Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By)

by R. F Delderfield

  ‘Look at it!’ he said. ‘Six miles wide and twelve deep!’

  ‘And we don’t own the half of it,’ she said, ‘so stop crowing!’

  ‘It doesn’t matter a damn who owns it,’ he said, ‘for even old Gilroy’s patch is more England than Trafalgar Square! I’ll tell you what I have in mind and you’re the first to hear of it! We’ll put on a coronation show of our own that will be talked about when George and Mary are nudging their jubilee! And I don’t mean simply a Valley affair but a real show, with brass bands, a sports programme, fatstock competitions, rifle butts, a gymkhana, a cart-horse parade, the lot! We’ll get entries from the Paxtonbury territorials, who start their annual camp in a fortnight, and from the Yeomanry over in Heronslea Park and we’ll get Gilroy to bring his hirelings across the Teazel to get a drubbing from our chaps in everything from pig-skittling to Cornish wrestling! How does that sound for a start?’

  ‘Absurdly ambitious,’ she said, her lip trembling, ‘but I’m all in favour if it improves your temper!’

  He kissed her then, a great, hearty kiss full on the mouth, like a farmer returning home after a successful day at the market. Back here he was so like a great, hulking boy that she could never think of him as a person born and raised in a city. He said, ‘By God, we’ll show them how to go about things! Get up, Ned!’ and he slapped the reins on the cob’s back and began the steep descent to the river road.

  His enthusiasm infected the entire Valley within a couple of days, as he lunged up and down the estate, dashing off letters to Honorary Secretaries as far afield as Whinmouth and—this astounded everyone who knew him—getting the house connected to the Paxtonbury Telephone Company, so that he could make direct contact with the Gilroy estate and the people and organisations to whom he looked for active co-operation. There had been all manner of free luncheons and sports meetings arranged in the district as part of the national coronation fiesta but most of these had been organised on a local basis. The promise of valuable prizes and free beer worked wonders upon the isolationist spirit of communities half-a-day’s journey north, west and east of the Valley so that the event, given good weather, looked like proving the most spectacular since the Heronslea three-day fair at the time of Victoria’s first jubilee, a celebration still spoken of by the middle-aged and elderly of the Valley as ‘the day us all got dead drunk at Gilroy’s expense’.

  The local military organisations proved co-operative, Territorials and Yeomanry entering sports teams in most of the contests, and when it was clear that the number of contestants and spectators was likely to exceed two thousand Paul shifted the venue from Big Paddock to the Codsall stubble fields now lying fallow. Tents and enclosures began to mushroom there within days of his return home and the ringing of the new telephone bell in the hall drove Mrs Handcock frantic, for she swore that she could never disassociate it in her mind from a fire-alarm. Only the sudden return of Ikey, on a month’s furlough, saved her from resignation as Chef Extraordinary, and her husband Horace had to be taken on one side and told to persuade her that the Coronation Jamboree would make Shallowford history, so that her loyalty to the Squire was at stake. Apart from this Horace was a great help to Paul during these feverish days for he was a great authority on the many slumbering feuds that existed between Heronslea and the county border and showed the Squire how to exploit them in the interest of competitive events. Three silver and four brass bands entered in the band contests and there were over a hundred and forty gymkhana entries for a dozen major events. Two hunting packs promised support and rural athletes came in from as far away as Barnstaple, whereas the rifle and clay-pigeon events were so popular that they had to be shot off in heats days in advance. A fifty-yard stretch of the river was dredged for tub-racing­ and a wrestling ring was built west of the ford. There were all manner­ of agricultural contests, from fence-splitting to hedging-­and-ditching­ and the inevitable firework display advertised a magni­ficent set-piece­ of the Spithead Naval Review, with guns firing rocket salvoes­ over the avenue chestnuts.

