Long Summer Day (49 page)

It was almost light when she heard the far-off jingle of harness and returned to the motor to see a startled carter whose horse had shied at the Benz blocking its path. The man was delighted to accept a half-sovereign for a tow to the main road and she left him attaching a drag rope to the motor. After washing herself in a brook and brushing the bracken fronds from her coat she woke the snoring Roddy.

‘It’s all arranged,’ she said, ‘a man is giving us a tow and you can probably get her started when we can get to a slope.’

He sat up, rubbing his eyes, looking so bemused that she laughed.

IV

P
aul, although reluctant to admit it, was beginning to be disenchanted with politics. He believed what he preached, and desired most earnestly to send Grenfell to Westminster, but his commonsense bucked at the racket and claptrap of the campaign and the ranting of half-intoxicated supporters of both candidates who swaggered about shouting their silly catch-phrases at one another. The business of government, he told himself, ought not to depend upon this kind of thing, upon the moods and impulses of leather-lunged yokels marching up and down with their banners and chanting doggerel like:

‘Vote, vote, vote for Jimmy Gren-felllllll!

Kick Verne-Jonesy out the door …!’

But obviously it did so depend, and scenes like this were repeated all over the country at a General Election. Later, he supposed, all the Jimmy Grenfells and Verne-Joneses who had out-shouted and out-postured each other at the hustings forgot their rivalry in the genteel atmosphere of the House of Commons, where real policies were formulated in cold blood. The more strident the campaign became the less he could identify himself with it, and at last he was obliged to carry his misgivings to Grenfell who, as it happened, had a rational explanation on the tip of his tongue.

‘It’s simply the price one has to pay for the use of democratic machinery, Paul,’ he said. ‘Under an autocracy you could dispense with it. A man would become one of the legislators by reason of wealth or position in a particular locality but now that all adult males have the vote this farcical nonsense is inevitable! It’s really quite harmless, you know, and it does jolt some of the more thoughtful into making an honest and deliberate choice. I’ve heard people like you ask why we need parties at all or why a man like me can’t judge every issue on its merits but whenever you get more than a score of men together they tend to divide into groups thinking roughly along the same lines. Then, hey presto, you have a political party and all the trimmings!’

Half satisfied with this Paul went back to his canvassing and stumping, drawing comfort from his belief in James Grenfell’s integrity, for Grenfell did indeed practise restraint, rarely resorting to platform tricks and it now looked as if his careful nursing of the constituency was bearing fruit, for he was said to be leading the Tory Bernard Verne-Jones by a short head and the odds were five to four in favour of a Liberal victory. Once or twice, in his movements about the country, Paul’s path crossed that of Gilroy and on one occasion, on a Paxtonbury market-day, he saw the crusty old patrician drive his brougham through a milling crowd about Martyr’s Cross, on the Cathedral Green. He could not help admiring the old man’s bearing, as contemptuous as that of a French aristocrat in a tumbril. The crowd surrounding the carriage was part hostile and there was a good deal of catcalling and booing but the expression on Gilroy’s face remained impassive. He might, thought Paul, be taking a drive across Blackberry Moor, or paying an afternoon call on a duchess. He sat erect, enclosed in his aloof, glacial cage that was proof against plaudits, and insults. Grenfell, standing beside Paul, said admiringly, ‘Well, Paul, there goes the last of eighteenth-century England! You want to take off your hat to it, don’t you?’

It was that same day that Paul had his brief and rather mystifying conversation with Farmer Venn, pot-bellied supporter from a farm a mile or so north of the city, whom he had met in the early stages of the campaign. He was eating a sandwich lunch at The Mitre when Venn waddled in, his broad chest half-covered by a huge yellow rosette and he greeted Paul heartily as he ordered ale and pasties.

‘A rare ole fix your good lady was in t’other mornin’,’ said Venn jovially. ‘’Er an’ that young shover o’ yourn an’ their ole motor! Crawling along behind Ned Parsons’ cart they was, an’ at two mile an hour all the way to Norton Edge bevore they managed to get ’er goin’! ’Twas news to me you’d got yourself one o’ they old stinkpots, Squire!’

