Post of Honour (25 page)

She regretted it the moment he had gone, realising that she did not regard him as a person at all but as a symbol of all the millions of young men marched into this inferno by paunched, be-whiskered generals and ageing politicians on both sides of the line, boys who, like this one, would die virgins if they were too fastidious to visit the Blue or Red Lamp establishments during rest and training periods behind the front.

She kept her promise, however, and far from regretting it found his clumsy embraces a measure of solace for her years of deprivation and dedication before and during the war. They did not go to Paris, as he had urged, but to the village high up the Seine where, as a girl, she had boarded out for a time after her father had brought her back from India and where, among the friendly peasants, she might have found peace had she remained there to grow up as an exile instead of being fetched home after her father’s remarriage.

They stayed at a little inn near the bridge. Before their window was the broad sweep of the river and its tidy fringe of poplars, limes and chestnuts and above them towered the walls of the castle, squatting like a white hen on a clutch of half-timbered, many-gabled houses. For Grace it was a recuperative interval, for here the war seemed to belong to another century. For David, ‘The Boy David’ as she called him, it was an idyll. He could hardly have been as deeply in love with her as he professed himself to be, yet she represented for him a romanticised ideal of womanhood who somehow struck a precise balance between a mother and a mistress, offering comfort in the one role and the grossest flattery in the other. He asked her many questions about her past but she parried most of them, telling him good-humouredly to mind his own business and although he talked eagerly about marrying her during his next leave, he did not press for details of her first marriage or her involvement in politics. On the final morning, just after dawn, she left him to sit by the tall window looking down on the sliding river and when she returned to the bed the terrible poignancy of his sleeping face brought tears to her eyes. To her he was as dead as though he was lying out on the battlefield and the knowledge that she had been the means of bringing him a little ecstasy seemed to her the most positive achievement of her life.

David was the first and perhaps the most innocent of them, for as the war dragged on she took other lovers, all of them young and resigned to death in the immediate future. She derived small physical satisfaction from these encounters for some of the boys were greedy while others were excusably clumsy yet she derived satisfaction of another kind that had nothing to do with their bearlike embraces and fearful impatience. She saw herself, as the Somme petered out and the even more costly assaults of 1917 began, as a healer and again as a kind of janitor, opening the door to give these condemned men a glimpse of a world they would never inherit. It was an extravagant thought and perhaps a vain one but it seemed to her a more rewarding endeavour than any she had attempted in all the years of platform storming and window smashing, or, for that matter, anything achieved during her short reign at Shallowford.

II

O
ne morning in April, 1916, the Reverend Hubert Horsey, Rector of Shallowford, was shown into Paul’s office in what Mrs Handcock might have described as ‘zummat of a tizzy’. Like his son Keith he was afflicted by a slight stutter and Paul, aware of this, gave him a moment or two to collect himself before offering him a sherry which he politely refused.

‘It’s about my boy, Keith,’ the rector said. ‘I’m here to ask you a favour, Mr Craddock, or maybe find someone else on the estate who would do me a favour.’ He went on to say that his son had recently been summoned before a Leeds tribunal to explain why he had not enlisted under the Derby Act of the previous December, Keith having declared himself a conscientious objector. Paul was not surprised. Both father and son had always been regarded as eccentric among the Valley folk and the rector was as unlike his predecessor, the Reverend Bull, as it was possible to be for he neither hunted, hectored his flock, nor challenged members of his congregation to explain why they had missed matins. He had also succeeded in establishing cordial relationships with the Nonconformists in Coombe Bay and for this reason alone Paul had always liked the little man but Horsey had not been a success in the Valley. Having been bullied by Bull for a generation the local Anglicans regarded clerical tolerance as weakness and church attendances had fallen sharply until the war encouraged parishioners to seek Divine protection for absent menfolk. Paul said, ‘How convinced is he, Rector? What I mean is, there seem to be many varieties of conscientious objectors. Is Keith a religious boy?’

‘I never thought of him as such,’ Horsey admitted. ‘We’ve had a good deal of argument on religious dogma since he went up to Oxford but he seems to have made a stand on this issue. I have a newspaper report here; perhaps you should read it.’

