Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By)

by R. F Delderfield

  II

  The campaign of January 1910 saw the most bitter electioneering in the history of the constituency. Neither candidates nor leading supporters emerged unscathed from the contest.

  Captain Owen-Hixon, the new Unionist contender, fought a merciless campaign, appearing, however, in the role of a puff-adder rather than the lion they had been promised. He not only employed conventional ammunition to attack the Government but the brickbats supplied by Grenfell himself after he had openly proclaimed his belief in women’s suffrage.

  The main issue in the fight was the proposed land taxes and the Unionist, an exceptionally accomplished speaker with a knack of cutting hecklers down to size, hammered on his thesis day after day and night after night, warning the electorate, most of whom looked to agriculture for a living, that the budget would mean all-round contraction on the part of landowners and therefore unemployment among farm labourers in the area. Paul, as the only landowner supporting the Liberals, came in for persistent sniping for Owen-Hixon lampooned him as an amateur farmer, protected from the full effects of the new taxes by a steady flow of capital from a London scrapyard. He implied, and came close to stating openly, that the Shallowford estate was bolstered by profits from the South African War and the jibe was the more lethal because Grenfell had never ceased to denounce the war as a capitalist adventure. Owen-Hixon also made play of an alleged attempt on the part of the Government to sacrifice national safety to a vote-catching policy built on the new insurance scheme, painting lurid pictures of what would happen to Britain when the Kaiser’s growing naval strength enabled Germany to challenge the Empire on the high seas. As to Grenfell’s sudden infatuation with ‘the livelier ladies’—the Unionist turned Grenfell’s criticism of forcible feeding back upon him by saying that he was puzzled to know why, since his friends felt so strongly on this matter, he was still aligned with Lloyd George, Asquith and Winston Churchill, the principal persecutors of the suffragettes.

  In only one exchange did the Liberals come off with the honours and that was at Owen-Hixon’s eve-of-poll rally, in the Paxtonbury Corn Exchange, where the heroes were a pair of determined Liberal hecklers. On this occasion Owen-Hixon, carried away by his own eloquence, made a jeering comparison between Lord Gilroy, a landowner with three centuries of tradition behind him, and his neighbour Craddock, who, no doubt, would lose interest in farming as soon as the new tax was imposed and seek some other diversion, perhaps milling flour for the suffragettes to throw at Liberal Cabinet Ministers! In the laughter touched off by this sally Henry Pitts, of Hermitage Farm rose from a gangway seat about a third of the way down the hall and demanded to know of Lord Gilroy, in the Chair, how much he paid his workers on the Heronslea home farm? The question was ruled out of order but Henry remained on his feet, buttressed by the immovable Sam Potter, and read out a short list of weekly payments made to Heronslea and Shallowford farm-labourers. The wages showed a difference of around seven shillings a week in favour of Squire Craddock and in the momentary hush that followed this announcement Henry added, genially, ‘So mebbe tiz as well us didden get an answer from the Chair! Saved ole Gilroy tellin’ a string o’ bliddy lies, didden it?’

  At this the Unionist stewards made a concerted rush for Henry, now standing one seat in from the centre aisle. In their eagerness to eject him, however, they overlooked Sam Potter who threw his chair under the feet of the foremost and floored two others with his fists. Before reinforcements could be rushed round from the sides of the hall the two Shallowford men had escaped via an exit, Henry felling another steward en route. They left the meeting in an uproar and made their way to Liberal headquarters, congratulating one another on the success of their sally. Neither man, out of his cups, was a talkative individual. All Henry said was, ‘Well us told un, didden us, Sam?’ and Sam replied, ‘Arr, an’ us showed ’un, didden us, Henry?’

  Claire stood beside Paul and Grenfell on the day following the ballot and watched the votes pile up on each table as the boxes were opened by the tellers. By midday the result was announced from the balcony of the Town Hall. James Grenfell had lost his seat by the narrow margin of eighty-seven votes. Captain Owen-Hixon was the new Member for Paxtonbury Vale.

