The Devil in Clevely (Afternoon of an Autocrat) (39 page)

And he had, instead of a batch of rowdy, reckless fellows who approached the whole thing as a game, mud as they would have done a cockfight or a horse-race, Richard Shelmadine, that gnawed-out shell of a man, so emotionally void that he was neither credulous nor sceptical. He was curious, but his curiosity was merely the result of boredom; he'd tried everything and been, eventually, bored by everything; and he was greedy...he hoped to gain something. That his greed and his boredom actually cancelled one another out Mr Mundford had proved by lending him his luck. Greed had been satisfied, dwindled and died, killed by boredom; yes, they cancelled one another out and left nothing. Richard Shelmadine was nothing, just the two necessary hands----And then, as a kind of decoration, the final finishing touch, there was the fact that, by the moon and the stars, this particular day, commonly known as All-Hallows' E'en, was the chosen date.

Mr Mundford saw the significance of that. Like Christmas and Easter and Lammastide and Whitsun and various days, All-Hallows had roots in the past; the crafty organisers of the new Christian faith had seized on all the old landmarks of the year, given them new names, new reasons for being, and incorporated them into the Christian calendar. The horned masks and the licence of Saturnalia lurked behind the Christmas festival; the old rebirth of the year, symbolised by the egg-ceremonies, behind the Easter celebrations; and behind the lesser, only-just-recognised anniversary known as All-Hallows' E'en there was the dark and sinister history of the November Eve covens. No date in the year would so much have suited his purpose; no kind of weather been so promising.

At eleven o'clock, fulfilling Fred Clopton's promise, the fog lifted and the sun gleamed out for a couple of hours. Every last clinging leaf and all the bare twigs shone damply in the sudden brief light. Then the air thickened, by three o'clock it was dusk, and soon after four quite dark.

Mrs Palfrey, walking heavily, came away from Flocky, where she had been helping with the last preparations for the party. She had earned a precious shilling and had also gained an unexpected prize. The whole skin, the 'swathe', of a ham, with a good lining of fat, just as Mrs Clopton had peeled it from the joint before applying the browned breadcrumbs. The Palfrey family had not tasted any form of animal food for at least six weeks. At the end of harvest Spitty had applied for 'parish relief. In the course of the investigations following this application it transpired that the Palfrey family was not the responsibility of Clevely; Spitty had been born in Baildon, and his relief must be claimed there. He was, by law, entitled to the price of a one-gallon loaf of bread per week, his wife and each dependent child to the price of a half-gallon loaf. In that month the gallon loaf was worth one shilling and eightpence, so the allowance granted to the Palfrey family was five shillings, or sixty pence. And lest this grant should lead to idleness and pauperism the careful guardians arranged that the week's dole should be divided into six equal parts, and Spitty was allowed to collect tenpence each day for six days a week. This made sure that he, at least, had never an idle moment. Lithe, able-bodied Danny Fuller, with his heart light with hope, had found the walk from Clevely to Baildon twice a week quite a strain; for poor, shambling Spitty, product of a lifetime's malnutrition, the walk twice a day was a task only just within his power. He had to set off early in the morning and returned, late in the evening, utterly exhausted; yet, despite the exhaustion, so hungry that he would have found no difficulty in devouring the tenpenny loaf without help from his family. The spiteful and petty-minded arrangement worked woe for the family in another way too, making it difficult for Mrs Palfrey to take any small odd job' which did happen to come her way, since it was impossible to leave three children, all under five years of age, alone in the house for long. In desperation she had done so on the day of Mrs Clopton's party; she had tied the two youngest to the table legs, leaving four-and-a-half-old Betsy free and in charge. Mrs Ashpole had promised to 'look in' once or twice. So Mrs Palfrey came home in triumph, sharpened the family knife and chopped the ham skin into fine mincemeat, the small yellowish-brown, semi-translucent fragments of boiled pigskin shining in the base of soft, lardy fat. She would have fed the children and put them to bed before Spitty came home, but the last crumb of yesterday's bread had been eaten at midday. So they waited, the children wailing with hunger, until, very late on account of the ' fog, Spitty arrived, dewed all over with grey misty drops and almost dead with weariness. Seizing the stale ten-penny loaf, Mrs Palfrey cut it into thick slices and spread them thinly with the 'minced' meat. She was ravenously hungry herself, but just as she spread the fifth slice the new child moved within her, a nauseating lurch. Tightening her mouth, she drew the knife twice across the slice, cutting in into four.

