Theirs Was The Kingdom (94 page)

So she made him his sandwiches, bringing them out to him just as he was being hoisted into the driving-box by two yard boys and an interested stableman of The White Hart, a hostelry adjoining the Swann yard.

Down at the Great Western depot there were plenty of porters to manhandle the statue on to the flat surface of the man-o’-war and lash it there under its yards of canvas wrappings. Hamlet, aware that descent from the box was a complicated manoeuvre, had perforce to superintend the loading from where he was and this was not entirely satisfactory. He found it very difficult these days to look over his shoulder on account of arthritis in his neck. He assumed they knew their business, however, and it seemed they did. By four in the afternoon he was on his way, moving at a walking pace up a river valley that ran parallel with the valley down which, in the prime of his life, he had hauled Dante, the lion he recaptured singlehanded beside the river Bray.

The recollection of this legendary feat afforded him the greatest satisfaction, affirming as it did that he was indestructible. For here he was, twenty-five years later, performing a task that he dare not entrust to anyone else on Swann’s payroll, and doing it, moreover, in the finest possible style, that is to say behind a four-horse team that caught and held the attention of everybody he passed.

By the time he had traversed the village of Stoke Canon, a few miles north of Exeter, he had mellowed sufficiently to reply amiably to those who asked what it was he was conveying. “Why, the queen,” he would say, enigmatically. “Who else, seein’ what day tomorrow be?” When this statement was received with incredulity he would pull up and ask the questioner to lift a corner of the wrappings shrouding the royal face, or feel the outline of the angled sceptre that protruded level with the ponderous shoulders. These investigations delayed him somewhat, but he had time in hand. It would be light until very late at this season of the year, and he was well on his way and likely to arrive at the base of the clock tower by ten, two hours inside his deadline.

He had reckoned without Barley Dip, however, where the byroad marked out as his quickest route took a steep plunge down to a stone bridge crossing a tributary of the Exe and then climbed again, at a gradient of about one in six over a loose, gritty surface. Halfway down the descent the terrible weight of the waggon began to hurry the wheelers, despite Hamlet’s manful application of the brake, and there was a particularly nasty moment when the clumsy equipage levelled out to cross the bridge, passing between the stone parapets with no more than a couple of inches to spare on either side.

He managed it, however, and without mishap save for the loss of a hubcap. After a long and satisfying pull of sloe gin, he moved along the flat and stopped at a cut-out, taking a look at his map in the fading light, and using the interval to demolish the wedge of ham and cheese sandwiches Augusta had cut for him.

It was very pleasant down here, in a long green tunnel of summer foliage, with the last rays of the evening sun slanting through the great umbrellas of cow-parsley atop the hedge, and the distant murmur of the brook running swiftly through the slimed arches of the pack-horse bridge he had just negotiated. Drowsiness stole upon him, bringing with it a benediction that was a compound of some of his most satisfactory memories. Half-asleep and wedged firmly between the box rails, he had a vision of Augusta as a bride, the very last of the seven Bickford sisters, who was twenty-eight on her wedding day and so vastly relieved when twenty-two-year-old Hamlet had married her that she had fallen upon him, as one of her ribald relatives had put it, “like parson’s wife on parson at the end o’ Lent.”

He remembered other things, failures as well as successes. Moments out of his life as a corn-chandler’s clerk in Barnstaple, and an auctioneer during his spell of servitude in the brick wilderness of London, whence he had been rescued by Adam Swann to achieve triumph as the captor of the Bamfylde lion. Sitting here and nodding off, as the leaders cropped the sweet grass of the verge, and the scent of honeysuckle came to him on the lightest of summer breezes, he reasoned that his thirty years as a haulier had obliterated all his earlier failures. Somehow that lion-catching incident had made him a man of substance overnight and now, whenever anyone in Devon thought of transport, it was Hamlet Ratcliffe not Swann who sprang to mind. If it were not so would he be here at this moment, within a mile or so of the parish border, where Mayor Wonnacott had agreed to accept delivery of an eight-foot bronze statue of Queen Vic?

The jeering cackle of a jackdaw roused him, reminding him of his duty, and he called, “Giddon up there!” to the team, moving forward to tackle the long, steep haul to the top of the ridge where, no doubt, Wonnacott’s sentries were already posted to pass word of his arrival. The big vehicle slowed to about two miles an hour, then one, and then half a mile, its wheels grinding the skittering surface of the track as Hamlet, raising his voice to a high, quavering pitch, called “
Giddon
there!
Up
, me booties! Lay to it, Floss! Lay to it, Margy!” As the leaders heaved and strained and sweated, their hooves struck showers of sparks from the flints and caused the wheelers to throw their heads about in a way that alarmed Hamlet, for the dray was now progressing at a rate of about five yards a minute.

