South Riding (43 page)

Therefore this doubt cast upon his moral judgment in the matter of the carnival wounded Huggins. He balanced himself, in considerable physical as well as mental discomfort upon the wooden bench, and wished that he had brought Nellie with him. His solitary state had made him defenceless before Mr. Drew’s attack.

Until now, the day had been a success. The children’s sports went without accident. The weather had been exemplary. Even when the sun had fallen below the roof of the Floral Hall, it still reached the far-out tide illuminating the waves as they broke to creamy radiance and creating an illusion of afternoon at sea, though evening darkened the Esplanade Gardens.

Teas had been served in the Floral Hall—two shillings with crab, ham or potted meat, one and six with fruit salad, a shilling plain. And even the so-called plain teas included cheesecakes, tarts, scones, spiced bread, currant tea-cakes. Experienced as Huggins was in public teas, he felt proud of this one. When the South Riding does anything, it Does It.

It was a pity that the High School disapproved of Madame Hubbard. That Miss Burton tried to stop her girls joining the classes. Well, of course. Still, she was coming to the carnival with Mrs. Beddows. Charity was charity, and Hardrascliffe had raised fifteen hundred for the hospital at its own three-day bazaar. We must do something.

There was an interval between the dances.

“Coming for a stroll?” asked Drew.

They disentangled themselves from the benches and strolled off under the yet unlighted festoons of coloured electric bulbs, between the stalls selling ices and Kiplington Rock, and the deserted sands.

“Good few people,” commented Drew.

Huggins was about to reply when his gaze was arrested by a sight of terror.

This was nothing more than a young man and woman standing beside a lemonade stall. The young woman was drinking—from a bottle, her arms raised, her head thrown back, her round creamy throat exposed and her bright blue dress straining across her maternal bust. Spellbound, Huggins watched her Adam’s apple twitch as she swallowed the gassy liquid. Then she finished, drew the back of her hand across her moistened lips, gave the empty bottle to the young man, and turning, stood staring at the councillor.

She laughed a loud, careless laugh that showed the red pit of mouth between her strong yellow teeth. She came forward, her hand thrust out. “Hallo, Alfred!” she shouted. “How’s yourself? Meet the hubby.”

Huggins found himself shaking hands with Reg and Bessy Aythorne.

“Ah, excuse me,” he said to Drew. “I must have a word with these young people. I haven’t seen them since their marriage. Mrs. Aythorne used to come to my services at Spunlington.”

He thought that Drew strolled off without suspicion. After all, a lay preacher has a wide circle of acquaintances.

“Well, and how are you both?” he asked bravely enough, in his rich patronising preacher’s voice.

“Not so bad.”

“And how do you like our show?”

“Bit too classy for me. I like something with a bit of go in it, don’t I, Reg?”

She nudged the rabbit-faced young man who was her husband.

“Tha’s right.”

“We wanted to see Mr. Huggins, anyway, didn’t we, Reg?”

“Tha’s right.”

“Well. You see me. Here I am,” said Huggins. Brave words, but he felt dreadful. His protruding eyes searched the Esplanade for some place of shelter. Facing Bessy among all those people, he suffered from a sense of nakedness, of indecent exposure.

At intervals along the Esplanade Gardens, the corporation had built rugged archways. Made of hollowed blocks of clay from the cliffs encrusted with small pebbles, they reached the high-water mark of local marine architecture. Clumps of purple stone crop, white arabus and pink valerian had been planted about their surface. Huggins’ desperate eye lit on one such archway now. A bench had been set across it; it had been used as a sheltering place for eaters of oranges and chocolate, and as a convenient retiring house for dogs and children, but thither Huggins led his two young friends.

“Aren’t you going to ask after the kid?” jeered Bessy.

“I hope she’s well.”

“He.”

“Ah—yes. Of course. He.”

“Oh, come off it! Let’s get to business. Are you going to pay Stillman’s interest on those damned sheds?”

“Pay the interest? Why—no. Of course not. The sheds are yours. That’s your business.”

