Morrisey was not desperate. He had access to several more liberal-minded girls in Whinmouth but by February 1945 he had come to believe that his manhood was at stake and decided to make one last attempt to vindicate it. He packed a large carton, choosing goods that were unobtainable, even in a community containing black market experts like Smut Potter and Jumbo Bellchamber, and drove his jeep over the sandhills to the Home Farm strawyard.
He did not make the mistake of telling Prudence that he was posted, or that this was his final visit. Indeed, he hinted at vast bounties awaiting her, underlining the hint by declaring that rationing would continue in Britain long after the cessation of hostilities. Prudence was impressed in spite of herself, both by the magnitude of his gifts and the threat of further shortages. In addition his visit had been nicely timed for Nelson, moments before Ed had appeared in the yard, had told her he was driving to Whinmouth to apply for extra feed coupons for his herd. She handled the packaged cartons as another woman might have handled pearls. ‘It’s swell of you, Eddy,’ she said, ‘real swell!’ Like all other women in the Valley she had imbibed American idioms along with American PX goods.
Eddy said, ‘It’s cold out here. Let’s go in the barn, honey.’
They always went into the barn when he arrived with a carton but so far this had proved Eddy’s terminus for Prudence was careful to leave the big door swinging open. She did so now but when he put his arm round her and kissed her in a way that Nelson had never kissed despite a good deal of encouragement on her part, she felt a bit of a niggard and wondered, a little apprehensively, how long this trade could be expected to continue at the present rate of exchange. She said, to his gratification, ‘I don’t know how I could have coped this last year without you around, Eddy!’ And then, ‘Did you pass Nelson on the way over here?’
‘Yeah!’ he said, hopefully, ‘heading towards the camp in his jalopy.’
He would have added his persuasions then but reasoned that if an invitation was coming it was far better it should come from her, so he drew back a little, saying, ‘You sure are cute, baby! And you smell nice, too!’
‘It’s that perfume you gave me, the bottle your buddy brought back from France.’ Then, very cautiously, ‘Did Nelson see you?’
‘I guess not. He was going in the other direction and all of a quarter mile up the road.’
‘Then let’s go up the ladder,’ Prudence said, and was surprised to find herself trembling. Eddy was getting on for forty and his poor condition had been a factor in him being left behind when the Rangers moved out, but he was up that vertical ladder in five seconds flat. There was plenty of hay up there and it was warm and dark, with no more than a shaft or two of winter sunshine penetrating cracks in the weatherboarding. She said, ‘You’re a naughty boy, you really are! And don’t think I believe a word about you being a bachelor!’ Then, with a directness that rather shocked him, ‘You’ll have to be quick before they wonder where we’ve gone.’
Nelson had seen the jeep breast the last of the dunes spotting it in his driving mirror as he approached the final bend in the farm track leading across the fields to the river road. It was no more than a glimpse but enough to decide his course of action. He rounded the bend, stopped, reversed and got out of the lorry, standing under the wall to plan his next move. It was not the first time he had kept watch on them. Once or twice he had seen them embrace, his eye glued to the hinge-crack of the barn door, but he had not disturbed them. A man could not be expected to stake his entire future on a kiss or two and a bit of scuffling behind an open barn door, but somehow, today, he felt very uneasy, having heard on the Valley grapevine that the U.S. depot on the beach was due to close. He left the vehicle where it was and went through the door in the park wall and across the western paddock, taking care to stay the far side of the hedge. Then, seeing no-one in the yard but noting the bonnet of the jeep projecting from behind the barn, he moved quietly behind the byre and thus reached his usual observation post.
Nothing came within his range of vision except a pile of tools, a few bales of straw, and a muck-spreader, and this puzzled him so that he wondered for a moment if Prudence was settling accounts in the kitchen. Then he heard a stifled laugh and it came from immediately above, telling him that on this occasion Sergeant Morrisey had enlarged his bridgehead. He crept inside the barn and listened at the foot of the ladder. What he heard resolved his next action.
