‘Isn’t that encouraged?’ asked Paul, deciding that he did not like the man much but the Head disarmed him with a professional smile and said, ‘Well, to be frank we don’t cater for individualists here—not yet, at all events. It was during the last year or so that we began to succeed so spectacularly with your lad.’
Paul murmured that his ward (he remembered just in time that ‘Ikey’ was never used at High Wood) had been very happy at the school and that he was relieved to hear him well spoken of by his headmaster.
‘Oh, it’s rather more than that,’ the headmaster went on, ‘the fact is Palfrey has always puzzled me somewhat. He was never any trouble apart from that one time. He pulled his weight and made friends easily enough but frankly, I always had the impression he was … well … laughing at us! Does that sound extravagant?’
Paul thought, privately, ‘No, I’m damned if it does for he almost certainly was and jolly good luck to him! He got away with it, and I wonder what the old bird would say if I told him Ikey came here from a London junk yard via my stables?’ He said, aloud, ‘I’ve been wondering if we’re doing the right thing encouraging him to take a commission, Headmaster. Have you any thoughts on the matter?’
The headmaster put on his ‘careers’ look and said, with slight hesitation, ‘That … er … rather depends. Has he an army background?’
‘I served through the South African War,’ Paul said, at last beginning to get the measure of the man, but all the Head said was, ‘Ah, that’s not quite the same thing! You were Yeomanry, I expect, and you’re his guardian, not his father.’
‘The old bird is fishing now,’ Paul thought, ‘but he’ll catch nothing from me!’ ‘I’m a relative,’ he said, brazenly, ‘his sister was my first wife. Perhaps I never told you he was born on the Continent, or that his mother was an Austrian subject?’
The Head seemed vaguely impressed, remarking that the Austrians produced a large number of first-class equestrians, whereupon Paul said promptly that the boy could ride anything and had always had an exceptional flair for horses.
‘Then I don’t really see how we could improve on the cavalry,’ the headmaster went on. ‘After all, it’s a pleasant life, particularly in Ireland and India. If he does well enough in Army Entrance he might get a good regiment although there’s tremendous competition, I’m told,’ and when Paul made no reply he added, ‘Did you have anything else in mind?’
‘No,’ Paul admitted, ‘I didn’t but I think I should prefer him to take up a profession with more future in it.’
‘But surely there is a future in an Army career, Mr Craddock?’
‘Not in the cavalry,’ Paul said promptly, ‘at least, not in my opinion!’
‘I’m afraid your opinion isn’t generally shared,’ the Head said kindly, as though applying a gentle damper to a boy who had made a bad gaffe but needed encouragement. ‘The Chairman of our Governors, Lieutenant-General Manners-Smith, thinks the exact opposite and he was on Buller’s staff in the Transvaal.’
‘I wouldn’t wonder,’ Paul thought, ‘and got a lot of good chaps killed playing at Waterloo outside Ladysmith!’ and suddenly he tired of phrase-juggling and began to wonder if, after all, High Wood was the kind of place he wanted for Simon and the twins when they had passed through Prep School. It had performed a miracle on Ikey but did his own boys stand in need of miracles? He said briefly, ‘I’ll have a talk with the lad during the holidays, Headmaster, and if I need further advice perhaps I could write. If he really wants the Army I won’t stand in his way,’ and he got up, extending his hand. And then another, more important thought struck him and he said, ‘You spoke well enough of him as a product of the school. How did he show up as a scholar?’
‘Oh, average, average,’ said the Head airily, ‘but scholarship isn’t everything, Mr Craddock,’ implying that it counted for rather less than the ability to convert a try into a goal.
The matter was carried a step further early in the holidays as Paul and Ikey rode into Paxtonbury to look at a hunter recommended by Rose Derwent as ‘being worth a guinea over the odds’. They had often travelled this road in company and for each of them it was usually a sentimental journey. Paul recounted the gist of his interview with the Head and Ikey was amused by Paul’s confession that he had found the man too pretentious for his taste. ‘Oh, Sandy Mac is stuffy all right,’ he said tolerantly, ‘but he’s a trier, a bit like you and me in a way,’ and when Paul asked what this meant he added, ‘He’s not public school, you see, and has to walk pretty carefully. His father was a postman, I believe, and he won a scholarship to a grammar school up north and afterwards went on to win first-class honours at Cambridge. You have to hand it to him for that. It was really why I played along with him.’
Paul was intrigued by the boy’s eye for the chinks in adult armour and also by his ability to judge people’s real worth but the comment reminded him of the Head’s remark—‘I believe he was laughing at us’ and he quoted it, expecting to outface the lad. He evidently failed for Ikey laughed so heartily that he lost a stirrup.