“Is it? I see. Nice lot of use they are to us.
We
don’t want ’em. Stillman can foreclose.”

“Oh, but he can’t. They—I, they are as it were only a loan to me.”

“Well, we can’t help your troubles. We aren’t going to touch ’em. We don’t care. The shop’s not going as well as all that We can’t afford to pay for
your
property. I just thought I’d let you know. If you want to keep those sheds, pay your own interest, or let Stillman take ’em. We can’t do it. We’ve got to keep your child, you know. It takes a bit of money.”

“My child?”

“Spitten image of his dad, little Alf is, isn’t he, Reg?”

“Tha’s right.”

“Alf? You’ve called him Alfred?”

“After his pa. Why not? It’s only natural.”

“But—but—this is blackmail.”

“Is it? It seems sound sense to me, anyhow. Reg and I are keeping your kid for you. You’re paying maintenance by setting us up in business. You can’t expect us to pay your interest for you too. You’ll have to fix it up yourself with Stillman. Or you can lose the sheds. Or you can take your own kid and keep it. Can’t he, Reg?”

“Tha’s right,” said the obliging Mr. Aythorne.

“I—I——” gasped Huggins, but they had done with him.

Without mercy, they laughed and went away.

Oh, God, thought Huggins. What shall I do now?

The sheds were his only security for repaying Snaith. He might pay Stillman’s interest, but business had gone badly. Besides, it was sheer blackmail. Once he began, the Lord alone knew where it would all end.

He stood, racked by suspense, staring out at the carefree, moving crowd.

Drew saw and hailed him. He had been confiding his disgust at the morality of the carnival ballet to Lovell Brown. Huggins approached them, not knowing what else to do. Drew turned to the reporter.

“Well. Here’s a member of the Carnival Committee. You know Councillor Huggins, I suppose?”

“Yes, rather. Been to Spunlington lately?”

Spunlington! The councillor’s jaw dropped. Had Brown seen him now with Bessy? Was all his folly known?

“Well, Dollstall, then?” smiled Brown, and Huggins knew that the worst had happened.

It must be known—his connection with Spunlington where Bessy had been, with Dollstall, where she now lived. All was lost. Huggins tried to swallow. His mouth was dry. His eyes. stared out from his deep pit of despair at the bright gala crowds and the floodlights illuminating the grass stage between the corporation flower-beds.

Almost he felt release from his long penance of deceit. If everything was known at least he need no longer hide a secret scandal.

“I—I don’t get you,” he gasped.

“Don’t you remember,” asked the reporter, “how I met you last at Dollstall? I was coming back half frozen from a ploughing match, and stopped for a drink at the pub there. You were on your way to preach at Spunlington?”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course. I’d forgotten.”

“Whenever I catch you, you’re always on your way to some good work,” grinned Lovell.

The reaction was so great that Huggins almost fainted. He knew now the measure of his love for his good name. It meant everything to him—honour—friendship, the opportunity for service. And indeed he desired to serve his generation. He leaned against the low sea wall, feeling sick and dazed with relief, yet aware that his escape could not be permanent. At any time the horror might recur—so long as Bessy was in the South Riding. Why hadn’t he seen that she went far away? To London? Manchester? Even Leeds would have been better.

Mr. Peckover was coming towards their group, his round face beaming.

“Well? Good-evening, Huggins. Good-evening, Drew. ’Evening, Brown. Hope you’re giving us a good report?”

“I’m glad you like it, Mr. Peckover,” Lovell grinned mischievously. One up for the Church of England, he was thinking.

“Oh, quite classical. Quite refined. Different from all that jazz Mrs. Hubbard seems so fond of.”

It’s all right. It will be all right, Huggins told himself. He was accepted, welcomed. No guilt, no fear wrote itself across his forehead. He wiped his face with a big white handkerchief.

“Hot night,” said Mr. Peckover.

The Ladies’ String Orchestra had replaced the brass band. They were beginning to tune up, conscientiously drawing bows across cat-gut; in a moment they would be sawing and grinding away in the full vigour of Part II of the carnival programme—“In Ancient Arcady, A Masque of Song and Dance.”

