“But won’t you want it?” I asked.
“Oh, I’ve got plenty more.” He seemed a little put out by the question. He pulled the bandage rather hard. “Too tight?” he asked.
I liked his half-unwilling gentleness.
“Now try walking with it,” he said.
I stumped about on the stone flags of the kitchen floor: the bandage held; I was beginning to feel better. To know that something that had begun badly was ending well acted like a tonic. What a story I should make of this! Then suddenly I realized that I owed him something; used as I was to having things done for me, as all children are, I was old enough to recognize a debt. But I dared not offer him money, even if I had had any. What could I do? Could I give him a present? Presents were very much in my mind. I looked round the kitchen, which had no ornaments except a large stock-breeder’s calendar and was so different from my recent surroundings, and said, rather grandly:
“Thank you very much indeed, Mr. Burgess” (I was glad to have got in the “mister”). “Is there anything I can do for you?”
I fully expected him to say no, but instead he looked at me rather hard and said:
“Well, perhaps there is.”
My curiosity was at once aroused.
“Could you take a message for me?”
“Of course,” I said, disappointed at being given such a trifling commission. I remembered Lord Trimingham’s message and how flat it had fallen. “What is it, and who shall I give it to?”
He didn’t answer at once, but took up the bowl of discoloured water and swilled it round in the sink. He came back and stood over me.
“Are you in a desperate hurry?” he said. “Could you wait a minute or two?” He always seemed to speak with his whole body and it gave a curious intensity to his words.
I looked at my watch and calculated. “We don’t have tea till five o’clock,” I said. “That’s rather late, isn’t it? At home we have it earlier. I could wait—well, ten or fifteen minutes.”
He smiled and said: “You mustn’t miss your tea.” He seemed to be debating with himself: his manner altered and he said: “Would you like to look at the horses?”
“Oh yes.” I tried to sound enthusiastic.
We had reached a long brick-built shed, in which were four doors, each flanked by a window, and from each window a horse’s head looked out. “This white one’s Briton,” he said. “He’s the best puller I have, but he won’t work with another horse, has to do it all himself. Funny, isn’t it? This is the bay mare, her name’s Smiler, she’s a good, willing worker, but as soon as harvest’s over she’ll be in foal; and this grey one’s Boxer, but he’s getting a bit long in the tooth. And this is the one I drive and use for hunting, sometimes. He has a nice head, hasn’t he?” He stooped and kissed the velvet nose, and the horse showed its appreciation by dilating its nostrils and breathing hard through them.
“And what’s he called?” I asked.
“Wild Oats,” he answered with a grin, and I grinned back, without knowing why.
All the heat of the afternoon seemed to be concentrated where we stood, intensifying the smell of horses, the smell of manure, and all the farmyard smells. It made me uncomfortable, almost giddy, and yet it stimulated me; and I was half sorry and half glad when, the inspection over, we turned to go back to the house.
As we were entering the kitchen the farmer said abruptly: “How old are you?”
“I shall be thirteen on the 27th of this month,” I said impressively, hoping he would say: “Why, fancy that!” for most grown-ups could be relied on to show an interest in one’s birthday.
Instead he said: “I should have given you a bit more. You’re a big boy for your age.”
I was flattered at this tribute, especially coming from a man of his size.
“I wonder if I could trust you,” was the next thing he said.
I was very much taken aback, and half offended; but only half, because I thought it must be the prelude to a confidence.
However, I said rather indignantly: “Of course you can. My report said I was trustworthy; ‘a trustworthy boy,’ the headmaster said.”
“Yes, but can I?” he said, eyeing me. “Can I trust you to keep your mouth shut?”
What an idiotic question, I thought, to ask a schoolboy. We were all sworn to secrecy. I looked at him almost pityingly. “Do you want me to cross my heart?” I said.
“You can do what you like with yourself,” he answered. “But if you let on—” He stopped, and the physical threat that his presence always implied seemed to vibrate through the room.
“Is it anything to do with this afternoon?” I asked. “You can bet I shan’t want to tell them, but they’ll see my knee.”
