‘Decent folks?’ Emery shouted. ‘Decent folks, did you say?’
‘What d’you want?’ Beth asked. ‘You can see our dinner’s on the table.’
‘My business is with your husband.’
‘Why me?’ Jesse said. ‘Why me, I’d like to know?’
‘You’re the nearest thing Tom Maddox has got for a father, that’s why, and I want to know what’s happened to Tilly.’
‘Yes, well,’ Jesse said. ‘That ent nothing to do with me.’ And he busied himself about the stove, leaving the matter to his wife and daughter. They, it seemed, found nothing amiss with the way young Tom was carrying on. They, therefore, could answer all the awkward questions.
‘Tilly’s run off,’ Betony said to Emery Preston. ‘Hadn’t you heard?’
‘I’ve heard a lot of funny things lately, but nothing at all from Maddox hisself, so what’s he playing at, you tell me that!’
‘Seems they weren’t happy, so Tilly left him.’
‘Then why ent we seen her?’ Emery said. ‘A girl falling out with her husband like that would surely come home to her own father?’
‘Not if she left with another man.’
‘I ent having that! Not my girl Tilly. She was always a good girl and she certainly wouldn’t behave like that!’
‘Rubbish!’ Beth said. ‘Tilly’s no better than she should be, and well you know it, Emery Preston.’
‘She deceived Tom,’ Betony said, ‘making believe she was having a baby.’
‘She never told me she was having a baby.’
‘She wouldn’t, of course. She knew you’d take your belt to her.’
‘Who says I take my belt to my children? And why shouldn’t I if they deserve it? I always warned her against that boy. I tried to stop her marrying him.’
‘It’s a pity you didn’t succeed, Mr Preston.’
‘What’d he do to her, the swine, to make her run off without a word?’
‘He didn’t take his belt to her, if that’s what you mean.’
‘We don’t know that! We know nothing at all. He’s been acting queer for some time past and I ent the only one to say so neither.’
‘Is it surprising, since he’s going blind?’
‘I know! I know!’ Emery said. ‘It ent that I don’t feel nothing for him. He’s been through a lot, I daresay, but it don’t excuse his ill-using Tilly and I’m going out there to see him about it.’
‘No, don’t do that,’ Betony said. ‘Leave him alone.’
‘You needn’t worry about my feelings! I know damn well he’s got another woman living there with him. It’s no good hoping to keep it quiet, even if he does live three miles out. All Huntlip knows about the way he’s going on.’
‘Huntlip would!’ Dicky muttered.
‘He didn’t waste much time, did he, finding someone to take Tilly’s place?’
‘She was the one who walked out.’
‘I don’t know that! That’s just his story! It’s like this chap she’s supposed to’ve run away with. I don’t know he even existed.’
‘He existed all right,’ said Great-grumpa. ‘He came to my workshop, trying to sell me foreign brushes.’
‘Well, I’ve never seen him,’ Emery said, ‘and I’m the one that keeps the pub!’
‘I’ve seen him, though,’ Matthew said suddenly. ‘Chap about thirty, driving a motor, sounded as though he came from Brum. I was parked beside him in the road once and he gave me some lip about my motor-cycle.’
‘Oh? Is that so?’
‘Come to think about it,’ Matthew said, ‘he ent been around these few weeks lately, though one or two people still owe him money.’
‘Why didn’t you say so before?’
‘It warnt till they mentioned his selling brushes ‒’
‘And it still don’t prove nothing, neither, does it?’
‘What’re you hoping to prove?’ asked Beth.
‘I dunno!’ Emery said. ‘All I know is that I don’t like it and I tell you straight so’s you know how I stand. But I’ll say this ‒ if Tilly turns up with this salesman fella, they’ll both rue the day, I promise you that!’
He turned towards the door, shoving the boy Matthew before him, and Great-grumpa Tewke looked up from carving the joint of beef.
‘I’d ask you to stop to dinner,’ he said, his voice laden with sarcasm, ‘if it warnt all gone cold while you was so busy showing yourself up for the fool you are!’
