Long Summer Day (32 page)

Paul was admiring the skill with which she handled her voluminous, lilac skirt, and the effect of a wan shaft of sunlight on her light brown hair, when the front door opened and Grace walked into the hall. She was wearing the bicycling costume she had worn when she called at the house to shelter and looked, Paul thought, even more windblown than on that occasion. Her defeated expression touched him so that he cursed Celia Lovell for not whisking him out of the house before she returned. They stood in embarrassed silence for a moment and it would have been hard to say which of them was the more dismayed. Then Celia flashed one of her brittle smiles, saying, ‘Mr Craddock was just leaving, Grace dear. I tried to get him to stay to dinner, but he can’t, he’s very busy it seems. You are sure you won’t change your mind, Mr Craddock?’

‘No, if you’ll forgive me,’ he lied, ‘I’ve got a great deal to do before Mr Rudd comes back tomorrow,’ and he saw Grace’s chin come up sharply, as though Rudd’s return was an added cause for depression but she said nothing, continuing to stare at the tiles on the floor and fidget with her shapeless hat. Mrs Lovell said, with a brightness that Paul now found irritating, ‘Would you like to ride over to Shallowford tomorrow? May Mr Craddock expect you?’

It was like listening to an unimaginative mother encouraging a stupidly bashful child and suddenly he felt desperately sorry for the small, dejected figure, standing so irresolutely in her hideous costume.

‘Come if you want to, Grace, and come on your bicycle if you like,’ he said. ‘You’ll always be welcome and I’ll tell Mrs Handcock to make you comfortable in the library if I’m out. I’m usually there until about eleven and always after tea. I could drive you home in the trap,’ and he was rewarded by a look of gratitude and an almost inaudible ‘Thank you, Paul’ as Grace sidestepped Celia and walked quickly through a curtained aperture at the rear of the hall. As he opened the front door to let himself out Mrs Lovell seemed about to say something more but he cut her short, this time almost brutally.

‘I don’t want Grace harried, Mrs Lovell! Please remember that, and tell Mr Lovell the same!’

She made no reply to this but her lips parted and once again he had a strong impression that beneath her good breeding and natural amiability, she was as hard and ruthless as a professional whore. He went out into the gathering dusk and along to the yard of The Raven where he had left the trap. Looking back over his shoulder he saw a light in the upstairs room and he thought, ‘That must be her bedroom, and I’ll wager she’s up there crying, and even if I marry the girl I doubt if I shall ever discover why.’

IV

P
aul Craddock would have won his wager. Grace was weeping but not, as he had half-imagined, face downwards on her bed, shoulders shaking with sobs for she had never wept in this fashion, not even when the Ayah told her that the Memsahib was dead and she was facing the eternity of childhood with the man whose pale, protuberant eyes had never looked on her without impatience or contempt. When Grace Lovell wept, which was seldom, the tears flowed sparingly and never for more than a moment so that presently she studied herself in the dressing-table mirror impatient with what she saw and wondering how an uncomplicated man like Paul Craddock could hoodwink himself into imagining that she would make a good wife for a young man who was already close on a century out of date. Yet she conceded his kindness, his rather craggy good looks and a streak of obstinacy that put him outside her experience. Her father was obstinate but only as regards matters related to his own comfort. Ralph Lovell had been obstinate in a different way, setting his face against the acceptance of responsibility, even that of keeping sober in mixed company. Ralph’s father, old Sir George, had been very obstinate indeed in persuading young females to take off their clothes and stand in front of his camera but neither could match the quiet obstinacy of this limping Cockney, with his nasal accent and dedication to a pastoral way of life that belonged in the reign of George IV.

