God Is an Englishman (34 page)

Wouldn’t surprise me to learn he had begun life in the Company’s riding-school down the road.”

She remembered then how it came that they had settled here when they moved south. The East India Officers’ College, where he had been trained a dozen years ago, was only a few minutes’ walk nearer Croydon, and she suspected that he had always had an attachment for the district, with its miles of open heath, stony hills, and old woods of beech, oak, chestnut, and elm. He would never admit to this, of course, for he hated to be thought of as a man who lived in the past. It was not often, in fact, that she could get him to talk about the Light Brigade, or the excitements of the Sepoy Rebellion. He much preferred to gossip about his waggons and his contracts and the odd characters he encountered in that stale old GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 176

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yard beside the Thames. Perhaps, she thought, he would be more communicative about his real adventures when he had a son for an audience, for men would talk to men about that kind of thing but always assumed it curdled the blood of a woman.

And thinking this she sighed, as she always did when she remembered how gladly he had exchanged scarlet and gold braid for topper, frock coat, and the strapover trousers of the city uniform. He had had his way over that, of course, but there was another battle looming that she was resolved to win. The young man who seemed so impatient to view the world was going to wear scarlet whether his father liked it or not. She had quite made up her mind about that.

Their route took them up the long slope of a dust road that wound its way between gorse-studded hills, then down the sharp descent of the Spout Hill towards the open country beyond Addington. He drove very soberly, holding the grey closely in hand, and the little carriage was so comfortably sprung, and so well-cushioned, that be hind the box-seat she seemed to be floating into the sunset. He said, over his shoulder, “Make the most of it, my dear. I’m not risking an outing even behind an old stager like this when you’re nearer your time. Are you quite comfortable back there?”

Very comfortable, she told him, admiring his straight back and the military way he held himself when handling the reins. It was the most perfect kind of evening for late April, with the sun sinking like a great, burnished plate behind streamers of heliotrope cloud, and the scent of honeysuckle coming from the hedgerows. They turned off the main road just beyond a hamlet, crossed a shallow watersplash, and entered a straight narrow lane that ran between a park wall and a piece of woodland overgrown with rhododendrons. Beyond the low bank on the left she could see great drifts of bluebells in the bud, and their scent, the most country scent in the world, seemed to linger in the hollow like bonfire smoke.

Then, almost imperceptibly, Dancer lengthened his stride and began to trot so that Adam said, “By George, he’s lively. It must be spring,” and then, but without urgency, “Whoa, there!
Whoa,
you old badger!” But Dancer had no disposition to whoa, and broke into a loping canter and then, as they rattled round a bend in the lane, into a long, uneven gallop.

She saw at once that he was alarmed. He braced himself against the rail, bunching the reins and throwing a harassed glance over his shoulder before addressing himself wholly to the task of checking the horse, but his anxiety did not communicate itself to her until she was assailed by the first pain. It advanced on her slowly, brought on by the first yards of jolting, but its final pounce was swift and devastat ing, so that she set her teeth and pushed her feet down into the well of GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 177

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the carriage, taking a frantic grip on the rail of the seat. Then, quite suddenly, she was deluged in pain, and a wild cry broke from her, so that he swung half-round and at the moment of his turning a cock pheasant, startled by her yell, blundered out of the covert, soared and flew a diagonal course across the lane under Dancer’s nose.

It was all he needed, apparently, to defy the bit and settle to a mad, weaving dash towards a huddle of buildings at the junction of the lane and a private drive marked by a pair of stone pillars topped by enormous stone balls. With ears laid back he seemed almost to fly over the ground, so that she was flung first to one side and then to the other, and all the time the great waves of pain crashed over her like breakers.