‘I hadn’t heard of their breakdown,’ Paul said, so far only slightly puzzled, ‘but I haven’t been home lately. And it isn’t my car, Venn, it belongs to my agent’s son, a naval lieutenant. Where did you see them?’

‘Coming up the hill, towards Norton Edge backalong,’ Venn told him. ‘Early on, it was, as I was comin’ in to market, an’ both lookin’ pretty sorry for ’emselves! Tiz a rare come-down to be towed home by a grey mare when they’m all so pleased to talk about “horse-power”, baint it?’

Having heard nothing about the incident Paul’s impulse was to question Venn further but then it seemed to him that this would make him look ridiculous in Venn’s eyes and perhaps start a rumour about Grace’s relationship with that young idiot, Roddy, so he drank his beer and hurried away but found it difficult to give his mind to the chairmanship of meetings during the afternoon and excused himself at teatime, telling Grenfell that he had an accumulation of work at home and wanted to clear it before preparing for the eve-of-poll meeting.

He learned, on arrival at the lodge, that Roddy had left for London earlier in the day but Rudd was evasive when he asked about the breakdown, saying, off-handedly, ‘Oh, I believe they had several about the country, Paul. Motors aren’t all that reliable, you know, but I daresay we shall have to have one in the end!’

‘Over Snowdrop’s dead body!’ Paul told him and sought out Grace, less disturbed by the realisation that she must have spent a night away from home without telling him than by Rudd’s implied championship of the motor. He found her alone in the rose garden, absorbed in her work and when he walked round the lily pond she looked up saying, ‘Hullo! I didn’t expect you until after midnight!’

‘I decided to take an evening off,’ he said and wondered how a husband began asking the kind of questions he wanted to ask whilst leaving room to manoeuvre. He said carefully, ‘A farmer came to me today with a silly story about you and Roddy having to be towed home one day last week,’ and found himself watching her eyes for signs of guilt. She gave a shrug and dusted earth from her gardening gloves.

‘It wasn’t a silly story, Paul, it was quite true. We were stranded overnight and a cart towed the Benz half-way to Paxtonbury.’

He was startled and showed it. ‘When was this?’ and she told him last Friday, the night he sent a message saying that he would be staying with Grenfell.

‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me about it?’

‘Why? I suppose partly because I didn’t have a real opportunity, and partly because I thought you might put a wrong construction on it, as you seem to be doing now.’

‘Is that unreasonable?’

‘I think it is.’

It was clear that she considered him ridiculous in the role of the outraged husband and was determined not to rise to the bait but he read in her impassivity an evasiveness that was not there. He said, shortly, ‘You can imagine what a fool I felt, having to stand in a public bar and hear about my own wife coming home with the milk! Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Don’t you care if I’m made to look as if I enjoy my wife gallivanting all over the county with a young idiot in a motor?’

She looked at him compassionately now but he was too angry and humiliated to notice it.

‘Yes, I care, Paul,’ she said, quietly, ‘I care very much, but in this case my share of the blame is confined to not telling you about it and for that I apologise. Now I think we’d better go in.’

He followed her along the flagstones and across the corner of the paddock to the terrace. When they were inside the library he said, petulantly, ‘Well, what
did
happen? Were you stranded at that friend of Roddy’s? John told me you had paid a call there.’

The white lie she had intended telling him changed colour with his attitude and now she felt under an obligation to tell him the insignificant truth.

‘As a matter of fact we were stranded half-way between there and home,’ she said, ‘and spent the night in the open.’

‘Roddy and you?’

For a moment he was too outraged to speak. When he did the violence of his tone surprised her. ‘What do you mean,
“in the open”
?
How could he let such a thing happen? And how could you be a partner to it?’

‘It wasn’t Roddy’s fault,’ she said wearily, ‘it was just bad luck. The car broke down miles from anywhere and we couldn’t get help … We tried but there was no alternative.’

‘You were together in that damned motor all night?’

For the first time since he had challenged her, she could smile.

‘No, not in the motor, Paul. We found somewhere a little more comfortable.’

