Christmas at Candleshoe (7 page)

‘Grant won’t at all mind that mite of attention from your dog – certainly not from a fine dog like that. Grant can take some hard knocks without complaining. He’s an open-air boy, although fond of his books as well. Grant has a fancy to be a writer. And I’m prepared to back him in that. Only I do wish I had another son to take control of some of the family concerns.’

‘
Some
of the family concerns?’ Miss Candleshoe is gratifyingly interrogative.

‘Not perhaps the railroad interests. Nor even the oil. But I did have a fancy he might spend a year or two looking after the ranches. The Feathers have always enjoyed raising cattle. They pack more of it than most other folk, but they’ve always preferred to deal with it when still on the hoof. Coming myself from people who have never gone outside steel, I find that attractive. When my husband was alive, we used to spend weeks in the saddle, getting round one place or another.’

Miss Candleshoe’s glance goes to the decanter. She is conceivably reflecting that her visitor is worth another glass. But she contents herself with regretting her own lack of acquaintance with the American colonies.

Mrs Feather accepts this as an entirely gracious observation. ‘And until this present generation there always have been Feathers to take over. And that’s a great thing. Property – landed property, say – must always mean less when there isn’t an heir.’

Miss Candleshoe remarks that commonly there is an heir somewhere. When an heir seems to be lacking in England, one generally turns up from across the Atlantic. Persons of rustic or menial conditions have been known so to turn up – she believes from what Mrs Feather would call the prairies – and make successful claims on earldoms and baronies. But such episodes, which are on the whole to be deprecated, rarely occur among the landed gentry. It is clear to Mrs Feather that Miss Candleshoe takes a poor view of the nobility. Mrs Feather makes a note to suppress her own devious connection with an Irish peerage – a circumstance upon which she has at times found it advantageous to touch – and to bring in the Buckinghamshire squires when opportunity offers. Meanwhile she sets out upon a further exploratory movement. ‘I do know, of course, how things are very different over here. I mean with the sale of family properties and matters of that sort. Some of our lawyers reckon to be pretty good at tying things up, and there are more trusts and the like in our family than I’d care to count. But here these matters are still on a feudal basis, and a lot of your places are pretty elaborately entailed. I’ve heard that even when two generations see eye to eye in such a business a really strict entail can be hard to break.’

Miss Candleshoe now definitely reaches for the Madeira. Her own property, she offers, is an instance in point. Although not extensive, nor at all certainly associated with the Candleshoes until after the Norman Conquest, its tenure is believed to be a matter of the most amazing intricacy. Her brother Sir James – who reluctantly accepted the convention of knighthood on becoming Solicitor-General – used frequently to discuss it in her hearing with fellow lawyers deeply versed in conveyancing. Miss Candleshoe believes that if the property were to be disposed of there would certainly be a question of Crown prerogative. Moreover she positively knows – what is very vexatious – that she has mislaid the deeds of both home paddocks. But neither of these obstacles, perhaps, would prove insurmountable should sufficient – abundantly sufficient – occasion be presented for tackling them.

Mrs Feather, who is far from an artless lady, feels that this exploratory skirmish has gone far enough. As soon as Grant returns it will be time to bring the visit to a close. She gives her hostess a preliminary indication of this by picking up and smoothing her gloves. Miss Candleshoe, who is perhaps not an artless lady either, drops the stopper into the decanter and inquires if Mrs Feather is comfortably accommodated in an hotel. The Benison Arms at Benison Magna is said to be disagreeable, largely because flooded with sightseers, who are said to pay money to go gaping round Benison Court. Mrs Feather will recall that the servants of poor Dean Swift in his last years used to show their bizarrely demented master in return for half a-crown. Miss Candleshoe confesses to a belief that showing one’s ancestral home for a like consideration is an action of very comparable sort. But the Spendloves have not perhaps been at Benison long enough to develop any very nice feelings in such matters.

