Long Summer Day (6 page)
It was strange, Craddock thought, how time had done nothing to dull the man’s memory of that single moment of panic, now twenty-three years behind him. It was as though, up to that moment, nothing of importance had occurred to him, and after it he had lived a kind of half-life in which the most sensational event came a poor second to a wild gallop across the veldt, with troopers gasping out news that the Prince Imperial was back there, speared through by assegais.
‘Why are you telling me all this, Mr Rudd?’ he asked and Rudd said, ‘God knows! I haven’t mentioned it to anyone else in twenty years! Not that everyone here doesn’t know about it, Sir George and Hubert saw to that.’
‘But they continued to employ you as their agent.’
‘That’s
why
they employed me and also why I stayed. What kind of future was open to a man who had turned tail and abandoned a Prince Imperial to a few savages?’
They rode silently for a moment and then Craddock said, ‘Very well, now you’ve told me, but as far as I’m concerned I don’t give a damn what bad luck you ran into all that time ago. I’ve done my share of dodging tricky situations and so has every other soldier, unless he’s a fool, or a bit slow off the mark! I was hoping to rely on you for straightforward advice on my chances of making some kind of success with this place; if I decided to buy, that is, but you ought to know right away that it wasn’t my idea at all but Zorndorff’s. I can’t even legally buy it for another five years.’
Rudd looked surprised. ‘You mean your money is tied up until then?’
‘That’s so but it needn’t necessarily stop a purchase. Mr Zorndorff seems anxious that I should take the plunge, although administration of an estate this size was only a vague notion at the back of my mind, something I used to think about when I knew I would be invalided out. I’ve had no previous experience and wanted a single farm. The only qualifications I have are that I should be interested and I can ride. I’m not a crock either. When this stiffness eases I’ll be as fit as the next man. I wanted an open-air life and Mr Zorndorff seemed to think this was as good an opportunity as any.’
Rudd was smiling again. The man had almost as wide a range of expression as Zorndorff. No trace remained of his previous sullenness and he looked, Craddock now felt, like a man one could trust.
‘Well, I suppose you might do worse, things being what they are and I mean your circumstances, not those of the estate. It’s badly run down and peopled with backward, lazy rascals but they ought to welcome you; if they have any sense that is! The Lovells took their rents every quarter day for a century or more and cursed them if they asked for a new tile on the roof. You’ll need to put money into it for a spell but the land on this side is as good as any in Devon and there’s good timber behind the house. The Home Farm is in shape, for I’ve seen to that, and Honeyman is a good farmer. It’s in the Coombe area that you’ve got layabouts and they’re mostly confined to one family, the Potters, of Low Coombe. However, there’s no point at all in my influencing you one way or the other at this stage, you’ll have to make up your own mind after you’ve gone the rounds.’ He chuckled and glanced sidelong at Craddock through half-closed eyes. ‘Well, this is a rum do I must say! I expected all kind of developments when I got the enquiry but nothing quite like this, I can assure you.’ And then he seemed to brace himself in the saddle, assuming a paternal, businesslike air. ‘We’re about half-way down,’ he said, ‘so I’ll do what I should have done at first instead of crying on your shoulder, Mr Craddock!’ He pointed left towards the steep wood that bounded the moor. ‘That’s Hermitage Wood, close-set oak and beech mostly but with a big fir plantation higher up. This moor is called Blackberry Down and it’s common land, used by us and also by the Gilroy Estate, our nearest neighbour across the Teazel. That’s the smaller of the two streams, this one on your right is the Sorrel that flows through our land as far as the sea at Coombe Bay, four miles from here. Coombe Bay isn’t much more than a small village but we own some property there, held on long leases. The roads runs beside the river here for a mile or more and the park wall is over there on your left, beyond Hermitage Farm. Martin Codsall’s Farm, Four Winds, is down there across the river, the biggest we’ve got, and fairly well run. Above you, hidden by that clump, is Hermitage, farmed by Pitts and his son, sound enough chaps but very unenterprising. Beyond the park wall …’
He broke off as Paul, lifting his head, trotted forward and reined in on the very brow of the hill where he could look across the long, rolling slope to the sea.