He ignored that. “There’s a boy, isn’t there,” he said, “a lad of your age?”
“Yes, my friend Marcus,” I said, “but he’s in bed.”
“Oh, he’s in bed,” repeated the farmer thoughtfully. “So you are on your own, like.”
I explained that we usually played together in the afternoon, but that this afternoon I had taken a walk instead.
He listened with half an ear, and then he said: “It’s a big house, isn’t it, a great big house, lots of rooms in it?”
“Counting the bedrooms,” I said, “I don’t know how many.”
“And always people about, I suppose, chatting to each other and so on? You’re never alone with anybody?”
I couldn’t imagine what this catechism was leading to.
“Well, they don’t talk to me very much,” I said. “You see, they’re all grown up, and they have grown-up games like whist and lawn tennis, and talking, you know, just for the sake of talking” (this seemed a strange pursuit to me). “But sometimes I talk to them a little, like I did to Viscount Trimingham this morning after church, and once I spent a whole day with Marian—she’s Marcus’s sister, you know, a topping girl—only that was in Norwich.”
“Oh, you spent a day with her?” the farmer said. “That means you’re pretty pally with her, I expect?”
I considered. I did not want to claim for myself, in respect of Marian, more than was my due. “She talked to me again this morning,” I told him, “on the way to church, although she could have talked to Viscount Trimingham if she’d wanted to.” I tried to think of other occasions when she had talked to me. “She talks to me quite often when grown-ups are about—she’s the only one that does. Of course I don’t expect them to. Her brother Denys said I was her sweetheart. He said so several times.”
“Oh, did he?” said the farmer. “Does that mean that you are alone with her sometimes? I mean, just the two of you in a room, with no one else?”
He spoke with great intensity, as if he was envisaging the scene.
“Well, sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes we sit together on a sofa.”
“You sit together on the sofa?” he repeated.
I had to enlighten him. At home there were two sofas; here there appeared to be none; at Brandham Hall—
“You see,” I said, “there are so many sofas.”
He took the point. “But when you are together, chatting—?”
I nodded. We were together, chatting.
“You are near enough to her—?”
“Near enough?” I repeated. “Well of course, her dress—”
“Yes, yes,” said he, taking that point too. “These dresses spread out quite a long way. But near enough to—to give her something?”
“Give her something?” I said. “Oh yes, I could give her something.” It sounded like a disease; my mind was still slightly preoccupied by measles.
He said impatiently: “Give her a letter. I mean without anybody seeing.”
I almost laughed—it seemed such a small thing for him to have got so worked up about. “Oh yes,” I said. “Quite near enough for that.”
“Then I’ll write it,” he said, “if you can wait.”
As he was moving away, a thought struck me. “But how can you write to her
when you don’t know her?” I asked.
“Who said I didn’t know her?” he countered almost truculently.
“Well, you did. You said you didn’t know them at the Hall. And she told me she didn’t know you, because I asked her.”
He thought for a moment, with the strained look in his eyes that he had when he was swimming.
“Did she say she didn’t know me?” he asked.
“Well, she said she might have met you, but she didn’t remember.”
He drew a long breath.
“She does know me, in a way,” he said. “I’m a kind of friend of hers, but not the sort she goes about with. That’s what she meant, I expect.” He paused. “We do some business together.”
“Is it a secret?” I asked eagerly.
“It’s more than that,” he said.
All at once I felt rather faint, as if the Psalms had exceeded fifty verses. To my surprise (for grown-ups could be very dense about this), he noticed it, and said: “You look all in. Sit down and put your feet up. Here’s a stool. I haven’t any sofas, I’m afraid.” He established me in the one easy chair. “I won’t be long,” he said.
But he was. He got out a bottle of Stephen’s blue-black ink (I was rather shocked that it was not a proper inkstand), and a sheet of blue-lined writing paper, and wrote laboriously. His fingers seemed too large to hold the pen.
“Should I just give her a message?” I said.
He looked up with narrowed eyes.
