Long Summer Day (64 page)

‘Baggage or not,’ said John glumly, ‘he’s still in love with that madcap and neither you nor I can do a thing about it.’

‘You think not?’ she said. ‘Then you’ve a thicker head than I suspected, John! I was five and a half years working for my degree and there was nothing in the lectures about broken hearts. Maybe there will be when there are more women in the field but there isn’t yet! We still leave it all to the ladies of the circulating libraries, who make a very good living out of it I’m told. Do you pay no account to this other girl—the one who rushed down from London the moment she heard of his plight?’

‘Claire Derwent? Don’t be misled by her—they’re old friends and I daresay after reading the papers she …’

‘If you think she came simply because he was laid up with broken ribs and pneumonia, John, you must have your nose so deep in the soil that you’ll end up down a rabbit hole!’

‘Oh, he was fond of her but mildly I’d say and before he married Grace. It never amounted to anything serious.’

‘It’s taking a serious turn right now,’ she said, ‘and I mean to give it a push! Why do you suppose I engaged Miss Derwent, in preference to a real nurse from Paxtonbury? Did you think I was impressed by her having played nursing games at a V.A.D. lecture course?’

‘Well, to tell the truth I was a bit sceptical,’ he admitted, chuckling, ‘for I made sure you would get a professional in for night work. After all, he can afford it and you can’t be on the spot all the time.’

‘John,’ she said, with Irish mock solemnity, ‘I’ll tell you something else about the patient and I’ll risk shocking you! It’s a little night work the boy needs, bless him, and given time and patience on both side I think he’ll get it!’

He laughed outright at this, one of the few honest guffaws since his garrison days in Ireland twenty-five years ago. ‘Maureen O’Keefe,’ he said, in a very fair imitation of her brogue, ‘as Almighty God’s me witness it’s a brazen, scheming hussy you are and I have it in mind to pass your prescription to a medical council and plaised they’d be to get shut of ye!’

‘You do that, m’boy,’ she replied, ‘and I’ll argue the diagnosis before any number of them! Now will you not admit it’s high time the country had more of us petticoat quacks? And what’s so different about my prescription either? Sure, it’s no more than the mixture as before!’ and she cracked the whip and pulled the cob back on to the river road. It was a week before he learned how to look impassive when listening to Maureen’s solemn and detailed instructions to ‘Nurse’ Derwent, when she reported for night duty after the evening visits.

The situation in the sick-room linked agent and doctor in conspiracy for as Paul’s wounds began to heal and he could move around a little John found himself studying the relationship between patient and nurse with an attention that sometimes made him nervous. It seemed to him that both Paul and Claire were very much on their guard, as though determined to keep their distance but when he mentioned this to Maureen she scolded him, saying that he would do well to keep away from the sick-room when Claire was on duty. If the girl got so much as an inkling what was expected of her she would be over the hills and far away in a flash. He took her advice and thereafter confined his visits to daylight hours but he went on worrying all the same and presently it occurred to him that the boy Ikey might be able to supply a clue regarding the latest situation between Paul and Grace. In the turmoil surrounding Ikey’s return he had not exchanged more than a few gruff words with him, whereas Ikey had kept out of his way, probably anticipating a rebuke. John waylaid him one morning in the orchard and called, sharply, ‘Hi there! I want a word with you, young feller-me-lad,’ and when the boy put on a virtuous expression, added, ‘You don’t fool me! I haven’t forgotten all that extra trouble you caused us skipping to London like that and I hope you get a hiding for it when you get back to school tomorrow!’

‘I daresay I will, sir,’ the boy said, but so cheerfully that John at once suspected the boy was laughing at him.

‘What in the name of God possessed you to do such a thing?’ he demanded. ‘You must have known we had enough trouble on our hands and that having you home only made work for everybody!’

‘I know that,’ said the boy, enigmatically, ‘but it was something I had to do!’ Then, more doggedly, ‘I can’t tell you, sir! I’d like to but I can’t. I promised, you see.’

John said, coldly, ‘Will you tell me why you went to Mrs Craddock? Did she send for you?’

‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘it was all my idea. She was surprised to see me and sent me back the next day.’

‘How the devil did you know where to find her?’