At this moment Grant and Mr Armigel return to the room. Mrs Feather, remembering the half-crown which she herself had been clutching in Miss Candleshoe’s private chapel, has felt herself on the verge of blushing. She is therefore glad of the diversion. Grant and Miss Candleshoe exchange civilities about the injured part of Grant’s person, which Miss Candleshoe roundly describes as a buttock. Mrs Feather gloves her left hand and rises. Miss Candleshoe makes Mr Armigel a sign which can only be interpreted as an instruction to ring the bell. Mr Armigel accordingly advances to the fireplace and gives a tug at a long silken rope, about the thickness of a ship’s cable, that depends from the gloom of the ceiling. Perhaps because it is quite evident that nothing happens or can happen as a consequence of this ritual, Mr Armigel gives a second tug with rather too much vigour. The rope falls to the floor, together with a long coil of wire and about a barrow-load of plaster. The wolfhound, which appears to be peckish again, falls upon the rope and savages it. It is apparent that the designed ritual has wholly broken down. There is no means of summoning a servant; in all probability there is no servant to summon; the visit of the Feathers to Candleshoe Manor looks like being, of necessity, indefinitely prolonged.

Grant Feather is rather disposed to turn and run. His mother advances upon Miss Candleshoe in good order, determined upon farewells. Whereupon Miss Candleshoe, with much formality and to the evident consternation of her chaplain, presents her visitors with an invitation to dine.

Mrs Feather has managed to get her back to the most recent evidence of the house’s extreme dilapidation; although the air is thick with dust and powdered plaster she contrives not to cough. She sees – being a woman of precise and rapid social discernment – that in the circumstances Miss Candleshoe’s utterance is in fact less an invitation than a command. Hesitation must suggest a hint that the present resources of Miss Candleshoe’s establishment may be severely taxed by an unexpected accession to her board. Mrs Feather has a very good idea how limited these resources are. Is she not, indeed, planning in the light of that knowledge? And here Miss Candleshoe is conceivably not without a fairly full insight into her visitor’s mind. All this renders necessary the preservation of a very high decorum. Mrs Feather accepts – charmingly but without effusiveness. Grant must do something about their car – it can scarcely be left on the roadside while darkness falls – but that need take no more than fifteen minutes. Mrs Feather hopes that this interval will not conflict with Miss Candleshoe’s customary domestic arrangements.

Miss Candleshoe is very clear about this. Nevertheless she will herself have a word with her housekeeper. Tapping with her ebony stick, and bent forward as if scanning the threadbare tartan carpet for an invisible pin, she moves towards the door. Reaching it, she turns and gives her guests a swift glance of stony irony. ‘If there
is
a housekeeper, that is to say.’

She goes out. Towering over her, the wolfhound follows.

‘As a matter of fact there is no housekeeper.’ Mr Armigel, conducting Grant to the drive, becomes confidential. ‘All that sort of thing became very difficult during the war.’

‘The women went into munition factories, and so on?’

Mr Armigel looks doubtful. ‘I don’t know that I ever heard of
that
. But it was unsettling – decidedly unsettling. Women adore a red coat.’

‘A red coat?’

‘Precisely. You recall the relief of one of those places – was it called Mafeking? Both our cook and kitchen-maid, I am sorry to say, subsequently proved to have celebrated that occasion in a manner that cannot be described as virtuous. I remember reflecting at the time how distressed Colonel Baden-Powell would have been to hear of it. He cannot have intended that his gallant defence of the place – which was probably by no means worth defending – should result in lax sexual behaviour among the lower classes. You agree with me?’

‘I surely do.’ Grant sometimes encounters persons of mature years for whom ‘the war’ means a conflict beginning in 1914. Mr Armigel, going fifteen years farther back, takes him entirely out of his depth.

‘Moreover two of our housemaids left soon after. Their lovers were hanged in the county gaol. It is an astonishing fact, but one well-attested in our poetry, that a high proportion of soldiers returning from the wars at that time
were
hanged in county gaols. But these girls were very upset, all the same. In fact they took a decided dislike to the district, and went away to places like Australia and the United States. We have never recovered – never
quite
recovered – on the domestic side. There is, as I say,
no
housekeeper. But at least there is a housekeeper’s boy.’

‘You mean somebody that runs about for a housekeeper who isn’t there?’

‘I ought to have said
the
housekeeper’s boy – our late housekeeper’s son.’

‘Is he good with a bow and arrow?’

