South Riding (33 page)

Down the market-place strode a familiar figure. Snaith and Huggins could both see him. At his approach labourers touched their forelocks, stallholders called out greetings, women held up dressed guinea-fowls, prodding flexible breasts, challenging purchase. In his market clothes, breeches, tweed coat and soft hat, Carne of Maythorpe was a farmer among farmers. And he was popular. Huggins felt as though this widespread recognition were a deliberate insult to the little grey alderman, whom no acquaintance had welcomed, and who now sat, demure, non-committal, quizzical, watching the approach of his political opponent.

Outside the hotel Bill Heyer, the one-armed ex-service man, presided over the Cold Harbour provision stall. Carne stopped to speak to him. The window was open in the bright May sunshine, but the clatter of wheels on the cobbles, the clangour of voices, the cackling of fowls, barking of dogs and explosions of a motor-cycle back-firing in the square, drowned all but a few sentences.

Carne and Heyer were discussing a dog. Heyer said:

“I told him we couldn’t have it running after sheep. Once they start, there’s no stopping them. Pup or dog, they’re damned. But Sawdon said, ‘That’s my missus’ affair.’”

Carne said, “I agree with you it’s back luck, but there’s no cure for it.”

“So Carne will be at the committee,” Snaith observed.

“Aye. Hunting season’s over,” laughed Huggins, pleased when a swift flicker of amusement crossed his host’s pale face.

Both men had been annoyed by the appearance of Carne, mud-splashed, in his pink coat, at committee meetings. “Damned bad form. The man’s a bounder,” Colonel Whitelaw once had said. Whitelaw had taken the Sedgmire’s side in that ancient quarrel. Huggins treasured his words with rapture.

Heyer was laughing now, and Carne was laughing, his saturnine face lit up by the glitter of dark eyes, the flash of white teeth. The man’s a bounder, Huggins repeated to himself, thinking that Carne might be the present hero of the Cold Harbour colonists, because he was prepared to combat Snaith’s good work on the council; but obstruction was a poor basis for hero worship. “One day they’ll learn the truth,” Huggins swore to himself.

He leaned forward, “I wanted to ask you. You know this circular about maternal mortality from the Ministry?”

Carne entered the dining-room.

A group of farmers at a corner table hailed him. They had kept a place for him and he went to them, handsome, commanding, popular, his melancholy dissipated by that genial greeting.

It’s not right, thought Huggins, his indignation at Mrs. Holly’s death mingling with his indignation at Carne’s popularity and the comparative obscurity of Snaith. Just now too, Snaith had asked for a jug of water, and the waiter delayed while he went for Carne’s whisky; Snaith ordered apple-pie for two, but the waiter was bringing Carne’s roast ribs of beef.

“This Cottage Nursing Association Mrs. Beddows is so keen on—it’s not adequate,” spluttered Huggins. “Never there when you want it. We need a proper maternity service for the South Riding and a hospital not so far away as Kingsport. Why not Leame Ferry? What’s wrong with building the new annexe for mothers at Leame Ferry?”

“Nothing wrong—except that we haven’t yet raised the money or drained the Wastes.”

“Look here now—Look here now. This is my idea.”

Huggins shovelled pie and custard into his deep red mouth. He thumped his blunt fingers on the tablecloth. Under his eager vision the garden village rose with neat labour-saving houses. Lime and sycamore trees lined the avenues. Shops, in one comely block, faced the main road; and back from the road, equipped with all the latest appliances and comforts, lay the women’s hospital.

“There!” he cried in triumph, leaning back in his chair, his coarse hairy hands outspread on the white tablecloth. There it was. Built already. A boon and a blessing to men—and women. He smiled across the emptied plates at Snaith.

“Well—of course—it certainly might be done. But I hardly think that this committee is the time to make the suggestion. The housing scheme comes up under Housing and Town Planning. Astell’s handling it there. He thinks they’ll elect a special joint committee with Kingsport Corporation to inquire into the estimates at the next sub-committee. I should think we can safely leave it to Astell. As a matter of fact—did you get hold of those warehouses?”

