Post of Honour (39 page)

‘You and I are going to have words, Eveleigh!’ she snapped, and when his hand went to his chin added, ‘Never mind shaving, come down just as you are!’

He followed her downstairs to the big, stone-floored kitchen, looking bewildered and alarmed.

‘Has anything happened up at the house, Mrs Craddock? Is aught amiss wi’ Marian?’

‘You may well ask that!’ Claire snapped at him. ‘I’ve just learned from her what’s been happening here and I came at once. It’s got to stop, do you hear?’

His expression hardened and she realised that his initial anxiety had stemmed from a guess that his wife had had some kind of accident. As soon as he understood that his own behaviour was in question he began to bluster but not, Claire thought, with much conviction.

‘I don’ see what the ’ell it’s got to do with you,’ he mumbled, ‘I’m not behind wi’ me rent, am I?’

‘I don’t know,’ Claire said, impatiently, ‘I didn’t stop to consult Rudd but I do know that if the Squire was here he wouldn’t stand for what’s going on at Four Winds!’

‘But he knew about Jill,’ protested Eveleigh, ‘it’s no dam’ secret in the Valley!’

‘He doesn’t know that the girl has been installed in one of his farms and your wife turned out!’

‘If she said that she’s a liar!’ said Eveleigh, flushing and wiping lather from his blue chin. ‘We haven’t been man and wife for nigh on two years but I never turned her out! You c’n ask Jill or any one about here!’

‘I’m not going to ask that girl anything,’ Claire said, ‘except to pack her stuff and move out before I leave! I can’t stop you making a damned fool of yourself, or making your wife miserable, but I won’t stand for a chit like that being mistress of a Shallowford farm! I’ll give her ten minutes and no longer; I’m busy!’

He looked at her open-mouthed and it struck her then that the change in him since the war had invaded his home and deprived him of his boys was almost as great as that wrought in Will Codsall by his spell in the trenches. She remembered that Paul had always spoken of Four Winds as the most prosperous but the unluckiest farm in the Valley, and had sometimes half-jested about it being hag-ridden by Arabella’s ghost. She could understand what he meant now, less on account of this hesitant, truculent man, standing with his back to the door and trying, almost pitifully, to strike a balance between the respect he owed her as his landlord’s wife and his rights as an individual than on account of the cheerlessness of the kitchen which had no feeling of home. In pre-war days this had been a cheerful room with its brasses gleaming, its hearth swept, its oak furniture highly polished. Now it smelled of dry rot and looked drab and tarnished, as though nobody used it except as a place to eat and loaf about. One or two grubby garments lay on the settle, and dirty dishes, coated with grease, were piled on the centre board of the great oak dresser. The fire was smoking and the curtains were stained and wrinkled. She said, with deliberate contempt, ‘Jill seems to me a pretty poor exchange for a wife like Marian who gave you good service and loyalty! If this kitchen is anything to go by you made a damned bad bargain, Eveleigh!’

At the mention of the girl he scowled, drawing his heavy brows together. ‘Leave Jill out o’ this, Mrs Craddock,’ he growled, ‘you got no call to insult her and none to order her out neither! I’m master o’ this place so long as I pay up quarterdays, and you show me another farm in the Valley that has my yield, year in year out!’

‘I’m not discussing your yield,’ Claire said, half-wishing she had brought John along to bully the fool, ‘but I stand by what I said. Out she goes or you’ll live to regret it!’

The door behind him opened so suddenly that it struck him and he lurched forward a pace to reveal Jill Chilcott. Claire remembered her now as a sullen, generously-built girl, who had once served behind the counter at a Paxtonbury draper’s. She was dark and coarse-featured but possessed a heavy sensuality that would appeal to a man of Eveleigh’s taciturn temperament. She was also every bit as sluttish as the kitchen suggested, her uncombed hair hanging in great hanks’ either side of a petulant face. She had obviously just risen from bed and had not bothered to dress. All she had on was a dirty whalebone corset that nipped her waist and forced her breasts so high that she looked as grotesque as one of the dummies in the window of the draper’s where she had worked before the war. Her skin was very white but an unhealthy white, as though she ate too much starch and avoided exercise.

Eveleigh said, roughly, ‘For Chris’ sake get something on, girl! This is Mrs Craddock from the Big House,’ and he threw her a flannel dressing gown that had been hanging on the back of the settle. She caught the gown but did not put it on, staring at Claire with far less embarrassment than her lover. Her wide, moist mouth was clamped in a little girl’s sulk and she looked, Claire thought, rather too sure of herself in the circumstances.