'I did my eating up at Flocky. So you all get a bit extra. Right a feast tonight, ain't it?' she said bravely.

Damask herself carried up Miss Parsons' tray. The old lady had developed a cold two days earlier and was keeping to her bed. Her appetite was good and she welcomed the tray with little eager sounds.

'Quite a feast tonight,' Damask said, pausing to set one covered dish from the tray on the silver heater with the three thick candles under the grid and then carrying the tray itself to the bed. 'Oxtail soup and a roast partridge, some grapes from the Ockley hothouses and our own pears.'

'Delicious I' said Miss Parsons. 'Lying here I have been thinking. One should cultivate gluttony, without practising it too much, in one's youth, so that one may have one dependable pleasure left in old age.'

Thinking of Julie and the tea--Julie had, most oddly, veered clean over to Amos's side and refused the tea and the teapot and even the medicines which Damask had taken over on the day following the row--Damask said, If one can afford it.'

She lifted the cover from the bowl of soup.

'And we can, can't we, dear child? There was a time when...when we, when I...nothing but cold mutton, the nastiest kind, all fat and little bones. That was before you came. Now you're here and everything is all right. You'll never go away, will you? Promise me.'

'I have promised you. I shall never go away. I am going out for a while this evening, though. Mrs Bennett will come and make you comfortable for the night and I shall be here when you wake in the morning.'

'Oh dear. I shall be alone.' Miss Parsons' wrinkled old lips, glistening with the rich soup, assumed a childish pout.

'I must go and see my mother. She isn't very well, you know.' She had told Mr Mundford to stop the carriage in which he was fetching her at the gate of the Dower House. I hope you find her better,' Miss Parsons said, untruthfully. With the passing of time she had grown more possessive about her 'dear child' and jealous of Julie. It was, of course, natural and proper and admirable that the child should care for and visit her parents, but Miss Parsons grudged every one of the brief, infrequent visits. She rather hoped that Julie would die soon; then she would have Damask's undivided attention.

'I have a mother myself,' she remarked as Damask removed the empty soup-bowl and placed the partridge before her. 'She doesn't care for me, though. Being a girl, you know--a great disappointment. My father says that in China--or is it India? No, China, I think--unwanted girl babies are put out to die of exposure. Did you know that?'

'No. What a horrible custom.'

'Is he in the library?'

'Who?'

'Papa. If not, on the top shelf of the cupboard to the left of the window there is a big brown-covered book, a kind of journal which he kept when he was on his voyages. Most interesting. Not intended for female eyes, of course, but most enjoyable reading. We might peruse it together.'

'Not this evening. I told you. I have to go out presently.'

'You must wrap up well. I have a cold, you know.'

'You have had. It is better now. I think you will be able to get up tomorrow.'

'I sincerely hope so. It must be almost time for Charles to visit me, and it wouldn't do, would it, for me to receive him in my bedroom. His wife would object. She's very jealous, you know. And quite crazy, poor creature. I do sympathise with him, in a way. But they say, don't they, "Fools and knaves are always paid out, but fools first." He brought it on himself. Of course she is quite unbelievably beautiful and very well-connected. I do realise that. Papa was quite disgusted and said if that is gentlemanly behaviour give me seafaring men every time. This is a very young tender partridge, or exceptionally well cooked.'

'Eat it while it is hot.'

'And afterwards we might play cards. We could play on the tray, or would you prefer it if I got up and sat by the fire?'

'We'll do that tomorrow. This evening I have to go out.'

'Of course. I'm afraid I keep forgetting. I am very forgetful. But not mad, whatever that woman says.'

