Meg Potter was on familiar terms with several of the showmen and it was over a bread-and-cheese supper in the acrobats’ tent one night that the girls were introduced to Jem as a man rather than a performer. They found him so shy that they made little progress with him on that occasion, beyond extracting from him an admission that he was not forsworn to circus life and was, in fact, ‘looking about for a likely place to zettle’ and perhaps set up as a smith or forester. On hearing this the girls sounded their mother on the possibility of engaging him as a permanent replacement for the hired hand, loaned to Low Coombe by Four Winds after Tamer’s death. The prospect of having so magnificent a specimen of manhood within call day and night, was inviting from a variety of aspects, for the Potter girls hated their farm chores and Meg, looking on Goliath with an unprejudiced eye, agreed that he would more than earn his keep at Low Coombe and promptly offered him fifteen shillings a week, plus board and lodging. He promised to think it over and the girls saw that he did, following him about the fair every night and stupefying him with affection. On the last night of the fair he made up his mind and it was years before they learned what had tipped the balance. In a rare moment of expansion he told them, saying, in his broad North Devon burr, ‘I zeed the pair of ’ee cum sliding down thicky giant slide showin’ all ’ee had which was considerable!’
The Potter girls, although promiscuous, were not harlots within the meaning of the word. It was simply that they delighted in the company and admiration of men and always had, ever since they were fourteen-year-olds but they did not consort with them from motives of personal gain alone and regarded anything material that emerged from encounters as a bonus to the simple pleasures derived from jolly companionship. They wandered among the world of men like children gathering wild flowers, each subject to furious, short-lived enthusiasms over one bloom or another and although, in the view of the Puritan, they possessed no moral sense whatever, they exercised discrimination and had learned something from their sister Pansy’s dolorous experience of life pledged to one particular man. For poor Pansy, who had been so elated when she had secured Walt Pascoe as a husband, was now anchored to a cottage teeming with squalling children and seemed not to have any fun at all whereas Cissie and Violet were still gloriously free and valued their freedom far too much to form a permanent attachment. The establishment of Jem Pollock in the Dell would not, as Violet had pointed out, commit either of them in any way. As a hired hand, they reasoned, they could take him or leave him at will at the same time relieving Meg and themselves of the irksome responsibilities of work on the land. They found nothing distasteful in the prospect of sharing him, turn and turn about. They had shared all their lovers and sometimes extracted a good deal of amusement comparing notes. They had made their mistakes and there were two toddlers in the Dell to prove as much, but a child or two under their feet did not bother a Potter, for the Dell seemed always to have been teeming with children. So the fair moved on, leaving the Goliath of Bideford behind as man-of-all-work at Low Coombe, and soon the whisper ran along the Valley that the Potter girls had at last found a male capable of accommodating them and had established a cosy ménage à trois in the Dell. That, however, was before the story broke new ground and an unexpected sequel forced the true state of affairs into the open. This might never have happened if the girls had been able to adjust themselves to their new way of life, and their antics had not awakened a fierce possessiveness in the heart of their willing captive.
It happened about a month after Jem had moved in. He soon proved himself a sound investment from Meg’s view point for his willingness and strength, expertly applied to the rundown acres, transformed the farm almost overnight. He was more tireless than any cart-horse and under Meg’s direction cleared all the brushwood and weeds from the southern-facing slopes, later ploughing three of the largest fields for winter wheat and planting kale in the more enclosed part of the Bluff. When this was done he cut timber and built several new sties, sinking a small well on the edge of the wood and also repairing the ten-year-old leaks in the farmhouse thatch. His stamina was amazing, for although he worked hard all day he seemed to need very little sleep, so long as his huge frame was nourished by cauldrons of Meg’s savoury stew, enormous helpings of fresh vegetables and an average of three loaves of home-baked bread between sunrise and dusk. He ate about ten times as much as a normal labourer but even so he more than earned his board, and everyone in the Dell was delighted with him, blessing the day he had been detached from the Philistines. Then, one mild summer evening, he suddenly presented his bill and it was seen to be a formidable one for it included, in addition to about a basketful of food each day and fifteen shillings a week for beer and baccy, the personal freedom of the girls, who were dismayed to find themselves more married than their sister Pansy in Coombe Bay.
