Long Summer Day (69 page)

Claire herself was not guiltless of rumour-spreading. Having written to her cousin and partner, arranging to sell her share of the business and stating that she was unlikely to return to London, she added an enigmatic postscript:
‘Have been seeing a good deal of “P”. There is talk of him divorcing his wife, who left him some time ago and has since been mixed up with the suffragettes.’
What her cousin made of this is not certain but if she recalled Claire’s four-year-old confidences on the subject of ‘P’ she probably put two and two together.

Maureen O’Keefe wrote two letters in illegible scrawl (deliberately cultivated for writing prescriptions) to the only woman who had shared her medical course in Dublin, a glum, Hebridean girl, now junior partner in a Belfast practice where women doctors were just tolerated, providing they were good Protestants. Maureen succeeded in astonishing her friend by adding, after saying she was taking over her father’s West country practice ‘ … 
and I expect you will be even more surprised to learn I am to marry in September! I still can’t believe it especially when I (a) look in the mirror, and (b) check up on my birth certificate! I think you would like John—John Rudd that is, for in some ways he reminds me of you being dour, very solemn and wonderfully kind. He is fifty-two, a widower with a son in the Navy, and has been agent on this estate for years …’
She rattled on about Paul, Grace and even Claire Derwent, but mention of Claire reminded her of another letter she intended to write, so she cut short the Irish mail and began a slightly more legible letter to Ikey Palfrey.

‘My dear Ikey,’
she wrote, chuckling again as she recalled the encounter by Codsall bridge,
‘I
think the time has come to keep you up to date but burn this as soon as you have read it, or we shall find ourselves on the carpet again! I took care not to breathe a word about your MACHIAVELLISM but I felt you should know that it worked out better than any of us could have hoped, for Squire, so I hear, is taking steps to get a divorce and there isn’t the slightest doubt that if and when he does he will marry Miss Derwent, and jolly good luck to them! By the way, he’s quite his old self again now. Today, when I was visiting in Coombe Bay, I watched him go past without him seeing me and he was whistling loud enough to loosen his front teeth. He’s very fit and putting on weight and Mr Rudd tells me he’s just not the same man at all, so we can both take credit for that! Good luck to you, Ikey, and I do hope you’re happy at school and are looking forward to the holidays. Affectionately, Maureen O’Keefe.’

Ikey read this letter in the Fives court, having first extracted the five-shilling postal order enclosed with it and fortified himself with two cream horns at the tuckshop. He was gratified by the news, although it seemed to him that the slightly crazy woman doctor must be pulling the longbow somewhat, for he still found it difficult to believe that people could change wives like horses. The information regarding Squire, however, was cheering and having obeyed her instructions, and carefully burned the letter, he occupied his Sunday letter-writing period composing a suitable reply.
‘Dear Doctor O’Keefe,’
it ran,
‘many thanks for P.O., which is now spent and also for news. There are lots of things I should like to know more about but better not write them as you never know with letters do you. I am looking forward to coming home for summer half hols and entered in the under-fifteen mile sports day which is soon and I hope you and Squire will come up for it because I might win. Cooper our running capt. thinks so. Good-bye and thanks again for the P.O. Respectfully, I. Palfrey.’

Maureen O’Keefe did not burn this letter. It amused her so much that she put it away in her souvenir box, alongside her degree and collection of trainee photographs.

Sam Potter, at the instance of his wife Joannie, wrote one of his very rare letters to Smut, who had completed his third year and was expected to be released on licence by autumn. Sam had accompanied his mother on a visit to the gaol immediately after Tamer’s death and had decided that nothing would induce him to go there again but his wife thought he should tell Smut about the special headstone the German Mercantile had erected over Tamer’s grave. After a great deal of laborious pen-chewing and chair-squeaking as he writhed in the agonies of composition, he produced the following:
‘Dear Smut, this it to let you no they Germans paid for a stone over Father and chipped out a lot of wot happened on it
—
must have cost I dont no how much but you can read it when you get here—I cant rite it even if I could think on it. They say Squire is puttin aside his missus and there is tork he will take Ted Derwents dorter to church the pretty one I mene see you soon Sam.’