Her tears ceased to flow and her features composed themselves into their habitual, vaguely mutinous expression, an expression that had defeated all but the most determined assaults upon her privacy. Up here, temporarily out of range of Celia’s flashing smiles and merciless solicitude, Grace did her thinking for when she was in the open her mind had a habit of shooting off at a tangent every few minutes. Sooner or later, probably sooner she thought, Celia would corner Paul Craddock, and persuade him to press his advantage. It had been touch and go whether Celia had declared in favour of the egregious Basil Holbeach and now that she had quarrelled with Bruce on his account her need to secure the substitute was imperative. Perhaps the important thing to consider was, did Paul Craddock possess any ‘advantage? He was well off—not nearly so rich as Holbeach but surely comfortable if he could find thousands of pounds for a run-down estate and then pour money into its rehabilitation. Not that his means concerned Grace. Money was important to Celia and absolutely essential to her father, but meant little to her for she had never possessed any and had not even had indirect access to small change until her father’s second marriage. She found that she was able to think about Paul Craddock with detachment in a way that she had never been able to review any of the men her father or Celia had introduced into her life, after news of Ralph’s death in the Transvaal had reached them. He was healthy and whole, except for that damage to his leg, which did not seem to trouble him much and he was obviously very kindhearted. He thought her beautiful and had even confessed to excitement every time he approached her and the boyishness of this admission made her smile into the mirror, for the poor man was obviously besotted if he introduced considerations of this sort into a marriage of the kind Celia had in mind for him. He was probably the most genuinely disinterested suitor to present himself but did this make him worth the sacrifice of individuality? For all his kindness, and boyish enthusiasm, marriage to him would surely entail such a sacrifice, for clearly his idealism would never expand into wider, more adult fields and she could expect little from him but a humdrum life bounded by the sea, the main railway line, and the estate boundaries east and west, with possibly a monthly visit to Paxtonbury, which he would consider a rare treat. The prospect dismayed her almost as much as marriage to Basil Holbeach, soon to join the nameless ranks of Conservative and Unionist backbenchers at Westminster, a man who would lock his wife in her bedroom if he caught her reading a pamphlet of Mrs Pankhurst’s endeavours. Yet, unlike Basil or any of his predecessors, there was something appealing about Paul Craddock and what that something was she found it hard to decide. In a way it was a kind of sound, that seemed to reach him from a dead century, when Merrie England was an actuality and she fell to wondering about his background, and the strange impulses that had encouraged him to turn his back on opportunities that usually presented themselves to young men with fortunes. Even Ralph Lovell, lout as he was, with no other thought in his head beyond horses, wenching and whisky, had adventured further afield than Paul, whereas Ralph’s father, the old satyr who pinched little girls’ bottoms and photographed them in the nude, had had interests that sometimes brought him in touch with men of modern ideas.

She tried to imagine how a man with such an archaic dream would acquit himself as a lover. He would probably be courteous, considerate or accommodating according to her moods. If she held her face stiff when he kissed her good night he would go to sleep and awake next morning without resentment. He could be roused, no doubt, whenever she felt inclined and the inevitable result would be several nicely-spaced children, growing up like a row of cabbages and receiving formal educations according to their sex. It was not a pleasing prospect but what was the alternative? A regular shuttle to and from this hideous house to Cadogan Square, and back again; wrangles with her father over her activities in London and tiresome importuning on Celia’s part to capture the inevitable husband or, if not, to tread the social mill of her At Homes and the musical soirées, where young men prattled endlessly of pictures and tepid novels, and bombazined old hags chattered scandal, deferring to smug-faced husbands on every issue that really mattered. There must in the name of God be a compromise between these two fates and for the hundredth time in the last few months she thought of flight. But flight to where or to whom? With sixpence in her reticule? The prospect was even more absurd than marriage.

And then, as her mind shied at the years ahead, her strong sense of fair play reminded her that it would be a shabby trick to use a man as vulnerable as Paul Craddock as a harbour where she could never anchor herself for long. He might be a fool, might even be addressing himself to the task of putting the clock back, but at least he was honest, warmhearted and relatively harmless and deserved a wife who would expect no more of him than he had to offer. It was thinking along these lines that she made her decision and having made it felt carefree again. Tomorrow morning, she promised herself, she would ride over to Shallowford House and tell Paul Craddock, frankly and kindly, exactly why she could not marry him and afterwards acquaint Celia with her decision and direct her attentions elsewhere.

