Shabby Summer

by Warwick Deeping

  “Incredible, but true. He didn’t hear me, and I let off both barrels into the hedge. He scuttled like a rabbit.”

  “Peter, are men like that?”

  “Seems so, doesn’t it. But I think the laugh was with me.”

  She took her hand from his shoulder, for though he spoke of laughter, there was no laughter in his eyes.

  “The old wretch! I wish I could——”

  He tied up the punt, recovered his gun, and waited for her to climb the bank.

  “Oh, by the way, I’m afraid John wants his rick-cover.”

  “Does he? Well, I’ve——”

  “He can’t help wanting it. Harvest, you know, and if it should rain, stacks have to be protected.”

  “Of course. Shall we take it down to-night?”

  “To-morrow would do. We must try and patch up the poor old tent.”

  “No, I would rather take it down to-night. I wonder if I can manage.”

  “Oh, I’ll come and help you.”

  Mrs. Maintenance had Mrs. Strangeways’s stores ready for her, neatly packed in a basket, a pound of sugar, a quarter of a pound of tea, a pat of butter, two tins of milk. And would Sarah mind if she paid for them to-morrow?

  “I’ve left my bag and purse on the island.”

  Sarah suggested that it would save trouble if Mrs. Strangeways settled at the end of each week, and Mrs. Strangeways accepted the suggestion. She found Ghent waiting for her by the Camperdown Elm, and he took the basket and carried it down to the punt.

  She looked at the grey sky.

  “I don’t think it will rain to-night.”

  “No, these miffy days don’t produce rain.”

  She stepped into the punt, feeling that he was badly depressed, poor lad, and that nothing that she could do would alter the march of circumstance.

  “You can pole, Peter.”

  “All right.”

  She sat down with the basket at her feet, and he picked up the pole and pushed the punt out into the stream. And it seemed to her that he had no heart in the thing he did, nor in the business that lay before them. He was going to help her to dismantle one of the last of her defences just when he was feeling baulked and frustrated, and unable to play the part of hero.

  His back was turned to her, and suddenly he asked her a question, as though he was putting it to the sky and the river.

  “I say, how much money have you got?”

  The suddenness of it left her breathless for a second. It was like dashing cold water in her face.

  “Oh, enough to manage on for a while.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes. Don’t worry about me, Peter.”

  “Look here, you needn’t pay Sarah for those things.”

  “Of course I shall.”

  “Why bother? It can all be settled when I sell up the place.”

  Was it as bad as that? She had not known him bitter like this before, and with the self-confessed bitterness of defeat. She picked up her basket and clasped it as he ran the punt under the willows, shipped the pole and fastened the mooring rope to a tree. He seemed to be a long time knotting off the rope, and when he turned to face her he had the look of a man who was ashamed.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to blurt out like that.”

  She sat looking up at him with significant steadfastness.

  “Haven’t I some right to know?”

  “You?”

  “Yes, my dear. What hurts you, hurts me.”

  His eyes met hers for a moment in a quick, deep glance that was revealing. Then, almost roughly, he took the basket from her, and holding to a bough, steadied the punt against the bank.

  “That’s good of you, but I’m not going to unload my troubles on you.”

  She rose, and passing close to him, stood on the bank.

  “Well, then, why should you carry the basket? I’ll take it.”

  “No; my privilege.”

  She put out her hand for the basket.

  “You are making it rather hard for me, aren’t you?”

  “Hard?”

  “Yes. You needn’t be merciless to me.”

  He gave her the basket.

  “That’s the last thing I want to be. But don’t you understand that a man who’s in Queer Street, can’t——”

  “You don’t seem to understand much about women, Peter.”

  “I? Well, perhaps not. You see——”

  She was standing above him, and she put out her free hand.

  “Have I to help you up? Oh, my dear, how very blind you are.”

  He looked at her hand, and suddenly he took it, and bending his head, put his lips to it.

  “I feel such a rotter, Sybil. A silly idiot, failure.”

