Castle Orchard (26 page)

Mrs Arthur said, ‘Phil, you will miss your lessons.’

Phil went back across the meadow where he met the rector coming to look for him. It was not the first time he had run home. He was comfortable with the rector, who could think of nothing to say beyond telling him he was a funny little fellow.

Mrs Arthur thought Captain Allington gave up a day’s hunting to ride with her, but this being so unlikely, she changed her mind.

The day was mild and soft, the river, the woods and the downs half lost in a mist. She said, ‘I think it your turn to tell me something.’ She thought of the day she had first ridden with him, of his descriptions, so vivid, of Spain and Portugal, that she had lived each second.

Allington said, ‘Are we taking turns?’

‘You have more to tell than me.’

‘How can that be?’

‘It’s so. My life, though trying in many ways, has been dull, a prisoner here at Castle Orchard, a struggle to make the best of things . . . although once I did a London Season.’ This made her laugh and she added, ‘What an excitement. It seems a hundred years ago. I am a provincial, know only of country matters and country habits. If it were not for the newspapers, I shouldn’t even know that Lord Liverpool was the First Lord of the Treasury and Peel the Home Secretary.’

‘But you have read a great many books,’ Allington said.

‘Needs must when you only have servants and children for company. You read a book and it whirls away into a pit where are all the other books you have read. I am, all the same, grateful for books. The house is well supplied with them.’

‘What shall I tell you? Shall I tell you something I withheld before: I never want to go back to Spain.’

Mrs Arthur contemplated this for a while. She then said, ‘But sometimes you will talk of it.’

‘Yes.’

‘But actually to be there, where all those things took place, all those remembered faces . . .’ Mrs Arthur broke her sentence off and finished with the words, ‘Today, we won’t talk of war. You once told Phil what an overbearing child you were.’

Captain Allington smiled, but it was a grave, almost sad, smile. He said, ‘What can I tell you? I was alone with my mother as you have been alone with Phil, but my father had died in action, a soldier. I have no recollection of him. As a little boy I never went to school, but had my lessons with a dear old clergyman – oh, but too old, though I did learn. I think he didn’t charge my mother. He told her I was exceptionally clever, but I’m afraid she needed no convincing. What did we live on? There was an Army pension, very small, but what we ate were gifts from the St Jude estate – game, milk, butter, fruit, vegetables, anything in season. We lived in a little house, a cottage, with one servant. My mother cooked. I looked after her, or I thought I did. We had fruit trees, an apple and a damson, not one iota of which was wasted, as you will understand. I wrote labels for jars. I weighed sugar. I did sums. I was vigilant in checking that my mother hadn’t been overcharged for groceries or anything else, having learned of this possibility. Now I wonder if I was really useful, or did she just indulge me? How busy I was, running back from my lessons to help her in the kitchen, telling her how she should go on, finding the things she had lost, and everlastingly, telling her not to worry, how we would manage. In the evening I read her books from the lending library, not, you observe, the other way round. Was I insufferable? My mother had long since elevated me to the deity. I was tall for my age. I didn’t look like her, for she was fair, delicate, very pretty. Yes, I was tall and I think not plump – skinny, in fact. There, that’s a picture of us. Ours was a situation not unlike yours.’

Mrs Arthur agreed, but Phil was no Captain Allington, except in skinniness. She said, ‘What did your mother call you?’

‘Just by my Christian name. I once looked myself up in the church records to see if I could really have been christened so simply, no saints involved. Even us good solid Protestants are usually called for saints. My name is Robin, which is surely short for something else, but not in my case. For me, it has fallen out of use.’

Mrs Arthur turned the name over in her mind. She saw him as a child and said, ‘It’s hardly a grown-up name, but your stepbrothers might make use of it.’