Downstairs the gong sounded for dinner and she changed into a green dinner frock without bothering to do more than wash her hands and tie a ribbon under her curls. She felt more than equal to Celia tonight, reflecting that she might even enjoy leading her partway up the garden path.

By ten o’clock on New Year’s Day Grace Lovell was approaching the ford and as she walked her mare Roxy across the path-fields she was satisfied that her speech was word perfect. About half-a-mile from the crossing, however, a yellow dog-cart flashed past, going in the opposite direction and driven hard by a round-shouldered little man in an ulster and a billycock hat. She recognised him as Grenfell, the local Radical candidate, who had entered the field against Hilton-Price, Paxtonbury’s Unionist M.P., and although she had almost as great a contempt for Liberals as for their political rivals, she wished him well if only for having the courage to plant a Radical standard on such Philistine soil. She soon dismissed him, however, readdressing herself to the business in hand, and it was only when she was crossing the river that she remembered him for ahead of her, on the point of turning into Shallowford drive, was another gig with two men on the box, and she recognised them as well. The driver was Lord Gilroy and his passenger, a thickset man about fifty, was Cribb, the local Unionist agent, a man whose job, so they said, was a sinecure, for how could anyone but a Conservative win Paxtonbury, one of the safest seats in the British Isles? There was nothing odd about Gilroy and his agent paying a call upon the Squire of Shallowford on New Year’s Day but the circumstances began to seem unusual when she realised that their visit followed Grenfell’s by less than ten minutes and suddenly Grace forgot about her speech in an attempt to draw conclusions from this coincidence. Had Grenfell just come from Shallowford? He must have done, for this track led nowhere else, except to the railway halt and no train stopped at Sorrel Halt until after midday. There was clearly significance in Gilroy’s visit too, or why should he be accompanied by Cribb? Were both parties competing for Paul Craddock’s support? And if so, could there be the least possibility of the brash young man challenging local mandarins as powerful as Gilroy and the Hilton-Prices?

She gave the gig time to increase its lead and dawdled in the area of the ford for a few minutes. Paul could not receive her until they had gone and if they remained indefinitely she decided to postpone her call and keep Celia on tenterhooks for another twenty-four hours. The prospect of this did not displease her, and she rode round the paddock and entered the yard from the east, leaving Roxy with a perky little boy, who ran forward to take the reins. Gilroy’s rig was in the forecourt, the horse tethered to a ring on a lamp socket and she could hear the murmur of voices coming through the library window. The garden door of what used to be old Sir George’s studio was unlocked and by opening it, and standing in the angle made by the terrace, she could hear very clearly what was being said in the next room. If she hesitated a moment from taking her stand here it was because she was debating whether anything Gilroy and Cribb might have to say merited her attention, for Grace Lovell had no misgivings about eavesdropping. In her guerilla war with her father and stepmother it had proved an indispensable means of survival. So she stood there, listening intently and so changed the course of her life.

V

P
aul was map-tracing in the office when Thirza Tremlett, the parlourmaid, came in with the news that Lord Gilroy and Mr Raymond Cribb were in the drawing-room on the other side of the hall. Thirza, the nearest approach Shallowford House possessed to a butler, was in what Mrs Handcock would have described as ‘a rare ole tizzy’, for the arrival of two such visitors in the forenoon frightened her and she came in flushed and out of breath. Paul himself was surprised, particularly as James Grenfell had only just left, and it occurred to him that the visitors might even have passed one another at the ford, so he was not entirely unprepared for the bleak look on his Lordship’s face when Thirza ushered them into the library and fled. Cribb, however, was affable and quickly introduced himself, grasping Paul’s hand with excessive firmness and apologising for having allowed six months to elapse before paying his call.

‘Stopped by here a good deal in old Sir George’s time,’ he said breezily, ‘but then, he was our local president before his Lordship stepped into the breach!’ He went on talking about nothing in particular and Paul gained the impression that he was awaiting a cue from Gilroy but the dry old stick said nothing at all, seemingly less interested in Paul than in the room, for his eyes roved from book shelves to fireplace, then through the garden door to the office table where the estate maps were spread.