He was returning to the Dell at dusk when he heard a ripple of laughter in the long grass on the eastern edge of the wood, close to the spot where he had dug his well. He recognised the sound as Violet’s laugh and stolidly changed direction to plod to the top of the slope, where he almost fell over the girls and the two Timberlake boys. Jem was neither a talkative nor an explosive man, his tongue being the one organ of his body that wanted for exercise. After blinking down at the recumbent couples, who were unabashed by his presence, he gave a short grunt that some might have mistaken for the sigh of a man who finds a small task overlooked as he is about to climb into bed. He bent down, gathered a Timberlake under each arm and ambled on as far as the well where he paused for a moment, as though uncertain how to dispose of his double burden. The Timberlake boys, Dandy and Jerry, were not weaklings. Each of them measured around six foot and weighed around thirteen stone but when Jerry heaved himself round and struck the Bideford Goliath a heavy blow on the back of his head, he minded it no more than the impact of a descending beech nut. All it did, it seemed, was to remind him that he had yet to dispose of his rivals and lumbering a few strides further up the hill he dropped both young men into the new well.
Cissie and Violet, screaming their protests and scrambling in pursuit, now made a concerted rush at him, their shrieks carrying far across the meadows and startling gulls on the rock ledges over the cove but the outcry was largely a reflex for the well was only nine feet deep and after floundering for a moment in thick, red mud the boys scrambled out and ran for the woods, without so much as a glance over their shoulder. The ease with which they had been transported from near heaven to the pit convinced them that counter-attack would invite further humiliation and possibly grave personal injury, so they did not pause in their stride until they had circled the Bluff, crossed Shallowford meadow and reached the sanctuary of their father’s saw-pit.
Bereft of their champions the two girls looked at Jem a little apprehensively, never having seen him in such a ponderously active mood but for a moment they were cruelly deceived by his apparent amiability as he poked about in the hedge and seemed disposed to begin some new task. When he took out his clasp knife, however, they looked anxiously at one another and Cissie said, sharply, ‘Put up that knife, you gurt fool! They’re half-way home be now and us don’t want real trouble!’
He made no reply but as he came back to them they saw what he had been doing. He had cut himself three or four pliant ash shoots and was binding them together with a piece of bast. Violet said, ‘What be at now for God’s sake?’ and he replied, mildly, ‘I’ll show ’ee in a minute or so, midear,’ and swished his birch through the air in such a manner as to dispose of their doubts in the instant. Hitching their long skirts they turned and fled towards home almost as precipitately as the Timberlake boys but it was not until they reached the head of the winding path leading down to the Dell that they realised they were barefoot, having shed their brogues in the long grass before Jem arrived to spoil a pleasant evening with a display of uncharacteristic vindictiveness. Jem was close behind them and apparently in no hurry so that they could easily have out-distanced him had it not been for the t
angle of briars and roots that grew over the path here. Cissie said, ‘We got to get our shoes, Jem …’ but the remark ended in an agonised yelp as the birch landed its first blow and after that there was no more talk of shoes or anything else but a clamour that startled everything in the thicket as the girls made a rush down the steep path. Jem managed to keep just within range and every now and again landed a casual swipe on the nearest posterior, so that the sisters jostled with one another for the honour of leading the procession. Violet, who had been in the rear, overtook her sister about a third of the way down but here, where the trees grew thickly, it was difficult to see in the gathering dusk and she stumbled, Cissie falling over her, so that Jem, still administering leisurely swipes, stood over them as they rolled together in the nettles. Smut, who happened to be visiting the Dell, heard the uproar from the campfire and ran to see the cause. He was just in time to witness the climax and the spectacle, once he had recovered from his surprise, made him double up with laughter for the two girls came down the incline at a stumbling run and behind them came a fast-striding Jem, herding them along like a drover escorting a couple of frisky heifers to market. Thirty yards from the glade Violet made a grave tactical error. Thinking to increase her speed she whisked up her skirts waist high and Cissie at once followed suit but it was a sad mistake on their part, for as long as he could keep them moving Jem was not specially vindictive and seemed in no particular hurry. With two such tempting targets, however, he settled to his task and scored a bull’s-eye on one or the other about every three yards. With renewed shrieks the girls dropped their skirts and settled for a good steady pace so they soon arrived, leaping this way and that like a pair of Chinese crackers, while Jem, his humour restored, came up with a broad, gap-toothed grin, as though proud of the brisk manner in which he had headed his cows for home.
