Summer's End (10 page)

She fastened her attention on the fairy cakes as though they could provide some sort of answer.

‘Aren't you?' he repeated.

‘Yes.'

‘Come on, Aggie, let's get out of here. Let's breathe.' No one knew them here in the big town, not like Ashden where Agnes felt eyes following her everywhere she went now. She didn't care whether they were looking at her in pity, or if they were laughing at her for being a fool, she hated it just the same. She told herself it was worse for Jamie. Seeing him so desperate changed things. She had been a princess with a handsome prince to look after her, but now she was only Agnes Pilbeam with a man she wasn't sure she knew. They walked in silence up to the common where they could be alone.

‘You're doubting me, aren't you, Aggie?' Jamie asked sadly at last. ‘Just because of that Ruth's lies.'

‘It's not that, Jamie –' She turned to him, she couldn't help it, and the prince put his arm in hers to show passers-by they were engaged, and everything was all right again. Then those insidious voices began again.
Did he do this to her?

Jamie felt her stiffen and took his arm away. ‘If you don't believe me, Agnes, who will? I might as well make away with myself.'

‘Have done, Jamie,' she replied sharply. ‘No talk like that. It's just I remember that evening – you wanted me to – well, like we were already married, and I wouldn't. I wondered if you did it with her because you were cross with me for not – obliging.'

Jamie did not reply. Didn't she realise how difficult it was to respect her like he should? When your head and your heart told you one thing, and the rest of your body was shouting something quite different. Why did he bother? His brother Len never did. He'd been boasting since he was thirteen about the girls he'd had. Disgusting, he'd thought it, until he grew up and found out what it was like.

‘You think what you like, Aggie. I thought as we were to be wed you might just about have trusted me, that's all.'

She burst out crying. ‘I do, I do, Jamie.'

When there was nobody around, they kissed and made up, but
there didn't seem much to say on the train back home, so they didn't say anything.

Laurence Lilley wondered curiously what this summons to Ashden Manor might be for. It was by no means unusual for Sir John to ask him for a discussion at the end of ‘Squire's Day'. From Tuesdays to Fridays Sir John worked in London, on some army job he would never define, and Reggie ran the estate. On Mondays, Sir John had decided the Squire himself, not his heir, should be present, for the equivalent of the parson's ‘Hour', when parishioners as well as tenants of his estate might come to seek advice on anything that might be troubling them. Caroline and Eleanor were frequently called on to write letters as a result for the older, illiterate villagers, and occasionally to act as peacemakers over some trivial issue. The Rector dealt with matters of conscience, or with urgent issues that could not wait till Monday, and Sir John dealt with secular matters.

There was an urgency about today's summons to the Manor that puzzled the Rector. Unlike his daughter, he went to the front entrance of Ashden Manor. Lady Hunney, or Maud as she was referred to privately between himself and Elizabeth, was not a figure of awe, but rather to be pitied. He had suffered too much at the hands of his own mother to fear any lesser mortals cast in the same mould. He wondered whether Sir John's summons could be connected with the Ruth Horner affair, which was growing in intensity and urgency. How, if so, could he be involved?

The affair had, from Agnes's point of view, taken a turn for the worse, for he had now spoken to Jamie. He liked the lad, and so the outcome of the talk had distressed him. He wasn't, or so the Rector had thought, born in the same mould as his elder brother, Len, and he could have sworn he was well-intentioned. But even the best of intentions could be forgotten when the flesh took over. Laurence was not so old that he could not remember Elizabeth, the summer evenings, and the agonising wait before they were wed.

Jamie had denied it, of course, and stood up to him – at first. ‘Ruth is lying, sir. I never did see her.'

‘Her story is very convincing, Jamie. I've talked to her again and she has told me of your meetings in your grandfather's cottage.'

‘What?' The boy's face had suddenly gone white.

He'd shut up like a clam, guilt written all over his face. The Rector
had seen that look on too many faces to have any doubt at all. Guilt, caught by the unexpected. So how could Tilly's ridiculous theory be true? He loved his sister, but they were chips off the same block and when they clashed it was Titan against Titan.