  “You’ll never be that.”

  She kept hold of his hand, and climbing the bank, drew him after her. She put down the basket. She was looking into his face, conscious of all that it revealed to her, and all that it tried not to reveal.

  “Peter, don’t you know that when one cares one wants to share things?”

  “What things?”

  “Oh, you know. Caring is not much use, is it, unless it’s for better and for worse, in sickness and in health? My darling, I want to help you.”

  * * *

  Peeping Toms do not always behold that which is piquing and pleasant, and Mr. Crabtree, who had a fondness for erecting a brass telescope upon the Temple Towers terrace and turning it upon the world below, trained his optical gun upon Folly Island. And immortal Zeus was not pleased. He beheld two base mortals in a provoking tableau, the woman sitting on a cushion, and the man lying on the grass with his head in her lap. She was stroking his hair.

  That young pup of a Ghent, and Mrs. Strangeways!

  “Damn it,” said Mr. Crabtree, fiddling with the eyepiece, and still feeling that his dignity had not retreated with honour from the barrels of Ghent’s gun. “Damn it, I wish I had old Mother Vandeleur up here. Interesting for her to see her little pet playing with a tart.”

  Mr. Crabtree kept his eye applied to the telescope. He was a spiteful and a vulgar-minded old man, and since youth had procured the lady, he could solace himself by exulting over their disgusting frailties. He wanted to see more, much more. But Mr. Crabtree was disappointed. He wanted both to gloat and to be shocked, and neither reaction was allowed him.

  Why didn’t they get on with the business?

  And then he heard a voice, his wife’s.

  “What are you looking at, Father?”

  She had slithered upon him in her slippers, and her husband removed his eye from the telescope, and snarled at her.

  “Nothing that would interest you, Ma. I wish you wouldn’t wear those damned things.”

  “What things?”

  “Sneakers. Yes, by gum, you can have a look if you like. Do you good. Wait a bit, let’s see if they’ve got going yet. Disgusting, I call it.”

  He adjusted himself again to the telescope, squinted, and after a moment of silence, slewed the telescope irritably in the direction of Farley village.

  “Nothing doing. Poor sort of peep-show, after all. Want to look into the vicar’s back garden?”

  “No, I don’t think so, Roger. But what were you looking at?”

  “A couple of cats on a wall.”

  “Cats! But cats don’t——”

  “Oh, don’t they!”

  “I don’t think it’s at all nice, anyway, at your age.”

  “You leave my age alone. You can take it from me that cats are better than snails.”

  * * *

  Her hand was ruffling his hair. She was not looking at him, but across the river at his rows and rows of trees, and at the chimneys and roof of Marplot. Her face had an exquisite serenity. Almost, it was the face of a woman who dreamed, while discovering her dream in reality.

  Ghent looked up at her.

  “Aren’t you being rather reckless?”

  She did not answer him for a moment, and her eyes remained fixed upon that littl
e world across the water.

  “No. Completely calculating! After all, safety first doesn’t go with adventure.”

  “Can recklessness be calculating?”

  This time she smiled and looked down at him.

  “Somehow, yes. I calculate that I am taking my risk as I want to and even if Adam and Eve——”

  “Were turned out of the garden?”

  “Yes, but we won’t be. I’ll not admit it. We’re going to make good, somehow. Oh, my dear, I wish I had a thousand pounds to give you.”

  “I don’t. Do you know, I feel different about things now.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Darling,” and she laid a hand upon his forehead.

  He closed his eyes, and lay like the happy warrior to whom peace and a new strength have come.

  “You’ll be awfully poor, Sybil.”

  “I think I know more about poverty than you do, dear man. If one’s feeling poor, no balance at the bank is going to make you feel rich. And I shall be feeling rich.”

  “Shall you?”

  “Of course. I’ve learnt so much in the last few weeks. I seem to have shed a skin. Do you remember saying that life on the land is real?”

  “It’s real enough; sometimes a bit too real.”

