Long Summer Day (87 page)

Sydney Codsall had not wanted to attend the Jamboree, regarding it as a mere chawbacon’s carnival with little to offer a man who ‘worked clean’—that is to say, wore a starched collar and cuffs. He was only there because, of late, he had been cultivating Rachel for reasons that had nothing whatever to do with her amiability, her red-gold hair or her pleasing, freckled face. He had grown up with the Eveleigh family and had no great affection for any of them, having always regarded them as interlopers whom circumstances had contrived to make him a lodger in his own house. He had been glad to break out of the family circle when he became articled to Snow and Pritchard and took lodgings in Whinmouth but his recent foray into the property market had caused him to have second thoughts about abandoning the Eveleighs altogether. A month or two back he had learned by chance that the parcel of land adjoining the brickworks site was registered in the name of a Mrs Amelia Page and he recalled that Marian Eveleigh had been a Miss Page before her marriage. A little cross-checking during the lunch interval when he was alone in the office had confirmed his guess regarding the ultimate owner of the land, no other than Mrs Eveleigh, old Mother Page’s only surviving child. He also discovered that old Mrs Page was pushing ninety-three. The land comprised no more than a couple of acres but it had a common boundary with his holding in Coombe Bay and if it could be had cheaply was clearly worth a great deal more to him than to anyone else. Sydney gave matters like these very careful thought and it seemed to him that, whereas a direct approach would probably result in drawing the land-hungry Squire’s attention to the parcel, an oblique approach through the most pliable of Marian Eveleigh’s daughters might lead to a bill of sale before anyone else was aware that there was another plot of land to be had on the outskirts of the village.

He set to work at once to court Rachel and made what he considered steady progress, for Rachel had never forgotten her father’s instructions that they were to be kind to the orphaned Sydney. Soon, or so it seemed to her, kindness cracked the crust of Sydney’s aloofness, for he seemed willing to sacrifice precious hours that should have been devoted to study walking her along summer lanes and telling her how much he appreciated the kindness her family had shown him and also—and this interested her rather more—how much more ladylike she was than any of her sisters. It was some time, however, before Rachel, a modest soul, could persuade herself that the rather prickly Sydney was actually courting her, for there were aspects of his attentions that were very puzzling. For one thing he never once tried to kiss her or even to hold her hand; for another all their walks, no matter in which direction, seemed to bring them to the fence surrounding Grannie Page’s field, alongside the old brickworks. For some reason Sydney seemed more bemused by the field, which was quite an ordinary-looking field, than by her red-gold hair, her blue eyes, her dimples, or anything about her, including her ‘ladylike’ conversation. It was not until the tea interval at the Jamboree, a month after the sombre courtship had begun, that Sydney confessed to a keen, personal interest in the field and asked her outright if Grannie Page was likely to live much longer and if Rachel thought her mother would be prepared to sell it for, say, ten guineas per acre?

Rachel Eveleigh was a very amiable girl but she was not stupid. Moreover she had the advantage, which Paul Craddock, in his dealings with Sydney, had not, of having lived cheek by jowl with him for years, so that it did not take her more than a moment to price Sydney’s courtship at twenty guineas, less solicitor’s costs. She had her mother’s complaisance but her father’s pride. After pondering a moment, in order to be quite certain that she was doing no one an injustice, she lifted her hand and smacked Sydney’s face so hard that he lost his balance on a tussock and fell backwards into the shallow river. By the time he got to his feet she had gone and before he could condemn his stupidity for rushing his fences so recklessly she was dancing with the parson’s son, Keith Horsey, and looking very much as if she was making the running. He watched them sourly for half-an-hour but she did not even glance in his direction and before the first rocket soared over the paddock he was bicycling back to Whinmouth, having learned a valuable lesson in tactics but lost a golden opportunity of enlarging his Coombe Bay holdings.

