Post of Honour (30 page)

‘Great God!’ John exclaimed and Claire rose from her seat but Maureen sat still looking at the floor. ‘Are you certain of that? You’ve seen her at it?’

‘Nay, I’ve not seen her,’ Meg said, ‘but tiz Hazel right enough. The point is, what’ll become of her if the police learn of it? Will ’er be shut up, same as my boy Smut backalong?’

Maureen said: ‘Not in a prison, Meg, I could make certain of that!’

The gypsy turned, ignoring the others and said, ‘
Where
then? In one o’ the asylums for mazed folk?’

‘She’d have to be,’ John said, ‘you couldn’t expect us to leave her free to do worse. Suppose she started setting fire to cottages with people asleep in them?’

‘She’ll not do that!’ Meg replied grimly, ‘tiz just the ricks and handy kindling, like the props up yonder.’

‘How can you know that?’ Claire asked and Meg said bluntly that she knew it well enough, implying that she had no intention of saying more than she could help.

‘Listen Meg,’ Maureen said urgently, ‘suppose I could promise Hazel a course of expert treatment? I’ve got a friend in Bristol who runs a clinic. It isn’t an asylum, or anything like an asylum. It’s a place where they treat all kinds of people who have cracked under war-strain. I don’t think this is a permanent derangement, it’s linked to the girl’s post-natal physical condition and maybe a sudden awareness of what’s going on in the world. We’d get her well, given time.’

‘Damn it,’ protested John, ‘what proof have we anyway? To put the girl away we should have to catch her in the act, wouldn’t we?’

‘Has she admitted the facts to you, Meg?’ Claire asked.

‘No,’ said Meg, shrugging, ‘I’ve not spoken a word to her on the matter and neither will I, except maybe to warn her should you and Mr Rudd set the police on her. I baint forgot what the police did to my boy backalong or the kind of place they kep’ him shut up in for taking a deer and fightin’ free o’ Gilroy’s men! Tiz like Mr Rudd says, you’ve no proof and us’ll zee you don’t come by none!’

‘Then why are you telling us?’

The gypsy shrugged. ‘Because you an’ Squire always played straight with me an’ mine!’ she said and left it at that.

There was silence for a while. In a way, Claire thought, it was almost as if she was gloating over their impotence, yet if this had been so she would hardly have come here with information that her own daughter was a pyromaniac. She said at length, ‘The Doctor could go and talk to Hazel, then report back to the four of us. Would you do that, Maureen?’

‘It if served any purpose,’ Maureen said, ‘but it wouldn’t, I can tell you that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because, since her baby died, she doesn’t trust me. I’ve tried talking to her, I’ve tried explaining about the war but it was easy enough to see she thought I was romancing. The only German she ever knew was the old Professor over at Coombe Bay. When I said Ikey was away fighting Germans she laughed in my face. She thinks of the Germans as a race of fat, wheezing professors, so it isn’t surprising she finds it hard to believe Ikey and everyone else is fighting them. No, I could do something for her with Ikey’s consent but she wouldn’t admit anything to me.’

‘She might tell her mother,’ Claire said but the gypsy shook her head. ‘I’ve generally known what the girl is about but there’s no bond between us,’ she said. ‘In the old days I had to stand with Tamer, him being my man, and as for the others, they stood together. But Hazel, she’s different, she stood alone ’till The Boy took up with her and now tiz his concern I reckon.’

‘Could Ikey get special leave under these circumstances?’ Claire asked John and John said he might, providing the facts were laid before the military authorities. Claire caught Meg’s eye and said, ‘We won’t break faith with you, Meg, not unless we have no alternative,’ and to Maureen: ‘Would it do any good if I tried to talk to her?’

‘It might,’ Maureen said, ‘she’s always trusted the Squire, and you’re Squire’s deputy. Maybe, if you let her know that you know, fear of the consequences might stop the next rick going up. What do you say to that, John?’

John said, gloomily, ‘I’m hanged if I know. It would depend on whether Meg was prepared to back us, providing, that is, Claire extracted some kind of confession from the girl. If I’d known when I came in here that it wasn’t a shell-shock patient I’m damned if I would have given half a promise to keep the police in ignorance for at least they could have kept a watch on the cottage. My duty has always been to the estate and it still is. I don’t clutter myself with personal responsibility for everyone who lives on it!’

‘No,’ Claire reminded him, ‘but Paul does so it seems to me I ought to try and put myself in his place. Would you agree as regards that?’