It did not take Paul long to discover that Keith Horsey’s objections were political rather than religious. He had recently resigned from the Paxtonbury tribunal himself and was familiar with all the stock questions and most of the stock answer. To the old chestnut, ‘What would you do if you saw a German soldier raping your mother or sister?’ Keith had replied, rather fatuously Paul considered, ‘I have no mother or sister,’ and when pressed said he supposed he would attack the rapist with his bare hands. There was nothing dramatic about the examination. It had the same tiresome note as the Paxtonbury hearings and the same futility that had prompted Paul to resign.

‘Will he do farm work?’ Paul asked and Horsey said that he probably would but that he, as Rector, had already made the rounds of the Valley farms and had been unable to place his son. At Hermitage Farm Gloria Pitts had abused him and at Four Winds Farmer Eveleigh had refused to discuss the proposition. There was no demand for unskilled labour at the Dell or High Coombe and neither Willoughby at Deepdene, nor Elinor Codsall at Periwinkle, could afford extra help.

Paul considered. He was aware that both the Pitts and the Eveleighs could use extra help; indeed, Four Winds, with the biggest acreage and a herd of seventy Friesians, was desperate for a cowman and Keith could surely be taught to milk in a week or so. He said, ‘Leave it to me, Rector. I’ll get him taken on at Four Winds. Get the boy down here and as soon as he’s fixed I’ll write to the Leeds tribunal.’

‘It’s very kind of you,’ Horsey said. ‘I couldn’t bear to think of him going to prison, they say they treat them so badly, but I should be less than honest if I didn’t say I understood how people feel who have a son or a husband out there.’ Then, pausing for a second, he said glumly, ‘This business makes me feel useless, Mr Craddock. I’m not one of those parsons who can unblushingly bless a cannon, or claim that the Almighty is fighting for us! Sometimes I wish I were; it would make things a lot easier and I daresay I should make more impact here.’

Paul, deciding that he had never liked the man so much as at this moment, said, ‘I’m not all that enthusiastic myself, Rector! However, there’s little you or I can do about it.’

The man’s head came up and Paul noticed the baffled look in his brown eyes. ‘Is there no prospect at all of a compromised peace this year?’ he asked, and Paul told him that he had asked the same question of their MP, Grenfell, only a few days ago and had received a negative answer. ‘Grenfell says the Government mean to fight to a finish,’ he added. ‘There are reasons for supposing the Germans have already approached both the Allies and the Americans and been turned down,’ and then, when he saw Horsey was prepared to unburden himself further, he made the excuse that he would try and catch Eveleigh before the farmer went off to weekly market. He was not in the mood to share the rector’s troubles, having more than enough of his own just then. As he was leaving however, Horsey said, ‘This war and everyone’s approach to it—it makes absolute nonsense of my work, Squire.’

‘Mine too,’ Paul said grimly, ‘I put fourteen years into building this estate into a useful community and I thought I was progressing but here I am going cap in hand to one of my own tenants, to ask him to help prevent a brilliant brain like Keith’s being scattered about France, or dulled by prison!’ and he took his cap and went out, not in the best of tempers.

Eveleigh proved exceptionally stubborn. ‘Look here, Squire,’ he argued, ‘I’ve had one boy killed and I’ve another in uniform! Why the devil should I help a damned shirker?’

‘Maybe because he’s your son-in-law!’ Paul reminded him, ‘and I’m sure your wife would be relieved.’

‘I daresay she would!’ growled Eveleigh, ‘but the truth is I’ve never liked the boy! Rachel ought to have found herself a man, not a walking encyclopaedia who hasn’t the guts to fight for his own kin! Besides, I’ve made arrangements to get a land-girl here.’

‘You could do with two extra hands and I’m asking this as a favour,’ Paul said.

Eveleigh hesitated. The war had changed him, more than any of them, Paul thought. He had always been dour and uncommunicative but in spite of this Four Winds had been a happy, prosperous farm since they had moved in, man, wife and children working in close accord and seeming to possess mutual respect for one another. Now the atmosphere of the farm was uncomfortably like Four Winds in Arabella’s time, with Eveleigh snarling at his wife and younger daughters and the kitchen charged with explosive bad temper and suppressed resentment.

‘Well,’ he said at length, ‘I’ll do it on your account, Squire, for I don’t need reminding it was you gave me my chance, backalong. If you hadn’t I’d still be a hired hand living in the cottage, so get the boy here and Rachel too, and we’ll see how they shape. If they pull their weight they can abide but I’ll tell you straight, I won’t have aught to say to ’em.’

