by Alis Hawkins
‘If I’m invited, I’m quite happy to bring myself, Miss Gwatkyn. I have no need of being squired about the countryside.’
Miss Gwatkyn smiled a different smile, then. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I see that you haven’t. I shall look forward to seeing you. Shall we say three o’clock?’
Before she could bid us goodbye, I quickly made arrangements for Mattie Hughes, as per Harry’s instructions. He thought it’d be better for Mattie to stay out of the way for a while.
‘It’ll be no trouble accommodating him,’ Miss Gwatkyn said. ‘We’ve tools in need of new handles and it turns out he’s a dab hand at that, so he’ll earn his keep. I know he won’t stay otherwise.’ She glanced off to one side, looking back towards the grey chapel where the Walters family was standing, Ruth Eynon still with them. ‘Alltybela is quite the home for waifs and strays at the moment. Ruth Eynon has asked if she might stay with me for a little while.’ She looked back at me but, when our eyes met, I didn’t see what I expected to there. No resentment of the girl, no ill-feeling. ‘Given the circumstances,’ she said, ‘it seems the best course.’
‘You think Jeremiah Eynon’ll stand for it?’
She looked me squarely in the eye. ‘I’ve asked it of him as a favour to me. Let him, and others, make of that what they will.’
She knew what people thought, then. Knew and took no steps whatsoever to make them think otherwise. But then, that’s the privilege of rank, isn’t it? To do as you want and to hell with what people think.
Once she’d set off with her gambo full of servants behind her, I turned to Lydia Howell and asked how she’d got to the chapel.
‘I walked.’
‘Three miles?’
‘Yes. Three, not thirty.’ Again, that little grin. It was getting annoying. As if she knew things I didn’t.
‘I rode over,’ I said. ‘The mare can take us both on the way back.’
‘I don’t think that would be suitable, Mr Davies.’
‘Then you have her and I’ll walk.’
‘That’s very noble of you but, as you can see,’ she gestured at her clothes, ‘I’m not equipped to ride astride.’ She was wearing a high-collared blouse and what my mother would have called a working skirt, made from a sensible brown material whose hem wouldn’t show the dirt. She had a coat, too. One Harry’d approve of. It wasn’t a Mackintosh but it was obviously designed for use not ornament. Except that it had a lot of fiddly little buttons down the front. The sun meant that she hadn’t bothered doing those up.
‘Very well then,’ I said, ‘I’ll walk with you.’ I knew Harry would’ve insisted, so, with him not being here, it felt like my job.
I expected her to tell me there was no need. That she didn’t need ‘squiring about’. But she didn’t. She smiled – a proper smile, not a social one. Or that grin. ‘That would be very pleasant, thank you.’
It felt odd, walking along that unfamiliar road with the mare on one side of me and Lydia Howell on the other. High up on one side of the valley, it felt as if we were raised up above the rest of the world, removed from everything. The sun was hot and there was almost no wind, just a little stir of the air now and again. With nobody else on the road, our solitude pressed in on me like an accusation. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and, if I’d been by myself, I’d have taken my jacket off but that didn’t feel right with Lydia Howell at my elbow.
I wasn’t used to walking anywhere with a woman. Such company as I’d kept with females had been indoors – at chapel meetings, or at Mr Schofield’s house when he was having a social occasion and needed numbers making up. I’d never got to the walking-out stage.
But Lydia Howell didn’t seem to be finding it uncomfortable. She strode out, legs swinging under her skirt. Not like the ladies of Newcastle Emlyn who walked as if their knees were tied together.
We matched our steps, stride for stride, up a long, slow incline with the hills on the other side of the Teifi away to our right.
I tried to keep my eyes ahead but ignoring Lydia Howell’s presence next to me seemed as bad as looking at her. I tried to tell myself that it was all right, the two of us walking alone together; she was old enough to be my mother. Was that right? She must be about the age my mother’d been when she died, eight years ago. Thirty-five. Fifteen or sixteen years older than me.
