Long Summer Day (46 page)

As the yellow trap passed out of view behind the curve of the chestnuts Grace said, ‘She’s still madly in love with you, Paul, but perhaps you don’t need telling that.’

He was shocked and angry, not so much by the statement but by the blandness with which it was uttered, as though this had been a subject of debate between them and that it was now time to concede her the winner and pay the bet. He growled back, ‘That’s a damned silly thing to say! And not a very kind thing, either!’ and stumped off into the library, leaving her smiling on the porch steps. A moment later, however, she opened the door softly and came in and he saw that she was quite unruffled by his touchiness.

‘It wasn’t such a silly remark,’ she said, after a pause, ‘and I didn’t mean it maliciously! There are all kind of things wrong with me, Paul, but I’m not catty about other women.’

‘All right then,’ he said, resignedly, ‘let’s regard it as bad guesswork. I don’t think she ever was in love with me, in fact, I know she wasn’t! She may have been a bit infatuated when she was nineteen but it was never more than a flirtation on my part or on hers, no matter what you might have heard to the contrary!’

‘I’ve heard nothing about it,’ she said, in the same reasonable tone, ‘I was just using my eyes. Her sister knows it’s true and I daresay old Edward Derwent was disappointed too; that would account for his grumpiness! You didn’t see her as I did, holding your Simon just now. She’s not only in love with you but unselfishly so, and that’s rare!’

He said, sullenly, ‘All women look that way holding babies! And he isn’t just “my Simon”, Grace, he’s yours as well!’ but then, sensing that this might lead to a discussion that provoked one of her dismal withdrawals, added, ‘As a matter of fact she behaved rather badly at the time. Rose knows that and it still ashamed for her. She made the running and when it was obvious to her that I was in love with you she flounced out of the Valley and has never returned until now! It was more pique than anything else, as she frankly admitted in a letter to me!’

‘Have you still got the letter?’

‘I don’t keep Claire Derwent’s letters tied up with chocolate-box ribbon,’ he said. ‘Why should I?’

‘Oh, I don’t know—as a scalp, perhaps. Do you keep mine?’

‘You’ve never written me one,’ he told her and she laughed, in a way that encouraged him to treat the whole thing more lightly than he was disposed to do.

‘No, that’s right, I never have! But there really wasn’t time, was there, and we’ve never been parted since then!’ She came across and perched herself on the edge of the table close to his chair, her skirts rustling pleasantly. ‘Come on, Paul, admit it! Don’t you find me a little cloying? Like David Copperfield’s Dora?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘you’re much more like Agnes, the practical one!’ but she had coaxed him out of his sulk so that they were able to discuss the Derwents objectively, Grace saying that Claire had done herself a good turn without knowing it by fleeing the Valley. She was now living less than an hour’s journey from London and could therefore enjoy the best of both worlds. Suddenly she added, ‘As soon as she sat down, holding her knees close together and sitting half sidewards as I handed her tea, she reminded me very vividly of someone and I couldn’t think who but now I think I’ve got it! Wait a minute …’ and she went over to the lowest shelf of the bookcase where there were several bulky volumes of coloured reproductions of famous masters, returning to him with a book called
Famous Paintings of the Western World
that Paul had never opened.

‘Here it is,’ she said triumphantly, ‘and I was right! There’s your Claire, three centuries ago!’ and she laid the book open at an illustration of Rubens’ ‘Bathsheba receiving King David’s letter’, a picture described as ‘one of the master’s most enchanting later works, a fiery love song and a poem in praise of sensual beauty’. Paul looked at the reproduction with interest, seeing a handsome, full-breasted girl sitting with bare knees pressed together and her body turned half-left as she received the letter from a Negro page. Grace’s memory had been remarkably accurate, for the girl, listed as Helene Fourment, whom the painter had married when she was sixteen, was Claire Derwent in almost every particular. She had the same rounded face, the same air of mild provocation and the identical attentive pose, for it seemed to Paul that this Bathsheba might have been checking her shopping list rather than receiving the advances of a royal seducer. He studied the picture with interest, struck by its superb composition, by the way the painter had directed light on the carelessly bent arm, the soft, drooping fingers and the chubby knees. Grace, watching him closely, said, ‘Well? And what has she got for you, Paul?’

‘Detachment more than anything else,’ he said, but Grace shook her head violently and said, ‘Oh no! It isn’t that! It’s a kind of
fruitfulness,
a ripeness that he’s captured. A man could enjoy that girl very much but without ever getting emotionally involved. She would have children very easily, I’d swear to that!’

