Post of Honour (51 page)

‘It’s a damned lopsided arrangement,’ Simon grumbled, ‘but I’ll do it if you insist. I’ve got nothing against the Gov’nor or your father and I don’t see much sense in asking either of them to make a five-hundred-mile round trip in mid-winter to attend a five-minute civil ceremony! However, if we ask one we should ask the other. What on earth has our difference in age to do with it?’

Rachel who, since his proposal, had not drawn attention to the fact that she was eight years his senior flashed out at this.

‘It hasn’t really any bearing at all except, possibly, that you were a child of ten when my father made everybody at home wretched about my marrying Keith! Can’t you get it into your thick Craddock-Lovell skull that I still find his attitude unforgivable?’

‘There’s your mother,’ he argued, ‘you’ve nothing against her, have you?’

‘Marian’s very loyal,’ she told him, ‘and she’d stick by Father no matter what but that’s as it should be, particularly since the bite has gone out of him! Do as I say! Go into the kiosk and tell your father when and where, for if you don’t I’m hanged if I won’t change my mind after all!’

He capitulated at that. He knew her by now, a woman of strange inflexibility in whom infinite prejudice was mixed with infinite compassion in about equal proportions. He had seen her in draughty church institutes and parish halls, raging against social injustices to an apathetic audience of a dozen people, and he had watched her help an incompetent midwife deliver a child in a bug-infested tenement where whole families lived in single rooms on diets of fish, chips, and bread and margarine when they were lucky. He had admired her, worshipped her, and sometimes feared her, knowing that dedication to a cause to the degree that Rachel Horsey was dedicated could make sentimental mush of his own dilettante socialism. He went into the booth and dialled trunks, watching her through the streaked panes as she stood with her coat collar turned up against the wind and her brooding eyes fixed on some point beyond the spot where the railway bridge laid a shadow across glistening setts. He felt desperately sorry for her, standing there in the cold and drizzle, sorry and half-choked with a range of emotions in which awe and a deep yearning to share her life were the two extremes. The operator told him he was through and he heard Paul’s voice on the line.

‘Hullo? Craddock here! Who is it?’

‘Simon.’

‘Simon!’
The voice sounded agreeably surprised. ‘Are you coming home?’

‘Soon, Gov’nor, but I’ve got news. It’ll rock you but it’s nothing unpleasant.’

‘Are you all right?’ The voice was urgent now.

‘Sure I’m all right. I rang to say I was getting married to Rachel Horsey.’

‘Married?’ The voice sounded incredulous. ‘For God’s sake—
When?
’

‘The day after tomorrow.’

‘Day after
tomorrow
! Great God! Wait a minute, I’ll fetch Claire . . . ’

‘No don’t, Gov! No, I don’t mind her knowing—of course I don’t—but, well . . . I haven’t any more change and Rachel is standing in the rain. Can you come up? It’s only a Register Office “do” but Rachel seems to think you and Claire should be invited. Otherwise I’d have written and left it at that! Are you still there?’

Paul’s voice broke the silence and sounded a little less cordial, Simon thought. ‘Yes, I’m still here. Listen, I’ve got to give Elinor Codsall away the same day. Can’t you postpone it?’

‘No Gov, I’m afraid not. We had to fit it in with all kinds of things up here, including a bye-election.
Who
did you say you’ve got to give away?’

‘Elinor Codsall of Periwinkle. The widow! She’s marrying a Jerry she met during the war! I’ve promised and she’s relying on me. I honestly don’t see how I could let her down flat at the last moment.’

‘Of course you couldn’t!’ Simon tried to keep the relief out of his voice. ‘You go ahead and wish her the best from both of us.’

‘It’s damned sickening tho’. Claire will be very disappointed. You say Rachel Eveleigh is there?’

‘Right here but she isn’t Rachel Eveleigh, Gov. She’s a widow too.’

‘Of course, I’d forgotten.’ He had forgotten, not only the fact that she had been a bride of one of those rushed war-time weddings but also that she must be years older than Simon, he could not say how many until he consulted Claire or the diary.

‘Do her parents know?’

‘Not yet,’ said Simon, ‘she’s writing her mother.’

‘I see!’ He understood the girl’s prejudice far better than his son. He had thought of that strange contretemps at Four Winds several times since Simon had written saying he was engaged in some kind of social work in association with the girl. Yet it had never occurred to him for a moment that one of Norman Eveleigh’s daughters would end up as his daughter-in-law and bewilderment prevented him from getting a clear mental picture of the girl. There were so many Eveleighs. There had always been so many Eveleighs, ever since that awful night he had hammered on Norman’s door in the teeth of a south-westerly gale and told him his employer was hanging from a beam of the barn. Then he remembered something relevant. That was the night Simon had been born, and one of the children who had peeped over the banisters and been shooed back to bed must have been the Rachel, now ‘waiting in the rain’. He said, emphatically, ‘Listen, Simon, if the operator cuts in tell her to reverse the charges. Get Rachel into the box, you idiot, boy!’

