God Is an Englishman (64 page)

She thought then that he was merely taking sly advantage of their dash for cover and when he kissed her on the cheek she did not re sent it, but only said, mildly, “Now, Miles, do behave yourself, rain or no rain,” but his grip on her tightened, and then he was kissing her mouth, so that she had to exert all her strength to break from him. She was at a loss to find words to express her displeasure and sought a moment’s respite wrestling with the damp ribbons under her chin, and taking off her crumpled hat. Then, as she straightened herself after placing it on the bench, she saw that he was staring at her in a strange disquieting way. His eyes were hard, and his woman’s mouth was set in a prim, downcurving line, as though he found her resis tance insulting.

She said, “Why are you looking at me like that?” and he replied, levelly, “Because you practice one set of rules and pretend to another! How long do you expect a man to dance on the end of your bonnet string, Henrietta?” His arrogance amused her, so that for a moment she forgot to be frightened at his tone of voice, or the way his insolent glance played over her, from her slippers to the crown of her head. It was a baleful, menacing glance. He might even have been measuring his distance with something repellent. She said, at last,
“What
set of rules? If you think you can just…just
grab
me, and kiss me without so much as a by-your-leave, you’re very much mistaken, Miles Manaton! If you had asked for a kiss I might have said yes, but I’m not one of those silly creatures who would think it a great privilege if you raised your hat to them in public!” and she turned her back on him, half-inclined to march off into the hissing rain but deciding GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 339

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that this would leave him with the honours, particularly as she would have to wade the stream to regain the towpath.

He was checked for a moment reassessing the situation. In his career as master-masher Manaton had met with any number of temporary rebuffs, but he had usually anticipated them. Women, in his experience, could be divided into three categories, the genuinely innocent, those who used innocence like a fan or twirling parasol, and those who, when it came to the point, enjoyed both chase and kill. He had slotted Henrietta Swann into the last category, deciding that she was a basically sensual little pigeon, and that once firmly within his embrace she would stay there with no more than a murmur or two of protest. His sharp observation told him, however, that her indignation was genuine, so that it followed he had made an error of judgement, and that she really belonged in the second group, flirting with innocence, and prepared to retreat into it until she had regained the initiative. It was difficult to hurry this kind of court ship and unfortunately there was not much time left, for his furlough expired in a day or so, and her husband might appear on the scene at any moment, so that both factors contributed to the course he decided upon, a feigned withdrawal under a mantle of resentment, with the object of putting her in the wrong, and giving him a chance to make a second storming approach. He looked at the rain grate fully, hoping the thunder would roll and the lightning flash, for it was his experience that most women were upset by thunder-storms.

He said, glumly but reasonably, “I’m sorry, Henrietta I didn’t mean that. But you must realise you have given me reason to hope.” He did not think of this as a fiction and in a sense it was not, for she had made no play of convention, or even modesty, during their association. She had ridden with him all over the neighbourhood, and had been seen by any number of local folk. She had listened to and laughed at stories most men would have hesitated to recount to a young married woman. But it seems she did not regard it in this light at all for she said, though less emphatically, “No woman likes to be…well,
pounced
on in that way. I’m sure I don’t, anyway. I’ve enjoyed meeting you, Miles, and it’s been very agreeable, so why did you have to do that and spoil things?” He now began to doubt if Henrietta belonged to any one group for surely, by now, anyone but a half-wit would have had an inkling as to how such a relationship would end, so he went off on a fresh tack, saying; “You’ll catch a bad cold if you stand there under those drips with that fichu sticking to you. Take it off, you’re dry under neath,” and when she hesitated, “Good heavens, Henrietta, you don’t think I’d harm you? I’m terribly in love with you.” GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 340

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It says much for Miles Manaton’s technique that this was accepted at face value and that his confession, spoken without benefit of faltering voice or heavy sigh but as a statement of fact, made a direct appeal to her emotions. It was a speech right out of the books of Miss Yonge and Mrs. Henry Wood, and nothing remotely like it had come her way in the past. Makepeace Goldthorpe had wanted to marry her for cash, and Adam, over the years, had shown her a great deal of affection, but he had never once admitted to being in love with her, and suddenly she felt ashamed of having encouraged him to that extent.

