God Is an Englishman (62 page)

He led the way over a little path that passed between a small grove of sycamores and horse chestnuts to the far side of the islet, where there was a clearing GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 328

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forming a rough square. In the middle of it, ten yards from the bank, was a dry stone structure with a shingle roof and a stone floor. It had an open fireplace and one or two items of rustic furniture, including a chair, a bench, and a rush table with one leg missing. Ferns peeped through the walls and the flags were slip pery with moss but inside it was cool and secluded. The word “bower” described it exactly.

He stood back, smiling, whilst she examined it, noting the rest of his clothes piled on the bench. The coat and stock were neatly folded, as though by a woman.

He must, she thought, be a very fastidious young man, again in contrast to Adam, who scattered his clothes everywhere.

“I’m glad it was you,” he said, “for I wanted to get to know you better. I was very put out when you called the supper party off. I came over specially from Deal and was looking forward to it.” She remem bered then that the Manatons had been invited and coloured at the recollection of those gruff cancellation notes Adam had sent out. Feeling some explanation to be necessary she said, “You heard what happened, I imagine? I was very much upset at the time. Everyone at Tryst was, for it was a dreadful thing to happen on one’s own doorstep.”

“Yes,” he said, making it very clear that he regarded the death of a chimney sweep a social inconvenience rather than a calamity, “I daresay it put you all to a great deal of trouble. But why not call the party on again now that I’m home on a month’s furlough?”

“That’s quite impossible,” she said. “For one thing my birthday has gone by and for another my husband is away.”

His expression of interest in this announcement made her regret having made it, and it occurred to her then that perhaps, after all, she was a little short of experience in handling brash young officers who did not seem to be the least embarrassed when they were observed swimming in the nude in somebody else’s stream. Most people, she supposed, including his own mother, would consider it very improper for a married woman to be here in his company, even though it was broad daylight and he was the trespasser. Then she remembered that, in all the time she had known him, Adam had never exhibited a spark of jealousy, and also that he had no patience at all with the fiddle-faddle that polite society hedged about young married and single women. The thought gave her confidence so that she said, carefully, “I’m not in the least sure I ought to stay talking to you after you had the impudence to go swimming in our reach without so much as a pair of cotton drawers. Why didn’t you make sure the towpath was empty?

Anyone at all might have seen you.”

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“Yes,” he said, looking at her gravely, “they might at that. Even Mrs. Halberton,” and at that she had to laugh for Mrs. Halberton was acknowledged the self-elected arbitress of social proprieties in the district. “I hope you won’t tell her,” he added, and she replied, “How could I? Without starting a scandal?”

“Well that’s handsome of you, Mrs. Swann, but I can’t say I’m really surprised by your attitude.”

“You think I make a habit of watching men go swimming?”

“No,” he said, seriously, “what I meant is that you’re obviously a person who shares my impatience with conventions. There’s far too many of them nowadays and they’re becoming an insufferable bore to everyone young enough to enjoy life.”

“Now that’s very curious,” she said, “for my husband is always saying precisely the same, and has done, ever since we married.” She noticed that his eyebrows lifted in a quizzical way so she went on, hurriedly, “What I mean is, Mr. Swann has travelled a great deal and served in two wars, so that that kind of thing doesn’t bother him overmuch.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Miles said, “for it means you could help me to pass the time very agreeably while I’m on leave, providing you’ve nothing better to do, of course,” and before giving her a chance to protest, “I usually take my furloughs during the hunting season, and go out six days a week. This is the first summer I’ve been home since I was commissioned and frankly I’m finding it dull.”

