Post of Honour (5 page)

‘I tied the cord but couldn’t cut it, Mrs Potter!’ she said and Joannie, without a word, poked her head under Rachel’s elbow and bit so that the cord parted and Rachel was able to administer a smack on the child’s tiny behind. The baby opened his mouth as wide as it would go and roared its resentment, the volume of his yells astonishing Rachel almost as much as the mother’s unaided scramble on to the bed. The baby continued to bawl so loudly that Joannie said, grimly, ‘ ’Er’ll do! Just ’ark to un! Still, ’twas lucky you was by, with nought but a few dirty sacks to hand!’ and she sighed as though the birth of a child in these circumstances was a bit of a nuisance but otherwise unremarkable.

‘Be ’ee gonner tell ’em whose tacker tiz?’ she asked carelessly but Hazel replied, sharply, ‘Tiz mine! Dornee pester me, Joannie!’ whereupon Joannie sighed again, grumbling that Sam would want to know and so, probably, would the lady doctor but implied by her tone that the identity of the father was not very important.

‘Be ’ee strong enough to give un the breast, child?’ she said and Hazel, in answer, reached out for the baby and Rachel, a little regretfully, placed him carefully in her arms while Joannie pulled the crumpled dress over the mother’s shoulders and busied herself tucking the blankets around her. The baby’s outcry ceased so suddenly that the silence inside the cave seemed uncanny. Joannie said, dispassionately, ‘You’d better go an’ watch for ’em. That boy was so scared I woulden wonder if ’er dorn taake lady doctor to Hermitage! I’ll bide ’till they come, for Sam’s with the children, young Barby bein’ sick abed!’

Rachel went out into the open, surprised to find it was now almost dark. In the glimmer of light over the Bluff she saw the foliage stir down by the north corner of the mere and presently, where the trees fell away around the stream, she caught a glimpse of two figures on horseback moving at a trot and yelled at the top of her voice in case, as Joannie had suggested, Keith had difficulty in locating the spot. Somebody answered her and they came on at a canter, the ponies’ hooves chinking on the stones of the ascent like bottles in a basket. Keith appeared first, rolling from the saddle of Sam Potter’s chestnut pony and shouting the moment he saw her, ‘Are you all right, Rachel?’ and Rachel said, ‘Of course I’m all right! It wasn’t me who had the baby, stupid!’ but then she understood why he had asked for she was blouseless and her hair was falling over her bare shoulders so that for once it was she who blushed and was glad to answer the bark of Doctor Maureen, who climbed out of the saddle holding her bag, demanding to be shown the way to the patient.

They left Keith with the horses and pushed through the gorse, guided by the gleam of a lantern Joannie had lit but Rachel, acutely conscious of her dishevelled appearance, and feeling suddenly helpless in the presence of a professional, was glad to wash her face, hands and neck in what remained of the water before despatching Keith to the stream for more. While he was gone she hitched up her skirt, tore away the trailing edge of her petticoat hem and tried to tidy her hair by rearranging pins but she could do nothing about her bare neck and shoulders until Joannie said, ‘Taake my jumper, child, and go along home! Us can manage now and you can ride Sam’s pony backalong, and Passon’s boy can return un in the mornin’.’ Gratefully Rachel slipped on the soiled jumper that hung about her like a cloak, tucking it into the waistband of her skirt and giving a final, fascinated glance at Hazel, as she sat propped against the rear wall of the cave, the child at her breast. Then she went out to find Keith and said, apologising for her appearance, ‘It’s Joannie Potter’s jumper! I . . . I had to use my blouse in there,’ but she didn’t mention her petticoat thinking that the poor boy had had a surfeit of embarrassments that evening. It was when he helped her climb up behind him and she clasped him round the waist, that she began to feel happier and more serene than she had felt in twelve months for somehow, after all that had happened back there in the cave, his angular body was a source of comfort and what had occurred seemed, perversely, to have given him more confidence, for he said as they crossed over Codsall Bridge, ‘You were wonderful, Rachel! I was proud of you, and some time . . . some time I’d like to . . . to speak to Mr Eveleigh about you, Rachel.’