‘I bin listening,’ she announced, ‘I heard every thin’ she said, an’ you don’t need to take no notice of ’er! None at all, see? Fact is, she’s got no right ’ere an’ you can order
’er
out if you please!’ She turned back to Claire who was shaking with rage. ‘You wouldn’t have no court order, would you? You know, one o’ them notice-to-quit papers, signed by a Magistrate?’

The girl’s insolence was so insufferable that Claire regained the initiative, ignoring her and concentrating on Eveleigh, who was now losing his truculence and was very embarrassed by the scene.

‘I took the trouble to study your lease before I came,’ she said, ‘and I could have you out of here in three months! The Squire let you take over the Codsall lease on a triennial basis but it was never transferred to you. I’m sure Sydney, Martin’s heir, would be very glad to let it revert to the Codsalls. He’s already bought a farm in Nun’s Bay and if he knew the circumstances of your tenure he’d probably apply to me for a re-transfer at once! Now get this slut out of here and reinstate your wife. If you do I’ll ask Rudd to make out a new seven-year lease in your name but if you don’t I’ll write to Sydney Codsall this very day!’

It was a shot in the dark, or at least in the twilight, for Claire’s study of the Four Winds’ lease had been cursory but its effect upon Eveleigh was deadly and she saw this at once. Resentment and obstinacy ebbed from him and for a moment he almost cringed. She saw too that her threat had cut the ground from under the girl, who obviously knew Eveleigh as Paul and Rudd knew him, a man dedicated to these acres, someone whose entire life was bound up in stock and pasture between Sorrel and Teazel. She knew then that she had him, that nothing would be allowed to threaten his hold of the farm and that, in his heart and belly, he valued the least of his Friesian cows above the woman who had found a means of making a bad joke of his years of toil since Codsall’s death.

The girl was a fighter, however, and made a final, desperate appeal, catching Eveleigh by the forearm and hanging there in what struck Claire as a kind of parody of an imploring wife in a Temperance magic-lantern show.

‘Don’ lissen Norman, she can’t touch yer! She
can’t
,
I tell yer! She’s bin put up to this by the old cow, Norman . . . !’ but that was as far as she got for suddenly Eveleigh ceased to look either surly or hesitant but shook himself, like a man coming out of a daze and thrust her aside so violently that she was sent spinning across the room.

‘Don’t you call my missis names you bliddy whore!’ he shouted, ‘I told you before ’bout that and I’ll not tell you again! Do like Mrs Craddock says! Pack yer things and go back to the cottage! Go on, damn you!’ and swinging open the door he spun her round, planted a stockinged foot in her behind and projected her right across the hall to the foot of the stairs.

She fell on her hands and knees and remained crouching there but the terrible indignity of rejection must have sparked off her pride for, after a moment, she rose slowly and not ungracefully and said, in a little above a whisper, ‘You won’t get rid o’ me as easily as this, Norman! I’ll make you pay one way an’ another, you see if I don’t!’, and as Eveleigh took a couple of strides in her direction she ran up the stairs and he came back into the kitchen, closing the door and crossing to the fireplace where he stood with head bowed and hands resting on the mantel as though the effort had exhausted him. It was so quiet that Claire could hear a hen clucking in the yard. She said: ‘You didn’t have to do that, Eveleigh. She didn’t move in without your invitation.’

‘Sometimes I could ha’ killed her,’ he said, ‘
lots
o’ times I could ha’ killed her and I daresay I would in the end if you hadn’t come!’

He shivered and glanced round the room, so fearfully that Claire’s flesh crept. It was as though she was listening to an echo of a scene enacted in the room during Arabella’s time and described to her by Paul, years after the tragedy and this fancy was underlined by his next words. He said, bitterly: ‘This is an unlucky house, Mrs Craddock. Sometimes I get the notion they’m still yer, the pair of ’em! I never thought o’ that until my boy Gilbert got blown to tatters an’ then my woman turned queer and didn’t seem to take no pleasure in me but I’ve thought of it a lot since and maybe that’s why I took up wi’ that little bitch! She took me mind off me troubles I reckon,’ and he spat in the fire, shaking himself like a big dog scrambling from water.