‘Well,’ he said, closing the book, ‘I daresay you’re right but there’s something missing for my taste.’

‘What is it?’

‘There’s no “secret” about her and I suppose that’s what initially attracted me to you! Besides,’ he went on, more jocularly, ‘I’m partial to brunettes and always have been,’ and he told her something about the girl whose surname he had forgotten and the fourteen-year-old hoyden who had scared him so badly in the stables as a boy, reflecting that both had been dark, rather sallow girls. It was good to be able to talk to one’s wife like this and he thought, ‘If I had married Claire Derwent I daresay we should have made a go of it, but it would have lacked adventure!’ He said aloud, ‘Let’s go and look at your garden, Grace. Horace tells me it’s almost finished,’ and they went out through the french doors and along the terrace to the corner of Little Paddock.

Great clumps of daffodils and narcissi were growing on the grassy bank dividing field and the path that led to the rose garden. There had been none about here last spring and he remembered now that she had planted more than a thousand bulbs hereabouts and more on both sides of the drive. It struck him as odd that a woman as self-contained as her, someone who worried about imponderables like women’s suffrage, should expend so much energy on a garden, for surely the Pankhursts and their supporters would deride anything not brought to their notice by a pamphlet. As always when they were alone out here, with the great house silhouetted against an evening sky and blackbirds piping in the thickets, a glow of possession and satisfied memories stole over him, embracing not only the scene, and the long vista of woods and field to the south and east, but her also and when they stopped at the stone wall she and Horace Handcock had built he slipped his arm round her waist and said, ‘I shall never want anything more than this and a man ought to think himself lucky to have found all he needed at twenty-five! Does that saddle me with a sluggish imagination?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘not necessarily but it’s a fortunate state of mind, Paul, and uncommon enough to be valued, I think.’

‘Well then, I appreciate it to the full,’ he admitted and he bent to kiss the lobe of her ear.

Chapter Eleven

I

I
t came stuttering down from the moor like a lean, lamed hen, moving in short, uncertain flutters, pursued by a rolling cloud of white dust and because of its erratic progress the cloud occasionally overtook it and loitered just ahead until it emerged into clean air with an undertone of
bub-bub-bub
and an overtone like the bleat of a deprived ewe.

Henry Pitts was the first man in the Valley to see it, abandoning his plough to run wide-eyed across two acres of downslope where he could stand on the crest of the moor and look down on the road it travelled. It was the first horseless carriage he had ever seen for he rarely travelled as far as Paxtonbury and had never really believed the stories his drinking companions told them in the bar of The Raven. Yet here it was, careering along the track that led from the moor to the river road, a real and unmistakable horseless carriage, propelled by noisy magic and steered by a stranger in heavy goggles, a peaked cap and a long white coat, like the cloak of a French horseman in ‘The Squares at Waterloo’, the only picture on the walls of Hermitage Farm.

Henry stood on the bank with mouth agape, telling himself that seeing was believing yet not fully acknowledging what he saw as fact, for the thing was now moving at the speed of a galloping horse and the dust streaked behind it like the wake of a ship. Its wheels, Henry reasoned, must be made of iron, for they struck the uneven surfaces with murderous force and several times the driver would have been thrown out had he not clung to a wheel perched on the end of a long vertical rod rising from between his knees. Henry thought it a very clumsy device for this purpose, reasoning that something fixed and square would have afforded a better grip but while he was still standing there the squat vehicle reached the junction of track and cart-road and suddenly stopped, its trailing cloud of dust again rolling down on it until Henry thought it had been an illusion and feared for his reason. It was still there, however, for when he ran down from the bank and advanced along the track the dust cloud had settled and the thing could be seen clearly for what it was, a kind of foreshortened brougham, with spoked wheels like exceptionally heavy bicycle wheels and rims swathed in thick bands of rubber. He saw now that the wheel to which the man had been clinging was obviously used for guiding because, just as Henry approached, the goggled man began to haul at it so that the front wheels moved around in a half-circle. There were, in addition, all manner of levers and appurtenances attached to the rigid brass frame, a pair of fishy-eyed lamps, another thick iron fitted with a handgrip and a bulb that looked to Henry like a hunting horn with a cricket ball attached to it. The young man smiled encouragingly when he saw Henry make his cautious approach and shouted above the
bub-bub-bub
of the little monster’s voice, waving his arms as if urging Henry to come nearer but Henry stopped a good ten yards away and continued to stare, knuckling the dust from his eyes and trying to make up his mind which way to run should the thing explode in his face. So must his ancestors have approached a local pit in this same Valley when word came that a strange and ferocious beast had been trapped therein.

