Bee looked round and smiled at him. "Your birthday," she said.
Of course. He was now the possessor of a birthday.
"Had you forgotten that you are going to be twenty-one on Friday?" she asked.
"I had, almost." He caught her sidelong look at him. After a pause she said: "You came of age a long time ago, didn't you." She said it without smiling and it was not a question.
"About Friday," she went on. "I thought that since we have postponed the celebrations for Uncle Charles's benefit, we wouldn't have a party on Friday. Mr. Sandal will be coming down with the papers he wants you to sign, so we shall have him to lunch, and make it just a quiet family party."
Papers to sign. Yes, he had known that there would be papers to sign sooner or later. He had even learned to make his capital letters the way Patrick did, thanks to an old exercise book that Loding had unearthed and filched from the Rectory. And, after all, signing a paper didn't make him any more of a heel than he was being at this moment. It just put him more surely in the Law's reverence, made the thing irrevocable.
"Is that how you would like it?"
"What? Oh, the birthday. Yes, of course. I don't want a party. I don't want a celebration, if it comes to that. Can't we just take this coming-of-age for granted?"
"I don't think the neighbourhood would be very pleased if we did. They are all looking forward to some kind of party. I think we shall have to give them one. Even the invitation cards are all ready. I altered the date to a fortnight after Charles's arrival. He is due in about twenty-three days. So you'll have to 'thole' it, as old Nannie used to say."
Yes, he would have to thole it. Anyhow, he could sit back now and relax for a little. He was not supposed to know the Gates family.
They were coming back to the village now; the white rails of the south paddocks on their left. It was a washed and shining morning, but it had an uneasy glitter. The sky was metallic, and the light had a silver edge to it.
As they passed the entrance to the Rectory Bee said: "Alec Loding came down for the week-end not long ago."
"Oh? What is he doing now?"
"Still playing roue parts in dreadful little comedies and farces. You know: four characters, five doors, and one bed. I didn't see him, but Nancy said he had improved."
"In what way?"
"Oh, more interested in other people. Kindlier. He even made efforts to get on with George. Nancy thought age was beginning to tell. He was quite happy to sit for hours with a book in George's study when George was out. And when George was in they would yarn quite happily. Nancy was delighted. She has always been fond of Alec, but she used to dread his visits. The country bored him and George bored him even more, and he never bothered to hide it. So it was a pleasant change."
Half-way through the village they turned into the lane that led to Wigsell.
"You don't remember Emmy Vidler, do you?" she asked Brat. "She was brought up at Wigsell, and married Gates when he had a farm the other side of Bures. When her father died, Gates put a bailiff into his farm and took over Wigsell. And, of course, the butcher's shop. So they are very comfortably off. The boy couldn't stand his father, and got himself a job in the Midlands somewhere; engineering. But the girl lives at home, and is the apple of her father's eye. She went to an expensive boarding school, where I understand she was known as Margot. Her name is Peggy."
They swung into the farm entrance and came to rest on the small old cobbles of the yard. Two dogs rushed at them in wild self-importance, yelling their arrival to the world.
"I do wish Gates would train his dogs," said Bee, whose dogs were as well-trained as her horses.
The clamour brought Mrs. Gates to the front door. She was a faded and subdued little woman who must once have been very pretty.
"Glen! Joy! Be quiet!" she called, ineffectually, and came forward to greet them. But before she reached them Gates came round the corner of the house, and in a few strides had anticipated her. His pompous welcome drowned her more genuine pleasure, and she stood smiling gently at Brat while her husband trumpeted forth their satisfaction in seeing Patrick Ashby on their doorstep again.
Gates was a large, coarse individual, but Brat supposed that once he had had the youthful vigour and assurance that appealed to pretty, fragile little women like Emmy Vidler.
"They tell me that you've been making money in horses over there," he said to Brat.
"I've earned my living from them," Brat said.
"You come and see what I've got in my stable." He began to lead the way to the back of the house.
"But Harry, they must come in and sit down for a little," his wife protested.
"They'll sit down presently. They'd much rather look at a piece of good horseflesh than at your gewgaws. Come along, Mr. Patrick. Come along, Miss Ashby. Alfred!" he bellowed as they went down the yard. "Turn out that new horse for Miss Ashby to see."
