Post of Honour

by R. F Delderfield

  ‘Well, I think I managed that very neatly indeed!’ she crowed, ‘and moreover my part in it will establish just the right relationship between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law!’

  ‘I suppose you’re boasting of your share in helping that dull, well-meaning old duck to cope with all those beaming clergymen?’ he asked and she laughed and said, ‘Oh dear, Paul, you really are dim about some things! Haven’t you realised I arranged that wedding singlehanded?’

  He stopped the car on the first stage of the descent, pulling off the road not fifty yards from the point where, more than twenty years before, she had helped him to adjust himself to all that had happened as a result of the suffragette riot in Westminster Yard.

  ‘What the devil are you talking about, Claire? How did you arrange it? Stevie has been blowing hot and cold about that girl for years and it seems to me all that happened is that he got a fresh look at her when she turned up at Whiz’s wedding, looking extremely fetching!’

  ‘Well, to begin with it was me who invited her with that end in view,’ she said, ‘and after that it was me who told Monica where he was based and advised her to manufacture an excuse to bump into him!’

  ‘Good God, you did that?’ he exclaimed, genuinely amazed. ‘But why? What made it so important to you to see Stevie married?’

  ‘I don’t see why a mother shouldn’t work as hard to get her sons safely married as to find someone suitable for her daughters! As a matter of fact sons usually stand in greater need of the push, especially ours! In this case, however, I had a special incentive. I was determined to split the partnership and now Andy will have to get married too, you see if I’m not right!’

  ‘Have you anyone special in mind?’ he asked but his sarcasm was tinged with admiration.

  ‘No,’ she admitted, seriously, ‘but he’ll find someone and soon for he won’t enjoy himself nearly so much without Stevie as an audience! Don’t you realise that most of their trouble stems from the fact that they have been playing “Betcher!” ever since they were toddlers?’

  He knew it of course but her talent for practical intrigue startled him. He said, ‘What exactly did you do? Apart from the invitation and the tip-off?’

  ‘Oh, I had a long and rather blushing talk with Monica when she came home after “meeting” him in Birmingham. We met by appointment at The Mitre and, as the saying goes, she emptied her heart, poor dear! Well, it wasn’t in vain, I told her to leave it all to me and that I’d have Stevie roped and delivered in less than a week!’

  ‘Knowing The Pair that was a damned reckless offer but I’ll wager the cards fell your way. They usually do in the matrimonial field.’

  ‘No,’ she said, unblushingly, ‘as a matter of fact they didn’t, or not at first. Those two maniacs of ours got involved in the crash the next day. You remember—the first we heard about it was Stevie ringing up after being discharged from hospital.’

  He chuckled, recalling the way she had exploited his own helplessness shortly before he proposed but his only comment was, ‘Well, go on, finish it.’

  ‘In a way I was lucky. Andy was crocked but Stevie escaped with scratches, tho’ I daresay I should have thought up something if it had been the other way round.’

  ‘You bet your life you would! What precisely did you do, you scheming hussy?’

  ‘I just mentioned, ever so casually, that there was talk of Monica Dearden marrying Alderman Gratwick’s son—you know, the ironmonger one—and then I told Monica to get young Gratwick to take her to the Territorial Ball. I knew Stevie would rise to that bait and sure enough he did! He was in Paxtonbury Town Hall before the orchestra had tuned up and now—well, now they’re on their way in a gondola!’

  ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ he said. ‘Did it occur to you that if the marriage goes on the rocks you’ll be directly responsible?’

  ‘No, it didn’t and doesn’t! He’s kept that poor girl on tenterhooks for years and with all the opportunities he must have had that must mean something! Monica played up much better than I expected, however, and in view of her ecclesiastical background that was rather surprising.’

  ‘Just what do you mean by that?’

  He saw that she was not only enjoying her triumph but also the prospect of shocking him. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘knowing The Pair, and the fact that, behind their display of fireworks, they are basically decent human beings with tender consciences, I encouraged her to let Stevie go almost the entire length of the garden path providing she didn’t let him into the summer-house! It seemed to work. She brought him to the boil in less than a month!’

