R. Delderfield & R. F. Delderfield (21 page)

There was nothing really startling in the little tableau, framed in the hawthorn and sycamore leaves. On the contrary, if one could have regarded the couple anonymously, it was an idyllic glimpse of a man and his maid, at peace with the world, at one with their pastoral surroundings, oblivious of everything but each other. As he stood there gaping, he was able to identify the source of Julia's laughter, for she leaned forward so that her hair brushed his lips, then drew back with another chuckle but at this Blades roused himself and grabbed a double handful, pressing them to his face in a way that succeeded in checking Julia Darbyshire's merriment. Her face clouded and she said, rather desperately. '
No
Keith, you promised!'

It was as much as David could stand. He turned and retreated swiftly up the
slope, not pausing until he was on the eastern side of the plantation and here, cursing the chance that had involved him in such a ridiculous situation, he took the shortest way home, hurrying along at such a pace that he was sweating when he reached the cottage gate.

Beth called, from the kitchen. 'Tea now, or will you wait until Ben brings the twins in?' and he called back, 'Now!' and slumped down on the bagged-out armchair, dabbing his temples.

She was beside him in a couple of minutes and even before she set the tray down she realised something was wrong. She said, 'Well, what is it? Why the scowl on a lovely day like this?'

'I'm not sure I should tell you, Beth.'

'That means you'd rather, so out with it. What's happened up there?'

'The twins are in the farmyard?'

'Having their pony ride. Well?'

'It was something I saw, almost stepped on. On my way home.'

'Another adder?'

'No, not an adder. I wish to God it had been.' He thought for a moment, aware of needing, if not her advice, then certainly her reassurance.

'It was Julia Darbyshire and young Blades. They were necking, down in the Coombe. They didn't see me. I backtracked and came home by the road. I went that way to get your blasted marsh marigolds.'

She said, slowly, 'Necking? How do you mean, exactly? You'd best tell me all you saw, if you want my opinion, that is. If not, we'll leave it there.'

'I want your opinion. I'm damned if I know who else's I can seek, or not without starting one hell of an uproar. Blades is in Carter's house.'

He described what he had seen and when he finished she was silent. Finally she said, 'In your view, are they lovers?'

'I don't think so. Not from the way it looked, nor from her tone of voice, come to that. My guess is that he's making the running and she's holding back. For his sake more than her own.'

'Why do you say that?'

'I don't know. Just a hunch. I saw them and you didn't.'

'How old is Blades?'

'Seventeen.'

'And Julia?'

'How would I know? About twenty-four, I'd say. I hardly know the woman. Algy appointed a spinster who had been a matron at a school up north but she let us down at the last minute and the agency sent Mrs Darbyshire.'

'She's married?'

'She might be a war widow, I don't even know that. She seems to have made a hit with the Second Form. You've seen her, haven't you?'

'Once or twice, at a distance. Is she pretty?'

'Not pretty but attractive in an odd sort of way. She's got a kind of stillness, not the kind of face at all that goes with playing the fool like this. God damn it, if she was a kid in her teens I could understand it. We had trouble of that kind two years ago with Manners and one of the maids.'

'What happened then?'

He grinned. 'Old Judy Cordwainer caught them in the shrubbery behind the piggeries. Nearly gave the old boy a seizure. They took a very dim view of it. Manners was sacked, the week before he was due to take Cambridge Senior and the girl was packed off back to Challacombe. But this is worse. I mean, how the devil can one leave a woman like that in charge of twelve-year-olds? I'll have to tell Algy.'

'I wouldn't.'

'But damn it, I have to. You must see that.'

'Not until you've talked to her and to Blades, if necessary.'

He looked exasperated and ran his hand through his hair. 'But that's poppycock! I'm a junior master, I can't accept responsibility for a thing like this.'

'You can find out more about it before a nice boy like Blades gets kicked out at seventeen. And the woman is put in a position where she couldn't hope for another job.'

'She doesn't deserve one, does she? And as for Blades, he's one of the brightest chaps we've ever had. He must have known what he was about.'