The audience sought their seats again. It seemed impossible to Huggins that all this had happened during the brief interval of one night’s entertainment.

“What’s the next item?” asked Drew grimly. He never bought programmes if he could borrow one. Huggins produced his—a folded yellow paper. His thin spatulate thumb made a broad shadow over the fine print in the lamplight.

“The Shepherds’ Quarrel,” he read, “danced by Lydia and Violet, sung by the Ladies’ Choir.”

Through the crowd moved round the vivid blue of Bessy’s dress. Above the clamour of voices he could hear Bessy’s unrestrained cruel laugh. Oh, God, I should have got away! He felt trapped.

“Shepherds. Well,” observed Mr. Drew, “at least they should be adquately clad.”

But Daphnis and Chloe, as Madame Hubbard conceived them, were attired very differently from Mr. Naylor and his South Riding colleagues.

To the wail of strings they sprang forward into the yellow floodlights, crossing the dark green lawn. Vi Alcock fled, a slender blushing Chloe in a brief lilac tunic. She knew that Bert Holly was watching her from the crowd, and it was to him she danced, flushed with the bloom and joy of her first love-affair. Her fair hair tossed above her girlish shoulders, her arms and legs were bare. The imperfect light hid the blemishes in her beauty—her coarse red hands, her feet deformed by ill-fitting shoes, the rather common prettiness of her little face. Only her grace and passion were revealed, the golden gleam of her tossing curls, the flying drapery of her lilac tunic. After all, Lydia Holly, brown and sturdy, a frowning fierce young shepherd waving a crook, danced with serious concentration.

She too was aware of a member of the audience. Sarah Burton, cool and charming in her green summer dress, sat in the reserved seats between Joe Astell and Mrs. Beddows. She hadn’t left Kiplington yet, then. She was there—Scarlet Sally, in her soft chiffon. Sarah Burton, with her hair like an autumn leaf, Sarah, who didn’t want girls to learn dancing with the Hubbards—Sarah who had let her down.

Very well. Sarah should see what Lydia could do. It was Sarah whom she pursued, leaping, spurning, springing across the flower-beds, a dynamo of vitality. It was Sarah whom the ultimately caught with her crook and humbled, crouching formidably above her.

But Violet, soft, panting, defeated, prone on the grass before them all, was yielding in love to Lydia’s brother.

A burst of clapping, like the patter of hail on a roof, rattled round the arena. The tune of the fiddles changed. The Ladies’ Choir advancing, rather cold in white tunics, broke into the song chosen by Madame Hubbard. Its words might not be wholly “classical” but its rhythm was irresistible.

“I hate you, I lothe you—

I despise and detest you—

Oh, why don’t you kiss me again?”

Violet and Lydia were on their feet now, miming the shepherd’s quarrel. Into their act Violet threw all her newly-acquired youthful amorousness, the fear and desire and surrender learned in a camp tent west of Kiplington. Into it Lydia threw all the misery and bewilderment of her past six months—her mother’s health, her exile from the school, Sarah’s betrayal, the illness of her small brother and sister. She danced frustration as Violet danced fulfilment.

“I’ll make her see,” she swore.

And Sarah did see. She was amazed by the performance. She had thought Lydia capable of many things, but not of this wild passion and power of miming. It had not been necessary to remind her that Lydia was worth saving.

And it was not of Lydia now that she was thinking.

For Sarah was clasping and unclasping the green velvet bag on her lap and repeating to herself. “I hate you, I loathe you. I detest and despise you——” But Carne had never kissed her once. Would never kiss her. Never, never, never, never. And she must put him out of her mind, or learn indifference.

It was easier to hate than to be indifferent. She would teach herself to think only of his preposterous public policy—not of his strong hands so tenderly ministering to sick animals, not of his vigil beside his little daughter, not of the dawn that they had watched together, coming up out of the dark summer sea.

She looked at Joe Astell’s stern face for reassurance. Joe who was so clear, so definite, so determined. Joe was a good friend. Joe would teach her how not to love her enemy.