The Caxley Chronicles (5 page)

With these and other cautious warnings Sep did his best to cool Edna's excitement. His strong chapel-guided principles deplored show and waste. Thrift, modesty and humble bearing were ingrained in the little baker. He thanked his Maker for blessings received, but was too apprehensive to expect them to continue indefinitely. Nevertheless, a tidy sum began to accumulate steadily in the bank, the Howard boys had a new bicycle apiece, Edna glowed from beneath a pink hat, nodding with silk roses, as the Howards, as well as the Norths, began to share in the genial prosperity of Edward's golden reign.

It was a perfect time to be young. As the serene years slipped by, as slow and shining as the peaceful river Cax, the young
Howards and Norths enjoyed all the wholesome pleasures of a small and thriving community. There was always something going on at the Corn Exchange, for this was the era of endless good works 'in aid of the poor' who were, alas, as numerous as ever. Concerts, plays, tableaux vivants, dances, socials, whist drives and even roller-skating, followed each other in quick succession. The talent was local, the organisation was local, and the appreciative audiences and participants were local too. There was something particularly warming in this family atmosphere. It had its stresses and strains, as all family relationships have, but the fact that each was known to the other, the virtues, the vices, the oddities and quirks of each individual were under common scrutiny, made for interest and amusement and bound the community at large with ties of affection and tolerance.

Bertie North now attended the town's grammar school daily and Winnie was one of the first pupils at the new girls' county school. Neither was outstandingly academic, but they were reasonably intelligent, obedient and hard-working, and became deeply attached to their local schools, an affection which was to last a lifetime.

Despite the modest fees asked by these two establishments, and the diverse backgrounds of the pupils there, Sep could not bring himself to send his children to either, and they walked daily to the same National School in the High Street where he and Bender had been educated. The schooling was sound and the discipline strict. Bender, knowing something of Sep's finances, often argued with him to send his children elsewhere, but Sep was unwontedly stubborn on this point.

'The old school was good enough for me, Bender,' he
replied. 'It'll do for my boys. No need for them to get ideas above their place.' And no amount of argument could budge him.

The children did not worry their heads about such distinctions. Life was much too full and fascinating. Every Thursday the market square's usual hum rose to a crescendo of shouting and clattering as the weekly market took place. The North and Howard children loved Thursdays. The day began very early, for long before breakfast time at seven o'clock the rumble of carts and the clop of horses' hooves woke the square. By the time the children set off for school everything was in full swing. Prudent town shoppers had already filled their baskets with fresh fruit and greens from the surrounding countryside before the country dwellers themselves arrived by trap or carrier cart to fill their own baskets with more sophisticated things. Everywhere was the sound of hooves and the sweet-sharp smell of horses.

For this was the golden age of the horse. Family coaches, some with fine crests on the doors, still rumbled through Caxley from London to the west. Glossy carriages, with equally glossy high-steppers, bore the local gentry from one tea-party to another. Broughams and landaus, gigs and phaetons, traps and governess carts tapped and stuttered, rattled and reeled, round the square and onward. In the dusty country lanes, massive hay carts and wagons piled high with sacks or sheaves, swayed like galleons, with slow majesty, behind the teams of great cart horses, shaggy of hoof and mild of eye. The music of the horse and carriage was everywhere, the thunder of wheels and hoofs acting as bass to the treble of cracked whip and jingling harness. And always, as added
accompaniment, there was the cry of man to horse, the encouraging chirrup, the staccato command, the endearment, with the appreciative snort or excited whinny in reply. It was an age when the horse was king, and his stabling, fodder and well-being were paramount. He provided transport and labour, and the calm bright world was geared to his pace. The animal kingdom from man himself, who harnessed that willing and beautiful energy, down to the lowliest sparrow which fed upon his droppings, acknowledged the horse as peer. The thought that the smelly and new-fangled motor-car might one day supersede the horse never entered the heads of ordinary folk. Wasn't it true that London made the carriages, and England supplied the horses, for all the world? Nothing could alter that invincible fact.

