Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By)

by R. F Delderfield

  There was little or no rhythm about their love making. He would be stirred by any number of tiny, inconsequential things, a cluster of stray tendrils on her neck that caught a gleam of winter sunshine, the slow ripple of her breasts as she reached up to put something in place and what was singular about her in this respect was that she never used the excuse of a task or appointment to bridle or postpone his demands but would say, with a frankness that amused him, ‘Now? Well really . . . !’ and would cease whatever she was doing and accommodate him, initially with an almost complaisant air but soon with a cordiality that began to manifest itself the moment he laid hands on her. In this respect, as in others, they remained lovers and were seldom conventional as regards time and place. If the impulse touched him after the children and servants had gone to bed and they were together in the library of a winter evening, they would sometimes repeat their impromptu encounter of Hermitage Hallowe’en night before the fire and whenever this happened the process assumed a kind of lighthearted, unselfconscious ritual, beginning with his leisurely undressing of her and praising of each part of her, as though to prolong the occasion as long as possible. There was a stage, however, beyond which she would show impatience and then, when they were still, she would pretend to a modesty and delicacy that she did not possess and never had possessed, and he would tease her unmercifully but secretly he was immensely vain of his ability to awake such unthinking response in her. Intimate moments such as these brought her a disproportionate satisfaction, for she too had her vanities and they concerned, as well as his delight in her body, his virility, a virility that seemed somehow to spring from the valley around him, as though he were able, by some acquired magic practised over the years to catch and distil the fecundity of the countryside, storing it in his loins to bestow upon her as proof of his achievement. This enormous gusto in him, this bonus bounty of the fields and woods he loved, was something she prized even above her children, for she was persuaded that it was something rare that neither Grace Lovell nor any woman in the Valley could have conjured from him. It was partly this naive pride in his masculinity that invested her with the power to match and surpass his easily aroused passion. She sensed that he possessed her not only as a woman but as the consuming instrument of his lust for life in the place he had made for himself in this gentle wilderness. She was a woman not much given to extravagant fancies but in this realm the wildness of her imagination had few limits. She saw herself then not as Claire Derwent, a farmer’s daughter married to a man who had purchased his place among them with pounds, shillings and pence, but as consort to an almost godlike being who used her flesh as an altar to express his strange obsession with the fruitfulness and timelessness of the Valley, with every flower and cornstalk that grew in it, and every human or animal who lived and multiplied hereabouts, and it was acute awareness of this that made her reckless of giving, so that she felt at times that she could never absorb enough of him or demonstrate how dedicated she was to the gratification of his senses. Eagerness to convey this, communicating itself as it did to every nerve in her body as she enfolded and enclosed him sometimes half-stupefied him with delight.

  And yet, in more mundane spheres, there were times when she called the tune, when an issue arose that encouraged her to make a stand and whenever this happened, when she once made it clear that she was determined to have her way, she could usually influence him without much trouble. This had been so in the case of Simon’s renunciation of hunting and like matters but perhaps her most signal victory was in respect of the car he brought home on the occasion of the birth of ‘Whiz’.

  It was a 1911 Belsize, a great, square, brass-snouted monster, purchased second-hand from a Paxtonbury draper who had lost his nerve on the second outing and left it unused in his coach-house for almost two years. Paul decided to buy it after hearing Claire say it was a pity the family could never travel far afield as a group and after getting Frisby, the Paxtonbury coach builder, to service it and give him a few lessons in driving he piloted it home across the moor in dashing if somewhat erratic style, deriving unexpected pleasure out of his mastery of the brute and causing Eveleigh’s foreman, who saw him come bouncing down from the water-shed, to run up the hedge in alarm, scarcely able to believe his eyes when he recognised the driver.