‘Decidedly good. When our last shot-gun went – and it blew itself to pieces in my own hands, my dear sir, a circumstance somewhat alarming at the time – when our last shot-gun went, Jay developed considerable efficiency with a bow. At this moment I have a rabbit-pie in the oven–’

‘Say, do you do the cooking?’

‘Certainly. Jay and I largely divide the labour. He provisions the larder, and I make what I can of it.’

Grant considers. ‘Is this Jay what you would call a strange boy?’

‘Dear me, no.’ Mr Armigel is somewhat anxiously emphatic. ‘He is a very practical boy. We rely upon him in all our more prosaic and humdrum affairs. He could not, I fear, be called an imaginative lad, but he commonly has a sensible solution to any casual mundane exigency.’

‘But he likes going about in fancy dress?’

‘I cannot say that I have noticed anything of the sort. It is true that he is very good in contriving to dress himself in whatever he finds about the place, so his appearance may be a trifle outmoded now and then. I would not know. But I should not like to feel that his frugality in that regard was likely to lay him under any reproach of singularity with his fellows.’

Grant finds that Mr Armigel’s remarks regularly require a little decoding. This slows things down. ‘Then Jay’, he asks presently, ‘has fellows?’

‘He has made friends with several other lads at the village school. Miss Candleshoe, who is fond of children, is very willing that they should play about together.’

‘And fell trees?’ Grant has remembered the obstacle laid across the avenue down which he and his clerical acquaintance are now walking. That Jay is responsible for it he has very little doubt. And it means that he cannot, in fact, drive the car up to the house.

‘Certainly not! I am sure they would not dream of such a thing.’

Mr Armigel is shocked, and Grant sees that the situation is a little awkward. Because the tree has been neatly felled he is prepared to be on the side of the young woodcutters. So Mr Armigel, who probably has not been down to the end of this drive for months, must be headed off. Grant has an inspiration. ‘See here, Mr Armigel, don’t you come any further. You have that pie to think of, and that’s a whole heap more important than stopping along with me. I’ll just get the car a bit up this avenue, and follow you back to the house.’

Mr Armigel discernibly hesitates. It is clear that part of his mind is indeed with his rabbit-pie. At this moment a twig snaps in the undergrowth nearby, and with the suddenness of an apparition the boy is before them. Mr Armigel is delighted. ‘But here is Jay – and at a thoroughly apposite juncture, as is his wont. Jay, be so kind as to take Miss Candleshoe’s guest to the lodge, and help him to dispose suitably of his conveyance. You will excuse me, my dear sir? It has occurred to me that baked apples, albeit an unassuming dish, may make an agreeable addition to our repast.’

Mr Armigel toddles away. Grant and the boy are left eyeing each other.

Jay is slim, straight, pale, dark-haired, and with dark eyes deeply set. He ought to have more chance of being handsome than attractive, and he clearly does not intend that his present demeanour should be held engaging. He confronts Grant grimly for a moment. Then he turns and precedes him silently down the drive. His bow has vanished, and he has changed out of his archer’s clothes into very old grey flannel trousers and a dark blue shirt. Jay is long-limbed and will remain so. His arms as well as his legs move with precision as he walks. Grant finds it indicative of his own social inexperience that he would certainly have supposed this to be the young squire, happily bundled into his shabbiest attire for the holidays.

Grant overtakes Jay, but doesn’t speak. He has decided that here is a nice kid, and he is anxious not to say a wrong thing. There has been sufficient evidence that Jay has no use for casual visitors to Candleshoe, and he wants not to get further in the boy’s black books. They reach the felled tree. Grant stops. ‘I’ve done a good deal of this in my time.’ He steps to the tree’s base and passes a hand appraisingly over the axed surface. He gives a curt approving nod and walks on.

Jay is looking at him sideways. The boy, he realizes, is not sullen or surly. He is wary – very wary – and now he is puzzled. He has put Grant in some category, and Grant’s taking note of the soundness of the tree-felling job has thrown him out. But still he doesn’t speak. Grant remembers that this kitchen-boy knows Meredith’s ‘Woods of Westermain’, and this makes him steal his own sidelong glance. Their eyes meet for a moment and each looks away. Now comes the part of the beech wood, Grant recalls, that is curiously silent.