The Happy Prisoner (44 page)

“You mustn't come in here like that when your uncle's dressing,” said Elizabeth.

Evelyn took no notice of her. “Uncle Ollie, I believe in God,” she announced. “After you'd asked Aunt Hattie and she still said yes I must, I thought I'd have to kill myself. Then I thought of something else and I went into Dandy's stall and prayed and prayed, just like that girl in the book who prayed and the bread got cooked, only I prayed for it to stop raining. After today, I think I'll be a saint and pray all the time. I can do anything. I could pray and make it start raining—only I'm not going to; I didn't mean that,” she added hastily, glancing out of the window in case God had misinterpreted her rash statement. “I'm going to get Dandy out now. He's been sweating like anything; I'm sure he knows. Will you watch me? There's crowds of people there and some of the ponies are awfully big. The Master's come. Oh, Uncle Ollie, he is marvellous. He's come on one of the Hunt horses, a topping big grey, you must see him. He's brought a couple of hound puppies with him too—they're frightfully well trained, much better than the ones Vi's walking.” She dashed away, leaving the door open.

“Isn't it silly,” said Oliver. “I feel as nervous about her
winning that jumping as if she were my own child. I'm sure I shall be awfully wet when I have a family—drool at the mouth and dote. You won't, though. You'll be scientific and sensible, and when they don't win things you'll say it's good for their characters. Poor little things, it would break my heart to be their father, but I don't suppose Arnold Clitheroe will mind. He thinks everything you do is marvellous.”

Elizabeth opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. “Why do you always call him Arnold Clitheroe in that tone of voice?” she muttered, bending down to tuck a rug round his legs.

“It's such a funny name,” he said simply. “I can't help it. Am I ready, Liz? How do I look?” He cocked his head at her. “Oh, my cigarettes.” He patted the breast pocket of his jacket.

“In the right-hand pocket, and your matches.” She went behind him and started to wheel him out of the room.

“You're a marvel. I couldn't do without you.” He said this several times a day, meaninglessly, because soon he would have to do without her. “No, don't push me as if I was a pram. Let me go under my own steam. You might leave me that much self-respect.” He put his hands on the outer wheels and, giving them a tremendous shove, went bowling over the floor and nearly ran into his mother in the doorway.

“Careful, darling!” She skipped aside. “I was just coming to ask you if I look all right. Do I look sporting enough?” She wore a green tweed suit over her best corsets, a green satin blouse with a diamond brooch, a cabdriver's hat with a feather on one side, and shoes that were comparatively low-heeled for her. “I can't walk in these brogues,” she complained, kicking out the little feet that always looked unequal to her weight, “but I do want to look right. I never know how these county women manage to look so dowdy and so right at the same time.”

“You look a perfect English gentlewoman,” Oliver assured her, and she believed him.

“It's this medal,” she said, proudly touching her lapel, where a blue and gold badge proclaimed that, although she hardly knew one end of a horse from another and was afraid of both, she was a member of the local Pony Club committee.

“Honey looks just terrible,” she said with satisfaction. “She's wearing that umbrella-shaped dress she got at Worth's and that hat that makes her look like Carmen Miranda. Bob, of course, looks just right. That man does have the loveliest shoes.”

“No more talk about them not being here this afternoon, I hope?”

“She hardly spoke a word at lunch. Just sat there with her Mona Lisa smile while Bob fussed round her as if he were her slave. I do hate to see him making such a fool of himself over that woman, Ollie. I hope he'll get used to her soon and settle down before she makes a monkey out of him. I reckon it's because he married late. He was just like this over Vivien, though, when they were first married, but she was always such a sweet person.” She sighed. “Evie would have adored her. She adores Bob, though, doesn't she? Half the reason she's so excited about this afternoon is because she wants to show off to him. He's out there with her now, striding about and being most fearfully English, don't you know.” She put on what she imagined was her ultra-English accent. “Where are you going, darling, down to the end of the lawns? You'll be able to see it all from there.” She took hold of the back of his hair and he turned round and removed her hand from the crail.

