Post of Honour (50 page)

II

J
ohn Rudd was buried on one of those left-over days from late summer when the broad, steep street leading down to the church glowed in pale sunlight that suggested rather than provided warmth for the mourners. After the committal, when he was heading for the lych-gate to rejoin Claire (no women had attended at the graveside although many had been present in the church), Paul found himself noting any number of odd, inconsequential things that John might have remarked upon had he been in a tranquil mood—a squadron of rooks circling the church elms, the drunkard’s flight of a bumble bee who had evidently lost his calendar, the curious, crab-like progress of old Aaron Stokes, the reed-gatherer, who must, by Paul’s reckoning, have attended two hundred funerals during his eighty-odd years in the village but his reflections were cut short by confrontation with young Mark Codsall, yet another godchild, at the fork in the church path and Mark’s apologetic—‘Could I have a word with ’ee, Squire? Worn taake but a moment; tiz about Mother!’

He turned aside, wondering if this meant fresh trouble but Mark seemed no more than bashful and said, as they drew aside from the stream of mourners, ‘She’s thinkin’ on gettin’ married again, Squire! Tiz true! I baint jokin’! But it’ll mean her leaving Periwinkle an’ she abben the nerve to tell ’ee! Anyway, tiz all happened zo zudden I’m praper mazed meself, that I be!’

Paul said, ‘I’m absolutely delighted to hear it, Mark, and so, I’m sure, would your father have been. She needs to make a new life for herself and that’s been her main trouble but I hadn’t the faintest notion she . . . ’ and he stopped, noticing that Mark was now flushed with embarrassment.

‘Nor had I, nor our Floss, nor any of us,’ Mark added, ‘but on’y me’s in favour of it! Them others, they don’t understand, havin’ gone off an’ lived away so long, but I remember the bloke well enough. Reckon I ought to—he saved my life when I was a tacker.’

‘Who did?’ asked Paul, more mystified than ever and the young man blurted out that the German prisoner who had been loaned to the farmer twelve years before had reappeared on the doorstep a fortnight ago and informed his mother that he was not only a widower but a prosperous one, having inherited an extensive market-garden from an uncle in some unpronounceable German province like ‘Shinivwig’.

‘Schleswig? Schleswig-Holstein?’ suggested Paul and Mark said yes, that was it, and Elinor had asked him in for a meal and afterwards they had driven off to Paxtonbury in his hired Essex saloon and that his mother had ‘shown up that night in a praper old tizzy, laughin’ an’ cryin’,’ and that since then the German, who was called Willi Meyer, had called every day and had finally taken Mark aside and asked him his views on the prospect of having a German stepfather.

‘Good God!’ said Paul laughing and then, recalling where he was, straightened his face. ‘What did you say to that?’

‘I told un ’twas no biziness o’ mine,’ Mark said, ‘seein’ ’er was old enough to marry whom ’er plaised! Point is, I got no hankering to stay on there meself. I bin courtin’ Liz Pascoe and Liz has zet her heart on one o’ they new houses in Nun’s Bay and woulden give us a thank-you for our ratty old plaace. Besides,’ he looked a little ashamed, ‘I baint zet on varmin’ like Mother and Dad were, I’d as zoon try something wi’ steady money, zo long as it had to do wi’ driving and mebbe a chance to ride once in a while.’

Paul knew very well what Mark was hinting at. Chivers, the Shallowford groom, had died a year ago and had never been replaced and Mark Codsall was a judicious compromise between the post-war motor-clad youngsters and the older men who still liked a day’s hunting. He said, on impulse, ‘How would it suit you to move into Chivers’ old quarters at Shallowford and be our chauffeur, groom and odd-job man in the garden? The stable flat has mod cons, tell Liz, and it’s a damned sight more comfortable than any of those jerry-built bungalows at Nun’s Bay. You won’t make a fortune but I daresay you’d earn more than you’ve been getting lately.’

‘It’d suit me fine,’ Mark said, his eyes shining, ‘Liz an’ me could get married zoon as mother but . . . well . . . dornee
mind
about her marryin’ a Jerry, Squire?’

‘Not in the least,’ said Paul, ‘a Jerry saved my life soon after that prisoner-of-war tackled your snakebite. Would she be embarrassed if I rode over and wished her luck?’

