Long Summer Day (44 page)

He knew it well enough and cursed himself for not stopping to wash and change and compose himself a little before blundering in here. He said, ‘Martin Codsall went off his head and took a shot at Ikey on the Dunes.’

‘Ikey was hurt?’

‘No, but Martin—well … he killed himself and we’ve sent for the police.’

She nodded, slowly. ‘Thank you for telling me, Paul. I knew it must be something grim. So you’ve had a bad time, as well?’

‘It wasn’t very pleasant,’ he mumbled, ‘but go to sleep and don’t worry about it!’

‘Tell Thirza I’m hungry,’ she said suddenly, ‘and do impress upon everybody not to creep about the house as if I was in a decline! I’m not, you know, Daladier said I managed it pretty well, considering it was a breech birth.’

‘I’m sure you did,’ he said and suddenly vertigo assailed him again so that he gripped the door-knob with all his force and glanced over his shoulder to see if she had noticed. Luckily she was looking towards the window and it relieved him to see that her expression, seen in profile, was serene and even a little smug. He thought, savagely, ‘I suppose Codsall never meant much to her and why should he? But this Arabella business will have to be kept from her for a day or so and I’ll punch anyone’s head who blabs about it!’ The moment of faintness passed and he was able to go out, closing the door softly. He went along to the guest room they had prepared for him and peeled off his wet clothes, throwing them in a heap. He gave himself a vigorous towelling but he was too spent to bother with a bath and climbed into bed not expecting to sleep but soon he was snoring and they let him lie until late afternoon.

His first thought, on waking, was not of Grace or Arabella but of Will Codsall, whom he supposed must have been told by now. He wondered how he would take it and whether he would blame himself for his desertion of a year ago, thinking, ‘If he does, then that wife of his will soon drag it out of him,’ and it occurred to him that Will might want to return to Four Winds and this would mean finding another tenant for Periwinkle. At once he remembered Eveleigh and his six children, surely the safest bet in the Valley. He lay there wondering at himself for worrying about estate routine when, a few yards away, was his wife and son, and thought, ‘If the child was born soon after I left last night he entered the world just as Martin left,’ and the notion of simultaneous birth and death remained with him as he took his bath and went along to the big bedroom, opening the door an inch to see if she was asleep. She was awake and was combing out her hair and it seemed to him a very striking thing that she could be so engaged when, only twenty-four hours ago, she had been battling for her life and the child’s, or so it had seemed to him waiting below. He took the brush from her, imitating the long, sweeping strokes that he had first observed her make in their bedroom in Paris.

‘I’ve been thinking about names,’ she said. ‘Have you any particular preference?’

‘None at all,’ he said, ‘as a matter of fact I expected a girl.’

‘I didn’t,’ she told him, ‘not for a moment. I always knew it was a boy all right. An athlete too I wouldn’t wonder, judging by the way he kicked out! It was probably his restlessness that caused the trouble.’

She sounded calm and relaxed and he remembered reading somewhere that this was a common reaction after an aggravating labour. ‘I quite like your name,’ she went on, ‘but it’s a nuisance to have two Pauls about one house. What was your father called?’

‘Saul,’ he told her, grinning, ‘so that’s out of the question!’

‘There are too many biblical names around here already,’ she said. ‘Joshuas, Samuels, Jacobs and Micahs and most of the popular ones get shortened, all the Bills and Bobs and Walts and Dicks! No, I want him to have a two-syllable name that nobody lops. Who is your favourite historical character?’

‘Oliver Cromwell,’ he said, ‘but I don’t see him as “Oliver”, do you? There’s another man who always intrigued me, however—Simon de Montfort!’

‘That’s it!’ she exclaimed, ‘“
Simon
”! It’s clean and uncompromising like a … like a blade!’

‘All right then, “Simon” it is and I don’t know whether we can take that noise for his approval.’

The baby had begun to whimper but before Paul could pick him up Thirza had rushed in, all rustling skirts and galvanised efficiency and looking sternly at Paul said, ‘It’s time for his feed, sir!’ but when Grace held out her arms and Paul seemed in no hurry to go the girl looked so embarrassed that Grace laughed and said, ‘Oh, don’t be so stuffy, Thirza! How do you think I got the baby anyway?’ and without more ado slipped her nightdress from her shoulder and gave the child her breast. Thirza left the room in three strides, Grace’s laughter following her down the corridor as Paul said, ‘Every convention in the book is a kind of hurdle you have to jump, isn’t it?’ and she replied, ‘Most of them, so you can tell me the truth about Codsall!’

