Castle Orchard (10 page)

‘Yes.’

‘Well, what do you say to my stake?’

‘Not much. What precisely do you mean? What do I know of Castle Orchard? There must be land, I suppose – farms, cottages, a house, things inside the house. Where is the line to be drawn?’

‘You shall have all of it. There are three thousand acres and a house. If I have no house, I will not rescue my ancestors off the walls, for where should I put them? Besides, they might look at me spitefully.’

Allington seemed to pause for contemplation. He had never had reason to believe a word that Arthur said, and what he now proposed went beyond belief.

Arthur now said, ‘We have a witness.’

‘That is true. What sort of a witness would he make?’

‘An honest one,’ Rampton replied, nettled, wishing he was anywhere but where he was. He started to walk anxiously about the room, picking up an ebony cane from a stand and swishing it about in his agitation.

‘How can I know I want your estate?’ Allington asked. ‘It’s probably falling down.’

‘No, it is in good repair. My trustees, who managed it until the last three years, saw to that. It is a few miles from Salisbury, on the river. It has every amenity, even a Philosopher’s Tower.’

Rampton could not see Allington had anything to lose. As he could not take Arthur’s money, for Arthur had none, he may as well take the estate. For Arthur, if he lost, it would be the end. Castle Orchard was his only source of income.

Arthur got out the chess set. It was exotically carved, top heavy and inconvenient. ‘Today my luck will turn,’ he said.

‘It’s not luck but application that’s required,’ Allington replied. He moved the little table so that he could keep a seat by the window. ‘Perhaps Mr Rampton would like to write down the wager. We will sign it and he will witness it.’

Rampton said, ‘Arthur, this is complete madness. You can’t want me to do any such thing.’

‘Oh, I do, I do. Get on with it, there’s a good fellow. There’s paper on my desk. Write two copies. We must both have a copy.’

Rampton, with extreme reluctance, did as he was told. He would have done almost anything to escape but was at the same time, mesmerised. Allington read the agreement carefully before signing it but Arthur scrawled his name with apparent indifference.

Now excitable, Arthur put the pieces out, knocked a few over in his haste, put them up again. Allington said, ‘I will allow you the first move.’

‘You are too confident, Allington. This is to be my hour of glory. You can take the red, as befits a soldier.’ Arthur, sure his luck had turned, seizing a white pawn, started to play at random, though his brain could be agile enough.

Rampton watched the game in acute discomfort. He never played chess himself so he had no idea of the proceedings. All the same he hung over the board in a state of anxious speculation, as if looking could enlighten him. He noticed Allington took longer over his moves than Arthur.

Suddenly Allington said, ‘Pay more attention. I will allow you to reconsider your last move.’

Arthur looked swiftly at his opponent. Allington’s face told him nothing. Turning his attention to the board, he repositioned his Queen.

‘A slip,’ he said. ‘Very kind of you to overlook it.’

His voice was not steady. Suddenly, for the first time in his life, he knew it had nothing to do with luck, that Allington was right. He also knew if he engaged his mind he was clever, that he was fighting for his very survival. Allington knew this too. Arthur began to deliberate long and carefully. Allington moved a little more swiftly. His opponent was now giving him time to work out each possible move that could be made. He thought of nothing else, not even of how much he disliked Arthur’s room, which had preoccupied him when he had been in it on many previous occasions.

Arthur’s game was one of attack. Allington let him run away with the idea that he was doing well. Arthur thought of many possible moves to be made by his opponent, but Allington could think of more. There was not a single moment in the game when Allington was in the least danger of Arthur winning.

Eventually Allington said, ‘Checkmate.’

Arthur was not stupid. He had seen it coming.

Allington said, ‘Do you wish to make it the best of three?’ It was as if he too wished to put off the actual significant moment.

Arthur said, ‘Yes.’ He was exhausted, his hand unsteady, but he put the pieces out again. Allington’s allowing him a second chance was surely luck, and if he made a supreme effort, he could win.

Rampton, sitting uneasily on the edge of the chair, thought them both mad. He realised Arthur was incapable of keeping up the necessary length of concentration, and that even in this hour, with his whole livelihood at stake, his attention would start to slip.