  About a fortnight after Claire had come downstairs he suggested a family expedition into Paxtonbury and after some hesitation Claire got the elder children ready, veiled herself in a beekeeper’s bonnet and they set off, little Mary sitting between Paul and Simon in the front, Claire and the exuberant twins in the back. Simon, holding Mary’s hand to give her confidence, looked very solemn but the Pair squealed in unison when Paul clashed the gears at the foot of the drive and wedged the lever into its tortuous gate, so that the Belsize (christened The Juggernaut by Claire) leaped forward like a steeplechaser and came to a shuddering halt between the stone pillars.

  ‘Are you sure you can manage it, Paul?’ Claire asked anxiously and he said huffily that he certainly could for how else could he have driven the fifteen miles from Paxtonbury? He got out and swung the heavy starting-handle and soon they were moving at a steady twenty miles an hour along the river road, past the Home Farm, where one of the biblical shepherds swung his hat and cheered, past Codsall Bridge, where Eveleigh’s cows turned tail and stampeded across the water meadow, then hard right up the unsurfaced incline to the moor where, long ago, Martin Codsall had taken his wife Arabella on a John Gilpin’s ride to prevent her intervening at her son’s wedding. And here, almost at the top of the hill, the engine coughed and fell silent, so that they were poised on a gradient of one-in-six, with no room to turn and no hope of breasting the hill.

  He climbed out again, assured them of his confidence in himself as an engineer and swung the startling-handle until the sweat ran down his face but nothing happened and Mary’s faith in her father’s infallibility faltered so that she began to cry. Simon did his best to comfort her, declaring that Father would soon have them on the move again, while the twins shrieked offers of help from the back but Claire held them back, privately regretting her share in sponsoring the expedition and reflecting that, apart from the baby safe in her cot, all her eggs were now wedged in a single, unpredictable basket. Paul said there was nothing for it but a careful reverse back to the river road, where, if necessary, Simon could run and borrow ropes and a pair of Eveleigh’s cart-horses.

  He pretended to treat the matter as a great joke and had she been alone with him she might have humoured him but the safety of her brood was no laughing matter to Claire and she said, very sharply, ‘Wait then, while we all get out!’ and when the twins clamoured to remain she gave each a smart box on the ear that sent them scrambling on to the road, after which she opened the nearside front door and ordered Simon to bring Mary out and wait with the twins on the safe side of the hill.

  ‘Look here,’ Paul protested, ‘if I get her started I shan’t be able to stop again without the engine dying. Why can’t you stay put and wait for her to spark when I slam her in reverse?’ but Claire said firmly that her duty was to look after the children, and what he did with The Juggernaut was his business, so after telling her she was making an unnecessary fuss he released the brake, missed his gear again and zigzagged all the way down the hill backwards, his steering made wildly erratic by the pressure he was obliged to apply to the handbrake.

  He got safely down and they followed him in a cautious group, finding his temper had not improved for he was using language that made the twins and Simon giggle and Mary glance fearfully at her mother. Claire said then that she would walk the children home and send Honeyman out with two cart-horses and ropes but Paul, declaring that such mass desertion would make him the laughing stock of the Valley, ordered them to remain, saying that all he needed was a shove along the flat. An open quarrel was narrowly averted by the timely arrival of Tod Glover, an engaging nineteen-year-old who was Old Honeyman’s nephew and had recently forsaken the land to work for a
Whinmouth hackney-carriage proprietor owning an eighteen-seater charabanc. Tod, cycling back from the Whinmouth direction, at once offered his services, inspecting the Belsize with the respect his ancestors would have reserved for its owner. As the only man within artillery range with the rudiments of a mechanical training Tod was regarded as the Valley witchdoctor and Paul welcomed him as the one person capable of rescuing his dignity. The lad had the bonnet cover off in a trice and after tinkering for some moments, and giving the handle a swing or two, he said, with a grin, ‘All she needs is a drink, Squire! When did you last fill her up?’

  ‘I haven’t put any petrol in since I brought her home,’ Paul admitted ruefully and the insertion of a twig showed that the tank was bone dry.