Mrs. Gates, tailing along behind, found herself side by side with Brat. "I am so happy about this," she said quietly. "So happy about your coming back. I remember you when you were little; when I lived here in my father's day. Except for my own son I've never been so fond of a small boy as I was of you."
"Now then, Mr. Patrick, have a look at this here, have a look at this! Tell me if that doesn't fill the eye for you."
Gates swept his great limb of an arm at the stable door where Alfred was leading out a brown horse that looked oddly out of place in the small farmyard, even in a region where every small farmer kept a mount that would carry him across country in the winter. There was no denying it, the brown horse was something exceptional.
"There! what do you think of that, eh? What do you think of that?"
Bee, having looked, said: "But that, surely, is the horse that Dick Pope won the jumping on at the Bath Show last year."
"That's the horse," Gates said complacently. "And not only the jumping. The cup for the best riding horse in the show. Cost me a pretty penny, that did, but I can afford it and nothing's too good for my girl. Oh ah! It's for Peggy I bought it. That wouldn't carry me, that wouldn't." He gave an abrupt shout of laughter; at least Brat supposed it was laughter. "But my girl, now, she's a feather in the saddle. I don't have to tell you, Miss Ashby; you've seen her. There's no one in the county deserves a good horse better than my Peggy, and I don't grudge the money for it."
"You've certainly got a good horse, Mr. Gates," Bee said, with an enthusiasm in her voice that surprised Brat. He looked across at her and wondered why she was looking so pleased. After all, this brown horse was a potential rival to Timber, and all the other Latchetts' animals.
"Got a vet's certificate with it, I need hardly say. I don't buy pigs in pokes."
"Is Peggy going to show it this year?"
"Of course she is, of course she is. What did I buy it for but for her to show?"
Bee's face was positively blissful. "How nice!" she said, and she sounded rapturous.
"Do you like it, Miss Ashby?" Peggy Gates said, appearing at Brat's side.
Peggy was a very pretty creature. Pink and white and gold. Brat thought that if it were possible to cross Miss Parslow and Eleanor the result would probably be Peggy Gates. She accepted her introduction to Brat with composure, but managed to convey the impression that it was personally delightful to her to have Patrick home again. Her small hand lay in his with a soft pressure that was intimate rather than friendly. Brat shook it heartily and resisted a temptation to wipe his palm down his hip.
She accepted Bee's congratulations on her possession of the horse, allowed a decent interval for further contemplation of it, and then with an admirable display of social dexterity, lifted the whole family from the yard into the drawing-room of the house. It was called the drawing-room, and was furnished as such, but Bee, who remembered it as old Mrs. Vidler's parlour, thought the water-colours and wistaria wallpaper a poor exchange for the lustre jugs and framed engravings of Mrs. Vidler's day.
They drank very good madeira and talked about the Bures Agricultural
Show.
And they drove home with Bee still looking as if someone had left her a fortune. She caught Brat's considering look at her and said: "Well?"
"You look like a cat that has been given cream," he said.
She gave him her sideways, amused glance. "Cream and fish and liver," she said; but did not tell him the translation.
"When all the fuss of Friday is over, Brat," she said, "you must go up to town and get yourself a wardrobe. Walters will take weeks to make your evening things, and you'll need them for the celebration when Uncle Charles comes home."
"What shall I get?" he asked, at a loss for the first time.
"I should leave it to Walters, if I were you."
"Outfit for a young English gentleman," Brat said.
And she looked sideways again, surprised by the twist in his voice.
18
Eleanor came into the sitting-room as Bee was opening the midday post, and said: "She bumped!"
Bee looked up hazily, her mind still on the contents of her mail.
"She bumped, I tell you. For a whole fifty yards she bumped like a good 'un."
"The Parslow girl? Oh, congratulations, Nell, dear."
"I never thought I'd live to see this day. Is no one having sherry?"
"Brat and I have drunk sufficient strange liquids this morning to last us for the rest of the week."
"How did it go, Brat?" Eleanor asked, pouring herself some sherry.
