Lord Cumbermound revolved on his shooting stick in the direction of the two women. ‘That bay’s too small for her now, Georgina,’ he said genially. ‘If that gelding of yours is any good, I’ll put my hand in my pocket for him for Dolly. She’s worth backing on her present form.’
Georgina smiled back companionably, ‘Oh, he’s a smart pony, all right. I think he and Dolly’d get on a treat.’
Laura Medaware put the remains of her gin and tonic in its plastic cup down by her canvas chair, ground her menthol cigarette into the turf and said, ‘Come on, Georgina. Come and hold a bridle and have a word with Dolly. She always values your praise.’
The two women, one tall, middle–aged and handsome, the other smaller, younger and compact, wove their way amongst the debris of cups and chairs which littered the grass. They picked their way carefully over the leads of numerous labradors, terriers and springers anchored with more or less acquiescence, to bits of their owners’ persons. Avoiding the attentions of small, clamorous children with food and drink in their hands they made their way out of the members enclosure of the Medewich and Markham Agricultural Show.
Now, late on Sunday afternoon, people were saying that the weather had been perfect for both days of the two–day Show. Lord Cumbermound, a lucky gambler, had pointed out that he usually got good weather for his show.
‘You carry on as though you controlled the weather George,’ his cousin, the Dean had said with acerbity.
‘Like God,’ had added his profane wife.
‘Perfect weather, perfect setting,’ his lordship had asserted with no trace of boastfulness. He loved his house, his estate, his horses, his county and his country. He saw no reason not to enjoy them all and he was quite generous enough to share his enjoyment with others by providing, once a year, a venue for the Show.
The park sloped down gently from his undistinguished seventeenthcentury brick house, the grandest part of which was the stable block, to the lake below. The Show was held in the meadows on the higher ground on the opposite side of the lake. The house looked as it had done for three centuries; Lord Cumbermound was in no doubt that it would manage another three.
In the goat tent Julia stood beside Ian. She was enjoying herself hugely. ‘The trouble with Saanans is, they all look alike,’ she announced.
Ian was in no position to disagree with her. He’d admitted early on that he’d never looked closely at goats before. He’d liked, therefore, the flashy Nubians with their grotesque, bloodhound ears and patronising expressions.
‘Too refined,’ Julia explained didactically and pressed on to introduce him to the black and white humbug types labelled British Alpines, standing next to the skewbald variety called British Toggenbergs. Ian liked the names and was content to scratch the animals’ heads as, emitting a warm goaty smell, they gazed up at him with calculating yellow eyes.
‘The cloven hoof is very marked,’ he said happily in parody of the judge’s comments.
‘I think this is the nicest thing that’s happened to me in England,’ said Julia with real contentment. ‘I’d no idea you carried on like this. It’s all so natural.’
In contrast to what? Ian wondered. To the Chapter and Cathedral, to the diocesan office? To his eyes, the Show had its conventions and artificialities too. But then he supposed, it was a question of what one was used to: artificialities struck a stranger so much more strongly.
Having exhausted the goats they moved via pigs, pigeons, game birds and Burmese cats to the main ring.
‘I’d quite like to see the final judging of the handy hunter,’ said Julia knowledgeably. Here their interests lay closer together. Ian had ridden as a boy and he suspected from the way Julia commented that, although she was socially timid, she might be an efficient horsewoman. They came up in time to see the penultimate line–up. It consisted of a grey, with black tack (‘Very vulgar,’ said Ian to see how Julia would react; she made no answer) and a large handsome chestnut mare with good shoulders but long in the back and with that slightly dotty look in her eye usual in chestnut mares. Then came two bays, a light and a dark. The dark bay was a seventeen–hand mare, perhaps young, beautifully conformed, with a kind eye and immaculately turned out.
‘Have they ridden them?’ asked Julia.
‘I think all of them except the dark bay.’