When the Prestons had gone, Jesse returned to his place at the table, next to Betony.
‘All this talk!’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I’m disappointed in that boy Tom, causing all this scandal and gossip. Whatever will people think of us? What’ll the captain think of us?’
‘You don’t need to call him the captain now, Father. He’s not in the Army any more.’
‘He’ll always be the captain to me.’
‘Even when he and I are married?’
‘H’mm,’ Jesse said, ‘and when’ll that come to pass, I wonder?’
He longed to see her married to Michael. He could not understand why they should wait.
‘You’re always so busy,’ Michael said, looking over Betony’s shoulder at the exercise-book she was correcting. ‘What with your work at Chepsworth Park and now the school ‒ I hardly see you nowadays.’
‘It’s only temporary,’ Betony said. ‘The school, that is. It’s only while Miss Likeness is ill.’
‘I’m surprised you teach them geometry. I’d no idea village schools were so ambitious. I thought it was all hymn-singing and sewing fine seams on linen samplers.’
‘Huntlip’s got a good village school. All others ought to be like it.’
‘I’ve half a mind, the moment we’re married, to whisk you off to South Africa and hide you away on my uncle’s farm.’
‘You’re always talking about South Africa.’
‘I had a very happy year out there, when I was a carefree boy in my teens.’
‘The trouble is not so much that I’m busy,’ Betony said, ‘as that you are not busy enough.’
‘Would you believe it!’ he exclaimed. ‘My mother says I need a long rest and you say I need to be active. What’s a man to do, between two women offering such conflicting advice?’
‘He should choose for himself, every time.’
‘I don’t seem able to settle down, since coming home from the war,’ he said. ‘I’m bored stiff with the factory and it runs itself anyway under George Williams. I think what I’d really enjoy is having a farm of my own.’
‘Then why not buy one?’
‘You make it all sound so simple.’
‘Well, isn’t it simple, if you’ve got the money?’
‘Would you like living on a farm?’
‘Yes, I should, though not in South Africa,’ Betony said.
Michael went and stood at the window, looking out at the old orchard. The plum trees were stippled white with blossom; the evening sunlight lit their trunks; and a woodpecker flew from tree to tree. Nearby, in the garden, Jesse was splitting seed potatoes and Beth was planting them in the rows, her back bent in a perfect arch, her gloved hands working swiftly and surely, opening the soil with her sharp trowel and closing it again over the seed in a movement almost too quick for the eye to see.
‘I suppose South Africa is too far away from your collection of lame dogs.’
‘What lame dogs?’
‘Oh, come, now,’ he said. ‘There’s your foster-brother for a start.’
‘Why do you always call him that? You know his name so why not use it?’ Betony closed one exercise-book, placed it on its pile, and took another. ‘Sometimes I feel you resent Tom.’
‘Perhaps I do,’ Michael said, turning towards her. ‘He does claim rather a lot of your attention.’
‘You can’t be jealous of someone like Tom, knowing he’s slowly going blind. It’s too absurd.’
‘I didn’t say I was jealous of him.’
‘Then what i
s all this about, exactly?’
‘Oh, I don’t know! It isn’t very easy to talk to you these days, Betony. You’re always thinking of other things.’
‘Very well,’ Betony said, and swung round to face him. ‘You now have my undivided attention, so what is it you’re trying to say to me?’
‘Yes, you’re very good at putting me in the wrong and making me feel ridiculous,’ he said. ‘You’re always much better than I am at any sort of argument.’
‘But I don’t want to be better at it! I don’t want to argue at all. All I want is to understand you.’ Looking at him she could see there was something seriously wrong; some awful uncertainty in his face; some fear that lurked and flickered in his eyes. ‘Michael,’ she said, ‘was it very bad in the prison-camp?’
‘It wasn’t what I would call a picnic.’
‘I wish you’d tell me about it.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to tell, and you’re mistaken in thinking I want to talk about it. It’s the last thing I want. I’m always trying to forget about it.’