"Not as badly as I'd been prepared for," Brat said, watching her thin capable hand manipulating the glasses. That hand wouldn't lie soft and confidential and insinuating in one's own.
"Did Docket tell you how he got his wound?"
"Docket was at market," Bee said. "But we had hot buttered scones from Mrs. Docket."
"Dear Mrs. Docket. What did Miss Hassell give you?"
"Shortbread. She wasn't going to give us that, but she succumbed to Brat's charms." So Bee had noticed that.
"I'm not surprised," Eleanor said, looking at Brat over her glass. "And Wigsell?"
"Do you remember that brown horse of Dick Pope's? The one he swept the board with at Bath last year?"
"Certainly."
"Gates has bought it for Peggy."
Eleanor stopped sipping sherry and thought about this in silence for a moment or two.
"For Peggy to show."
"Yes."
"Well, well!" said Eleanor slowly: and she looked amused and thoughtful. She looked at Bee, met Bee's glance, and looked away again. "Well, well!" she said again, and went on sipping sherry. After an interval broken only by the rip of paper as Bee opened envelopes, she said: "I don't know that that was such a very good move."
"No," said Bee, not looking up.
"I'm going to wash. What is for lunch?"
"Goulash."
"As made by our Mrs. Betts, that is just stew."
The twins came in from lessons at the Rectory, and Simon from the stables, and they went in to lunch.
Simon had come down so late to breakfast that Brat's only intercourse with him to-day had been to wish him good morning. He seemed amiable and relaxed, and inquired with what appeared to be genuine interest about the success of the morning. Bee provided an account, with periodic confirmation from Brat. When she came to Wigsell, Eleanor interrupted her to say:
"Did you know that Gates has bought Peggy a new horse?"
"No," Simon said, looking up with mild interest.
"He has bought her that brown horse of Dick Pope's."
"Riding Light?"
"Yes. Riding Light. She is going to show it this year."
For the first time since he had met him Brat saw Simon Ashby flush. He paused for a moment, and then went on with his lunch. The flush slowly died, and the cool pale profile resumed its normal calm. Both Eleanor and Bee had avoided looking at him while he absorbed the news, but Ruth studied him with interest.
And Brat, eating Mrs. Betts's goulash, studied him with his mind. Simon Ashby was reputedly crazy about the Gates girl. But was he glad that the girl had been given a good horse? No. He was furious. And what was more, his womenfolk had known that he would be furious. They had known beforehand that he would find Peggy's entry as a rival unforgivable. They had, understandably, not wanted the Gates affair to last or to become serious; and they had recognised instantly, both of them, that Peggy's possession of Riding Light had saved them. What kind of creature was this Simon Ashby, who could not bear to be beaten by the girl he was in love with?
He remembered Bee's inordinate pleasure in the brown horse. He saw again Eleanor's slow amusement at the news. They had known at once that that was the end of the Peggy affair. Gates had bought that horse to be «upsides» with Latchetts; to give his daughter a mount as good as any owned by the man he hoped she would marry. And all he had done was to destroy any chance that Peggy ever had of being mistress of Latchetts.
Well, Simon was no longer master of Latchetts, so it would not matter to the Gates family that Simon resented Peggy's possession of the horse. But what kind of heel was Simon that he could not love a rival?
"What is Brat going to ride at the Bures Show," he heard Eleanor say, and brought his attention back to the lunch table.
"All of them," Simon said. And as Eleanor looked her question: "They are his horses."
This was the kind of thing that the English did not say. Simon must be very angry to desert the habit of a lifetime.
"I'm not going to 'show' any horses, if that is what you mean," Brat said. "That requires technique, and I haven't got it."
"But you used to be very good," Bee said.
"Did I? Oh, well, that is a long time ago. I certainly don't want to show any horses in the ring at Bures."
"The show isn't for nearly three weeks yet," Eleanor said. "Bee could coach you for a day or two, and you'd be as good as ever."
But Brat was not to be moved. It would have been fun to see what he could do against English horsemen; fun especially to jump the Latchetts horses and perhaps win with them; but he was not going to make any public appearance as Patrick Ashby of Latchetts if he could help it.