She said, turning back from the door, “Undo the knot, for I can’t reach it,” and presented her back to him, with the innocent object of getting rid of the fichu and wringing it out. It did not occur to her that he would regard this as unconditional capitulation, and even when he had loosened the knot, and the ends of the fichu were freed, she felt no sense of alarm, for she now saw him as an unhappy be wildered boy, who could be kept in check by a few gentle pats and a gentle kiss on the cheek and brow. Then as the fichu fell away, his arms shot round her and locked under her breasts, and his mouth was close against her neck and she understood she had entirely mis judged him, not only as a lover but as a man. His grip told her that he was beyond pleading with, and also that she was neatly trapped and would be very fortunate to escape from this encounter without staking everything she valued on the outcome of the next few minutes.

Her first impulse was to scream and kick at his shins but then she realised that she could never put up more than a token struggle, and that the only possible alternative would be to employ the kind of tactics he had used in getting her into this kind of situa tion. She fought down her panic and said, “I’m so frightened, Miles. If my husband ever found out…” and then stopped to see what advantage she had gained, if any.

It was appreciable. He was familiar with this last-minute, pre-surrender bleat, accepting it as the small change of victory. He said, “Why should he, until it’s too late for him to get you back?” and then, as his hands slipped over her breasts, she thought of Lady Isobel’s fate, and it seemed to her so credible that it came storming right out of the printed page, so that she thought she would faint on the spot. She managed to hold on, deciding that if that happened there was no doubt at all how a man of Miles Manaton’s character would act. In less than a minute he would have her stripped and in one minute more past and present would have retreated out of sight, leaving nothing but an appallingly bleak future, for her instincts were serving her well enough now, and she had no doubt that he was absolutely ruthless as regards women, ruthless, cruel, and without scruple of any kind.

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It was this, perhaps, that restored to her a measure of courage and cunning, so that she was able to say, leaning her full weight on him, “I daren’t go back there afterwards, Miles. If you want me so much then let’s run away. Now. At once!” and before he could find a suitable reply to this she turned in his embrace and began shower ing him with kisses so that he thought, fleetingly, “Why, damn it.

I wasn’t wrong at all! She’s no more than a genteel whore posing as a virtuous wife,” and her proposal that he should abduct her seemed as specious as all her other artifices, something that could be for gotten as soon as the rain had stopped drumming on the roof.

He would say one thing for her, however. She certainly knew how to rouse a man, and that husband of hers must have taught her a trick or two, for she was now kissing strumpet fashion, and using her thighs and fingers like a trained mistress coaxing her lover into a giv ing mood. It would not have surprised him very much if she had not broken off the embrace in order to tear off her clothes and suddenly he wanted to laugh, not only in triumph but at her terrible im patience that was feeding his vanity in a way he would not have thought possible a moment ago. He said, breathlessly, “Wait…over here…” and lifted her on to the broad wooden bench, flat tening her and groping under the folds of her flimsy dress, with the intention of securing a grip on the waistband of her drawers, but then a strange thing happened. In the very moment he hooked his fingers under the tape a great red bubble soared and burst in front of his eyes, and he fell sideways, striking his temple a sharp blow on a projecting edge of the stone wall.

It occurred to him, vaguely, that the bower had been struck by lightning, and that he and she and everything about them had gone up in a puff of smoke but then, his vision clearing somewhat, he saw her standing over him, with her copper hair a disordered mop, and her eyes fixed on him with a look that was as close to hate as he had ever seen in the eyes of a woman. The expression communicated something to him, and his hand shot up to the crown of his head, coming away wet and sticky, and then he noticed that she was hold ing a triangular piece of stone, of the kind that were laid one upon the other to form the wall, and he half-recognised the relationship between her expression, the piece of stone, and the sudden enlarge ment of his head. Even so he rejected the idea that she could have struck him, and the notion of a thunderbolt returned to him to add to the imponderables.

Then, but still through a reddish haze, he saw her move swiftly across the floor and make a grab at her hat and fichu, and it was this evasive movement that GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 342

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restored him to something like full conciousness, so that he let out a wild bellow of rage and flung himself forward just as she reached the entrance of the bower.