Smut was intrigued by this letter, although both items of news puzzled him for, although there were a number of Potters laid in Coombe Churchyard, none had attained the dignity of a headstone which, as he recalled, were luxuries reserved for freeholders and prosperous tradesmen. He was even more mystified by Sam’s reference to the Squire’s possibility of taking a second wife, supposing that this privilege extended only to heathens and was against the law in England, even for a man as exalted as a Squire. His memories of Claire, however, were vivid for she had always been reckoned the most fetching girl in the Valley and he had suspected that she might one day make a good match, although not quite as good as this.

Something of Smut’s natural exuberance had returned to him of late for they had recently put a card on the door of his cell, explaining the legend thereon,
‘E.D.R. 15.10.06’
meant
‘Earliest date of release, Oct. 15th, 1906’.
If things continued to go smoothly he would be back in the Valley in less than three months but the nearness of his release date was not the sole reason for his cheerfulness. Since his shift back across the border into Devon, where he could smell the sea and, if the wind was in the right quarter, the scent of gorse blowing down from Blackberry Moor, some of the sting had departed from confinement behind stone walls and iron doors and under the encouragement of the officer in charge of trusties working in the prison grounds, he had found a new interest in growing flowers. Smut, although he had lived his life in the open, had always taken flowers for granted but he did so no longer for in here a small splash of colour riveted the eye and sometimes made a man catch his breath. All summer he laboured away tending geraniums, lobelia, calceolaria and marguerites and bit by bit, as he watched the results of his work, the occupation became the focal point of his existence so that he sometimes thought a little fearfully of the time when he would be separated from them and some other clumsy lout would have charge of them. He pondered this a good deal and wondered if it would be possible to make some kind of livelihood out of potting plants in the Coombe. If so, then he would prefer to devote himself to a job like this rather than share the casual husbandry of Meg and the girls, for here a man could see something in return for energy expended whereas nothing ever prospered under his hands in the Dell. He made up his mind to broach the subject to Chief Officer Phillips as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

In the meantime, however, unknown to Smut, a place was being prepared for him in the Valley, for the manner in which Tamer had died forged a personal bond between Paul and the shiftless tenants in Low Coombe. At harvest-time Paul rode across to the Dell and had a talk with Meg on the family’s future, after which he crossed the corner of the Bluff and descended the wooded slope to Sam Potter’s cottage beside the mere.

He found Sam at his midday meal and Joannie, always flustered by a visitor, wiped a damp cloth across the jam-smeared face of his god-daughter Pauline, who held the distinction of being the first child born on the estate under the new regime. Paul always felt very much at home in Sam’s cottage and accepted a brew of tea whilst Snowdrop was given a feed in the lean-to stable.

‘I’ve been discussing with Meg what we can do about Smut,’ Paul told him. ‘He’s due out in the autumn and I’m officially responsible for him until his full sentence expires. Do you think he’ll go back on poaching?’

Sam said he thought not but he was clearly worried by the possibility. Despite their temperamental differences the brothers had always been close and Sam’s visit to the gaol strengthened the link, for he found it difficult to imagine a worse fate than that of being locked inside a grey fortress for years on end. He said, reflectively, ‘Ah, tiz a real problem an’ no mistake, Maister! Smut were never a varmer, no more’n any one of us, an’ like as not he’ll be praper rusty after being cooped up in that gurt ole plaace! God knows, Mother needs help over there, and I bin in two minds to ask ’ee to give Smut this job o’ mine and let me move downalong, wi’ Mother an’ the girls. I’m no great shakes at varmin meself but I could best Tamer’s efforts and maybe end up a credit to ’ee, Squire.’

‘It’s more or less what I had in mind, Sam,’ Paul told him, ‘but you and Joannie have been happy here. How will you really feel about moving out and letting Smut take over as keeper and woodsman?’

Sam looked glum and said, with a glance at his wife, ‘I’ll be honest with ’ee, Squire, us won’t like it at all, will us Joannie? Us’ve maade a praper nest for ourselves here an’ us don’t fancy going downalong, an’ bedding down in that old muddle! Still, us’d maake a better job of it than Smut and I zee no help for it if us is to give the varmint a fresh start!’