‘I read it in the newspaper, Mr Rudd.’

‘You found her address in a paper?’

‘No sir, just where those suffragettes met. I guessed she’d be there and—well, she was, sir.’

Curiosity tormented him but his army training stopped him bullying the truth from the boy. He had heard cornered troops use this stalling technique in the orderly room and had, in fact, used it himself when he was Ikey’s age. The boy, he was sure, was not being evasive out of cussedness but from motives which he regarded as honourable, loyalty to a comrade perhaps, or maybe loyalty to Grace. He said, with a pretence of bad grace, ‘Very well, Ikey, I daresay the Squire will want to know all about it when he is better. After all, you’re his responsibility, not mine!’ and he walked back to the stable-yard. When he looked over his shoulder, however, the boy was still standing where he had left him and his expression suggested a certain amount of distress and uncertainty. For no reason that he could think of the interview both puzzled and disturbed Rudd but when he saw Maureen’s trap enter the yard he shrugged off his doubts muttering, ‘I daresay it’s all trivial enough but how the devil is a boy to know that at his age?’

V

J
ohn Rudd was correct in surmising that his questions had upset Ikey. In fact, one way and another these holidays had been a disconsolate period apart from the hours spent in Hazel Potter’s company. The rush to London, the tracking down of Mrs Craddock, the dramatic switch to Claire Derwent and the luring of her to Devon, had seemed achievements at the time and when Claire actually arrived he had enjoyed a moment of triumph. But since then events had slipped and slithered beyond his comprehension and the more he contemplated the adult world the more baffling and illogical it became, lacking the fixed loyalties that regulated the world of school and stable-yard. He suffered badly from lack of a confidant and, as the days passed, with Squire in the sick-room and Claire Derwent spending her nights at the big house, Ikey’s elation began to moderate so that he passed from bewilderment to a permanent state of anxiety, seeing himself as the author of a plot that had gone awry and might ultimately touch off a domestic explosion involving everybody concerned and himself most of all. He could make nothing of the situation. The Squire, presumably, was still married to his wife, who had not only refused to visit him when he lay critically ill but had actually connived at the introduction of another woman into the house. It was this that ran counter to all Ikey’s conceptions of the married state, indeed, to his conception of human nature. He was familiar with sporadic domestic eruptions in the backstreets but wives south of the Thames, however resentful and vituperative they felt towards their husbands, stopped far short of encouraging rivals. They would, he reflected, be more likely to tear the clothes from their backs and claw out handfuls of hair, at which stage, in Ikey’s experience, husbands usually intervened and tempers were cooled in the nearest four-ale bar. And there was another aspect of the affair that bewildered him. He would have thought that Claire Derwent, once installed, would have been sure to seek him out and question him very closely about that letter but not only had she failed to do this, she had gone out of her way to avoid him and had, in fact, not addressed a word to him since her arrival. He could get little reassurance from Mrs Handcock or Thirza Tremlett regarding Squire’s health and yet they were forever whispering together and he guessed that their furtive confidences concerned Claire Derwent’s more or less permanent presence in the house. He would have talked it over with Gappy, the gardener’s boy and former room-mate over the stable, but since going away to school his relationship with Gappy had changed and Gappy now regarded him as one of the gentry, hardly less exalted than the Squire and had even taken to addressing him as ‘Young Sir’, a form of address that made Ikey blush. After John Rudd’s crusty interrogation he wandered away along the river bank towards Codsall Bridge, having considered but rejected the idea of seeking Hazel Potter’s advice. With the best will in the world, he decided, Hazel could be of no assistance here and having decided this he again envied her her freedom and from this it was a short step to gloomy contemplation of his own changed status in the Valley and a conviction that it might be better for his peace of mind if, the moment the Squire was approachable, he applied for reinstatement as stable-boy. He drifted along the path beside the river, hands deep in pockets, forehead creased with melancholy, reflecting that here was a rotten end to a thoroughly rotten holiday.