He was unprepared for this and growled, ‘What idiot has been telling you things while I was asleep?’

‘No one mentioned it,’ she said, ‘but I should be witless if I didn’t know something was being kept from me! What really happened over there?’

He sighed, reflecting that it was never any use trying to cushion her against facts for every time he attempted it she made a fool of him.

‘It was a ghastly business; Codsall killed his wife with a hay knife but if you want all the gory details you can read them in the newspaper after the inquest.’ He added, however, the story of Ikey’s part in the tragedy and said how well the boy had acquitted himself, and this seemed to interest her as much as the murder. ‘We shall have to do something for that boy,’ she said, ‘and we ought to do it at once!’ and when Paul pointed out that Ikey was perfectly happy as a stable-lad she said, impatiently, ‘I daresay, but he won’t be later on! The time to start on him is now, while he’s young enough to do as he’s told.’

‘What can we do for him we aren’t already doing?’

‘We can send him to a proper school where he’ll get a real education,’ she said, emphatically, and it was useless to suggest that Ikey might be unhappy at a school where his outlook and Cockney accent would put him at a disadvantage, for her agile mind was already grooming the boy for a career and at last Paul had to admit that her plan had possibilities, for she reasoned that if Ikey could mimic anyone on the estate he could also learn to speak and behave conventionally, particularly if Paul made demands on him. He grumbled, ‘Why saddle me with the responsibility? It was your idea, not mine!’

‘He worships the ground you walk on,’ she said, ‘he always has and always will. Why do you suppose he tracked Codsall like that and then insisted on going back to the farm? Everyone has to have a hero and you happen to be Ikey’s, whether you like it or not, so talk it over with him and if he backs down because going away to school would mean parting from you then I’ll have a talk with him!’

‘You’re always in such a damned hurry,’ he said, laughing, but she replied, seriously, ‘Yes, I am, Paul, and I always will be while things like the Potter case occur so needlessly!’

He could see very little connection between the poaching incident, Codsall’s craziness and his stable-boy’s education but reflecting that this was no time to argue with her promised to speak to Ikey after the inquest at Whinmouth, the next day. She seemed satisfied with this and handed him Simon to return to his cot. He cradled the child for a moment and she watched him, her eyes alight with secret amusement. It was curious, she thought, that women produced children but never sentimentalised over them in the manner of men. She was glad about the child but more for his sake than her own. She felt no sense of achievement, as Celia and all the other sentimental old bodies had promised, no more than relief that it now had an existence of its own and that she could retreat into her own privacy. Then, away at the back of her mind and hardly as a conscious thought at all, she wondered if it was this kind of prejudice that set her apart from other women and whether, indeed, she had any real right to a man’s protection and love.

III

T
he inquest produced no surprises. It was a survey of known facts, volunteered by a short procession of witnesses, beginning with Doctor O’Keefe, who said he had treated Martin Codsall over the last year for headaches and had cautioned him on the probable results of his excessive drinking. He also mentioned the strain of eccentricity in previous Codsalls he had known, notably Martin’s father, and when he was talking of this Paul glanced at Will Codsall, who was sitting on the witnesses’ bench between his wife Elinor and the stolid Eveleigh but Will did not seem to resent this implication but merely blinked and absentmindedly scratched his chin so that Paul thought, ‘Nobody ever asks the important questions or digs for the real facts, like Arabella’s eternal nagging or Martin’s terrible sense of inferiority, engendered by years and years of denigration.’ He gave his own evidence briefly, as did Eveleigh, and was glad when the Coroner complimented Ikey on his dogged pursuit of the deceased and his prompt rescue of the hysterical Sydney. It was over and done with inside an hour and outside the little court Will Codsall told Paul that the funeral would be at Coombe Bay parish church the next day, murderer and victim being buried in the same family grave, despite a rumour that Parson Bull would prohibit it. His family, he said, had been churchwardens at Coombe Bay for more than a century and having regard to Martin’s mental illness Parson Bull agreed to stretch a point. Elinor stood by tight-lipped while they talked, only joining in when Paul asked Will if he would like to return to Four Winds as master.

‘No,’ she snapped, ‘’er woulden, an’ you can taake that as vinal, Squire! Thankee all the zame but tiz “No”! Four Winds be a bad plaace an’ us is better off where us be, at Periwinkle!’

Paul agreed but noticing that Will looked shifty thought it right to press the point somewhat.

‘There’s no comparison between Four Winds and Periwinkle as farms, Elinor,’ he said. ‘One is well established and close on 350 acres, the other a mere sixty, enclosed by Pitts’ land and the moor.’