Arthur began looking at Allington instead of at the board. Was not chess a martial game? Had not Allington been in a line regiment, Cornish probably, and worn a scarlet jacket with silver lacing? He saw the scarlet jacket, the epaulette, the belt and some tall, peaked hat on his head, but no, was it not the dark green of the Rifles, with black cord, lacing and silver buttons? Arthur preferred the scarlet. He had a sudden image of death and blood. He would run steel into Allington’s red breast and the blood would run red upon red. Ah, but he was wrong, confused. The red would run on the darkest blue and stain the white belt, the gaudy lacings, the sash of an officer in the Light Dragoons. And what was he, Arthur? Surely not a miserable little Frenchman whose sword had rusted in the rain and stuck in its scabbard, so, when the enemy advanced, when the cheers rang out and the drums rolled, he could do nothing but wait . . .

When Arthur looked again at Allington, Allington was looking out of the window. Arthur studied the board. He thought of various moves. Twice he put his hand out and then withdrew it. Eventually he took the edge of the board and tipped the pieces on the floor.

He said, bouncing up, full of mock bravado, ‘Well, I shall be glad to be shot of the place. It is a millstone round my neck, wanting this, wanting that, wanting the tithes paid. What do you say, Rampton? I am fairly beat.’

‘I know nothing of chess. It is barbarous. Your family have been at Castle Orchard for several hundred years.’

‘What should that signify? They have been there long enough. Property is responsibility. My father said it over and over again until he seemed never to say anything else. I feel quite light-hearted to think it gone. Open a bottle, Rampton. We will celebrate.’

‘I think that most inappropriate,’ Rampton replied, primly. ‘Besides, I believe Captain Allington not to drink. I wish I wasn’t here. It is not the way for grown men to behave. I am surprised, Captain Allington, at your not taking a more responsible attitude.’

Allington turned from the window and gave Rampton half a glance. He said, ‘What difference does it make to Castle Orchard if I have it or the moneylenders. Is it Howard and Gibbs, Arthur, or a string of them? The latter, I dare say. While the deeds are in your hands the property remains yours. If you tell a lie and Mr Rampton another, you may jog on a little longer, for all I know, though I have my copy of the agreement.’

Arthur, stalking about the room, said, ‘No, no, the property is yours. You shall have the deeds tomorrow. My lawyer can have nothing else to do at this time of year. I ask of you both only one thing, to let it be a secret until after Michaelmas Quarter Day, and Allington – will you allow me those Michaelmas rents? On my honour I will claim nothing else. I need go there only one more time.’

Allington looked at him. He remained silent. Arthur, thinking again of the soldier, of all the fancy lacing and the buttons made from real bullion, the snug fit of the dark jacket to the ribs, said, ‘Aren’t you fellows expected to treat your prisoners honourably?’

For the first time Allington gave a brief smile. Arthur could not remember ever having seen him smile before.

‘All right,’ Allington said. ‘You may have the Michaelmas rents.’

‘But you shall have the deeds tomorrow, and you will keep it a secret.’

‘Of course. Whose business is it but yours and mine?’ Allington stooped to retrieve the chess pieces. ‘Here is the rook that won the game. It’s appropriate.’

‘Why a rook better than a bishop or any other piece?’

‘Because the word rook comes from
rohk
, which is Indian for a soldier. It also means to plunder or cheat, so it is a two-edged sword, depending on how you look at the profession.’ Without looking up he added, ‘Perhaps Mr Rampton would like it as a memento of the occasion, though it would spoil the set.’

‘No, I should not!’ Rampton replied, almost shouting. ‘This whole thing is ridiculous. Arthur, you are mad. You should see a lawyer.’

‘A doctor is more the ticket for a madman,’ Arthur said.

‘But you are ruined.’

Allington sighed. For the first time he properly addressed himself to Mr Rampton. ‘Really,’ he said, ‘I think you not very clever. Can’t you see it makes no difference? It’s either I or his creditors.’ He then turned to Arthur and said, ‘They will be scrambling for the betting books in White’s and Brooks’. You are not yet thirty-five and you have lost the estate. Did they not bet on it?’

‘They did, but I am meant not to have mortgaged it. I never did that. They must argue it out.’

‘But what did you give the moneylenders as security?’