The butler showed him into the study where Sir John was waiting for him.

‘Thank you for coming, Mr Lilley.' On rare occasions after port and a cigar Christian names would be used, but on occasions such as this formality was a strength, not a distancing factor. Their wives maintained the same formality, but with different reasons, and it was never relaxed despite their long and on the whole peaceable relationship.

The subject was not Jamie Thorn, for which the Rector was thankful, as he sat down in the chair to which the Squire had waved him. Sir John was a shorter man than Laurence, but their faces betrayed characters with much in common: men of firm opinions, and considered judgement. Where Sir John was often content to be silent, however, assessing situations as on a battlefield, the Rector usually pressed forward, using dry humour as a cover to talk his way to the truth. There was kindness in both men, but little humour in Sir John. Moreover, the one considered an incorrectly folded newspaper a sign of disintegrating society; the other could see little relevance between private preferences and public heart.

‘Thomas Cooper visited me about his cottage.' Sir John did not believe in lengthy preambles. ‘Mr Swinford-Browne has asked him to move into an almshouse. He has refused.'

‘The former oast-house worker on the Towers' estate? But he's retired.'

‘Precisely. It's a tied cottage, because he used to work for the hop farm. After his son moved out last year, there's no legal reason Swinford-Browne should continue letting it to old Tom. As I gather Swinford-Browne pointed out, it was decent of him to find him room in the almshouses.'

‘Church almshouses.' The Rector rubbed the side of his nose absently. ‘But there is a vacancy, so no matter.'

‘No matter? My dear Mr Lilley, take care. You and Swinford-Browne are shortly to be linked by marriage.'

Sir John was the politician, he the moralist. Of course, Laurence realised belatedly, anything linking Swinford-Browne to the Rectory
would be scrutinised by the village for signs of favouritism. ‘I could not at the moment see grounds for not granting an almshouse to Cooper, when there is one available. Mrs Hastings died last month.'

‘I understand, though I gather Sammy Farthing has his eye on it, but the point of my concern is that Cooper does not want to move.'

‘He worked the hop fields and oast-houses for fifty years. It would be a hard man that turned him out for his last ten or so. He must be seventy.'

‘Unfortunately that does not count in law.'

‘His son was dismissed to make way for Mr Eliot, the new manager.' Laurence thought for a moment. ‘I cannot believe Swinford-Browne wishes that small cottage for Eliot. He has some plan.'

The Squire eyed him appreciatively. ‘I'll make a politician of you yet, Mr Lilley. He wishes, I gather, though I have no proof, to move Mrs Leggatt into the cottage – and she is not eligible for an almshouse yet.'

‘Of course. The cinema. He needs to buy her cottage. I gather, however, Ebenezer Thorn is refusing to sell his cottage, so Swinford-Browne's efforts may be in vain.'

‘He is not a man to give up so easily. I have advised Cooper to go to my lawyer, but I fear he stands little chance, unless there is something in the deeds about the cottage being used only for farm purposes, and even then Cooper himself has no claim.'

‘And what is my role?'

Sir John trod carefully. ‘My instinct tells me there are murky waters round this episode and, as the stick that stirs them is shortly to be linked to your family, I wished you to be warned, since there is also the question of the new cemetery. Do we have no rights over Tallow Field? It is glebe land.'

‘Ah yes, but rented to the Swinford-Browne estate since at least 1850, and while its owner continues to vote against it as a site for the cemetery on the grounds that it would be desecrated by the hop-pickers, I cannot revoke the agreement, since there are no deeds or documentation. It is a “time out of mind” arrangement, as his solicitors have informed myself and the diocese. I suspect Swinford-Browne has plans for Tallow Field as well as Cooper's cottage. He needs new hoppers' huts.'

‘You have no alternative site?'

‘None suitable. Swinford-Browne suggested the present cricket
ground, but not with any degree of seriousness.'

Sir John managed a smile. Lordsfield, as its name suggested, was on the Manor estate.

‘The matter is becoming serious,' the Rector continued. ‘If it is not settled soon, we shall be forced to re-use or double up on plots.'