She thought then that she was going to die, for surely no one could survive such an experience and live. She opened her mouth to scream, but whether or not the sound reached him she never knew for, obey ing some mad instinct, the horse suddenly checked its stride and swung left between the pillars, dragging the carriage round in a quarter circle and bringing its nearside rear wheel into violent colli sion with a pillar. Then, as the pain subsided, she was conscious of a number of things; of a man with white hair running out of an en closure behind the buildings to the right, of a tumbling stream and a slowly-turning mill-wheel, of Adam standing up on the box-seat and cursing at the top of his voice, and of the carriage coming to an un certain halt just inside the drive. Then the pain was gone, leaving her limp and exhausted, so that she could only listen, half-hearing, to the brief conversational exchange between Adam and the miller, the latter saying, in tones of wonder, “Christ A’ Mighty, it’s Dancer! It’s Dancer found his way home again…” but Adam cut in with, “Where’s the nearest doctor? My wife is expecting a child and a thing like this could…” but she did not hear if he shared her conviction that she was dying, for he leapt down and keeping the reins in his hand edged the man towards the railing enclosing the mill and here they had begun a consultation when the second wave of pain rushed upon her and she cried out in anticipation of the torment it promised.

The next thing she remembered was being carried bodily from the carriage and over the threshold of a building that seemed, impro bably, about twenty times as large as the mill, but she could not be sure for a haze surrounded it, and now she hoped fervently that she would die and be done with it, for every nerve in her body was twang ing and quivering like violin strings under the blundering fingers of an amateur. The intervals between the waves of pain became shorter, and her body reacted in a kind of mad and defiant despair. This seemed to her to GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 178

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continue indefinitely, and the contest was so absorb ing that she hardly noticed the presence of a fat woman bobbing in and out of her limited range as she threshed and twisted on a couch or pallet. She noticed one or two other things, irrelevant things, like a moulded ceiling high above her, a latticed window pane from which, unaccountably, daylight had departed and a yellow half-moon could be glimpsed, and then the sound of heavy boots and male voices and after that, with a sense of relief surpassing anything within her ex perience, came a gradual receding of the storm of agony until it was no more than a whisper. The lull was accompanied by a lassitude like that immediately prefacing a deep sleep, and she yielded to it gratefully.

2

His experience of women in labour was wider than might have been supposed.

As a dismounted lancer he had been attached, for a time, to the regimental surgeon of the Horse Guards outside Sebastopol, and had been present on several occasions when the major had deliv ered some of the canteen women who had followed the army to the Crimea. Later, at Cawnpore and elsewhere, he had been billeted near the married quarters when the wives of resident officers had been brought to bed, usually of children who did not survive long in that climate and under those primitive conditions. This was why he was able to assess the situation even before the collision with the gatepost, and the appalling possibilities had brought him to his feet so that he could throw his whole weight on the reins, boots braced against the splash-board. It must have had some effect upon Dancer for the grey faltered after swinging round in that unpredictable quarter-circle, and then Adam saw the miller run across the drive and grab Dancer’s noseband, bringing the lathered horse to a standstill. He understood then what had led up to the incident. Dancer had recognised the lane as the approach to stables he had occupied for years before being put up to auction. It was nobody’s fault, not even Dancer’s, for who could have predicted that his first outing with a new owner would lead him here? But in the meantime it was quite clear, even to the miller, that Henrietta was now in labour. That fool of a doctor must have muddled the dates, or perhaps the fright and jolting had induced a premature birth. There was no profit debating this now. Something had to be done at once, and the old, instinctive disciplines of the battle field returned to him as he said, sharply, “Where
are
we? Where is this place?” and the miller said, “Tis ‘Tryst,” the Collinwood seat, zir, but they’m all gone, everybody but me and the missus. I got GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 179

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a key tho’, I could tak’ the lady there. It’d be best, for there ain’t room to swing a cat in my cottage an’ the mill’s fair cluttered on account o’ yesterday’s flood. Wait on, zir, I’ll fetch missus.”