Then, within fifty yards of the crest, an unforeseen thing happened. The tilt of the waggon-bed put too much strain on the fastenings under the royal neck, and the statue stirred under its taut wrappings, the plinth and two slippered feet sliding out towards the tailboard and canting to the right in a way that upset the entire balance of the load. In the ensuing moment of panic, Hamlet cursed the railway porters aloud, twisting his arthritic neck in a way that enabled him to see precisely what was happening back there, as the canvas folds rucked up under the box and more and more of the queen began to show like a corpse emerging from its shroud, a movement that suggested levitation of the kind witnessed by Hamlet as a boy visiting Barnstaple Goosey Fair. At the same time the shift in weight caused the wheelers to falter, so that the waggon not only stopped but began to slip back at an angle of about forty-five degrees that would land its rear wheels in the ditch unless it could be arrested. Once there, as Hamlet’s experience told him, there would be no getting it back on the road short of an additional team harnessed ahead of the sweating Floss and Margy. And if this happened, to whom would the credit go? Not to him and Swann, but to chawbacons up yonder, who hurried to his assistance.

It was not to be thought of. He knew then what he should do, what
must
be done if he was to avert disaster and disgrace. The leaders must be steadied by hand, must be given active encouragement to make one final effort to win the crest, and without giving the matter another thought he heaved himself out of the driving seat and flung himself down to the road, lurching as he landed but saving himself by clutching the leading edge of the shaft and clawing his way along it until he could duck under Margy’s head and grab her bridle with both hands, bellowing, “Come
up
, me booty! Hup, hup,
hup! Hold
there, for Chris’ sake!
Hold
, will ’ee, you bliddy gurt brute!”

And Margy did hold, somehow managing to brace her hind legs against a ridge in the flinty surface and thereby steadying Floss who, in turn, steadied the floundering wheelers.

He hung there for more than a minute, spattered with Margy’s foam and glaring sideways at the slithering load. About half of Victoria was now visible, stripped of wrappings certainly, and liable to slide altogether free, but still in place, for the corner of the plinth on which she stood had run up against the metalled ridge surrounding the waggon-bed, so there seemed no certainty of a royal descent into the ditch. Or not providing he could restart the team and reach level ground.

He could not see clearly now. Sweat and dizziness blurred his vision, but he could sense what was required and began to back up the hill, all the time calling piteously to the team. Slowly, and with a kind of ponderous grace, they responded to his tugs and exhortations. Inch by inch they struggled forward into what seemed to Hamlet a blackness, shot through with exploding rockets, so that he could only assess the gradient by the soles of his boots. Statue and waggon did not part company, miraculously so it seemed to Hamlet, for in their efforts to get a purchase on the gritty surface, all four of the Clydesdales began to weave, Margy carrying Hamlet with her so that more than once his feet swung clear of the ground. Then, somewhere out ahead, he heard shouting but he could not identify its source. The sounds seemed to reach him from a vast distance, like the cries of men drowning in the darkness marking the end of the long, green tunnel. Then, with a great sense of relief, he felt the momentum of the team quicken. His last conscious thought was being whirled upwards and outwards like a nosebag attached to Margy’s head. And after that, nothing, or nothing but the axle squeak of the tormented dray.

He was dead when they reached him. As dead as a doornail someone said, but he was unmarked. Hooves and wheels had missed him in their erratic passage over the crest to the gentle downslope above the town.

It was getting dusk then and people came running with lanterns, buzzing round the halted team like a swarm of grey-brown flies, asking one another what this could mean, and how such a bizarre tragedy could have occurred on their doorstep. Then Mayor Wonnacott rattled up in a trap, the doctor beside him, and there was an expectant silence whilst the latter knelt, unbuttoning Hamlet’s frock coat and holding a watch glass to the bluish lips. “Heart,” he announced, “grossly overweight. No business at all to be driving at his time of life!” The doctor was a man of few words but Mayor Wonnacott wasn’t. He was quick, as most politicians are, to see human drama in such a sacrifice to duty and after he had dwelt on the theme for a few moments he gave orders that the corpse be lifted up and laid beside the queen, who had been edged back between her timber parallels but left uncovered, for her wrappings were now a tangled ball of canvas and twisted ropes.