It was not the proposal she had daydreamed about either before and since the entry of Keith Horsey into her life, but it was valid she supposed and she hugged him in silence. There was really nothing she could reply to such a delightfully old-fashioned statement of his intentions. When they reached the yard and got down, unbridling the pony and turning him loose in the duck field, Keith found an excuse to linger by the gate. She could have wished that he had sought an elbow-rest further from her own kitchen door for she could hear the clatter of dishes and the voices of the children, any one of whom might appear bawling, ‘It’s Rachel, Mum!’ for it was late enough to merit explanations. She said, therefore, ‘I must go in now, Keith dear. It’s late and Dad’s very strict about time,’ and then, without the slightest prompting on her part, he seized her by the shoulders and kissed her on the mouth, and she kissed him back and ran swiftly across the cobbles towards the oblong of light in the kitchen yard. As she ran she giggled, partly with excitement but also with relish at the thought that it had taken Hazel Potter’s bastard child, born in a cave in Shallowford Woods, to convert him from a possible into a certainty.

II

T
here was less speculation in the Valley as to the identity of the man responsible for bringing Hazel Potter to bed than there was comment regarding her reply to every enquiry, a sullen, reiterated, ‘Tiz mine an’ my man’s, baint it?’ to which she would sometimes add the admonition directed at Joannie Potter at the time—‘Dornee pester me!’ as though requests for enlightenment on the subject were not merely impertinent but frivolous. Her sisters, who were shocked by the event, came up with a list of probables that included a half-witted crowstarver employed on the Heronslea estate and all three of the Timberlake boys. Fathers were canvassed in Coombe Bay and among the labouring population on the western side of the estate, the Potter girls reasoning that if Hazel’s lover had lived on the eastern side they would have been sure to have seen him coming and going about his shameful business. Meg, for her part, did not seek information, realising that one might as well ask a vixen to name the dog-fox that had crossed into Shallowford country when she was last in season. She was, moreover, resigned to the arrival of babies without fathers and in any case did not consider it her business. In her view any grown woman could renew herself if she felt so inclined and with whom she went about it was a personal matter. Doctor Maureen, however, had other views and after making no headway at all with Hazel consulted her husband, declaring that the father of the child should be sought out, encouraged to marry the girl or if he was disinclined, compelled to contribute towards its upkeep but John told her not to waste time and shoe leather. ‘That child has lived rough in the woods for years,’ he said, ‘and I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before! It might be any one of a score of men and no one is likely to own to it.’

‘If that child is promiscuous I’m Boadicea!’ Maureen declared. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she’d been raped and threatened and that’s why she’s holding her tongue!’ but John said, wearily, ‘Why do we have to put such a dramatic construction on a Potter producing a bastard? They were doing it when I came here!’

‘The circumstances are different,’ his wife said, ‘
very
different and not on account of the child being born in a cave. That Hazel Potter is fey for how else did she conceal her pregnancy all the time?’

‘With the help of the Great God Pan I wouldn’t wonder,’ John said, grinning and resumed his attempt to teach his seventeen-month-old son to walk a straight line across the carpet.

So Maureen turned elsewhere, questioning patients up and down the Valley but adding nothing to her knowledge. Few recalled having seen Hazel Potter during the last few months and those who had declared she was always alone. She persisted, however, and it was while casting about for some means of providing for the child’s future that she was approached by Keith Horsey, the son of the rector, whom she recalled as being a friend of the absent Ikey. Keith came to her with a practical suggestion. If Hazel would domicile herself within walking distance of Coombe Bay, he said, the rector was prepared to pay her a small weekly sum out of parish funds for cleaning the church and helping Marlowe, the sexton, keep the graveyard free of weeds. She thanked him and recalling that it was he who had summoned her the night the child was born asked if he or Ikey had any knowledge of the company Hazel kept. He was on the defensive at once.

‘Certainly not,’ he said, stiffly, ‘why should I have? Or Ikey either for that matter!’

‘Oh come, lad,’ she chaffed. ‘I’m not suggesting it was either one of you but you and that lass you’re courting walk the woods of an evening whereas Ikey, whenever he was home, was through them on horseback often enough. He’s sharp enough to have noticed and remembered if he did see her with anyone. Will you mention it when you write?’

The boy turned aside and it seemed to her that he found the subject distasteful. Then she realised why, recalling that he had burst into the cave and seen the girl in labour and it had probably been a considerable shock to a person as shy and withdrawn as Keith Horsey. He said, finally, ‘I’ll write and ask Ikey but I don’t think he’ll know anything. Won’t the girl say?’

‘No,’ said Maureen, ‘she won’t but for your information that isn’t at all unusual in these cases.’