‘It’s no odds,’ she said stubbornly, ‘us want none of it, do us, Will?’

‘No, I reckon not,’ Will said, slowly, ‘we’m zettled enough, Mr Craddock,’ and Paul pondered the tendency of Codsall males to let their women speak on their behalf as Elinor added, ‘As to what that old vool in there said about the family being mazed, I don’t reckon nothing to that! Will baint mazed, nor my little Mark neither! A man’s what he maakes of himself to my mind, or what his woman maakes of ’un!’

‘I daresay you’re right about that, Elinor,’ said Paul, and thought how much luckier Will had been in his wife than Martin. ‘Stay on at Periwinkle and good luck to you both! Will you be taking young Sydney to live with you now?’

Elinor glanced at Will. It was plain that she did not relish the prospect but she said slowly, ‘I reckon that’d be our duty, Squire, providing he wants to come, but he’ll never maake a varmer, he’s too set on book-larnin’. Maybe whoever moved into Four Winds would board him. He don’t eat much and he’s at school most o’ the time.’

‘Then leave Sydney to me,’ Paul said and went across to the black-browed foreman, Eveleigh, who was adjusting the harness of his pony and deliberately avoiding involvement in the conference.

‘Suppose I transferred the tenancy of Four Winds to you, Eveleigh?’ he asked and the man’s head came up so sharply that the pony shied. To cover his agitation Eveleigh shouted, ‘Quiet, damn you! Stand still, boy’ and glanced across at Will and Elinor, now on the point of moving off.

‘That wouldn’t be right, would it, sir?’ he asked, ‘not with Will ’aving to make do on sixty acres o’ rough land?’

‘Will doesn’t want the farm,’ Paul told him, ‘I’ve just offered it to him. He’ll have the contents, of course, and some of the stock no doubt, for Martin probably left a will but he’s only got sixty acres and I daresay you could come to some arrangement with him and buy stock over a period? Or perhaps you could split the Friesian herd between you? The point is, how would you feel about running Four Winds?’

Eveleigh considered, making the decision of a lifetime. Finally he said, ‘I could make it the best farm for miles around but I’ve got nothing put by. How could I, wi’ six kids and the pittance Codsall paid me? I couldn’t run it alone, and I couldn’t pay the hired men a week’s wages. It isn’t Will I’d have to come to terms with, but you, Squire. It’d be five years before you saw money come back but by then my boys an’ girls would be old enough to lend a hand so I wouldn’t need hired help. I’d say it was you who had to make the decision, Mr Craddock!’

Paul remembered the man’s steadfastness and the gentleness he had displayed lowering Martin’s body. He recalled too, the relationship between Eveleigh and his wife, and the way she had hustled Ikey into bed with one of her own boys. He said, ‘I’d take a chance on you both, Eveleigh! The place if yours if you want it and I’ll get Rudd to draw up a new agreement. You can have it rent free for three years and I’ll undertake to pay two men until you see something back from your harvest. Did Martin sell his milk locally?’

‘We do right now,’ Eveleigh said eagerly, ‘but my missus is a wonderful hand with the churn. I’ve always thought we could send butter an’ cheese up the railway line to the cities if we got things on a proper footing. There’s money in that if you can cut out the middle-men.’ And then, his dark eyes glowing, ‘You’ll not regret it, Squire! You give me this chance and I’ll make something of it, you can rely on that!’

‘I’m sure I can,’ Paul said, and wondered briefly what Rudd would say when he heard he had struck the best farm in the Valley from the rent roll for three years. Then he thought, ‘To hell with John! Grace would agree and it’s time I made some of my own decisions!’ To Eveleigh he said, ‘You’d best go back now and get things moving. Come over and see me on Sunday morning.’

Eveleigh nodded, too moved to say more. He climbed into his trap and drove off after Will Codsall just as Rudd came out of the courthouse looking more than usually gloomy. ‘I always seem to be missing when anything serious happens around here,’ he said glumly, ‘but it looks as if you and that stable-boy managed as well as anyone could have done. However, I can take over from here so get back to your wife and baby and take it easy for a day or two.’ He did not give expression to the thought that crossed his mind as he mentioned Grace, or how events seemed to be justifying his nagging suspicion that, in some way, Grace had revived the bad luck of the Valley simply be being who she was, a hangover of the Lovell tradition. There had been the quarrel with Gilroy, then the Smut Potter affair, and now this, a murder and a suicide, all within a matter of a year. And there was more to come he wouldn’t wonder!