John blew out his cheeks and groped for his pipe. ‘Yes,’ he said reluctantly, ‘I suppose I’d have to agree to that. I’ve worked alongside the man fifteen years and flatter myself I know him that well. Go and see what you can do but if you run into trouble don’t stay and handle it yourself, come straight back here for help!’ He got up and went out, saying he would tell Chivers to bring the trap round to the front and Claire thought she had never seen him look so old and tired.

They had forgotten in was a Thursday, the day for the weekly war game over at the camp. Troops swarmed on the rising ground beyond the Four Winds’ border, and the peace of the river road was shattered every now and again by a convoy of lorries, the ear-splitting rush of a despatch-rider’s motor-cycle, or the passage of the big Crossley staff car that advertised its approach by a series of imperious honks. Claire cursed them one and all as she jogged along towards the cottage, for the noise and bustle put an additional strain on her nerves and the presence of transport here, where it had always been so quiet and changeless, underlined the fearful urgency of the war, as though a great bird of prey was beating its way up and down the Valley in search of fresh victims. She reined in beyond the ford to let the staff car rush by and did not answer the cheery wave of the officers in the back. The car disappeared in a cloud of exhaust towards Coombe Bay and she went on to the point where the lateral track joined the road beside the cottage, tethering the pony to the gatepost. In the garden she saw the child Patrick absorbed in the task of nailing pieces of wood together with a hammer that seemed almost as large as himself. She was struck not only by his neatness and cleanliness but also by his likeness to Ikey. There was little of the Potter stamp about his face or build for he was very slender, with a dark, slightly sallow complexion and sharp, intelligent eyes. He stood up when Claire asked him if his mother was in the cottage.

‘Arr,’ he said, in the broad Valley burr, ‘ ’Er’s upstairs, ma’am. Leastways, ’er was!’ and then, with an unexpectedly engaging smile, ‘I’m making a nairyplane! I’m gonner fly in un when ’er’s done!’

She had come without the least idea of how to approach the matter but now she saw that, with a little luck, she might use the child to win Hazel’s confidence. She said, ‘If I sent my Simon over for you would you like to come up to the Big House and play with the twins? They’re making aeroplanes too.’

Patrick considered. He had, Claire thought, his father’s charm as well as his polite but definite sense of privacy. ‘Arr,’ he said finally, ‘I’d like that! When will ’er come, then?’

‘I don’t know, I’ll go and ask Mummy,’ Claire said and went into the cottage.

It was, she thought, very neat and clean. It seemed a lifetime since she had spied in at the window watching Paul read Ikey’s letter aloud, her heart torn with jealousy, but today a different kind of confusion assailed her and she stood just inside the door, wondering where to begin. Everything in the room shone and twinkled in the afternoon sun and the hearth had been newly swept. It did not look like the home of a crazy woman who ran about the estate at night setting fire to ricks and the responsibility of her mission dragged at her so that, not for the first time since Paul had left, she was conscious of her own inadequacy to deal with problems of this kind, her uncertainty reminding her of his strange talent for administration. Every man, woman and child living in the Valley trusted him implicitly and he would have had such a headstart on an occasion like this.

She went up the short stair and found Hazel sitting beside the window looking out across the stubble fields beyond the river. There was something birdlike about the way she sat perched on a milking stool, her knees and hands pressed tightly together, her expression not exactly tense but very alert. She said, as Claire entered, ‘Be’m still searching, then? I zee the soldiers go by just now,’ and Claire wondered if this remark was a defensive diversion, as though Hazel understood very well why she was here and was hoping to forestall interrogation. She said, gently, ‘I should like your boy to come over and play with my twins. If I send Simon over will you let him come? Tomorrow afternoon, say?’

‘Arr,’ Hazel said, readily, ‘you could have un over to stay for a bit if youm minded, for I fret sometimes on account o’ leaving ’un alone o’ nights. ’Er sleeps like a winter squirrel mind but if ’er did awake, to vind the plaace empty, I daresay he’d be lonesome!’

‘You have to go out? Of a night?’ Claire asked, and was dismayed to find herself trembling.

‘Oh arr, sometimes,’ Hazel said cheerfully, ‘on account o’ lighting they beacons. Tiz a praper ole nuisance but seein’ theym all lost it has to be done, dorn it now?’

‘Yes,’ Claire said, feeling her way step by step as one might descend an unfamiliar staircase in the dark, ‘I suppose it does, but does nobody ever help you light those beacons, Hazel?’

The girl looked sharply at her but then suspicion left her eyes and she smiled.

