III
Ikey Palfrey passed out of Woolwich with creditable marks in the late summer of 1912 and came home on furlough for a month before joining his battery in India. Claire thought he had changed a good deal during the last two or three years and Paul admitted that he had, at least outwardly, for he was now a shade short of six feet and had also filled out, losing the lean, rakish build of his cross-country days. Yet to Paul he was still the Ikey Palfrey plucked from the scrapyard ten years ago, a waif with an impudent way of looking seniors in the eye as if, whilst prepared to be lectured now and again, he reserved the right to treat scoldings as so much pi-jaw without much significance.
Claire had never felt wholly at ease with Ikey and, without in the least knowing why, went out of her way to maintain the slightly impersonal relationship that grew up between them. In the early days of her marriage, when Ikey was only a boy and away at school most of the time, it had been easy to patronise him but later on, when he was about eighteen, she began to suspect that, more often than not, and in the kindest possible way, he was laughing at her and this led her to discard patronage in favour of propitiation, although she could think of no reason at all why she should adopt such an attitude. It might, she sometimes thought, have something to do with that curious letter he had written her all those years ago, the one urging her to visit the injured Squire after he had called out for her in a fever. She had never mentioned this letter to anyone, not even to Paul, yet here again she could find no adequate reason for keeping it a secret, for she had never once doubted its substance. Ikey was always very polite to her and she did not think it likely that he still regarded himself as the agent who brought man and wife together, reasoning that he had probably forgotten the letter by now and yet, every now and again when their eyes met over the table, or she found herself alone with him, his knowing air put her at a disadvantage. He still addressed her as ‘Ma’am’, as though she was a queen to whom he owed an indirect allegiance, and this slightly uncomfortable relationship had not been eased by a recent exchange over Simon, occurring soon after her discussion with Grace concerning the boy.
Claire took her duties as stepmother very seriously and had gone out of her way to avoid discriminating between Simon and her own children, often to the latters’ disadvantage. Simon was a difficult child to know and inclined to walk alone but she had persisted and was confident that he had a genuine affection for her. She had thought a good deal before taking Grace’s advice, and discussing with Ikey the possibility of telling Simon some form of disguised truth about his mother. She would have preferred to leave things as they were and let him grow up thinking of himself as her child but she remembered that the Valley relished scandal of every kind and with Simon approaching his eighth birthday it was likely that he would soon learn the truth from an outside source which it was surely her duty to anticipate. So, in the end, she told Ikey the gist of her conversation with Grace in the hotel bedroom after the suffragette scuffle and as always he listened gravely and politely to what she had to say. When, however, she told him that Grace had advised her to employ him as her agent, he smiled his rather irritating smile and said, ‘I’m afraid it’s too late, Ma’am. Simon already knows all there is to know.’ She said, shocked by this news, ‘He does? Who told him?’ and without a blush he admitted having told Simon himself more than a year ago, after the child had made an appeal to him for information on the subject.
At first she was furiously angry but then common sense warned her that she was being unjust and that Simon must have got an inkling from one of the tenants or estate workers before approaching Ikey in the first place. She said crisply, ‘He came to you? After hearing gossip from somebody else?’
‘I couldn’t say,’ he replied calmly, ‘I didn’t ask him.’
‘Why didn’t you ask him?’
He lifted his shoulders, refusing to be rattled. ‘I don’t know, perhaps because it seemed to me to be prying. He had probably been eavesdropping and heard something he wasn’t meant to hear. He asked me about his mother so I told him.’
‘Wouldn’t it have been wiser to have sent him to me or his father?’
‘I don’t think so, Ma’am. If he had wanted that he would have gone to you or Squire instead of me.’
She bit her lip and at that moment she could cheerfully have boxed his ears but behind her resentment she could not help admiring his grasp of essentials. She said rather sharply, ‘Well, how did he take it? Was it a shock to him?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think it was a shock. I cushioned it as well as I could, and I got the impression he had always known there was a difference between him and the twins and Mary. How can we be sure he didn’t get a hint years ago, a chance remark made by any one of us when we thought him too young to notice?’
She considered this and the pause gave her a chance to master her temper and make an honest effort to put herself in Ikey’s place. After all, he was quite possibly right, for adults often make this mistake and in any case it was done now and her relationship with Simon had improved rather than deteriorated in the last year. She said with a shrug, ‘Well, I’m glad it’s over and done with but I shall have to tell Squire what happened and I daresay he’ll want to hear more details.’
Ikey nodded, absently she thought and said, ‘I did what I thought best at the time, I’m sorry if I put my foot in it. It seemed to me that, by making an issue of it Simon might have been more confused than he was. That was why I made light of it, Mrs Craddock.’
Devil take the boy, she thought, he’s infallible! It occurred to her then how odd it was that Grace should have singled out Ikey for a mission already accomplished and with this thought came another, more disquieting one for it seemed to her that Ikey’s loyalty was to Grace rather than to her and it distressed her to think this for until then it had always seemed that all trace of Grace Lovell had been banished from the house whereas it was now evident that something of Grace lingered. The uncertainty caused by this reflection must have shown in her face for, with his strange faculty for reading thoughts, he said, gently, ‘I wouldn’t worry about it any more, Ma’am. Simon looks on you as his mother and why shouldn’t he? You haven’t failed him in that respect and I’m sure you never will.’
