop pretending it didn’t happen!’
‘I’m not so sure we can,’ she said, regarding him steadily across her saddle. ‘Everyone here says you’re still very much in love with her and that you’ll never give her up!’
He was not so much astonished by this, reasoning that he must have given this impression by his churlishness over the last two years but it struck him now that it was no longer true, that in the last few weeks most of the resentment and humiliation had been purged from him, although just how this had happened he did not understand. It was something to do with a shift in the centre of gravity, removing Grace as the dominant factor in his life and filling the vacuum with the Valley, and the people of the Valley and he supposed that this shift had been brought about by the wreck but it was clear that Claire’s return had a share in it. ‘I was very much in love with her,’ he admitted, ‘but it seems to me that love can only stand up to a certain amount of battering, Claire. Grace walked out on her duties as wife and mother and I’m reconciled to the fact that I never will understand why. It’s one thing to lose out to another man but quite another to be made a fool of by a political fad! I suppose the heart of the trouble is that Grace didn’t simply turn her back on me and Simon but on our whole way of life down here. That being so there comes a time when a man has to accept what can’t be altered!’
She had finished adjusting the girths now and was holding both horses by the bridles. She looked, he thought, very young with he
r damp hair tumbling about her shoulders but for the first time since her return she also looked resentful.
‘I don’t see why you have to involve me in it,’ she argued. ‘I won’t have people thinking I’m waiting in the wings, waiting … well, for things to happen! I’ve already made a fool of myself twice over you, Paul Craddock, and there isn’t going to be a third time, I promise you!’ and with that she dropped Snowdrop’s bridle, swung herself up and set off at a smart trot down the beach. He did not follow her at once but remained standing by the pool, smiling to himself. Perversely her flash of temper had overthrown the barrier their mutual wariness had raised and unaccountably he felt more lighthearted than at any time since that ridiculous quarrel with Grace over young Rudd and his motor. And this was not because he was flattered by her demonstration but because he was able, for the first time in years, to get his dilemma into perspective and view it objectively without self-pity or indignation. It was this glimpse of himself that opened up an entirely new vista on his marriage. He could see it now for what it was, no more than a compromise from the very beginning, an arrangement entered into with reservations on the part of a woman with her back to the wall. Surely there could be no such thing as a marriage conditioned by such strictures and anyone but an infatuated fool would have realised as much from the beginning. He had been too obsessed with her to weigh the cost against the probability of failure. He had temporised and gone on temporising, buying time with intermittent flashes of hope, like her interest in the garden and her ability to hypnotise credulous peasants, like Horace Handcock. There had never been a real marriage between them, no real fusion of interests and responsibilities, only the mutual appeasement of physical appetites, together with resignation on her part and hope deferred on his. Standing there on the rock, with the sun warming his body, and Claire a solitary figure on the tideline, he saw this so clearly and unmistakably that he felt like proclaiming it at the top of his voice, for self-knowledge brought with it a sense of release that was immensely reassuring and uplifting. ‘Damn it,’ he said aloud, as he retrieved his clothes, flung them on, and swung himself on to Snowdrop, ‘a man ought to be guided by his head when he goes looking for a wife! If I’d had a ha’porth of sense I’d have finished what she started in Shallowford Woods years ago!’ and forgetting Maureen O’Keefe’s caution he clapped his heels into Snowdrop’s flanks and pushed him into a canter, so that Claire, looking over her shoulder, stopped and swung her cob round as her came up with her.
‘Get down,’ he said, curtly, ‘for I can’t say what I’ve got to say to you jog-jogging along the beach!’ and when she only stared at him, he jumped down, threw both sets of reins over his arm and half yanked her from the saddle, although the effort gave his ribs a twinge that made him grunt with pain.
‘Listen to me …’ she began and he guessed that she was on the point of reassuming her role of nurse.
‘No, I won’t,’ he said, ‘I’ve been “listening” long enough and always to women of one sort or another! I don’t give a damn what your father or the Valley think about it and I’m not interested in what happened four years ago, or two years ago, or two minutes ago! If I get a divorce will you marry me? And if you do will you guarantee to stay put and not run off and open a tea-shop at our first difference of opinion?’
‘You’re insufferable!’ she said, trying to dodge between the horses but he caught her round the waist, dropped the reins and kissed her on the lips. It was a claim advanced with such determination that it threw her weight against the bay, who shied seawards and made off at a smart trot with reins trailing over the sand.
‘Well?’ he said, without relaxing his hold, ‘what else do I have to do to convince you?’
‘You might ride after Rusty and take me somewhere a little more private,’ she suggested, ‘for if anyone sees us from the cliff path I shall be packed off to Tunbridge Wells again within an hour of getting home!’
‘I’ll catch him but wait here!’ he said, and dashed off after the bay. She stood watching him circle and head the horse off, hands pressed to her tousled hair, a slow, half-rueful smile puckering the corners of her mouth. How was she to know that her thoughts were identical to his when she said to herself, ‘Well, if we had pushed that first encounter in the woods to its logical conclusion we should have saved everybody a great deal of time, trouble and expense!’
