The children intrigued him. They were already talking about what regiment Alexander would enter at seventeen, and even from here he could spot the boy's qualifications to pick up the Swann tradition where his father had laid it down. There was a foretaste of the parade ground strut in the little fellow's movements from porch to paddock, a touch of the cavalryman's pride in the way he sat his barrel-chested pony at three. There was even a hint of the barrack room in his hectoring approach to Dawson, the gardener, or Stillman, the handyman, and the stuttering questions he put to them, like a young greenhorn making his first tour of stables.
He had his favourites, of course, among them Stella, who often climbed up here to watch him paint. Stella shared his delight in landscapes under rapid-changing conditions of light and shade, and would sometimes challenge his choice of colours when he was trying to capture the green of April, or the russet of October in the copse opposite. Up here they would converse as equals, an old soldier of seventy-five, and a child of five, sharing the pleasures of the long, slow ride from the moment the first daffodils showed on the paddock, to a time when the chestnut leaves were brittle and autumn sat over the woods like a patient mother waiting to put her noisy family to bed.
He was very happy, happier he supposed, than he had ever been, so that sometimes, when this kind of mood was upon him, he would wonder a little tremulously how long it would last. Not long for him, of course, for he had already celebrated forty-nine Waterloo anniversaries, but away into a brand-new century for most of them, he hoped, although sometimes this seemed to be taking a great deal for granted in a world that was changing at such a stunning pace.
Perhaps it was the pace that bothered him, even though he was a confirmed potterer who never hurried anywhere, and yet he was conscious of it, as though, out there beyond the heat haze, he could hear the grinding roar of the big city, and sniff its stale, secondhand air competing with the lilac, mock-orange and cabbage rose, whose scents reached him from the beds between the house and paddock.
He could not settle to his painting, deciding it was a mish-mash and rested with his hands on his knees, trying to match the permanence of what he saw and the sense of impermanence that blurred his thoughts. He had a fancy then that it was a premonition of death, introduced, perhaps, by the invitation he had received that same day to attend the Jubilee dinner at Apsley House, marking the fiftieth anniversary of Waterloo. It might well be this and if it was it ought not to bother him, for very few of the originals were above ground now and it was time he thought about shuffling off to join them. He would be sorry, of course, for no one but a fool would wish to be winkled from this particular billet, even though he sometimes suspected they had all come to look upon him as a museum exhibit, like the Old Duke's cocked hat, or the voltigeur's musket-ball that sent Tommy Picton packing all those years ago. Or perhaps his unease stemmed from something more definite, a heart murmur, or the stumble that had recently replaced the careful, spur-conscious tread of earlier old age.
He sat very still, his eye on the truncated fingers of his right hand, and it was then, for the first time in many, many years, that he saw again the fierce, moustached face of the big cuirassier who had lopped them, a florid, clumsy fellow, who had looked amazed when his opponent had shifted sabre from right hand to left and lunged before he could correct the body swing that followed his own gigantic slash. Then, as the sabre-point glanced from the rim of his breastplate and entered his neck, he had fallen away without so much as a cry, while the Colonel had reined in, staring down at his bloodied gauntlet.
The clarity of the memory startled him so much that he fancied he sensed pain in fingers that were not there and he thought, wonderingly, “Now why the devil should I recall that on a summer's day fifty years later? Damn it, it's almost as though that poor devil of a Frenchman had been looking for me all this time…” and he glanced round the edge of the summerhouse just to satisfy himself that it was not so, and very reassured he was when, instead of a cavalryman's frown, he looked straight into the laughing face of little Stella, who had stolen up on him through the ferns as she sometimes did when she tired of Alexander's demands on her.
The sight of her, with her chestnut curls cascading over her pinafore, and her little mouth puckered in a smile, steadied him for he could see that she was excited and had something to confide. She said, dancing up and down, “Debbie is coming tomorrow to stay until September! Won’t you just love having her here?” and when he consented that he would, and that he supposed Phoebe the governess would be taking her to meet Deborah's train, she hopped from one chubby leg to the other, squealing, “Oh, no, Granddaddy! You’ve got it wrong. We’re going to fetch her! On the train! All the way to Folkestone—me and Alex and Mamma and Papa, for Papa will be home in time for tea and it's all arranged. Isn’t that wonderful? I mean, not just having Debbie, for lessons, and sharing my room and…and everything, but all of us going to the seaside as well?” Then, stepping back and regarding him speculatively, “Why don’t we ask Papa to take you? He would, I’m sure, and you’ve never been in a train, have you?”
“No,” he said, “I never have, and I’m too old to travel in one now. I like trains, at least I like watching the smoke puffs in the distance, but I wouldn’t feel safe nor comfortable rushed along at that pace. No, my love, I’ll stay here with Phoebe and entertain young George while you’re gone.”
Alexander came waddling up the path, just as the bell announcing luncheon clanged from below. “We’re g-g-g-going on a t-t-train,” he announced, “to fetch Debbie away from the nuns,” and the old man chuckled for it was obvious that Alexander regarded a convent as an ogre's castle, where Deborah was held under duress from time to time.