Suddenly, and shamefully, she wanted to cry and he must have seen this too, for he turned away and lounged off, hands deep in his pockets while she stood there feeling more unsure of herself than at any time since her return to the Valley. But she was Edward Derwent’s daughter and had emotional reserves at her disposal, so presently she blew her nose, threw up her head and marched off along the terrace to the rose garden where she remained until she had regained control of herself.
She found a way of telling Paul without making an issue of it, throwing the information into a general conversation about her talk with Grace at the hotel and saying, with a casualness that deceived him, ‘Grace wondered if Simon knew I was his stepmother; I told her that Ikey had explained it to him long ago,’ and all Paul replied was, ‘Ikey did? Well, good for him! It was something I should have put off indefinitely.’
And that, so far as Claire was concerned, would have been that had not a new development involving Ikey and Simon taken place during Ikey’s embarkation leave, a year later. This time Claire found herself in uneasy alliance with Ikey, siding with him at the risk of engaging in her first serious quarrel with the man she adored.
It happened at lunchtime, on a day towards the end of October after Paul and Simon had come in from a morning’s cubbing in the woods. Paul seemed very put out about something and Simon, after kicking off his little boots and throwing down his hard hat and riding switch, disappeared upstairs, remaining there in spite of being called for lunch. The twins and Mary were in the nursery and the only other person at table was Ikey, who had seemed very preoccupied this leave, a circumstance Claire attributed to the imminence of his first tour overseas. Claire said, as Mrs Handcock appeared with the
vegetables, ‘I’ll see to that! Go up and get Simon, I’ve already called him three times!’ but Paul said, unexpectedly, ‘Leave him to work out his sulks!’ and Mrs Handcock departed, buttoning her lip as she always did when there was an atmosphere at table.
‘Did anything happen this morning?’ Claire asked and Paul grunted that sometimes he couldn’t get to the bottom of ‘that boy’, and that it was time Simon went to school to get sense knocked into him.
Ikey perked up at this, winking at Claire who at once demanded to know what had happened. It was something very trivial, he told her—Gilbert Eveleigh, as whipper-in, had posted Simon on his pony in the north run while most of the others stood back from the covert. The boy had been told to holler back as soon as the fox in the thick undergrowth crossed the ride towards a known earth north of the mere. The fox went in that direction—Gilbert and others would swear to that—but no holler came from Simon, and when they had all dashed round to his side of the wood he was seen walking his pony down a ride nearly a mile from the spot where he had been stationed. The fox got clean away and when Paul demanded to know whether Simon had seen it he admitted that he had but had turned away rather than holler.
‘Why ever did he do that?’ asked Claire much surprised, and Paul said that on the way home Simon had told him he did not want to go hunting again and that he thought hunting ‘wasn’t really a gentleman’s sport!’
This was too much for Ikey who let out a loud guffaw and even Claire smiled but Paul, whose sense of humour was unpredictable, said, ‘What’s funny about it? I felt a damned ass I can tell you! And as for him feeling squeamish about hunting we don’t want the boy to develop into a milksop, do we?’
‘He’ll not do that,’ Ikey said and with so much emphasis that Claire saw he no longer treated the incident as a joke. ‘If the kid really feels that way,’ he went on, ‘then jolly good luck to him! He’s probably right anyway!’
‘Now what the devil am I to make of that?’ demanded Paul angrily and Claire said they were both making too much of the matter, and that if he took Simon at his word, and left him behind next time, the boy would probably be disappointed.
‘I wouldn’t bank on that,’ Ikey said, quietly, and when they both looked at him, he added, ‘He’s got a natural sympathy for the fox. He always has given me the impression he’s signed on with the hunted!’
‘Sometimes, Ikey,’ Paul said, gruffly, ‘I wish to God you would stop favouring us with undergraduate drivel when you’re at home! It doesn’t suit you and it damned well irritates me!’
It was the first time Claire had ever heard him address Ikey sharply and she suddenly was aware that the clash between them went beyond Simon’s quixotic sympathy for a hunted fox. She said hastily, ‘All right, all right! Don’t let’s quarrel about it, it isn’t that important.’
‘It might be,’ Ikey said, ignoring her cautionary glance, ‘if the Gov’nor is determined to warp Simon into being the kind of person he isn’t, and never will be!’
‘Well he isn’t likely to do that,’ snapped Claire, feeling annoyed with both of them but she could not help noticing that Paul winced at Ikey’s remark as he said, sharply, ‘Look here, Ikey, I happen to think young Simon made an exhibition of himself turning his back on the field the way he did! I daresay the incident seems trivial to both of you but to my mind it was a blatant piece of showing off! If he really felt that way he could easily have made some kind of excuse.’
‘What kind of excuse?’ Ikey asked, and Paul replied, irritably, ‘Any kind! He could have pretended he wasn’t looking, or that he had just taken a toss!’
