God Is an Englishman (63 page)

There was a kind of scale in his armoury of tactics, and its pitch was dictated by the overture. If the prospect looked easy he could be wildly passionate, but if there was likely to be opposition he could simulate the despairing, lovesick youth better than any professional actor performing at Drury Lane. Sometimes, according to the quarry’s mood, it was necessary to compromise, alternating rapidly between paroxysms of desire and transports of despair, and occa sionally he had to resort to a less direct approach, seeming to seek a soulmate rather than a bedmate, a woman equipped to solace his loneliness and be an older sister to him.

There was even a fourth ap proach, the one he decided upon now, and that was to reverse the tide of flattery, feeding it back to the woman who, he had decided, was not simply bored, as in the cases of most wives he had seduced, but dwarfed by a dominant partner, and perhaps on the point of having her individuality extinguished altogether.

When he encountered such a person his wealth of experience told him precisely how to act. He would gently isolate his victim from her background and then, almost inadvertently, display her to herself as an earthbound goddess whose celestial qualities had been churlishly overlooked by her partner. This, he found, was almost certain to bring her back to him again and again, until the moment arrived when he could dart in like a bullfighter and end the contest at a blow.

He walked back to the tethered cob in Henrietta’s wake, planning his moves like a pickpocket. She was very pretty. She was very vain. She was neglected.

She was virtually subdued by that lout of a hus band, who was so deficient in commonsense as to throw up a military career (even a pinchpenny one among sepoys) to become not a merchant but a hawker, whose income depended upon what he was given to lug about the country in a cart. Moreover, the poor fool was not only absent from home most of the time but allowed his wife to range GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 334

3/27/09 5:14:21 PM

Skirmish on Shallott
3 3 5

the countryside like a ripe little milkmaid or cattle-herder, ready to be ravished behind the nearest haystack by the first man who happened along. The conquest of Henrietta Swann, he decided, would be swift and complete.

2

They had parted on a promise that she would meet him again in a day or so but that this time he would come mounted and give her a lesson in horsemanship.

Adam, he acknowledged, had taught her to manage a quiet cob, but there was more to horsemastership than that, and obviously poor Mr. Swann was far too busy with his important concerns to have time to give her the necessary instruction. He would be happy, he said, to teach her something of dressage, and was prepared to bring along a well-mannered hunter from his father’s stable for her pleasure.

She said nothing to anyone at Tryst about the encounter for she already thought of it as a safe, stimulating flirtation, of the kind many of Mr. Mudie’s heroines indulged in from time to time, with out getting themselves fatally enmeshed like poor Lady Isobel, in
East Lynne.
For that, she decided firmly, was not for her.

She was not even physically attracted to Miles, having had a unique oppor tunity to look him over without benefit of uniform. She thought of him, indeed, as a handsome, rather silly boy, who was, it seemed, as lonely as she had been on occasion and who had, in passing, been almost ruined by the fussy attentions of women, among them his domineering old mother and her three plain daughters.

She could, she felt, safely show him a little sisterly affection in return for the personal enlargement his attentions had brought her. She might even let him kiss her, providing he went about it reverently and modestly, and then she would let him know that she was quite unable to return his love, and this offered a mutual bonus for, where as she was badly in need of a boost, he needed to be shown that there were still women about who were proof against his charms. All men, of course, were egotists, but the egotism of Miles Manaton was exceptional, and deflating it, by means of a series of gentle pin pricks, offered a welcome break in a flattish routine until Adam came cantering home with all that chimney-sweep nonsense out of mind. There was really no comparison between being swept off her feet and tossed about by a real man like Adam Swann, and flattered and petted by a self-inflated masher like Miles Manaton, but Adam’s lack of jealousy had always irritated her a little, and it could do no harm, and might even do some good, if he learned, in a roundabout way, that other men not only thought her pretty but in possession of a full set of wits.

GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 335

3/27/09 5:14:21 PM

3 3 6 G O D I S A N E N G L I S H M A N

It was a rather smug Henrietta who stretched herself out in the big double bed that night, and before she slept she had resolved upon setting out for the towpath the following afternoon, and discovering whether he had kept his promise about giving her a riding lesson on one of his father’s hunters, known to be thoroughbreds.

He was there sitting on his own mare, a dainty little bay, with expensive-looking accoutrements and holding another horse by the leading rein. Moreover, he was wearing the undress uniform of the Royal Horse Artillery, and looked far more manly than he had in ruffled shirt and breeches or, for that matter, flat on his back in the pool. They spent a pleasant, restrained afternoon. He was, she had to admit, a superb horseman and possessed the patience to teach her to jump over a log, which was something Adam had never been able to do. They rode up across the moor and down into the adjacent river valley, and all the time he was gracious and polite and talked to her about army life, recounting a number of amusing anecdotes about his superior officers and their feuding wives. She went home thinking she might have misjudged him, for he was really a most agreeable companion, and seemed to have set aside his outrageous conceit for her benefit, or perhaps because he already realised it failed to impress her.

It was a Monday when she had first crossed to the islet, and by the following Saturday they had enjoyed three similar expeditions, all unremarkable in every way, save that she seemed, by then, to have tamed him completely, for he began to behave towards her with a reverence that she found delightful to contemplate.

Nobody had ever shown her the least deference in the past, and the sensation it imparted encouraged her to reward him with any number of soft words and expansive smiles, and even the licence of half an embrace each time he helped her mount and dismount. Once, she noticed, as she leaned her weight on him momentarily, he gave a kind of groan, as though he had a stomach ache, but she thought it impolite to com ment and when they parted, and she set off through the wood for home, she glanced over her shoulder and saw him standing there, a lonely, disconsolate figure, holding the reins of the two horses, and staring after her as though she was one of Mrs. Henry Wood’s heroines who had just rejected his advances.