She was not absolutely sure what niche a gunner occupied in the complicated military hierarchy, but she was aware that it was higher than most. She said, “I wanted my husband to remain in the army. He was a lieutenant in the East India Company, the ‘John Company’ he always calls it. I believe you’re in the Royal Horse Artillery, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am,” he said, proudly, “and I’ll wager you are the only woman of your age in the district who would know as much. As a matter of fact,” he went on,

“I got the impression at that croquet party that you didn’t approve of me and wouldn’t have cared two straws which regiment I served. I take it as a compliment that you not only found out but also remembered.” It struck her, with a kind of wonder, that everything one said to Miles Manaton was construed by him into some kind of compli ment and attempting to alter this state of affairs she said, quickly, “Pray don’t jump to conclusions, Mr. Manaton.

I’ve been interested in military matters ever since the Crimea and in your case I re cognised the badge. I can tell you most things about soldiering, and even GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 330

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which regiment takes precedence over others. I know, for in stance, that all you regular officers look down on the Indian army and that the Guards look down on you.”

The laugh that greeted this was not conventional. It ran clear across the river, starting a moorhen out of the reeds. “You’re too sharp for me, Mrs. Swann,” he said, “and I promise upon my honour not to tease you again.” Then, standing back a pace, he looked her up and down in what many women would have considered an almost indecent fashion, and would have made her blush if he had not added, with obvious sincerity, “You can’t imagine what a relief it is to chat to a very pretty woman who treats you as though you were a brother, and doesn’t take refuge in meaningless chatter. It used to be fun with my sisters, but they’ve suddenly grown up, and put on the most ridiculous airs, whereas every so-called

‘eligible’ my mother intro duces into the house acts like a doll wound up by mamma and likely to run down at any moment.”

She found that she liked this line of talk for it made her feel very much at ease. “I know what you mean,” she said, “and I’m sure Adam would, but you can hardly include me in the eligible class, can you, Mr. Manaton?” expecting him to laugh again.

He did not, however, but dropped his gaze, appearing, to her con siderable astonishment, somewhat confused. Then, turning away and looking across the river, he said, sombrely, “No, unfortunately not, Mrs. Swann, and I’ll risk offending you by saying that I con sider your husband a very fortunate fellow indeed. Among the most fortunate in the county!”

Who could avoid being flattered by this from a man like him, she asked herself.

She had noted his bored acceptance of the adulation he had received from all the unmarried girls at the party, some of them pretty, but there was something almost abject in the way he propped himself against the doorpost and avoided her eye, as though her presence subjected him to a deep emotional strain. Whether this was so or not the certainty of his interest in her as a woman rather than a neighbour excited her. It was a long time since she had re garded herself as anything much more than a man’s plaything, and while this satisfied her vanity it was pleasant to learn that a man existed, and a young and handsome man at that, who regarded her as a person in her own right. She was still cautious, however, and said, “I don’t think you should say that to me in these circum stances,” but was careful to keep coquetry from her voice. “After all, Mr. Manaton, there must be a great number of unattached girls about here who would be very flattered by any attention you paid them.”

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“I daresay,” he replied, with a boy’s surliness, “but not one among them with a thought in her head except what the Empress Eugenie is wearing, and a whiff or two of local scandal.” Suddenly he faced her with what she could not help but regard as an air of desperation. “You must have realised that I’ve been very much aware of you, ever since we met at Mrs. Halberton’s.”

“I’m aware of nothing of the kind,” she said, truthfully. “How could I be? We’ve never met again until this moment.”

“That’s so,” he said, smiling now, “but I’ve watched you walking and riding about here none the less, and often been tempted to hail you, for you were always alone.” His engaging smile faded and he looked at her with a new kind of interest.
“Why
are you always alone? Isn’t your husband concerned about you roving the country side afoot and on horseback, without an escort?” She said, smiling, “To tel the truth I don’t think he knows, for he’s away so often about his business. But if he did I think he would trust me to look out for myself.”

“Aye,” he said, giving her another of his appreciative scrutinies, “and I’d wager you could if it came to the pinch. Your husband runs a transport service, doesn’t he? Surely that’s a rum thing for a gentleman to do, especially a man who rode in Cardigan’s charge. I’m not the only one to remark on it. It puzzles a majority about here. Did you know that, Mrs. Swann?”