The same thought had already occurred to Paul. Sam had more than justified his faith when he had set him up here and it was asking much of Joannie to leave her clean, tidy home and share a kitchen with Meg and her sluttish daughters. He said, ‘I don’t like the idea of uprooting you at all and maybe there’s another way round it. Perhaps I could get your mother a permanent hired man and settle Smut somewhere on a patch of his own.’

‘Beggin’ your pardon,’ Sam said, regretfully, ‘he’d never prosper on a patch of his own, Squire. ’Er’s a good sort at heart but ’er’s more shiftless than ever Tamer was. But if us dorn settle ’im somewheres you can be certain sure us is in trouble again, and neither me nor Joannie would like that, seein’ how good you been to us! No, us’ll get packed up, I reckon, and Smut can move in here. Mebbe he’ll marry an’ zettle down an’ if ’er does, then it will have been worth it. What do ’ee zay, Joannie?’

Joannie said, without looking up, ‘Aye, us have got to stand by the family and there’s an end to it!’

As he rode back through the woods it occurred to Paul that there must be some good blood in the Potters somewhere for how else could they produce courage like Tamer’s and loyalty like Sam’s? He wished, however, that he could buy a few acres west of Four Winds or north of Priory, in order to give Smut a fresh start without disrupting the lives of his brother and sister-in-law.

V

T
he announcement that John Rudd and Maureen O’Keefe were to marry in September intrigued and amused the Valley but it surprised no one. John, although much respected, had never captured the affection of the Valley people and when it was known that he was openly courting the lady-doctor (who, although acknowledged a far more skilful healer than her father, was judged even more eccentric) people like old Honeyman and the shepherd twins told one another that here was someone who might succeed in shaking old John out of himself and maybe encourage him to take himself less seriously. For in some ways Rudd remained a symbol of the Lovell regime and this despite the fact that he was known to be held in high regard by Squire Craddock.

Paul himself was not surprised by the news. It had been obvious from the first days of her sojourn among them that Maureen O’Keefe had bewitched the agent, who had trotted up and down the Valley behind her like a big collie, blind to the smirks and deaf to the innuendos of his beloved’s patients. The doctor made a great joke out of his subjection, sniping at her fiancé’s dignity without mercy but in some mysterious way warming a place for him in the hearts of tenants and their dependants. As soon as John had proposed she drove up and down the Valley broadcasting the news like a town-crier and very soon, on a sunny September morning, the marriage was solemnised in the parish church. Every pew was crammed and the entire population of Coombe Bay, including freeholders who had no dealings with the groom, assembled in the churchyard to witness the event. The bride arrived in the Squire’s waggonette, attended by a male cousin and the two Derwent girls as bridesmaids, for Maureen O’Keefe, declaring that she had never expected to be a bride, had announced that she intended making the most of the occasion and doing the Valley full justice.

Paul was already inside with the groom and much relieved to get him there, for John’s natural phlegm had basely deserted him when Paul called at the lodge an hour before the ceremony. In the act of fastening his high collar the agent had dropped both hands and exclaimed, ‘Damn it, this is bloody ridiculous at my age! Why can’t we slip out of the Valley and marry in the Paxtonbury Registry Office?’ Paul had replied, laughing in spite of himself, ‘Look here, John, it’s her day and you damned well do as you’re told! As soon as you’re properly dressed I’ll get you a stiff drink and the moment Parson smells it he’ll gabble through the service at top speed in order to get across to the house and drink his quota!’

After his favourite toddy John calmed down somewhat and as there was time to spare he sat on the edge of a chair puffing away at his pipe and ruminating on the present situation in terms of mild astonishment.

‘Now who the devil would have thought of anything like this that day I waited for you to get off that London train, Paul? Did you know that I hated you before I set eyes on you? And I made sure the first thing you would do was send me packing? Damn it, it’s like a crazy fairy-tale and this is a fitting climax I must say! Me, sitting here in a frock coat and a Come-to-Jesus collar, waiting for you to steer me down the aisle and be sniggered at by every yokel for miles around!’