There was a long pause and he heard Claire calling from the library, ‘Who is it, Paul?’

‘Simon! He’s ‘phoning from Manchester,’ and she came into the hall as Paul heard a crisp, unrecognisable voice on the line. ‘Mr Craddock? You remember me?’

‘Good Lord, of course I remember you, Rachel! Listen, before we’re cut off. Would you like me to go over and tell Marian? I’m sure she’d appreciate it.’

There was a brief pause, during which Claire joggled his elbow and he shook her off, impatiently. ‘Did you hear, Rachel?’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘I’d like that, Mr Craddock, and tell her I’ll write. I’m sorry you can’t come but we both understand—and, Mr Craddock . . . ’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ll look after him well. You don’t have to worry.’

‘I hope he’ll look after you, Rachel—but thank you, I . . . I’m happy about it, even if it is a bit sudden, and I’m sure Mrs Craddock will be. Can we ring you anywhere later?’

‘Yes, you can. We’re going to town just for the weekend to a conference actually,’ and she gave him a number that he jotted down on the pad.

‘There are the pips,’ she said, ‘don’t reverse! Simon’s getting wet now! Good-bye, Mr Craddock.’

‘Good-bye, my dear. And good luck, both of you.’

The wire clicked and began to purr. Slowly he replaced the receiver and turned to meet Claire’s bewildered gaze.

‘Who on earth was it? You said “Simon”, didn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it was Simon who called but that was Rachel Horsey, nee Eveleigh.’

‘Eveleigh’s second daughter? The one who married the parson’s son and never came back?’

He nodded. ‘What do you remember about her?’

‘Only that she was a pretty girl with a generous share of Norman Eveleigh’s pigheadedness. Why?’

‘She’ll need it, she’s marrying Simon the day after tomorrow,’ and as she gasped and her hand shot to her mouth as it always did when she was surprised, ‘Come out of this damned draught and I’ll tell you what little I know. Fix me a drink too. It’s a wonder I’m not a dipsomaniac with my crazy family.’

Simon’s letter duly arrived, a breezy statement of fact, ‘Like an extract from one of his damned statistical reviews on malnutrition,’ Paul muttered, but he made no such comment about a letter Marian Eveleigh handed to him a day or so later, after he had ridden over and told her the news. Marian was flushed and excited, although half-inclined to apologise for her daughter having married into the Squire’s family but it seemed to Paul that Norman, her husband, had some difficulty taking it in. He kept shaking his head and fidgeting with his hands and his only remark when his wife repeated the news into his one sound ear was, ‘Arr, Rachel’s alwus gone her orn way! Nothin’ new about that, be there?’

When Marian walked him to the yard he said, ‘How is he these days, Marian? He doesn’t seem too great,’ and she said, defiantly, that he could still do a good day’s work but that the deafness that had followed his partial stroke a year or so ago sometimes gave people the idea that he was wool-gathering. The Lady Doctor, she went on, using the term the Valley had applied to Maureen Rudd since 1906, had urged him to give up work altogether but she knew this would be fatal to him. ‘He’d only moon about and die of boredom,’ she said, ‘so let un carry on, long as he can. As to our Rachel, she’s a hard one and no mistake! She’s never forgotten that war-time bust-up. Maybe this’ll make a difference. I wouldn’t like to think they kept it up until he was taaken.’

She seemed, Paul thought, resigned to him dying although he could hardly be more than seventy and looked strong enough physically. She was equally resigned to tending him and sticking by him, having found it easy to erase the memory of a war-time peccadillo with the land-girl who had once moved into her bedroom and been ejected by Claire. He said, briefly, ‘Well, I don’t know what you think about it, Marian, but I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you I think Rachel is what Simon needs. She’s had plenty of trouble of her own and I daresay she’ll mother him and persuade him to settle down somewhere.’

‘None of ’em will ever do that be our standards, Squire,’ she replied, ‘and I don’t reckon it’s their fault altogether. Nothing’s ever been quite the same since, has it?’

‘No,’ said Paul, cheerfully, for he heard this kind of remark every day from one or other of the older generation, ‘but there’s a good deal I’m not sorry to see gone. Taken all round people are kinder and at least we’re unlikely to see another war again, so we must have learned something from it.’

‘Lord God, I do hope you’re right,’ said Marian fervently. ‘Would you like to see the letter she writes me if ’er does?’

‘Yes indeed,’ Paul said, privately hoping it would be more explicit than Simon’s telephone conversation.