“Aythorne did. He’s got a mortgage on ’em with a chap called Stillman.”

“The undertaker?”

“That’s right.”

“Queer about undertakers. I suppose they have their private lives like any one else. Odd though, to be a professional mourner.”

Huggins glanced up, puzzled. He was unaccustomed to whimsicality.

“Your daughter getting along all right?”

“My—er? Oh, Freda! Yes. She’s all right.”

“Back at Redcar?”

“Quite so—quite so. Thanks to
you
, Mr. Snaith. I’ve not forgotten.”

“Oh—that’s all right. Purely a business transaction. Now look here. As I see it, the whole council is in a fever just now about economy. Very silly, a great deal of it, but they’re made like that. Perhaps next year’s elections will get us some new blood in. Lord knows we need it.”

“Surely, surely.”

“Now there’s this thirty thousand needed for rebuilding Kingsport Hospital.”

A guffaw of laughter came from the farmers’ table. They had reached the stage of exchanging doubtful anecdotes.

“
They
can afford it,” said Huggins, with a jerk of his head.

“Maybe. But we’ve got to see they do. I imagine that the council will give pound for pound on the money raised by voluntary contribution. What we’ve got to do is to make people realise that this health business is important. Publicity. That’s the idea. I want you to back me.”

“Anything I can do.”

“You can do a lot. You can get the Methodists roused. You can work up the Kiplington area. You’ll come on my committee? Good. I’ll tell you another idea I’ve got. We’ll have the old building floodlit. There it is, right in the centre of the town. Yet people hardly know it exists.”

“Yes, but look here. What about the site for the new building?”

“Oh, we’ll see to that all in good time.”

Huggins was content. Somehow, by the miraculous subtleties of intrigue, the plan for floodlighting the hospital was going to raise the values of the Leame Ferry Waste sheds. Never mind how. Huggins was Snaith’s man. He believed implicity in his leader’s power. Somehow all things worked together for good to those that love God.

T
O
M
IDGE
C
ARNE
Mrs. Holly’s death meant that when she returned to school for the summer term of 1933, Lydia was not there. Lydia, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! Fat, rough, vulgar, slummy Lydia had gone home to look after her horrid little snotty-nosed brothers and sisters and a wretched little baby. Good riddance of bad rubbish.

But Lydia’s absence was not the only treat awaiting her. Midge had a tale to tell. A marvellous tale. Miss Burton, Scarlet Sally, had—no, no, no, you’d never possibly guess it. Miss Burton has worn my combinations. Imagine it! Midge whispered to Gwynneth Rogers and Nancy Grey and Leslie Tucker—Imagine Miss Burton in your combinations!

Then, when incredulity gave way to ecstatic giggles, Midge would tell the whole story—of the calving cow, the night’s vigil, of her father’s return with Scarlet Sally, and of the hot bath, the borrowed clothes, the breakfast. No one else in the school had such a story. It gave Midge a prestige which she had never even dreamed of during her first two unhappy terms. It was an answer to prayer.

For at her first Communion on Easter morning, as at the most potent, sacred and magic moment of her life, Midge had prayed first that her mother might recover, then that her father might be happy, then that she might be popular at school and receive admission to the glorious company known as Them.

“They” were a small group of girls who for some indefinable quality had acquired popularity at the High School. There was nothing special about them. Gwynneth was a farmer’s daughter, a pert vivacious unintimidated member of IV Lower; Nancy Grey, Molly Gryson, Judy Peacock—all these and perhaps half a dozen others congregated in one privileged corner of the bicycle shed, cycled to games and ate their eleven o’clock biscuits together. They were exclusive. Outsiders were sternly warned away. Midge, unaccustomed to exclusion, had suffered hideously from their repeated snubs. They did not want her, and she took nearly two months to learn that even Midge Carne of Maythorpe, even Lord Sedgmire’s granddaughter, found no welcome where she was not wanted. The very inaccessibility of Them made them seem more desirable. When Midge returned for the summer term, and found that her story could win eager listeners, her delight was unbounded. Even They might want her.

