by Carola Dunn
“You’re dining here, Addie?” Gwen entered from the corridor. “Did you tell Jennings?”
“No, but I gave my coat to that stupid maid you just hired. She’ll tell him.”
“Why should she? I doubt it would cross Dilys’s mind that you’d turn up for dinner so late without warning. Why on earth didn’t you ring up on the ’phone? There won’t be a place set for you.”
“For heaven’s sake, just ring for Jennings and tell him I’m here.”
Gwen looked ready to explode. Jack said quickly, “I’ll go and tell him, Gwen. You know we only ring for Jennings in dire emergencies, Addie.” His laughing, half-guilty look at Miller acknowledged that he’d been on the point of committing that sin a few minutes ago. He chucked his cigarette in the fireplace and went out to the corridor.
“Jennings would be useless in a dire emergency,” Addie pointed out. “It takes him hours to get from his pantry to the dining room. I can’t imagine why you don’t pension him off.”
“I’ve told you—he doesn’t want to go and Father won’t insist. If you want to argue with either or both, go ahead. Martin, would you mind pouring me a small sherry?”
“Coming up. Here’s your gin-gin, Mrs. Yarborough.”
Adelaide accepted her drink with an ungracious nod. Apparently, she disapproved of Martin Miller. She took a sip and pulled a face. “Ugh, I told Jack not to drown the gin!”
Jack returned just in time to hear her. An incipient squabble was interrupted by the arrival of Sir Harold and Lady Tyndall. A few minutes later, the connecting door to the dining room opened and the butler appeared. A bent, wizened figure in faded black, Jennings kept one hand on the doorjamb for support as he announced in a voice like a badly oiled hinge, “Dinner is served, m’lady.”
It was kind of Sir Harold to keep the old man on, Daisy thought. Though, on the other hand, he might be difficult to replace. These days, one didn’t have a string of footmen eager to move up to the top of the servants’ hierarchy. Doing without a butler would be a lowering of standards Sir Harold was unwilling to face, even if the one he had wasn’t much use.
Throughout dinner, Jennings stood by the sideboard, discreetly leaning against it, and in the creaky voice he seemed unable to lower to a butlerian undertone, he directed the two parlour maids who served the meal. The maids, one very young, one elderly, withdrew after serving each course, but Jennings remained propped in his place. Whether it was his inhibiting presence or a truce for the sake of digestion, dinner passed without any overt quarrelling, to Daisy’s relief. However, the polite conversation was decidedly strained.
Lady Tyndall led the ladies from the dining room, leaving the gentlemen—or two gentlemen and a “not quite” guest—to the port and brandy and cigars.
“They won’t be long,” Gwen whispered to Daisy. “Jack’s not keen on port, Martin loathes it, and Father hates sharing it with people who don’t appreciate it. I should think we’ll be able to get away in a quarter of an hour or so.”
“I’ll fetch my coat. What about your parents—do they know we’re going?”
“Gracious no! To a pub? They’d have forty fits. All right for the men, of course, but no lady would be seen in a public bar. The Three Ravens is perfectly respectable, though. I’ve been several times with Jack, and Babs goes down quite often to talk to the farm people about modern agricultural methods Father won’t consider, won’t even discuss. If it was good enough for his forefathers . . .” She grimaced.
“Then how will we explain leaving the house?”
“Jack’s going to tell them he’s taking us for a spin. It’s a clear night and the moon’s coming up.”
Clear and cold: Frost already sparkled on the grass when Jack and Daisy set off in the Triumph. He’d offered to take everyone in the family Crossley, but the other three elected to walk down the footpath to the village. Adelaide showed no disposition to want to join them. She was busy describing some frightfully clever exploit of her boys to their admiring grandparents.
Though the moonlight was beautiful, the chilly air nipping at Daisy’s ears almost made her wish she had asked Jack to put up the hood. She pulled her hat down and tucked in the motoring rug he had thoughtfully provided.
Her mind full of questions, she racked her brains for something to say which would appear neither nosy nor critical of his family or friend. She was about to enquire what part, if any, he was going to play in the fireworks display tomorrow, when he said abruptly, “I say, do you mind if I ask you something, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“Ask away. I won’t promise to answer.”
