Christmas at Candleshoe (8 page)

But this time he does hear something. It is the low murmur of a gently flowing stream. To the right is a small glade, and he can just discern a gleam of water. Something – to Grant no more than a shadow – flickers. But the boy has stopped in his track – and now he speaks.

‘The kingfisher!’

‘Could you tell, son, in this light?’

‘It was the kingfisher.’ For some reason the boy is darkly triumphant. ‘That’s always important, isn’t it?’

‘You mean lucky?’ Grant is amused.

Perhaps he sounds so – for Jay flings round at him. ‘Do you defy augury?’

So Jay knows
Hamlet
too. It occurs to Grant that Mr Armigel has been permitted but a partial view of this child. ‘No,’ he says soberly, ‘I don’t defy augury, son. And if there’s good luck around, I hope it’s coming to you. But what am I to do about my car?’

They have come to the ruined lodge. The dusk is soon going to give place to darkness, and there is something sinister about the mean, gapped building and the two piers of masonry and the single perched ball. It suddenly occurs to Grant that, so far as he knows, the only inhabitants of Candleshoe Manor are a couple of ancient eccentrics and this boy. And their situation is a very lonely one.

An owl hoots, and Grant senses Jay stiffening beside him. ‘Don’t you like owls, Jay? Are they ill-omened birds?’

‘Anyone can make a call like an owl. That’s why I don’t like them very much.’

It is a quiet reply – but it comes to Grant with the effect of a flash of lightning. ‘I can understand that,’ he says. ‘But there’s the car.’

They turn down the road, and suddenly Grant is aware that Jay has skipped to the other side of it. ‘Have you brought two cars?’ The boy’s voice is sharp, peremptory. He is like a grown man who suspects a trap.

‘Of course not, son.’ Grant peers ahead. ‘But there
are
two cars. Now, that’s certainly strange.’

A second car – another powerful American car – is indeed drawn up in front of his own. Two men have got out. They appear to be reconnoitring Grant’s car – even to be poking about in it. Grant is indignant and surprised. Perhaps they are car thieves, but the spot is an unlikely one for that. It is an unfrequented road. A single glimpse of two cars standing together on it has instantly struck Jay as queer in itself.

Their footsteps have been heard, and the two men swing round. There is an uncertainty in their movements that betrays what is surely a criminal purpose. Jay gives a long low whistle on a rising note. This is promptly answered from half-a-dozen places in the wood. The effect is startling, and it startles the two men. They run for their own car, jump in, and drive off. As they go past, accelerating furiously, Grant tries to get a clear glimpse of them. But the light is too bad. As the noise of the engine presently fades, silence succeeds it. There is no sign of the children who have given this odd and effective demonstration. Nor does Jay refer to them. ‘I can find you a way up to the house,’ he says. ‘It means opening some gates – and one or two other things.’

Grant for the first time notices the boy’s speech. It is of the rustic sort, evolved through generations of slow thinking and slow utterance. But the boy uses it rapidly and nervously, so that the effect is markedly individual. Moreover beneath this or above this is something that strikes Grant as familiar. The accents of Miss Candleshoe and Mr Armigel are at play in the articulations of their young assistant. Perhaps it is only that. Remembering the rabbit pie, he looks at his watch. ‘Never mind the gates, Jay. I’ll just drive the car past the lodge and she’ll be safe enough.’

‘No.’

There has been a moment’s deliberative pause and then the word has come decisively out of the dusk. Grant sees that on the kitchen-boy is some burden of command. It is perhaps from this that he gets both his pallor and his poise. ‘You think those people might come back and take my car?’

‘Your car will be better at the house. May I get in beside you and show you the way?’

It is a reticent reply, but Grant senses that Jay has made some important decision. He is quite sure that Mr Armigel’s practical and unimaginative lad in fact leads a secret life of vivid fantasy, and that to this – or to a part of this – he has admitted some of his companions of the village school. Perhaps Grant himself is going to be approved; perhaps that is the inner meaning of the decision to guide his car by devious ways to Candleshoe Manor.