‘He said that? Old Sandy Mac admitted that to you? Geewhiz! He must have come close to twigging me after all!’
‘The point is,’ said Paul seriously, ‘you’ve been playing charades ever since you went to school and I’ve been aiding and abetting you! Frankly I think it’s been worth it but we don’t have to go playing them indefinitely! You’re eighteen now and can make your own decisions!’
‘Can I?’ The boy was suddenly serious. ‘I can’t, you know, not really! Far too much has rubbed off on me. Oh, I’m not complaining, Governor, and I should hate you to think I was, I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me but sometimes …’
He broke off and kicked his heels against the horse’s flanks causing it to break into a trot. Snowdrop automatically increased his pace and when they drew level again Paul saw that the boy’s eyes were troubled. ‘Look here, Ikey,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to confide everything to me but I’ll always listen if you want to and don’t ever forget it! I started this conversation with the idea of finding out if you had made up your mind about taking Army Entrance in October and going to Sandhurst. The last time we talked about it you had no doubts. Have you had any since?’
Ikey reined in and both horses stopped near the brow of the hill; another fifty yards and they would top the crest and begin the long descent into the Paxtonbury bowl.
‘The Army would cost you money, Governor; it could go on costing you money indefinitely.’
‘I can afford it and if you really want to take a commission I’ll back you. The real issue is—would you prefer to train for something else, for one of the professions? Or would you care to go on to University and make your final decision there?’
The boy said, with a shrug, ‘It isn’t that easy, Governor. At my reckoning I’m only about two-thirds a gent; maybe not as much as that, maybe only three-fifths! You couldn’t anticipate that when you sent me to High Wood but that’s how it happened, a good part of me was still …’
‘In the scrapyard? That’s damned nonsense, Ikey, and I believe you know it!’
‘I wasn’t going to say “scrapyard”,’ Ikey said, gently, ‘I had that beaten before I went to school. But I was happy in the stable-yard and deep down I never wanted or expected anything better.’
‘I’m hanged if I follow you,’ Paul grumbled, now more than a little exasperated, ‘you made a success of High Wood and whether you like it or not you’ve moved up in the world. What is it you really want?’
‘I suppose, more than anything, to justify your investment in me,’ Ikey said and Paul was instantly sorry for his impatience. ‘Where would I be now if you hadn’t brought me down here?’ And suddenly he looked less serious and added, ‘I can guess—doing a stretch probably, for knocking off the railings of Buckingham Palace or the Monument!’
They rode on in silence for a spell, P
aul puzzled and a little disturbed by the boy’s view of himself as a partial misfit but the more he thought about it the less credible it seemed for his mind returned to his obvious popularity and the vision of the trim, swallow-tailed youth who had escorted him into the headmaster’s study less than a month before. He said finally, ‘When you were at school were you homesick for the stable-yard, Ikey?’
‘Not the stable-yard,’ Ikey said, ‘but the freedom that went along with it! A chap outside looking in on a place like High Wood is entitled to imagine it’s all beer and skittles but it isn’t, you know! Nobody’s life is that simple—I mean, there were plenty of times when I was homesick for the days when I didn’t have to live up to anything and that’s what I mean when I say I’m only two-thirds a gent. The other third was always back here, deep in the woods.’
He was tempted, at this moment, to confess what lay behind this admission, to tell Paul of his long association with Hazel Potter and his identification of her with everything that grew and hunted in the coombes and coverts of Shallowford, but consideration for the man checked him. He had been living with snobs too long not to realise that their kind of snobbery had no place in Paul Craddock’s nature but he knew also that there were limits to tolerance and that Hazel Potter, the half-wit of the Valley, was beyond those limits. To say that he had often wished he had stayed a stable-boy with free access to her and her irresponsibilities would be throwing dirt in his benefactor’s face yet he was aware that, to some extent, she was the most rewarding person in his life, except for the man riding beside him. As he pondered this he felt a great yearning for her, for the sound of her soft, Devon burr and the broom-thicket scent of her hair, for the security and isolation of her little house over the badger sets and for the touch of her warm lips. He said, suddenly, ‘Look here, Governor, I don’t have to confirm my Army Entrance application until September but I can tell you one thing—I’ve decided against the cavalry, if only on the grounds of your pocket! A chap at school has an uncle in the Engineers and I met the old boy when he came over one day. The R.E.s are the only up-to-date branch of the Army and if we ever do have a showdown with the Germans or the Russians they’ll make rings round the lancers and hussars! And that’s not all, either! I don’t think I could stick the mumbo-jumbo of what they call a “good” regiment. If I am to be in the Army then I should certainly want to earn my keep—you know, really earn it—and at least I should have an outdoor job with a chance to travel at Government expense. I couldn’t stick an office life so maybe we have got somewhere with this pow-wow!’