  John Rudd, although approving of the venture as a whole, shook his head over the probable cost, declaring that it would set the estate back five hundred pounds, but Paul said they could regard it as money spent on advertising and that the Valley as a whole would benefit from new contacts and the opening up of fresh markets in the area. Rudd thought this was eyewash but he did not say so for by then he had had a word with Claire, who described what had happened on their last day in London. Thinking it over he agreed with her that a diversion on this scale was what Paul needed. As for the others, the hard core of the Valley tenantry, they formed a kind of staff about Paul, and, notwithstanding the fine weather, work on the farms was shamefully scamped throughout the first week of July. The stolid, conscientious Eveleigh took charge of the sports meeting, Sam Potter the agricultural competitions, and Henry Pitts, glad of such a good excuse to take a holiday, appointed himself Squire’s adjutant, with Ikey Palfrey as an aide-de-camp tearing up and down the Valley on his chestnut hunter. And each of these officers had auxiliaries outside the Shallowford area, men like Eph Morgan, the builder, who, as a Welshman, declared himself the only man qualified to supervise the musical programmes, and Tom Williams, the fisherman, who provided the tubs for the river-race and cartloads of hazards for the obstacle races. The women of the Valley rallied to Claire’s sub-committee so that the smell of baking rose over the Sorrel like a benediction and so much food was prepared that Martha Pitts, carrying her quota into the refreshment marquee, declared that the twelve apostles would be needed to carry away the surplus by the basketful as they had when the five thousand were fed beside Galilee.

  The sky began to cloud over on the last day of preparation and it looked as though the spell of fine weather was about to end so that the men worked on frantically after dusk and when it was too dark to swing a mallet assembled to broach the first of the fifteen-gallon casks that had been hauled into the Valley by Whinmouth drays and were now ranged in an imposing row in the refreshment tent. Said Henry Pitts, his cheerful face clouded with anxiety, ‘All us wants now is a bliddy downpour, an’ us looks as if us’ll get it!’ but to Claire’s relief Horace Handcock (whose oracular powers extended to the weather field) licked his thumb, looked wise, and announced majestically that there would be a change of wind during the night and that the sun would shine all the following day. Then Sam Potter, raising his pewter tankard, declared that as the place would be full of foreigners tomorrow he proposed they all took this opportunity to drink the health of the Squire and everybody murmured agreement and downed their pints in one while Claire, glancing across the table at Paul, saw that he was touched by their loyalty and added her silent prayer for a cloudless day.

  She was awake and at the window soon after five, watching the grey light creep over the Bluff and cross the river to the little town of tents, booths and enclosures west of the ford. It was childish, she thought, to be so concerned over a country fête of which there were probably a thousand arranged for that day in various parts of the British Isles but it seemed to her an issue of tremendous importance for so much work had gone into the event and not an inconsiderable amount of money. She continued to stand watching the sky while his snores reached her from the bed, and presently the shadows across the river retreated to the Teazel Valley and she saw cotton-wool mist steal in from the sea, which told her that calm weather could be expected for the surest sign of rain in the Valley was a clear view to the south-west. She went back to the bed and shook him and when he only muttered and rolled over on his back, she slid her hand along the dark stubble of his chin so that the short bristles crackled and he sat up suddenly wide awake and exclaimed, ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Set fair,’ she said, ‘so get up and shave! You forgot to yesterday and your chin is like a quickset hedge!’

  He passed his hand across his cheek and grinned, ‘So I did,’ he said, swinging his feet to the floor, ‘I was so damned busy! Have you
been lying awake worrying about rain?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ she said. ‘I invariably do your worrying for you! Now hurry up, Paul, there’s a lot to do before breakfast!’

  ‘Aye, there is that,’ he admitted, but despite her impatient protest he caught her round the waist as she crossed to the dressing-room and holding her for a moment said, ‘It wouldn’t by any fun without you, Claire! I don’t suppose I should lead a different life married or single but it wouldn’t be any fun, you understand?’ and he gave her a bristly kiss on the neck and went whistling along the passage to his tub.

  She looked at herself in the mirror, wasting more precious time she told herself but there was time enough to smile at her reflection and say, ‘Claire Craddock, you’re odiously smug and he’s smug too! Maybe we’re all rather smug down here far away from it all and we’ll stay so as long as we can!’