‘Promises, fibs, fictitious grandmothers with fortunes, everything but Castle Orchard. I told them it was entailed on the male line.’

‘And how am I to know it’s not?’

‘I wouldn’t lie to you, Allington. To lie to the Jews is quite another thing. My lawyer has the deeds. They tell all and I have never given them in surety, I promise. Oh, I shall be had for fraud as well as debt. What do they call it, “obtaining money under false pretences”?’ A curious look passed over his face, for such fraud was a hanging offence, and he lost what colour he had, but then he poured himself a large brandy, saying as he did so, ‘It must be an exceptional circumstance for such an affair to be conducted when all parties were sober.’

Every morning Phil went to school at the rectory and in the afternoon returned. Sometimes he would dawdle across the meadow, sometimes he would race, but now he dawdled because there was no sign of the Conway boys. To one side of him there were further meadows, the river, cows in brown and cream; and on the other, fields of corn rippling all the way to the foot of the chalkdown. Red poppies grew amidst the yellow corn, the red of soldiers’ jackets, but within a week or two the grain would be cut and after that, autumn. Leaves would soon lie in banks and drifts, rust red, the rust red of the soldiers’ jackets after days and days in the rain, the sun and the snow. The jackets were only red for a little while, when they were new. There was nothing smart about soldiers; their clothes were the shade of dried blood.

‘How many days did you march? Tell us again, Jackson.’

Jackson would blink his one eye. ‘The retreat to Corunna was over yer mountains in Spain. It was winter, see, Christmas Eve, think of that, and we marched four days and four nights without rations. We was flogged if we stopped. The skin was tore off our backs. Many couldn’t stick it. They dropped where they was, and if it were yer own brother you walked on by. There weren’t no graves. The wolves tore the limbs off ’em.’

Phil could always see Jackson in his mind’s eye. He could have mimicked his exact tones, had he wanted. Jackson would go on and on, his ‘yer’ that stood for ‘you’ or ‘your’ punctuating the deathly drama of his foot-soldier days in Spain. He rarely spoke of victory or loyalty, courage or kindness, for that was not his way, but only of the cruelty of the officers, the floggings and shootings, the cascades of enemy fire and the bloody ends of his companions.

Seated on his empty barrel in the cellar, his face grimly distorted by the loss of his eye and lit by the single candle, transporting the boys who gathered around him from the smell of boots and grease to the grisly battlefields.

Phil, caught like the rest of them, unable to take flight, relived the dreams and the nightmares, the screams of the wounded, he and the Conway boys re-enacting all in their games at Castle Orchard, clinging, despite Jackson, to their visions of glamour and romance, though it did not preclude the Conway boys from savagery. Now and again they shut Phil up in the Philosopher’s Tower where it stood on the bend of the river. They would wait until school was over and follow him across the meadow, catch him up, threaten him with this and that if he declined to go with them.

The Philosopher’s Tower was built of soft red brick, octagonal in shape with small latticed windows to face north, east, south and west. It had a ground floor, rather dark and murky, and a flight of steps to an upper floor, pleasant, with a table and a chair. One could open a little window and look down on the wide, swift river or open another and gaze at the trees in the orchard, at Domino grazing and at the drive with encroaching brambles, shadowed with beech and elm. A third gave a view of the house and the fourth looked across the river to the downs.

Phil thought the tower his, as he had, it seemed, been named for it, though he knew, of course, his name was really Philip, like the Spanish king who never gave wicked Queen Mary any babies and so successfully prevented England from being Roman Catholic and everybody having to pray for the Pope, who was a foreigner, instead of for King George, who was not, though he had been German once, a long time ago. He supposed the tower could have a whole name like his, Philip Osipher’s Tower, but it was a bit too long to say. He had begun to say it in a different way, giving it a different meaning.

He did not mind being locked in it in the summer, but in the winter it lacked charm. As evening approached, vapours rose from the fearsome river and owls screeched, though, as his mother reminded him, they were only birds and had never been known to attack.

Now it was August, late August, not at all a bad month, except for darkness setting in sooner. Yesterday he had been ambushed and locked in, but as usual they let him out before night. They had crept up and unlocked the door without his noticing, running away, so he thought he was locked in when he was not, and he was late for dinner.