Thus it was that Hamlet Ratcliffe, lion-catcher and courier extraordinary to Her Majesty the Queen, shared the final stage of the royal progress to the foot of the new clock tower. In a way Hamlet took precedence, as the Queen entered the town uncovered, and Hamlet had the benefit of a horse blanket. Criers went before them, yelling the news, so that upwards of a thousand people surrounded the bier when it halted, and Mayor Wonnacott had another opportunity to make a speech, extolling Hamlet as a man who had died at his post rather than disappoint the ratepayers.

And so he had in a way. When, at first light, a local carter backtracked on his progress up the one-in-six incline, and saw the angled ruts cutting into the verge fifty yards or so below the crest, he was able to deduce what had happened and this gave Mayor Wonnacott yet another inspiration. After the unveiling ceremony he called the local stonemason on one side and said, “Us’ll have words, Ben, when tiz all over. But say nothing yet, for I’d like to think on it. Commemoration, that is, for I knowed Hamlet Ratcliffe as a boy…” and then he wandered off, leaving the stonemason scratching his head.

They came for him that same evening, a dry-eyed Augusta, fortified by half a dozen of his Exeter cronies, who had always known somehow that he would leave them in some such fashion. For he was, as one of them put it, “the greatest little varmint yera-bouts.” But that wasn’t the end of it, or not quite. When all the tumult had died away, and the Devon river valleys had resumed their timeless rhythms, Mayor Wonnacott wrote to Augusta and asked her to make the journey north while the good weather held. He had, so he said, something very special to show her. Bertieboy drove her up in the gig and when, once again, they stood before the blue granite clock-tower, where a vexed-looking Victoria was wedged between drinking fountain and Gothic apex, they saw, low down on the coping alongside the inscribed foundation stone, a second legend. It read “
And to the memory of Hamlet Ratcliffe, aged
79
years, who died helping to erect this monument. June 20th, 1887.”
Then, at last, Augusta wept.

Six

1

T
HEY CAME DOWN SPOUT HILL HELL FOR LEATHER, HELEN THIRTY YARDS IN the lead, much faster, it seemed to Joanna, than either of them had ever travelled since the new safety bicycles had been stripped of their wrappings in the stable yard and the first cautious circuits made in the forecourt.

The exhilaration of a rushing descent, the sensation of coasting along at what struck her as approaching the speed of a train, with the wind whipping at the binder holding her round sailor hat in place, prompted Helen to shout for joy. Joanna, knowing the hill rather better, lost her nerve halfway down, applied her spoon brake, and screamed a warning as they rushed onwards towards the brick pillars of Addington Manor. Helen did not hear her shout, of course, but if she had she would not have heeded. More and more these days she was inclined to assume the leadership of the pair, a fact that only Henrietta noticed and thought upon, finding it strange that Joanna, now almost of age and by far the prettiest of the Swann girls, should be led into mischief by a chit of seventeen and a half.

Yet it was so and here was proof of it, Helen applying no more than a touch on her brake as they whirled down the gradient towards the Keston crossroads. They were travelling, Joanna would have thought, at twenty miles an hour and heading straight for disaster if horseman, haywain, or milk float happened to be using the junction leading to West Wickham and the main road to Croydon.

It happened about fifty yards short of the crossroads. Joanna, braking hard, sensed the approach of the horsemen before the first of them showed beyond the curve of the stone wall enclosing the paddocks. Perhaps she heard the scrunch of hooves on the gravel or perhaps she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the gleam of a stirrup iron through the chink in the lodge gates that stood wide open. Whatever it was it caused her to scream again but it was then too late and a spill or head-on collision was inevitable.

The leading horse reared as its rider sat back in the saddle, applying what must have been a merciless jerk at the reins, and the following horse, brought up short, wheeled and sidled. He butt the grey in the rump, so that it bounded forward as the bicycle shot directly under its nose, swerving madly towards the nearside bank, half mounting it, careering down again, and projecting its rider over the handlebars in a flurry of skirts, petticoats, and flailing arms and legs.

Joanna was quite sure then that Helen had broken her neck. No one, surely, could survive such an impact, even though the ditch was full of last year’s beech leaves, sodden by yesterday’s thunderstorms. She jumped off somehow, bringing the machine to a halt midway between the two cavorting horsemen and heard, through her panic, the curses of the young man on the grey, now fully occupied with keeping his seat. She noticed other things too in that first fearful moment, when she ought to have been mourning Helen—odd, inconsequential things, like the firm seat the young man had on the scared grey, the barley-gold glint of the sun in his whiskers, the blueness of his eyes and sleekness of his mount, clipped shorter than she would have expected at this time of year, when most horses were out to grass. She paid little attention to the other man, who was clearly less expert a rider and was draped around his bay’s neck like John Gilpin halfway to The Bell, at Edmonton. Then, in a second or so it seemed, the young man with the golden whiskers had brought his horse under control, dismounted, and was running across the road to where the flurry of skirts seemed to be making good time down the hill.