Sir John frowned. ‘I don't like the idea of that, if only on more secular grounds. Whose family? Which plot? Every stone is known and dear to someone here. Yet we have a public benefactor for a cinema who stops short of ceding rented land for a burial ground.'

‘He thinks of the future, we of our heritage, Sir John. Both have value. Have you visited the cinema?'

‘In London, yes, many times. Quite out of place in Ashden. It would be a bad influence. The darkness of the cinema can only encourage a familiarity between the sexes that is already growing fast out of control amongst our youth. What should be a privilege of unchaperoned meetings between a young man and woman is fast being taken as a right, and, moreover, abused, and see where it has got us.'

‘Jamie Thorn.' The Rector sighed. It had to come.

‘I give you a word of warning, Laurence.' Sir John looked grave. ‘I am told there is talk of rough music.'

‘That outmoded mob law? It died out years ago, surely.' The Rector was shaken. ‘It has not been known in Ashden in my time.'

‘Merely talk, Laurence. But it is a sign that feelings run high.'

The Rector walked home, in disquiet both at the machinations of man and at his darker side. None knew more than he that the conquest of reason by passions, whether violent or sexual or both, was ever present in a village, however deep it lay buried. And rough music which turned the victim into a social outcast was one ugly manifestation of it. He slipped into St Nicholas, so that its silent certainty might strengthen him. The seemingly massive problems of today faded into insignificance besides the calm relics of yesterday. He knew and loved everything about this church, like the Rectory itself. Its lancet windows and pointed arches, the mural of St Nicholas with his three purses, whitewashed over by the Puritans and lovingly and with difficulty restored, the magnificent bells, two of which were cast by the early eighteenth-century Sussex itinerant bellfounder John Waylett, the hassocks woven by the Mothers' Union, the disputed altar cloths, the beetle in the beam above him, each carved pew head, the devil's door in the north wall, the three holy initials on the font: IHC, the
stone effigies of the Norville and Hunney chapels, and its centre-point, the altar, all mellowed into a whole, and the whole was God. God was here, God was his help, but the decisions were still his.

The Forest was leaping with life. Bracken that had been slimy brown in February and peppered with a few yellowy-green shoots in April was over a foot high and, save on the higher ground, conquering the dead undergrowth with fresh green leaves. Green canopies formed overhead; and branches waved over their path, triumphant in their victory over winter. Gorse and broom flamed yellow on the open ground. Felicia had dragged Caroline out to Five Hundred Acre Wood, determined to show her a spiked rampion, whatever that was.

‘
Please
come,' she pleaded. ‘I wanted to be sure I wasn't dreaming. It's so rare.'

Caroline capitulated. She needed some air after being closeted in the Hunney library. After the most glorious April she could remember, the weather was bad again; rain might be good for the trees but it was bad for the spirits, so a dry day like today, even though it was cool, when the undergrowth would not brush wet against her skirts and soak through to her stockings and then to her legs, was not something to be passed indoors, especially with Mother and Mrs Dibble cloistered together over menus and budgets, both for the Rectory fête in July and the wedding. The very word ‘wedding' was taking over the Rectory, lurking in corners ready to jump out at her. The carrier had three times delivered samples of material on approval for the bridesmaids' dresses, three times returned them to Messrs Weekes and on the fourth delivered them with such a glare that even Mrs Hazel pronounced herself satisfied. Escape would be good, Caroline decided, and anyway it was pleasant to see Felicia so enthusiastic about something, even if it was a wild flower. She had been very quiet for the last two weeks. When she was younger, Caroline had nightmares that Felicia might slip away from them like Beth who won her heart in
Little Women
and then devastatingly died in
Good Wives
. Mother had comforted her by informing her that it was Felicia's emotions that were fragile, not her body, and, anyway, she had every intention of keeping all five of her children with her, since she was far too lazy to do without her little chicks.

‘Should you like to be married, Caroline?' Felicia asked, bending over to inspect the ground closely, Sherlock in search of a clue, Caroline thought, amused.

‘And leave you? I should think not.' Caroline decided to go cautiously.