  II

  By extending the area of the Jamboree beyond the Valley and inviting entries from districts north of Paxtonbury, east to the county border, and west to Gilroy’s estates, Paul had not intended to stress the competitive element but, as Horace Handcock warned him, an occasion like this would unleash local patriotism on a formidable scale and Horace must have known his west-country men for the Jamboree soon lost its national flavour and entered the arena of local partisanship, with substantial bets being laid on the top score of the various competing units. These units were basically geographical and the intense rivalry between them was not finally resolved until a match had been applied to the set-piece of the new King and Queen. That, however, was very late in the day and in the meantime competition was intense, for superimposed upon geographical backgrounds was the rivalry between the civilians and the Territorials and the Yeomanry, so that sometimes there was a conflict of loyalties. By afternoon the general scheme of the contest had sorted itself out and the amateur bookmakers were at last able to introduce some kind of pattern into their wagers.

  The Valley gained a headstart when Rose Derwent, on her steeplechaser Tawnyboy, won the principal event of the Gymkhana. One of Gilroy’s stable-lads rode her to a close finish after a pile up at the water-jump and she streaked down the flat with little more than a nose to spare.

  Then, to the Valley’s surprise and disgust, the famed Goliath of Bideford, a hot favourite for the Cornish wrestling championship, was vanquished in the final by a Horse Artilleryman from Paxtonbury. It seemed that clearing Potter land and digging Potter wells had not provided the right training for this kind of contest, despite the fact that Jem Pollock still looked a magnificent specimen of manhood in his leopard-skin. The men of the Valley, however, seeing him thrown three times in succession in the heats, were not deceived and dispersed wondering if any man, no matter how thick of thigh and broad of chest, could be expected to keep two Potter girls quiescent and still triumph in the wrestling ring. Anyway, he was badly beaten, and several less well-regulated fights threatened to break out between territorials and agriculturalists as a result of the verdict. Jem took his defeat well, declaring his opponent a master of the art but in the dressing tent Cissie and Violet Potter felt ashamed and blamed the issue on Meg’s insistence that Jem should enter the contest with a full belly. They had cause to complain. In the interests of the Valley they had denied themselves his comforting presence for almost a week and had looked on glumly that morning when Meg had sent him out fortified by five fried eggs, three pounds of fried potatoes and a dozen rashers of green bacon.

  Lord Gilroy’s team won the hedging and ditching contest and a West Dorset silver band was judged the winner of the band contest but Sam Potter brought the Valley to the forefront again with his brilliant exhibition of rail-splitting. It was a joy to watch him straddling a great beech log, whirling his woodsman’s axe as though it had been a conductor’s baton. The sweat poured down his naked back as he worked his way towards the tapering end, occasionally exchanging his axe for wedges and a fourteen-pound sledge until, like a neatly divided apple, the lot split down the middle.

  A curious thing happened in the final of the clay-pigeon contest where Smut Potter, to everyone’s amusement, came face to face with Dave Buller, the Heronslea keeper whose scars had cost Smut three years and eight months behind bars. Paul, when he saw the pair take up their stand, expressed anxiety but John Rudd laughed at him, declaring that Dave bore Smut no malice. And neither did he, it seemed, for when Smut won, he went up to him and wrung his hand saying, cheerfully, ‘Well, Smut, you baint lost your touch I zee!’ and everybody within earshot applauded the keeper’s sportsmanlike attitude.

  Other highlights of the day were the tub race, won by the Yeomanry after all their competitors had capsized and the Ladies’ Pancake Tossing sprint, won in fine style by Elinor Codsall, mother of three but still as fleet of foot as when she was a slip of a girl. Ikey increased the Valley’s lead before tea by winning the mile, with half a lap in hand, but the tug-of-war proved almost as big a disappointment as the wrestling for despite Jem Pollock as anchor, the Territorials dragged the Sorrel men over the mark in a series of expert heaves and pulled into overall second place by going on to win the open relay.