‘Giddon no,’ she said, impatiently, ‘for there’s no one can vind their way about in the dark like me! I’m accustomed to it, you zee. There baint no plaace yerabouts where you could lose
me
!’

It was her emphasis on the word ‘me’ that gave Claire her first real clue and for a moment compassion choked her. She reached out and took the girl’s hand. It was very soft, she thought, for a woman who had lived rough all her days and spent every morning in the churchyard helping the sexton dig graves and cut grass.

‘How . . . how
long
have they been lost, Hazel?’

‘Time enough,’ said Hazel briefly. ‘First one and then the other, and tiz puzzling, somehow. The Boy was lost first time I ever zeed him but he was a proper ole townee then, so there baint nothing surprising about
that
!
Tiz the others losing theirselves that’s queer—Henry Pitts, Will Codsall and young Gil Eveleigh, all reared in the Valley; and then Smut, that’s queerest of all! Smut knew the place better’n any on account of the poaching he did from the time he was a tacker in the Dell! I should ha’ thought Smut could have showed ’em the way home easy enough but ’er hasn’t, zo it crossed my mind to zet light to they beacons. Tiz a rare pity there baint more ricks near the shore. If theym all across the water, like The Boy says, they won’t zee the blaze unless theym looking for it!’

Suddenly it was very simple to understand, like a jigsaw puzzle when the centre pieces were assembled making a picture of what had been a jumble of torsos and severed heads. All the men of the Valley were lost and unable to find their way home again and the beacons were to guide them home. Claire said, releasing Hazel’s hand, ‘Suppose I took the boy back to the Big House now? The twins would like someone to play with and my trap is just down the road. The lady doctor is coming too and I think she wants to talk to you. Could I take Patrick, if I promise I’ll bring him back as soon as his Dad gets back?’

‘Arr, you taake un,’ Hazel said, carelessly, and losing interest in the conversation resumed her scrutiny of the fields across the river.

Claire went downstairs, impatient with the tears blurring her vision and pausing for a moment in the living-room to absorb the terrible poignancy of the situation. Then, with relief, she was able to concentrate on the most urgent measure to be taken—the whisking away of the child outside, to a refuge where he would be secure in the company of her own children. She thought of other things too, what she would write to Ikey and Paul and how Maureen would find the words to persuade Hazel to abandon her vigil and quit the Valley for the first time in her life but she pushed these misgivings into the back of her mind and went swiftly out into the garden, telling the child that his mother wanted him to go to the Big House at once. He agreed eagerly enough and they went down the winding path to the river road hand in hand. As she closed the gate Claire looked up and saw the girl still sitting in the same crouched posture, looking out across the slope of the watershed between Sorrel and Teazel.

She was back within the hour with John and Maureen. The agent was more relieved than dismayed at her report and Maureen, having telephoned the Bristol hospital, suggested they should persuade Hazel to join her child in the Big House until arrangements could be made for her to be taken away. Neither seemed to think it would be difficult to coax the girl out of the Valley and, looking back on what happened with such appalling unpredictability Claire sometimes wondered if she exaggerated her own misgivings in this respect.

She went on alone, leaving John and Maureen in the lane but her return after such a short interval must have alerted Hazel, for when she suggested she should move out and join Patrick at the Big House the girl looked at her suspiciously and said, flatly, ‘For why? What would I do there, along o’ they voreigners?’

‘You could help me and your sisters,’ Claire reasoned, ‘we’re nursing wounded soldiers now and some of them are friends of The Boy.’

Hazel showed a flicker of interest. ‘Do they know where he be tu then?’

‘We could ask them?’

Hazel considered a moment before rejecting the proposal. ‘If theym voreigners they’ll be worser lost than the Valley men! I’ll bide yer and look to the beacons!’

Claire hesitated whether to accept this for the time being and consult Maureen and then made what she later realised to be her fatal mistake. She said, trying to sound casual, ‘You mustn’t light any more beacons, Hazel. It’s better that you should stay up to the house, really it is!’ and laid a hand on her shoulder. It might have been the touch, the strained expression in the eyes of the Squire’s wife, or the sixth sense that had served Hazel throughout her wild life in the woods; whatever the cause she leaped back, throwing up her head like an animal scenting danger and gathering herself for flight. Before Claire could utter a word of reassurance she had dodged round her and dashed down the stairs and within seconds she reappeared on the flood barrier that served for a front garden on the river frontage. Claire’s shout brought John Rudd running but Hazel spotted him before he had moved two strides and changing direction without checking her pace crossed the patch and leaped down on to the road, turning south for the edge of Dell Wood a hundred yards distant.