Post of Honour (68 page)

‘No, not a bit stupid. The fact is you’ve had a devil of a lot of excitement and no matter how much you pretend to be adult you’re still only a kid. It’s perfectly understandable you should feel nervous. If it was me, I’d be scared stiff.’

She made the only joke he ever recalled her making, saying, with a smile, ‘You’d look like hell under a crown, Daddy!’ and because it was the first time there had ever been real communication between them he threw his arm round her, saying, ‘Neither you, nor Whiz, nor your brothers, ever had the slightest respect for me! However, if you’d like me to stay and see you off I can easily ’phone through and get Henry Pitts to do my judging at the Gymkhana. Would you like me to do that, Claire?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘because I know you hate London and I think you’ve been pretty sporting over the whole business. You haven’t even warned me not to talk to strange men in foreign cities! Go on back to your precious Valley and let me find one of my own, like Whiz and The Pair! All I’d like you to be sure of is that—well—that I don’t
really
take everything for granted! It’s just that I’m not very good at saying “thank you”,’ and she took both his hands, stood on tiptoe and kissed him very deliberately on both cheeks. The unexpectedness of words and gesture overwhelmed him so much that all he could say was, ‘Do you need any money?’ She shook her head, held him for a moment and then resumed her seat by the window. He may have fancied it but it seemed to him that she turned her head away deliberately and he went out hurriedly, never having suspected her of doing anything so human as to shed a tear at the prospect of leaving home and family.

IV

I
t was a rather sombre journey back to the Valley. He found it difficult to rid himself of a feeling of guilt, of having abandoned her at a time when, for the first time in her life, she seemed to need him but when he tried to describe what had passed between them, first to Claire and then to Mary, it sounded trivial and insubstantial so that he was not surprised when they told him that maybe young Claire had bitten off just a tiny bit more than she could chew and that a little humility, the product of nervousness, would do her far more good than harm. When he urged that he should stay after all, or even accompany her to Holland, they laughed at him for reverting to one of his ‘duty-moods’, another hoary source of merriment among the family, yet the feeling of unease persisted, clouding his pleasure at the sight of the Valley under warm September sunshine, with its fields dotted with golden stocks and its streams unseasonably high after a wet August.

All that day and all the next he had difficulty in picking up his routine, his mind constantly returning to the picture of young Claire sitting at the hotel window looking out on nothing or perhaps on something only she could see, and he thought too of her sudden spurt of affection, wondering what instinctive fears might have prompted it. The feeling was strong enough to drive him to the telephone on the second night, the last of her stay in London, only to learn from an impersonal receptionist that ‘Mrs and Miss Craddock had gone to a theatre and were not expected back until after midnight.’ He declined an invitation to leave a message and went to bed with his favourite copy of Jorrocks and when Jorrocks failed to entertain him he lay awake a long time listening to the screech of owls in the paddock, thinking it was the one night-sound of Shallowford he preferred not to hear on the rare occasions sleep evaded him.

If Shallowford House could have been said to possess a radio fan the title would have gone to Mary, the only member of the family whose musical tastes extended beyond Strauss waltzes and jazz. Mary’s room, the first on the nursery corridor facing west, was the most feminine in the house. She had chosen her own carpet and curtains and converted two deep alcoves into arched bookshelves. Her furniture was small and neat, an assortment of birthday and Christmas presents over the years and she had accompanied Paul to local auction sales to buy little pieces of Coalport and Rockingham china, mostly vases and baskets which she kept filled with wild flowers from February until late autumn. These little posies, dotted about the room, were her calendars. In late winter there were usually snowdrops and celandines on the mantelshelf and the lower shelves of the alcoves. In March and April there were primroses and dog-violets, with arrangements of pigmy daffodils and narcissi as spring advanced and after that came the blue and yellow iris that everyone else in the Valley called ‘flags’. Later still the room was gay with foxgloves and bluebells (cut short to spare the bulbs), honeysuckle, meadowsweet, campion, bugloss and shyer flowers gathered in remote corners of the woods revealed to her by old Meg Potter, with whom Mary was on intimate terms. She spent a great deal of her free time in this room writing her diary, trying to compose rustic sonnets in the style of Wilfred Blunt (her favourite poet) and writing long, rambling letters to Rumble Patrick, with whom she had now maintained a regular correspondence for more than three years. Rumble’s photograph stood in a silver frame on a papier-mâché bedside table, not the roundfaced Rumble Patrick who had decamped to Australia as long ago as December, 1930, and had since wandered half-way round the world, but a lean, cheerful-looking young man, in what she took to be a Canadian trapper’s outfit of fur cap, fringed jacket and top boots. The photo was signed
‘As always, Rumble’
which satisfied her but did not seem to impress anyone else.