‘You mean you want a week or two to think it over?’ Paul said, laughing, and Ikey said maybe only a day or two, so by common consent they dropped the subject and rode on into the city talking of horses.
V
Every day, wearing his old training sweater and a pair of soiled slacks, Ikey climbed the orchard to the high-banked lane, circled the mere and threaded the rhododendron maze that he now knew as expertly as Hazel. She was always waiting for him, high up on her rock, and would lift her hand when she saw him tackle the steep, pine-studded slope leading to the cave. And when he saw her a sense of urgency would rush down on him and he would set himself at the sandy slope as though he was on the home run of the most important cross-country event of the season for all summer there had been a clock ticking in his heart, setting a term to boyhood.
One day, soon after the conversation on careers, he did not come until evening, after the sun had passed Nun’s Head in the west and the bowl below the escarpment was drowsy with summer, as though everything living there had been used up by the heat of the day. She shouted, from her platform, ‘Where’ve ’ee been? I’ve been lookin’ out for ’ee zince noon!’ and he told her he had been to a tea-party with some of Mrs Craddock’s friends in Coombe Bay and had only now managed to change and steal away. He went through the wicker screen to the little house and because everything there was familiar to him he noticed a stone jar, standing in one of the cavities she had scooped in the soft sandstone.
‘What have you got there?’ he asked and she told him it was a gallon jar of Meg Potter’s hedgerow wine she had stolen from the washroom behind the Potter farmhouse. ‘Tidden really stealing,’ she added, ‘for backalong, when ’er was out after blossoms, I went along of her an’ helped. Besides, there’s nigh on a dozen jars stored there to cool off. ’Er sells it, you zee, over in Whinmouth, so when ’er wasn’t lookin’ I skipped off with some, thinkin’ us’d taake a mug when us was dry!’
He sniffed it, finding that it smelled a little like damp corn. ‘What does she put in it, Hazel?’
‘Oh, all sorts,’ the girl said carelessly, ‘zertain nettles ’er knows, cowslips, elderberries, turnips, dandelion, sloes, quinces and I don’t know what, fer ’er’s proper stingy with ’er book o’ charms an’ never lets none of us peep, not even me, who couldn’t read what’s writ there! Would ’ee like to sample it? Tiz rare stuff and good for rheumatics they say.’
‘I don’t have rheumatism yet,’ he said laughing, ‘but I’ll down a mug if you will,’ and she produced two earthenware cups, shook the jar and tipped a generous measure into each.
It was like drinking the Valley at harvest time. Clover was there, as a kind of base, but so was every other ingredient Hazel had mentioned and many others besides, including honey. It slipped over the palate like nectar.
‘By George!’ he exclaimed, ‘it’s marvellous! Better than any drink I ever tasted! Pour me another.
‘Tiz heady stuff,’ she warned him, ‘us dorn want to zend ’ee ’ome tipsy,’ but he boasted that he had a good head for liquor and could walk a straight line after half-a-bottle of the Squire’s burgundy with brandy to follow so she poured another measure and sat sipping her own, her great brown eyes watching him over the rim of the cup.
When he had finished his second drink and smacked his lips with appreciation she put the stopper on the jar and returned it to the cavity.
‘I dorn reckon you’d better have no more, Ikey,’ she said, ‘for even our Smut can’t taake a pint of it and you’ve had two gills. ’Ow do it feel? Do it warm your belly and make your ears sing?’
It would have baffled him to tell her exactly how he felt. There was, it was true, a great glow spreading under his navel and his ears were singing but not unpleasantly so, the murmur of the woods coming to him as a chorus chanted by angels and the evening light, filtering into the cave through the gorse, appearing as the radiance of a celestial sunset. He said, giggling, ‘Let’s have another half cup, Hazel—go on, be a sport!’, but she refused him and stood with her back to the cavity. He got up then crouching because the roof was low and made a playful grab at her but she pushed him and he staggered, grazing his head on a rock buttress, not heavily, but enough to make him yelp and sink to his knees. She was beside him at once, with her arms round his shoulders, pressing his head to her breast and uttering soothing noises, as she might over a puppy struck by a blundering foot.