  Grenfell, Paul thought, took his defeat stoically. On the way back to Shallowford, as their trap breasted the northern swell of the moor, James said, with a sigh, ‘Well, Paul, nobody could call it a clean fight but at least it was a lively one! Without you I could never have saved my face, let alone my seat and I’d like you to know I’m grateful for that! Maybe a year or so on the home beat won’t do me any harm, for it’s my guess we shall be at it again before long. Today’s result all over the country is something and nothing, the main issues can never be resolved without a clear-cut majority.’

  Paul said nothing, feeling far too raw to take pleasure in an inquest but he reflected glumly that Grenfell’s championship of suffragettes had cost him far more than eighty-seven votes. It was left to Claire to comment further on the issue and as they turned on to the river road she said, cheerfully, ‘Well, I wouldn’t worry if I were you, James! To my way of thinking you didn’t lose out on your policy but on your chivalry and it was about the only spark I saw struck in that mud-fight!’, and to emphasise her point she squeezed his hand so that Paul, seeing the movement out of the corner of his eye, thought, ‘By God, if James was lucky enough to find a wife like Claire she’d put him back all right and with a thumping majority!’

  As they passed Codsall bridge they saw Eveleigh and his family standing in a forlorn cluster to give the loser a cheer and Grenfell, waving acknowledgement, looked across the winter fields towards the Teazel watershed and said, ‘The grass roots are right here, Paul. We ought never to forget that, lad!’

  III

  News of the sudden death of King Edward came to the Valley in the full flush of Maytime; to Paul, who had settled here the summer Edward was crowned, it seemed as if the brief reign completed a personal as well as a national cycle.

  The first rumour reached the Valley by one or other of the two telephones in Coombe Bay, and was later confirmed by the heavy black border round the front-page advertisements of the County Advertiser but Paul, knowing that some of the tenants living off the main road would be unlikely to see the weekly newspaper for another day, decided to go his rounds, at least, this was the excuse he offered Claire at breakfast. She was not taken in, remembering the long drought of the coronation summer when he had first arrived among them and well knowing his trick of separating the phases of his life into little packages of seasons and years. He would see the death of Edward, she thought, as the end of a Valley era and for an hour or so would want to ride alone, savouring his modest achievements here. She said, kissing him, ‘Go along then Paul Revere, and proclaim the news among the Potterites and the Codsallites in the Wilderness,’ and he rode off, taking the river road along the park wall in the direction of Codsall bridge.

  He noticed, on passing the Timberlake cottage, that someone had hung a bunch of crepe on the knocker and drawn the parlour blinds, as though the royal corpse lay inside. Old Mrs Timberlake, allegedly one hundred and four, had died the previous summer, and perhaps it was her late mother-in-law’s incredible age linking her with George III, that had prompted Mrs Timberlake junior to show this special mark of respect to royalty. Yet Paul found himself unable to share in a sense of loss that morning, for the sun was bright, kingfishers flashed along the Sorrel stream, the hedgerows were a riot of flowers and he had never seen King Edward in the flesh. He could think of him, with mild affection, however, recalling the headshakes of the wiseacres when the portly, sixty-year-old rake succeeded his mother. Everybody had said he would introduce sweeping changes in the Court and they had been right but some of their other prophecies remained unfulfilled. He had proved an unexpectedly popular monarch and even his weaknesses, the chain-smoking of cigars and his obsession with pretty women, the Turf and rackety characters associated with racing, had endeare
d him to the mass of English people. He was also said to be the only man alive who could browbeat the German Kaiser, his sabre-rattling nephew across the Channel, and if this was true, it was a pity that he had not ascended his throne earlier and saved everybody a great deal of money by discouraging Wilhelm from building a navy. He thought, as he rode down the Four Winds track, ‘I suppose we shall have to do something to mark the occasion. Perhaps Parson Horsey will want to hold a special service and if he does I shall have to appear with Claire and the children,’ and then he saw the oldest Eveleigh boy forking dung and called, ‘Hullo, there! Is your father about?’, and at that moment Marian Eveleigh emerged from the dairy with her daughter, Rachel, a rosy sixteen-year-old, carrying a pail of skimmed milk for the pigs. Marian said, ‘Good morning, Squire! You’ve heard the news I suppose?’, and Paul said he had and was sorry but all Marian replied was, ‘Well, to tell ’ee the truth, Squire, I’m surprised ’ee lasted so long! He was very weak in the chest, you know!’