He seemed, thank God, a reliable fellow, with more than his share of commonsense, and was back in a moment with his mountainous wife and the four of them went on up the long drive between two rows of magnificent copper beeches to a large, rambling house built in a deep hollow between two arrowheads of woodland crowning a spur of brushwood and full-grown oaks and beeches. Somehow, be tween them, they lifted her from the carriage and followed the miller’s wife into a hall, where everything was draped in white sheets, and then on and into a room with low-silled latticed windows and a beautifully moulded ceiling.

The name Collinwood struck a chord in his memory. He had known a Collinwood in the Crimea, a hulking chap with a stammer, and he would have asked the miller more about the owners of the place had not Henrietta, at that moment, emerged from what he thought of as a coma and begun to scream again. He said, breath lessly, “Where can I get a doctor? Is there a village near?” but the fat woman said, “Ned’ll tell’ee but it’ll be over’n done with be the time he gets yer. You’d best ride for him tho’, and leave the lamb to me!” She sounded efficient but less subservient than the miller, and he watched her for a few seconds making up some kind of bed on a divan with sheets dragged from the shrouded furniture, while the man pulled a table alongside the couch and busied himself lighting and trimming an oil-lamp shaped like a shell.

Henrietta had stopped yelling now and was looking up at him with eyes that registered no kind of recognition but a kind of mute accusation that made him feel like a jackal. He said, “What’s that doctor’s name, and where’s the village?” and the man said, “Birtles. He’ll be home now to supper. Tis the square house on the right as you enter Twyforde Green. It’ll tak’ ten minutes behind Dancer if the hubcap bain’t knocked off.”

“Damn the carriage,” Adam said, “I’ll ride the grey. Don’t worry, I’m ex-cavalry, and if that crazy beast wants to break his neck here’s his chance!” He had Dancer out of the shafts in thirty seconds and in thirty more was galloping down the incline, using a cane snatched from a window-box to supplement the hammering of his heels. The horse, once he had discovered he had a master, moved in long, easy strides, confirming Adam’s guess that he had been a good hunter in his time, and it was only when they came in view of a broad street that Adam realised he had guessed the direction to take on leaving the mill. He was, he reflected, very fortunate in the people he met that evening.

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The doctor was a gaunt, uncommunicative Scot, incapable of being ruffled by any fresh emergency life had in store for him. Leaving his untasted soup he picked up his bag, shouted a command to his housekeeper, and steered Adam out the front door to climb into a trap that a groom led out from the stableyard.

The groom was given Dancer to stable, and Adam jumped up beside the doctor who was already moving off, as though he regarded husbands as excess bag gage.

The only remark he made during the drive was “From Shirley? Old Groom’s patient, nae doot!”

Adam confirmed the guess, adding that the child had not been ex pected for nearly a month, and that Dancer had landed them at the Collinwood place.

The village doctor said nothing to this, and Adam was left in no doubt that he thought of both him and his wife as a couple of fools but was too well grounded in human fallibility to comment. Just as they were getting down Doctor Birtles permitted himself the luxury of one more remark. He said, “If there’s any delay dinna get under ma feet. But maybe it’ll be over, for that Michelmore woman has had eleven children and I didnae deliver six of them.” They went in then but at the door of the drawing-room Mrs. Michelmore blocked his entrance. “Tis all done with,” she said, phlegmatically, “and ’er was luckier’n ’er deserved if it’s the first. You too, Mister,” and she nodded at Doctor Birtles, who ignored her and passed inside.

Adam was left to stand there gaping, watching the woman wipe her hands on a greasy apron.

“You mean, she’s
had
the child? She’s all right?”

“She’s well enough. The doctor will zee to ’er. My man’ll tak’ you back to the mill to wet the babby’s head.”

“Can’t I see her?”

“Nay,” the woman said, “you can’t, or not for a spell,” and sud denly she called her husband in a querulous voice, and a sheepish Michelmore emerged from a room at the end of the hall and shuffled forward, grinning. Then the woman retired, shutting the door behind her and Adam, passing a hand across his brow, said, “I’m uncom monly obliged to you both. To your wife especially. Could a thing like that happen so quickly?”