Betony rose and went to him. She touched his arm and found he was trembling.
‘You’ll have to make allowances for me, Michael, when I don’t understand things. It was so hard for us at home here to imagine what it was really like. We tried and tried ‒ or some of us did ‒ but we couldn’t really understand. And I must admit I stopped worrying ‒ indeed I was thankful in a way ‒ once I heard you’d been taken prisoner.’
‘Thankful? Were you? Were you really?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Especially after the uncertainty while you were posted missing. All I could think of was that you were safe. Safe and alive and out of it all!’
‘Yes,’ he said, in a dull voice, and took her in his arms so that his face should be hidden from her.
The night was unusually warm for May. There were too many blankets on his bed and he lay sweating, unable to sleep, listening to the cathedral clock striking. It was half past two. The room was full of white moonlight.
He rose and put on his dressing-gown. He opened the door quietly and went out across the landing. His mother heard him and called out. Her door was half open, and when he looked in she was sitting up in bed, groping for the light-switch.
‘Don’t put the light on. The moon is bright enough.’
‘What’s the matter, Michael, are you ill?’
‘No, no. I just couldn’t sleep, that’s all. I thought a drop of Scotch might do the trick.’
‘I’m worried about you, not sleeping. You’ve been like this for weeks now.’
‘My bed’s too cushy, that’s the trouble. Perhaps I should get a wire-netting bunk.’
His mother patted a place on the bed. He went and sat there, and the two of them were close together, with the moon shining on them, bright as a searchlight. Her grey hair was set in symmetrical wavelets, as orderly as in the day-time, and had the sheen of polished pewter. Her face was pale and her lips in the moonlight looked almost purple.
‘Have you got something on your mind?’
‘Nothing more than usual.’
‘Is everything all right between you and Betony?’
‘If it isn’t, the fault is entirely on my side.’
‘You can’t expect me to accept that.’
‘It’s true all the same.’
‘You’ve been home for five months, yet you grow more nervy all the time. You’re drinking a lot. You never used to.’
‘That’s what it does to us … lies in wait and pounces on us …’
‘Were you ill-treated at the camp?’
‘Some of the guards were pretty brutal, but most of them were all right. Hunger was the worst thing we had to bear, and I almost welcomed that in a way, as an expiation.’
‘Expiation?’
‘Because I felt guilty at being safe.’
‘My dear boy! What nonsense you’re talking ‒’
‘Don’t interrupt me. I want to tell you what really happened. I gave myself up, you see, because I couldn’t face any more fighting. I wasn’t all that badly wounded. I could have got back to our lines if I’d tried. Minching and Darby wanted to help me, but I made some excuse and stayed behind, where the German patrol was sure to find me.’
His mother was silent, sitting upright against her pillows, her hands lying motionless on the quilt. For once he could guess nothing of her thoughts.
‘I liked it at first, being a soldier. I was even good at it, up to a point. Promotion came quickly, as you know. But it all went on so long, so long, and the more one did the more they expected. I began to wish, like everyone else, that I might be wounded and out of it, but I was wounded three times and every time they patched me up as good as new and sent me back again for more.
‘It wouldn’t have been so bad, I think, if I had been just a private soldier, but I was an officer giving orders … blowing a whistle and sending men over the parapet … and when we were in a tight spot, I’d see them all looking at me, expecting me to know the answer, expecting me to do the right thing and get them all out of the mess. Sometimes their faith nearly drove me mad. I didn’t always know what to do. Often I knew no more than they did. And there were one or two among them who were better men than I’ll ever be.’
From being hot, he was now shivering. The sweat lay cold on his face and body, and sickness crept on him, reducing him to nothing.
‘I forgot when I gave myself up,’ he said, ‘that I’d have to live with it ever after.’
