‘Funny thing, I remember opening my eyes after Maureen operated on me on the kitchen table for those broken ribs, and wondering how you and poor old Grace had changed places. It was summer then. The sun played games in a wisp of hair behind your ear. I remember watching it for a hell of a long time before I spoke. Then you got me some tea and played that tuneless piano we had in the dining-room, remember?’
‘In great detail,’ she said, having to make a big effort to hold back tears of relief, for she had been more frightened than she cared to admit.
After that he mended very quickly and Maureen was able to talk him into a Mediterranean cruise for the early spring but somehow—after being informed that an overlooked insurance policy for nearly two thousand was due—the jaunt had enlarged itself into a world tour and because, at that time, he had to be humoured, Claire pretended to be enthusiastic and everything was arranged in a great hurry so that they were basking in Sicilian sunshine by March.
It was getting on for half a century since he had been so far afield and Claire had never even been to Calais, so that to their astonishment they began to enjoy themselves, particularly when they reached Egypt and took the traditional camel-ride to the pyramids, and then, in a hard, dry heat that never scorched the Valley, sailed down the Arabian Gulf and across to Colombo, and on to Hobart where Claire had a very hospitable cousin holding high rank in the police force.
Paul liked Tasmania because it had so many physical similarities to Devon and they stayed there nearly a month before moving on to Samoa where he paid his respects to the late Robert Louis Stevenson, and after that to San Francisco, a city that appealed to him as a sparkling, vigorous place in great contrast to the more sultry parts of California they visited. He also enjoyed his trip across the Rockies although he told Claire that mountain scenery of this kind made him homesick for the tree-hung hills of the Westcountry. This was his first admission of homesickness and she was glad they were well on their way home, for although he now looked as tanned and fit as she ever remembered, she sensed that he was getting restless and had noticed that he needed no provocation to bring the Valley into their conversation.
She said, when they sighted the Eddystone, ‘Well now, there you are, and I don’t imagine we’ll ever catch you west of Plymouth again,’ and he replied, fervently, ‘By God, you won’t!’ and then, hastily, ‘Not that I haven’t enjoyed it, old girl. It was time we shook the straw out of our hair and I’m not at all sorry we went.’ But from that instant he was in a ferment to be home and the Valley could hardly have put on a better show for him, for the long, hot summer he had predicted was longer and hotter than anyone remembered, to offset a winter that had been longer and colder.
As they drove down the slope of the moor to their first sight of the Sorrel he was like a boy returning home from his first term at boarding school and when, early next morning, she saw him foraging in the cupboard for his riding breeches and tall boots, she did not have to be told what he intended doing but said, hiding her smile, ‘What time lunch?’ and he replied, ‘Any old time. I want to have a good look round and get myself up-to-date! I’ll probably make do with a sandwich and a beer in The Raven.’
She could indulge herself in a long chuckle the moment he had clattered out of the yard and said to Mary, who had dropped in for breakfast, ‘He’s been on a lot of day excursions in the last few months but he’ll get a bigger kick out of this one than his trot around the Pyramids on a camel.’ Then, forgetting him, she pumped her daughter for all the family gossip and spent a pleasant hour or so hearing progress reports on her numerous grandchildren.
Paul walked the grey across the field paths to the door in the park wall that he always thought of as ‘The Postern’ and dismounted to pass it. It had been relatively cool in the paddocks but out here, facing the open fields of Four Winds that stretched as far as the dunes, the full strength of the morning sun struck his face and flies began to pester Snowdrop so that he flung his big head to and fro. Eveleigh’s harvest looked very promising from here, acres of wheat nearest the river and further over barley and rye. The early summer months must have been exceptionally hot to produce such results and Paul reminded himself to ask Rumble to tell him how many hours of sunshine they had had since April. He could only recall two summers in his life when the sun had this strength at 9 a.m., that of 1902, the year he had settled in, and later in 1919 when he had returned to a depopulated Valley after the war. He was sorry for Snowdrop, but for himself he always enjoyed a blazing sun and as he went along under the park wall he made his usual observation of the pattern of wildflowers growing there, huge glowing dandelions like picquet lines of miniature suns, splashes of crimson campion, honeysuckle he could inhale from the saddle, yellow toadflax, vetch, yarrow, and the one that few thought of as a flower but had always impressed him as majestic—the huge, gently nodding umbrellas of cowparsley, a growth that Gypsy Meg had dignified by the name of ‘Ladies’ Lace’. It was a fine show but he supposed farmers like Eveleigh and Rumble Patrick never thought of it as anything but a vast crop of weeds. The river was down to a trickle and the mud along the margins was baked hard and seamed by a thousand cracks.