“You wouldn’t understand it,” he said.
At last the letter was done. He put it in an envelope, licked the flap, and laid his fist on it like a hammer. I stretched out my hand, but he didn’t give it to me.
“If you can’t get her alone,” he said, “don’t give it to her.”
“What shall I do with it?”
“Put it in the place where you pull the chain.”
One part of me wished he hadn’t said this, for I was beginning to see my mission in romantic colours; but the other appreciated the practical side of the precaution. I was a born intriguer.
“You can be sure I will,” I said.
“Now,” I thought, “he will really let me have the letter,” but still he kept it under his clenched fist, like a lion guarding something with its paw.
“Look here,” he said, “are you really on the square?”
“Of course I am,” I answered, hurt.
“Because,” he said slowly, “if anyone else gets hold of that letter, it will be a bad look-out for her and me and perhaps for you, too.”
He couldn’t have said anything more calculated to put me on my mettle.
“I shall defend it with my life,” I said.
At that he smiled, lifted his hand, and pushed the letter towards me.
“But you haven’t addressed it!” I exclaimed.
“No,” he said, and added with a rush of confidence that excited me: “and I haven’t signed it either.”
“Will she be glad to get it?” I asked.
“I think so,” he said briefly.
I wanted to have it all cut and dried.
“And will there be an answer?”
“That depends,” he said. “Don’t ask too many questions. You don’t want to know too much.”
With that I had to be content. Suddenly there was a lull in my mind, like the détente after a retreating thunderstorm, and I realized it must be late. Looking at my watch, “Golly!” I exclaimed, “I must be off.”
“How are you feeling?” he asked solicitously. “How’s the knee, eh?”
“A 1,” I said, bending it up and down. “The blood hasn’t come through the handkerchief,” I added, half regretfully.
“It will do, when you walk.” He gave me his hard, searching stare. “You’re looking a bit peaked,” he said. “Sure you wouldn’t like me to drive you some of the way? The trap’s there and I can put the horse to in a jiffy.”
“Thank you,” I said, “I’ll walk.” I should have liked to drive, but suddenly felt the need of being alone. Being too young to know how to take my leave, I lingered awkwardly; besides, there was something I wanted to say.
“Here, you’ve forgotten the letter,” he said. “Where shall you put it?”
“In my knickers pocket,” I said, suiting the action to the word. “This suit has several pockets”—I indicated them—“but a man who knew a policeman once told me that your trousers pocket is safest.”
He looked at me approvingly and I noticed for the first time that he was sweating: his shirt was sticking in dark patches to his chest.
“You’re a good boy,” he said, shaking hands with me. “Hop off, and be kind to yourself.”
I laughed at this, it seemed so funny to be told to be kind to yourself, and then I remembered what I wanted to say. “May I come and slide down your straw-stack again?”
“I’ll have it combed and brushed for you,” he said. “And now you must scoot.”
He went with me to the stackyard gate, and when I turned round a little later he was still standing there. I waved and he waved back.
They were all at tea when I arrived. I felt I had been away for months, so different was the atmosphere and so estranging the experience I had been through. At the sight of my knee they poured out sympathy and I told them how kind Ted Burgess had been.
“Ah, that’s the fellow at Black Farm,” said Mr. Maudsley. “Good-looking chap, rides well, I’m told.”
“He’s a man I want to see,” Lord Trimingham said. “I expect he’ll be playing in the match on Saturday. I’ll have a word with him then.”
I wondered if Ted Burgess had been getting into trouble; and I looked at Marian, expecting her to make some comment, but she did not seem to have heard: her face had the hooded, hawklike look it sometimes wore. I could hear the letter crackling in my pocket and wondered if it showed. Suddenly she got up and said:
“I think I’d better dress that knee for you, Leo. It’s looking a bit messy.”
Glad to get away, I followed her. She went to the bathroom; it was the only one, I think, in the whole house. I had never seen it before; Marcus and I had a round bath in our room.
“Stay here,” she ordered, “and I’ll find you another bandage.”