“So your sister tells me but you’d sooner ride there, wouldn’t you?”
“Don’t be silly, Granddaddy,” Stella said, severely, “who could possibly ride all that way? It's forty miles, Miss Phoebe says,” and it struck him that people's notions of distance had altered with all the other changes for even after his return from the wars forty miles had still been reckoned a two-day ride, and tomorrow, he supposed, they would all be there and back in a matter of hours. He rose stiffly and lifted his easel inside the summerhouse, taking the children by the hand and moving between them down the path to the house. The ghost of the French cuirassier did not follow but remained to brood in the summerhouse beside the half-finished water-colour. Perhaps, the colonel thought, as their pace dragged him on, ghosts were impotent in the presence of laughing children.
4
He had been away longer than usual but at least she had been forewarned of his return, so that she was able, by inventing a white lie or two, to slip away towards the middle of the afternoon and wander down the drive in the hope of intercepting him before the children took charge of him. He usually arrived home at dusk, so that it was not long before they were alone and she could adjust to his presence, but today she did not feel that she had that much patience. Nearly a month had passed since he had set off to pay a call upon those other mistresses of his, dotted all over the country.
It was, she thought, the loveliest summer day she could ever remember, even here in Kent where everyone expected more than their fair share of summer. The air quivered over the paddocks and in the copses every leaf was so still that the foliage reminded her of Mrs. Worrell's waxed fruit under a glass dome. There was not even enough breeze to set the poppies nodding under the paddock rail, but the colour down here was like a long, cooling draught, so that the heat, under the arched chestnuts, was not oppressive. She hugged the shade none the less, following the line of trees as far as the derelict building that had been Michelmore's mill, then climbing the low fence and entering a thin belt of fir and larch bordering the lane. There was a pheasant hide here, a solid little structure built by old William Conyer, the sportsman, and she peeped in, to discover that the children had been using it as a little house and had carpeted the floor with bracken. Outside was a stack of sawn logs striped by sunshafts, and
she sat down, cocking an ear for the rattle of the gig and, as always when he was absent, and she was clear of the house, revelling in solitude and the speculation that solitude encouraged. Excitement at the prospect of seeing him again hummed in her like a spinning top, but slowly the silence of the little wood had its way and she leaned back on her hands, luxuriating in a way that was impossible up there at the house, where new demands were made upon her every minute.
Gradually her thoughts formed a pattern that was at one with the scene, having serenity, colour, and shape. There was Tryst, with its routines; there were the children, who seemed to her to have acquired, of late, not only charm but moderate manageability; there was his business which, judged by his letters, was booming along like a river in spate; and there was her, sitting here on a pile of logs awaiting him, like the Cecil girl who had stolen out of her father's house to meet the first Conyer near this very spot.
The comparison pleased her. Outwardly, she supposed, things were always changing, but the basic things did not change at all or not until people grew wrinkled and frail and breathless, or stiff in the joints like the old Colonel who had seemed so pensive over luncheon. She was twenty-seven now, mother of three handsome children, and the virtual mother of a girl of ten, but at this moment she felt more akin to the novice who had waited beside Derwentwater for a stranger to come back and marry her. How long, she wondered, would she continue to feel like this about a man? How many years would pass before they took one another for granted, before the idea of coming down here to waylay him would seem absurd and undignified? Five? Ten? Not more, surely, for at thirty-six one was nearly old and he would be close on fifty, about as old as Sam when she packed her basket-trunk and fled into the night.
She thought about Sam for a moment, deciding that he had no terrors for her now, and reflecting that Adam had been very wise to promote a reconciliation. Sam had once seemed to her a man capable of anything, but now, with his florid face and heavy paunch, he was nobody special. People could be tamed then by the passage of time and the planless events of passing years. She must have been tamed, she supposed, or she wouldn’t be sitting here in a wood listening for the rattle of a man's approach, and hoping to snatch a few moments’ privacy with him before he became common property up at the house. She wondered if anyone, least of all herself, would ever subdue Adam Swann and decided not for she saw him now as a member of that select company who had mastered England and were well embarked upon the task of subduing the entire world. Surely it was a privilege to be such a man's mate and bear him children, and she realised now that it was only in the last year or so that she had come to terms with this, for until then, until George had been conceived that night at the inn, she had always been jealous and resentful of his business whereas now she not only accepted it but took a personal pride in it every time she saw a waggon bearing the Swann insignia. After all, it was her insignia.
