Chapter Eighteen
I
Claire must have set her heart on going to London for the Coronation. She had spent the long autumn afternoons of her pregnancy turning the pages of catalogues of children’s emporiums, paying particular attention to little girls’ frocks and bonnets and when her third child was born, towards the end of the old year, she was delighted, although not much surprised, when she heard Doctor Maureen exclaim, ‘Glory to God, it’s a girl!’
Paul was not in the district when the baby arrived, about 2 o’clock on an unseasonably mild afternoon. He had accepted Maureen’s assurances that the event would not occur until the New Year and had embarked, with James Grenfell, on a whirlwind tour of the areas north of Paxtonbury to fight a second election within twelve months. He had been reluctant to go but both doctor and wife persuaded him, the one because, in her own words, ‘I hate having husbands under my feet at a time when they are less use than a wet clout’, the other because she knew that Grenfell would be fighting the battle of his life and had real need of Paul.
Local passions over the People’s Budget had not cooled throughout the summer and Grenfell regained lost ground after the announcement that a Woman’s Suffrage Bill was to be placed before Parliament; so Paul rode off in the trap, promising to be home before New Year’s Day.
The baby gave them very little trouble although she was a plump little thing, tipping the scales an ounce short of seven pounds, more than either of the twins had weighed at birth. She had, Claire noted, an abundance of dark hair, darker even than Paul’s and her eyes, now cornflower blue, looked as if they intended to stay blue and not change to grey, as had the eyes of the boys within six months of birth.
‘Well, Maureen,’ she said later that night, ‘you have to admit she’s pretty and Paul will certainly spoil her. He’ll be in a real tizzy when he comes home and finds we managed without him.’
Maureen said that after breakfast next morning she would post Thirza to watch for Paul at the gates, so about 10 a.m. Thirza was despatched to the ford to give warning of the Squire’s approach. An hour or so later he came spanking along the river road at about twice the pony’s normal pace and seeing Thirza hopping about between the great stone pillars, shouted, ‘Has anything happened? Is Mrs Craddock all right?’ and Thirza gasped, ‘It’s a girl, Squire! Prettiest li’l maid ever did zee!’ and without a word he dragged her into the trap and drove furiously up the drive to the forecourt where he left Thirza, now giggling hysterically, to lead pony and trap round to the yard while he went up the stairs three at a time and thumped on the bedroom door, as if alerting occupants of a burning building.
Maureen came out scolding him for his impatience, and telling him that, as the father of four, he ought to know better but then she relented and said, laughing, ‘As God’s my witness she’s an angel from heaven, the prettiest baby any of us ever saw, and there’s no doubt who’s the father! Wait a minute, lad, I’ll tell Nurse and you can go in, for they’re both doing marvellously.’
A moment later he was looking down at the child with an awe that he had not experienced on either of the previous occasions. Thirza and Maureen had not exaggerated. There was nothing of the brick-red, puckered look about this child; she had perfectly formed features, a peach bloom complexion and exquisite little hands and feet. He stood gazing down at her so long that Claire said, ‘Well, don’t I count any more?’ and although aware that she was teasing him he blurted his apologies and kissed her a dozen times, saying, triumphantly, ‘By God, Claire, she’s a treasure! She really is! I’ve always had to pretend to like new-born babies but this one …! Damn it. I’d quite resigned myself to another lump of a boy! Did you have a bad time? Maureen swore she wouldn’t arrive for days—I wouldn’t have thought of going if I’d dreamed you were so near!’
‘She came very quickly and it was about ten times as easy as the twins,’ Claire reassured him, ‘so much so that I can’t still persuade myself that it’s all over. Do you know, Paul, I’ve got the pleasantest feeling about her. Something tells me she’ll never be any trouble to any of us! There’s something … well … something reasonable about her and I’m glad she was born earlier than we reckoned because 1910 was a wonderful year for us and what happens in 1911 is anybody’s guess.’
He said, stroking her hair, and wondering at both her radiance and resilience, ‘Every year with you is a good year, Claire, and 1911 will be better than 1910, more sensational anyway, for James is getting us places on the House of Commons stand for the Coronation. Had you forgotten that bargain we made at Ikey’s Sports Day?’
‘Certainly not,’ she said, ‘in fact I’ve already picked out a dress! It’s in the catalogue on the study table, with the corner of the page turned down, so look at it and tell me you approve. But how can James get us seats unless he’s re-elected?’