It wasn’t, or not much. Marian sent it over a day or so later and it looked fat enough to be informative until he realised that the envelope contained a sealed letter addressed to him as well as a brief letter to Mrs Eveleigh. He thought, as he took it out, ‘Now why the devil didn’t she write direct? She hasn’t forgotten where we live has she?’ but he ceased to wonder when he saw, written slantways across the inside envelope,
‘For Mr Paul Craddock! Personal!’
and his jaw dropped at the first paragraph, which read: ‘Dear Squire Craddock,—I’m sorry, I can’t think of you as a plain “Mr” although, to be frank, I wouldn’t like you to think I subscribe to patronage of any kind!’ His curiosity overcame his surprise as he read on—‘I haven’t told Simon I’m writing for obvious reasons and therefore enclose this with Mother’s letter. I wouldn’t have thought of writing if I hadn’t got to know Simon well enough to understand
you
far more than I did in the old days, when I was a child growing up in the Valley. Ordinarily I set my face against landlords of all kinds but you are an exception apart from the fact (whether we like it or not) we’re now related. Any prejudice I might have had in your respect has gone long ago and not only because—as I say—I’ve learned about you through Simon, but also because you’ve never shown my family, particularly my mother, anything but consideration and therefore you don’t qualify as a landlord in my book!’

His unpredictable sense of humour was already at work and he found himself grinning broadly. ‘By God,’ he muttered aloud, ‘young Simon’s met his match here and no mistake!’ and because her uncompromising style reminded him so vividly of Grace riding her sex-equality hobby-horse he readdressed himself to the letter with enthusiasm.

‘Well,’ she went on blandly, ‘that will do for a preamble; now to the grist. Honestly, Mr Craddock, you’ve made a real mess of Simon and sometimes I feel it’s almost too late to unravel him! I’m going to try, though, for Keith persevered with me and I was even more hopeless material. I remember the fearful row we had about the time we married when I curtsied to his father! You see, Simon has terrific potential—a receptive mind, good reasoning powers, good health, a first-class memory and so on, but what are these worth without
drive
and
purpose
and
direction
?
When I met him he was ambling along like a sick mule, feeling so sorry for himself that whatever capacity he had to do something practical for anyone else was a spluttering fuse that led nowhere and would have ended blowing himself up with a faint pop! I imagine you were always handicapped by the fact that his mother dodged the job of bringing him up and that made you lean over backwards to make allowances for him. That damned public school you sent him to didn’t help either but that’s another story. The point is, he’s my responsibility now and I want you to know that I’m serious to the point of priggery about any responsibilities I take on! That’s why I always take my time accepting a new one as I did by marrying Si. After all, he’s twenty-six and I’m thirty-four, so there was plenty to worry about had he been adult, which he certainly wasn’t when I met him the night of his brothers’ twenty-first party.’

He knew it was important to digest this letter line by line so he went back and started again. He knew, also, that she was not merely forthright to the point of arrogance but that her judgment was sound and that every shot fired scored a bull’s-eye. He had leaned over backwards to make allowances; Simon had all those qualities she named and he did lack purpose and direction; he was not fully adult and never had been, as though some hidden streak of Lovell indolence blunted his natural talents to a degree that made him seem rootless and ineffectual and yet, somewhere inside him, was a persistent flicker of Grace’s fire. That a child of Norman and Marian Eveleigh, whose education could not have exceeded a rudimentary grounding at Mary Willoughby’s little school, should have perceived this astonished him. Could she have learned so much in her brief marriage to Keith Horsey? Or had it been dinned into her during the long struggle to make ends meet and keep her head above water, without whining to a father she despised? He realised that this was something he would never know. Clearly she was not a person to proclaim her own triumphs. He read on: ‘I’m going to make something of Si, Mr Craddock—
really
make something of him! What emerges may not be the kind of person you admire but at least that person will amount to something. I think it’s right that I should tell you this because, in a way, I need your help.
I
want you to promise you’ll never send him money.
He has a little (about three pounds a week) from his mother’s estate and that’s more than enough to tide us over until he can stand on his own feet. If he thinks he can always come back to you I’m beaten from the start. Some of the people we work among raise families on less than this and if there is one thing I can’t stand it’s a theorist who preaches Socialism when his own belt is let out to the last notch! Believe me, Mr Craddock, we get plenty of those in the Movement and I wish to God they would stop pretending and go over to the Opposition! I haven’t made up my mind yet exactly what Simon will go for but meantime he’s teaching in the WEA (Workers’ Education Association) and soon I’m hoping he’ll take an external in Economics. After that, if things work out as I hope, he’ll get electoral experience in a hopeless seat and finally, with more luck, stand for somewhere with a chance of winning. All this, of course, is dependent upon him and also on my hunch about him. Meantime, if Mrs Craddock fusses (and I wouldn’t blame her a bit if she did, for she obviously knows him better than you!), do try and convince her I’ll make him as good a wife as he’ll let me. He’s a very lovable boy and although I’m sure I don’t sound it I’m a naturally affectionate person. Yours very sincerely, Rachel Craddock.’