It was only a step from this to contemplation of any future children she might have and there was time, she supposed, for half-a-dozen more. Stella and George were his and Alexander was hers. What arrangement would they come to concerning future children, or rather future sons, for daughters did not count in this context. For a moment her imagination soared as she saw man and wife picking sides, as for a game of tag, as successive sons presented themselves. She was smiling at this absurdity when her ear caught the jingle of harness and the scrape of wheels. She jumped up, assailed by the scent of resin and realising, with a flurry of irritation, that some of the sticky substance had transferred itself to her palms. Then, forgetting everything but his approach, she ran through waist-high bracken to the low bank where she could watch his gig round the last curve in the lane, the lane down which Dancer had rushed them the night Stella was born and she thought she was going to die. It astonished her that she could remember that at this particular moment, when all her senses were strained towards the approaching reunion, and yet she did, and for a fraction of a second relived those awful moments in the lurching carriage, but then he came bowling up, seeing her out of the corner of his eye and pulling hard on the reins as the horse, less impatient than Dancer, came to a halt.
She stood with one hand enclosing a sapling and the surprise and the pleasure in his expression was ample excuse for the ambush. He called, eagerly, “Wait!” and jumped down, looping the rein over the whip socket and running out a length of cord as a tether. The cob welcoming the respite on such a hot day, lowered its head and began to crop the long, sweet grass of the verge and for a moment they stood there, she looking down and he staring up, his face glistening with sweat and his hair powdered with the dust of a cross-country ride.
Some explanation, she thought, was necessary so she said, lamely, “The others were all dressing up for you. So…well…I thought I’d come on down and wait,” but then she stopped, blushing under one of those half-ironic, half-predatory scrutinies he seemed to reserve for homecomings.
“I’m very flattered you did,” he said. “How often does a man see a siren in a Kentish hedgerow? And a very pretty one at that? No, don’t,” as she made to descend, “you’ll get hooked up on the briars,” and he vaulted upwards as eagerly as a boy on a birdsnesting expedition, throwing his arms round her and kissing her eyes and cheeks and hair and finally, with tremendous gusto, her lips, so that she said, breathlessly, “Adam…that cob…No one could get by…” but he only replied, laughing, “Don’t be so coy, woman. It's our right-of-way. Let them shift the gig into the drive if they’re in that much of a hurry, for I’m not, are you?”
The boyish spontaneity of his greeting delighted but bewildered her. “Well, no,” she said, “I suppose not, for we didn’t expect you for an hour, but it's so public here, in full view of the lane…” and then she remembered the pheasant hide and giggled, reflecting that they really were behaving more like a couple of peasants in a hayfield than a married couple with three children. She took him by the hand, nevertheless, pulling him into the copse and pointing to the little hut in the clearing. “The children have been playing there,” she said, “making a little house, I suppose.” He glanced inside, then back at her, saying, “Very obliging of them,” running his hands over her and holding her off by the hips in that speculative and rather shameless way of his as he said, “They’re dressing up, you say? Well, you don’t seem to be wearing very much, my dear,” but she could match his mood now and replied, saying, “I should think not, in this weather. Besides, I know you of old when you’ve been away and I should, shouldn’t I?” but when he held her to him again delight in his presence and more particularly in the astonishing success of her stratagem, led her to say, without reserve of any kind, “Oh, Adam, I’ve missed you so! More than ever before. I’ve ached for you, yearned for you, and I wanted you all to myself for a few minutes…” and with that he practically bundled her into the hide where the sun made intricate patterns through weathered patches in the roof and walls, and she forgot the cob and the gig blocking the lane, and the possibility of people coming to and from the village, and the presence of the Colonel, the children, and the staff almost within hail at the top of the drive.
The serene splendour of the afternoon, the weeks they had been separated, and even the brazen nonconformity of the setting might have been contributory factors to the joyousness of the occasion, but they were no more than that. It was as though, at that precise hour, circumstances and experience had contrived to strike an exact balance between them, so that for the first time in the years they had shared as man and wife they were aware of existing momentarily for each other. Their fusion, when it came, was a new peak in their mental and physical experience so that what had begun as a frolic took on a new and spectacular dimension, transcending the passing of seed from his loins to hers and profoundly disturbing their entire ethos, as though the act itself was the apotheosis of a ritual as old as time. Perhaps he was more acutely aware of this than she, sensing it in every shift of her eager body, and in the cry wrung from her at the moment of fulfilment
. Something approaching this rapture had attended them in the past but only occasionally and never with the same intensity, for it was as though he had helped her to cross a sensitory frontier into an area of intense personal conceit where, from this moment on, she could more than hold her own with all his other concerns, taking pride of place in his heart and mind.
For her it was much simpler than that. She was not concerned with abstracts but her instincts were as sharp as any woman's and much sharper than most, so that awareness of the extension brought her a security and maturity that had eluded her all her life. She had been endowed with one personality and, at his insistence, had tried hard to develop another, but now, crushed under him, and exulting in him, she was conscious of a blending of those two separate selves and had no need to be assured that this was an alliance he not only approved but had been trying, in his own obstinate way, to promote ever since that night of compromise at the inn adjoining his yard. What he had sought, and what so far had eluded him, was a different kind of compromise, the establishment of a working partnership between the impulsive, affectionate juvenile he had married, and the self-consciously dutiful mistress of his household and here it was, achieved almost effortlessly through the alchemy of flesh and fervour on a carpet of dried ferns and bracken on their own doorstep. In a way it was a kind of miracle and she accepted it as such.
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