The Painted Tent (21 page)

She said with a touch of awe in her voice, ‘Oh, Sammy, isn't he the bonny bird? He looks like some noble prince in armour ready to fight to the death for his lady.'

From that moment for both of them, the tiercel was named and became the Prince. Twenty minutes later Fria came back from her meal and the tiercel Prince dropped from the tower and beat away fast and low down the slopes of the parkland to disappear near the river.

Smiler said, ‘ He's away to the river for his morning bath.'

They climbed down from the house and Smiler showed Laura the ladder he had made, explaining that he was not going to use it again until he was sure that the eggs had hatched.

They went back to their bicycles and rode off to go to Barnstaple. Laura wanted to do some shopping for presents to take back to her father and mother and friends, having said that morning to Smiler, ‘I know you don't want to waste time shopping in a town but it's got to be done – so we might as well get it over and then you won't be fussing about it for the rest of the week.'

It rained hard that afternoon. To escape it they went to a cinema and sat at the back, holding hands, and Smiler when he came to write up his diary that night could not remember even the name of the film they had seen.

He wrote:

The tiercel is the Prince. Laura named him after one look, bang on the nose. Had to take some eggs up to the village after supper from the D. to Mr Samkin. Laura stayed behind nattering to the D. Glad she did, really. Not very keen about Sandra seeing us because you never know what she's going to say just out of devilment. Come to think of it both Sandra and Laura like doing that. Mr Samkin asked about Fria and I told him about Prince. I got a feeling that he already knew there was a tiercel up there. Shouldn't be surprised if he is already paying a visit now and then to Highford. He's a quiet one, but he's all right. I wish the teachers at my stinking old school had of been like him.

What Smiler did not write in his diary was that coming away from Mr Samkin's he had run into Sandra who had said, ‘ I hear tell that you've got your girl friend staying at the farm for a week.'

‘Don't be silly,' Smiler had said indignantly. ‘She's not my girl friend. She's just some relation of Jimmy Jago's and I'll be glad when she's gone so she isn't tagging along all the time.'

Sandra tossed her fair hair and grinned.

‘The only time I saw her tagging along you had a grin on your face like a Cheshire cat that had taken all the dairy cream.'

‘If you think that, you ought to get your eyes tested.'

As he cycled back down the hill Smiler thought, with a moment's crossness, that it was a funny thing that some people couldn't keep their noses out of other people's business. But by the time he got to the bottom of the hill he was saying to himself, ‘Samuel M., you didn't handle that right. You should have just told the straight truth. Maybe that would have put her off for good.'

1. See Flight of the Grey Goose.
   

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If the time of waiting for Laura's arrival had passed snailslow for Smiler, the days of her week in Devon appeared to race by. High pleasure seemed, like a glutton, to bolt and swallow the hours voraciously. They visited Highford at least once every day. Laura was disappointed that she would not be there when the young arrived, but she made Smiler promise to write and give her all the news of them when they showed. They cycled for miles around the countryside, fished for trout in the Bullay brook, went now and again for a lunchtime drink at the Fox and Hounds, and explored the river for miles up and downstream – and, by skilful manoeuvring, Smiler managed to keep Laura away from the village and Sandra.

The morning of the day before Laura was due to go back, they walked the Bullay brook to the point where it ran into the Taw. They sat on a high bank overlooking the main river. A hundred yards downstream a heron stood in the shallows, fishing. A black mink ran along the far bank, scented them, raised its head, gave them a beady stare, and then turned back along its tracks and disappeared. A salmon jumped in the pool above them, bored with the long wait ahead until spawning time. A solitary early Mayfly hatched from the water. It drifted away on the film with raised wings to take the risk of a few moments' peril from lurking trout before it could lift itself into the air to its all too brief freedom.

Lying on his back in the grass, Smiler said, ‘ I can't believe you're going tomorrow. Where's all the time gone?'

Laura was silent for a while, and then she said, ‘Sammy, I got something to tell you.'

Smiler rolled over on his elbow and looked at her. A small, serious frown creased her sun-tanned brow.

