Long Summer Day (101 page)
‘Then all I can say is I wish to God I had it,’ Paul said emphatically. ‘It seems to me we rushed into the business without a thought as to what was at stake and these people here, the Walt Pascoes and the Smut Potters, are amateurs. We all know what happens when an amateur takes on a professional!’
‘They’ll stay amateurs for a bit,’ John said, ‘but that’s what I’m driving at. When they get desperate enough they’ll knock hell out of everybody. Go up to that camp and watch those cotton-spinners at bayonet practice.’
‘Not me,’ Paul told him, ‘I’ve no stomach for the business and I still think we were damned stupid to get drawn into it.’
‘Well,’ John said, ‘I can understand that, knowing you. For too long now you’ve been giving your attention to what happens in your own backyard but when you realise that backyard is at stake you’ll outdo the rest of them! That’ll be when your Puritan streak shows. Puritans only show fight when they’ve convinced themselves their way of life is threatened. After that there isn’t many who can stand up to them for long.’ He got up and knocked out his pipe. ‘Will you tell Maureen not to wait supper? I think I’ll take a turn along the river road.’
‘Do you want company?’
‘No,’ John said, smiling, ‘but if I did I should prefers yours to anyone’s. Thanks for coming down and thanks for getting my brain working on an abstract issue. I don’t know whether it was intentional but it worked!’ and he took his hat and stick and went out abruptly leaving Paul to contemplate two framed portraits on the mantelshelf, one of Roddy in his rakishly tilted naval cap, the other of the fat surprise packet Maureen had produced not so long ago, now asleep in the little room over the porch where Paul had spent his first night in the Valley. He thought, as he lit the lamp, ‘I wish those bloody fools who had poor old John Rudd drummed out of the Army on account of that Prince Imperial incident could have shared the half-hour I’ve just spent with him! Could I show that much dignity if I’d just had a telegram telling me Simon or one of the twins had been blown to bits in somebody else’s quarrel thousands of miles away?’ He sat finishing his whisky, having heard the girl whom Maureen employed as a maid clank off into the dusk on her bicycle. Presently Maureen came back and he gave her the message. ‘Well, that’s John’s way,’ she said, ‘he always is greedy with his troubles. Can’t bear to share ’em with any of us, but maybe you’ve noticed?’
‘Yes,’ Paul told her, ‘it was something I learned about him very early on. Did you see Claire?’
‘Yes and made a point of not telling her about Roddy, tho’ I rather wish I had. She almost bit my head off and the twins came in for a slap apiece. Is she that much upset about Ikey marrying the Potter girl?’
‘About as upset as I’ve seen her.’
Maureen said, as though to herself, ‘I find that very odd!’ and then, turning to face him, ‘Top up your drink, Paul, for you’re going to need it!’ and when he protested that he had already had too much whisky she took the decanter and half-filled his glass. ‘I’ll tell you something I’ve never told anyone, not even John, and you can please yourself whether you make use of it or not! If it wasn’t for Ikey, Claire Craddock would almost certainly still be Claire Derwent. At all events, she wouldn’t be mistress of Shallowford tucking your children into bed!’
Paul said, ‘What the devil did Ikey have to do with me marrying Claire?’ and Maureen, trying but not altogether succeeding to keep the chuckle out of her voice, replied, ‘It was a letter written by him saying you were calling for her, that got her down here that time you were laid up after the wreck. And that’s not all either, not by a long chalk! He wrote to Claire at the instance of Grace. The letter was written in her rooms that time he ran off to London.’
Said like that, bluntly and factually, it did not make an immediate impact on him. After a pause, while she waited for it to sink in, he said, ‘How do you know that? How long Have you known it?’
‘I’ve known it ever since I came here.’
‘
He
told you? Ikey told you?’
‘He did that, down by Codsall bridge a week or two after it happened.’
‘You believed him?’
‘Of course I believed him. Would a boy of his age manufacture a story like that? Besides, Ikey was never a liar.’
The implications of her story began to register. He said, wonderingly, ‘But he was only a kid! Claire came home on chance and finding me laid up volunteered as a nurse. If I remember rightly you engaged her.’
‘Claire never mentioned that letter to you? The one telling her you had been calling for her when you were running a high temperature?’
‘Never! I didn’t know there was a letter!’
‘Well boyo, there was! You can depend upon it and there isn’t much doubt that the girl took it at face value, believing what she wanted to believe. Knowing that, I’m sorry I blabbed. She probably had good reasons for forgetting. Still, I’ve told you now so it’s up to you if you jog her memory or not. The fact is she owes Ikey Palfrey her happiness, but come to think of it, so do you, for this silly business will blow over soon enough and taken all round you and Claire are as well-matched a pair as I’ve ever doctored!’
He said nothing for a moment so that presently she picked up his glass and pushed it into his hand. ‘Get it down, lad,’ she said, ‘it’s not Irish whiskey but it’ll serve!’ and after he had swallowed the measure and still remained silent, she cocked her head on one side and said, humouring him, ‘There now, it’s not worth brooding on. What began as a hoax turned out well enough for all of us, didn’t it?’
‘In the light of what you’ve told me,’ he said, slowly, ‘her present attitude to Ikey is impossibly arrogant! Ought she to be reminded of what she owes him?’ and it was Maureen’s turn to consider.
‘No,’ she said at length, ‘I don’t suppose it would help in the least, it would probably harden her against him. How many of us enjoy coming face to face with a generous creditor after a lapse of ten years?’
For the first time since he had heard of Ikey’s intention to marry Hazel Potter Paul was able to smile. ‘You were in attendance as doctor at the time so will you tell me one thing more?
Did
I cry out for Claire?’
‘If you did I didn’t hear you,’ she said, ‘but you have to give that boy full marks for originality!’
He went out and up the drive feeling a good deal less despondent than when he had descended it. He found that his memories, jogged by Maureen’s story, were sharp enough when he summoned them. He could recall waking up after they had set his bones on the kitchen table and seeing Claire over by the window, looking as if she had always been there and would always remain there, and he could also recall his sense of relief at her presence, as though the excitement and terrors of the wreck had, in half-battering the life out of him, filled a vacuum left by Grace and given a new twist to his life. He thought, a little smugly, ‘Let her sulk! Let her indulge her damned Derwent pride, for that’s all it is now I can get a close look at it! I could puncture it by telling her what I know but Maureen’s right—it would only drive a permanent wedge between her and the boy, for what woman likes to be reminded of the tricks she played to get what she wanted? And she must have wanted me pretty desperately and Shallowford too I daresay, although I don’t blame her for that. She’s been a good wife and mother and she cares for this place as much as I do, so what have I got to complain about?’
He took a long sniff at the damp evening air and went in to begin his penance. He might have dragged his step a little if he had suspected that it would see him through Christmas and well into the New Year.
About the Author
R. F. Delderfield (1912–1972) was born in South London. On leaving school he joined the
Exmouth Chronicle
newspaper as a junior reporter and went on to become editor. He began to write stage plays and then became a highly successful novelist, renowned for brilliantly portraying slices of English life. With the publication of his first saga, A Horseman Riding By, he became one of Britain’s most popular authors, and his novels have been bestsellers ever since. Many of his works, including A Horseman Riding By,
To Serve Them All My Days
, the Avenue novels, and
Diana
, were adapted for television.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1966 by R. F. Delderfield
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
978-1-4804-9059-8
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
