Pictures of Perfection

CHAPTER FOUR

So dusk stole down on Enscombe.

Crag End Farm, tucked under the western wall of the valley, felt its shadow first. George Creed washed his wellingtons under the yard pump and laughed as he saw the mud slide off their rubbery blackness. Life was good apart from that silly quarrel with his sister, but that would soon be put to rights. Would have been put to rights already if her daft scripture quoting hadn’t driven him to a matching obduracy. Tomorrow would see things sorted, one way or another. He sat on the bench under the kitchen window and lit a pipe. Time for a smoke before he went into the village for the Save Our School meeting. His old dog, sensing his master’s contented mood, settled with his head on the damp rubber boot, and together they watched the shadows which had already embraced them reach out to cover Scarletts and the winding river.

At Scarletts too the inmates acknowledged the approach of night in their different ways. Mrs Bayle set about checking her defences. Fop sniffed the air with hopeful anticipation. And Justin Halavant poured himself a glass of Bâtard-Montrachet which some Frog had claimed was the best wine in the world for getting philosophical on.

So far the test was inconclusive.

He took a careful sip and once more examined the situation.

Looked at positively, he was no worse off.

Looked at legally, he had lost nothing that he could really complain about losing.

Looked at morally, a problem had been solved, a wrong righted, a dying wish fulfilled.

But none of these considerations, nor yet the wine, prevented him from feeling robbed, cheated, and humiliated.

Ultimately it was all down to that ungrateful child, Caddy. True, his approach had been less than subtle; in fact, memory of his gaucherie was almost as painful as memory of its consequence; but there had been no need for that sister of hers, the Ice Queen, to share his humiliation with the whole village. And any guilt he had felt about Caddy herself had been washed away by his detection of her part in this latest outrage. Presumably the whole village knew about that too. Therefore it was meet that his revenge should be taken against the village as a whole. And what better wine than the Bâtard to appetize revenge? But not tonight. Tomorrow was the Day of Reckoning. Quite soon enough to draw on himself the hatred of all his neighbours. He rose and went to the door and shouted. ‘Mrs Bayle!’

‘Yes?’

‘If Mr Philip Wallop calls, tell him I’m out. Ask him to call again tomorrow.’

‘Oh yes? Going to the School meeting, are you?’

The meeting? Yes, why not? That’s how it had all started. So why not!

On the edge of the village as the shadows stretched to consume the wilderness he had created out of Intake Cottage’s once lovely garden, Jason Toke too was thinking of Caddy. He had nothing so positive as hope; what he did have was a certainty that without that ghost of a dream of a possibility which was his mainstay, something cataclysmic would happen in his life, sending him shooting off irresistibly in some new and unforecastable direction. To Jason, the best thing that had happened in recent times was the story of Halavant’s rejection. Justin had wealth, power, influence, yet Caddy had rejected him. So what did she want?

And that ghost of a dream of a possibility came again to haunt the boy’s mind as his supple, intelligent fingers dismantled and oiled his guns.

Higher up the valley where the sun lingers longer to gild the lead of the church roof and flood the vicarage windows with fire, thoughts of Caddy filled Larry Lillingstone’s mind also as he sat at his desk over his neglected papers. He had known it was a mistake from the start. As soon as he felt those longings, he should have gone straight round to the Bishop and told him he couldn’t stay in Enscombe. What matter if he looked foolish? Anything was better than this mess he had got himself into. Yet was it such a mess? Was it not an occupational hazard of his calling since time began for a poor priest to find himself teetering astride the perilous gap between the state’s laws and his flock’s needs? His famous predecessor Stanley Harding hadn’t hesitated to defy convention or the law in his efforts to save Enscombe School.

But Harding’s motives had been pure! Whereas he had thrown up his hands in firm refusal till he had learned of Caddy’s involvement … Oh Caddy, Caddy, Caddy. Would she be at the meeting tonight? Did he want her to be or not? Perhaps the best thing would be to stay away himself? After all, nothing would be certain till tomorrow. Perhaps it would turn out to be an empty dream after all and things could be put back to what they were?

There was a tapping at the window. He rose and peered out into the dusk. Standing on the lawn looking as insubstantial as the light vapours rising from the damp grass was the figure of a woman. For a long moment he regarded the pale oval of her face without speaking or moving. Then with a deep sigh he began to open the french window.

Only one building stands higher in Enscombe than the church and that is Old Hall. Nor is this an entirely fortuitous symbolism. The Hall was built on the site of, and out of the stones of (and, some whispered, with the wealth of), the old priory of St Margaret. When Thomas Cromwell’s team of dissolvers reached this remote part of Yorkshire, all they found was a smoking ruin. The Lady Prioress, so they were assured by the local Justice of Peace and Lord of the Manor, one Solomon Guillemard, having received advance warning of the King’s just wrath, had fled to the Popish Netherlands, taking with her all her followers and, what was worse, all their valuables. On word of this the loyal peasantry of Enscombe had risen up in righteous indignation and not stood down again till the priory was reduced to the present worthless ruin, which none the less, out of patriotic love and feudal duty, Solomon Guillemard was willing to take off the State’s hands for a very small consideration. The men from London, having learnt the hard way that it rarely paid to argue with a Yorkshireman, accepted the offer and hurried on to their next port of call, hoping to find better pickings at Jervaulx or Rievaulx.

All this Squire Selwyn had put into his ballad, but as he sat at his writing desk that evening, his thoughts, like Lillingstone’s, were not on the papers before him but on a woman.

Girlie had said she had something she wanted to talk over with him and from her manner he knew it was no light matter. He feared the worst. Had she turned out to be one of those feckless, fluttering kinds of girl he recalled from his youth, there’d have been no problem. She’d probably have gone off long since and got herself married. Instead, she had taken on the Hall and all it involved, including looking after young Fran and himself, no easy task that! And what was more she’d made a first-rate job of it, dragging the estate back from the brink of ruin and now planning for its future survival with the help of this damn Health Park. If anyone deserved to inherit, it was Girlie.

But she couldn’t. Not a matter of law. Male inheritance was no longer the hard and fast thing it had once been. But that in his view made it all the more important. His study of the family history had taught him this if nothing else, that tradition had to come before personal whim. How many Squires of the past must have wished they could redirect the inheritance? His own father had never concealed his preference for his younger son, Guy. But Fucata non Perfecta. You didn’t fiddle with the natural state of things, and he’d inherited. Now it was only proper, pain though he was, that the present Guy should inherit in his turn.

He had told Girlie this, said he would leave her what was his personally to leave (which wasn’t much), and added (which was less) that he would urge upon Guy his family duty to see that Girlie and Fran kept a roof over their heads. His own recommendation was that Girlie should not rely on her cousin’s kindness, but while she was still young, divert her undoubted talents for making money for the estate to making money for herself.

She had listened politely, said thank you, and gone about her business.

And now he was filled with a foreboding that she was coming to tell him she had taken his advice and was leaving.

He couldn’t blame her. But, oh God, how he would miss her.

That was her now, tapping on the door. He straightened himself up and prepared for bad news.

It was both better and worse than he expected.

When she had finished a silence fell between them, stretching out as if to fill the space left by the receding light.

She hadn’t asked for a decision but he knew one was expected of him.

‘Tomorrow,’ he said finally. ‘Leave it with me till the Reckoning. I’ll make up my mind by then.’