I tried to remember my mother’s face. For years, I hadn’t been able to. Not properly. Only the odd expression. A quirk of her mouth. One eyebrow rising, as much as to say ‘You’re not telling me the truth, are you?’ The way her hair always fell out of its pins and she’d hook it behind her ear as she worked. But I couldn’t see her whole face. Couldn’t see a picture of her in my mind, just looking at me.
Still, I was pretty sure that her face had been more lined than Lydia Howell’s. Being a governess wasn’t the hard work that farming was.
Had Miss Howell seen me glancing at her? I hoped not. Didn’t want her to think my mind was on her. I tried to fix my thoughts on something else. Anything. How far we’d walked. What I had to tell Harry when we got back to Tregaron.
I turned to bother with the mare, talked nonsense to her.
But it was no good. The longer we walked, the more awkward the silence between me and Lydia Howell felt.
Harry wouldn’t have been at a loss for conversation. He would’ve said something interesting, she’d have responded and off they’d have gone. Chatter, chatter, chatter.
Perhaps Miss Howell could see how uncomfortable I was, because she turned to me. ‘I suppose the late Mr Probert-Lloyd’s funeral was a little different from that one?’
I was so grateful to have something to say that I gave her chapter and verse – who’d been there, the formality of the occasion compared to Rowland’s funeral, the eulogy by the vicar which had made Harry so pensive, the fact that Mr Probert-Lloyd’d been buried with his second wife, not his first wife and eldest son.
She listened as if it all really mattered. Then, when I’d finished, she said, ‘In one of his letters, Harry told me that Dr Reckitt wanted to dissect his father’s brain. But Harry couldn’t bear the thought.’
He hadn’t told me that. ‘I think he’s gone off the idea of dissection,’ I said. ‘He didn’t even let Reckitt do a proper autopsy examination on the teacher.’
She nodded. Looked as if Harry’d told her that, too.
‘They had a bit of a disagreement about it at the inquest,’ I said. At least that was something I knew and she didn’t.
‘Yes, the inquest. Will you tell me about it?’
So I did. And telling her must’ve slowed my walking because, by the time I’d finished, she wasn’t striding along, just keeping a slower pace with me and we were crossing the bridge over the Teifi that would take us on down towards Tregaron.
Harry
The following morning, after a convivial breakfast during which Lydia tried to distract me from my nerves by relating the tall tale she’d heard from our landlord of the circus elephant that had died in Tregaron and been buried in the Talbot’s garden, our little election party made its way out into the crowds already gathering in the square.
Minnever had been outraged, the previous day, to find that Caldicot’s agent, not content with buying up the town’s entire stock of Tory-red ribbon with which to festoon the stage and make rosettes to distribute amongst his candidate’s supporters, had also found a way to corner the market in blue ribbon so as to prevent our acquiring any.
‘Damn it, it’s underhand!’ he raged. ‘Having no Liberal colours about the place makes us look friendless and penniless.’
To my surprise, Lydia had suggested a solution. ‘I’m sure the Olive Leaf Circle you mentioned would help. If you give me a name and address, I’ll write a note, now.’
I hoped that this would soften Minnever’s attitude to Lydia. He had been lukewarm in his reception of her when I had introduced them and, when Lydia had retired to bed, he had taken me to task.
‘What are you thinking of, Harry?’ he’
d asked. ‘The only acceptable female companion for a candidate is his wife!’
‘She is my private secretary—’
‘Yes, and I’ll thank you to keep that nonsensical notion to yourself as well! If people get wind of that kind of eccentricity you can kiss goodbye to any chance of being elected. The best thing you can do with Miss Howell is send her back to Glanteifi tomorrow and ask her to keep within doors until the election is done!’
Shaking hands and responding to greetings as we went, Minnever, John and I made our way through the crowds to the election platform. Still fragrant with resin from its freshly-cut boards, it was in the process of being draped with ribbons of a quite startling blue by various ladies who had gathered in answer to Lydia’s call.