  She had often amused him with her half-baked schemes, and her transparently counterfeit logic, but never quite so much as on this occasion. He said, when he had done laughing, ‘You’re an absolute travesty of a wife and mother! I don’t know where you get it from—certainly not from your father—and I can’t bring myself to believe from your mother either. Now, I suppose, you’ll go to work on Andy?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t have to. You see. Andy will go wife-hunting­ himself now that he’s thrown on his own resources. Stevie­ was always the real leader.’

  ‘And how about Mary?’ he asked cautiously but there was no mischief in her eyes as she replied, very levelly, ‘Mary? Oh, she’s your problem, not mine! That’s one for you to tackle without any help from me!’

  He had no need to be reminded of that and thought briefly of Rumble Patrick, now in Alberta doing God alone knew what, but still, he was sure, holding Mary’s heart to ransom. She had been very quiet of late, an island of serenity in a sea of to-ing and fro-ing, willing to smile at the antics of her brothers and sisters but not to contribute much to family high jinks. How far did one’s parental responsibilities extend? His eldest, Simon, was now twenty-eight, and his youngest, Claire’s favourite, was fifteen and quite the daintiest creature he had ever seen. Of the six of them three were now ‘safely’ manned and two of the others likely to be in no time at all but of the six not one had inherited his obsession with the Valley, or was prepared to get behind it and help to push into the future. Simon, inheriting Grace’s wider outlook, was already immersed in the troubles of the world at large and perhaps, like his mother before him, secretly despised the limits Paul had always set upon himself. The Pair made no secret at all of their impatience with his parochialism and had reverted to type, deriving more satisfaction from a discarded boiler than a good harvest. As to the girls, Mary loved beauty and seemed content to seek it at home but suppose Rumble Patrick turned up ‘whispering of lands where blaze the unimaginable flowers’? Then, he supposed, she would turn her back on the Valley without another thought and he would never see her again, except for an occasional visit from somewhere thousands of miles away. As for the remaining two, Whiz and young Claire, he expected nothing at all from them. Whiz was married anyway and the Valley had never been more to her than a place to cross at breakneck speed on a mettlesome horse. Claire, the baby, whom his wife and almost everyone else spoiled outrageously, would find nothing more absorbing in a Sorrel pool than her own reflections, so that, taken all round, they were a disappointing bunch. Claire said, with a smile, ‘I don’t need a penny for them! I suppose you were wondering whether they’ve been much of an investment after all?’ and he replied, without rancour, ‘Something like that but a man is a fool who expects a dividend from flesh and blood. I look for my return in the by-products!’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I’ve still managed to hang on to most of my capital, haven’t I?’ and he made a wide sweep with his hand; she realised that he was not referring to money.

  III

  Claire made good her boast. Within three months of Stevie’s marriage to Monica Dearden, and their settling in what Paul thought of as a rather vulgar Edwardian house in a suburb of Birmingham, Andy appeared and presented his intended with the flourish a magician uses when he whips the curtains aside to reveal the mi
ssing lady still in one piece. Claire did not say, ‘I told you so!’ but her glance implied it when Andy came bounding into the hall one crisp, February morning, having driven through the night from the Welsh valleys where, he crowed, he had gone to rescue his Margaret and whisk her over the border like a marauding moss-trooper in search of a bride.