‘Well, what?'

‘Well, before I left home my mother told me there was something I had to do.'

‘What was that?'

‘Well, she knew from me that although you were writing to your sister and her husband that you hadn't told them where you were – except in Devon somewhere. And she felt that was all wrong. And … well, since I knew where they lived in Bristol from you, she said I had to go and see them on the way down and tell them where you were.'

Smiler sat up quickly. ‘You did that?'

‘Yes. I stopped off in Bristol. And it's a good thing I did. They're both very nice and I like them.'

‘Albert's all right. But my sister Ethel – you don't know her. If she takes a mind to it shell be off to the police and – oh, Laura, why did you do it?'

‘Stop panicking like a loon. Your sister won't do anything of the kind. They both promised me that before I exactly told them. And then… well, they gave me this for you.'

Laura took an envelope from her pocket and handed it to Smiler.

Smiler recognized the writing on the envelope at once. It was his father's.'

‘It's from Dad.'

‘Yes, I know. Your Albert said you have to have it urgently, but he'd no way of sending it to you.'

Smiler turned the letter over. ‘You know what's in it?'

‘Of course not. I don't open people's letters. But from what Albert told me your father had written to him I do know that it's some good advice. And that's something that some folk not a hundred miles from here – don't take to too gladly. Why don't you open it and see?'

Smiler opened the letter. It was a long letter in which his father explained what had happened to him to cause him to miss his ship, and how things had gone from then on, and a lot of chatty stuff about his doings. Reading it Smiler had a vivid picture of his father and his memory rioted with all the good things they had done together in the past – but all that was washed from his mind as he read the last paragraph:

… Well now – to the real thing, Samuel M. I know from Albert and the police reports that the company sent me about most of your goings on. But the thing is – no matter how you've been able to look after yourself (and I'm really proud about that) – you've got the wrong end of the stick. O.K. so you didn't pinch the old girl's bag and you ran away from that place they sent you. But that wasn't the thing to do and it no more is the thing to keep on doing. I don't know when I'll be back, but that makes no difference cos I should only make you do what you really ought to have done – if you'd used your noddle – long ago, and that's walk up to the nearest copper and give yourself up. The police aren't fools. The fact you run away tells them something was wrong, and the fact of giving yourself up will just make it more so. I'm not going to start sparking off and giving you orders. I know my Samuel M. All I know is that you got my advice – not orders – and I'll know you'll do the right thing. O.K.?

Yours from the bottom of the world, but hoping to be home soon – lots of love, Dad. PS. They tell me you want to be a vet. That's fine – but you can't really settle to that until every things cleared up, can you? Chin up.

Love again, Dad

Silently Smiler handed the letter to Laura. As she read it he looked around him, at the sunlit river, and the green fields and the wood-sweeps of the valley-side. Above the high crest of the firs that hid the Highford hilltop from him he saw a handful of rooks sporting in the air, and far above them a pair of buzzards circling slowly on their broad wings. Fria and Prince were up there somewhere, Fria for certain would be sitting on her three eggs and in a couple of weeks they might be hatched … All this and his work with Mr Samkin and his pleasant billet with the Duchess to be thrown away, to be walked away from, perhaps for good, just because his father… A lump rose in his throat and he screwed his face muscles up to stop unwelcome tears seeping into his eyes.

Laura handed the letter back to him. ‘Your father's a fine and sensible man. Wronged you've been, but you've done nothing for yourself by running away. Oh, Sammy – I've told you that before.'

Stubbornly Smiler said, ‘I never robbed that old lady – and I'm not giving myself up to the police.'

Laura eyed him silently for a while and then she smiled and said, ‘You've got the letter. You know what your father thinks. I'm saying no more. It's no place of mine to tell you what to do. A man must make his own decisions. So, Sammy, I'm saying no more about it.'

‘But it means leaving the Duchess, and the peregrines, and all my studying and –'

‘No, Sammy,' Laura interrupted him and stood up. ‘I don't want to hear anything about it. I know what you'll do. Now come on, let's walk up the river and have a bar snack at the Fox and Hounds and I can say goodbye to Harry.'