They did. They shared her admiration of Miss Burton and her awe at the amazing intimacies of her wardrobe. They were ready to listen with avid attention to her details. “Her own things were pale green silk. Yes, fancy, and a sort of belt with net frilling instead of stays; but she wore my brown tights, and sent back all the clothes washed and ironed in a box from Marshal
&
Snelgrove.”

There were other pleasant features of that summer term— crisp white cotton blouses instead of cream flannel, eleven o’clock break out of doors, tennis instead of hockey.

Midge hated hockey. To her it meant hours of chill uncomfortable boredom punctuated by moments of anxiety and disappointment. Always before a game she thought: This time I shall play better. Always she found herself unable to keep in line with the forwards, fumbling her passes, missing tackles. She was no good at all. She shed tears behind the pavilion, but these did not help her. Fatigue and humiliation exhausted her.

But tennis was different. She had played before; there was a court at Maythorpe—when any one bothered to put the net up. The Beddows family sometimes played tennis. Midge liked to watch the new white balls springing on the green turf; she loved the smell of cut grass, the hum of bees in the border of narcissus and wallflowers and forget-me-not, the drowsy murmur of the mowing machine through open form-room windows. She loved the summer term.

It was not spoiled for her when during the second week Gwynneth Rogers suddenly disappeared and the school was put into quarantine for measles. The others were furious. Measles in summer! It simply was unthinkable. The Easter term was the proper term for measles. No tennis matches, no sports competition against Kingsport South. Midge did not care. She had become one of Them. She sat in the bicycle shed with Molly and Judy and pretended to mourn the absence of Gwynneth. She mourned nothing.

It was just as well that she found school so pleasant, for Maythorpe Hall was drearier than ever. No visitors came now; only men on business drove up to the back door and sat closeted with her father in the gun-room. Mr. Castle was worse. Pudsey was drinking. Daddy sat night after night at his account books. He was trying to sell the pictures from the dining-room, but nobody seemed anxious to buy the portraits of Carne forefathers in blue satin waistcoats, Carnes in hunting pink, Carnes with sidewhiskers. We can’t afford it, we can’t afford it, that was the rhythm chanted across the day. After the cheerful order and variety of the school routine, the time-table that changed at the bidding of a bell every forty-five minutes, the jokes, the companionship of them, Maythorpe life stretched out in a dull monotony of inaction.

Then one morning Midge woke up with a sore throat and a slight headache. She said nothing, terrified lest Elsie should tell her she had a cold and must stay at home. She choked down egg and bacon, collected her satchel and gym shoes, and was ready, with unaccustomed punctuality, when her father came out into the stable-yard. He was driving to Kiplington to catch a train for Flintonbridge. She could go with him. On the way he told her that he must shortly go to Ireland again, about some horses. She made little comment. Her throat felt so sore that all she wanted was to keep her mouth shut. She was aware of the sombre, disappointed glance he gave her, but did not know that he was deeply jealous of her delight in the school, her preoccupation with all its affairs.

She loved him dearly. When he drove away, leaving her at the school gate, she looked at the flashing wheels of the cart, the spanking chestnut, the glittering buckles of the polished harness, and thought that there was no one like her father. Even his refusal to buy a car had distinction in it. The chestnut was one of the horses to be sold in Ireland.

Midge went into school, but her head was heavy. She could not give her attention to her lessons. She could not eat her dinner.

Miss Parsons saw her drooping figure and flushed cheeks and called her into matron’s room and took her temperature. When she removed the thermometer from Midge’s mouth, she became at once pink-faced and fluttering.

“Yes, yes. You’d better lie down, dear. Here on the sofa. I’ll keep the others out. Yes, Jean, what is it? Oh, your cod-liver-oil. Well, no—yes. I’ll bring it out to you.” She look a card marked “Engaged” and hung it on the door.

Midge was delighted. If she was to feel ill, she preferred that her maladies should evoke consternation. Miss Parsons seemed most suitably impressed.

Midge lay down. She felt hot and drowsy. She could hear the clatter of feet outside, in the stone corridor, the ripple of arpeggios from the practising-room, the hollow knock of cricket balls against bats down at the nets.