Among the tools in the corner of the barn was a mattock with a loose shaft and when he laid hold of it the head and shaft parted without so much as a rattle. Nelson was slightly built and below medium height and although, by now, he was fully charged with indignation, he knew that he was no match for the stocky sergeant. God, they said, looked favourably upon a worthy cause but there was another saying that He also sided with the big battalions and Nelson was a realist. He tightened his hold on the mattock shaft and ascended the vertical ladder step by step, taking his time about it and testing each rung for creaks.
Neither of them heard him and neither was positioned to see his head rise slowly above the level of the floor. He was more or less prepared for what he saw under the sloping eaves but it gave him a nasty jolt to have his gloomiest suspicions so convincingly confirmed. Prudence, it appeared, was at last giving full value for money and from the glimpse he got of her in his rush across the floor she was not finding the discharge of the debt irksome. Fortunately for her Eddy was the more exposed of the two and the heavy end of the shaft descended before either was aware they had company. Eddy shouted a picturesque oath and achieved a quick double roll, so that the second blow, aimed at his head, glanced off his padded shoulder and struck the back of his hand. Like a dancing demon returning to the pit in a miracle play he hopped the length of the loft and then, to Nelson’s amazement, disappeared altogether having shot feet first through the hatch that was partially masked by hay.
He fell with a terrible crash and had not his exit been vertical he might have broken his neck. As it was he broke his right leg and lay bellowing like a calf, adding his yells to the piercing screams of Prudence who had somehow struggled to her knees and was embracing Nelson’s gumbooted calves in the attitude of a drunkard’s wife in a Victorian temperance print.
It was a dramatic gesture but quite unnecessary. Nelson, appalled by the sergeant’s yells and also by the speed of his exit, had no thought of striking her but was concerned only with the possibility of having committed murder. He was almost sure that he had and in the moment of terrible panic that followed he saw himself standing in the dock at Paxtonbury Assizes pleading the unwritten law. Then he managed to break free from his wife, leaving her clutching a pair of muddy gumboots, and the relief of seeing Sergeant Morrisey conscious and rocking himself to and fro at the foot of the ladder was stunning. He said, briefly, ‘Get down out of here, you bloody whore, and fetch Bernard and Jock. Say we were skylarking and he slipped. I’m going to phone ambulance and Squire.’
She stared up at him and he thought he had never seen anybody look so ridiculous, a woman in her mid-thirties, kneeling on a truss of hay embracing a pair of gumboots. Her skirt was rucked up to her thighs and her suspender clips were broken so that her stockings, stockings brought her by Eddy, had wrinkled down to her shins. Straw was clinging to her disordered hair and all the time she knelt there she continued to scream, so that it was not necessary to summon Bernard and Jock for they came running, together with Nelson’s aged pigman, Walt Davey, who was thus able to give a lively account of the tableau that night in the bar of The Raven at Coombe Bay.
‘There ’er was,’ Walt was to declare, ‘screaming ’er ade off, like ’er was mazed! And there was the Yank, hollering bliddy murder at the bottom of the ladder! You never zeed zuch a carry-on, and then down comes Young Maister, white as a vish-belly, steps right over the Yank like he was a bale o’ straw, and rins out to the vone! Well, us straightened him out as best we could, and Bernard put a splint on his leg, and the
n down comes the missis showing all ’er’s got, and not giving a damn neither for ’er was that scared. ’Er stood looking at him for a minute without so much as a wink an’ then ’er zees us looking at her an’ suddenly whips round and out and that’s the last I zeed of ’er.’
It was the best story told in the bar for a generation. They plied him with cider and he went on to describe the removal of the cursing, bellowing Yank to the Marine sickbay, but he was unable to tell them of the subsequent interview between Squire Craddock and Nelson Honeyman for it took place at the Big House, whither Nelson went as soon as the injured sergeant had been driven away. The result of that conversation, however, and others that followed it, was brought home to him when it became known that Nelson Honeyman and his wife—‘Prudence-Pitts-that-was’ as the Valley folk called her in the manner they referred to all girls who had married locally—were breaking their tenancy and taking a sheep farm in Dorset, and that Home Farm would now be run by Squire Craddock or one of his relatives.
It was no light decision for the badly shaken Nelson but although the Squire did his best to dissuade him from leaving his mind was made up by the certainty that the story had already passed into Valley legend, and also perhaps, by the attitude of his father-in-law, Henry Pitts of Hermitage.
