Post of Honour (84 page)

‘Not so dry!’ Simon said, ‘but home okay! I’m ringing from near Folkestone. I got in during the night. Pretty well the last of ’em I’d say!’

‘God, but I’m glad to hear from you!’ Paul said, fumbling for a cigarette to steady himself. ‘What happened? How did you make it?’

‘Too long a yarn to spin from a public call-box but the bare bones aren’t so remarkable. I just walked into the bloody sea and swam for it!’

‘You’re joking!’

‘No I’m not!’ He heard Simon smother a chuckle. ‘I could see ’em mopping up along the beaches, north of Calais, so as it was every man for himself I stripped off and struck out. I was damned lucky, mind, I not only found an empty oil-drum a mile or so out but I was sighted by a destroyer late in the afternoon. That’s why I’ve been so long getting in; they only docked last night!’

‘You’re . . . you’re quite fit?’

‘Fit as a fiddle! They gave me lashings of Navy rum on board and I don’t think I’ve sobered up yet. We’re getting nine days survival leave. Tell Rachel I’ll be down some time during the next forty-eight hours. Look, I can’t stop, Gov, there’s a queue outside . . . see you soon!’ and the line went dead.

He stood holding the receiver to his ear, thinking not so much of Simon, whom he had half-decided was dead, but of some of the other times he had stood here being fed with information from the world outside the Valley; a night in 1914, when Uncle Franz had rung; the day Simon had ’phoned to tell him he was marrying Rachel Eveleigh; all manner of minor milestones through the years, concerning the comings and goings of The Pair, of Whiz, Mary and young Claire. He thought, ‘He’s luckier than his mother! He survived that Spanish nightmare and he’s survived this! He obviously takes some killing, like me and Smut and old Henry Pitts.
Swam
for it, by God!’, and he gave a short, barking laugh, catching sight of himself in the cheval mirror hanging on the cloakroom door. The reflection arrested him. Earlier that morning he had compared Henry to a Boer commando but now he himself looked like an ageing bandit, with tousled grey locks and a Smith & Wesson strapped to his side. He cocked his head on one side, wondering if others would agree with him that he did not look sixty-one, nor more than, say, fifty-four or five, and still good for a rough and tumble if one was waiting him down on the beach. Then he heard the kettle-lid rattling and went back to the kitchen to make the tea, pouring it into the morning ritual mugs, taking one in each hand, and going slowly up the broad, shallow stairs.

He opened the bedroom door with his knee and was surprised and not a little amused, to find Claire was still heavily asleep. Then he remembered she had got up with him at two o’clock to make his coffee before he rode off to the shanty and had probably had some trouble getting off to sleep again after he had gone. He gently set down the mugs and pulled the curtain aside so that dazzling sunshine filled the room and she stirred and heaved herself over without waking. He went across and looked down at her, conscious of a warm current of relief and pleasure that was only partially due to the cheering news of Simon’s escape. She was still, he thought, lovely to look at, particularly when she was relaxed as now. Her hair showed evidence of its fortnightly rinse and there was a suggestion of grey about the temples but one had to look for it, it didn’t proclaim itself, as it did in most of the Valley women midway through their fifties. Her skin was still very clear and her cheeks, now slightly pendulous, were as fresh and rosy as on the day he had first ridden into High Coombe farmyard on his initial tour of the estate. Her mouth, showing faint traces of lipstick, was just as inviting and slightly parted lips revealed square, white teeth, the product, as she often told him, of her great weakness for cheese, which made calcium. Suddenly she blinked her eyes and when she saw him sat up very suddenly, her pink nightdress slipping over one shoulder and her expression very bemused.

‘What is it? What’s the time?’

‘Time you were up and about,’ he said, handing her a mug. ‘It’s lucky you woke up when you did. Another moment and I should have been in beside you and half the morning wasted. I’ve just heard from Simon.’

‘
Simon!
He’s . . . here? He’s all right?’

‘Near Folkestone and coming on leave. Not even wounded. Sounded as though he subscribes to the general belief that Dunkirk was an even more shattering victory than Waterloo!’

‘Oh God, I’m glad, Paul! Glad for you but gladder still for me!’ and she set down the mug and hugged herself with a little girl’s glee.

He said, sitting on the edge of the bed, ‘I knew you would be. He always was rather special for you, wasn’t he? Perhaps because you always leaned over backwards in attempts to disprove the wicked stepmother theory! Well, I daresay he owes his survival to you. He tells me he swam for it. No! I mean it! He actually struck out across the Channel and was picked up by a destroyer a mile or so out! It was you who taught him to swim, Claire.’