‘’Ave I ’urt ’ee? Did ’ee knock yer poor ade on the rock? Tiz gone to your legs, like rough cider! Bide awhile an’ I mak ’er some tay!’, and she held him like a child, rocking him to and fro while a wave of sweetness passed over him and he forgot the smart of his head in the softness of her breasts and the scent of her hair tumbling about his face. Then the glow in his belly seemed to explode so that its warmth invaded every vein in his body and he broke from her embrace, bearing her backwards and crushing her into the bracken with his weight and covering her face with kisses. She seemed inclined to resist him for a moment for when, breathlessly, he turned his head aside and caught up a handful of her hair, which he pressed against his mouth she twisted from beneath him and said, ‘Dornee, Ikey boy, tiz the drink in ’ee!’, but he saw to his relief that she was only laughing at him and that her remark was more of a statement than a protest. He released her, however, rolling on his elbow and laughing at himself but also at her for she looked comical squatting
back on her hams and looking down at him like an affectionate wife contemplating a husband far gone in drink who had returned home and fallen on the doorstep. She seemed to contemplate him a long time, as though not sure what to do with him and as she sat there, head on one side, hands on her knees, he thought her the most beautiful creature he had ever seen and blurted out, ‘I love you so much! I love you, Hazel’, and because, despite the choir and the golden haze, his inner consciousness was still sharp and clear his voice sounded false and stilted so that he slipped back into her vernacular, saying, ‘Youm mine, Hazel Potter, and I’ll kill any man who touches ’ee, do ’ee hear, now?’, and this must have sobered her for she stood up with a slow, graceful movement, and without taking her eyes off him, said, ‘O’ course ’ee would! But I woulden let un, Ikey! Never, do ’ee hear? No man but you!’
The effect of the wine on his brain was two-fold, for while his body presented him as an amorous, half-helpless clodhopper his thoughts about her were diamond sharp and he saw her as he had always thought of her, the concentration in a woman’s body, of all the colours and scents and fruitfulness of the Valley under the mantle of summer and desired her not as a woman but as a kind of key to her world and everything it offered. Yet the prospect of possessing her seemed to have nothing to do with his body but was an emphatic gesture of the mind. He stood up, unsteadily, and because he staggered a little she took his hands, saying, ‘You’d best bide a spell, Ikey, youm drunk as David’s sow!’ and she giggled and she propped him against the canting wall and spread her flour sacks on the bracken at the back of the cave.
‘You’ll bide tu?’ he said and she told him she would but he was not to worry for he would soon be asleep and when he awoke he would be none the worse for the drink; ‘’Er dorn carry no ade with ’er,’ she added. By now, however, the glow had spread to every part of his body, so that the atmosphere of the cave became insufferably hot and he began to struggle with his sweater in an effort to pull it over his head. She said, as though it was the most natural question in the world, ‘Be ’ee that hot then? Do ’ee want to strip to lie down?’, and pulled his sweater free after which she removed his trousers by the simple process of unbuckling his belt and hoisting his legs clear. He suffered this indignity without protest, without even thinking of it as an indignity, and watched her make a pillow of his clothes. When the makeshift couch was ready he collapsed on to it and lay flat on his back as she knelt beside him, inspecting his body with a kind of amused tolerance and saying, with the utmost mildness, ‘Ah, youm a praper-looking man now, Ikey, a praper man to be sure!’ He lay staring up at her with slightly glazed eyes and might have succumbed at once to the drowsiness that was already playing tricks with his consciousness, distorting his judgments of sound and distance but then, almost with resignation, she stood upright again and without taking her eyes off him for a moment slipped out of her odds and ends of garments, folded her ragged dress with great care and put it to one side, standing erect between where he lay and the fading light filtering through the gorse screen of the entrance. His drowsiness left him then but he did not move a muscle, remaining on his back looking up at her, marvelling at the tawny smoothness of her long, straight legs and the rim of browned skin where the tide of sunburn had been checked by the dress just above the shallow downsweep of her breasts and above her knees. Then, with a curiously remote expression, half abstracted and half deliberate, she knelt again and began passing her hands over his body, lightly yet with an air of purpose so that the touch of her fingers induced in him a state that was a kind of suspension between elation and the richest daydream of his experience. He was aware that they were naked and that she was caressing him with deliberation but he felt no shame or, at that moment, desire. Her manipulation of his senses was without significance and thus made no direct impact on him and he did not move, neither did he reach out to return her caresses. It was only when she placed both hands on his shoulders, leaning over him to kiss his mouth that her presence beyond his reach became intolerable and he pulled her down beside him, kissing her face and breasts and shoulders and slipping his hands down the full length of her back. She said, with a tinge of sadness in her voice but without urgency, ‘You gonner tak’ me now, Ikey? Be ’ee clear-aded enough to know what youm at!’ and he said, sharply, ‘Youm mine, Hazel Potter, I’ll tak’ ’ee whenever I wants!’ and she sighed as he enfolded her and was done with her in a few painful seconds.
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 69