Julia’s eye glittered. She watched as the bowler–hatted judge patted the mare’s neck and prepared to mount. Clearly it was a moment with its own significance for her. The judge swung himself calmly into the saddle and the mare stood without moving whilst he adjusted his stirrups. There was a moment’s quietness, as of a grace before a meal, and then the mare stepped sweetly forward from leg to hand. The aid had been invisible. The judge was a good rider in the old–fashioned seat, legs slightly too far forward for the modern taste but with the body nice and upright, hands quiet and soft. Although not a young man, there was, nevertheless, nothing stiff or cramped about him. The mare started to track up and softened to the bit. She settled to her walk and began to swing her quarters. Halfway round the ring when he asked for little more collection she offered no resistance and they moved as one into an easy working trot rising.
Julia could not take her eyes off the beautiful mare. At the quarter marker he asked for canter and got extended trot. Well, she’s young yet, she thought, and that leg of his was so far forward the mare could easily make a mistake. The rider seemed to sense the fault was partly his. He tried again at the corner and got a smooth rounded canter. Julia wondered if he would gallop her: surely he must for a hunter class. She watched as the mare completed a second circuit in canter, waiting for her rider to ask for the gallop. She was a large animal and any minute now, Julia thought, he would be holding her up. However, the rider’s feel for the mare was sure. He closed his legs and she came smoothly into a nice even gallop. He wisely asked for the downward transition after a circuit and the mare came down to trot, threw her head up briefly and then rounded again. Julia let out her breath. He circled her in a 20 metre circle, changed the rein through two half–circles and repeated the performance on the left rein. The halt, when he asked for it, was square.
‘Very, very pleasant,’ said Ian, at one with Julia in admiration of the performance.
‘Whose is she?’ asked Julia.
Ian consulted the programme. ‘Number 15, Rosa, Geoffrey Markham. That’s Cumbermound’s youngest son.’
‘And who is riding her?’
Ian looked again. ‘Judges: Mrs Henrietta Gibson and Major L. Braithwaite. That’s Theodora’s uncle, I think.’
When Julia looked again at the judge she could see the family likeness. The long square head came out well in the male version. ‘Yes, he rides a bit like Theodora: kind and competent. He’s sensitive to the horse, without all that macho pushing and pulling you sometimes get in male riders.’
They watched as the judges conferred and then placed them in order in the line–up. Rosa was called in second, the grey first, the chestnut and light bay third and fourth.
‘Very satisfactory,’ said Julia incisively. ‘Ian,’ she added suddenly, ‘I’m not going to go on being a poor typist to people I dislike and am frightened of. I’m going to get a job as a farm worker.’
Ian was amused. ‘They last had land girls during the war. Green jerseys and breeches. I had an aunt in the trade. I’ve got photographs of her leaning on hay rakes with yokels in smocks, more or less.’
The war was not a concept which claimed Julia’s attention anymore than land girls. ‘How would I go about it? I mean getting a job on the land?’
‘Oh, come on, Julia. Women don’t work on the land in this country. You must know that. Come to think of it, not many men work on it either. It’s all done with tractors and computers.’
Julia assumed that mutinous expression which Ian had seen on her face when having her work returned to her by Miss Coldharbour. As in that situation, she said nothing. He hadn’t meant to bully her. He hadn’t realised she was so serious. He was contrite. ‘I’
m sorry,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and get some tea and perhaps we might make inquiries about types of jobs amongst the local farmers. We’d better hurry, though, they’ll be striking camp ere long.’
They threaded their way round the ring towards the tea tent. Halfway round they met Theodora walking with her uncle in the direction of the members enclosure. Theodora lifted an eyebrow and with a caught glance drew them in to introductions.
Major Braithwaite and Julia started talking about horses. There was a sort of thirstiness about Julia’s immersion in the conversation, as though she’d been parched for a long time. Theodora watched her, with pleasure. She and Ian drew a little apart from the two of them.
‘Julia wants to chuck typing and be a land girl,’ Ian said to Theodora.
‘That would probably be best,’ replied Theodora in her pastoral voice. ‘She’s not happy in the office. She’s both too intelligent and too incompetent to flourish in that setting.’
‘Would you suppose she’d be more competent on the land? How would her intelligence survive hoeing cabbages?’
‘They don’t hoe now, they spray, unfortunately. Anyway, she might do something with horses, by the sound of it,’ said Theodora.