‘One minute, Mr Rudd,’ he called. ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like this before!’ and he swept the prospect from west to east, from the thin sliver of the Teazel marking Gilroy’s boundary on the right, to the high, wooded bluff above the outfall of the River Sorrel, that ran below in a wide curve to the left. He could sniff the sea breasting the scent of heather and gorse, a smell of summer released from the bracken by the grey’s hooves, and hear the light breeze shaking Martin Codsall’s corn on the slope where Four Winds’ meadows met the great sweep of the woods and the Sorrel, ten yards wide, and spanned by a wooden bridge, began its final curve to the sea. He could even see the sun glinting on a roof in the distant village and as his eyes followed the course of the shallow stream a kingfisher flashed and then disappeared into the brake.
Rudd said, ‘Ah, it looks tame enough now, Mr Craddock, but some of its moods are damned ugly! You should see it when the sou’westers come roaring in from over the Whin, and sleet drives at you from every point of the compass!’, and he led the way down on to the track that followed the bend of the river; a broad path thick with spurting white dust that swept up in clouds and then settled to bow the stalks of cowparsley in the hedgerow on their side of the river.
It was this tall bank that held Paul’s attention until they passed the angle of the grey stone wall, bordering the park, for its colours defied the dust every yard of the way. Tall ranks of foxgloves grew there, and at their roots a thick carpet of stitchwort, ragwort, dandelion, honeysuckle, dog rose and campion. The air throbbed with the hum of insects and huge bumble bees droned from petal to petal, like fat, lazy policemen checking the doors of silent premises. As they trotted past the wooden bridge Rudd told him that it was the only one spanning the Sorrel between the railway and the sea, and rightly belonged to Codsall of Four Winds but was used by everyone when the ford from which the estate derived its name was impassable. As the little grey lodge came in view beyond the Home Farm buildings, he added, ‘I took the liberty of getting Mrs Handcock, the housekeeper, to make you up a bed in my lodge. There used to be a lodge-keeper of course, and I lived up at the house, but when he left I moved in and have been too lazy to shift. I’m a widower, and can look after myself although one of Tamer Potter’s sluts looks in to clean up every once in a while. I live a solitary life down there and get sick of my own company, so you’ll be welcome to stay with me as long as you are here. The guest rooms up at the big house are in poor shape. If we get a wet spell after this long drought the ceilings will leak.’
‘The lodge will suit me very well,’ Paul said but absently for he was still a prey to pleasurable excitement and nagging anxiety, sparring one with the other just below his belt. The whole place, he thought, was so immense, and not only vast and awesome but overpowering. By acquiring suzerainty of such a domain, he would be shouldering the cares of a small kingdom and that without a notion of how to rule unless he placed himself under the thumb of this square-faced, unpredictable agent, a man who rode with a chip on his shoulder, a chip the size of a French Prince. He must, he told himself, take plenty of time to think this out, and do his thinking in solitude.
The park gates looked as if they had remained open for years and hung by rusting hinges to a pair of fifteen-foot stone pillars, crowned by stone eagles. A stone’s throw from the entrance was the ford, paved with flat stones and no more than six inches deep where the river ballooned into a pond. Geese honked among buttercups and anemones growing on the margin, and the lodge, a snug little house with a pantiled roof and trim muslin curtains, stood only a few yards inside the drive. All that Paul could see of the house itself was a cluster of chimney pots soaring above the last few chestnuts of the drive which curved sharply at the top of the steep ascent, where grew huge clumps of rhododendron, now in flower.
Mrs Handcock, the housekeeper, came waddling to the lodge door as they clattered up and Rudd, dismounting, introduced Paul, giving the horses to a boy of about twelve who somehow contrived to hoist himself on to the cob and rode away across the paddock to the Home Farm. The housekeeper was a large, pink-faced woman about fifty, with greying hair and a rich Westcountry brogue, the first purely Devon accent Paul had ever heard. She was respectful in her approach but by no means humble, as she shepherded him into the parlour where the table was laid for tea, a traditionally Devonshire tea of scones that Mrs Handcock called ‘chudleys’, and huge bowls of homemade strawberry jam, served with thick, yellow cream. Paul was too elated to do justice to her hospitality but he did his best and was afterwards shown to his room which was very small but scrupulously clean, with a copper can of hot water set ready for his use. He listened a moment to the rumble of Rudd’s voice below, guessing that the agent was giving Mrs Handcock his first impressions of The Prospect but then he thought that this was taking mean advantage of them and having washed, came downstairs again, to find Rudd very much at ease in his big armchair, with jacket off, feet up and a Meerschaum pipe between his teeth. Paul lit his own pipe and tried to pretend that he too was at ease but Rudd was not fooled. He said, ‘I didn’t tell you the conditions of the furniture sale, Mr Craddock. The curtains and carpets, together with various fittings labelled “R”, go with the property; all the other stuff is up for sale the day after tomorrow. Coombes and Drayton are doing it from Whinmouth, that’s our nearest town, some three miles west of Gilroy’s place, across the Teazel. If you have made your decision before the auction you can bid for anything you want, or I’ll get someone to bid for you. Would you like to go up there now, or will you wait until morning?’