On the afternoon Paul drove to Paxtonbury to meet the 3 p.m. out of Waterloo she declined his invitation to come along, saying that she had to write Rumble an account of the Dairy Queen final so that it was about half-past five, just after Paul had left, that she sat down at her little rosewood desk and began to marshal her facts, making no effort to restrain the pride she felt in the family triumph and pinning caption slips on each of the snipped-out photographs of Claire, on which she wrote such comments as
‘This doesn’t do our Claire justice, it was one of those awful flashlights and she looks startled!’
or
‘The girl next to Claire is Miss Cheshire who was a very pretty brunette but a cat!’
About ten minutes to six she reached out and turned her wireless set on, continuing writing against a background of Jack Payne’s light orchestral music, a Palm Court broadcast dribbling out tinkling tunes like ‘Little Man you’ve had a busy day’, or dreamier ones like ‘A Night in Napoli’ and ‘Little Old Church in the Valley’. Mary paid no heed to them but unconsciously cocked an ear when the announcer began to read the news. Then she stopped writing, in the middle of the word ‘gorgeous’, used to describe the white satin ball-dress the Dairymen’s Association had presented to Claire to wear at her maiden public appearance. Her hand clutched the pen so tightly that its nib spluttered and for a moment the little room, flooded with early evening sunshine, rocked and receded as the announcer said, in a voice nicely pitched for tragic announcements, ‘ . . . there are believed to be no survivors in this afternoon’s air disaster, involving the British Dairymen’s contingent on their way to exhibit British products at The Hague. Among those aboard the aircraft, which is believed to have crashed about twelve miles north-west of the Hook of Holland, was the recently-chosen British Dairy Queen, Miss Claire Craddock aged only sixteen. Rescue craft went out on receipt of the first distress signals and, together with other aircraft, are still searching the area. A report has come in that one body, believed to be that of a crew member, has been recovered but apart from a small amount of wreckage no traces of the fuselage have been found. The total complement of the aircraft was sixteen. Further bulletins will be issued at nine o’clock and midnight . . . ’

Mary waited, her hand on the knob, until the announcer went on to talk about something else. Then she switched off and stood up, steadying herself by the little brass rail that surmounted the desk and it was necessary to grip hard for the walls continued to expand and contract and all the time the sun poured into the window like a blinding light, causing her to raise a hand still holding the pen and press the palm to her eyes. The movement left a smear of ink on her cheek.

Claire dead! Drowned and probably mangled, somewhere off the coast of Holland! Claire, the spoiled beauty of the family, whose photographs lay strewn across the desk covering the pages of Rumble’s letter. Claire! Who had somehow stood for success and glitter and adventure in the world outside the Valley, the beautiful little child whom she had accompanied to so many dances, gymkhanas and fetes, noting how everyone turned their heads when they passed, the girl who had caused men of all ages to stand aside and pay silent homage to her radiance and grace, as though she was some classical statue transformed into flesh and blood and loaned for each occasion. It was incredible and yet, as Mary fought for her breath, she knew that it was true and that even at this stage to hope would be futile. There had been clinical finality in the announcement but away and beyond this there was also a terrible inevitability about it, as though young Claire had come to the end of the road the very moment the little crown had been settled on her head and that somehow, if only they had taken the trouble to find out, it could all have been found in Meg Potter’s pack of cards.

And then, as tears began to flow, she forced herself to think of the effect of this appalling news on the others, on her mother, now more than half-way home and isolated from news in a speeding train, and of her father, half-way to Paxtonbury, likewise ignorant of what had happened and liable, she thought with a shudder, to read it in a newspaper whilst awaiting the arrival of the express.