Reckitt and the Tories were already in their seats and they rose courteously as we climbed the short flight of wooden steps on to the platform to take our places.
Lowering myself carefully on to a chair whose dimensions and stability I could estimate only imperfectly, I found that I was trembling at the prospect of the ordeal to come. Minnever had assured me that he would see to it that I delivered my speech last so that I might leave a favourable impression on the minds of those inclined to believe the last thing they had heard, but he had not made it clear how he was going to manage this. Now, he began his manoeuvre.
Drawing the town clerk to one side, he pitched his voice so that only our little party could hear his words. ‘Mr Pritchard, may I make a suggestion? As something of an outside bet in the competition, perhaps Dr Reckitt should speak first, leaving Mr Probert-Lloyd and Mr Caldicot to speak once the crowd has its listening ears on, as it were?’
He did not specify whether Caldicot or I should follow Reckitt but I could only trust that he knew what he was about.
Pritchard having seen nothing to object to in the suggestion, Reckitt was invited to come forward and, having pulled his notes from a pocket, began with a strident declaration. ‘Citizens of Tregaron, I am the only candidate before you who does not have a party to please before he pleases the voters!’
The resounding cheers that greeted this statement did nothing to lessen my apprehension; I had not expected such a tactical opening from Reckitt. But worse was to come.
‘Everybody knows that Mr Montague Caldicot has been whisked down from London to stand in this election and that he’ll probably spend all of five minutes in Cardiganshire if he is elected before appointing a proxy and returning to the capital.’
Jeers and catcalls ensued and I wondered if the hecklers noticed my discomfiture. For Reckitt had just reiterated something I had said at dinner the previous evening.
‘As for Mr Henry Probert-Lloyd.’ I felt a visceral response go through me as Reckitt spoke my name. ‘He will tell you that he is an independent man and will represent your interests over and above those of the magistrates and the police force. And yet,’ Reckitt’s voice rose, ‘here he is today, not standing before you as an independent candidate, but as the Liberals’ darling. Their agent has been parading him all over the parish this last week. Indeed, he has even been to woo the ladies of Tregaron. He represents the Liberals’ interests, not yours!’
I felt a knot develop in the region of my diaphragm. This identification of me with the party had been exactly what I had feared when Minnever approached me.
‘You cannot trust men whose primary allegiance is not to seeing justice done but to their party. I have no party allegiance. I stand before you as nothing more than a medical man who wishes to improve public health.’
Fortunately for me, that statement proved Reckitt’s undoing. Had he gone on in his previous, critical vein, I believe the crowd would have rallied to his cause, for who does not love to see brickbats thrown at politicians? Instead, he began to enumerate the qualities which made him a superior candidate, and he had not progressed far from his experience of surgery and medicine into his views on the coroner’s responsibilities to society when the heckling commenced.
Once begun, the jeers and catcalls only gathered momentum and soon, seizing on Reckitt’s own use of the word ‘quack’, the crowd began quacking derisively.
I sat, a mocking crowd before me that I could not scrutinise, my stomach churning at the thought that I might be treated in the same way. How many people were here? More than a hundred but less than a hundred and fifty, I guessed. A good crowd from a small town in a sparsely-populated district. I wondered how many of the assembled men were eligible to vote. A good deal fewer than half, in all probability. But people came to these meetings to be entertained as much as to allow their opinions to be formed.
The quacking was getting louder now and I doubted that a single word Reckitt said could be heard. Sitting behind him, acutely aware that I, too, was being watched and judged, but unable to meet a single eye, I suddenly felt as if my head was covered in a sack. I could not see, could not gauge reactions or adjust my speech accordingly. I might as well have been sitting behind a screen with a light and making shadows upon it with my hands.
Look! A rabbit! A swan! An elephant!
A blind coroner!
Apprehension rising within me, I turned to Minnever. ‘How exactly are you going to make sure they don’t haul me up next?’