They climb in and Jay directs Grant to turn round. He watches as Grant’s hands move over the controls. Grant realizes that Jay has the habit of learning all the time; that he could now, if necessary, have a fair shot at starting this car himself. He may get fancying things, but he is decidedly not what is called a dreamy boy. Grant wonders about his mother, the former housekeeper – where she came from, whether she has died or merely gone off with a lover, how the boy comes to be left apparently in Miss Candleshoe’s care.

The secret route to the manor house turns out to be a matter of traversing a couple of fields by cart tracks and crossing the stream by a small wooden bridge. At the bridge Jay has to get out and perform some complicated operation in the darkness – a piece of ritual, Grant supposes, connected with whatever fantasy he is indulging. Once get such a fantasy going, he reflects, and anything that comes along will feed it. Two men driving down a country road see an empty car. They stop to take a rummage in it in the hope of petty theft. But for Jay and his concealed troop this drops into place as part of some vast shadowy adventure. Perhaps Grant and his mother drop in too.

The bridge is negotiated safely, and it appears that there is a clear run to join the main drive near the house. As Jay climbs back into the car an owl hoots again in the distance. And by way of experiment Grant quotes softly:

‘Owls or spectres, thick they flee;

Nightmare upon horror broods;

Hooded laughter, monkish glee,

Gaps the vital air…’

‘
You
know that?’ Jay is surprised; he has clearly supposed himself to be the only person in the world who has discovered Meredith’s poem.

‘Enter these enchanted woods,

You who dare.’

Grant concludes the quotation and brings the car to a halt. The house, now dark and dimly sprawling, uncertainly towering, is before them. A couple of lights are burning on the ground floor. Their suggestion is of tiny areas of tenuous security scooped out of the void. Grant doubts whether, for a child living in such a place, imagination can be the most comfortable of companions.

‘You got my message.’ Jay has opened the car-door beside him, but for a moment sits tight. ‘And yet you
have
entered, all the same. Do you think it was wise?’

‘That depends.’ Grant switches off his engine. ‘If Candleshoe is like Westermain, I think I can take it. Dare, you know, and nothing harms. Keep your courage up, and fair you fare. I think I can manage that.’

‘So do I. But then we are inclined to be boastful, aren’t we? Or at least so Mr Armigel says.’

‘We – you mean human beings?’

Jay can be seen shaking his head in the darkness. ‘I mean people of our nationality – yours and mine.’

Grant bursts into laughter. ‘Say, son, haven’t you guessed that I’m an American?’

‘Of course. And so am I.’

This is neither a boast nor a confession, but simply a piece of natural history. Grant is taken aback by it – the more so when he sees that he ought to have guessed. What in Jay’s speech lies beneath its rustic and gentle components – the accents of his school companions, the accents of Miss Candleshoe and her chaplain – is Grant Feather’s own tongue.

‘Well, if this isn’t a surprise!’ Grant has taken to the boy, and now here is a bond. He is genuinely delighted.

‘Even in England Americans must meet quite often, I suppose.’ Jay remains objective and even cool. Grant feels on probation still.

They get out of the car and the boy produces a pocket torch. As he switches it on Grant tries a question. ‘Do you remember much about America, Jay?’

‘Nothing at all.’ The beam picks out the first of the broken steps by which they must mount to the terrace.

‘But you’ve read about it?’

‘No.’ The boy is abrupt. ‘I know very little about it.’

They climb in silence. When they reach the terrace Grant speaks. ‘Well – you’ve plenty of time. But there’s quite a heap to learn.’

‘I suppose there is.’ For the first time Jay’s voice is uncertain. It is as if he suspects himself of having been discourteous. ‘You see, I don’t really know much about anything.’ He hesitates. He has reached the front door. He flashes the torch backwards to light the way for Grant. Then – perhaps the better to locate himself – he puts out his other hand to the smooth stone. ‘Except Candleshoe. I know quite a lot about that.’

The rabbit-pie is a notable achievement, in point both of succulence and of mere size. Mrs Feather speculates on the oven from which it has emerged, and upon the invisible domestic economy of Candleshoe in general. She is obliged to conclude that there is no invisible domestic economy. The place puts everything on the table – and around it.