“No, of course not, if she told you in confidence. . . .The thing is, it’s what my father said, about Gwen and Miller. You heard, didn’t you? I just . . . I can’t imagine . . . I mean, he’s quite old!”
“Gwen’s my age. We’re no longer spring chickens, alas. I dare say you still think of her as your big sister. Well, in a way she still is, but you’re an adult yourself now.”
“She’s always been my favourite sister. She’s nearest to me in age, though she’s six years older. I’m twenty-one, so she’s . . .”
“Don’t say it!” Daisy laughed. “We ladies of a certain age prefer not to examine that particular number.”
“So I suppose Miller isn’t really too old for her, is he? Only, I haven’t seen any sign that they . . . care for each other particularly. Not that I’d mind if she married him. He’s a jolly good fellow, absolutely brilliant, and what does it matter if he’s not a gentleman? I mean, all that tommyrot is frightfully old-fashioned, don’t you think?”
“Rather. My husband’s father was a bank manager.”
“No, really? And your father was a viscount. It just goes to show!”
“But you can’t expect your parents to see it that way. Parents do tend to be antediluvian.”
“I suppose so,” Jack said disconsolately. “It’s just that Father thinking there’s something between them, even if there’s not, gives him one more reason to object to Miller. It’s all my fault.”
“What, exactly?”
“If I’d only broken it to him gradually! You see, he sent me to Cambridge to make the right sort of friends, punt on the Cam and row in the Mays, and generally kick up a lark. I should have told him when I first got interested in engineering.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I funked it. I knew he’d be angry. I mean, he’s always been jolly good to me, and let me do pretty much what I wanted, but I’d never before wanted most frightfully to do something I knew he’d strongly disapprove of. I suppose I thought, too, that perhaps I’d find I wasn’t so keen after all, and then he need never know I was buckling down to my books instead of boating on the river and developing a taste for fine old port.”
“When did you decide engineering was it for you?”
“I was pretty sure last summer, summer 1923, that is, and quite sure by the end of the Michaelmas term. I couldn’t decide which branch I wanted to go into—hadn’t even considered aeronautical—till Miller came to talk to us. Then he showed me around the factory.”
“Gwen said Mr. Miller came here last spring. Is that when you told your father? He’s surely had time to get over the shock!”
“No, I asked Miller not to say any more than that he’d taken me up in a ’plane. I was afraid Father might refuse to let me go back for the Easter term, my last term. There was nothing definite at that point anyway. They couldn’t give me a job till they saw how I did in the Tripos. They only take the top people, you know. There’s no room for mistakes with an aeroplane.”
“Gosh no!”
“Well, I didn’t do too badly,” Jack said modestly as they passed the gatehouse, now with lights in the upstairs windows. He swung the little car around the sharp bend into the lane with a verve that made Daisy clutch her seat. “They offered me a job. Since I wasn’t desperate to start earning a living, Miller suggested I should take the summer off before I started, and read all the latest stuff on aeronautics.”
“Summer’s long past,” Daisy pointed out.
They entered the village. Jack turned right into the main street and came to a halt in front of a many-gabled building of the inevitable Cotswold stone. The moon, a lantern, and the Triumph’s headlamps illuminated the inn sign: three ravens perching on the body of a fallen knight in armour.
“What a grim sign!”
“ ‘ “And I’ll pick out his bonny blue e’en,” ’ ” Jack quoted, grinning.
“ ‘Many a one for him makes moan . . .’ ” She didn’t attempt a Scots accent. “ ‘But none shall ken where he is gone. O’er his white bones when they are bare, the wind shall blow for evermair.’ But that’s the ‘Twa Corbies’—two ravens. ‘The Three Ravens’ is ‘God send every gentleman such hounds, such hawks, and such a leman.’ The hounds and hawks and his lady keep the ravens away.”
“I bow to your superior knowledge.”
“Well, they didn’t teach us any science at school, and not much arithmetic, but we did learn our literature.”