'He might have, but then again, he might not. How can you know what led up to this unless you talk to them, separately, and let them know you saw them down there? You owe them that much.
I
think you do, anyway.'

He considered, checked by her earnestness but by no means converted to her point of view. He said, at length. 'I'm not certain that's loyal to Algy. What makes you so sure there's more in it than meets the eye?'

'Living here. Being a part of it for four years.'

'How do you mean, exactly?'

'Look, I'm flesh and blood, and so are you. So is everybody else up there,
except one or two who have fossilised, like Ferguson. You've got to make allowances for four hundred boys cooped up in a place like this throughout their entire adolescence, without any contact with women, of the kind boys have in a day school. If half of what you've told me is true there's far worse than this goes on in some of those famous schools. At least this is straightforward, a bright boy, his head stuffed full of romantic poetry, and a lonely woman, plumped down among God knows how many attractive young males. It can't go on, I'll grant you that. But if you take it to Algy Herries and Carter it will end in something that will do harm out of all proportion to the harm that's been done. Providing any has.'

Her logic began to make sense, or better sense than emerged from his own reactions. He said, 'I'll sleep on it. Pour me some tea, I'm parched.'

3

He took her advice, as he had known he would. Julia Darbyshire's quarters were two rooms on the second floor of Outram's, over the quadrangle arch and he knew, more or less, when he could slip in there unobserved, for the Second Form had a woodwork class towards the end of morning school that coincided with his one free period of the day. He waited until they had trooped in and then followed Mrs Darbyshire up the stone steps to her sitting-room, pausing outside for a moment, summoning enough nerve to knock. Her 'Who is it?' from the far side of the door, told him a little more about her. She had a very pleasant voice, low-keyed and as musical as the laugh he had heard in the Coombe.

'Powlett-Jones. Could I have a word with you, Mrs Darbyshire?'

She opened the door and stood there smiling at him, a petite woman, with good features and rather sad grey eyes. Her hair was her most attractive feature. It was a particularly fine shade of chestnut, almost auburn, and she wore it coiled in what they were now calling 'earphones'. She had a presence that he found difficult to relate to the woman he had seen teasing a bewitched boy in the Coombe. It was as though he was looking across the threshold at two women, with nothing in common except a wealth of soft, chestnut hair. She said, still smiling, 'Well, and what can I do for you?'

He said, falteringly, 'Could I… er… step inside for a moment?' and at once the sad eyes betrayed uncertainty as she said, stepping back, 'Certainly,' and then, her fugitive smile returned, 'Have you come to give me good advice,
like Mr Carter?'

'Has Carter been here today?'

'Not today, every other day for the first month of term. Until I told him I'd prefer to learn from my own mistakes.'

It was awkward, her saying that, and in that tone of voice. He floundered a moment and then made an opening of the chink she had offered saying, 'I'm giving advice of a kind, Mrs Darbyshire, but I'm not sure you'll relish it,' and she replied, seriously, 'I will if it's well meant. You're a very different kettle of fish to Carter.'

Her unexpected coolness made it even more difficult than he had imagined and silently he cursed Beth for putting him into such a ridiculous situation. Suppose she laughed in his face? Suppose she denied she had ever been in the Coombe? Blades would almost surely support her story, and that left his word against the two of them. Algy would believe him, of course, but Carter wouldn't, or would pretend not to, if only to make a score. He said, measuring his words as in the witness box, 'I'm here at the insistence of my wife, Mrs Darbyshire. Before I talked it over with her I had made up my mind to go to the head, and let him cope with it the best way he could. I say that because I want you to understand from the first I don't like saying what I came to say. As a matter of fact, I find it horribly embarrassing. I was on my way home across the Coombe yesterday afternoon. I saw you and Blades down by the stream.'