  By six o’clock, when points had been totted up after the ankle competition and fancy-dress events (events sporting men discounted and excluded from their wagers) the Valley was only one point ahead and the atmosphere was charged with excitement as competitors lined up for the most spectacular event of the day, a two-lap trap-race, with no pettifogging conditions imposed on it and here, it seemed, the Terriers were favourites and a win would give them a clear five-points lead.

  The day had been intensely hot, with distant thunder rumbling beyond the Bluff and when the stewards cleared the course word came that Eveleigh’s eldest boy, Gilbert, who had been training the Codsall skewball Firefly for the event, had sprained his wrist getting ashore in the tub race and had been obliged to withdraw. In the few minutes left the Valley was canvassed for a substitute but none with any chance of holding off the strong challenge came forward, so that a howl of dismay rose from the ropes as Eveleigh, looking even more unsmiling than usual, began to lead Firefly out of the line-up. Paul, standing alongside the starter, said philosophically, ‘Well, that’s that, John! The Terriers have it in the bag,’ but John said suddenly, ‘Look here, they needn’t have! You can handle a trap smartly enough, get up there and show ’em,’ and to Paul’s surprise Claire, overhearing the challenge, said, ‘Do it, Paul! Even if you don’t really care who wins everyone else in the Valley does!’ So Paul peeled off his coat, donned a steeplechaser’s crash hat and climbed into the box to the accompaniment of the biggest cheer of the day but feeling far less confident of his ability to negotiate the bends than were his supporters.

  There were five entries but only the Terrier looked dangerous and Paul was relieved to be drawn on the inside, a starting position that seemed likely to exploit Firefly’s reputation as a flying starter. He thought, as he picked up the reins, ‘Good God, this is ridiculous! I feel more nervous than I did out on the Veldt, or fishing those Germans ashore in the cove, and all over a footling chariot race in one of my own meadows!’

  Then they were off, with Firefly gaining a clear yard in a couple of bounds and he held on to his inside place round the first bend as the ponies went into a stretched gallop on the slight downslope of the flat. The pace was terrifying. Never had he moved so fast behind a horse and he thought, as he dragged Firefly round the second bend and into the straight to complete the first lap, that he must have been an ass to let Henry Pitts and Will Codsall override him on the potential dangers of this event. On the third bend he heard a wild shout, and the splintering of wood behind him but it was not until he had started the final lap that he saw what had happened. Three of the traps had crashed in a wheel-lock on the second bend and were only dragged clear as he pounded straight down on the mêlée with the Terrier drawing level and half-standing in his box as he lashed his pony to overtake at the second bend.

 
The spectators now seemed to go mad in a body, for as the two traps flashed by neck-and-neck they poured from behind the ropes and capered into the centre of the course, and then, as the two survivors entered the straight again, Paul realised he had the race in hand for the Terrier dropped back and Firefly crossed the finishing line with a length in hand and Paul had to use all his strength to avoid ploughing on into the crowd now scattered all over the track. He said, as an exultant Henry Pitts jumped for the pony’s head and brought him to a halt, ‘The next time you insist on a chariot race you can damned well compete yourself, Henry!’ but Henry only banged him on the back and bellowed, ‘Us ’ave shown ’em, Squire! Us ’ave shown ’em!’ and every man, woman and child in the Valley agreed with him, even Claire, who had watched the race with her heart in her mouth feeling sick at the thought that, if Paul had been injured, she would have blamed herself for the rest of a guilty life.

  Paul went over to inspect the damage to the others and found, to his great relief, that all three drivers had escaped with bruises, although their vehicles were shattered, two of them beyond repair. The Yeomanry competitor was undismayed for his entry had been official and the trap was on the inventory of the barracks, but Paul felt sorry for the Dorset man, a young farmer now dolefully inspecting the wreck of his gaily-painted rig. ‘What do you value it at?’ he asked, and the man said it was his father’s trap and the old man had paid four pounds ten shillings for it at Paxtonbury market only a month ago. ‘My agent, Mr Rudd, will give you the money out of funds,’ he said and feeling magnanimous as winner of such a contest, added, ‘and here’s an extra ten shillings for danger money!’