  She talked, Paul thought, as though the King had lived in one of the tall, red-brick houses in Coombe Bay where the royal bronchitis was a parish topic. It occurred to him that modern communications were already having their effect upon people cut off from the cities, for how would a Tudor peasant have been able to comment on, say, the bronchial tubes of Henry VIII?

  Eveleigh himself came out of the byre while they were talking and declared that Edward had proved a better man as King than as Prince of Wales. Paul suspected that Eveleigh, an austere man dedicated to hard work and simple living, was a republican at heart and the farmer seemed to confirm this by adding, ‘Well, it won’t make much difference to me, I reckon! His son’ll succeed him and they say he’s a quiet sort of chap, don’t they, Squire?’

  ‘I believe they do,’ Paul said, smiling and deciding that Eveleigh was anxious to get on with his work he said good-bye and went on down the gangway between house and barn towards the higher ford. As he passed under the gable of the farmhouse he glanced up at the window of the room where he had looked on the bloody remains of Arabella Codsall but the memory had no power to dull the sparkle of the morning. Eveleigh, and his family of romping, rosy children, had exorcised the ghosts of Four Winds long ago.

  He forded the shallow river a mile above the bridge and climbed the edge of the moor to Periwinkle, where Will and Elinor Codsall had heard nothing of the news from London and seemed more deeply impressed by it than the Eveleighs. Elinor’s oldest child was now five, and already earning his keep egg-collecting. The farm was nearly double its original acreage, Will having reclaimed a wide strip of moorland and his poultry arks were dotted about the fields like a shanty town. Paul thought, as he gossiped with man and wife, ‘That was the first real decision I ever made about here—to get Will and Elinor married off and settled on their own and it was a good move, despite what happened afterwards.’ He remembered his first glimpse of the little woman now standing by Snowdrop’s head, a slim, shy, slip of a thing, with hardly a word to say for herself and here she was, the mother of three children, the real master of the farm and the acknowledged poultry expert of the Valley. He wondered if the lumbering Will Codsall resented taking second place to her but decided not, for even now, as they stood in the yard talking, he was looking at her as though he would like to whisk her off into the clover. Codsall said, ‘Will us be havin’ some kind o’ funeral service, Squire? Us did for the Ol’ Vic, I remember, Parson Bull preached a sermon on her, didden he, midear?’ but Elinor said this was a matter between Squire and parson and that he had best get about his work upalong, while she brewed Squire a dish of tea.

  He drank her tea and rode down across the great swathe of heather to Hermitage, wondering if any of them were ever put out by his casual visits. After all, they were tenants holding long leases, and were not answerable to him so long as they paid their rent each quarter-day, but as soon as he saw the broad, beaming face of Henry Pitts he knew that he was wrong and that most of them were flattered by his interest in their stock and day-to-day improvements and also that what little remained of their prejudice had disappeared since his re-marriage. Henry called, ‘Top o’ the marnin’, Squire! Mr Grenfell was passin’ by yesterday an’ I told un, us’ll ’ave him back in no time! Us will too, you can depend on it!’

  Paul recalled then that Henry’s triumphant foray on the Corn Exchange had made him an enthusiastic supporter of Grenfell and that he was now honorary treasurer of the Valley Liberals. Leaving him to his beloved saddlebacks Paul rode into the yard and entered the big kitchen where Martha Pitts and Henry’s great tawny wife, Gloria, were apparently enjoying a private joke for they stopped laughing and looked shamefaced when they saw Paul on the threshold. There was always laughter here, he reflected, and enquired after Henry’s eldest boy, who had recently broken an arm climbing an elm to get at a rook’s nest.

  ‘Oh, er’s well enough, Squire,’ Gloria said casually. ‘’Twoulden surprise me if ’er didden come in with t’other one broke tomorrow! Bones mend zoon enough at his age, dorn ’em now?’ He told them that rumours of the King’s death had been confirmed by the newspapers and at this they both put on straight faces, holding the expressions until Gloria said, nudging her mother-in-law, ‘Well, if all I yer about ’un be true, he had a wonderful run for ’is money, didden ’er?’ and Martha said, ‘Shhh! Dornee talk like that!’ and pretended to be shocked, so that Paul left them hiding his own grin and rode to the top of Hermitage plateau where he could look down over the wide Valley, something he never failed to do when he was this way.