I was able to see a smile if it was broad and close to me but could not hope to tell whether it was genuine. Was Minnever amused by his own initiative or did he simply wish to reassure me?
‘By the helpful intervention of your friend, Miss Gwatkyn.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You’ll see.’
Reckitt ground on, though his voice had lost some of its assurance, and I imagined a look of pained incomprehension on a face that John had once described as ‘pale and doughy’.
Abruptly, without waiting for Reckitt to finish, Minnever turned away from me to speak to the town clerk. ‘Mr Pritchard, Miss Gwatkyn from Alltybela has not yet arrived,’ I heard him say above the crowd’s clamour. ‘She’s been tremendously supportive of Mr Probert-Lloyd and I know she wishes to hear him speak.’ He paused, delicately, to give Pritchard the opportunity to offer the favour without being asked. But Tregaron’s administrator was shrewder than he was obliging. He knew as well as Minnever that, if a favour is sought, then one is also owed.
Minnever was not a fool and did not prolong his silence. ‘I wonder if I could ask that Mr Caldicot speak first?’ he said. ‘So as to allow time for Miss Gwatkyn to arrive?’
Pritchard, a portly man sporting a moustache that would, had he been taking part in a play, immediately have identified him as a foreigner, raised a hand to smooth his whiskers. ‘Definitely coming, is she?’
‘Oh, yes, I’m quite sure of that.’
Minnever’s certainty, I very much suspected, arose from the fact that he would have a boy stationed in the crowd ready to alert Miss Gwatkyn as soon as it was safe to enter the square. That is to say, as soon as Caldicot rose to his feet to speak.
I could feel Pritchard staring at Minnever, making him wait. ‘Very well, then. As a favour to Miss Gwatkyn, mind.’
‘Of course.’ Minnever knew that both he and Miss Gwatkyn would soon be making a donation to whatever municipal facilities the town clerk was currently seeking subscriptions for.
Reckitt having been persuaded to sit down and end his own humiliation, Caldicot was duly called to speak. Did he cast a baleful look in our direction? His head certainly turned towards us when Pritchard invited him to come to the podium but he said nothing, simply pulled down his waistcoat as he rose and marched to the front of the stage.
He proved to be an effective speaker. He began by refuting Reckitt’s suggestion that he would not remain in the county, then went on to present himself as a plain man, a soldier who knew nothing of politics. ‘I’m accustomed to taking orders as well as giving them,’ he said. ‘And, unlike Mr Probert-Lloyd, I will be content to submit myself to the magistrates.’
I felt those words as his first palpable hit and, as the cluster of bright blue ribbon on my
lapel fluttered in the light breeze, I put my hand to it lest it unravel.
But Caldicot was not to have it all his own way. ‘You got thrown out of the army!’ a heckler shouted. ‘You’re not a suitable person to be coroner!’
‘Yes,’ another responded, ‘tell us why they threw you out!’
The crowd found its tongue again and the air filled with shouts. ‘Shame, shame!’ went up in one quarter, though it was not clear whether this was directed at Caldicot or the heckler. ‘Tell us, tell us!’ others shouted.
Minnever leaned towards me. ‘This is all staged.’
‘By you?’
‘No! The Tories. They know his cashiering is common gossip and they want to give him a chance to say his piece without bringing it up himself.’
Caldicot left the lectern and his notes and moved towards the edge of the platform.
‘You’ll forgive me,’ he said, ‘if I don’t speak, publicly, about matters that are between me and my regiment. You would, I know, want a coroner who knows how to keep private matters private. But I will promise you this,’ he said, his voice rising above the jeering provoked by his refusal to satisfy their curiosity. ‘I am a man who understands what it is to have to face up to his mistakes. My own troubles have given me a lesson – it’s not always easy to do what’s right.’ He paused slightly, no doubt to look around the crowd, meeting an eye here, nodding man-to-man there. ‘If you elect me, you will not find me harsh and unwilling to listen. I am a man humbled by experience.’