It was the horse, in all its infinite variety, that the three boys chiefly encountered on their bicycle rides. Within five minutes of leaving the throbbing market place, they could be in the leafy lanes that led north, south, east and west from Caxley. The wide fields were fragrant with cut hay or bean flowers, freshly ploughed earth or ripe corn according to the season. The hedges were snowy with blossom or beaded with shiny berries. Blackbirds darted across their path. Speckled thrushes sang their hearts out from sprays of pear blossom in cottage gardens. There were butterflies of every hue fluttering on the flowered verges of the roadside, and when the boys rested in the cool grass under the shade of a hedge, they could hear all around them the tiny quiet noises of the countryside. Somewhere, high above, a lark carolled. In the dark thickness of the hedge a mouse scuffled the dry leaves stealthily. A bee bumbled lazily at the orange lips of toadflax flowers, and little
winged insects hummed in the sunlight. These were the long happy hours of childhood which the boys were never to forget. The gentle countryside and its quiet villages were theirs to explore, and Caxley, small and secure, the beginning and the end of every adventure. Nothing, it seemed, could ruffle Caxley's age-old order.

But something did. In the midst of this halcyon period an event occurred which was to have far-reaching consequences. It began innocently enough, as such things so often do. It began with Dan Crockford's sudden hunger for one of Sep Howard's lardy cakes.

Daniel Crockford had lived in Caxley all his life, as had generations of Crockfords before him. The family had supplied woollen cloth to the town, and to all England—and parts of Europe for that matter—from the time when Caxley, in the sixteenth century, was building its prosperity from this industry. The family still owned a mill, but now it was a flour mill, some half-mile along the bank of the Cax from the market square.

Crockfords had played their part in the town's history and were well-liked. They had been Mayors, churchwardens, sidesmen, councillors, magistrates and generous benefactors to many causes. But not one of them, until Dan appeared, had ever had anything to do with the arts. It would be true to say that the world of the imagination was looked upon with considerable suspicion and complete lack of interest by the worthy Crockfords.

It was all the more shocking, therefore, when the adolescent
Daniel proclaimed that he intended to be an artist. His father was impatient, his mother tearful. What would the neighbours say?

'They'll say you're plain stark mad,' announced his father flatly. 'The mill needs you. There's a living waiting for you. If you must paint, then have the common sense to do it in your spare time!'

'They'll say you're no better than you should be,' wailed his mother. 'You know how wild and shameless artists are! It's common knowledge! Oh, the disgrace to us all!'

The young man remained unmoved. A few uncomfortable months passed and at last his father paid for him to go to an art school in London for two years.

'Let him work it out of his system,' he growled to his wife. But Dan throve on the work, his reports were reassuring and he returned to his home determined to make painting his career. His father, seeing that the boy's mind was made up, had a studio built at the back of the house in Caxley, and let him have his way. There were other sons to take an interest in the mill, and Dan had a small income from an indulgent uncle and godfather which covered his essential needs. The Crockford family was resigned to the black sheep among the rest of the flock.

Dan sold an occasional landscape to various local people who had wall space to fill. His views of the Cax were considered very pretty and life-like. His portraits were thought unflattering, and rather too garish in colour. With photography becoming so cheap and reliable it seemed sinful to spend so much money on having a portrait painted which might not please when it was done.

But Dan worked away happily, and did not appear to mind that the stacks of paintings grew in his studio and very seldom sold. He was a large handsome man of flamboyant appearance, with a wealth of red hair and a curling red beard. He loved food, and he loved drink even more. Tales of Dan Crockford's prowess in the bars of Caxley and the country inns near by grew tall in the telling. He wore a dark wide-brimmed hat and big floppy silk ties. He had taken up the work of an artist, and he intended to make it plain. Needless to say, he was looked upon in Caxley as a somewhat worthless character, and his family, everyone said, was to be pitied.

On this particular morning, Dan had spent over an hour in cleaning his brushes and his nostrils were filled with the reek of turpentine. It was a soft May morning and the door of the studio was propped open with an old velvet-covered chair. On it, asleep in the sunshine, the family tabby cat rested a chin on its outstretched paws.