‘Well, I daresay ’er’d blush an’ carry on a bit,’ Mark admitted, grinning, ‘but if I was you I’d call unexpected an’ catch ’em at it! He’s always around dinner-times but you worn have no trouble with ’ee, ’ee’s a nice enough chap, even if he does click his heels and bob about all the time. He’s got our lingo off too! Damned if he don’t sound like he’d swallowed a bliddy dictionary sometimes!’

Paul rode over to Periwinkle about noon the next day and it cheered him to see the astonishing change in Elinor Codsall, who flitted out to the gate in a way that reminded him of the Elinor Willoughby wooed by Will Codsall over at Deepdene all those years ago. Her greying hair was neatly dressed and her apron (a piece of sacking when he had last called) was clean, frilled and gaily patterned. She was so shy and excited that she whisked him into the presence of the tall, sombre Willi Meyer, a man about her own age and then disappeared into the scullery like a rabbit into a hedge burrow. Fortunately, at this point, Mark stumped into the kitchen and dispensed tankards of home-brewed cider, so that Paul and the German soon found common ground in battlefield reminiscences which led, naturally enough, to an expression of Meyer’s doubts about the local reaction to the marriage between a German and the widow of a man killed by Germans fourteen years before, explaining earnestly that Elinor herself seemed entirely free of prejudice and regarded the entire conflict as an act of folly on the part of their respective rulers. As for him, he did not blame the luckless Kaiser (as most English people did) so much as the Junkers, who had always been a thorn in the side of the South Germans. He himself, he hastened to add, had nothing but admiration for the British, who had treated him with far more lenience than he had been led to expect after his capture near St Quentin. All the time he talked he stood stiffly to attention, making his points with a series of stiff half-bows from the waist and every time he bowed Mark Codsall choked into his cider. Paul could not help comparing Meyer’s elaborate courtesy with the bucolic manners of poor old Will, his predecessor, and it crossed his mind, whilst listening patiently to the German’s preamble, that it was not every woman who could achieve such a range in husbands. This led him to reflect upon what this punctilious Saxon could find to admire in the tubby, middle-aged widow, still holding out in the scullery, or, for that matter, how Elinor herself could have taken his proposal seriously. The German answered one of these questions almost at once, declaring that he had forgotten neither Elinor’s kindness when he was a prisoner nor her skill in raising poultry and it seemed to Paul that his determination to take her back to Schleswig with him was prompted largely by her promise of extreme usefulness when he got her there. In Germany, as in England, he pointed out, poultry was the prerogative of the farmer’s wife. He had no children and after eight years as a widower looked upon marriage as an insurance against lonely old age. What did the Graf think? Was it not a very sensible arrangement for both parties?

Paul explained, as well as he could, that he had no jurisdiction whatever over Elinor, that she was his tenant and had been for nearly thirty years but that his interest in her was limited to that of an old friend. If she was anxious to become Frau Meyer he could give assurance that nobody in the Valley, much less himself, would think any the less of her and that the majority, he felt, would wish them luck. The people round here, he told the German, now resented the French more than the Germans, particularly since it had been made public that the French Government charged rent for the use of track and rolling stock employed to repatriate British wounded, whereas in recent years, especially since the publication of Remarque’s
All Quiet
,
anti-German hysteria had spent itself.

‘Ach, so!’ said Meyer, thoughtfully, ‘that is good to hear from the lips of an English Graf! It has never been otherwise in my country. Tommy fed our children in the Ruhr and in defiance of orders, yes?’

He seemed to regard this as a suitable point to terminate the interview, clicking his heels and conjuring a blushing Elinor from the scullery with a despotic clap of his hands. Elinor’s prompt response to the summons released another spring of conjecture in Paul’s mind, for he reflected how, when Will Codsall was nominated master here, it was common knowledge in the Valley that Elinor wore the trousers. Elinor said Willi was anxious to get married before his return early in the New Year and this meant that everybody concerned would have to hustle. Mark could take what he liked of the furniture and the remainder would be put up to auction for she was taking nothing but her linen.

‘John Rudd’s notion was to split Periwinkle acres between Hermitage and Four Winds,’ Paul told her, wondering if Elinor would resent seeing half her acreage pass to the Pitts’ family, for she had never forgiven Gloria for her unique expression of patriotism during the war.

‘Tiz your land, Squire,’ Elinor said carelessly, ‘and tiz for you to parcel it out but I’d be plaised if you could see your way to givin’ me away when the time comes! Would ’ee now? Would Mrs Craddock think it zeemly?’

‘I’m sure she would,’ Paul said, ‘but wouldn’t your brother Francis like to do it?’