  “Can anything be? It comes to this, if one lives on tinned stuff, one’s funking one’s cooking.”

  He opened his eyes and looked up at her steadfastly.

  “Yes. But what about being bored? It is going to be a struggle. Not much variety. A little shopping in Loddon. A cinema now and again. And winter, you know. Winter’s a bit grim in England.”

  She bent over him.

  “You don’t quite understand yet. We are going into this thing together, Peter. I don’t want to read what the very clever people have to say about life. I want to live it. They seem to make such a supercilious mess of it. I’m a very simple creature, really. I want simple things. I know that now. I want to live, not to be a critic.”

  He smiled at her, and putting up a hand, pinched her chin between thumb and finger.

  “Is that the idea? You want to back your man?”

  “For better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Oh, my very, very dear, it can all be so good. Why should one funk anything when we can face things together?”

  He sat up suddenly, and opening his arms, held her.

  “My God, I feel as strong as a horse. I’ll make life good and safe for you somehow.”

  She gave him her lips.

  “Of course you will. Let’s be reckless.”

  “Reckless?”

  “Yes, let’s get married, Peter. But fancy my asking you! What I mean is I want to feel that your fate is just utterly mine.”

  He kissed her again.

  “Well, that settles it. And now, what about poor old John’s rick-cover? It’s going to be rather superfluous very soon. Marplot’s still got a roof.”

  She jumped up, pulling him with her.

  “Oh, Peter, will poor Sarah be very upset?”

  “It takes a lot to upset Sarah. She’s always been preaching marriage to me in her funny old way. Sarah is all right when she likes.”

  “Do you think she likes me?”

  He put his arm round her.

  “Could anyone help it?”

  XXV

  Lady Melissa had suffered Sir Gavin Marwood to go by himself round the Temple Manor gardens, for she knew that he abominated personally conducted tours just as much as she did. Moreover, Sir Gavin’s political career had entailed so much social insincerity that now that he had retired he had become quite sincerely unsocial. He had let it be known that he had retreated for good and all into the country, to escape from that other ridiculous England which, with others, he had attempted to govern. Being the most sincere of men he had been marked down for accusations of insincerity by a revolutionary press that would have cut the throat of an archangel, had Gabriel or Michael refused to accept all its catch-cries and its humbug. Sir Gavin had christened the Leftist Intelligentsia “The Wows.” They amused him, but he had no desire to confront crises in their company. Such brilliantly loquacious people were apt to take refuge under beds when danger threatened their hypersensitive egos. When storms blew up, and nature’s bitter moods had to be confronted, Sir Gavin would have preferred a plain man as his comrade.

  He was both benign and a cynic, but with a cynicism that could chuckle, for how could you be anything but cynical in a country whose demagogues screamed “Liberty,” and “Down with Wage Slavery,” and were prepared to impose a far worse tyranny upon all and sundry. Let a solitary railway employee desire to be a free man, and his dear brothers will rush out on strike to blackmail the blackleg into surrender. Yes, the Wows had peculiar ideas about Liberty. They snarled at Hitler, while lusting each to be a little Hitler in his own small section of the community. So, Sir Gavin had taken refuge in the country. He had a country mind, and he continued to be persuaded that the countryman was more sane than his urban cousin. England was getting herself in a devil of a mess, and lacking future social enlightenment, Sir Gavin could not foresee any solution of the problem. It was not that he had shrugged his shoulders and abandoned the business. He was old and he was tired, and perhaps a little disillusioned, and he saw no hopeful sign in the heavens. Therefore, he had chosen to retire from a world where animal, crowd noises were on the increase, and base and sinister motives were ascribed to anything you said or did. The smugness of the Wows had disgusted him. Trees did not shout catch-cries at you, and if you elected to breed super-delphiniums, you could not be accused of insulting democracy by expressing a belief in the reality of super-men.