The girls disappeared into the house and Meg, glancing after them, absorbed the situation at once. She did not join in Smut’s uproarious laughter but her stern features relaxed sufficiently to register approval of the way in which affairs at the Dell had been set in order. She said, incuriously, ‘Was it they Timberlake boys?’ and when he nodded, ‘Ah, then us’ll see no more o’ they, Jem! You did right, boy, and they’ll be the better for it! ‘Ave ’ee vinished with ’em now or be gonner give ’em a real tannin?’
‘Leave ’em be, Mother,’ he said, carelessly, ‘I skinned the arse off ’em all the way ’ome,’ and then, sniffing, ‘What’s for supper?’
‘Rabbit stew,’ she told him, ‘and I should eat yours, midear, an’ tak’ theirs into ’em later. They’ll be busy now putting lard on one another’s backsides I reckon.’
This was, in fact, precisely what they were doing in the light of the kitchen lamp and after they had quietened a little Violet, the sharper of the two, grumbled, ‘Well I doan ’ave to tell ’ee what this means, do I?’ and Cissie said no, she supposed not, and that it meant they were now Jem’s exclusive property and that the sooner everyone in the Valley got to know it the fewer broken heads and whole skins there would be hereabouts. Silently, as they inspected one another’s welts, they reviewed the prospect of lifelong bondage to the Bideford Goliath. It was, they felt, a sorry ending to a life of freedom but it had certain advantages that were expressed, perhaps, in Violet’s summing up after they had peeped fearfully out-of-doors and watched their tormentor stolidly supping his stew by the fire. ‘Well,’ she said resignedly, ‘it could be worser I reckon! After all, there’s only two of us but Jem makes six of any other man in the Valley.’ And Cissie agreed, adding wistfully, ‘I can smell that stew from here, Vi! I wish I dare nip out an’ get some but I darn’t, dare you?’
‘No,’ said Violet grimly, ‘I dasn’t, fer I shan’t zit comfortable for a week as it is! Us’ll bide yer and be real nice when ’er brings some in, and if ’er comes in among us tonight dornee start that ole nonsense about you bein’ a year older than me! Us’ll cut cards for it now—ace high same as Mother decides!’
They cut the cards and Violet drew a queen to Cissie’s eight and from that night on there was peace and modest prosperity in the Dell. It took a world war to upset the equilibrium established there by the Bideford Goliath.
III
On the day that Claire’s twins were born old Parson Bull breathed his last and the double quota of news ran up the Valley like a heath fire.
Claire had not really believed Maureen O’Keefe when she had told her to prepare for two babies but Maureen had done some investigating into parish registers and discovered that, unknown to Claire, and even to Edward Derwent, there were twins on both sides of her family and that there might well be on Paul’s for all she was aware. When she was half-convinced Claire began to worry but Maureen said, impatiently, ‘You can forget about last year’s mishap for you know well enough what brought that about! You’re a strong, healthy girl and the theory that twins are more difficult to bring into the world than one child is old wives’ prattle! I’ll undertake to deliver them if you do your part by taking things easily instead of gadding about after your husband as if you’re afraid to let him out of sight!’
The event occurred on the second day of September with the minimum of alarms, although John Rudd had to be summoned as nursemaid to Paul, who spent the day walking about the house like a man awaiting a last-minute reprieve from the gallows. He had just descended from seeing her, and peering dutifully at the pink, bawling scraps in the cot, when Chivers asked for him and said word had arrived from the Rectory that Parson Bull had died after a long illness dating from a fall he had received in the hunting field more than a year ago. Paul was so relieved that Claire was safely through her ordeal, and so intrigued at becoming the father of twin boys (weighing, they told him, respectively a shade over six pounds apiece) that he could find little regret for the passing of the choleric old parson, although he had always half-admired the man as a genuine left-over from the eighteenth century; in any case, Bull had reached the age of seventy-eight, had been hunting at seventy-seven and was usually well ahead of the field. Paul wondered, as he sipped his brandy in the library, who would succeed him as rector and it was not until John reminded him that he was a patron of the living that he realised that this, in large measure, would depend on himself.