“Let me go on my own,” he said like a testy old gentleman. “Why does everyone treat me as if I was paralysed?” As he wheeled himself away from them down the corridor, he heard his mother say to Elizabeth: “It's a good sign, isn't it? He's getting so independent.…”

He sat enthroned on top of the Ha-Ha wall above the meadow and several people came up to talk to him from below. The M.F.H., a long, lean, tanned man who was the idol of all the Children and many of the local females, rode up on a huge grey horse with scarred legs to tell Oliver he was expecting to see him hunting again next season.

“I don't know,” said Oliver. “I don't see how I—” He glanced down at his missing leg.

“Course you will,” said the Master, yanking his horse's head fcway from the lawn, which he could crop without lowering his heck. “When I was with the Southdown there was a chap, been turning out for years with a cork leg. They weren't so good in those days, of course. He had to ride with it stuck straight out and it used to catch on gateposts and knock him off as easy as tipping your hat. Funniest thing you ever saw.”

“It must pave been,” said Oliver doubtfully.

“Oh, old Saunders didn't mind. He used to lie there in the mud waving his leg and wait for someone to come and put him back on.” He kicked the grey in the ribs arid, putting a horn to his lips, cantered round the field like the Pied Piper, with a
string of hero-worshipping children kicking and beating their ponies after him.

Mrs. Ogilvie came and planted herself on a shooting stick and talked up at Oliver with her hands on her spread knees. “What a very chic woman your uncle's wife is,” she told him. “So
American
, if you know what I mean. You're looking peaky, old boy. Been overdoing it?”

“On the contrary,” said Oliver. “I never felt better.”

“You'd never admit it; that's you all over. I always say you're a stayer, a game one, if ever there was. It's the breeding, you know, like with horses. An ounce of blood is worth an inch of bone.” She always adapted her conversation to suit the occasion. This afternoon all her similes were horsey; when she went to a flower show she called her friends Blossom, and children were thrusting shoots. At the cinema she tinged her talk with obsolete Americanisms, and at a dog show she all but barked.

“See my grandson out?” She jerked her head to where a terrified little boy like an uncooked shrimp was doing the splits across the broad back of a Shetland pony no higher than a large dog. “Game as they make 'em. I've told Richardson a hundred times not to let go of the leading rein, but would you
believe
it, I found my little topper trotting about on his own as pleased as Punch while the man was away over in a corner coffee-housing with his pals. Rank Socialism, you know, but what can one do? Servants have no idea of loyalty these days, and of course this government's gone to their heads. What news of John and Heather? They don't seem to come down much these days.”

“That's because they're so happy up there in their flat,” Oliver said. “They're getting madly domesticated. Heather makes rugs in the evening.”

“How splendid!” cried Mrs. Ogilvie, disappointed to find no hint of a family feud.

The first class was being judged for the best rider under ten years old. Mrs. Ogilvie's grandson had refused, with screams, to enter. Oliver saw that Bob had somehow talked himself into being one of the judges and was swanking about in the middle of the ring with the Master and a woman in a mackintosh, who looked like Dorothy Paget and ran the local riding school. Evelyn and Dandy ware going round in perfect harmony, the pony's little legs going like oiled clockwork, Evelyn with her hands still and her head high, scarcely rising from the saddle,
and beautifully, with a well-timed dip of her body, leading Dandy off on the inside leg when the riding-school woman bellowed:

“Canter!”

But the judges, infuriatingly, were not looking at Evelyn. Bob was, but he did not count. The other two would concentrate on a smug little boy in miniature boots and a jockey cap, who was tittuping round the ring on a professional show pony with a plaited mane. He wore a little hunting stock and his gloves were very bright yellow and even his behind looked conceited. He did not even smile as the woman in the mackintosh handed him the red rosette and caught the pony a slap on the neck that echoed round the field. He had known he would win. So had she; he was one of her pupils.

Fred, who was riding about on his farm cob, a bad-tempered animal with a tail like a worn-out stair brush, looked more of a person than he did on the ground. Violet, in a red polo sweater, grubby breeches and canvas leggings, was galloping about on foot picking up fallen poles, spacing out potatoes for the bucket and potato race, being a turning point or a starter or a winning post or the victim of the needle and thread race, and tightening the girths of children in danger of being swung upside down as their grass-fed ponies stomachs shrank with the exercise.