  His choice presented Paul with no puzzles. Contemplating Margaret he reflected that perhaps, after all, at least one of his sons had inherited something from him, for at Andy’s age Margaret Highton’s ripeness would have made instant appeal to him. The girl’s qualifications for an extrovert’s bride were all on show—a happy-go-lucky temperament, a trim little figure, Celtic sensuality and an obvious capacity for enjoying the bonuses of life, good food, pretty clothes, lots of laughter and a regular roll in the hay. She was small and neat, with exceptionally pretty legs and a fashionable pageboy bob framing a fresh, gently rounded face. Her brown hair reflected firelight in the way sunshine teases the polished husk of a chestnut and she had large brown eyes, a retroussé nose and a wide red mouth that turned up at the corners and would probably stay that way if kissed often enough. Paul took to her at once and Claire, watching him, understood why; Margaret had promise and to Paul a woman without it was not worth a moment’s attention. Claire, for her part, was fascinated by the girl’s Welsh lilt that suggested sad Celtic songs sung round the camp-fires of forgotten kings with long, unpronounceable names full of ‘u’s and double ‘d’s. She thought, the moment she saw her, ‘Well, I’d say Andy was luckier than Stevie! She’s got something, apart from pretty-prettiness and I daresay they’ll have a string of handsome children and enjoy watching them grow up!’ and she left Paul to show Margaret around while she listened to Andy’s unlikely account of his courtship that began in the casualty ward of a cottage hospital in Glamorgan, and ended a few days ago with Andy storming the dispensary at three in the morning, being ejected by an indignant night sister, and returning at breakfast time to persuade Margaret that, until the British paid its nurses better wages, they didn’t deserve to have any! Claire said, laughing, ‘Did she take much persuading, Andy?’ and he said not after she had seen the ring that he had purchased from one of his seedier contacts in Cardiff, getting a seventeen-and-a-half per cent reduction on condition he gave ‘Solly’ (who dealt in scrap metals as well as expensive jewellery) twenty-five shillings a ton ‘over the odds’ for the rusting remains of a coaling barge!

  ‘I hope you didn’t tell her as much as you’re telling me!’ Claire laughed, ‘for the idea of a man bargaining for my engagement ring would have made me think twice at Margaret’s age!’ but as she said this she felt a wave of affection for him that embraced not only Andy, and his sexy little Welsh girl, but the whole of Andy’s generation who seemed so miraculously liberated from the conventions of the preceding generations. The very notion of buying an engagement ring from a scrap dealer, rushing into a girl’s place of work, and carrying her off like a freebooting soldier at the sack of a city, would have been preposterous in her day and she remembered the scandal that had led to her virtual exile from the Valley throughout the years of Paul’s first marriage. She could never agree with Paul and other traditionists that all post-war changes were regrettable. A few were but the majority were long overdue and one was surely the disappearance of hypocrisy among the young, giving them the freedom to act on impulse and indulge their natural appetites without artlessness. Andy had simply looked at this plump little partridge and, after prodding her here and there, had decided that he liked what he saw and here they were, as good as in bed together, and enjoying every moment of it! ‘Damned good luck to them!’ she thought. ‘I wish Paul and I had been able to use that kind of short-cut!’ and she bustled off to order a special dinner but found time during the afternoon to enter Andy’s engagement into the diary immediately under recent entries devoted to Whiz and Stevie.

  The April wedding was a very simple affair, more intimate and relaxing than either of its forerunners. Margaret’s father, a retired miner, made no excuses for his inability to do more than provide a modest reception in the institute adjoining the local chapel and Paul found both him and his wife refreshing contrasts to Ian McClean’s formidable aunt, and the patrician dignity of the Archdeacon and his wife. Claire, watching them talking and laughing together, was amused and relieved, for although she freely admitted to being a bit of a snob she would have hated to witness her husband or children putting on side. These were his kind of people, she reflected, whose company he had sought ever since she had known him and they brought out the best in him, whereas the twins seemed equipped to move freely on all levels of society. She noticed, however, that Stevie’s wife, Monica, tilted her nose an inch or so as she took her seat at the trestle table and toyed with lettuce salad, and thought, briefly, ‘It’s odd they should have been so close all their lives but split on their choice of wives! I still think Monica was absolutely right for Stevie and there’s no doubt at all that the little Welsh girl is ideal for Andy, but will this prove the fork in the road that The Pair have travelled all these years?’ Then she found herself looking directly into the eyes of Simon, saw that he was smiling and realised that they were sharing the same thought. He came over and said, in his diffident voice, ‘It’s all right, Claire, you don’t have to worry! If Monica fries to snub her Stevie will sit on her, hard!’