Several things happened simultaneously then. The following rider, having quietened the bay, was half out of the saddle and the man with the barley-coloured whiskers (who looked much younger dismounted) had overtaken the flurry of skirts and lifted it, bracing himself against the angle of the bank and cradling Helen in his arms. Then his companion had his hand on Joanna’s arm and was enquiring, very calmly considering the circumstances, if she was hurt, and when she gasped out that she was not he took her machine and leaned it against the wall, saying, “I say, I’m most fearfully sorry… Our fault entirely… Should have come out at a walk, for that’s a brute of a hill for a bicyclist…!” Then he called, urgently, “Is she hurt, Clint? I’ll fetch Mallow… hold on!”

But by then Clint was halfway back to them, still cradling Helen in his arms and the look on his face was in great contrast to the stricken expression of his companion as he said, gaily, “No bones broken! Just a scratch or two, I’d say. Soft landing… those leaves are two feet thick over there. Get the bicycle off the road, Rowley!” And he strode away with his burden, passing through the lodge gates and across a strip of garden to the door, which he kicked open before disappearing into the lodge.

Joanna said, shakily, “Is he right…? Is it possible…?” and the man addressed as Rowley smiled and patted her reassuringly, saying, “I’ll make sure just as soon as we get her bicycle. It’s a danger to others lying there. I’m a doctor… well, almost a doctor. Give me a hand with the machine,” and they walked over to where Helen’s bicycle lay in the middle of the road and dragged it under the wall.

It was impossible to wheel it. The handlebars were askew, one pedal was missing, and the front wheel was bent into a figure eight, with spokes projecting like arrows from a target. He said, ruefully, “I say, that’s a goner. Come, let’s see to your sister, Miss Swann.” and she said, astonished, “You
know
us?” Whereupon he laughed, saying, “Why, of course I do. Who doesn’t around here? We even knew you had safety bicycles. My brother Clint told us about it yesterday and Mamma was annoyed he mentioned it in front of the girls. Now they’ve started clamouring for them. This will put a stop to that, however. Come into the lodge and I’ll clean and bandage her cuts. Clint is too ham-fisted for that kind of thing.”

They went through the little sitting room to a scullery at the back where Helen, still dazed with shock, was slumped in a kitchen chair. Clinton was working the pump in what seemed to Joanna a lackadaisical manner, considering that Helen’s palms were bleeding through shredded gloves. At once, however, the man called Rowley took charge, telling his brother to see to the horses. Peeling off his coat he said, “Work the handle, Miss Swann. It’s a deep well and needs a minute or two. Your sister will be more comfortable on the sofa,” and while he was talking he rolled up his sleeves, lifted Helen from the chair, and carried her back into the tiny sitting room, leaving Joanna to work the pump-handle until water gushed into the trough and she could fill a bowl she found in the sink.

It was fascinating to watch him work. Clinton was right, it seemed. Helen’s injuries were trivial, despite the distance she had rolled, but her new bicycling costume was in ruins. Every button but one had been ripped from her waistcoat bodice and the blouse underneath was also ripped, showing an inch or two of pink chemise. The heavy pleated skirt, however, had cushioned her knees, and the hard straw hat, split across the crown, had protected her head. For all that, she seemed to be dazed, for when Joanna brought the bowl, and Rowley began washing the blood from her hands, she opened her eyes and asked, vaguely, “Where am I… what happened?” And Clinton, returning at that moment to say he had sent Mallow for the dogcart, said irreverently, “Not in Paradise, I’m afraid, Miss Swann! This is only Addington Manor, and we’re called Coles. I’m Clinton and that’s Rowland. Don’t be shy. He’s a doctor, or will be in December.”

“I’ll need my bag,” Rowley said, briefly. “Ride up and fetch it and tell Mamma there will be two more for luncheon. This young lady has had a bad shaking and can’t ride back yet.”