‘Giddon no,’ said Elinor, impatiently. ‘Francis baint had collar an’ tie on zince Father died and he give up attending chapel! Us’d zooner it was you, woulden us, Willi?’

‘Please?’ said Willi, never having mastered the Devon dialect, whereupon Paul translated and the German said it would be an honour, none of his family having had a Graf present at their weddings.

‘For God’s sake what
is
a “Graf”?’ demanded the indulgent Mark but Paul said he would explain later and they parted on a cordial note, Elinor accompanying Paul to the post where he had tethered his skewbald.

‘What do ’ee really think, Squire?’ she asked as he put his foot in the stirrup, ‘do ’ee think I’m mazed to go marryin’ a forriner at my time o’ life? I dorn mind if you says zo tho’ my mind’s zet on it, whether or no!’

‘I think it’s a splendid arrangement,’ Paul said, laughing, ‘so long as you’re sure you’ll be happy in a strange land, away from all the folk you’ve grown up with. He’s a thorough decent chap but I suppose you’ve considered the obvious difficulties, language and so on?’

‘Arr,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘I have that and I daresay I’ll be terrible homesick come springtime an’ autumn but a woman’s plaace is where her man has his work. If old Will had up an’ trotted off to Australia that time his folks tried to come between us I would ha’ followed to whistle an’ neither Arabella nor my folks could have stopped me! Zeems away off, that ole fuss dorn it, like another lifetime? To tell ’ee the real truth, Squire, Willi Meyer showin’ up like he did saved me from actin’ about as stupid as Will’s father! Things was closin’ in like they do sometimes an’ you can’t fight free of ’em like you can when youm young an’ spry!’

‘You’re as young and spry as the best of us,’ Paul told her and then, looking down at her earnest face, his curiosity broke the bounds of propriety and he said, ‘Was there ever anything between you and Willi Meyer when he was working here during the war? I don’t give a damn one way or the other, but
was
there?’ and was not the least surprised when a sly grin lit up her face and she said, cheerfully, ‘Arr, naught but slap an’ tickle in the barn a time or two, Squire, but dornee let Gloria Pitts know, will ’ee now?’

‘What kind of a fool do you take me for?’ Paul said, chuckling, and before he swung himself into the saddle he turned and kissed her weather-roughened cheek, not waiting to witness her surprise but riding down over the weed-grown western slope to the track that led to the river road. ‘By George!’ he said to himself, as he broke into a trot, ‘what the devil do any of us know about the people we live among? I don’t think I ever thought of that story Henry told me about the fight in the Periwinkle kitchen without choking with indignation but it seems Gloria had been right after all! Maybe everyone was a little mad those days, even Claire with that ass at the camp, the one who came close to prompting me to tan the hide off her!’ He went on down to the river, riding into a flurry of rain and feeling a good deal more cheerful than he had for a long time.

III

T
here were three Valley weddings that winter but only those of Elinor Codsall and her unlikely German, and Mark Codsall and his Liz Pascoe, were on home ground. The third, a ceremony entirely without trimmings, took place in a Manchester Registry Office on the same day as Elinor’s wedding.

Valley gossips were wrong when they told each other Squire Craddock had refused to attend the wedding of his eldest son, Simon, to Rachel, the widowed daughter of his tenant, Norman Eveleigh, and they were equally wrong surmising that neither Squire nor Squiress had been aware of the match until it was accomplished. Their failure to attend was due to the clash of dates and no other reason. Paul had been given a bare twenty-four hours’ notice of the wedding by telephone but would have hurried north, grumpily enough no doubt, had he not felt that Elinor Codsall had prior claim on him.

Simon telephoned his father and stepmother with reluctance. Only the prospect of an eve-of-wedding quarrel with his fiancée got him into the ’phone booth for her insistence seemed to him maddeningly illogical having regard to her refusal to notify her own parents. She could not make him understand that their cases differed or that she had never found grace to forgive her father for his bitter opposition to her marriage to Keith Horsey during the war. She and Norman Eveleigh had never exchanged a word since that day and she still held him partly responsible for Keith’s death, which was even more illogical. It was not Eveleigh’s bellicose patriotism that had made Keith Horsey a conscientious objector, nor his sour nagging that had encouraged Keith to enlist as a stretcher-bearer instead of sweating it out in gaol. The rift remained however, and when Simon tried to strike a bargain with her, offering to delay the wedding a week and invite all four parents, she refused point blank but still held to her view that Paul should be notified and given the chance to attend.