‘Yes, I did,’ she said, with enormous satisfaction, ‘and he was always the best swimmer of the lot of them. The Pair wouldn’t have got beyond the breakwater. Have you told Rachel yet?’

‘No, I only heard as I was making the tea ten minutes ago.’

‘Then I’ll drive over right away!’ she said, scrambling out of bed, but he protested. ‘No you won’t, woman! You’ll get me some breakfast first and while it’s cooking you can scout around for Mark Codsall. He came off duty more than seven hours ago and he can take her the news!’

He yawned and suddenly she looked contrite. ‘You must be tired out! Why don’t you pull off your clothes and slip into bed for an hour or so? Tell you what—I’ll bring your breakfast up on a tray!’

He could not remember when he had last breakfasted in bed and the idea was appealing. Then he remembered all the things he had to do and stopped in the act of unbuckling his webbing belt. ‘Hell no, I can’t do that . . . !’ but she had gauged his approval and said, sharply, ‘You can and you will! Here, give me those things!’ and began peeling off his jacket so that he surrendered and quickly undressed, sliding into a bed that was still warm and smelled very pleasantly of her perfume. He lay back watching her struggle into her clothes, smiling to himself as she inched a frivolous and inadequate foundation-garment over her hips and marvelling at the impression of slimness it lent her when it was in position. Then, after a tug or two at her hair, she was gone and he was drifting into a doze when the dressing-room door opened very cautiously and the bullet head of his six-year-old son John appeared round the crack. He said, sleepily, ‘All right, either come in or go out, John!’ and John came in, his eyes immediately fastening on the discarded holster.

‘Can I look at it, Dad?’

‘No you can’t, it’s loaded!’

‘Have you shot any Nazis?’

‘No, there were none within range unfortunately!’

John looked mildly disappointed and mooched across to the tall window where Paul saw that he was arrayed in the cowboy outfit the doting Thirza Tremlett had made for him at his urgent demand. It consisted of a loud check shirt, fringed corduroys and a gun-belt slung with two beaded and brass-studded holsters, each sporting a cap pistol.

‘Uncle Rumble says the sea will be a-wash with their corpses if they try for Coombe Bay!’ John said solemnly. ‘Was he pulling my leg, do you think?’

‘No,’ said Paul, judiciously, ‘he wasn’t! Every one who tries to get ashore will certainly be picked off from the dunes. Everyone’s waiting with a gun and the Navy is all set to drive them right into our line of fire. If you want your breakfast your mother’s getting it now!’

‘Okay!’ said the boy and left abruptly, without noticing the reluctant grin that made his father conscious of the night’s bristles on his chin. ‘Okay!’ And dressed as an American cowboy at a time like this! It was a little incongruous to see a six-year-old adopting a role of make-believe violence when there was so much real violence threatening over the Channel and in the skies overhead. He was nodding off when Claire bustled in with his tray and although, just then, he would have preferred to sleep, he made the effort and sat up while she lifted the cover from a plate of bacon and eggs. Then the smell revived his appetite and he began to eat ravenously as she watched with approval.

‘Was it all quiet on the Coombe Bay front?’

‘Quiet enough,’ he told her, describing Henry’s arrival, Rumble Patrick’s tank-trap and his own casual visit to the churchyard before riding home through the woods. His detour interested her. She said, looking down on him with a smile, ‘I’d like to see the German who could run you off this land, Paul! He’d have to be a six-headed monster armed with a death-ray!’

‘A company of second-line troops could do it with last-war rifles,’ he said. ‘We’ve only got a few sporting guns and an odd revolver or two!’

‘You don’t have to worry,’ she said, with a finality that made him half-ashamed of his fears, ‘they won’t even try! And we’ll win all right, the same as we always do after the initial flutter in the henhouse. You’ll finish your days here and so will I. And so will Mary’s children and young John and probably their children! And by that time there won’t be anything to worry about except jerry-builders for by then you men will have grown up and learned to attend to the serious business!’

He was exasperated in spite of the assurance she brought him and said, petulantly, ‘It isn’t that kind of war, Claire! Not this time. It’s very real war, with all-or-nothing stakes. You ought to get that into your head and keep it there!’

‘Oh, it’s in my head,’ she said, off-handedly, ‘but I can’t get so worked up about it as you. I can’t really believe that anybody as idiotic as Hitler will be tolerated anywhere for long. Too much Derwent commonsense, maybe. Breakfast to your liking, sir?’

‘First-rate. You can make a habit of this after the war!’