She flushed, the colour of her cheeks at odds with the shade of her hair but, apart from that, showed no particular response. He went on, hurriedly, 'You must realise a thing like that can't go on. Sooner or later someone else would see you and if it was one of the boys he wouldn't report it, simply pass it on. From that moment both you and Blades would be in an impossible position…' He broke off because she had moved away, across to the little dormer window overlooking the quad. It was very quiet down there at this hour, with everybody in class. The noon sun flooded the room with golden light, revealing its shabby paintwork and plaster, despite pathetic efforts she had made with chintzes and a few reproductions, among them Millais's 'The Order of Release'. He noticed something else, a silver-framed picture of a second lieutenant on the mantelshelf and recognised the cap badge as that of the Hampshires. Her voice, when she spoke, was very small, the voice of a child.

'You say your wife advised you to come to me? Does that mean you don't intend making it public?'

'I suppose that depends.'

'On what?'

'On all kinds of things.'

'On one thing really. Whether we've been lovers.' She faced him, bracing herself, as though for a blow. 'Well, you can set your mind at rest as to that. We haven't, and wouldn't have been. On my honour, for what that's worth in your eyes.'

Suddenly he felt disarmed and very much on the defensive, as though he was at pains to explain to her he wasn't here to pry into her private life. He said, 'I believe you.'

'Why should you?'

'Partly because I overheard a word or two you said before I backed away. I didn't follow you there. It was pure chance I saw you, and chance again that you didn't hear me coming down the path. But my job, as I see it, is to consider Blades, and I suppose that's why I'm here. The head would have to sack him the moment he knew.'

'And you wouldn't want that?'

'No, I wouldn't. I've always liked Blades. He's not…'

'Not the type you'd expect to imagine himself deeply in love with a woman eight years his senior?'

'I don't know. I've been at this job since I came out of the army five years ago. You learn something new every day. He's the starry-eyed kind, I suppose, but the bright ones often are.'

'Is that frowned upon in a place like this?'

'Not necessarily. The point is… I… I don't see how it could have started, how someone as adult as you could have let it begin, and develop to the stage it had up to yesterday. You don't have to tell me. I've the right to question him, I suppose, or Carter has, as his housemaster.'

'
No
!' The word was flung at him, more of command than an appeal. 'Not Carter! Anyone but Carter. I can imagine how he would go about it…' And then, with a gesture of helplessness, 'Give me a minute or two. Sit down. Let me think, just for a moment.'

He lowered himself carefully into a small, cane-bottomed chair. She stood quite still for thirty seconds, then crossed over to a bureau, opened a drawer and took out some papers. He said, 'If they're his letters I don't want to read them. God knows, this is complicated enough as it is.'

'It's not a letter,' she said, extracting two sheets of paper, 'but you asked
me how it began. Read that. Then I'll do what I can to explain. After that we might, conceivably, come to some kind of… well… arrangement. But that would be up to you.'

He took the sheets and saw at a glance that the top one was half-filled with a couple of verses by Herrick, copied in Blades's precise handwriting. It was entirely deficient of the flourish of a seventeen-year-old, whose hand was not yet formed. He was familiar with the poem, one called
Upon Julia's Clothes
.

When as in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then, methinks, how sweetly flows
The liquefaction of her clothes!

Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave vibration each way free,
O how that glittering taketh me!

He glanced up, not yet taking her point despite the obvious one as regards her Christian name.

'Read the other page.'

He took the second sheet and read:

How easily from there to take
My Julia's hand, and for her sake
Forswear all sleep and lie awake
The long night through,

And conjure with a fancy fine
Of making gentle Julia mine
Of seeing in her eyes the shine
Of her love too.

O, I could dream by day and night
Of consummating my delight
At Julia's entrancing shrine.
But how could such reward be mine
For dusting off some musty book?
I've been well paid – by one sweet look.

'This is his? He gave it to you?'

'He sent it through the post.'

'Those last two lines, what's behind them?'

'Nothing very subtle. It was just his way of making sure I identified him.'

'You mean this arrived out of the blue?'

'No, I'd been here a fortnight and almost made up my mind to leave. I'll tell you why later if you're interested. I was on my way up here one wet morning when my attaché case burst open and some books fell out. Keith… Blades appeared out of nowhere, and scooped them up. When he saw they were muddy he insisted on carrying them up here and cleaning them off with his handkerchief. It would have seemed churlish not to let him.'