‘I should like to go now,’ Paul said, ‘and if it’s all the same to you, Mr Rudd, I’d prefer to poke around on my own. I can make notes of anything I might want to ask and I expect you’ve got plenty to do.’
‘I’ve got an inventory to make out,’ Rudd told him. ‘The lawyers have been pestering me for it ever since the sale notices went up. The place is locked so you’ll need the front-door key,’ and he handed Craddock a key that looked as if it would have opened a county gaol. ‘I usually have a toddy before bed,’ he added, ‘would you care to join me, after dusk?’
‘Very much,’ Craddock said, ‘and convey my thanks to Mrs Handcock for the tea.’ He left then, more than ever anxious to be alone, yet conscious of a growing liking for the agent, and climbed the steep drive, discovering the brazen heat had gone from the day and that long, evening shadows were now falling across the smaller paddock, beyond which he could just see what looked like a formal garden enclosed by ragged box hedges. It was so quiet that he could hear the rustle of birds in the rhododendron thickets and then, as he rounded the curve, there was the house twenty yards distant, looking like a great grey rock, with the last rays of red-gold sunlight lighting up its westerly windows but its eastern wing blank, as though such life as remained in the pile had gone to watch the sunset.
It was easier to assess its age and character than had been possible by studying the picture in the
Illustrated London News
;
Craddock saw at once that it was really two houses, of widely separated periods. The centre block, notwithstanding its portico and Doric columns, was a stone Tudor farmhouse, with two squarish windows set low in the wall. The massive front door was the kind of entrance suggested by the key and although at first sight the two styles represented in the frontage seemed incongruous yet they seemed to have learned to tolerate one another over the years, the marriage having been accomplished by a mantle of creeper running wild along the whole front of the building. The main windows, opening on to the terrace, looked as if they gave upon spacious rooms and the terrace itself was unpretentious, divided in half by the semi-circular approach fronting the pillars, and bounded by a low stone wall spaced with stone cranes or herons.
Craddock stood looking up at it for several minutes, watching the west windows turn ruby in the sun and as he stared, eyes half closed against the sun, the silent building began to stir with life, so that he saw it as an ageing and once beautiful woman, awaiting the return of sons who had marched away centuries since and been swallowed up in a forgotten war. There was patience here, patience and a kind of desperate dignity, as though all hope of their return had never been abandoned, and that one day all the windows would glow with candles. Craddock tried to relate this dignity and repose with the little that Rudd had told him of the family who had lived here for a century or more but he found this very difficult, for somehow the house did not strike him as morose, merely forsaken and resigned. Yet about the middle section of it, the oldest, Elizabethan block, vitality lingered, the older tenants still seeming to exert more influence than the Lovells and this conviction was so real that Craddock would not have been surprised if, as he watched, lights had flickered in that part of the house leaving each wing dark and lifeless.
He climbed the stone steps and wrestled with the giant key, the lock turning more easily than he had anticipated, and the great door swung back with a sound like an old man’s cough. He left the door open, for it was dim in the slate-slabbed hall and here he saw that the early-Victorian architect’s work on the interior had been more bold than outside, for beyond the great empty fireplace a stair ran up in a well-contrived curve and each step was so broad and shallow that it promised an easy ascent to those short of wind. There was not much furniture in the hall and what there was was shrouded in green dust-sheets. Some of the portraits had lot numbers attached to them and Craddock, recalling the hard faces of Sir George and younger son, guessed they were portraits of Lovells from 1806 onwards; they had the same bleakness of eye and stiff formality of dress that he had noted in the photographs in the magazine.