It was a big room with, which seemed to me unnecessary, a washstand in it: for why should people want to have a bath and wash as well? The bath was encased in mahogany and had a mahogany lid. It looked like a tomb. When she came back she lifted the lid and made me sit on the edge of the bath while she took my shoe and stocking off, as if she didn’t know that I was old enough to do it for myself. “Now put your knee under the tap,” she said.
The water trickled down my leg deliciously cool.
“My goodness,” she said, “you did come a cropper,” but to my surprise she said nothing about Ted Burgess until almost the end, after she had put on the new bandage. The old one was lying on the edge of the bath, all creased and blood-stained, and she looked at it and said: “Is that his handkerchief?”
“Yes,” I said. “He said he wouldn’t want it back, so shall I throw it away? I know where the rubbish-heap is”—it wasn’t officiousness, I wanted to save her the trouble. And I welcomed the chance to revisit the rubbish-heap, that grateful touch of squalor in all the magnificence.
“Oh, perhaps I’ll wash it out,” she said, “it seems to be quite a good handkerchief.”
Then I remembered the letter, which I had kept forgetting, for while I was with her I only thought about her. “He asked me to give you this,” I said, pulling it out of my pocket. “I’m afraid it’s rather crumpled.”
She almost snatched it out of my hand and then looked round for somewhere to put it. “Oh, these dresses! Wait a moment.” She disappeared, taking the letter with her, and the handkerchief. A moment later she came back and said: “Now, what about that bandage?”
“But you’ve put it on,” I said, showing her my knee.
“Good gracious, so I have. Now I’ll put on your sto
cking.”
I protested; but no, she wanted to do it herself and I cannot say I minded. “Was there an answer to the letter?” I asked, disappointed that she had taken it all so lightly. But she only shook her head.
“You mustn’t tell anyone about this—letter,” she said, looking away from me; “no one at all, not even Marcus.”
I was rather bored by all these injunctions to secrecy. Grown-ups didn’t seem to realize that for me, as for most other schoolboys, it was easier to keep silent than to speak. I was a natural oyster. I assured Marian again that her secret was quite safe with me. I patiently explained that I couldn’t anyhow tell Marcus, because he was in bed and I wasn’t allowed to see him.
“Of course he is,” she said, “I seem to forget every-thing. But you mustn’t breathe a word, I should be terribly angry with you if you did.” Then, seeing me looking very hurt and on the point of tears, she melted and said: “Oh no, I shouldn’t, but you see it would get us all into the most frightful trouble.”
8
ONE REMEMBERS things at different levels. I still have an impression, distinct but hard to analyse, of the change that came over the household with Lord Trimingham’s arrival. Before, it had had an air of self-sufficiency and, in spite of Mrs. Maudsley’s hand on the reins, a go-as-you-please gait: now everyone seemed to be strung up, on tiptoe to face some test, as we were in the last weeks at school, with the examinations coming on. What one said and did seemed to matter more, as if something hung on it, as if it was contributing to a coming event.
That this had nothing to do with me I realized: the quickly summoned smiles, the suppressed anxiety, were not for me; in the conversation, which was never allowed to die away, I took little part. Picnics or expeditions or visits were planned for almost every day: Mrs. Maudsley would announce them after breakfast; to the rest of us it sounded like a command, yet her eye would flash an interrogation at Lord Trimingham as if he was a signal that must be consulted before the train went on.
“Suits me down to the ground,” he would say, or “Just what I was hoping we should do.”
I can remember sitting by some stream and watching the hampers being unpacked, the rugs spread out, and the footman bending down to change our plates. The grown-ups drank amber wine out of tall tapering bottles; I was given fizzy lemonade from a bottle with a glass marble for a stopper. I enjoyed the meal; it was the conversation afterwards, while the things were being packed away, that was the strain. I got as near to Marian as I dared, but she did not look at me; she seemed to have eyes only for Lord Trimingham, who sat beside her. I could not hear what they were saying to each other, and I knew I shouldn’t have understood it if I had. I should have understood the words, of course, but not what made them say them.
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