The turpentine had run out, and intrigued with the texture and markings of the cat's leonine head, Dan took a piece of charcoal and began to sketch intently. He brushed in the soft ruff, the upward sweep of grey whiskers and the fluff protruding from the pricked black ears. Delicately he sketched in the intricate frown marks of the forehead, the rows of black dots from which sprang whiskers on the upper part of the muzzle, and the bars which ran, echelon fashion, along each jaw.

He began to feel excitement rising. The sketch was good. He selected a firmer piece of charcoal and began the difficult job of emphasising the streak of each closed eye and the puckering of the mouth.

Suddenly, the cat woke, yawned, leapt down and vanished. Furious, Dan swore, flung away the charcoal and burst from the studio into the garden. He found that he was shaking with fury. He would take a brief walk to calm himself. He picked up the empty turpentine bottle, resolved to get it filled at North's, have a quick drink and return to work.

Swinging the bottle, his great hat crammed on the back of his red head, he strode through the market place. There were several people outside the baker's shop and he was forced to step close to the window in order to pass them. A wave of spicy fragrance floated from the open. Sep was putting a trayful of sticky brown lardy cakes in the window, and Dan realised that he was desperately hungry. He stepped down into the shop, and saw, for the first time, Edna Howard.

It was a shock as sudden and delightful as a plunge into the Cax on a hot afternoon. Dan knew beauty, when he saw it, by instinct and by training. This was the real thing, warm, gracious, dynamic. In one intent glance he noted the dark soft wings of hair, the upward sweep of the cheekbones, the angle of the small pink ears, and the most beautiful liquid brown eyes he had ever seen. Dan gazed in amazement. To think that this beauty had remained hidden from him so long!

'Sir?' asked Sep deferentially.

Dan wrenched his eyes away.

'Oh, ah!' he faltered. He fumbled in his pocket for a sixpence. 'One of your lardy cakes, if you please.'

While Sep busied himself in wrapping up his purchase in fine white paper, Dan looked again. Edna had walked across the shop to a shelf where she was stacking loaves. Her figure was as exquisite as her face, her movements supple. There
was something oddly foreign about her which excited Dan.

He found Sep holding out the bag. He was looking at him curiously.

'Thanks. Good day to you,' said Dan briskly, and departed towards the river bank.

There, sitting on the grassy bank beneath a may tree, he devoured his fresh, warm lardy cake and made plans.

She must sit for him. He must go back again and ask her. She was the perfect subject for his type of portrait—full of colour, warmth and movement. She must be Sep Howard's wife. He groped in his memory.

Of course! What had the old wives said? 'He married beneath him—a
Bryant,
you know!'

Dan leapt to his feet, and banged the crumbs from his clothes.

'"The gipsy",' he cried. 'That's what we'll call it: "The Gipsy Girl"!'

D
AN FOUGHT
down the impulse to return at once to Sep's shop and hurried home instead. By judicious questioning of his mother, he confirmed that the beautiful girl was indeed Sep Howard's wife.

In his studio, he wrote a brief note to say that he would give himself the pleasure of calling upon Mr and Mrs Howard that evening at eight o'clock, on a matter of business, and dispatched it by the little maid-of-all-work. The hours until that time seemed excessively tedious to the impatient artist.

"I can't think why he didn't say anything in the shop this morning,' said Sep, much puzzled, as he read the note.

'Maybe it's only just come to his mind,' suggested Edna, busy mending baby clothes and not much interested in the letter.

'Seems funny to address it to
both
of us,' went on Sep. Dan Crockford's open admiration of his wife had not escaped Sep's sensitive eye.

'He probably only wants you to do a bit of catering for a party or something,' said Edna off-handedly. She snapped the cotton with her white teeth, and folded up the baby's gown.

Prompt at eight, Dan arrived. Edna and Sep received him in the first floor parlour which was at the back of the house overlooking the yard and the distant Cax. The willows lining
the banks were shimmering green and gold in their new May finery, and Edna wore a dress which matched their colour. In her presence Dan felt strangely shy, as he was introduced. Sep, who had known the Crockfords slightly for many years, was obviously ill at ease. Edna was quite unperturbed.