  It was a day for remembering. He recalled coming here with Grace on a summer morning, a long time ago it seemed, the day they had punted across to the temple on the islet and made love like lovers meeting by stealth, and he wondered, briefly, where Grace was at this moment, and if she ever thought of him and remembered vistas like the one at his feet. Then a pair of coal-tits distracted him and he watched them flirting on the lower boughs of a chestnut, making a mental note to tell Horace Handcock, the local oracle on all matters ornithological, who had told him only last week, that, whereas the Valley was teeming with great-tits and blue-tits, he had not seen coal-tits hereabouts since he was a boy. The birds seemed almost tame, flitting about Snowdrop’s head, darting in and out of the widely-spaced trees. He went down the main ride to the steep-banked lane leading to the mere, finding it alive with all kinds of water birds, moorhens, dabchicks, coots, a mallard and her family, and even a heron, standing like an old post in the shallows near the islet.

  Sam’s cottage seemed to be half-full of children, although Paul counted but four on the premises. The eldest, his godchild Pauline, was playing with her sister Georgina and the babies, making daisy chains for each of them as Paul called, ‘Catch, Pauline!’ and threw a penny which Pauline caught expertly, abandoning her charges to run in and fetch her mother, who Paul noticed was pregnant yet again, the fifth time in eight years. He thought, ‘Dammit, if they don’t call a halt soon I shall have to build on to the cottage!’

  ‘Sam’s upalong, hauling timber,’ Joannie said, pointing towards the northern end of the woods, ‘did ’ee want un special, Squire?’, and Paul said no, he had only looked in to tell them that the King was dead and Joannie said, ‘Cor! Be ’er now? Will Alix have to manage on ’er own then?’, and Paul had to explain that Alexandra would not be Queen any more but would live in retirement, while her duties were taken over by the new Queen Mary, King George’s wife. Joannie was interested but unconvinced. ‘Well, I daresay his missus will manage,’ she said, ‘but I can’t say I call ’er to mind. Sam don’t read, you see, so us don’t get a paper but he sets a store by Queen Alix because we got her in the parlour,’ and she led Paul into the tiny front room that seemed never to be used and there on the wall was a gigantic double portrait of the late King and Queen Alexandra, Edward looking half-asphyxiated in a tight, gold-laced gorget and red tunic. ‘I always thought of ’er as the beautifulest woman I ever set eyes on,’ Joannie
said solemnly, as though she too had died. ‘I mus’ say I’m sorry for her, that I am!’ and moved by the same instinct as the Timberlakes she pulled down the blind so that the room was almost in darkness despite the brightness of the sun outside.

  He left her and went through the wild wood behind the cottage and over the escarpment, to strike the Bluff about half-way up where a briar-tangled path led to the Dell. Only children were there so he put Snowdrop at the path down which the Bideford Goliath had whipped his mistresses, and there, in the level field adjoining the cliff top, he found the Potter girls drawing water from the new well and emptying it into a great wooden pig-trough under the oaks.

  They were obviously glad of an excuse to stop work and come running, their broad, good-natured faces glistening with sweat. ‘Jem’s off across the Teazel to buy wire,’ they told him in chorus. ‘He’s minded to fence the strip under the trees tomorrow,’ Violet added, ‘on account of the pigs fattening quicker if they don’t stray. We had to fetch a sow back from Deepdene and it put Jem in a rare ole tizzy, didn’t it, Cis?’ Cis said it had indeed and Paul got the impression that the Potter girls were far more effectively subdued by their hired hand than were the Valley wives by their lawful husbands. He had been discussing the Dell situation only yesterday with Claire, expressing himself in agreement with Parson Horsey that something should be done to regularise the position, particularly as, in the New Year, the Potter sisters had presented Jem with a child apiece to add to the two whose fathers were the subject of much speculation in the Valley. Claire, laughing at his misgivings, told him to let well alone, pointing out that the Dell was paying its way for the first time in living memory. ‘He seems to have tamed them and that’s an achievement,’ she said, and he had told her she was shameless and that sooner or later Parson Horsey would insist Jem married one or the other.