That was the best Paul could do and a week later Keith and Rachel arrived from the North and took up residence in the cottage the Eveleighs had occupied during the Codsall regime. The rector called in to thank Paul but Keith himself did not seem particularly grateful for the reprieve and Paul guessed that he regarded farm work as an uneasy compromise. Rachel also was estranged from her sisters, who were inclined to share their father’s view that Keith was a coward, a pitiful creature compared to their splendid brothers Gilbert and Harold but the arrangement served as a temporary measure and at least kept Keith out of gaol. Paul heard, however, that a month or two after their arrival, Eveleigh went ahead with his intention of employing a land-girl and soon after her arrival he saw her, a buxom, auburn-haired young hoyden, who looked as though she would be more at home in a munitions factory than a field of cows. Paul happened to pass her by Codsall bridge whilst she was driving the herd home from the river pastures and saw her take out a pocket mirror to apply a powder puff to her broad, freckled nose. He thought, ‘Well, I don’t know what Eveleigh’s thinking of but Keith can’t be much more of an amateur than her and at least Rachel can make butter and care for hens!’ but he did not think any more about it until a week or so later when, on returning late from a meeting of an agricultural committee at Paxtonbury, Claire met him on the doorstep and he saw at once that she was worried.

‘Rachel Horsey is in the library,’ she told him, ‘but don’t go in until I’ve told you what it’s about. There’s been more trouble over at Four Winds.’

She took him into the little-used drawing room and shut the door.

‘What do you know about that land-girl Eveleigh has over there?’ Claire asked, and Paul told her nothing at all except that she did not look like a girl who could earn her wages on a farm.

‘I daresay you’re right at that,’ Claire said, ‘for it seems that Eveleigh isn’t interested in her vertical activities!’

‘Now what the devil do you mean by that?’ Paul demanded, ‘Eveleigh’s not that kind of chap. You’ve been listening to gossip started by the fact that she’s the first land-girl who has shown up here!’

‘Not in this case,’ Claire said, ‘she was Eveleigh’s fancy piece when she worked behind the counter at Foster’s, the drapers, and has been for a year or more. He got her drafted to him by delivering cream and butter on councillors’ doorsteps. Ben Godbeer, the seedsman, is on the County Council and allocates land labour, doesn’t he? And Ben is an old crony of Eveleigh’s. It looks to me as if Rachel has hit the nail on the head.’

‘And what does she think I can do about it?’ Paul demanded. ‘Eveleigh’s a paid-up tenant running the best farm on the estate and I’m already under an obligation to him on account of placing Keith.’

‘Well,’ Claire said, hands on her hips, ‘you can’t ask him to get rid of the girl just like that but Rachel thinks you might make some kind of indirect approach. Since this afternoon everyone at Four Winds knows about it.’

‘What happened this afternoon?’

‘A French farce,’ Claire told him, ‘Old Ned Fosdyke, the pigman, went into the loft over the barn to get meal and trod on the pair of them. Eveleigh had his breeches down and the girl was stark naked in the hay!’

‘It’s nothing to grin about, woman!’ Paul growled, but Claire, still chuckling, said, ‘I’m sorry, Paul, but I can’t help it. If it were anyone else but Eveleigh it wouldn’t be funny but he’s such a sententious, self-righteous kind of chap and so strict with his children! The idea of him taking both time and breeches off for an ex-shop girl is enough to make a cat laugh!’

‘Damn it, he might have been more discreet at all events,’ Paul grumbled. ‘How did Rachel come to hear about it?’

‘How could she help hearing? Eveleigh was so mad he knocked poor old Ned Fosdyke down the ladder and everyone came running, including Marian! The point is he’s absolutely unrepentant and won’t even hear of getting rid of the girl!’

‘He damned well will if I’ve anything to say in the matter,’ grunted Paul and after a talk with Rachel, who was crying in the library, he would have accompanied her straight back to Four Winds had she not begged him to wait and hear something of her personal problems. ‘It was good of you to get Keith fixed up,’ she said, ‘but it isn’t going to work, quite apart from this development! Father’s so changed you wouldn’t know him. I don’t know whether it was the boys going, or the war, or what, but life is impossible for Keith and I over there and Keith is thinking of walking out and taking the consequences. He thinks the war is a crime against humanity and that the only way it can be stopped is for people like us to make a stand but what good will it do him going to prison? Besides, I’m expecting a baby in the autumn!’