Suddenly she felt a terrible compassion for him, a far deeper and more urgent pity than she felt for his wife, or his dead son Gilbert, or his daughter Rachel now mourning Keith and involved in pity for him was a little for the girl upstairs, who had tasted power for the first time in her wretched life only to be thrown out in the end like a pan of washing-up water. But he had suffered and was suffering far more than any of them, a man whose lifetime of hard, disciplined toil had led him to this—his wife a neurotic, his children dead or scattered and his self-respect in ruins. She said, gently, ‘Take a drink, Eveleigh. Is there whisky or brandy in the cupboard?’

Without shifting his position in front of the fireplace, he said, quietly, ‘There’s gin and bitters. That was her tipple!’ and Claire crossed to the dresser finding there a bottle of gin and a jug of apple juice. She fetched glasses, washed them, and poured him a stiff measure and a smaller one for herself, carrying it across to him and bending to give the sullen fire a poke.

‘I’ll get Mr Rudd to make out a proper lease,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to worry any more but you’ll be far happier with Marian back to look after you. It’s done her a lot of good working up there with the convalescents. She’s almost over losing Gilbert now and I hear that Harold, your other boy, is doing splendidly in Palestine. He’s commissioned, isn’t he?’ and when he nodded, ‘We’re all going through a bad time but it’ll end, sooner or later. Would you like me to send Marian over to clean this place as soon as the girl moves out?’

She did not know whether her words brought him any comfort. He heaved himself away from the mantel, swallowed his gin and sat heavily in the inglenook, his big, brown hands clasped between his knees.

‘I daresay it’s hard for a lady like you to understand,’ he said at length, ‘but she helped get me through that time I heard about Gil and all that bliddy table-rapping Marian took to. That, and all the work an’ worry and conniving, with everyone on at me to squeeze quarts into pint pots, an’ dam’ near every man and girl in the Valley going off to war or munitions! She was outside it all somehow. Never seemed to touch her, one way or the other. All she wanted was a strong man two-three times a night. It’s hard to explain but . . . ’ Suddenly he got up and walked over to the window, as though confession was embarrassing him more than he could bear. Claire said, ‘You don’t have to apologise to me. I understand better than you think. And I’m not really a lady you know, just a farmer’s daughter, who was lucky to get a good man and stay in love with him. That’s why I’m here, I suppose. The Squire isn’t just a landlord. He thinks of people like you as his friends, not his tenants, and he feels about this place just the way you do. You can say anything to me. It won’t go further than this room!’

He looked at her gratefully and she saw that he was master of himself again and was glad for it excused the impulsive way she had challenged his privacy. He said, slowly, ‘What I was going to say was, her being a young woman made me think a bit of myself, I reckon, took me back to the old days, when I first come here to work for Old Maister an’ Arabella. I’m turned fifty now and it comes hard on a man that age to see most o’ what he’s worked for shredding away, a bit here, a bit there. The boys went off, then two o’ the girls but me an’ Marian never fell out over aught ’till Rachel took up with that parson’s son, poor little sod an’ then Gil joined an’ got hisself killed. I was wrong both times and I’ll own to that now but I didden know it at the time. You don’t, do you? You just say an’ do first thing as comes into your head and then the damage is done! I’d have come through it all right if Marian had turned to me fer comfort instead o’ they bliddy spirits and suchlike! Then Jill see how things were between us an’ tried her luck so to speak. She come to me in the barn one day after I’d had no sense nor comfort out o’ Marian for three months or more. I was about desperate I suppose, an’ one thing soon led to another. So long as she was there, ready to parade all she got any time I was minded I could muddle along wi’ the work but youm right o’ course, there’s no future to it!’ He stopped suddenly and looked at her under his heavy brows. ‘Do you think Marian’d cry quits an’ come back, same as we used to be?’

‘Yes,’ Claire said, ‘I’m sure she’d be glad to do just that.’

‘Right!’ he said, ‘then I’ll pay that bliddy volcano off an’ have done with her and we’ll pick up where we left off!’

Claire heard the girl bumping a case down the stairs and Eveleigh went out to her. There was a low rumble of voices, then a pause and finally the front door banged. He came back rather jauntily with a reluctant grin on his face and the tread of a man who has just settled a matter of business to his own satisfaction.

‘I give her fifty pounds,’ he said, ‘that stopped her snivelling! A pair o’ trousers an’ a bit to spend on herself is all she needs to keep her contented. We won’t hear no more of Jill,’ and then, resignedly, ‘it’ll mean tellin’ the Squire, won’t it? If you’re thinking of getting the lease straightened out, I mean?’