‘You’d be lucky!’ and suddenly she laughed, reached out and rumpled his already rumpled hair. ‘I’ll see to John’s breakfast and get the message over to Rachel!’ and she turned to go but he steadied the tray with his right hand and shot out his left, catching her by the wrist.

‘Steady on!’ she warned him, ‘you’ll have the lot over the bed-clothes!’ but when he lifted her plump hand to his mouth and kissed it she smiled, saying, ‘An early ride in Shallowford Woods always takes you this way! Did you pass alongside the mere?’

‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘past the exact spot where you once tried to seduce me, you huzzy. And me a gangling, city-bred boy with money in the bank!’

‘I wish I’d succeeded!’ she said. ‘We would have had nearly five extra years to look back on!’

‘And five more children!’

‘Without a shadow of doubt. Help yourself to more tea if you want it. I’ll give you a call about ten.’

She went out and he disposed of the tray, stretching and luxuriating in the warmth of the bed and the glow of strong, morning sunlight. Suddenly and improbably the war seemed to recede and with it went all thought of Hitler, a stricken Continent, LDV patrols and Rumble Patrick’s tank-traps. All that remained, all that mattered on this earth or beyond it was Claire and Shallowford, Claire’s children and Claire’s children’s children, together with all the old originals and their descendants, living their humdrum lives between the railway line and the sea, between the Teazel in the west and the Bluff in the east. Nothing else was worth a moment’s anxiety, and, resolving this, he slept.

She returned about ten but she did not disturb him. He was sleeping very peacefully and she thought, briefly, ‘To hell with his orders. He’ll be out again half the night and he isn’t as young as he likes to pretend!’ And then, for the first time in a long while, she took a dispassionate look at him, not so much to assess the toil of the years that drove her to study her own reflection often enough, but in search of the man himself. What was it, she asked herself, that had held her to him all these years, had made his business hers, his trickle of hopes and fears, anxieties and exultations the threads of her existence and led, one and all, back to this sprawling house on the southern slope of a valley by-passed by the century? She looked closely and seriously at the long, narrow face, hedged with bluish stubble, the thick grey hair tumbled on her pillow, the long, relaxed form under the white coverlet. His loins undoubtedly. They had always brought her fulfilment but outside the bed, in day-to-day life, there was a quality about him that was astonishingly rare in this age—an enduring faith and ceaseless endeavour that was utterly divorced from the besetting pre-occupation of his generation, concerned, in the main, with greed of one sort or another. He might, she reflected, have been a very rich man and he was not, had never wanted to be, for all the money he had ever had had been poured into these acres and dribbled away without a sigh on his part, and he was not even rich in kind, for most of it had gone to those whose lives, in a sense, he had held in trust over the years. And yet, she decided, it was not his generosity that made him the acknowledged leader here but his terrible earnestness, his sense of purpose and dedication that only today was finding wider expression from one end of the country to the other. Realising this, identifying his steadfastness with the national mood in the face of final disaster, she decided something else about him that was both old and new. He had been right all the time, every moment of his working life, since he had first ridden into the Valley when she was a girl of nineteen. He had, as it were, selected a target that most men of his means and single-mindedness would have regarded as far too modest, but whereas the big-game hunters had missed he had scored a succession of bull’s-eyes and was still scoring. It gave her a queer sense of pride to realise that, over most of the time, she had been loading for him. He had prescience but also a kind of innocence. The one had enabled him to evaluate soil and comradeship in excess of everything else that touched his life and the other had matured him as a human being and brother to whom everyone about here turned, in good times and bad, for advice, steadfastness and friendship. In a way he was the antithesis of the spirit of the century, of the dismal trends of laissez-faire, usury and triviality that had led, after all, to another global calamity and yet he had never lost a certain modesty that some mistook for naivety, forgetting that, under his seeming mildness was a core of proofed steel. Perhaps she was the only person in the world who was fully aware of this, having seen it tempered over the years but there were still plenty who thought of him as an anachronism, a reactionary, a benevolent autocrat or a genial soft touch but she knew otherwise. He was all these things on the surface but primarily he was a man of faith and a romantic, whose fibres were far tougher and more weatherproof than the fibres of professional adventurers and men in counting-houses, if only because, by now, they probed so deeply into Valley soil. There was enormous strength here, and abundant tenderness. There was virility, at sixty-one, that still retained the power to make her wilt and there was also self-assurance equal to all the stresses of peace and war, change and catastrophe. A woman who troubled herself to understand and appreciate this would always be safe with him; safe, satisfied and grateful for the hand she had been dealt.