  Lady Melissa saw Sir Gavin’s large white head appearing on the steps of the terrace. He had a magnificent head, rather like the head of a lion with a mane of silver. As a young man his blue eyes had expressed a certain impudence, but now they contained a serene twinkle and were kind. No man had been more capable of devastating wit in trouncing a political opponent. He had confessed to a passion for removing the symbolical sackcloth that Wows in particular love to wear.

  His shoulders were as massive as his head, and no man held himself more proudly than Sir Gavin, but with the genial pride of one who was so big that he forgot to be little. The jackals of this world barked either with him or at him, he cared not which. He had left the jackals behind, and if they howled, which they did, he did not hear them. Had he read the Leftist Press he would have discovered innuendoes which suggested that even his retirement had some sinister inspiration. Had he taken to growing onions the Wows would have discovered in that very simple operation a deep and malignant odour of intrigue.

  Lady Melissa waited, smiling. And Sir Gavin came smiling to her up the steps as though he was not too old to lay an offering at the feet of an old lady. Besides, she possessed the spirit of eternal youth, as he did. The young can be so dreadfully decrepit.

  Said he: “I suppose you had some motive in sending me to look at that border?”

  “I had. Provocation.”

  “Nothing of yours, dear lady, could make me jealous.”

  “Have you renounced all envy?”

  He laughed.

  “I have left that to my late political opponents. Were you responsible for that border?”

  “Not quite. Mr. Ghent made it for me two years ago.”

  He stood straight and square, looking her in the face.

  “Ha, the protégé! I must go and see that young man. Are you completely dispassionate in your recommendations?”

  “Never.”

  “How refreshing. I adore blank prejudice. So many dear ladies have offered to sell me pups, but you——”

  “I am prejudiced, where I like.”

  “Splendid! But tell me, is your lad a Wow?”

  “I think not.”

  “He does not suffer from thwarted appetites and the illusion that if the world were turned topsy-turvy, he would emerge somehow as a small tyrant?”


  “Oh no, he happens to be in love.”

  “Then I can forgive him anything.”

  “And he is hard up.”

  “Poor but proud.”

  “Oh, damnably proud, my dear.”

  “That virtue is so excessively rare that one is tempted to question its existence. With so many people vanity cries ‘Damn your beastly money,’ and then murmurs seductively, ‘Cheque, please.’ ”

  As Lady Melissa had told Peter Ghent, Sir Gavin Marwood had bought Thursby, an exquisite study in stone that had been built about the year 1610. Thursby had belonged to the Latimers since the day of its birth, but the Latimers had grown poorer and poorer, until the last of them had wriggled from under the boot of the Tax Gatherer, and escaped to a bungalow somewhere in Cornwall. Meanwhile, Thursby itself, the great house, the gardens, and the park had been growing poorer year by year, until roofs leaked and outbuildings fell down, and the garden had gone native. Mr. Roger Crabtree had been sniffing at Thursby, scenting a possible bargain and a site that might offer a more social elevation than Temple Towers, but while he was sniffing, Sir Gavin had stepped in and rescued Thursby from the man of ideas.

  Sir Gavin was very rich, far richer than Mr. Roger Crabtree. As a cultured amateur he had some knowledge of gardens, but Thursby was rather beyond the happy potterings of an amateur. The gardens had gone back to nature. Nothing but clearing and replanting, and replanning would recover them from a state of dishevelled decay. Shrubs were overgrown and scraggy, roses smothered, terraces and borders thick with weeds. The lawns were starved and rabbit-sour. Many of the old trees needed felling. But, at the same time Sir Gavin had a fierce distrust of the professional planner who dished you out lily pools and rose gardens and pergolas like suites of furniture. Thursby demanded enthusiasm, vision, and the individual touch. The old and the new Thursby needed delicate blending.

  * * *

  Peter had broken the news to Mrs. Maintenance, who had received it with placid resignation.

  “You won’t want to leave us, Sarah?”

  “No, sir, it’s not quite as bad as all that.”

  Ghent had looked at her whimsically.

  “No, not quite so bad for me.”