She had not said this with the intention of goading him but he reacted as if she had, taking her by the arm so that at once the smile left her eyes. ‘Please don’t act like that, Paul!’ and she wrenched herself free yet still contrived to give the impression that she was in control of herself. She said, more patiently, ‘Do we really have to go on with this, Paul? Are you interested in chapter and verse?’

‘Yes, I am,’ he shouted, ‘what husband wouldn’t be?’

‘Very well then. There was a pheasant hide close by that offered some kind of shelter. We lit a fire and stayed there until it was light. Then a cart came along and pulled us on to the main road and on a hill Roddy managed to start the motor so we got home about breakfast time. It wasn’t as romantic as it sounds, just the kind of thing that might happen to any pair of travellers. At least, I thought so at the time.’

‘And that’s all?’

For the first time she seemed to resent his questions and her jaw hardened. ‘What am I supposed to read into that? That Roddy is my lover? Is that what you’re trying to make me say?’ He was so taken aback by this that it was plain to her he had no clear idea what he believed and again she felt compassion for him, although it astonished her to discover that a man could share her life for more than a year but learn so little that was important about her.

‘Roddy wasn’t my lover, then or at any time, but if you can’t bring yourself to believe that there’s nothing I can do about it, Paul. I’m sorry, but there it is,’ and she walked past him and out of the room.

He stood there cursing himself and her; himself for his hamfisted approach, her for allowing herself to be squired by a man whose incompetence involved women in compromising situations. For it was a compromising situation, as even she had tacitly admitted by withholding the facts from him, although he did not doubt her innocence for a moment. There was no reason, however, why anyone else should believe in it; Farmer Venn, for instance, or the carter who found them, or even John Rudd, whose evasiveness regarding the incident he now recalled. The thought of another man spending the night in a pheasant hide with his wife annoyed him but it did not frighten him, as it might have scared a man married to an unpredictable woman. For Grace was predictable, at least as regards fundamentals. She had always been candid with him, even when he would have secretly preferred her not to be and it was this that baffled him, that fact that, but for Venn’s chance remark in the pub, he might never have discovered that she had spent a night in the woods with the type of man likely to boast about the experience. It was the thought of Roddy, and the ease with which he had captured and held her interest from the moment he came honking up the drive, that crystallised his resentment and it was not resentment against her for a single indiscretion but for their failure, after more than a year, to achieve harmony as individuals. She was his wife in bed and about the house and garden but beyond, these narrow limits they shared nothing and while, for some men, this was enough to make a marriage work, for him it was not. Here he was, striving to make a way of life for both of them, while she continued, in her secret way, to deride him, and the Roddy incident, so trivial in itself, emphasised the cleavage. He thought, wretchedly, ‘If this divergence continues there can be no real happiness for either of us! God knows, I’ve been patient but where has patience led me? To within a few inches of being cuckolded by a lady-killer who uses a blasted motor instead of a bouquet. I’ll be damned if I give way again, the way I did over the Potter affair, the election, and everything else that gives purpose to my being here!’ and he flung himself into the office and tried to cool his temper assaulting the accumulation of work in the desk-trays.

Yet, as a measure of calmness returned to him, he did not relent towards her or not in the real sense. When he went upstairs about eleven o’clock she was reading in bed and he was still inclined to deliver an unrehearsed ultimatum and would probably have done so had she not forestalled him by laying the book aside, looking across at him mildly, and saying, ‘It was very wrong of me not to have made a point of telling you, Paul. Will you believe me if I say I’m genuinely sorry about that?’ and again he felt he had lost the initiative. He said, ‘Yes, of course I believe you. I realise you have far more dignity than to let a man like Rudd take advantage of you but that isn’t the real issue, Grace!’ He was standing at the foot of the bed, feet astride and hands behind his back, and for a moment it was all she could do to stop herself laughing at his unconscious caricature of an outraged husband as depicted by Mrs Braddon or Mrs Henry Wood. The moment passed, however, for he went on, ‘It’s your whole attitude to our life down here, to what I’m bent on doing and what I’ve set my heart on. I don’t just mean the political aspect but everything, the estate, the attempt to … well … to
create
something lasting and rewarding.’

‘I’ve never concealed the truth from you about that,’ she said. ‘You know very well I could never see it through your eyes, Paul.’