  ‘How about that can on the running board?’ asked Tod, trying not to look superior when Paul admitted that he thought the can contained water and after a sniff to make sure Tod made a funnel of paper and within minutes the Belsize was climbing the hill again, Paul maintaining a discreet silence all the way to Paxtonbury.

  ‘Well,’ said Claire, after an uneventful journey home, and insistence upon the entire family taking a bath to rid themselves of layers of white dust, ‘it was nice of you to buy a motor for us, but I can’t help thinking we should be much cleaner and far safer without one! It would be promising, I think, if you had a mechanical bent like young Tod but you haven’t and never will have, so why not admit it, and stick to horse and trap?’

  ‘That’s a ridiculous stand to take simply because I ran out of petrol,’ he said. ‘It’s high time we got used to motors and I’ll master this if it’s the last thing I do!’

  It almost was; a day or so later, having refused to engage Tod as a chauffeur, he came bumbling down the steep drive, clashed his gears at the gate and shot across ten yards of soft ground straight into the Sorrel, carrying ten yards of paling with him. There had been some heavy rainfall and the water above the ford was five feet deep. The Belsize plunged in nose down, looking like a primeval monster maddened by thirst and only the fact that he had managed to unlatch the door whilst ploughing through the iris bed enabled Paul to free himself before the heavy vehicle sank into the soft mud of the river bed.

  Help came from all directions. Matt, one of the shepherd twins, hauled him ashore and Honeyman and Henry Pitts, summoned from the lodge where they were conferring with John Rudd, managed to get a rope under the rear wheels just before they disappeared from view. When Claire was summoned she found the river bank seething with activity as Home Farm horses struggled with the hopeless task of hauling the Belsize clear. What astounded her was the fact that Paul did not seem cured of his obsession. Instead of going back to the house to change he remained on the bank to supervise salvage operations, snarling at everybody who advised him to get into dry clothes. He was there for an hour or more during which time no progress was made, apart from the motor being anchored by ropes to saplings and the following day, to nobody’s surprise, he had a heavy cold which did not improve his temper.

  Claire said, as she dosed him with whisky and water, ‘What do you intend to do with The Juggernaut if you ever do get it out?’ and he said, grumpily, ‘clean it up, get young Tod to service it and have another go.’

  She said, with unexpected firmness, ‘You’ll leave it right where it is!’ and when he exclaimed in protest, arguing that it was she who prompted him to buy, she went on, ‘That was before I realised you haven’t the temperament essential to anyone setting out to master one of those things! I admire you for trying and I shouldn’t have to remind you that I usually back you to the hilt when you set your mind on doing something, but this is different; the children are involved and I’m obliged to make a stand.’

  ‘Now how the devil are the children involved in my driving a motor?’ he demanded. ‘I’m not likely to let them play with it, am I?’

  ‘Sooner or later you’ll expect them to ride in it,’ she said. ‘It’s only by chance that Simon wasn’t beside you yesterday and if he had been he would have been drowned! Did you think of that while you were prancing about on the bank in wet clothes, catching this cold and working off your bad temper on people who were trying to help you?’

  He had not thought of it but he knew it was true. Up to the last minute Simon had intended to accompany him but Paul, impatient to be off, had made a trial run down the drive whilst Simon slipped inside for coat and scarf. He said, reflecting how specially protective Claire always felt about Grace’s child, ‘You’re right. If anything had happened to him you would have found it hard to forgive me, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I should have found it impossible, Paul,’ she said, calmly, ‘even though indirectly, it would have been my fault! As it is, we were lucky and I mean to profit by the lesson, even if you won’t! I can’t stop you amusing yourself with your new toy but I won’t have you take any of the children out ever again and that’s final!’

  It was an edict and he accepted it as such but for all that her attitude still piqued him, perhaps because, for the first time since their marriage he had failed to impress her.

  ‘Suppose we retired old Chivers and signed on Tod as a chauffeur?’ he suggested. ‘He could give me lessons and I can’t be such a damned fool as to fail to get the hang of it in time.’