‘Why?’ he asked, genuinely surprised. ‘Why should that be so?’

‘All manner of reasons—fear, a bribe perhaps, or even mistaken loyalty. Sometimes they break down when they are faced with angry parents but this won’t happen in Hazel’s case, for that gypsy mother of hers thinks no more of a bastard than a litter of kittens under the stairs.’

He flushed and she was sorry she hadn’t chosen her words more carefully but after repeating his father’s offer he left abruptly and she tackled her husband again, this time on the subject of accommodation for Hazel.

‘There’s a half-ruined cottage near the old mill a mile or so along the river road,’ she said. ‘Do you think Paul would do it up and let the girl have it on a peppercorn rent?’

‘I daresay he would,’ John said, ‘he’s soft enough, but why can’t she and the child move into that harlot’s nest in the Dell?’

‘Because, if she does, she’ll be in the family way again within six months,’ she told him, shortly. ‘I wouldn’t put it past that great lump of a Jem adding another to his harem!’

‘Ah,’ said John, chuckling, ‘you’ve got something there, old girl! I’ll have a word with Paul,’ and he did with the result that Hazel and her baby moved into Mill Cottage adjoining the long abandoned water-wheel, at the junction of the Sorrel and the stream that ran down from Deepdene goyle. Surprisingly she soon made herself at home, cultivating the vegetable patch and keeping a few goats in the water meadows and every weekday morning she carried her baby along the river road to the parish church where she scoured and polished for nine shillings a week, with a bonus of sixpence an hour for helping in the churchyard. Motherhood had sobered her somewhat, inasmuch as she did not wander so far afield but in other respects she was the same half-wild creature who had lived rough in the woods and Maureen, Irish enough to have faith in the Little People, thought of her as one and often passed to Hazel some of the payments in kind given her by cottagers for medical attention. She also took a keen interest in the baby, standing in as godmother when, at her suggestion, he was christened Patrick. As Maureen explained to her patients, saints had lived in caves all over Ireland when the English were still painting themselves blue, so why shouldn’t a broth of a boy be born in one on the Shallowford estate?

As soon as Hazel had settled in the doctor ceased her random enquiries regarding the child’s paternity, quite forgetting that she had advised Keith to write to Ikey on the subject. She never did learn how close she came to discovering the truth then, for Keith had few doubts on the subject but remained silent for reasons so complex that, notwithstanding his familiarity with Greek, Latin and Hebrew, he would have found it difficult to set down. Alone in the valley Keith had strong suspicions regarding the paternity of Hazel Potter’s child and they stemmed from a single word uttered by the mother at the moment he had burst through the screen of gorse to find her lying up in agony beside the half-dead fire. She had seen him through a haze of pain, standing agape with his back to the evening light, and in the moment before he had turned and rushed back to Rachel, she had confused him with the tall young man who had come here so often and cried out, in desperation and perhaps relief, ‘Ikey-boy!’, clearly and distinctly, thus telling Keith when he had time to reflect, all he needed to know. He was aware, of course, of his duty even if he found it very hard to believe that his one time champion had seduced this girl and left her to face the consequences alone. It was clearly obligatory on his part to write to Quetta, asking Ikey to confirm or deny but he did not write, regarding the child or anything else. The chain-reaction that would almost certainly follow Ikey’s admission would be shattering and result in so much trouble for everyone that he did not possess enough resolution to light such a fuse. Whatever happened it was he, Keith, who would suffer most, for if Ikey admitted paternity there would be legal claims that would broadcast the facts up and down the Valley and surely Ikey would find it hard to forgive the Judas who had so invoked the wrath of the Squire and Mrs Craddock and the contempt of rustics like Sam and Smut Potter and everyone else who sympathised with ‘the girl. Yet if Ikey denied the fact, as he probably would, the accusation would destroy their relationship for life and it was a relationship that Keith prized almost as highly as his love for Rachel Eveleigh. The more he considered putting what he knew on paper the more profitless it looked and so, in the end, he kept his counsel, persuading himself that if the girl was determined to keep her secret then he was entitled to do likewise. It did not satisfy his conscience completely but it helped and because, at that time, his head was full of dreams involving Rachel, and the rosy future they would share when he had his degree, he was able to put the secret into cold-storage and even half-persuade himself that Hazel Potter’s agonised cry qualified as a kind of audible hallucination on his part.