‘He’ll be re-elected all right,’ Paul said grimly, ‘we’ve got them on the run again! A year on the local doorsteps has worked wonders and I’ll wager he goes in with five hundred majority!’
The nurse came back then and shooed him out. Downstairs, before she dashed off to complete her rounds, Maureen told him over a stiff brandy that the birth had indeed proved one of the most casual in her experience and said, raising her glass, ‘Well, here’s long life to the pair of you and that’s no conventional toast either! She’s a healthy, happy girl and she’s made you a wonderful wife, so don’t forget to count your blessings, lad!’
‘I’m not likely to,’ he said seriously, ‘as John could tell you. You never did meet Grace so you can’t imagine how different they are but the odd thing is I don’t think I should have ever fully appreciated Claire if I hadn’t been so much in love with Grace. There’s a conundrum to work into one of your fancy theories.’
‘It’s not much of a conundrum,’ Maureen said chuckling but refused to be drawn and hurried away, promising to send John up to ‘wet the baby’s head’ immediately after supper.
Paul sat by the log fire stroking the retriever’s head and feeling his hand nuzzled for she loved having her ears fondled. The dog was his one permanent reminder of Grace and of the hours they had spent together in this room. Simon, her child, had never interested her much but the dog she had sent him had always remained hers and although she had long since attached herself to Paul she always behaved as if she half-expected Grace to walk through the door again.
It seemed strange to him, sitting here alone with Claire and her new baby overhead and the house quiet after the turmoil of the last two days, that his thoughts should centre not upon Claire but Grace, whose ghost had never been banished from this particular room, although it seemed to have vanished from all other parts of the house. He wondered vaguely what had happened to her, if she had tired of passing in and out of Holloway under the Government’s Cat and Mouse act, or whether, by now, she had another husband, perhaps a fellow campaigner who could share her implacable hatred of the old society. He thought, ‘I wonder if Claire realises how much she owes Grace and how they would behave to one another if they ever came face to face? Claire probably thinks of her, if at all, as a crank, whereas Grace would certainly despise Claire for her domesticity and deference to men. For all that I’m glad Grenfell and his minority have forced the Cabinet to recognise the right of people as intelligent as Grace to vote,’ and he heaved himself up and fetched his beloved estate record to which he usually turned on these occasions. He wrote, on the last page of the 1910 Section, ‘About 2 p.m. on December 29th my wife presented me with a daughter weighing six pounds 15 ounces; she has dark hair and blue eyes’ and then fell to pondering a name embodying the tranquil temperament Claire had prophesied for the child. A string of Biblical names presented themselves—Deborah, Judith, Naomi and Sarah, but none of them appealed and, finally he hit upon the most English of all names, Mary, and savoured it murmuring, ‘Mary—Mary, Claire, Craddock’, deciding that it had a roundness and simplicity that pleased him. He wrote, feel
ing sure Claire would confirm his choice, ‘I am calling her “Mary”’ and then, perhaps infected by the inconsequence of Claire’s entries, ‘Everyone about here describes her as a rare pretty li’l maid and so she be!’, signing his name under the frivolous entry.
The new year opened in triumph, for Paul’s prophecy was fulfilled and Grenfell was returned with over a thousand majority. The sardonic Captain Owen-Hixon disappeared like the Devil in a pantomime but the new Lord Gilroy took his defeat very handsomely, congratulating Paul at the declaration of the poll and promising him ‘a return match’ in the years ahead. ‘Sour grapes notwithstanding I don’t envy your chap,’ he said, ‘or any Government taking office today! They have so many hot potatoes they can’t help but drop some of them! They can’t get a clear majority without leaning over backwards to bribe the Irish Home Rulers or the Labourites and what with Ulster, Home Rule, the reform of the Lords, the Navy League outcry, that ass of a Kaiser and the suffragettes, I wouldn’t wonder if the more thoughtful among them isn’t damned sorry they won!’
The prospects of stormy sessions ahead, however, did not seem to depress James when Paul drove him across the moor to catch the connection for the Cornish express, at Sorrel Halt. A whole year on home ground had revitalised him and his increased majority had boosted his morale, and yet, Paul told himself, he was a very different James from the man who had gone blithely to London after the 1904 bye-election. The struggle to relate conscience and humanity with the cut-and-thrust of life in the House showed in his face, deeply lined at forty-two, and in patches of grey at his temples and he made a jocular reference to the wear and tear of his nerves as they paced the little platform awaiting the train. ‘I’ve always said you have the best of it, Paul, guarding the grass roots down here and I don’t suppose you’d care to change places, would you?’