‘However, there’s no hurry,’ John said, ‘a locum will come over from Whinmouth until we’ve had a chance to look around. You don’t know any parson who would be likely to fit in here with your policy, I suppose?’
Paul said he did not but supposed that he would get guidance on the subject from the Dean and Chapter at Paxtonbury.
‘Oh, they’ll have someone in mind, you can be sure of that,’ John said, ‘but if we have a candidate they’ll have to consider him seriously. Bull was appointed by Sir George Lovell and must have been rector here all of forty years and it’s odd that the old battleaxe should have passed on today. Why don’t you occupy your mind entering it in the record book while I go down and make sure that Maureen has a hot meal ready when she’s finished upstairs? She’ll have to go out again afterwards, she has three evening visits to make yet.’
Paul was glad of the excuse to be alone, for his nerves were calmer now and after John had gone, and he sat listening to the indeterminate thumps from upstairs, his mind went back to the wild evening he had spent alone here the night Simon was born, when Ikey, dripping wet, had burst in with news of the Codsall tragedy. It occurred to him that the contrast between the occasions was symbolic of his two marriages for that night the world outside had gone mad, with volleying rain slashing at the window and trees threshing in a full south-westerly gale, whereas tonight the evening sun filled the landscape with soft golden light and the curving rows of chestnuts were as still as trees painted on canvas. He took out the estate book and read the last few entries, noting how proudly and self-consciously Claire had written of his trial scheme to set up a shuttle service of carts moving on a planned route through the Valley to dispose of produce from points
as far apart as Smut’s greenhouse in the east and Eveleigh’s dairy in the west. He saw that she had referred to the innovation by the name used for it, in the Valley—‘Squire’s Waggon Train’, an off-shoot, he supposed, of the recent visit of the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to Paxtonbury, but although they made jokes about it it seemed to work satisfactorily and eliminate a great deal of duplicated labour. In the past each farmer had used his own transport to take his milk, eggs, vegetables and plants to the railway halt, or to collection points established by the Paxtonbury and Whinmouth wholesalers but now, with three light carts and their teams in constant commission, they were relieved of this chore and their individual output had soared as the latest figures proved. He took his pen and wrote, at the head of a new page, ‘September 2nd, 1908. The Rev. Horace Bull, Rector of Shallowford-cum-Coombe for forty years, died today, aged seventy-eight,’ and underneath, in his neatest writing, ‘My dear wife, Claire, gave birth to twin boys, as yet unnamed. They were born at two in the afternoon and safely delivered by Doctor Maureen O’Keefe, M.D. All three reported to be doing well.’ He smiled at the entry and was tempted to add to it a light-hearted comment, expressing his delight or astonishment but he decided against this, reflecting that as soon as she came downstairs Claire would rush to the book and fill in her own comments. If she took pleasure in writing of his waggon train how much more would she extract from describing the arrival of the twins? He put the record away and listened for fresh sounds but all seemed silent now, so he lit a cigar and went out on the terrace, turning to look up at the window which was wide open, Maureen being a stickler for well-aired sick-rooms. The doctor found him there and said, gently for her, ‘She’s asleep now and there’s not a thing to worry over, Paul. Congratulations if I haven’t said it before. They’re a couple of sturdy brats and should do well. By the way, she can nurse them—no reason at all why she shouldn’t and she was happy to learn as much!’ Paul said, ‘Did she have a bad time, Maureen? It seemed so quiet most of the time,’ and she answered, ‘It was just as straightforward as I expected, thank God, but you’ve got her to thank for it, not me! I always have thought the mental approach to birth is as important as the physical—given no complications of course, and Claire wanted to bear you children more than anything else in the world. And why not? After all, she has everything now, bless her. She’s a wonderful wife, Paul, but I don’t have to tell you, do I, boy?’, and she kissed him impulsively and went down the terrace steps to the lodge, now half a dwelling and half a surgery. He looked after her gratefully, not knowing how close she had just come to explaining how Claire Derwent had been reintroduced into his life as the direct result of an alliance between her predecessor and That Boy. She supposed she would tell him one day but right now he had enough to think about and all of it reassuring.
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 62