The beauty of this kind of conversation was that one need not attend, need make no effort at all. One could go on pursuing one's own thoughts, remembering all the things which Mr Mundford had said, all the cajoleries and the promises and the mysterious, tantalising things which meant nothing, because one was young, and ignorant, 'just a beginner', as Mr Mundford pointed out. The promises she did understand; they shone, distant and golden, rather like a sunset, and outlined against them, stark and black, was the silhouette of Sally Fuller's figure, just as it had been when Damask, leaving the cobbler's cottage one evening, had seen it standing by the Ashpole door: full and ripe, bursting with promise, for Sally was big with her second child. At that sight the slight but vigorous vein of scepticism which in her Methodist days had often troubled her by producing doubts and questions about God began to work again, questioning this other Power. These questions were more quickly silenced; she had only to look around her, or down at her own hands, to find proof of this Power's favour towards her, its omniscience and potency. And there was Mr Mundford, with his signs and wonders, always ready to encourage her.

Damask removed the tray, soothed Miss Parsons into a passive drowsiness and went to get ready to play her part in the great 'experiment'.

The fog, which from within the lighted room seemed so thick and baffling, was far less impenetrable when one was out of doors. That at least was something to be thankful for, Linda thought, as she stole, furtively as a thief, out by the side door and into the stable-yard. She knew roughly where Simon was, for he had howled dolorously for an hour after being dragged away; but he was silent now, and with hands which no effort of will could make steady she opened door after door before she found the right one and braced herself to meet the dog's overwhelming welcome. After that she wasted no time; she had made her plan. Between the Manor and Berry Lane, if you went directly, there was only a stretch of park and the parson's glebe. Hadstock said that the walk took him barely ten minutes. With the dog close to her side, she left the yard and hurried into the park, where the long, tussocky grass, grey with the fog dampness, slowed her progress, until, after a few minutes, she struck the narrow track worn by Hadstock's feet. That was something else to be thankful for--and it was more; it was a sign. Out of all the horror and tumult and confusion and desperation, here she was, on the little path which led direct to Hadstock. His feet in their daily journeys had made the way smooth for hers.

The track led, ruler straight, to the sunken ditch which divided the park from the glebe. Water, leaden-coloured against the greyed grass, ran in the ditch's bottom, but two great stones broke the surface, bridging it in two lengthy strides. She misjudged the first step and slipped, soaking one shoe and stocking and one side of her skirt, but she regained a precarious balance and reached the glebe, and Simon crossed in one lithe leap.

The uncurtained kitchen window of Hadstock's cottage' showed as a yellow smudge on the prevailing grey before she reached the gate in the fence which separated his back yard from the glebe, and that again was a symbol of hope. For her most immediately pressing problem Hadstock would have a solution; furthermore in asking his help she would be bound to explain a little and that would be a relief. As she opened the gate and walked into the small yard she reminded herself that she must be careful, controlled; the relationship between them was only tenable on those conditions.

She had not spoken to Hadstock since Richard's return to Clevely just before the Harvest Horkey, and she had seen him, in that time, only once, at the horkey itself. Hadstock had remained aloof then, and left early. After the supper was ended and the trestle tables cleared to leave room for the dancing, she had, as on the previous year, started the jig on the arm of Ricky Wellman, the oldest man present, while Richard hauled Mrs Hart, all twelve stone of her, bulky in four petticoats, twice around the barn. A little later, when Richard said, in his critical fashion, 'You have not yet honoured the bailiff, my dear.' she had said, 'No, but I will,' and turned away quickly lest something in her expression should betray her. The idea of dancing with Hadstock as part of the routine, a sharing out of favours, was repulsive to her; it would have been a secret betrayal of their unacknowledged intimacy. And it would have been something more--a test of fortitude. But Hadstock had gone, his early retirement eloquent and significant.

The lighted window was close now. As she moved towards it she saw the light obscured by Hadstock's bulk; he carried a kettle in his hand.

She knocked at the door and it opened. There was Hadstock in his shirt-sleeves. He stared at her with unconcealed astonishment.

'You I' he said. Her face in the shadow of the cloak's hood had a luminous pallor; her eyes, with pupils dilated by the walk through the darkness were black and huge; and she was trembling so much that the little globules of moisture along the edge of the hood and the whisps of hair which showed under it shimmered and gleamed.

'Is anything wrong? Come in,' he said. As she entered the kitchen he slammed the door to, as though to exclude some possible pursuer.