‘No, they call me Allington. When I was a child, they called me “the little Allington”. I was just eight years old when Lord Tregorn’s first wife died. He married my mother within a few months. I never had thought of him as much of a threat, being well into his fifties, short, stocky, red in the face, balding. Except as our benefactor, I never thought of him at all. I realised he was very, very kind to my mother. Then my world was topsy-turvy, transported to the Big House, servants, rooms – endless rooms, just one of which could have swallowed our cottage whole – a dining table that stretched as far as the eye could see, with a myriad of glasses and finger bowls, knives and forks and all sorts of niceties to which I wasn’t accustomed. It was far removed from my mother and I, with a tray on our knees, snug by the fire or sitting under the apple tree on a summer evening. I was, of course, immediately sent away to school. I think my mother was as mortified as I, but she must have been puzzling how I was to be educated and got on in the world. I went to a small school to prepare me for Winchester. Later my stepfather changed his mind and sent me off to the Army school. I was perfect material for a schoolboy, clever and athletic, but woefully unaccustomed to strangers, let alone other children. My stepbrothers, who you might suppose could have resented my mother and myself, were good to me. They taught me to box. Dan was my sparring partner because he was small. I soon understood the necessity of defending myself, but how deeply I longed for my old life with my dearest mother.

‘The headmaster was a little like the rector here. In my second term he called me to his study and told me my mother had died. Of course, I didn’t believe him, droning on and on about being released from the cares of the world, happy amongst the angels, the cherubim and seraphim, and making me kneel down to say a prayer. I was confused at not getting my mother’s letters any more, confused and suspicious. Nobody came to see me. The headmaster, I later understood, assured them I had taken the information calmly and continued to do well at my lessons. When I returned to Tregorn for the holidays, I ran from room to room, seeking my mother. Where was she? Where was she? I started to shout and scream. I ran amok, threw things, broke things. Nobody knew what to do. Then my eldest stepbrother caught me by the arm and conducted me to the churchyard. He showed me a grave, not yet greened over, and said, “Your mother is there and your little brother too”. He then left me.

‘The terrible truth dawned, first that I would never see my mother again and second, that she never would have died if I had been there to prevent it.’

Allington turned to look at Mrs Arthur and saw he had brought tears to her eyes. He went white himself. Mrs Arthur, returning his look, thought, as she had previously, that he would escape if he could – the tears of a woman were painful to him; but he had no means of escape.

Allington said, ‘I am sorry I upset you. It wasn’t my intention. We’ll talk of it no more.’

‘But why shouldn’t I be upset for your sake, for the picture you draw? You are my benefactor, at this minute.’

After a moment he replied, ‘That’s too difficult a thing to answer. It was all long ago. What made me tell it?’

Mrs Arthur thought, though it was long ago, it was as clear to him as yesterday.

Mrs Arthur caught a cold and gave it to Emmy who, though not very poorly, knew it to be a good excuse for coming downstairs and having a story read to her. She appeared in an old, outgrown dressing gown of Phil’s after dinner, when she was usually asleep. At the same time Captain Allington had walked up from the lodge.

Mrs Arthur remonstrated with Emmy, who said, ‘Just a little story.’

‘I haven’t much voice for storytelling.’

This was evident even to Emmy but she sidled closer to the fire and said, ‘Captain Allington will give me a story. He has a book.’

‘Where is your storybook?’ he asked her, sitting down.

‘I forgot it. You can tell me a story.’

‘I think you overestimate my powers.’

‘What do I do?’ she asked, puzzled, going to lean on his knee.

‘You ask me something too difficult.’

‘Read to me from your book.’

‘It is not a book for little girls.’

‘May I sit on your lap?’

Allington picked her up. She immediately laid her head on his shoulder and he cradled her comfortably enough. He looked across at Mrs Arthur who was watching them. She thought his having Emmy in his arms, her brown curly head on the dark lapel of his coat, her child, an act of seduction.

Emmy said, ‘Tell me something from your book.’

Allington closed the book and put it down. He quoted, from memory:

Emmy interrupted him. ‘What is Kubla Khan?’

‘A king – a warlord perhaps, I am uncertain of his history; a man who was always fighting.’

‘Like Robert. He is always playing a battle. Phil too, but Phil doesn’t like it. Do you know the French put a biscuit on a string like a bead? Alph is a river, is that right? I am not allowed near the river in case I fall in and drown. Phil is afraid of the river. Is this river under the ground?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me some more.’