"Brat could ride in the races," Ruth said. "The races they end up with. He could beat everyone on Timber, couldn't he?"
"Timber is not going to be knocked about in any country bumpkins' race if I still have any say in the matter," Simon said, speaking into his plate. "He is going to Olympia, which is his proper place."
"I agree," Brat said. And the atmosphere ceased to be tense. Jane wanted to know why fractions were vulgar, and Ruth wanted a new bicycle tire, and the conversation became the normal family conversation of any meal-time in any home.
Before lunch was over the first of the visitors arrived; and the steady stream went on, from after-luncheon coffee, through tea, to six o'clock drinks. They had all come to inspect Brat, but he noticed that those who had known Patrick Ashby came with a genuine pleasure in welcoming him back. Each of them had some small memory of him to recount, and all of them had kept the memory green because they had liked Pat Ashby and grieved for him. And Brat caught himself being gratified in an absurd and proprietorial way, as if some protege of his own was being praised. The light that had been shed on Simon this morning made him more than ever Patrick's champion. It was all wrong that Latchetts should have been Simon's all those years. It was Patrick's inheritance and it was all wrong that Patrick should not be here to inherit it. Patrick was all right. Patrick would not have gone sick with rage because his best girl had a better horse than he had. Patrick was all right.
So he accepted the small verbal gifts on Patrick's behalf and was pleased and gratified.
About the time when tea-cups were being mixed up with cocktail glasses the local doctor appeared, and Brat ceased to be gratified, and became interested in Eleanor's reactions to the doctor. Eleanor seemed to like the doctor very much, and Brat, knowing nothing whatever about him, was straightway convinced that he was not good enough for her. The only guests left now were Colonel Smollett, the
Chief Constable for the county; the two Misses Byrne, who occupied the Jacobean house at the far end of the village and, according to Bee, had their walls hung with "plates and warming-pans, and other kitchen utensils"; and Dr. Spence. Dr. Spence was young and red-haired and bony, and he had freckles and a friendly manner. He was the successor of the old country doctor who had brought the whole Ashby family up, and he was, so Bee confided in an interval of tea-pouring, "much too brilliant to stay in a country practice." Brat wondered if he stayed for Eleanor's sake; he seemed to like Eleanor very much.
"You caused us a lot of trouble, young man," Colonel Smollett had said, greeting him; and Brat, after the polite evasions he had experienced so far, was glad of his frankness. Just as his notions of English middle-class had been derived from American films, so his idea of a colonel had been derived from the English Press, and was equally erroneous. Colonel Smollett was a small, thin man with a beaked nose and a self-effacing manner. What one noticed about him was his extraordinary neatness and his gay blue eyes.
The Colonel gave the Misses Byrne a lift in his car, but the doctor lingered, and it was only when Bee asked him to stay for dinner that he pulled himself together and went.
"Poor Dr. Spence," Bee said at dinner. "I'm sorry he wouldn't stay. I'm sure that landlady of his starves him."
"Nonsense," said Simon, who had recovered his good temper and had been very bright all the afternoon; "that lean, red-haired type always look underfed. Besides, he wouldn't have eaten, anyhow. All he wants is to sit and look at Eleanor."
Which confirmed Brat's worst fears.
But all Eleanor said was: "Don't be absurd"; and she said it without heat and without interest.
They were all tired by dinner-time, and it was a quiet meal. The excitement of having Brat there had died into acceptance, and they no longer treated him as a newcomer. Even the unforthcoming Jane had stopped accusing him with her eyes. He was part of the landscape. It was wonderfully restful to be part of the landscape again. For the first time since he came to Latchetts he was hungry.
But as he got ready for bed he puzzled over the problem of Simon. Simon, who was quite sure that he was not Patrick, but had no intention of saying so. (Why? Because he would not be believed, and his protest would be put down to resentment at his brother's return? Because he had plans for a dramatic unveiling? Because he had some better way of dealing with an impostor who would not be unveiled?) Simon, who was so good a dissembler that he could fool his own family about his inmost feelings. Simon, who was so self-centred, so vain, that to come between him and the sun was to insult him. Simon, who had charm enough for ten men, and an appealing air of vulnerability. Simon, who was like Timber.
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