Long Summer Day (80 page)

‘I’ll have a word with his headmaster before he leaves,’ Paul told her and her enquiry set him thinking for, until then, he had never considered Ikey a person with money-making propensities.

Claire was enjoying herself very much in her own way. The mothers and sisters seemed to her a very fashionable set and it wasn’t often she got a chance to mix with smartly-dressed women. The setting, she thought, was as remote and rural as the Valley, but today seemed self-consciously so, as if everyone here was taking part in an elaborate pastoral masque. There was an endless flirting of gloves and twirling of parasols, and the women swayed as they walked, wearing bright fixed smiles and using courtly inclinations of the head. She thought, ‘If anyone wanted to paint a scene representative of England in the first summer of the new reign they couldn’t do better than plant their easel by the long-jump pit and turn out something like Frith’s “Railway Station” or “At The Seaside”. If they were good enough they might even catch the smugness and the well-fed looks on the faces of that picnicking group over there, or the strained, newly-arrived expression on the face of that little boy’s plain sister, sitting alone near the hurdles.’ Then it occurred to her how very out of touch with the social world she and Paul were becoming down in the Valley and how unrepentant she felt about it, although she wasn’t so sure it was altogether right for them to live an enclosed life. For the first time since she had left London she reminded herself that this voluntary withdrawal on his part had been the rock on which his first marriage foundered and this encouraged her to think that perhaps there was something to be said for Grace after all. Taking advantage of a moment when everyone was talking to somebody else she said, ‘I’d forgotten people still followed fashions, Paul! Will you promise me something, while I remember?’

‘You look attractive enough to extract any number of rash promises today, Claire,’ he told her but she said, ‘No, I’m serious! After the baby’s born will you take me to London for the Coronation? I haven’t been east of Paxtonbury since we married!’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you what. Present me with a girl instead of another damned boy and it’s a promise! And I don’t give a row of beans if it’s twins so long as it isn’t one of each!’

‘I’ll see what can be arranged,’ she said and squeezed his hand as Ikey, looking self-consciously smart in his swallow-tailed coat and three-inch butterfly collar, joined them to say the Head could see Paul now and save him a special journey to school before end of term. So Paul followed him along stone corridors to a heavy, pseudo-Gothic door on which Ikey knocked and said, by way of introduction, ‘My guardian, sir!’ and withdrew, leaving Paul confronted with the thick-set, scrubby-haired man about fifty, who shook his hand absentmindedly and seated him in an obvious ‘parents’ chair that engulfed him.

Paul had met the headmaster on several previous occasions and had found him rather remote, with a tendency to grant an interview with a parent as though it was unavoidable but a crashing bore just the same. Today, however, the man came alive and Paul concluded that his change of manner had some link with Ikey’s athletic triumphs for he began by saying, ‘Delighted you could get over, Mr Craddock! In view of the fact that Palfrey is leaving this half I should have written in any case, but I appreciate an opportunity to tell you how wrong I was about the lad and how pleased I am to be wrong!’ When Paul looked rather nonplussed at this he continued, ‘The fact is he began rather badly—that time he ran off to London and I admit that I wrote him off as a lad anxious to advertise himself as an individualist!’

‘Isn’t that encouraged?’ asked Paul, deciding that he did not like the man much but the Head disarmed him with a professional smile and said, ‘Well, to be frank we don’t cater for individualists here—not yet, at all events. It was during the last year or so that we began to succeed so spectacularly with your lad.’

Paul murmured that his ward (he remembered just in time that ‘Ikey’ was never used at High Wood) had been very happy at the school and that he was relieved to hear him well spoken of by his headmaster.

‘Oh, it’s rather more than that,’ the headmaster went on, ‘the fact is Palfrey has always puzzled me somewhat. He was never any trouble apart from that one time. He pulled his weight and made friends easily enough but frankly, I always had the impression he was … well …
laughing at us
!
Does that sound extravagant?’

Paul thought, privately, ‘No, I’m damned if it does for he almost certainly was and jolly good luck to him! He got away with it, and I wonder what the old bird would say if I told him Ikey came here from a London junk yard via my stables?’ He said, aloud, ‘I’ve been wondering if we’re doing the right thing encouraging him to take a commission, Headmaster. Have you any thoughts on the matter?’