He had always preferred the Sorrel banks to any other corner of the estate, except perhaps the green depths of the woods near the islet. Last term the English master had introduced him to a poem called ‘A Boy’s Song’, and the lea, described therein, seemed to Ikey to refer to this particular reach of the river. Recollection of the verses, however, only served to deepen his gloom for he had no Billy with whom to share his enthusiasm for the darting trout and the tremble of tree shadows over the pike pool. He stood leaning on the rail of the bridge staring down into the clear water like a man contemplating suicide and was so drenched in self-pity that he did not hear the whirr of the trap wheels or turn aside when hooves beat on the planking. The first indication he had of the presence of the lady-doctor was her hail of, ‘Hi, boy!
You,
boy!’ and then he turned and flattened himself against the rail, supposing himself an obstruction to her passage. She did not advance, however, but stared down at him, her eyes glinting with amusement.

‘You’re from the big house, aren’t you?’ she asked, and when he admitted that he was, ‘Aren’t you a relative of Squire Craddock’s?’

Now this was not a simple question to answer. At school the Squire was his stepbrother but he had never made such an impudent claim on home ground, so he said, evasively, ‘I’m Ikey Palfrey and I used to work yonder but now Squire sends me to school!’

‘That’s it,’ she said, triumphantly, ‘I knew you belonged! I don’t forget faces that easily. Squire adopted you, didn’t he?’

‘He sends me to school,’ Ikey repeated obstinately, privately thinking her a very nosey woman and wishing she would stop pestering him.

‘All right, have it your own way,’ she said cheerfully and then, to his dismay, she hoisted herself from the box, looped the reins round a post and joined him in contemplation of the water.

‘Any fish down there?’ she said casually.

‘Trout,’ he told her, ‘and sometimes grayling but Squire won’t let it off. Anyone can fish free so long as they work on the estate.’

‘Ah,’ she said, with an air of satisfaction, ‘the Squire’s a sensible man! And a good one to work for I’m told.’

‘Yes, he is,’ said Ikey, somewhat mollified, ‘the best! Anyone will tell you that, Doctor.’

They remained side by side squinting down at the stream and presently he saw, or thought he saw, a chance to relieve at least one of his private anxieties. He said, bluntly, ‘Is he going to get better?
Really
better?’

‘Why, of course he is! He’ll be out and about as soon as we get the plaster off his ribs and his arm out of splints. He’s through the worst of it.’

He felt himself warming towards her, so much so that he was tempted to break the first seal of his confessional and said, ‘You … you heard about me running away to London when it happened? They all said it was a bad thing to do but I didn’t mean to cause Mr Rudd or anyone any trouble. I … I had an idea, that’s all’

She said, with elaborate unconcern, ‘You did? Well then you must have a clear conscience so don’t bother!’ And then, even more casually, ‘What kind of idea?’

‘A daft one it turned out,’ he said, beginning to suspect that he had already said too much.

They fell silent again and perhaps two minutes passed before she said, suddenly, ‘Look here, Ikey, if you want to get anything off your chest get it off and it won’t go any further! If you don’t then I’m not in the least worried. It’s a fine spring day and a boy of your age ought to enjoy it! No dam’ sense in taking troubles seriously at your age!’

The advice, and the fashion in which it was offered, levelled them in a way that astonished him for he might have been leaning on the rail alongside one of his Third Form cronies. This woman, whom everybody for miles around regarded as a freak, seemed far more approachable than, say, one of the prefects at school. He put a finger in his mouth and pulled at his lower lip, screwing up his face in an effort to assess her trustworthiness and then, as he recalled his miserable confusion of mind, he made a decision in her favour. ‘I can’t explain how it all happened,’ he said, ‘but it was me that began it! Now I don’t know whether I did right or wrong and that’s a fact, Doctor!’

‘All right,’ she said, equably, ‘suppose you explain and leave me to sort it out for you? Why
did
you run off to London, instead of staying at school until you were sent for?’

‘I went to find Mrs Craddock and tell her she ought to come home,’ he said.

He must have succeeded in astonishing her for she gasped and then chuckled, a rich chuckle, beginning deep in her throat so that he was prepared to share the joke to some extent.

‘He was very low,’ he explained, grinning, ‘not like he was before she ran off. I got to thinking about it and then, before he got hurt rescuing those sailors, I thought I’d … well … get her back if I could. I would have managed it without anyone missing me if it hadn’t been for Mr Rudd ringing up and telling them to keep me at school for a week!’