Long Summer Day (71 page)

‘Yes, it is,’ he said, seriously, gathering a double handful of tresses and kissing them, ‘but I’m hanged if I don’t believe you’ve forgotten what day it is,’ and before she could indignantly deny the fact he threw aside his pillows and produced a small leather box, pressing the spring and showing her a beautifully wrought brooch, with a heavy gold circlet and a central star composed of one large and a score of much smaller diamonds, the whole being suspended on a thin gold chain. She showed the wild excitement of a child opening a Christmas stocking.

‘Paul, it’s lovely! I didn’t expect anything, honesty I didn’t! I didn’t dream …’, and then, as her hand reached for it, ‘Did you really buy those cart-horses yesterday? Is that really why you went all the way to Torhaven?’ and he told her, chuckling, that it was indeed and that the purchase had been an after-thought that occurred to him minutes before the quay curiosity shop had closed, that he had walked inside without an idea in his head and had seen the brooch on a blue velvet cushion, surrounded by a lot of trumpery jewellery.

She crossed to the mirror and fastened it to her blouse, jerking her head this way and that and cooing like a pigeon.

‘Well, it’s wonderful and I wouldn’t have given you credit for such marvellous taste,’ she said. ‘Look! Isn’t it right! Isn’t it
different
!’

He said, smiling, ‘No, it’s you who are different, Claire! And you don’t need jewellery to convince me!’

II

T
he Dell problem had indeed been solved and it was not flippancy on Claire’s part that had prompted her to write ‘in a curious way—Squire’s approval conditional’ in the record book. The Dell had always been a nursery of Valley scandal but never more so than in the spring of 1908, some time after Smut came out of gaol on licence, having served three years, eight months of his five-year sentence. He at once astonished his welcome committee by declaring that he intended to become a horticulturist, specialising in hothouse and bedding-out plants for sale in the city.

This ambition baffled everyone who had known him but in many other ways he was a parody of the Smut Potter they recalled as the terror of Shallowford and Heronslea coverts with his gun and traps. His impudent smile had gone and in its place was a sleepy, ingratiating grin; his stubby hair had streaks of grey and his loping, poacher’s walk had shrunk to a careful shuffle. Instead of balancing himself on his toes, as of old when he had always seemed on the point of leaping for cover, he now stood with joints relaxed, as though awaiting the bark of command before he moved in any one direction. Yet one thing about him had not changed. He was still extremely obstinate and nothing could induce him to have a hand in uprooting Sam and his family from their cottage and taking Sam’s place as woodsman and keeper. Yet, to their dismay, neither would he consent to having Tamer’s lease transferred to him and settling himself on the derelict farm. He was done with poaching, he said, but also with pig-farming and crow-starving. All he wanted to do was to grow flowers in a greenhouse and if Squire Craddock, bless his warm heart, could see his way to dismantle and re-erect the dilapidated glasshouse now standing empty behind the Shallowford rose garden, then he would raise pot plants that had never been seen in the Valley and sell them as far afield as Paxtonbury. He knew he could do it if only he had a single quarter-acre under glass, and if Squire would not part with his greenhouse he would set to work, collect discarded panes from all over the Valley and build one on the long, sunny slope where the Potter land ran down to the river east of Coombe Bay.

The Potters went into conference with Paul and the upshot of their deliberations was that the project was just possible, although Meg expressed private doubts as to Smut’s staying power, saying he would be more likely to keep out of trouble if he went to work in the woods. It was Claire who finally won them over. She came out as an enthusiastic ally of the ex-poacher, reporting that Smut had obviously acquired an extraordinary amount of expertise in the prison gardens and not only knew the names of a wide variety of fashionable conservatory plants but could designate them in Latin! This piece of information convinced everybody that Smut was in earnest and for three days after Paul had given assent to his plan the Potter haywain trundled to and fro along the river road with its loads of glass panes and metal frames to be reassembled on the southern slope known as Seafield, and subsequently repaired and repainted by a team of volunteers, including one of the Eveleigh boys who enlisted as an apprentice.