“Yes,” she said, calmly. “I knew it. It doesn’t do to be in trade with some folk, but Adam says it will soon be accepted, even by county families like yours. He says it’s quite silly to pretend other wise. That was why he didn’t give a fig for family tradition.”

“What tradition was that?”

“Why the Swann tradition,” she said, proudly. “A Swann has served in every major war since Crécy, or so the Colonel, my father-in-law, tells me. He fought under the Grand Old Duke, and was wounded at Waterloo. He gets invited to the Waterloo dinner every June, and
his
father fought under Lord Cornwallis, in America. When America was a colony, of course.” He smiled, rather condescendingly she thought, offered her his hand, and led the way out of the bower into the sunshine. “You really are an intriguing person, Mrs. Swann. Here’s your husband running a freight service all over the country, and getting his name into all the newspapers, and all you can talk of is his family’s military tradition.”

“I can’t help that,” she said, equably, “it’s the way I’m made.”

“But what on earth does your husband think about it? About your attitude to trade I mean?”

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“Oh, he just laughs at it and goes about his own business no matter what me and the Colonel say to the contrary, but he has made me a promise and I mean to see that he keeps it.”

“What promise is that? Or is it a secret?”

“No, it’s no secret. He’s promised me our son Alexander shall take up a commission in a good regiment as soon as he’s done with school. It would have been Stella, of course, but she turned out to be a girl.”

“Were you very disappointed?”

“At the time I was, but I got over it as soon as Alex was born, and I mean to have other sons. After all, I’m only twenty-four.” Her artlessness had the power to silence him. It was so unlike the simulated ingenuousness of garrison town wives to which he was accustomed, or the rather tiresome naïveté of the kind of girls Mrs. Halberton invited to her croquet parties. Suddenly, and quite defi nitely, she began to interest him for it occurred to him that a woman who could talk so frankly to a man she hardly knew might well prove a very easy conquest inasmuch as her mind did not run along the rigidly prescribed lines of current fashion. Already he had half made up his mind to try his luck, partly because this promised to be an excessively dull furlough but mostly because Miles Manaton was a man who regarded every pretty woman he encountered as a challenge. He was not especially ruttish, and rarely consorted with the profes sional drabs who infested the barracks and overseas stations where he had served, but for all that he was a very dedicated womaniser, using women as a kind of diet to feed an insatiable ego that had been his principal characteristic ever since he had discovered, at the age of about three, how strikingly beautiful he was, and how natural it was that his sisters, and all the old trouts in married quarters should go out of their way to spoil him. He could never have enough flattery. Without it, even for a day, he was like an addict deprived of his opium.

The act of physically possessing a woman meant very little to him, but her hom-age, even for the few sweaty moments she was beneath him, meant everything, for he assessed each conquest in the way a miser assesses a bargain or a piece of gold. At twenty-six he had already accumulated a sizeable hoard, beginning with an adol escent encounter with a besotted young governess, and ending a month or so before he began this furlough, with the wife of his mili tary tailor in Canterbury. He had sired a number of children here and overseas, but he thought of them not as children but as proofs of his infallibility with women, all kinds of women, from housemaids and milkmaids to the wives of elderly officers and busy merchants. What was even more unusual than his tally, however, was his adroitness GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 333

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in evading the consequences of nonstop lechery. He operated like a skilled fencer, first estimating the ability of his opponent to defend herself, then deciding upon an approach, then moving into attack, and finally skipping back out of range and usually out of sight, for none of his affairs engaged him sufficiently to hold his attention for more than a month. Once heavily engaged, however, it became a point of honour with him not to desist until the quarry had either capitulated or made it absolutely clear to him that she never would. In the latter case he would drift away and take his revenge by drop ping hints among colleagues concerning the woman’s character and here again he was almost unique among men who made a practice of seduction. He had never, in the whole of his life, been troubled by a single twinge of conscience.