He crossed Codsall Bridge and stopped for a moment to greet Young Eveleigh, now not so young, for he must be at least twenty-eight although he was still a bachelor. Bob Eveleigh, not a notable conversationalist, confirmed his hopes of a bumper harvest and as he rode on down the lane Paul wondered if the young man was conscious of standing on the exact spot where his father, in local parlance, ‘had been blowed to tatters’ in February, 1942. He thought not, for the Eveleighs, one and all, were an unsentimental breed who concerned themselves with the present. Connie was pleased to see him and came out wiping her hands on her apron, asking conventional questions about his travels.
‘I didn’t see anything to compare with this, Connie,’ he told her and she said that didn’t surprise her for he was generally reckoned a stay-at-home, but if someone gave her the opportunity to sail round the world she would soon be off and away. She told him about her younger children, the boy studying accountancy in Bristol, the girl, married to a G.P.O. telephone engineer, who had presented her with a grandson ‘looking exactly like a snap I kept of Harold at the same age’. He rode on, wondering at his abiding interest in such trivia, keeping the river on his right as he ascended the long heathery slope of the moor to the abandoned R.M. Camp, still, he noted, a blot on the landscape and the abode of squatters Andy had urged him to send packing last autumn.
There were about half-a-dozen families living in ruinous Nissen huts, presenting the same kind of picture as the Potters of the Dell forty years ago. One of the men, a pale, unshaven Londoner, with an accent that Paul placed as Hounslow or thereabouts, looked at him apprehensively, but when Paul smiled and nodded he approached hesitantly, his wife and two or three children peeping from the hut doorway.
‘Hasn’t anyone at Whinmouth done anything for you people?’ Paul asked. ‘It must have been damned cold up here last winter,’ and the man said, sulkily, that it was at least a roof and a stove, and that everyone here had their name down on the Council lists but were told, whenever they went into the town, that there were scores of local residents ahead of them. He looked at Paul speculatively, trying to assess his interest in the situation, and finally added, ‘Couldn’t you ginger ’em up a bit, sir? I wouldn’t care to spend another winter up here. If I’d have known what we was in for in that bloody desert I woulder let old Rommel chase the Wogs round Cairo, and good luck to him!’
It was, Paul reflected, a perennial problem. He had heard almost identical comments from trench-veterans in the early ’twenties and it did seem monstrously unjust that a man who, had devoted years of his life to saving the country from a thug like Hitler could be at the mercy of tinpot officials when he demanded a home for his children. It was no use asking the fellow why he had left his own area and wandered down here among strangers. There were probably any numb
er of reasons, all of them complex. He could have chased them off last year, he supposed, and that might have compelled local government to do something on their behalf, but somehow he hadn’t the heart when their spokesman had called on him and asked for time. Instead he had turned a blind eye to the little community, ignoring Andy’s advice ‘to boot the buggers off’. He said, ‘How many of you are here? How many units?’ and the man said there were now five, nineteen people in all, eleven of them kids. ‘I’ll have another go at the Housing Committee,’ he said, ‘but in the meantime make some kind of effort to keep the place tidier and if the constable calls refer him to me.’
The man thanked him and he rode away feeling shamed. ‘That’s patronage if you like!’ he told himself, ‘and a generation out of date. But what else could I say? It isn’t as if any one of them up here is ready to learn farming, and I wouldn’t wonder if most of them aren’t layabouts who wouldn’t stick at a job in the cities!’