Henry, called in at the second conference, was abruptly silenced by Paul when he broke out, ‘Tiz all a bliddy fuss over nought! You catches her under one o’ they bliddy vorriners, an’ you does what any man would do, lambasts him with a pick handle an’ throws the bugger downstairs. But you forgot something after all. You didn’t give my bliddy maid a tannin’ ’er woulden forget in a hurry, and because you didden’ and because it’s too late in the day for me to do it, you’ll never have the upper hand of ’er now. Giddon, when I was your age …’
But this was as far as he got, for Paul said, bleakly, ‘Hold your tongue, Henry. This is 1945 not 1895 and if Nelson lays a finger on his wife it won’t do his case any good if the American prosecutes. He could, and probably would if he thought Prudence would back him up in court! Personally I think you’re wrong to clear out, Nelson. These things are soon forgotten I can assure you, but for God’s sake don’t take it out on her until he’s out of the country.’ He had never liked Nelson as much as his father but it saddened him to see a long family tradition broken by such a stupid incident. He went on, ‘Why don’t you leave the American to me? I’ll get in touch with his unit and tell them the facts and in the meantime you can think it over.’
Nelson said glumly, ‘This Dorset farm is going cheap. You won’t be able to buy it for double the money when the war is over and I’d like to get clear away from here, Squire. By now everybody knows what happened and everybody’s sniggering behind my back.’
‘O’ course they be,’ Henry muttered, ‘but they’d zoon stop if you took a beanpole to my maid like I said—all right, Squire, us knows times ’ave changed, and everyone along with ’em, but I’m ’er father and she was always a bliddy handful, so why can’t I have my say zame as you two?’
‘Because it’s a damn silly say,’ Paul told him, ‘and you keep away from her, do you hear?’ Then, to Nelson, ‘Has she agreed to go to Dorset?’
‘Not yet. I haven’t told her. She’s keeping out o’ my way as you can imagine, but—well, I’d like you to discuss it with her while I’m seeing the solicitors. I daresay you could talk more sense into her than I could at the moment.’
‘All right if that’s what you want,’ Paul said, although by no means relishing the task and he left with a warning nod at Henry and crossed the paddock to the farm where he found Prudence drinking port and lemon in the kitchen. He said, briefly, ‘Nelson’s been up at the house and told me and your father what happened over here. He wants to leave, and take a bigger farm in Dorset. It seems he’s had his eye on it for some time. How do you feel about backing him?’
She looked, he thought, unhappy and thoroughly ashamed of herself, and suddenly he remembered that she was one of his numerous godchildren. She said, slowly, ‘I’ll make a fresh start with him if he wants to try.’ Then, ‘We’ve never really hit it off, Squire. I only married Nelson because I thought I was in the family way. To my mind that was worse than what happened with Eddy, but when he realised the truth he never made this kind of rumpus. Can you explain that?’
‘It’s very easy to explain,’ Paul said, recollecting that he had always had his suspicions about the marriage. ‘The first was a private matter but this makes him a Valley laughing stock and that’s why he’s determined to get out while he’s got the chance.’ His resentment for her moderated as it always did when he was not faced with cant. These people in their early thirties were subject to pressures that had not been exerted on his own generation. The first war had damaged the structure of the old civilisation but it had not rotted it, as had the Depression and the years of drift that had resulted in Hitler. Back in 1917 and 1918 one had always felt one was fighting to preserve something worth preserving, that once things had settled down everything would be much the same, but this wasn’t true any longer. The whole fabric of community and family life was in tatters and there did not seem to be much hope of repairing it. Would it seem such a dastardly thing to her to betray a colourless husband like Nelson Honeyman, trading a few sweaty moments in a loft for an armful of household goods that no housewife in the Valley would have wanted thirty years ago? He didn’t think so. This kind of thing was in the atmosphere one breathed nowadays. It was in politics and business. It showed in the black-market traffic of men like Smut Potter and Henry, and in the business activities of his own son, Andy. Who the hell was he to condemn her for copulating with a Yank, when his own daughter-in-law had done the same thing with her brother-in-law and the passage of a year or so had resulted in his own wife’s passive acceptance of the situation?