Old Willoughby, of Deepdene, himself interested in horticulture, gave Smut a good deal of useful advice and a supply of seeds and most of the other farmers chipped in with second-hand tools and supplies of manure, so that Smut was soon established and working sixteen hours a day, sleeping in a poacher’s shelter built against the greenhouse boiler that had been hauled over the bluff on Timberlake’s tree waggon, along with its complement of cast-iron pipes.

It was encouraging, Paul thought, to see the Valley folk rally round the rascal, giving their labour free and taking collective pride in the ungainly structure on the downslope of the Low Coombe boundary. When all was as ready as could be Claire presided at a half-humorous official opening, launching the enterprise with a bottle of Meg’s hedgerow wine smashed against the boiler at the southern end of the house. Everyone, it seemed, was pleased to see Smut home again and all wished him well in his unlikely venture. His initiative, however, did nothing to solve the vexed future of the Potter farm as a whole. Meg had little interest in steady farming or animal husbandry and spent most of her time collecting ingredients for her elixirs, or making the mats and baskets she sold across the Teazel, whereas the girls, who could make a shift at looking after pigs and occasionally ploughed a few acres, were unsuitable as long-term tenants for they were now in their mid-twenties and unlikely to remain single indefinitely.

It was through their agency that the matter was settled, and although the manner in which this took place caused scandalised comment in the Valley, the arrangement drifted on until it was hallowed by time, and Big Jem Pollock was generally accepted as the master of the Dell, and in some ways proved a worthy successor to old Tamer.

Jem was not a farmhand, although he had worked on farms during his semi-vagabond life before appearing in the Valley with a travelling fair licensed to set up on Blackberry Moor each Whitweek. The fair billed him as
‘Jem Pollock, the Goliath of Bideford’
and his act consisted of tying knots in iron bars, hauling struggling teams of yokels across the ring and driving six-inch nails into billets of wood with his bare fists. The fair was a seedy little attraction, with the usual collection of swings, roundabouts, giant-slides and catchpenny booths but it attracted a public from as far away as Paxtonbury in the north and Whinmouth in the west whereas the Valley folk always attended
en masse.
The Potter family, very much at home in this kind of atmosphere, invariably downed tools and attended every evening, the two girls, Cissie and Violet, acquiring trinkets and entertainments by means of their personal cunning. It was here that they encountered and passed under the spell of Jem Pollock, the Bideford Goliath, or it might be more accurate to say that it was they, a pair of slingless Davids, who brought Goliath low, for having arrived in the Valley with no intention other than making sport of panting locals at the end of a rope Jem remained there until attracted to the colours by Kitchener’s arresting finger.

It happened on the final night of the fair. Jem had a barker and a tent to himself, and during the previous visits the Potter girls had watched spellbound as he bent over knotted bars, buried nails in tree-trunks with blows of his enormous fist and won frenzied cheers by marching round his patch of sawdust trailing six of the lustiest Heronslea estate workers on a tow rope. The Potter girls had always appreciated a man and were connoisseurs in this field, having, between them, sampled most of the available men living within walking distance of the Dell, but never before had they looked upon a man like Jem, whose calves were like half-grown pine trunks and whose biceps and magnificent torso reminded them of illustrations of the famous Sandow. But it was not his display of muscles that drew giggles from them so much as his working costume, consisting of a leopard-skin toga augmented by pink and excessively tight-fitting hose that left very little to the imagination and had spectators comparing him to Eveleigh’s prize bull. Another unusual thing about the Bideford Goliath was his geniality and the vacant mildness of his expression as he performed in the ring. He had the innocent gaze of a timid girl and features that were delicate for one so huge and muscular. On his splendid limbs grew forests of short, golden hairs that glistened with sweat as he stood flexing his muscles between each act. He also lacked the vainglory of the professional giant and seemed to find nothing very remarkable in his extraordinary feats of strength, which was strange considering the effect they produced upon his audiences, particularly upon the ladies, who flocked to his tent in large numbers for every performance.