  ‘Paul,’ she said, more gently, ‘I know you better than anyone and a lot better than you know yourself! You’ll never make a motor-driver because you haven’t got that kind of patience. You’re a bull-at-a-gate person and machines need a light touch. You are entitled to risk your own neck but you’re not risking my children’s! I don’t often oppose you but in this I’m adamant and I’m not saying this because of what happened yesterday but because your prejudice against gadgets is so great that you ought never to be trusted with one as lethal as that motor!’ She smiled, for the first time since the subject had been raised. ‘Shall I tell you what my advice is? Leave The Juggernaut as a local landmark and ‘go back to horses!’

  And this, after a good deal of grumbling about wasted money was what he did. All that winter, when the river was high, the Belsize was the plaything of otters and water voles but when the floods receded part of the wreck was revealed, a permanent testimony to the Squire’s short-lived attempt to adapt himself to the twentieth century. From then on the mechanisation of the valley proceeded without him. Soon the German professor appeared in Coombe Bay High Street in his new Humber, driven by his son, Gottfried, and then Eveleigh hired a traction engine to haul away the trunks of elms felled on his western boundary. Now and again, in that final glow of the Edwardian afternoon, an occasional motor was seen on the river road and occasionally, very occasionally, power-driven engines were used to harrow stubborn ground that had long lain fallow. But for the most part the horse continued to flourish and Claire consolidated her victory and in the main the people of the Valley were at one with her. It was Henry Pitts, watching the hired traction-engine pull roots as easily as a dentist extracts teeth, who voiced the opinion of witnesses when he said, with one of his slow, rubbery grins, ‘Tiz quicker an’ neater than us can do it wi’ chains an’ plough horses but somehow it baint real farmin’, be it?’

  Chapter Three

  I

  Looking back on the last summer of the old world Paul was always struck by two features of that time; the weather and the focus of attention on Irish affairs to the exclusion of everything else, including Germany.

  The weather he remembered as being the most pleasant of any comparable season he had spent in the Valley, wann and consistently sunny by day, with gentle rain at night so that crops ripened early and even the habitual pessimist Eveleigh, spoke guardedly of excellent harvest prospects. In some ways it resembled his first summer at Shallowford when there seemed to have been blazing sunshine for weeks on end but there was no accompanying drought, as there had been in 1902, and under a temperate sky the Valley burgeoned with promise and fruitfulness so that people went gaily about their work and only a f
ew local wiseacres like Eph Morgan expressed doubts about what was likely to happen when the Irish were given their precious Home Rule and began civil war.

  James Grenfell was down in early June and Paul invited him to dine with Professor Scholtzer with whom he was now on cordial terms. James liked the old German on sight and it was over their port that night that Paul took part in his first discussion on the dangers inherent in the rivalry Germany, France, Russia and Great Britain had been practising for more than a decade. He was mildly surprised when the Professor put forward a theory that, without justifying the Kaiser’s antics in the diplomatic field, at least shed a little light on them for he declared that, rightly or wrongly, fear of encirclement was very real to many Germans, even intelligent Germans. The Junkers, he told them in his expansive but guttural English, were anxious to come to some agreement with Great Britain and their fear of France and Russia was not merely a ruse to compel politicians into granting more and more money for military purposes. They saw Russia as a steam-roller driven by barbarians and France as an irresponsible nationalist mob determined to avenge the defeat of 1870. ‘I am not excusing them, my friends,’ he went on earnestly, when James Grenfell pointed out that sooner or later Germany would be obliged to restore the provinces of Alsace-Lorraine, ‘I try to make you look at Europe through German eyes. Only if you British do that can we stop this Gadarene rush to destruction.’ James said, with a smile. ‘Oh, I don’t question your thesis, Professor, but surely it is generally accepted that war, even on the scale of 1870, is an impossibility? Threats and border incidents yes—we’ll always have those, but civilised nations, grinding one another to pieces? That’s a very different matter, if only on account of cost!’