He said, ‘What’s that muck you’re drinking? Haven’t you got a real drink to offer me?’ and she crossed to the big dresser, returning with half a bottle of Scotch and poured him a few fingers.
‘I suppose this is a bit more lease-lend?’ he said glumly, and she said it wasn’t but the last of half a dozen that Nelson had got from Stacey, the Whinmouth wine merchant, in exchange for a crate of eggs and a few pounds of butter. The information widened his area of tolerance and he said:
‘That Yank could sue for assault and Nelson would find himself in serious trouble,’ but she replied, ‘Rubbish! Eddy would have to cite me as a witness and can you see me forgetting to tell the magistrates he got me up in that loft on false pretences?’ He chuckled, then straightened his face. ‘I don’t want you and Nelson to go. His father was farming here when I came and he was the third Honeyman to work the Home Farm. Will you be any happier among strangers?’
‘That’s for Nelson to decide,’ she said. ‘One farm is as good as another for my money.’
There it was again, this rootlessness, this yawning renunciation of tradition and the claims of a community, and even Rumble had been infected by it to some extent. It was frightening to a man who would be sixty-six in June.
‘What is it you want?’ he asked, suddenly, ‘not just you but the whole lot of you who grew up here between the wars? What means anything to you?’ She looked at him steadily and he was reminded of her great strapping mother, Gloria, whom he had seen courted, married and buried.
‘Time to play,’ she said, with a candour that surprised him, ‘I don’t seem to have had any since I was a kid. Soon I’ll be forty and then what? Somewhere there must be fun around and I want a piece of it.’
‘What kind of fun?’ he persisted.
‘Every kind. A car that’s not half a hearse. Travel maybe—there’s lots of places I’d like to see before I die, good food in my belly after being made to feel like a criminal for using half a dozen of my own eggs in a pudding and—well, let it pass!’
‘No,’ he said, ‘we won’t, what else?’
She looked acros
s at him slyly, with a gleam of Henry’s mischief in her eyes. ‘I suppose to feel a real woman now and again,’ she admitted. ‘Poor old Nelson, bless his heart, never had it in him to succeed in that direction.’
‘Did anyone else? Anyone special?’
‘No, or if they did I’ve forgotten. I don’t expect you to believe me but this was the first time I went off the rails. Really off them, I mean.’
He believed her. Deep down, he suspected, she was as loyal as most of the young wives about the Valley, but she was also in open rebellion against the theft of her youth, not only by the war years but by the dullness of Young Nelson, and as if confirming this she looked at him with another flash of her father’s mischief and said, ‘The war on one side, Squire, life isn’t all acre yield and tractor hours, is it? We all know it isn’t with you and God knows, you’re dedicated enough.’
‘Now just how am I to interpret that? he asked, smiling at her impudence.
‘Well,’ she said frankly, ‘you’ve got a long family and you don’t have any trouble with Mrs Craddock.’
He laughed openly at this and she laughed too, so that the tension that had been present in the room all but disappeared. He found his sympathy for her mounting. She was one of the prettiest girls the Valley had ever produced and he caught himself contemplating the opportunities Nelson must have neglected. ‘By George,’ he thought, ‘she’s so frustrated I believe she’d welcome a man my age if I went the right way about it. That would really set the Valley by the ears!’ But then, checking himself with a silent, half-humorous admonition, he said, ‘You can hardly expect me to give Nelson that kind of advice at his age. Do you think this has a bearing on you not having any family?’
‘It might have,’ she said, ‘but I can’t honestly say I feel deprived in that respect. It’s a lot more complicated. I had a pretty good time before I was married and I’ve always gone out of my way to dodge that dowdiness that seems to creep up on most Valley women the moment they’ve hooked a man bringing home good money.’ A kind of defiance entered her voice as she stood up, leaning her weight against the black oak overmantel. ‘Men still look at me the way they used to ten years ago. Even men of settled habit do. But Nelson doesn’t. I don’t mean by that he isn’t masculine, but there’s something guarded about him. Maybe it’s a Puritan streak, although some so-called Puritans I’ve met …’ and then reticence caught up with her and she completed the sentence with a shrug.
The Green Gauntlet (A Horseman Riding By) Page 31