‘
Hi
!’
the young man continued to shout, ‘
Hi,
there! Am I right for Shallowford? Do I turn right or left?’ and then, gauging the extent of Henry’s uncertainty, he made some adjustment so that the shattering
bub-bub-bubbing
stopped and the thing stood as silent and unoffending as a dogcart.

Henry said slowly, ‘Gordamme, maister, I never zeed such a thing! Never in my bliddy life!’ and advanced a step or two as the young man climbed down, stripped off his goggles and turned on him a pair of laughing blue eyes under sandy, upsweeping brows. He was, thought Henry, a very cheerful-looking fellow and Henry’s trepidation put a twinkle in the eyes as he said, ‘You mean that I’m a pioneer? The very first?’ and he was clearly delighted for he went on, ‘Now that’s one up for Diana because she’s nearly seven now! It’ll be something for her to remember in her old age, won’t it, Di?’ and he patted the casing at the front of the contraption just as though it was a horse. Henry was now half persuaded that he was dealing with an amiable lunatic but, remembering Martin Codsall, reflected that even amiable madmen were subject to violence so he continued to keep his distance and said, ‘Youm almost at Shallowford, zir! Baint no more’n a mile along the river ’till you strike the lodge!’ Then, but still moving with caution, he sidled nearer, reaching out to touch the casing, finding it very hot and withdrawing his hand as though it had been bitten.

‘Er’s
seven,
you said?’

‘Yes,’ replied the young man, ‘she’s a Benz, you see, a German model, copied from one of the early Rileys. I only bought her yesterday. She’s not half bad on a good road but this stretch almost did for her.’

‘Where … where’ve ’ee come from, maister?’ Henry asked and he would not have been much surprised had the young man told him from the moon.

‘Plymouth,’ he said, ‘I started about noon. Not bad, is it?’

‘Not bad!’ Henry echoed, ‘forty-five mile in dree hours? It’s a bliddy miracle, maister! Dornee mind risking your neck?’

‘Good God, there’s no danger!’ the man said laughing. ‘Not half as much as riding a young mare across country!’

‘Jasus!’ said Henry, fervently, ‘you gimme the mare, maister! Be ’ee callin’ on Squire Craddock?’

‘On my father,’ said the sailor, ‘John Rudd, the agent. Do you know him?’

‘Arr, that I do,’ Henry said, losing a little of his awe. ‘So you be Maister Rudd’s on’y son? The Naval gent?’

‘That’s me!’ said the motorist cheerfully. ‘I’ve just finished a short cruise and I’ve got a long leave, so I’m off all round England. If Diana lets me down I’ll sell her and buy a Wolseley. Mind you, there’s a lot to be said for this model. They have a mechanically-operated inlet valve and you don’t get so much trouble with fuel intake. She’s ten horse, you know, and can do thirty-five on the straight and flat!’

He might have been talking High Dutch as far as Henry was concerned and must have realised as much, for suddenly he hopped on to the seat, fiddled with levers, hopped out again holding a crooked piece of iron and ran round to the front where he seemed to tease the contraption’s secret parts with his uncouth weapon. Suddenly there was a series of shot-gun explosions causing Henry to leap for the cover of the ditch but when he peeped out again the staccato
bub-bub-bubbing
had recommenced and a cloud of bluish smoke was pouring from Diana’s hindquarters. With a wave the young man was off again down the river road, the noise of his progress stampeding Eveleigh’s Friesians half-way across the water meadow.

‘Gordamme!’ Henry said softly, ‘to think I should live to zee a bliddy dog-cart driven by smoke!’ and as he returned to his plough, realising that he would now have to treat his drinking companions’ stories with more respect, for Willis, the wheelwright, had told him only a week ago that he had seen one of these same carriages climb Cathedral Hill in Paxtonbury at a speed twice as fast as a man could run.