‘Yes,’ said Ikey, still quietly, ‘he could have done that and revealed himself as a liar and a coward when he’s neither.’
‘Oh do let’s get Simon down and forget it,’ said Claire but Paul said, ‘No, I’m damned if I will for I’ll not have Ikey trying to teach me how to bring up my own son! I tell you the boy was showing off and nothing more!’ whereupon Ikey growled, ‘That isn’t true and you know it, Gov’nor! It’s a damned pompous attitude and I’m hanged if I’ll sit here and listen to it! The kid was perfectly justified in doing what he did and as his father you ought to sympathise with him instead of bullying him!’ and he got up, nodded to Claire and strode towards the door.
He was stopped by Claire who shot out her arm as he passed and caught him by the wrist. She said, in a way that made them both feel slightly ashamed of themselves, ‘You can’t walk out on this now, Ikey! And neither can you, Paul! You’ve both said too much for my peace of mind and it’s quite wrong to begin an argument like this and then turn your backs on it!’
‘I wasn’t turning my back on it,’ Paul said, although he had in fact half risen. ‘All the same I can’t see any sense in prolonging it and upsetting everybody. You’d better go, Ikey, and I hope you mind your manners better than this in the mess!’
‘Stop it, Paul!’ Claire almost shouted, ‘just stop it and let me say something!’
They both looked at her then, Paul settling back in his chair, Ikey standing irresolutely by the door.
‘Now then,’ she said, trying hard to get her voice under control, ‘this is something we must have out here and now if only because I happen to be concerned. Very much concerned!’
‘I don’t see how,’ Paul grumbled but in a more reasonable tone. ‘What are you driving at, Claire?’
Claire looked at Ikey, realising that he was very well aware what she was driving at and went on, ‘Ikey is implying that Simon is . . . well, is his mother all over again! That’s what you meant, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is, Ma’am,’ he said, ‘and I’m sorry.’
‘You needn’t be sorry but for heaven’s sake do stop calling me “Ma’am”, as if I was someone who had usurped Queen Victoria!’ she snapped and a ghost of a grin plucked at the corners of his mouth and then vanished as he saw thunder in Paul’s glance.
‘I’ve never heard such damned nonsense in my life,’ Paul said but Claire, turning on him, said that it wasn’t nonsense and if he would have the patience to think about it he would see that it wasn’t. Paul said, helplessly, ‘But hang it, woman, Grace hunted twice a week! She was one of the best riders to hounds in the country.’
‘It isn’t simply a matter of hounds and foxes, Gov’nor,’ Ikey said, patiently, ‘it’s an attitude to life, an inherited attitude maybe. That’s what you meant, wasn’t it—Claire?’
Colour came back into her cheeks and through the fog of the issue that had them snapping at one another she saw that, for the first time since they had sat around this table together, they were of a single generation, no longer a man, his wife and a boy but three adults, each equally involved. She said, more calmly, ‘Yes, Ikey, that was exactly what I meant, and because of it I entirely agree with you! It would be quite wrong of Paul to bully Simon into hunting against his will, or looking on him as a ninny because he wouldn’t! I don’t like saying this, Paul, but you can be very stupid about some things and you’re being stupid now, because your pride as the local M.F.H. is involved.’
Ikey looked at her admiringly and for a moment nobody spoke. Then, when Paul moved as though to get up, and they both made sure he was going to storm out of the room, the door opened and Simon came in, silently taking his place and helping himself to vegetables. Claire said, gently, ‘You really must come when I call, Simon, we’ve all been waiting for you,’ and the boy, looking slightly startled, said, ‘I’m sorry, Mother, I was changing,’ and began to eat with catlike deliberation.
It was the strangest meal they had ever sat through but any prospect of further discussion was averted by Ikey’s tact for he talked to Simon about one thing and another and occasionally included both Paul and Claire in the conversation so that Claire, whose heart was still beating an uncertain rhythm, had cause to be grateful to him but wondered bleakly what Paul would say to her when they were alone.
After ab
out twenty minutes Paul rose, saying, ‘Run along and give Chivers a hand rubbing down, Simon, he’s on his own this afternoon,’ and the boy slipped off, glad to be out of it so cheaply.
‘Well, I’m not exactly climbing down,’ Paul said, as soon as he had gone, ‘but there might be something in what you say. It’s worth thinking over at all events because if it is so then it will need tackling one way or another! To have Simon go Grace’s way wouldn’t bring him much joy, would it? Or us either?’ and with that he stumped out. Ikey said, ‘I’m sorry I let you in for that, Claire. If I had to open my big mouth I shouldn’t have done it in your presence!’
‘It’s just as well you did,’ she told him, ‘for there’s little enough you could have done on your own, Ikey. Paul is hard to drive but I do flatter myself I’ve learned how to lead him.’
‘Yes,’ he said, with a grin, ‘I’m quite sure you have!’ and he thought, ‘Grace certainly knew her business when she urged me to write that letter, for Claire understands him better than any of us, yet he can manage her when he wouldn’t have managed Grace in a thousand years!’ He moved across to the window, looking across the paddock under its green and gold autumn mantle.
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