In the meantime Keith Horsey was blithely unaware to whom he owed his adoption by the prettiest of the Eveleigh girls, the titian-haired one, whom he identified as the second unit of a descending row of heads when the family took their places in church. Although shy and ill-at-ease with men he was more relaxed in the presence of women, for he had grown up among church workers who were predominantly female and was thus familiar with feminine topics of conversation. Rachel, who had only taken him in hand as a mean of alleviating the smart caused by Sydney’s baseness, soon found him agreeable company and was secretly flattered at having one of the gentry all to herself, although she could have wished for one with rather more experience in the art of dancing. By the time the fireworks were due to begin, and the band had disappeared into the refreshment tent, all her toes were bruised and on her right thigh was a tender patch of skin where Keith’s knee struck a blow every time they turned. It was very pleasant, however, to find a man ready to admit his shortcomings, especially after a month’s courting with Sydney who had never confessed to one. Keith made no excuses for his clumsiness, saying that his cousins had long since given him over as a hopeless hobbledehoy but if he could not dance he at least treated her with an elaborate courtesy that she found very welcome after the rumblings and neighing laughter of partners at village hops she had attended since putting her hair up. Rachel had pride, as her reaction to Sydney’s proposal had proved, but like all the sons and daughters of tenant farmers in the Valley she recognised her place in the graded society into which she had been born. On one side of the fence lived Squire, the freeholders, the doctor and the parson, and on the other the tenants, the tradesmen, the cottage craftsmen and the hired hands, in that order of progression. To be asked for a single dance by a young man from the other side of the fence was one thing, and might happen to any girl on an occasion like this, but to dance with a college boy who was also the parson’s only son eight times in succession, and then to be escorted by him to the refreshment hut for ice and lemonade, was quite another. By the time the fireworks were started, and Keith still showed no desire to rejoin the gentry, Rachel had decided that the Squire’s Coronation Jamboree promised to be a milestone in her life, the more memorable, perhaps, because there had been so few. Then the Valley gods took a hand in the affair. As the third volley of rockets soared forked lightning flickered over the Bluff and seconds later thunder rolled, so that she had every excuse to reduce the space between them; and because he was such a gentleman, and had such nice manners, his hand, cool if bony, took hers and she told the first deliberate lie of her life saying, in reply to his inquiry, ‘Yes, Mr Horsey, I
am
frightened of thunder,’ hoping that he would ask her to address him less formally. He did not but she made progress in another direction for he at once enlarged his hold upon her plump hand and held it tightly for the remainder of the display.

For those in charge of the fireworks it was a race against time. With the fall of dusk the atmosphere over the field became oppressive and the rumbles of thunder beyond the Bluff every more frequent. Presently, before the set-pieces had been touched off, a few heavy drops of rain splashed down but nobody minded them much for it was not often the Valley could watch a firework display and some of the spectators recalled the display here in honour of King Teddy, in October 1902. Among these was Pansy Pascoe, plain Pansy Potter when watching the last descent of green and crimson balls over the chestnuts. She was here again tonight, with her brood of four, three cooing and ahhing and the fourth, two-year-old Lizzie, asleep in the go-cart, which Pansy now realised she would have to push all the way home to Coombe Bay for Walt, her husband, had been last seen far gone in drink in the refreshment tent with certain other revellers. Pansy was not given to brooding but the link between the firework displays was too obvious to be ignored. In 1902 she recalled, she had been as one with her sisters living a semi-gypsy life in the Dell taking her fun wherever she found it; now she was a woman apart, with a house to keep clean, a husband to cook for and a steadily increasing tribe of children to make impossible demands on her time, so that fun passed her by and she was losing her figure. She could not help wondering if she had chosen wisely in settling for Walt, simply because he owned a cottage and earned a pound a week, summer and winter. There were times, particularly of late, when she yearned for the cheerful muddle of the Dell as it had been in old Tamer’s time, for up there an odd baby or two had never seemed to matter much and children did not get under one’s feet as they did in a four-roomed cottage. At the firework display of 1902, she recalled, she had considered herself the sharpest of the Potter girls but tonight she was not so sure, in spite of the rumour that Big Jem, the hired hand, kept Cissie and Violet on a very tight rein. Her thoughts, becoming more nostalgic with every new discharge, were interrupted by an impatient tugging at her arm and in the glare of golden rain she looked down into the face of her eldest boy, Timothy, now rising seven and said, without troubling to ask what he wanted, ‘Go over there, Timmy, an’ dornee be tiresome! No one’ll look at ’ee an’ iffen they do then who gives a damn, boy?’

Then, as Timothy slipped away, she was aware of the gleam of a waxed moustache at her elbow and sensed the not unwelcome presence of Dandy Timberlake, eldest and by far the sprucest of the Timberlake boys. All the Timberlake boys had a roving eye but Dandy’s roved to more purpose than his brothers’ and with another pang Pansy recalled larking with him in the hay about a thousand years ago, when everybody in the Valley was free and young and spry. He said, sorrowfully, ‘I’ve come to tell ’ee, Panse, Walt’s dead drunk and like to stay for the night! How be gonner get the family back home?’