One or two of the Home Farm workers saw the Benz turn into the main gates of the big house and pull up at the lodge, but either they were more sophisticated than Henry Pitts or they lacked his curiosity for they merely stopped work to see what would happen when the driver turned his back on the contraption. Then, calling encouragement to one another they edged nearer, watching the young man in the white coat hammer on the lodge door. Nobody answered, for nobody was there, but when he returned to the drive he saw what his ward-room companions would describe as ‘a fetching little filly’ bending double over the controls in such a way as to expose a pair of exceptionally neat calves. He coughed twice, expecting her to bob up blushing, but she remained absorbed, her head half under the steering rod so that, in her light summer dress, he had an unlooked-for opportunity of appreciating what he would have described as ‘her upholstery’, all the way from ankles to shapely little bottom. At length he had to admit to himself that he was taking a mean advantage and said, ‘Excuse me, Miss! I’m looking for my father, John Rudd. Do you know if he’s around?’

The girl straightened up slowly and he noticed, with surprise, that she had oil on her fingers. He noticed also that her front view was even more attractive than her back view, that she had dark, close-growing curls, a pretty, heart-shaped face, deep blue eyes, a short, regular nose, and something he always looked for in a girl, two large dimples, not counting one in the cleft of her chin. He thought, ‘My God! What a little peach!’ but he had good manners and instantly whipped off cap and goggles, giving her a quarterdeck bow, of the kind he used when the captain brought ladies aboard and he was under orders to make himself sociable.

She smiled, a slow, friendly smile and said, ‘Mr Rudd is up at the house, I believe. Are you Roddy, John’s son?’ and he stood to attention, looking rather ridiculous in his long, shapeless coat and said, ‘Yes, Miss! I’m on leave and I thought I’d look him up before setting off on a motor tour. I seem to have caused a bit of sensation in the Valley. A chap back there told me they’d never seen a motor here before but that can’t be true, can it?’

‘Yes, it’s true,’ she said and he noted her low, almost masculine voice and thought, ‘By George, I wish the skipper had invited somebody like this aboard during one of his blasted chit-chat parties!’ But she was to surprise him further for she said, pointing to the motor, ‘It’s a Benz, isn’t it? The model the Germans copied? I’ve never seen one before but I’ve ridden in a Panhard and a Daimler. One of the original Daimlers it was, assembled in Wolverhampton. Does she boil on hills? Do you have to wait for her to cool off every now and again?’

‘Why no,’ he said, eagerly, ‘she’s not a bad little crock at all! I tackled a one-in-five on my way across Dartmoor this morning. Had to take it quietly, of course, and nurse her, but she only stalled once. The main thing is to find even ground. She’s apt to move in jerks on rough surfaces, like the moor back there. I say, would you like a lift up to the house?’

‘Indeed I would,’ Grace said, laughing at his enthusiasm, ‘but perhaps I’d better introduce myself. I’m not a “Miss” I’m a ‘Mrs’ … Mrs Craddock, the Squire’s wife. I expect your father has told you about me.’

‘No, he hasn’t,’ he said, disappointment clouding his good-looking face, ‘but I do beg your pardon and I’m delighted to meet you, Mrs Craddock! You don’t often encounter a lady who doesn’t think of a motor as an infernal machine, liable to blow the curious to smithereens! Where did you ride in a Panhard? They’re the best, so far, but the whole industry is in a state of flux and Panhard won’t lead for long. Wolseley has something very lively coming up, I hear, and now that His Majesty has taken to motoring I wouldn’t wonder if they aren’t all the rage in a year or so!’

‘I’m sure they will be,’ she said, as he handed her into the passenger seat, ‘and I wish I could persuade my husband to buy one but he’s just bought a brougham, so I’m afraid it’s unlikely.’

She watched him start up and the Benz coughed its way up the steep drive. Conversation was impossible while they were in motion but they arrived in the forecourt without incident, just as Rudd came out onto the terrace and saw his son handing Grace Craddock down from her perch.

‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, ‘what the devil are you doing here in that thing?’ and Grace explained, noting that for all Rudd’s scorn he was nonetheless pleased to see Roddy.

They all three took tea in the library, Rudd explaining that Paul would not be back until late that night, for the long-awaited bye-election had just been announced and he had driven to Paxtonbury to sponsor James Grenfell, in the Drill Hall. ‘I daresay he’ll try and talk you into campaigning for him,’ John said. ‘Grenfell might like a modern approach and display a poster on a motor “Keep abreast with the Liberals” or something like that.’

‘Good Lord, I couldn’t allow that!’ Roddy said, with genuine alarm, ‘we chaps aren’t allowed to side with either party, although we’re naturally expected to vote Tory! Will you be helping your husband in the campaign, Mrs Craddock?’