It was, she decided, a very engaging game and perhaps a rather one-sided one but that was no reason at all to end it, for a young man with his looks and prospects could hardly expect to go through life without finding an occasional dose of castor oil on his silver spoon.

She expected that Adam would be home in a day or so and then, of course, this GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 336

3/27/09 5:14:21 PM

Skirmish on Shallott
3 3 7

nonsense would have to stop, but in the meantime they had another assignation, having agreed to meet on foot, for the horses were due to be shod and he had suggested she might like to try her hand at fishing. She proposed riding her cob as far as the islet, but he said, quickly, “No, Mrs. Swann, don’t bring the horse, for the best place to try for trout is that gravel bed near the narrow part of the channel, and if the cob is tethered close by they won’t bite. I’ll look out for you our side of the footbridge, and carry you over the stream, for the river’s no more than a trickle,” and to this she agreed, reflecting gleefully that it might put a strain on him to have her in his arms for a few seconds.

She dressed very carefully, choosing a wide-brimmed straw hat, a white muslin dress sprigged with forget-me-nots, a cross-over fichu to cover her shoulders, and a pair of white slippers for the ground was bone dry and the distance across the paddock not above half-a-mile.

She left the house carrying a flower basket and gardening gloves, having no intention of being questioned by Ellen as to why she was setting out in flimsy garments and indoor footwear. She idled along one of the lower flower beds and then, when the gardener’s back was turned, hid basket and gloves behind the raspberry canes, walked down the blind side of the wall enclosing the kitchen garden, and darted across the few yards of greensward to the wood. She was sure nobody had observed her leave but she was wrong. The Colonel had been watching her from his sitting-room window ever since she passed out of doors, and when he noticed the unconventional manner of her departure he put down his paint brush, rubbed his nose, and went downstairs to collect his field glasses.

In point of fact, Henrietta’s behaviour during the last few days had puzzled him. Although he could understand her rather secre tive high spirits now that Adam had returned to work and written two cheerful if noncommittal letters home, he was at a loss to know why his daughter-in-law should go out of her way to advertise to everyone about her that she was so confoundedly cock-ahoop. It showed in the sparkle that never left her eye, in her glibness when he asked her what kind of day she had spent, and, above all, in her restlessness, that had her glancing at the clock every so often, as though Adam might appear at any moment when she knew quite well that he was in the north. Then there were her regular disap pearances on that cob of hers, and the fact that she always took an identical route, through the paddock copse and down to the river, where she crossed the footbridge and could be seen for a moment through a gap in the trees passing along the towpath before being lost to view behind the willows.

GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 337

3/27/09 5:14:22 PM

3 3 8 G O D I S A N E N G L I S H M A N

He was very far from being a suspicious man, but she was guileless enough to arouse any man’s suspicions and as the days passed he began to wonder what mischief she could be engaged upon, and why she went about it with a mixture of nonchalance and secrecy. He was not seriously worried, however, until he witnessed that casual stroll along the borders and sudden dart for cover. To pretend to be gardening, and then pursue her usual course on foot and wearing house slippers seemed to him nonsensical. He trained his glass on the gap and waited, finding a fixed point and holding the brass cylinder steady by resting it on the window-ledge. In this way, he recalled, he had once saved his life, spotting an ambush laid by that wily old rascal Soult on the French side of the Adige. In five minutes she re appeared, walking briskly, as though she had a definite purpose in mind, and he made his decision, If she was up to anything likely to introduce fresh discord into the house he was going to do his best to scotch it while Adam was still at a distance.

That chimney-sweep business had made everybody miserable, and life had taught him to value domestic tranquillity above every other state of mind.

He went into the stableyard and summoned Michelmore, telling him to saddle the skewbald and saying that he fancied an hour’s ride in the woods. Michelmore, who had been enjoying a nap in the tack-room, took his time about saddling up, and helping the old fellow on to the mounting block. Then, looking up at the sky, he prophesied rain within the hour, and this interested the Colonel who fancied himself as a weather prophet, so that they got into an argument, the Colonel declaring that the thunder heard earlier in the afternoon was well to the west, and that whilst Surrey might get a storm Kent would not. Michelmore, declaring that he, as a Kentishman, qualified as the better judge, persisted in his point of view, pointing out that birds were flying low and there was cloud across the river, and for some minutes the Colonel forgot the purpose behind his ride and only recollected it on seeing Henrietta’s basket half-hidden in the raspberry canes. Then, telling himself that his ability to concen trate was deteriorating, he turned the skewbald towards the trees and was riding through them when the first local thunder pealed out and the horse nodded his head, as though signifying agreement with Michelmore.

3

They had not been fishing ten minutes before the first of the heavy raindrops fell and Miles, glancing up, said there would be a heavy thunder-storm in a matter of minutes and that they had best take shelter in the bower on the far side of the GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 338

3/27/09 5:14:22 PM

Skirmish on Shallott
3 3 9

islet. He was right. Moments later thunder crashed out and rain began to fall in vertical sheets, so that they abandoned their gear and ran for it.

Looking back on the incident, as she sometimes did in the years ahead, Henrietta fancied that Miles Manaton must have had in fluence with the Devil to be able to summon up a storm out of a clear sky, for here, within hailing distance of the towpath, he would have been obliged to take no for an answer, and she could have put a term to any persistence on his part by recrossing the ford at the expense of a ruined pair of slippers. On the left bank, however, where the bower was situated, the channel was deeper and timber ran right down to the water. There was no path here and the sycamores and horse-chestnuts behind the building completely screened anyone using it.

She followed him without hesitation, however, for now the rain was heavy and although the islet was no more than fifty yards wide her fichu was sticking to her shoulders when she ran across the threshold and into his outstretched arms.