The headmaster put on his ‘careers’ look and said, with slight hesitation, ‘That … er … rather depends. Has he an army background?’

‘I served through the South African War,’ Paul said, at last beginning to get the measure of the man, but all the Head said was, ‘Ah, that’s not quite the same thing! You were Yeomanry, I expect, and you’re his guardian, not his father.’

‘The old bird is fishing now,’ Paul thought, ‘but he’ll catch nothing from me!’ ‘I’m a relative,’ he said, brazenly, ‘his sister was my first wife. Perhaps I never told you he was born on the Continent, or that his mother was an Austrian subject?’

The Head seemed vaguely impressed, remarking that the Austrians produced a large number of first-class equestrians, whereupon Paul said promptly that the boy could ride anything and had always had an exceptional flair for horses.

‘Then I don’t really see how we could improve on the cavalry,’ the headmaster went on. ‘After all, it’s a pleasant life, particularly in Ireland and India. If he does well enough in Army Entrance he might get a good regiment although there’s tremendous competition, I’m told,’ and when Paul made no reply he added, ‘Did you have anything else in mind?’

‘No,’ Paul admitted, ‘I didn’t but I think I should prefer him to take up a profession with more future in it.’

‘But surely there is a future in an Army career, Mr Craddock?’

‘Not in the cavalry,’ Paul said promptly, ‘at least, not in my opinion!’

‘I’m afraid your opinion isn’t generally shared,’ the Head said kindly, as though applying a gentle damper to a boy who had made a bad gaffe but needed encouragement. ‘The Chairman of our Governors, Lieutenant-General Manners-Smith, thinks the exact opposite and he was on Buller’s staff in the Transvaal.’

‘I wouldn’t wonder,’ Paul thought, ‘and got a lot of good chaps killed playing at Waterloo outside Ladysmith!’ and suddenly he tired of phrase-juggling and began to wonder if, after all, High Wood was the kind of place he wanted for Simon and the twins when they had passed through Prep School. It had performed a miracle on Ikey but did his own boys stand in need of miracles? He said briefly, ‘I’ll have a talk with the lad during the holidays, Headmaster, and if I need further advice perhaps I could write. If he really wants the Army I won’t stand in his way,’ and he got up, extending his hand. And then another, more important thought struck him and he said, ‘You spoke well enough of him as a product of the school. How did he show up as a scholar?’

‘Oh, average, average,’ said the Head airily, ‘but scholarship isn’t everything, Mr Craddock,’ implying that it counted for rather less than the ability to convert a try into a goal.

The matter was carried a step further early in the holidays as Paul and Ikey rode into Paxtonbury to look at a hunter recommended by Rose Derwent as ‘being worth a guinea over the odds’. They had often travelled this road in company and for each of them it was usually a sentimental journey. Paul recounted the gist of his interview with the Head and Ikey was amused by Paul’s confession that he had found the man too pretentious for his taste. ‘Oh, Sandy Mac is stuffy all right,’ he said tolerantly, ‘but he’s a trier, a bit like you and me in a way,’ and when Paul asked what this meant he added, ‘He’s not public school, you see, and has to walk pretty carefully. His father was a postman, I believe, and he won a scholarship to a grammar school up north and afterwards went on to win first-class honours at Cambridge. You have to hand it to him for that. It was really why I played along with him.’

Paul was intrigued by the boy’s eye for the chinks in adult armour and also by his ability to judge people’s real worth but the comment reminded him of the Head’s remark—‘I believe he was laughing at us’ and he quoted it, expecting to outface the lad. He evidently failed for Ikey laughed so heartily that he lost a stirrup.

‘He said
that
?
Old Sandy Mac admitted that to you? Geewhiz! He must have come close to twigging me after all!’

‘The point is,’ said Paul seriously, ‘you’ve been playing charades ever since you went to school and I’ve been aiding and abetting you! Frankly I think it’s been worth it but we don’t have to go playing them indefinitely! You’re eighteen now and can make your own decisions!’