‘I’d sooner change places with Smut Potter or Norman Eveleigh,’ Paul said. ‘I haven’t been near London since I went there to try and bring Grace home; that was more than five years ago.’
‘Well, you’ll be combing the straw from your hair in June,’ James reminded him, ‘Claire is holding you to your promise to bring her up for the Coronation.’
‘Oh, I’ll do that,’ Paul told him, ‘for I can’t get out of it now but it’ll be a three-day stay and no longer. A drive round to see the decorations, a day watching the toing and froing and another for Claire to show off her new clothes—then home, with the harvest just round the corner!’
‘Well,’ James chuckled, ‘you were born a townsman but they always say converts are more catholic than the Pope! Here’s the train, so good-bye and again, thank you for your loyalty.’
From his seat on the box of the trap Paul watched the train round the long curve and then walked the cob over the moor, congratulating himself on his luck.
II
They had booked a small hotel overlooking St James’ Park and on the day of their arrival, whilst Claire was busy unpacking, Paul sat on the balcony and looked down on the evening idlers moving slowly along the wide paths and across the parched grass. There seemed to be hundreds of thousands of them and the bunting entwined the lamp-posts and the gilded arches catching the last rays of sun in the Mall, reminded him of the day he had crossed a city preparing for Edward’s coronation nine years ago. He thought, ‘I was young and green in those days, with no more than instinct to guide me in leaving this stew and breaking new ground! I hadn’t even made up my mind to buy Shallowford then, but now it seems as if I was born there and my father before me! Well, a devil of a lot of water has passed Codsall bridge since those days. People were still flaying poor old Kruger, and Lloyd George, now turning the country upside down with his precious budget, was no more than a comic turn with the Welsh gift of the gab! I wonder if Claire ever hankers after city life? She tried it for a spell but she soon came home and although she says we’re developing into a pair of bumpkins I don’t believe she really likes cities any more than I do!’, and he heard her call from the dressing room and came in to ask if she wanted to go out before dinner.
‘Go out? Why, of course I do!’ she called, still invisible, ‘why else do you suppose I’ve dressed myself up?’
‘I didn’t know you had,’ he said. ‘Come out and let’s have a look at you.’
‘Close your eyes then,’ she said and he closed them hearing the pleasant swish of her skirts as she moved into the bedroom and giving a gasp of astonishment that ended in a shout of laughter which he hastily choked back when he saw her frown.
‘What’s so funny about me?’ she demanded, tartly for her, but he moved round her once or twice and was no longer disposed to laugh but rather to wonder how a woman who so seldom got an opportunity of dressing for town, should succeed so spectacularly when the chance offered itself.
‘By George, you’re absolutely sensational, Claire!’ he told her, sincerely, ‘I only laughed out of shock! I’ve never seen you looking like that, not even on your wedding day!’
She was a summer’s evening study of white and apple green, a high-waisted skirt flowing away into a whipped-up torrent of sprigged lace that foamed out behind like a small, neat wake. Over a tight bodice she wore a green velvet hussar jacket, with frogged lapels and a stiff, turned-up collar. She had on a huge Gainsborough hat, one of the largest hats he had ever seen, worn at a tilt and crowned with green organdie gathered in half-a-dozen loosely tied bows and she was wearing the pearl necklace he had given her after the birth of the twins. In her right hand, clothed in an elbow-length suède glove, she carried a long-handled parasol with a white sword-knot swinging from it. He had noticed, of late, that she had been putting on weight but she was obviously well corseted under her coronation regalia for her figure seemed to him quite perfect, the waist as neat as the day he had first seen her in the yard of High Coombe farm, although even the merciless corset could not conceal the roundness of the hips and the generous contours of the bust. She blushed a little under his scrutiny and said, regretfully, ‘I didn’t realise how much I’d put on since Mary’s arrival! I ordered this dress in advance and I suppose it ought to be let out a little.’
‘Rubbish,’ he confronted her, ‘you’ve only put a little on in the right places and you don’t have to apologise to me. I like a woman to look like one, especially when she’s my wife. My only complaint is that the hat hides your lovely hair!’