“Don’t tell Dawson, the landlord. He’s dashed proud of that sign. I’ll tell you what: If you don’t mind sitting here for a minute, I’ll pop in and see if the others are here yet. You won’t want to be the only lady present.”
Daisy wasn’t so sure of that. In spite of coat, hat, gloves, scarf, and a motoring rug, she was cold. But no doubt all sorts of rumours and speculation would go around the village if she walked in, pregnant, alone with Jack. She said, “Yes, do,” and tucked the rug tighter around her legs.
They had arrived just too soon for her to find out when and how Jack had broken the news of his grand ambition to his parents. On the other hand, she hadn’t been forced to deny or acknowledge any attraction between Gwen and Miller. In any case, she knew only one side of that aspect of the story.
Before Jack returned, she heard the other three approaching. Miller and Babs were discussing farm machinery. Glancing back, Daisy thought she saw Gwen holding hands with Miller, but away from the inn’s lantern the deceptive moonlight made it hard to be sure. Jack came out just then and hailed the walkers, and when they reached the car, Gwen and Miller were a good yard apart.
Three boys came up to them, pulling a handcart containing a bundle of old clothes vaguely human in shape.
“Penny for the guy!” they chanted. “Penny for the guy!”
Jack and Miller delved into their pockets for change and dropped a few coins into the outstretched cap. The boys, apparently impervious to cold, settled on the pavement near the door of the pub, waiting for customers to come out.
“Don’t you lay a finger on the car, or I’ll skin you alive,” Jack threatened.
Notably, the three glanced at Babs before swearing and crossing their hearts and hoping to die if the car came to any harm at their hands.
“Is that your guy?” Daisy asked Jack as they went in.
“No, they just throw something together as an excuse to beg for money to buy a few fireworks of their own. Ours is a work of art. I should know, I made it this year. Come to think of it, it’s rather a gruesome custom, isn’t it, Mrs. Fletcher?” Jack teased. “As gruesome as the inn sign. Burning an effigy, I mean. And Guy Fawkes wasn’t burnt at the stake anyway, he was hanged.”
4
The pub was snug, with a roaring fire in the hearth and crimsoncushioned oak settles black with age, as were the ceiling beams and the bar itself, at one end of the long room. The brass handles of the beer pumps gleamed through a haze of pipe smoke.
A dozen men and three dogs turned to stare at the newcomers in their evening frocks and dinner jackets. Daisy wondered if the Ravens really was the sort of pub where the presence of a strange female was acceptable. It was all very well for the Misses Tyndall, daughters of the lord of the manor, to waltz in as if they belonged. In fact, the building might well belong to their father, along with the rest of the village.
The men at the bar looked like local farmworkers and tradesmen, except for one stout fellow in a flashy checked suit, a commercial traveller perhaps. The checks reminded Daisy of Alec’s detective sergeant, Tom Tring, who was wont to say villains were so stunned by his suits that they didn’t notice who was wearing them until too late, when he collared them. Maybe the traveller’s clothes had the same effect on his customers—they didn’t notice what they were buying until they’d signed for it.
In the moment taken by this reflection, most of the men had turned back to their beer and chat, and the dogs to their patient waiting for their masters.
A couple of prosperous-looking farmers in leggings, sitting in a corner, stood up and nodded to Babs as she went to join them.
“Evening, Miss Tyndall,” called out the one with a round red face fringed with white.
“Evening, Miss Tyndall.” The second raised a hand in greeting. “Evening, Miss Gwen.”
“What will you have, chaps?” Jack asked them jovially. “Just let me get the ladies settled. Come here by the fire, Mrs. Fletcher. You look half-frozen. What will you have?”
“I’ll stick to ginger beer, thanks.” She sat down, and Gwen took the place beside her.
“Half of cider, Gwen? Right-oh. The usual for you, Miller?” Jack went to the bar.
As Miller joined Gwen and Daisy, she saw a middle-aged couple at a table at the far end of the room from the bar. They appeared to be finishing a meal, so perhaps they were staying at the inn. The woman had silver hair piled on top of her head in a loose, untidy bun. Her face was much more youthful—she was in her early forties perhaps, plump and good-humoured. She was beaming across the table at her companion, who had his back to Daisy.