The surface appearance of the feast is that of somewhat rough-and-ready antiquarian reconstruction. Miss Candleshoe, it may be supposed, has formed a sentimental attachment to the Middle Ages, and like some eccentric in a novel of Peacock’s has arranged her household, its usages and appurtenances in conformity with this fondness. She sits at the head of her board, with her guests on her right hand and her chaplain on the left. Her retainers sit below the salt. They consist of a good-natured and mentally defective girl called Tib – of whom may safely be postulated an almost unlimited capacity for washing up – and a crowd of children. The children are a shock to Mrs Feather; she wonders for a moment whether Candleshoe is really a sort of orphanage, conducted upon lines which if surprising, are nevertheless conceivable in this perennially unpredictable country. It may even be an orphanage controlled by the State – in which case her cheque-book will be of no use to her. Grant, she sees, feels that he has a line upon the children; he is now more interested in them than in Miss Candleshoe. And in particular he is interested in the boy called Jay.

Jay is not at all suggestive of an orphanage. He has changed his clothes again – there is undoubtedly a streak of vanity in him – and is in black from neck to toe. Mr Armigel, if he sees this merely as a laudable economy, has become decidedly vague about immediate appearances. The old ragbag stuffs suit Jay admirably; he looks like Hamlet in a cry of child actors – or might do so if his demeanour admitted any suggestion of the theatrical. When one returns to the medieval interpretation of Candleshoe one observes that Jay sustains the character of a page. He carves the pie and performs other menial services with the proper air of a lad of gentle breeding. Above all, he is businesslike. Like Hamlet he may dream. But like Hamlet he will be capable of arranging a very efficient Mouse Trap should the occasion for such a thing come his way.

Jay has a henchman in a fair-haired boy called Robin, who must be of about his own age. Mrs Feather guesses that Robin too has a good arm for a bow, and her ear tells her that he is not what Mr Armigel would call a village child – although it appears to be in the nearest village that he lives. Robin is the vicar’s son, the doctor’s son – something of that sort. There are three other children – two girls and a boy – and although simple they are unselfconscious and natural, which makes it certain that their present situation is without novelty. The wooden platters and pewter mugs with which they are provided enable them to eat a great deal of pie and drink quite a lot of what appears to be a decidedly heady brew.

From these utensils Mrs Feather’s eye travels to her own. She has occasionally eaten off gold plate, but never off silver. The design is distinguished and she comments upon it to her hostess. Miss Candleshoe, whose head and hands alone appear above the level of the table, receives her compliments with civility.

‘China of good design is hard to come by. My brother used frequently to remark that the Prince, had he lived, might well have elevated the public taste in these regards.’

‘The Prince?’ Mrs Feather is momentarily astray.

‘The Prince Consort.’ Mr Armigel takes upon himself the task of courteous explanations to the colonial lady. ‘We have been much grieved by his death.’

‘It was untimely, of course.’ Mrs Feather finds the tenses into which the chaplain is apt to cast his observations mildly unnerving. ‘And I believe he was interested in the arts.’

‘And crafts. But unfortunately a corrupt taste has become pervasive. Consider the novels of Lord Beaconsfield.’ Mr Armigel pauses, but finding Mrs Feather without facility in taking up this theme returns to that of table utensils. ‘As a matter of fact, we employed nothing but china until the Cataclysm.’

‘The Cataclysm?’ Mrs Feather supposes that Mr Armigel is referring to some obscure impact upon Candleshoe of the late world war. But she realizes that he may well be speaking of the Great Rebellion or the Norman Conquest.

‘Tib.’ Mr Armigel looks with great amiability down the table, where the half-wit girl is gnawing with concentration at the leg of a rabbit. ‘She had not long been with us when our entire stock of domestic crockery vanished in one single act of destruction. Dispassionately considered, the feat was no inconsiderable one, since it involved the accumulations of some centuries. When we made inquiries about replacements, however, we found serious obstacles in our path – obstacles which might be subsumed under the two general heads of artistic and financial. Fortunately Jay – as so often – had a sensible solution of the problem. He raked about and found these rather older things. Upon their use, as you can conceive, one crucial advantage attends. The Cataclysm is impotent before them.’

‘Was it Jay who thought of having meals together in the hall?’

Miss Candleshoe answers this, bringing her magnificent nose out of a fine silver tankard to do so. ‘Certainly. The servants’ hall was becoming a little difficult to use–’