She crossed over to the window groping for handholds on bedhead and table and her blundering hand brushed and tipped over a small vase of flowers spilling water and a shower of yellow blossoms across the table-top. At last she found the window seat, summoning every ounce of resolution to think, to hit on some way of softening the blow if God was merciful and Paul and Claire arrived home unaware of the disaster. For she would have to break it to them. Somehow they would have to be cushioned against the savagery of a fiat, impersonal wireless announcement, or the professionally sympathetic voice of a policeman telling the story over the telephone. From far away downstairs she heard the telephone ringing insistently and levering herself up went out into the corridor to the stairhead. Thirza, crossing the hall, turned aside to lift the receiver but Mary called, with an urgency that made Thirza’s head jerk upwards, ‘
Don’t!
It’s for me!’ and ran downstairs as Thirza, shrugging, marched through the swing door into the kitchen quarters.

A voice said, quietly but distinctly, ‘Shallowford House? Is Mr Craddock available?’ and Mary said, choking back her tears, ‘Who is it? Who wants him? This is Mary Craddock, his daughter!’ and when the voice said, ‘Ah yes, is your father anywhere about, Miss Craddock?’ she recognised it as that of Sergeant Beeworthy, the policeman stationed at Whinmouth and responsible for the Coombe Bay area. She said, with a tremendous effort, ‘Is it . . . is it about the aircrash? About my sister Claire?’

‘Yes, Miss Craddock, I’m afraid it is. You know about it?’

‘I just heard it, on the six o’clock news.’

‘I see.’ The voice expressed relief and there was a pause before it went on: ‘Have you told your father? Is he there?’ and Mary said no, he had gone to Paxtonbury to meet her mother on a train due in about six o’clock. ‘Listen, Sergeant,’ she went on, as the power of coherent thought returned to her, ‘I . . . I’d much sooner you left this to me! Unless he buys a paper at the station he won’t know, he’ll simply pick up Mother and come straight back here without stopping! I’d much sooner you left it to me and didn’t try to contact him! Will you do that?
Will
you?’

‘Certainly, Miss Craddock,’ and Beeworthy sounded grateful. ‘I think it would be best in the circumstances. I just had word from London and it would have been my job to make sure that he knew.’

‘There’s no further news?’

‘Nothing good, I’m afraid. They’ve located the wreck, it seems, but there’s very little hope. There were no survivors. It was some kind of engine-failure, they say. I’m . . . I’m terribly sorry for all of you, I knew her well of course.’

‘Everybody did. Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll tell Father you rang.’

‘There’s one thing more, Miss Craddock.’

‘Well?’

‘In the circumstances the Press will soon be on to you. I expect they’ll jam your line.’

‘What can I do . . . just for the time being?’

‘You could leave the receiver off the hook but then nobody else could get you. I think it might be wiser to ring the Coombe Bay operator and ask her to put all incoming calls through to me. I could filter them for you, for a couple of hours or so, and I daresay I could head the Press off. I could say you were all in London.’

‘That would be very kind, Sergeant’

‘Right, then ring the operator right away. Perhaps Mr Craddock or you would ring me later. I might have more news.’

She rang off, passed the message to the operator without comment and looked at her watch. It was six-twenty. Paul would be meeting the train in a few minutes and it would take him less than an hour to drive back. By eight o’clock they would be coming through the door and she would know by looking at them whether or not they had heard. She went upstairs to the bathroom. Any weeping that had to be done had better be done now.

She waited until they had had some tea, listening over the banisters to the rise and fall of their voices and hearing Claire’s laugh. Then she went down to the library and Paul, jumping up, said, ‘I thought you must have popped out somewhere, Mary . . . ’ but stopped, looking hard at her as she stood with her back pressed to the door, groping for the words but finding none.

‘What is it, dear? You’re upset? You’ve been crying!’ and Claire put down her empty cup and turned towards her so that, fleetingly, Mary was grateful she had been betrayed by her eyes despite incessant bathing, for this surely meant that they would not be swung from a mood of relief at being home and together again, with all the excitement behind them, to one of utter despair. They had warning; some kind of warning.