‘Would that exercise her intelligence?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Theodora. ‘I’m sure you know it’s one of the Zen arts. Body and spirit are both totally engaged and concentrated. My uncle’s instincts are just as religious as my father’s and mine in his way.’
They turned back to Major Braithwaite who was talking to Julia with what, in so staid a man, was approaching animation. ‘I wonder if you’d care to come up to the stable at the house and help me box a pair of geldings of mine?’ he was inquiring. ‘I brought them over yesterday and George let me have a couple of boxes for the night but I don’t want to leave them over another night if I can help it. If you like big bays, you’d like my boy Oscar. He’s a fine fellow. Knight’s not a bad chap either.’
Julia was clearly on the point of accepting but remembering her manners pointed out that since Ian had brought her she could hardly desert him.
‘I’d love to help box your horses, Major,’ said Ian swiftly. ‘I’m not too knowledgeable, but I can do as I’m told.’
Julia looked delighted.
They began to walk down the hill towards the lake. Skirting the marshy end, they slowly climbed the gentle slope on the other side to join the carriage drive which led them to the stable. As they stepped from grass to gravel, a long dark green Mercedes two–seater swept towards them, accelerating fast. Julia caught a glimpse of a small neat head, a younger version of the Earl behind the steering wheel. Ian watched the progress of the car down the drive and Major Braithwaite raised his hand in a brief, unacknowledged greeting before the Mercedes raced out of sight.
The stable block had been built later than the house, in the mideighteenth century. It was set around a complete quadrangle, and built of rusticated stone. The tall carriage entrance had a clock with a black face and gilt Roman numerals in its small pediment, the yard paved with small, sunk cobbles with moss between. There was a wellhead in the middle, mounting blocks round three sides and fourteen boxes, six of which were in use. A tack room and hay loft took up the north side; on the south side were grooms’ and coachman’s quarters. A better working environment than the diocesan office, Julia thought, as she surveyed it. Better designed too.
The yard was empty except for a neat looking two–horse box and at the far end a large powerful motorbike. Major Braithwaite approached the box and undid the pins to release the tail gate.
‘My girl, Helen, landed on the deck a bit heavily in the jump–off of the Foxhunter and had to go home early, so I’m without labour at the moment. Hence, glad of your help. Glad of it anyhow,’ he added as if caught out in some discourtesy.
Ian grinned. He’d forgotten how much he knew the ways of horsemen of old.
‘I think I’m about ready to load. Theo, can you take Oscar and I’ll follow up with Knight? Ian, if you and Julia stand by to raise the bridge, I think we’ll do very nicely. Knight’s sometimes a bit nervous about all this. He’s still new to the travelling.’
Theodora and the Major moved off to collect the horses from the loose boxes at the north end of the yard. Theodora emerged leading a bay gelding of about sixteen hands. Irish draft with a trace of Cleveland, thought Julia watching the selfish, handsome head as he surveyed the box without fear and walked calmly up the ramp beside Theodora into the left–hand stall. The Major followed close behind with what was clearly a horse of a different stamp. He was a thorough–bred, lighter, therefore, of bone, his thin chiselled head evincing distrust of the strange machine in front of him. At the foot of the ramp he stopped dead. The Major encouraged him, then walked him round in a circle, conversing with him in low reassuring tones. Again the horse refused, his nostrils flaring with fear and his eyes appearing to swivel back under his ears.
‘Ian,’ said the Major calmly, ‘I think I can make out his saddle on the block over there. Could you bring it over and we’ll saddle him up? Julia, his bridle, I think, must still be in the tack room. His is a 5 inch French link with rubber reins on the peg to the left of the door.’