‘
So twice five miles of fertile ground/With walls and towers were girdled round
. How much is twice five, Emmy?’

‘Ten.’ Emmy, with the help of her fingers, could answer that.

‘Sometimes I think I will have those walls and towers placed around Castle Orchard.’

‘We have a tower already. What would the walls be for?’

‘To keep out all the poachers, but it would be expensive to build – and what should we do when we got to the river?’

‘It must be like Alph and go underground.’

‘Ingenious child.’

‘But it would be difficult to dig the hole, for the water would fill it up.’

‘I can see you having the makings of an engineer.’

‘Tell me more poem.’

Allington recited the rest of ‘Kubla Khan’, by which time Emmy was nearly asleep. She snuggled close into his arms but she asked drowsily, ‘What is a damsel?’

‘A young girl.’

‘Like me?’

‘Not so young as you.’

‘Like Mama?’

‘Yes, like your mother, but she is not from Abyssinia.’

‘No, she’s from Devonshire.’

Mrs Arthur said, ‘Emmy, I am going to take you up to bed.’ She got up and held out her arms for her daughter.

The following day, Captain Allington left for London.

Phil came back from school, to his mother’s astonishment, wearing new boots. ‘I went to the cobbler and ordered them,’ he said. ‘Today they were ready.’

‘But the cobbler must be paid.’

‘Captain Allington paid him.’

‘And you made no mention to me of needing boots.’

‘No, but I mentioned it to Captain Allington, that my boots were tight, and a few days after he spoke of it and sent me to order them. The cobbler was already paid.’

Phil looked with deep satisfaction on his new boots. Mrs Arthur was indignant. Captain Allington was so high-handed, yet how could she draw a line between what he might or might not pay for? Yes, if her necklace were worth sufficient money, she would go to Westcott Park, however much she might dislike it, however impossible.

Captain Allington was expected back within the week but he was gone a fortnight. Mrs Arthur became anxious about the gaming tables and her necklace, but when he did return she could see he was ill.

First he gave her a hundred pounds, which was, he said, the value of the necklace. She was so relieved to receive the money she thought it irresponsible to regret the loss, and while contemplating this, forgot to ask him whether the stones were paste. He then went on to describe his visits, on her behalf, to the various lawyers, but without actually telling her much except that he thought it would be several months before they got to the bottom of the riddle and she had best ignore the situation for the time being. The matter was in hand.

As to Allington being ill, he dismissed it as merely a spot of the ague, which attacked him from time to time.

Pride had more to say on the subject. He sought out Mrs Arthur. ‘If he’s ill, I want him to sleep in the house. I couldn’t look after him so well in the lodge. It’s a little damp, I reckon, and I need a proper kitchen by. He got that cold you and Miss Emmy had. His chest was bad and he was feverish. I says, “Don’t go out in the wet,” but he just looks at me and goes out all the same. Sometimes he says, “Think of Spain and Portugal.” Well, I do. It would rain and worse, all night, buckets and buckets of it, icy cold. If we couldn’t get the baggage up we’d be lying out in it, no rations, no bread, no biscuit, no beef, no rum, bloomin’ starving an’ wet to the skin, same as the men. The Heavens ain’t particular when it comes to rank. Forget? Not likely. What master forgets is his wounds and the fevers. For two years his life wasn’t worth nothing, what with one thing and another.’

Mrs Arthur said, ‘Make up a bed in the Blue Room.’

‘He won’t like it.’

‘Perhaps it will be my turn to be overbearing.’

Mrs Arthur did not see Allington again until later in the afternoon, certainly looking no better. The first thing she did was to make mention of Phil’s boots, a subject she had not had a proper opportunity to broach.

He said, ‘Please don’t bother me with trifles.’

She was about to say she now had the means of paying for them, but he put into her arms a large shawl, deeply fringed and prettily patterned.

‘Allow yourself to remain in my debt,’ he said testily. ‘We have yet to get the final outcome of your affairs so you don’t know how long that hundred pounds must last you. Put that shawl on. I very much dislike you to be so much in want.’