“She can’t ride back at all,” Clinton said, grinning. “That so-called safety bicycle of hers is for the scrapyard. All right, all right.” His elder brother looked severe, saying “I’ll get your bag, but there’s a first-aid box on that shelf above your head. Mallow keeps it handy for the saw-mill staff.” He smiled engagingly at Joanna. “Why don’t you come along with me, Miss Swann? I’d like you to meet my sisters and I’m sure they’d be enchanted to meet you. Your family is a legend round here. We’re newcomers but we’ve all heard about you!”

“Go and get that bag, confound you,” Rowley growled, and Joanna thought, “He’s so terribly earnest but the good-looking one is the exact opposite…” And suddenly she was glad things had turned out this way, and that little goose Helen was being fussed over leaving her an open field with Clinton, for that was something that would not have happened if Helen hadn’t been too dazed to make her grab. She paid lip-service to convention, however, saying doubtfully, “I ought not to leave Helen here alone…”

But at that, surprisingly, Helen spoke up quite sharply, saying, “Don’t be stupid, Jo! You’ve just heard, he’s a doctor—
Owww
!” as Rowley pressed her lacerated hands into the bowl.

Clint said, still grinning, “I’ll send Mallow down with the bag and dog-cart. Meantime make the most of it, Rowley. You won’t get many patients as fetching as Miss Swann once you’re in practice.”

They went out then, leaving them, and began to climb the drive that ran under an arch of beeches to a pretty Queen Anne house perched on the crest. Clinton said, “You’ll be wondering how we know you, but there’s no mystery really. We were with the Phillimore party at the Tonbridge Jubilee Athletic meeting and saw your brother Hugo win the open mile at a canter. Your family—you and your sister especially—were pointed out to us, and Rowley plagued Jock Phillimore, who said he knew you, to introduce us. I remember being surprised by that, for Rowley is the serious, dedicated type, not much given to showing interest in pretty girls.”

She was going to reprove him for his sauciness (this was the second time in five minutes he had commented on their looks) but he went on, gaily, “However, you disappeared, the whole lot of you, during the tea interval. We searched the ground and poor old Rowley was desolate. He’s always lucky, however, for here you’ve fallen right into his hands.”

She decided then that she liked his impudent approach. She was an uncomplicated person, like Hugo. Helen was a romantic, and was probably greatly impressed by Rowley’s bossy show of professionalism, but Joanna had always encouraged her beaux to make the running and not too many of them had. Mostly they seemed to approach a flirtation as if it was a gavotte. She said, “I remember now. We left the sports rally early, to dress for a ball over at Maidstone. But I always thought Colonel and Mrs. Walters had Addington Manor. Nobody told us new people had moved in.”

“That isn’t surprising,” he said. “We’re trade, and people are stuffy round here, aren’t they? My father is a chemist. Doesn’t the name Coles mean anything at all to you?” and he gave her a saucy, sidelong glance.

“I’m afraid not. Should it?”

“That depends on whether you are a hypochondriac,” he said. “Coles’ Cough Lozenges. Coles’ Instant Headache Powder. Does your hair fall out? Do you fear the winter chills? The Governor has something for everyone. It’s rare to find someone who has never had to turn to him.”

She knew the firm, of course. Their advertisements could be seen on hoardings and omnibuses. It was just as he said. Coles’ products claimed to cure everything overnight, from constipation to housemaid’s knee, and privately she thought some of their boasts vulgar. She said, “Well, it’s nice to know other people get looked down on because they’re in trade. It’s happened to us more than once, and if you got my father on the subject he could discuss it for hours. Without malice though, for it never did bother him in the slightest. Or Mamma either, for that matter.”

“Ah, but there’s a difference,” he said, in a way that made her think he was making gentle fun of her, “the time element enters into it. Your father’s carrier’s business was going before you were born, and your Mamma has had time to put down social roots, like all the local families who made their pile out of the slave trade or French smuggling or holy relics, and heaven knows what else. We’re newcomers to the fair. My father started his business in a little pharmacy in Norwich only twenty-odd years ago. Rowley, the eldest, was born over the shop. Advertising put us on the map and nothing else, believe me. Most of the poison we sell is straight out of the witch doctor’s wigwam!”

She laughed, thinking how refreshing it was to meet a young man who did not mind saying things like that. Almost all the tradesmen’s sons who had attended garden-parties and soirees at Tryst adopted fancy airs and tried to speak (as her father would say) with plum stones balanced on their tongues. She said, “Well, your brother Rowley seems to take himself very seriously. You aren’t at all alike, are you?”

“No,” he said, “we aren’t. But we all like Rowley, despite his terrible earnestness. He’s deeply interested in his profession, you see, and he’ll make a first-class doctor. He might even be famous, or so Mamma thinks.”