Some of her dogs had got out, and the young setter kept rushing about barking hysterically among the ponies' legs and being yelled at for a bloody dog and why the hell couldn't people keep their tykes under control. One or two of the mothers thought that Major Ferney should be more careful of his language at a children's show, but others shrugged their shoulders and said: “He's always like that nowadays; he's getting absolutely sodden.”

In the intervals of yelling at children who could not control their ponies for ham-handed little bastards who ought to be riding donkeys, Major Ferney ambled over to Oliver and leaned against the wall to olast the government and Russia and the farmers and the weather and his own catarrh.

Evelyn was second in the bending race, and rode up to Oliver wearing a blue rosette, her face holy with joy. “Did you see us, Uncle Ollie, did you see us? Wasn't he super? He never put a foot wrong. Fancy him beating that black pony, I never thought he would.” She did not say “Fancy me beating that great girl in pigtails who tried to jostle me out at the start.” The credit was all Dandy's; she wanted all the glory for him. The pony's brown sides were black with sweat, his forelock had got tangled in the browband of his bridle, grass and foam had dirtied the bit on which Evelyn had spent so many hours of burnishing last night and the hair on his neck was rubbed into a curly lather
by the reins. His wise little eyes were wild with the unusual excitement and he kept throwing up his head and hurling a challenging neigh into the air as if he were a stallion.

“I should give him a bit of rest before the jumping,” said Oliver. “Calm him down a bit or he won't know what he's doing. And for God's sake keep your weight on that left rein. And watch that double bar; I. saw the Master telling Vi to put it up a notch.”

Evelyn nodded vaguely. She was too excited to pay much attention to what anybody said. “I'm going to walk him up and down on his own while the others have tea,” she said. “Aunt Hattie keeps trying to make me go in and have some, but fancy anyone thinking of tea on a day like this.”

The Master came up and said: “Good show, Evie. That's a nippy little brute of yours. What is he—New Forest?”

“No, he's an Exmoor,” she breathed, adoring him.

“Hm,” said the Master to Oliver. “Should have said he was a Forester with that length of leg, and he's not such a slug as most Moor ponies.” Evelyn sat there in heaven, making Dandy stand like a Hackney show pony while the two men discussed him. She was at the peak of her existence. Her mind and body, her thoughts and memories and expectations were crystallised into the glorious present. She had forgotten yesterday and tomorrow and that there was any other world except the hill field or any people except these gods who talked the language she loved. If anyone had said to her: “You are going to Liverpool tomorrow and the day after that in a ship to America, where you will wear dresses and hats and walk on pavements and smell petrol and scented women instead of summer grass and hot horses,” she would have been as shocked as a sleepwalker too roughly awakened.

At tea-time neglected mothers and nurses came into their own. Picnic baskets were unpacked and children were made to get off ponies and sit on rugs. “On the
rug
, Miss Sheila, I said, not on the wet grass. Just look at the seat of her breeches, 'm. I shall never get that green off.”

Rich ponies had blankets to wear and grooms to walk them up and down, abjuring them with mock harshness as if they were real horses, when they tried to eat grass. Proletariat ponies were tied to the fence and allowed to eat as much grass as they liked and put their forelegs through their reins. One of them lay down and rolled on its saddle, and mother screamed and men ran up to buffet it to its feet, where it gave itself a soul-searing shake and
laughed at them. It did not mind being cursed; it had had its roll. Violet stood under a tree eating a bun and holding half a dozen ponies and the big grey belonging to the Master, who was having tea in the house with the Norths.

Halfway through tea Oliver suddenly realised something, excused himself and wheeled himself rapidly out across the lawn and down the ramp which had been made for him where the steps used to lead to the lower lawn. He scanned the field without much hope. There were the picnic parties, there the grooms, there was Violet in a happy coma, letting the grey rub sweat off its face onto her jersey, there was Evelyn, walking Dandy soberly up and down like a professional stable-boy.