And so it was that the subject was not mentioned between them again until a few moments before Laura got into the train at Eggesford to begin her journey home.

Smiler gave her a kiss and a hug and then took from his pocket a sealed envelope and handed it to her.

‘Don't open it now, Laura. In the train. It's for you. It's a kind of present. Well, two presents.' He grinned suddenly. ‘You brought me a letter – now you got one to take back with you.'

The porter came by them and, winking, said, ‘Come on now, miss. Can't hold the train up. Parting is such sweet sorrow – but there's always another time and nothing stops the grass growing.'

The train pulled out of the station and Laura waved from the carriage window until the curve of the line hid her. Smiler waved back, and two thousand feet above Fria's tower the tiercel caught the red flick of his bandana handkerchief and soared higher to chase a solitary buzzard, teasing it with short, playful, mock stoops.

In the carriage by herself Laura opened the envelope. Inside was a letter and a small silver chain necklace with a little silver fish hanging from it.

The letter read:

I got it in Barnstaple that day for you to wear and remember

our promise for one day. I hope you like it.
I hope you'll like the second present too that is what I've

made up my mind to do it.

Lots of love for ever, S.

Laura fixed the chain round her neck with tears in her eyes. Back at the station Smiler went out to the hired car. The garage man opened the door so that Smiler could sit alongside him. Seeing his long face, he grinned and said, ‘It ain't the end of the world, you know. But if it is, we can go back over Kersham bridge. I'll pull up so you can jump into the river and end it all. Knew a chap who did that once. Summertime it was, though, and the river dead low. Broke his leg on a rock.'

Two days later Smiler finished work early and went up to Highford House. He sat for an hour on the roof. Fria was sitting tight on her eggs. The tiercel, Prince, was nowhere to be seen until five minutes before Smiler left. Suddenly he came down from the high blue sky in a vertical stoop over the tower. Fifty feet above it he threw up in a great figure of eight, the sound of his stoop and manoeuvre making the air sing. Then he rolled over and dived at the roof of the house. He passed two feet above Smiler – as though, Smiler thought, he knew it was goodbye and this was his way of saying it – and then landed with a quick back flicking of wings on the tower-top. Smiler saw the movement of Fria's head in the recess and heard her call quietly to the tiercel.

He climbed down from his roof perch and made his way back through the woods, looking at his wrist-watch to check the time because he knew exactly when the little police patrol car would be coming up Bullay brook hill.

As he loitered down the hill the car came over the brook bridge, passed the farm and began to climb the hill. Smiler raised a hand and the car pulled in by him.

With a broad smile on his red face Grimble, the policeman, said, ‘Hullo, Samuel. Your girl friend's gone, I hear.'

‘Yes,' said Smiler glumly. For a moment or two he felt his courage ebbing from him and he had a sudden desire to turn and run away. Then he thought of his father and of Laura and the whole of his future and he suddenly stammered out, ‘ I got to tell you something … You see … well, I want to be a police… I mean –'

The policeman grinned. ‘If you want to be a policeman, you'll have to wait. You're not old enough yet.'

‘No, no, I don't mean that. I mean, I'm wanted by the police.'

For a moment there was silence between them and then the man said, ‘Say that again.'

‘I'm wanted by the police. I'm a sort of… well… criminal, and I want to give myself up and get it over to really prove I didn't do it, and then I can be clear with my father and Laura and … well, and then get on with my studies. ‘ So you'd better take me back with you.'

The policeman considered this and then said calmly, ‘ Well, now – this all sounds very sudden and serious. A criminal, eh? Sort of on the run, you mean?'

‘That's right.' It was funny, Smiler thought, but he was feeling easier now as though for days he had been all stuffed up with … well, like with overeating, and now suddenly he was back to normal and really feeling good. He went on, ‘You see I escaped from approved school way back early last year and I got this place working on a farm in Wiltshire and then things went wrong there and then I went to the Laird in Scotland and then again things went wrong and –'