Julia shot off in the direction of the tack room. When she reached it, it was empty. She stood in the doorway, taking in the lofty whitewashed space with match–boarding to shoulder height and saddle racks full of Stubens and Passats, all clean. Julia breathed the incense of saddle soap and neats–foot oil appreciatively. A 5 inch French link with rubber reins to the left of the door, the Major had said. There were two double bridles and a fixed ring snaffle. Hell she thought, where, oh, where was it? Julia scanned the rest of the pegs. Nothing like. At the far end of the room, next to the sink was a deal table. On the table were two grooming kit boxes, a couple of ‘L’ plates, a discarded car number plate and, thank Heaven, the unassembled pieces of a bridle with a 5 inch French link bit on it. Julia was half–way through assembling the bridle when she stopped short. She caught her breath. She looked again. There was no mistaking it. SVF 907. Being one of those who makes words out of initials, Julia, when first shown that number by the police, had changed mentally the V to U, as in the Latin alphabet, and came up with SUF, the first syllable of ‘suffer’. Which, she’d thought at the time, were appropriate registration letters for her cousin Paul Gray’s car, missing now for nearly two weeks.
Julia picked up the plate and turned it over. What on earth was it doing here and what on earth should she do about it? Her first thought, she realised, was that she hated the idea of the police trampling all over this heaven on earth. Her second feeling was pity for her murdered and mutilated cousin and her third feeling was one of fear. She turned round quickly as she heard the sound of a step at the door. It was Ian.
‘I thought you might be having difficulty spotting …’ he began. Then he caught sight of her face. ‘What’s up?’
She indicated the number plate on the table. Caretaker glanced at it. Then he too perceived what she meant. Everyone questioned by the police (and Julia and Ian had been questioned twice) knew the registration of Gray’s car. Had they seen it? When had it last been parked in the Cathedral car park? Did Gray have a parking permit? How long had he had this particular car? And so on. Ian, who was responsible for dealing with diocesan loans to incumbents for cars, had had to go into some detail on these points.
Julia realised that she was shaking and that Ian had taken her hand in his. ‘Do nothing now,’ he said firmly. ‘We’ll box the horses and I’ll drive you back to Amy Roy. We’ll talk about it there.’
‘You have a horseman’s priorities,’ said Julia, laughing nervously. ‘First box the horses.’
‘I was a prominent member of the pony club,’ said Ian with equal lameness. ‘Anyway, we might be mistaken about the registration number. I ought to check up before we set hounds on.’
They both knew, however, that there was no mistake.
Julia took up the assembled bridle
and they walked outside into the early evening sun. The sheer beauty of the handsome yard revived her. Standing beside Major Braithwaite’s box were the Dean, the Dean’s wife, Lord Cumbermound, his daughter and granddaughter, the latter in jodhpurs, blue shirt and the horrible purple and green of the pony club tie. There was that confident murmur of well–bred voices which Julia was beginning to associate with a certain sort of English gathering.
A flash of recognition crossed the Earl’s face as he lit on Julia. ‘Hello, me dear,’ he said affably. ‘Been over fences?’
Julia managed a smile, ‘Not yet,’ she said and added, ‘Your mare Rosa’s very beautiful.’
Cumbermound looked pleased. ‘Is she not?’ he said. ‘Found her on half an acre in Buckinghamshire with her mother and got her for my youngest lad. Have you met him? Geoffrey, I mean.’
‘No, I don’t know him.’
‘He was here a bit earlier. You just missed him. You know Geoffrey, Caretaker, don’t you?’ said Cumbermound unexpectedly swinging round to Ian.
Ian for once looked thoroughly discomposed. He had not realised that Lord Cumbermound had recognised him. ‘Yes, I know your son slightly,’ he said stiffly. ‘We met at Cambridge once or twice.’
‘And after that, I gather,’ said his father, ‘in London.’
Julia looked at Ian in surprise. He was as embarrassed as she had ever seen him.
‘Yes,’ said Ian almost sulkily. There was an awkward pause. For a moment Julia thought that Ian was going to walk away. Then the girl, Dolly, suddenly started to caper. ‘Can I lead Knight up the ramp, Theo? He’ll come for me.’
Theodora handed over the reins of the now saddled and bridled Knight who had begun to fear that he was no longer the centre of attention. The girl held them in approved BHS fashion.
‘Now, Knight,’ Dolly said firmly. ‘Don’t be a pain. You’ve known me for yonks.’ She marched him in an exact 15 metre circle. With no hesitation he stepped on to the ramp and into the right–hand stall of the horse box.
‘And a little child shall lead them,’ murmured the Dean’s wife.
Clerical Errors Page 12