‘Can I?’ The boy was suddenly serious. ‘I can’t, you know, not really! Far too much has rubbed off on me. Oh, I’m not complaining, Governor, and I should hate you to think I was, I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me but sometimes …’

He broke off and kicked his heels against the horse’s flanks causing it to break into a trot. Snowdrop automatically increased his pace and when they drew level again Paul saw that the boy’s eyes were troubled. ‘Look here, Ikey,’ he said, ‘you don’t have to confide everything to me but I’ll always listen if you want to and don’t ever forget it! I started this conversation with the idea of finding out if you had made up your mind about taking Army Entrance in October and going to Sandhurst. The last time we talked about it you had no doubts. Have you had any since?’

Ikey reined in and both horses stopped near the brow of the hill; another fifty yards and they would top the crest and begin the long descent into the Paxtonbury bowl.

‘The Army would cost you money, Governor; it could go on costing you money indefinitely.’

‘I can afford it and if you really want to take a commission I’ll back you. The real issue is—would you prefer to train for something else, for one of the professions? Or would you care to go on to University and make your final decision there?’

The boy said, with a shrug, ‘It isn’t that easy, Governor. At my reckoning I’m only about two-thirds a gent; maybe not as much as that, maybe only three-fifths! You couldn’t anticipate that when you sent me to High Wood but that’s how it happened, a good part of me was still …’

‘In the scrapyard? That’s damned nonsense, Ikey, and I believe you know it!’

‘I wasn’t going to say “scrapyard”,’ Ikey said, gently, ‘I had that beaten
before
I went to school. But I was happy in the stable-yard and deep down I never wanted or expected anything better.’

‘I’m hanged if I follow you,’ Paul grumbled, now more than a little exasperated, ‘you made a success of High Wood and whether you like it or not you’ve moved up in the world. What is it you really want?’

‘I suppose, more than anything, to justify your investment in me,’ Ikey said and Paul was instantly sorry for his impatience. ‘Where would I be now if you hadn’t brought me down here?’ And suddenly he looked less serious and added, ‘I can guess—doing a stretch probably, for knocking off the railings of Buckingham Palace or the Monument!’

They rode on in silence for a spell, Paul puzzled and a little disturbed by the boy’s view of himself as a partial misfit but the more he thought about it the less credible it seemed for his mind returned to his obvious popularity and the vision of the trim, swallow-tailed youth who had escorted him into the headmaster’s study less than a month before. He said finally, ‘When you were at school were you homesick for the stable-yard, Ikey?’

‘Not the stable-yard,’ Ikey said, ‘but the freedom that went along with it! A chap outside looking in on a place like High Wood is entitled to imagine it’s all beer and skittles but it isn’t, you know! Nobody’s life is that simple—I mean, there were plenty of times when I was homesick for the days when I didn’t have to live up to anything and that’s what I mean when I say I’m only two-thirds a gent. The other third was always back here, deep in the woods.’

He was tempted, at this moment, to confess what lay behind this admission, to tell Paul of his long association with Hazel Potter and his identification of her with everything that grew and hunted in the coombes and coverts of Shallowford, but consideration for the man checked him. He had been living with snobs too long not to realise that their kind of snobbery had no place in Paul Craddock’s nature but he knew also that there were limits to tolerance and that Hazel Potter, the half-wit of the Valley, was beyond those limits. To say that he had often wished he had stayed a stable-boy with free access to her and her irresponsibilities would be throwing dirt in his benefactor’s face yet he was aware that, to some extent, she was the most rewarding person in his life, except for the man riding beside him. As he pondered this he felt a great yearning for her, for the sound of her soft, Devon burr and the broom-thicket scent of her hair, for the security and isolation of her little house over the badger sets and for the touch of her warm lips. He said, suddenly, ‘Look here, Governor, I don’t have to confirm my Army Entrance application until September but I can tell you one thing—I’ve decided against the cavalry, if only on the grounds of your pocket! A chap at school has an uncle in the Engineers and I met the old boy when he came over one day. The R.E.s are the only up-to-date branch of the Army and if we ever do have a showdown with the Germans or the Russians they’ll make rings round the lancers and hussars! And that’s not all, either! I don’t think I could stick the mumbo-jumbo of what they call a “good” regiment. If I am to be in the Army then I should certainly want to earn my keep—you know,
really
earn it—and at least I should have an outdoor job with a chance to travel at Government expense. I couldn’t stick an office life so maybe we have got somewhere with this pow-wow!’