‘I could hardly watch the Coronation bareheaded,’ she said. ‘After all, it’s only once in a lifetime and I don’t suppose we shall ever see another king crowned.’ Then she laughed, adding, ‘Do stop staring, darling, it can’t be that sensational! I bought every stitch of it in Paxtonbury,’ but he told her that he enjoyed staring and so would everyone else when they went out but that he wished they hadn’t got to go out, because she not only looked vice-regal but very provocative indeed.
‘I daresay,’ she told him, ‘but I’m not available for more than a chaste kiss right now and anyway my breathing is restricted, so do please behave yourself!’
‘Well, temporarily,’ he promised but drew her gently to him, complaining that the corset she was wearing converted her lovely rump into a rampart. She laughed at that and kissed him warmly saying, ‘Oh, we are lucky, Paul! I do love you so much! And this is for bringing me up, because I know you’d far sooner have stayed home!’, and she kissed him again, this time on the mouth but skipped away at once sensing that another kiss or two would make him unmanageable.
They went out, walking sedately along the edge of the lake and thence into the Mall, now crammed with sightseers, and from there to the Palace, to stare at the railings and royal standard, and then back again along Constitution Hill to Piccadilly, unrecognisable under a thousand flags and pennants and huge cardboard portraits of the King and Queen, printed in garish colours and wired against the tug of the breeze. She was so gay, and looked so desirable, that he felt they were well launched on a second honeymoon and Claire, when he told her this, admitted
that she was, in fact, far more ready to enjoy herself than she had been on her real honeymoon in Anglesey, four years before.
‘Now why should that be for you weren’t a particularly nervous bride,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact I was agreeably surprised now I come to think of it.’
‘Well, I started out terrified I can assure you,’ she admitted, ‘because I couldn’t hide the fact from myself that I was a country daisy succeeding an orchid! I suppose it didn’t show because … well … you didn’t rush me! You probably don’t remember, Paul, but you were very patient with me.’
‘Was I?’ he said as they passed into the foyer of their hotel and the commissionaire saluted. ‘Well, I’m not likely to be so patient on my second honeymoon, my dear,’ and because it was obvious from the doorman’s smirk that he had overheard, Claire whispered urgently, ‘Shhh, for heaven’s sake! I shall blush scarlet when I see that man in the morning.’
‘It’s my belief that you’ll have good cause to!’ he said laughing, and in this mood they went in to dinner.
As usual, he was soon heavily asleep. She knew no one who could drop off to sleep so quickly and sleep so soundly, notwithstanding the unfamiliar symphony of rattling carriage wheels and honking motors that was such a contrast to the midnight stillness of Shallowford. She did not feel sleepy, in spite of all the wine they had drunk and the boisterous interlude that had followed. Always, at times like this, she liked to lie still in his arms, and smile at herself and at him and as the increasing flow of traffic rolled under the window she thought, ‘He really does behave as though he married me this morning! It can’t be my new clothes, in spite of the impact they made on him, for he could hardly wait for me to take them off!’, and she chuckled, wriggling from under his arms and sitting up, hugging her knees and feeling happier than she ever remembered. It was a very wonderful thing, she thought, to have attained the degree of balance and intimacy that was theirs and had been theirs since the very beginning, and her mind went back to the day soon after his arrival in the Valley, when she had set out to capture him without knowing or even caring what kind of man he really was, or what qualifications she had for marriage to someone with his unusual sense of purpose and singlemindedness. She was glad, looking back, that there had been that near-fatal rift in their association and for the first time in her married life she could contemplate his first wife without jealousy, reflecting that she probably owed her a good deal for seasoning him as man and lover. She must, Claire thought, have been a sensual little minx, for the man now asleep beside her had very little in common with the shy, rather gawky youth she had enticed down by the mere. All his boyishness and uncertainty had been ironed out of him during his first marriage and the unhappy period that followed it yet it had left him with no kind of a grudge against women, as might have been expected. He was masterful but, to her mind, accomplished as a lover and what was more unusual unselfishly so. That, in itself, was a contradiction to all that young women of her generation had been taught to expect of a man once he had got a woman to bed, for how many husbands in the Valley regarded lovemaking as a mutual experience or took pains to ensure that it was so? Precious few, she would say, for the dice was heavily loaded against her sex in this respect, yet it was not so in their marriage and for this she would never cease to be grateful. She leaned over and kissed him lightly and wriggled back into his embrace and as she drifted over the edge of sleep she thought, ‘If we go on like this I shall have a baby every year and lose my figure altogether but I don’t care a row of beans! Not even if they arrive in pairs, like Andy and Steve!’
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 71