  ‘There’s not even privacy in thought when you’re around, Simon,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I think you must be Ikey, reincarnated.’

  ‘Well, at least I was trained by Ikey,’ he said. ‘Thank your lucky stars he never taught Gov the noble art of thought-reading!’

  She laughed, feeling, as always, relaxed in Simon’s company. He was mellowing a good deal, she thought, since leaving home and marrying that earnest but tiresomely intense wife of his and she wondered if Paul was right when he said Simon was growing a shell. She held to her point, saying, ‘How can you be so certain? Stevie might even agree with her!’

  ‘No,’ he said, seriously, ‘the twins are vulgarians but just ones! They’ll make money, pots of it I daresay, but they’ll never let money makes fools of them. How could they? You and Gov had them until they were seven and you know what the Jesuits say!’

  It struck her that he was paying her a rather gracious compliment, that he was saying, in effect, no one who had grown up at Shallowford would find it easy to lose the classlessness that had been such a feature of the Valley since Paul had reigned there but she was never less than honest with Simon and said, ‘I can’t take a ha’porth of credit for that, Simon! I was a terrible snob when I married your father.’

  ‘Oh, I daresay,’ he said, cheerfully, ‘but you were humble enough to learn from him and loved him enough to want to. As a matter of fact, Claire, that’s something I’ve always admired about you two, you borrowed tolerance from one another, whenever you needed it! I suppose that’s what made the marriage so successful.’

  ‘Stop it,’ she said, ‘you’ll have me blushing in a minute!’

  ‘So what? If you can’t fly a happy marriage like an ensign on a wedding day when can you? You don’t have to apologise for it, it’s rare enough these days.’

  ‘Yours seems to be working well enough.’

  ‘Yes. but “well enough” doesn’t win prizes, does it? You have to remember Rachel took a beating over Keith. She’ll never quite get it out of her system.’

  She would have liked to have asked him to be more explicit but at that moment the bridal pair took their seat at the top table and Stevie, as toastmaster, called for order. She continued to ponder his rather enigmatic conversation and it bothered her so much that she missed half the fun of the send-off, when all Margaret’s neighbours converged on the pavement shouting expressions of goodwill that sounded like Celtic battle-cries. It was during the inevitable anti-climax, when they were returning to the hotel to say their good-byes and disperse, that she was able to draw him aside again and say, ‘I’ve been thinking
. . . it was Paul’s second go, you know, and that gave me a flying start . . . ’ and she stopped, remembering too late that she was addressing the son of Grace Lovell. He noticed her confusion and rescued her with a smile and a squeeze of the elbow.

  ‘There was a big difference, Claire. Rachel was in love with poor old Beanpole Horsey but you and Paul . . . it was in the cards from the start! I was the product of a misdeal!’

  ‘And a very lucky one for me,’ she said quickly and kissed him, remembering how she had once felt impelled to kiss Ikey Palfrey for roughly the same reasons. It was strange, she thought, as she watched Simon and Rachel drive off in their battered Morris, with the tatters of the last election posters still adhering to the doors—strange and a little spooky how vividly that boy recalled Ikey Palfrey, whose understudy he had always been.

  And yet, taken all round, she felt elated, reflecting that if the success of her marriage was so obvious to him, the son of the woman she had replaced, it must be doubly so to everyone and perhaps this was something to crow about after all. Her elation bubbled over when they were packing for the drive home and she said, suddenly, ‘Look here, Paul, why do we have to go home? It’s spring, and not all Wales is as down and out as this place! Why don’t we take a few days off?’

  He never like staying away from the Valley for more than a day or two but she saw by his smile that she had anticipated him and suddenly remembered why. Last year had been their Silver Wedding anniversary but there had been no celebration for it had clashed with Prudence Pitts’ wedding, then the whirl of Whiz’s engagement and marriage, and, within weeks, Stevie’s marriage to Monica Dearden. He had always promised her some kind of celebration and now it was far too late to arrange one they could share with all their old friends in the Valley.