‘On shanks’ pony,’ she said grimly, ‘how else do ’ee think, Dandy?’ but she was pleased to see him nevertheless and not much surprised when he said, ‘If I walked so far with ’ee would ’ee ask me in for a brew o’ tea for old times’ sake, Panse?’

She considered; Walt would probably lay up in the barn with all the other over-indulged loyalists and she had always liked Dandy, with his penchant for fancy waistcoats and fierce Kaiser moustaches, the effect of which was softened by a pair of twinkling brown eyes. There could be no harm in him walking her home, cumbered as she was by four children, for it would not be practicable to stop
en route.
If, at journey’s end, he claimed a small reward for his services as escort and go-cart pusher was that so unreasonable?

‘Mebbe I would at that, Dandy!’ she said, ‘but tiz time us started backalong, for the kids is tired out, baint ’ee, my loves?’

The nature of the reward, she decided, could be left in abeyance and would depend upon how tired she was on arrival, but it might have been otherwise had she known that Dandy had set his sights elsewhere only a few moments before their encounter, having edged along the line of spectators until he stood very close to Violet, her sister, sandwiched between Cissie and Jem, all standing with their faces to the sky. Dandy had always had a slight preference for Vi and seeing that she and Jem were engaged with the fireworks he approached from behind, pinched her bottom, squeezed her hand and let it run lightly upwards until it had sufficient purchase to incline her towards him. She turned then and flashed him a smile, for Jem’s pitiful performance in the wrestling ring had blown upon embers of resentment in her heart. Like all the Potters she had been born free and tonight she chafed at the bond of honourable captivity. Jem continued to stare upward and she was so deceived by his air of abstraction that she reached out and touched Dandy, her hand moving tentatively, like the hand of a penniless connoisseur fingering an exhibit in a museum while the curator’s back is turned, yet she ought to have remembered that Jem had eyes in the back of his head. He said, quite amiably, and without turning, ‘I was worsted be that sodger but I could still maake mincemeat o’ Dandy Timberlake!’ whereupon Dandy moved on to seek Pansy Pascoe and Vi, much piqued, grumbled, ‘The trouble wi’ you, Jem, is youm so bliddy greedy!’

‘Ahh,’ said Jem, still without taking his eyes off the suspended green balls in the sky, ‘I daresay I be but that’s how it is, Vi midear! I’ve told ’ee bevore an’ I’ll tell ’ee again, dornee let me catch either of ’ee we’ no man or I’ll tan the hide off ’ee, do ’ee mind now?’

‘So I should think!’ said Cissie virtuously and Violet, reflecting bitterly that her sister had not been tempted, ground her teeth with rage but judged it wise to make no further comment.

Edward Derwent, standing at the foot of the avenue with his wife Liz, his son Hugh and his daughter Rose, watched the rockets soar with more satisfaction than any man in the valley. It was not that he set much store by fireworks, considering them pesky, noisy, unpredictable things but simply that they helped to reveal the fat of the years, particularly the last few years, that had done so much to mellow him. For in that brief span of time Claire had
shown
them. Not only had she married the Squire and presented him with heirs but, almost in passing, she had cured her father’s land-hunger, for where was the sense in yearning to own High Coombe when, in a way, he already owned it, together with every other farm in the Valley? His mind returned to the occasion he had last stood here watching fireworks and he recalled his bitter disappointment at the apparent inaccuracy of their assurances that Young Squire was madly in love with his prettiest daughter, and likely to demand her hand at any moment. Well, Young Squire had taken his time but it had come to pass in the end and now he was the Squire’s father-in-law, just as they had predicted. As the years passed his pride in his daughter had grown and grown, just like one of his neighbour Willoughby’s vegetable marrows earmarked for the harvest festival, and whereas everyone in the Valley had, in some degree, warmed their hands at the glow issuing from the Big House, Derwent had been warmed through and through by events up there. And some of this warmth had passed through him to his wife Liz, she who had tried so hard and so unsuccessfully to fill the shoes of her predecessor, for whereas, in the early days of her marriage, Edward had treated her like a scullery-maid, he now yielded her the respect due to a tolerably efficient housekeeper and with this she was more than content. Silently, as a set-piece of the Battle of Trafalgar began to sputter, Liz Derwent breathed a prayer of thankfulness that things had turned out so well for all of them.