The encounter took a little of the brightness out of the morning and, as he crossed the edge of the moor and headed past the scar of Periwinkle, it struck him as ridiculous that civilisation could evolve, when necessary, the means of destroying a city the size of Hiroshima with a single bomb and then fall flat on its face when asked to find homes for five English families. The answer, he supposed, was an economic one, for Japan had been blasted because the Japanese had threatened commerce and these people did not constitute a threat. So long as they kept out of sight and didn’t brawl or steal they were nobody’s business. They talked a great deal about the Welfare State these days and he supposed recent progress had been spectacular in some areas, but it obviously took more than talk at Westminster to vanquish the good old British slum mentality and make people admit their responsibility towards the inevitable misfits. There was a time when he would have made an issue of the squatters but his days of political campaigning were over. Someone else could worry about the solution. At sixty-eight he hadn’t all that much time left to enjoy the sun, the wildflowers and the distant prospect of Shallowford Woods.
Away in the distance he saw Rumble Patrick at work with a baler but checked an impulse to ride the fly-pestered grey across open country and turned inland, noting that the rubble of Periwinkle farmhouse had now been carted away and that the site showed on the hillside like a filled-in shell-crater. It was shadier under the spur of Hermitage plateau, so he skirted it and headed up Hermitage Lane towards the beckoning shadow of the woods. At the last swing gate north of the farm he saw Henry Pitts and his greeting widened his old friend’s rubbery smile by at least two inches.
‘Giddon, youm back!’ Henry shouted, gleefully. ‘Us’d begun to reckon you an’ the Missus would stay outalong,’ and suddenly his smile shrank beyond its normal width and he said, ‘You won’t have heard the latest about my David’s caper, will ’ee? Now youm back ’ee won’t waste no time plaguing ’ee again.’
Paul remembered then that David had made an offer for the freehold of Hermitage and had been referred to Andy, who had told him brusquely that the Company had no intention of selling off more land. It was something Paul had forgotten, thinking it could wait for the Company’s next quarterly meeting, but now it occurred to him that there must have been a meeting during his absence so he said, ‘There’s not all that hurry, is there? I’m willing to consider it if he’s really made up his mind and can pay us a fair market price. I wouldn’t sell to a stranger but David is different. He was born on the place! Didn’t Andy tell him to hold his horses until I got back?’
‘No, ’er didden,’ Henry said, sourly for him, ‘’er showed him the door and zed there was no chance of David nor anyone else buying freeholds,’ and it seemed to Paul that he would have liked to express himself even more forcibly but did not do so out of regard for their long-standing friendship. He said:
‘You mean they had a row over it?’ and Henry said this was so, and that David came back saying he was going to emigrate to Australia where a man could hope to die owning the land he had worked in his lifetime.
For the second time that morning the sparkle left the air. First the squatters and now David Pitts and his son Andy snarling at one another in his absence.
‘David isn’t serious about emigrating, is he?’ he asked but Henry said he had already sent for brochures from Australia House.
‘I told him not to act like a bliddy vool until you was back,’ he said, ‘but now his ole gran is dade he’ll go if he’s got to bide yer as a tenant. He’s always had it in mind to own Hermitage, mind you. I never did, nor my ole feyther either, but they young ones is diff’rent. Your boy’s diff’rent. They doan zeem to be able to give an’ taake zame as us did, backalong.’
‘Well, tell him to throw those damned brochures in the fire,’ Paul said. ‘We’ll have a Company meeting in a week or two and he can rely on me to back him if he’s keen to buy. I don’t know why Andy should be so bloody-minded about it. This Valley is only a fringe interest of his. He’s got far bigger fish to fry and some of them stink to my mind.’
Suddenly Henry looked cheerful again. ‘Would ’ee tell un that now?’ he said, and without waiting for assent he put his fingers in his mouth and produced a piercing whistle, so that the chunky figure of David emerged from Hermitage copse some fifty yards away.
‘You damned old rascal, you must have seen me coming,’ Paul said, laughing, and Henry admitted as much so that Paul, reflecting that the ambush was reminiscent of earlier days, felt that the situation was now resolved and told the red-faced David that he could come over and talk figures as soon as he had had an opportunity to discuss the matter with Rumble Patrick and Andy.