III
Paul saw Zorndorff’s motor standing in the yard when he rode in shortly before sunset, a shining, snub-nosed monster considerably more impressive than the first motor to descend the Valley under the inexpert guidance of young Rudd two years before. He was surprised, for he had not expected Franz to respond in person to his letter and had in fact resigned himself to making another journey to London.
He found the Croat already established in the library, with Mrs Handcock fussing round him, impressed by his air of polite patronage and treating him as though he was a distinguished relative of the family, paying a duty call on Squire and his chawbacons. He was as neat and dapper as ever, in what he imagined to be ‘country clothes’, a pair of salt-and-pepper knickerbockers, a pleated Norfolk jacket, heavy brogues and brown worsted stockings; there was also a carnation in his buttonhole. He embraced Paul warmly, at once issuing orders for supper, as though this was one of his shooting lodges and Paul was a welcome but unexpected guest. Paul said, ‘I didn’t expect you to come down here, Uncle Franz. I intended coming up to see you as soon as you had news from the solicitors,’ but Franz replied, patting his shoulder, ‘Nonsense, my boy! I know you loathe London and I’ve been promising myself to pay you a visit for I don’t know how long.’
‘For four years,’ Paul told him, smiling, ‘and it took a situation like this to get you here! How long do you intend staying?’
‘Oh, I’m afraid I shall have to be off bright and early in the morning,’ the old man said and the regret in his voice was so counterfeit that Paul laughed but made no protest, realising that the country had the same effect upon Franz as urban sprawl had upon himself. It occurred to him also that this distaste of open spaces might have helped to establish the contact between Franz and Grace and that had led to the casual postscript of Uncle Franz’s last letter, for he had written, ‘Grace called at the yard and I took the unfortunate little pigeon out to dinner.’ The use of the word ‘unfortunate’ had irritated Paul at the time, implying as it did that Grace was the injured party but after reflection he had made allowances for Franz’s kind heart and had obeyed an impulse to write him a frank letter expressing his wish to marry again and asking Franz to sound their London firm of solicitors on the prospect of a divorce. And now here he was in person, barely forty-eight hours after receiving the letter, yet for all his despatch he did not seem over-anxious to discuss the situation. It was not until after supper, when the glow of sunset filled the room and Franz had examined Paul’s current bank statements, that he pushed the papers aside, removed his half-moon spectacles, and said, ‘Well, my boy, you’ve shown me your figures so I’ll show you mine!’ and had unlatched his briefcase giving Paul the impression that he was due for yet another lecture on the amount of money he had poured into the estate over the last few years. Instead Uncle Franz opened a buff folder and took from it the receipted bill of a hotel called The Golden Angel, at Windsor, handing it to Paul without comment. The bill related to a two-day stay at the hotel by a ‘Mr and Mrs James Monteith’, and for a moment it meant nothing at all to him. Then he turned it over and found a piece of notepaper attached to it with a paperclip. On the note, in Grace’s handwriting, was written, ‘Will this do? If not let me know at once—Grace!
He stared at the note curiously, conscious of the old man’s eyes on him and said, without any attempt to hide his distaste, ‘Is this how one goes about it? Is this the legal way?’ and Franz chuckled, replying, ‘Not strictly legal, Paul, but it serves. More than half the divorces granted nowadays are arrived at by similar means and you might consider yourself fo
rtunate that Grace is willing to accommodate you without being paid for it! Most wives would value that evidence at say a thousand guineas or a settlement but then, she’s an eccentric girl, wouldn’t you agree?’
The receipt, the note and its obvious implications moderated Paul’s pleasure at seeing the old man again after so long an interval. He said, briefly, ‘I don’t know much about this kind of thing but I was under the impression a divorce could be obtained on grounds of desertion.’
‘So it could,’ Franz said, ‘providing you and the lady you hope to marry are prepared to wait about five years, plus the time the suit would take to get heard. This is by far the quickest and cheapest way of going about it.’
‘And the most unsavoury,’ Paul said.
‘That’s for her to judge, isn’t it?’
He said this with such a ferocious lift of his eyebrows, that Paul’s sense of injustice was roused.
‘Damn it, Franz, am I to understand from that that you sympathise with her?’
‘To some extent,’ the old man replied frankly, ‘but also with you, my boy, for now that I know her better it seems to me to have been an extraordinarily ill-considered affair on both sides! To my mind you are entirely incompatible and you aren’t such a fool as not to have recognised that by now!’
A few months ago Paul might have argued the case with some heat but now he had enough philosophy to appreciate the old man’s difficulties as go-between and also his obvious willingness to help in any way he could.
‘There’s no point in raking over the past, Uncle Franz,’ he said, ‘and I daresay it’s sporting of you to involve yourself. If we did proceed along these lines would Grace and I have to meet again?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘not necessarily. The fact that she sent me that bill means she wouldn’t defend the case. You would have to attend, of course, but it isn’t the ordeal most people imagine, it’s becoming rather fashionable I’m told.’
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 58