Meg Potter was on familiar terms with several of the showmen and it was over a bread-and-cheese supper in the acrobats’ tent one night that the girls were introduced to Jem as a man rather than a performer. They found him so shy that they made little progress with him on that occasion, beyond extracting from him an admission that he was not forsworn to circus life and was, in fact, ‘looking about for a likely place to zettle’ and perhaps set up as a smith or forester. On hearing this the girls sounded their mother on the possibility of engaging him as a permanent replacement for the hired hand, loaned to Low Coombe by Four Winds after Tamer’s death. The prospect of having so magnificent a specimen of manhood within call day and night, was inviting from a variety of aspects, for the Potter girls hated their farm chores and Meg, looking on Goliath with an unprejudiced eye, agreed that he would more than earn his keep at Low Coombe and promptly offered him fifteen shillings a week, plus board and lodging. He promised to think it over and the girls saw that he did, following him about the fair every night and stupefying him with affection. On the last night of the fair he made up his mind and it was years before they learned what had tipped the balance. In a rare moment of expansion he told them, saying, in his broad North Devon burr, ‘I zeed the pair of ’ee cum sliding down thicky giant slide showin’ all ’ee had which was considerable!’

The Potter girls, although promiscuous, were not harlots within the meaning of the word. It was simply that they delighted in the company and admiration of men and always had, ever since they were fourteen-year-olds but they did not consort with them from motives of personal gain alone and regarded anything material that emerged from encounters as a bonus to the simple pleasures derived from jolly companionship. They wandered among the world of men like children gathering wild flowers, each subject to furious, short-lived enthusiasms over one bloom or another and although, in the view of the Puritan, they possessed no moral sense whatever, they exercised discrimination and had learned something from their sister Pansy’s dolorous experience of life pledged to one particular man. For poor Pansy, who had been so elated when she had secured Walt Pascoe as a husband, was now anchored to a cottage teeming with squalling children and seemed not to have any fun at all whereas Cissie and Violet were still gloriously free and valued their freedom far too much to form a permanent attachment. The establishment of Jem Pollock in the Dell would not, as Violet had pointed out, commit either of them in any way. As a hired hand, they reasoned, they could take him or leave him at will at the same time relieving Meg and themselves of the irksome responsibilities of work on the land. They found nothing distasteful in the prospect of sharing him, turn and turn about. They had shared all their lovers and sometimes extracted a good deal of amusement comparing notes. They had made their mistakes and there were two toddlers in the Dell to prove as much, but a child or two under their feet did not bother a Potter, for the Dell seemed always to have been teeming with children. So the fair moved on, leaving the Goliath of Bideford behind as man-of-all-work at Low Coombe, and soon the whisper ran along the Valley that the Potter girls had at last found a male capable of accommodating them and had established a cosy
ménage à trois
in the Dell. That, however, was before the story broke new ground and an unexpected sequel forced the true state of affairs into the open. This might never have happened if the girls had been able to adjust themselves to their new way of life, and their antics had not awakened a fierce possessiveness in the heart of their willing captive.

It happened about a month after Jem had moved in. He soon proved himself a sound investment from Meg’s view point for his willingness and strength, expertly applied to the rundown acres, transformed the farm almost overnight. He was more tireless than any cart-horse and under Meg’s direction cleared all the brushwood and weeds from the southern-facing slopes, later ploughing three of the largest fields for winter wheat and planting kale in the more enclosed part of the Bluff. When this was done he cut timber and built several new sties, sinking a small well on the edge of the wood and also repairing the ten-year-old leaks in the farmhouse thatch. His stamina was amazing, for although he worked hard all day he seemed to need very little sleep, so long as his huge frame was nourished by cauldrons of Meg’s savoury stew, enormous helpings of fresh vegetables and an average of three loaves of home-baked bread between sunrise and dusk. He ate about ten times as much as a normal labourer but even so he more than earned his board, and everyone in the Dell was delighted with him, blessing the day he had been detached from the Philistines. Then, one mild summer evening, he suddenly presented his bill and it was seen to be a formidable one for it included, in addition to about a basketful of food each day and fifteen shillings a week for beer and baccy, the personal freedom of the girls, who were dismayed to find themselves more married than their sister Pansy in Coombe Bay.