‘There now, what did I tell ’ee?’ demanded Henry, rounding on his stolid son as though he had been a surly child of five. ‘Tiz the Squire who gives the orders round here, so hang they ole papers you got in the bliddy privvy, where they belong.’
David said nothing at all but Paul could see that he was relieved. He went off up the slope slashing at thistles with his stick and Paul, struck by the dissimilarity of father and son, said, ‘Do you know what it is about them, Henry? They don’t laugh anymore, that’s their trouble. The only one of mine who can really see a joke is Simon and he couldn’t until those boys of his began rubbing his corners off down at the school,’ and he touched Snowdrop with his heels and passed gratefully into the deep shadow of the lane that ran under the southern edge of the woods.
II
Up among the big timber the summer scents were far stronger than on the plain and the muted orchestra that he always listened for here at this time of year reached him as a subdued clamour as he picked his way down to the Mere. The surface was glacial and over on the far side he could see some of the older beeches reflected in elaborate detail. The air was full of rustlings and hummings, punctuated every now and again by the flutes of the blackbirds, or the squawks of moorhens concealed on the islet. By the time he had ridden the length of the sheet of water his humour was quite restored and he was further gladdened by the sight of old Sam Potter, now the oldest of the Shallowford originals, who had lived on here alone after the death of his wife Joannie in the autumn.
Sam, the oldest of the Dell Potters, had been his woodsman for forty-five years and Paul supposed that he would now be making plans to live with one of his children, Dick perhaps, who had replaced that arty family at High Coombe, or Pauline, whose birth Paul had almost witnessed in this cottage the year he bought the estate. Sam, however, had other ideas, as he soon advertised saying, with a humility everyone else on the estate had discarded, ‘Was ’ee thinkin’ o’ givin’ me marchin’ orders, Squire, now Joannie’s dade and I draws the pension?’
‘Well now that you mention it I’m surprised to see you here. It must be very lonely for you, living in this place all alone.’
‘Lonely?’ Sam’s expression came as near to flat contradiction as Paul could remember. ‘God love you, I baint lonely. Not that I doan miss the ole
woman. I do, ’specially in the evenings, but a man can’t be lonely out yer so long as he can get about and I’d far zooner bide than move in as lodger wi’ any one of ’em. They’d ’ave me, mind. Pauline would do for me, and I daresay I could earn board and lodge up at High Coombe wi’ Dick, but I’d zooner bide if it’s all the zame to you. Will ’ee be wantin’ the cottage for someone younger?’
‘No, of course I won’t,’ Paul assured him, glad to have at least one local landmark confirmed. ‘You can live here as long as you like and I’m not thinking of getting another woodsman in any case. There’s precious little game to keep and the woods can look after themselves, the same as they were doing long before you and I arrived on the scene.’ And then it occurred to him that this was tantamount to saying that Sam had never justified himself all these years, so he added, ‘You’ve more than pulled your weight ever since I gave you the job, Sam. If you slack off a bit now don’t imagine I’ll complain. It might seem odd to you but these woods have always meant more to me than any acres that pay rent. As long as you keep the rides open and there’s a refuge handy for everything in the Valley that needs one, I’m satisfied. That’s about all I ever wanted out of this part of the estate, so let’s leave it that way and you can go on paying peppercorn rent for that cottage of yours.’
It was a pleasure to watch Sam’s embarrassment as he stood by Snowdrop’s head, scratching a large brown mole that divided the furrows of his cheek. Sam, he reflected, had never had much in common with his father, mother, his poacher-brother Smut, or his numerous sisters, for he lacked their independence and cheerful impudence. He had always reminded Paul of a rural character out of another century and his presence here was a small buttress against change. He said, suddenly, ‘How do you put in the day, Sam? I mean, apart from clearing fallen timber and cutting the brambles back?’ and Sam said, ‘I got the chicken to zee to, and a bit o’ cookin’ and cleanin’, for Joannie liked the place scoured and ’er woulden ’ave it otherwise. But the best times is early on, when I watch the varmints.’
The Green Gauntlet (A Horseman Riding By) Page 36