He almost caught her. His fingers hooked in the neckband of her dress and there was a long ripping sound as the material parted all the way down to the waistband, exposing the criss-cross lacing of her corset. The jerk delayed her flight for a second or so, pulling her sideways against the doorpost, and it was while he was straighten ing himself for a renewed pounce that a second blow, far more pain ful than the first, struck him in the groin, doubling him up like a jack-knife and bringing him to his knees with a yelp of agony.

He knew then there was no question at all of her innocence, and that she had not struck him on the head in panic but because his head had offered the easiest target when he had been reaching for her drawers. This second blow, deliberately aimed at his crotch, was a calculated one, and minutes passed before he realised she was no longer there to pay the price for such a terrible outrage. He crawled round in a half-circle and sat with his back against the post, rocking himself to and fro and trying to decide which area of pain claimed the most attention, his bleeding skull, his grazed temple, or his violated genitals. Then, to his disgust, he vomited, bowing his head to the floor. He was crouched there, like a wounded animal, when the Colonel came in and stood looking down at him.

4

When he emerged from the wood and made for the footbridge, it was already raining hard and the Colonel had half a mind to retreat under the trees and wait for it to stop. Then it occurred to him that she would be soaked through in a matter of minutes, and probably very frightened out here alone in a thunderstorm, so he rode over the bridge and turned downstream towards the line of willows, now masked by a curtain of rain that was bucketing down on him and running into his boots. He did not mind a wetting but he began to be very worried about Henrietta, and urged the skewbald into a trot until he drew level with the ox-bow that he had painted more than once, for a variety of wild flowers grew here and over on the islet he could sometimes see waterbirds too shy to nest along the open reaches. She could, he reasoned, have gone but one way, straight down the towpath, but he could only guess her destination. It was probably Twyforde Green, the village two miles downstream, or possibly the side road halfway along that led, ultimately, to Mrs. Halberton’s place, at Broad Oak.

Then it struck him that her manner of departure precluded both possibilities.

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If she had been going as far as Twyforde Green she would have taken the cob, whereas, if she had intended visiting Olivia Halberton, there would have been no secrecy about her departure. The more he considered it the more disturbed he became. There was a man in it somewhere, and the fact that there was did not surprise him, for he had often questioned his son’s wisdom in leaving a spirited girl like Henrietta unchaperoned for weeks at a stretch. She was probably enjoying a flirtation with one of the young bucks around here, for it explained her archness, her frequent disappearances and, above all, the way she had quit the house that afternoon. He thought, glumly, “Well, I daresay there’s very little to it. She’s plenty of commonsense at bottom but if Adam should hear of it the whole damned house will be in an uproar again,” and he turned up his collar and crammed his hat over his eyes, with the intention of seeking her somewhere be tween here and Twyforde Green. Then, as he kicked the skewbald’s flanks, he saw her, or someone very like her, a dishevelled figure with skirts bundled up, running from the trees and into the river less than fifty yards from where he sat his horse.

Even at that short distance it was difficult to be sure, for the bank was obscured by the threshing rain and the woman splashing through the ford, now thigh deep, looked like an animated scare crow, her clothes in tatters. The moment she saw him she altered course, and a few seconds later was clawing at his stirrup and shout ing up at him, but what she said he was unable to hear, for just then thunder went crashing across the valley and she loosed her hold on his leathers and pressed both hands to her head. He dropped out of the saddle and looped the reins round his forearm, for the skewbald was showing signs of restlessness under the impact of the thunder and Henrietta’s jostling. She shouted in his ear, “I’ve killed him…he’s over there…a hut beyond the trees!” and with that a little of his half-forgotten battle experience returned to him and he made the first decisive move of the afternoon, shouting, “Take the horse! Go home! Get away from here Henrietta!” and when she stared at him uncomprehending, and continued to dither, he bent, grabbed her foot, thrust it into the stirrup, and propelled her into the saddle where she slumped forward, clutching the skewbald’s mane, the tatters of her dress trailing across its haunches to the ground.