He shook his head. Even from behind, Daisy sensed doubt and worry in the gesture. The woman said something vehement, pleading, and he got up slowly and reluctantly. A short, stocky man, he wore a new-looking blue suit. His face was very brown, except for the upper part of his forehead. He was definitely not happy as he walked towards the bar.
Miller interrupted her thoughts. “We’d like your opinion, Mrs. Fletcher. I’ve invited Gwen to go up for a sight-seeing flight, and she can’t make up her mind. Would you—not at present, I imagine, but in the normal way—would you ever consider going up in an aeroplane?”
“Actually, I already have. A year ago, Alec and I flew right across North America, from New York to Oregon, on the West Coast.”
“Daisy, you didn’t!” Gwen gasped. “Was it fun?”
Remembering that cold, cramped, noisy, endless flight and the hair-raising bits when they zigzagged between the snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, Daisy said, “I wouldn’t exactly call it fun, not overall. But the first bit was, and that’s all you’d be doing. I wouldn’t mind flying to Paris in an ‘air-liner,’ for instance.”
They peppered her with questions, Gwen about her adventures in America, Miller about the type of aeroplane, flying conditions, American airfields, and similar matters. Daisy was laughingly confessing her entire ignorance of the capacity of the fuel tanks when Jack brought their drinks.
“Half of ginger beer, Mrs. Fletcher. Half of cider, Gwen. Pint of the best bitter, Miller.”
“Thanks.”
“I say, Mrs. Fletcher, would it be frightfully rude of me to go and have a few words with those people over there? They’re from Australia. I was talking to the chappie, Gooch, at the bar, and he said his wife’s originally from this part of the world. She’s heard of our Bonfire Night do but never attended and wanted to know if we’d mind their coming along with the village people. I just want to go and assure Mrs. Gooch that will be quite all right.”
“Why don’t you ask them to join us?” Daisy suggested. “We—you, rather—could pull up a couple more chairs.”
“They’re not what he calls ‘flash,’ which I take to mean gentry,” Jack warned.
“Jack, how can you say such a thing?” Gwen demanded.
Her brother glanced at Miller and flushed. “Sorry, old chap. The thing is, I forget.”
“I’ll take that
as a compliment,” Miller said dryly.
“Ask them over,” Daisy urged. “I’ve never met any Australians, and all is grist to my journalistic mill, you know. Presumably they’re not from the absolute dregs of society or they couldn’t have afforded the passage to England. They look perfectly respectable.”
So Miller brought two more chairs to the table while Jack fetched the Gooches. Mrs. Gooch was sensibly dressed in a grey woollen frock—merino, thought Daisy, with vague memories of geography lessons—but adorned with a big chunky gold brooch set with a huge blue-green opal. She appeared to be in quite a flutter, somewhere between nervous and jubilant, more so than the situation warranted.
Jack introduced the couple and seated Mrs. Gooch with all the courtesy of a well-brought-up young man. He sat down beside her and asked whereabouts in the district she came from.
“Evesham,” she said. “You’ve lived all your life here, haven’t you, just up the hill? Did you go away to school?” Her voice, tentative at first, mixed the soft, familiar cadence of Worcestershire and the sharper tones of Australian English.
Mr. Gooch spoke broad Australian. He was sitting opposite Daisy, so she found herself involved in the conversation between him and Miller. The Gooches now lived in Perth, in Western Australia, he told them. He had gone west from Victoria in ’92 when the gold was found at Coolgardie, and set up in business in the outback supplying miners with everything they needed.
“Started out with billies and boots and beer. A lot of them wanted to pay with gold, so I told ’em good-oh and got into the gold business.”
“ ‘Billies’?” Daisy asked.
“What you might call a kettle, ma’am, or a teapot, but it’s just a big tin can. Out in the bush, you boil water over a fire and drop in a handful of tea leaves, to wash down the damper and ’roo steak. And I sold ’em the flour for the damper and the knives to cut the steaks.”