His mother’s face was still impassive, and yet she was reaching out to him, leaning towards him with outstretched arms. And when he yielded his shuddering body, she drew him fiercely into her bed, pressing him close, trying to give him strength and comfort, trying to protect him from the bitterness of self-recrimination. He was her child again, creeping into her warm bed, letting her wrap him round in the bedclothes, letting her press his head to her bosom. He was her child, crying after a bad dream, and her only duty in the world was to him.
‘They asked too much of you. Yes, yes, they did! How could you go on for ever and ever? Nobody could. It’s too much to ask. You mustn’t feel guilty for the rest of your life. What good does it do? None whatever!’ And a little later, as the shivering passed, she said to him: ‘Have you told Betony about this?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid to tell her.’
‘There shouldn’t be secrets between man and wife.’
‘I’m afraid I might lose her. I couldn’t bear that.’
‘If she loves you, it won’t make any difference. She will understand you that much better. She’ll be able to help you. It’s only right that she should know.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s only right, as you say. I’ll tell her tomorrow.’
But in the morning, when he thought of Betony, he knew he would never be able to tell her.
High above the woods of Scoate House Manor a kestrel hovered, taking its ease on the warm summer air, and Tom, returning with Linn along the old turnpike, a bundle of osiers on his shoulder, stood still to watch it, one hand raised against the sun.
‘Can you see it?’ Linn asked.
‘Yes, just about, though I wouldn’t have knowed it for a kestrel if it warnt for knowing, if you see what I mean.’
‘Supposing you tell me what you mean.’
‘Well, it’s the way he’s lazing about up there … the way he’s concentrating on something below … ah, and now the way he’s gliding around, before going off, away down the wind.’
The kestrel circled three times and swooped away, racing its shadow over the treetops. Tom turned his attention to a soaring lark.
‘I’m a lot luckier than folk that’ve had no sight at all. Take that there lark, now, up in the sky. That could be a gnat for all I can see to tell me different, but when I hear it singing, well, it means I can see it at the same time, just as plain as I ever did, rising up and up all the time into a sky as blue as blue.’
They had been shoppi
ng in Norton village. Tom drew his pension from the post office there, and they rarely went to Huntlip now. He bought his osiers at Washpool Farm and sold his baskets to a dealer who called every other Friday.
The day was a hot one in late July and the sun was immediately overhead. Every few hundred yards or so, Tom dropped his bundle on the grass verge and the two of them sat on it, side by side, among the meadowsweet and sorrel. What wind there was came breathing hotly out of the east, and Linn tried to cool it by fanning herself with a bunch of ferns. Under the brim of her big straw hat, her face was shadowed, and he saw her only as a shape. Yet he knew the day had exhausted her.
‘You’d have done better stopping at home. You shouldn’t be walking so far in this heat.’
‘We spend more time resting than we do walking. It’ll likely be dark by the time we get home.’
‘Dark or light, what does it matter? We ent catching no train, are we?’
‘I left my washing on the line. It’ll go too dry for ironing.’
‘You just rest,’ he said firmly. ‘You know what Mrs Gibbs told you. You’ve got to rest and take things easy.’
When they reached home and were passing through the Pikehouse gate, Linn saw a man standing watching them from the edge of the woods, thirty yards off, across the road. He was half-hidden behind a tree and stood quite still, his hands in his pockets, his cap pulled low over his forehead.
‘There’s a man over there. Can you see him? He’s standing at the edge of the wood.’
‘Perhaps it’s a keeper,’ Tom said.
But then the man stepped out to the open; he crossed the grass verge and stood in the roadway: a short stocky man with a chest like a barrel.
‘It’s Emery Preston,’ Linn said.
‘What’s he doing hanging about here for?’
‘It’s not the first time I’ve seen him about. When I went up to Eastery last Friday, he was standing on the churchyard wall, looking down at the Pikehouse, and he stared hard at me as I went past.’
‘I’ll go and have a word with him,’ Tom said.
Emery Preston stood like a post. Tom went up to him, squinting a little, for he could see better by looking out of the sides of his eyes.
‘Did you want to speak to me, Mr Preston?’
The Sorrowing Wind (The Apple Tree Saga Book 3) Page 16