Page 67 of Rivals at Ashmore Castle

‘And I’ve had to have a new suit for it. A posh one, a gentleman’s suit.’ There it was, over there, hanging on a nail, like a falsehood. ‘Mind you, his lordship paid for it. But I had to have my hair cut. Proper cut at Eden’s in the village, not Ruthie doing it in her kitchen like usual. It’s not me, all this. I’m a plain man, Dolly, as you know. A plain man as doesn’t like fuss.’

Dolly cocked her ears at the sound of her name.

‘I know what you’re wondering,’ he said. ‘Will she be there? I think she will, because his lordship’s making a big thing of it, so he’ll likely say they all have to go.’ He was silent a moment, staring into his thoughts, and Dolly lowered her head to her paws with a faint sigh. ‘She doesn’t come any more,’ he said. ‘We miss her, don’t we? And when I see her outside church, she has that look, as if all’s not well with her. As if…’ A pause. ‘Studying art in London, they say. It’s what she wanted. And she’s good. She could make a go of it. But there’s that look…’ A longer pause. ‘I think she’s lonely. You and me, we’ve got each other. And she had me. Is it too prideful to say that? But it felt that way. Only now she can’t come. She’s too grown-up. People’d talk.’

In the following pause, Dolly looked up under her eyebrows, without lifting her head. She sensed a change in mood, but wasn’t sure if it meant a move towards breakfast.

He looked down at her. ‘We miss her, don’t we?’ he said softly. Then, like an earthquake, he rose briskly to his feet, and Dolly heaved herself up and skittered backwards, out of his way. ‘Time’s getting on. Got to get going.’

He fed the animals, turned Della out, let the ducks out, had breakfast and tidied the kitchen, banked the range, and made his bed, like his mother had taught him. (Climbing into an unmade bed at night wasn’t respectable.) He harnessed Cobnut to the little trap he had made with his own hands using a pair of second-hand wheels the blacksmith had given him, and tied him to the ring in the wall with an armful of hay to keep him happy. He washed and shaved extra carefully, put on the suit, tied the tie, gave the shoes a last rub, then combed and parted his hair and subdued it with oil. He looked at his reflection in the scrap of shaving-mirror, and thought he looked like a man heading for the scaffold. ‘Cheer up,’ he told that man. ‘They’re not going to kill you.’

Last, he bent to caress Dolly and tell her she was in charge. ‘Willie Cox is going to come and shut the ducks in, but you mind ’em until then. I’ll feed you when I get back. I don’t know what time, but there’s always rats if you get peckish.’

Then he unhitched Cobnut, climbed into the cart and drove off, shaking away the foolish feeling that he was never coming back.

The last normal thing was reaching the Castle stableyard, where they were to look after Cobnut and the trap for the day. Then things got strange. Mr Giddins, the head man, was waiting to receive him, along with Mr Archer, his lordship’s groom, and they shook his hand and said kind things, the rest of the grooms behind them smiling and nodding, as if he’d done something good for all of them. Except his brother Josh, who stayed well back and scowled, but Josh was a sour individual who didn’t like anyone or anything. A sad way to live a life, Axe always thought.

He walked round to the front of the house and the carriage was already waiting (two horses, the bays). His lordship came out right away, punctual to a fault, with Axe’s eldest brother Seth, chosen by the family to accompany him. Ruthie hadn’t got her way on that. Seth looked as if he wished she had, miserable in his best Sunday suit, his face scraped raw with shaving and his hair plastered down. He nodded to Axe but did not speak, as though it might be forbidden.

His lordship greeted Axe cheerfully. ‘Ready for the fray?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Axe said, which was a lie.

It seemed a long journey. Carriage to the station. Train to Marylebone. Hackney cab from the station through the teeming streets of London. His lordship was kind enough to realise Axe and his brother needed to stare at the sights, and didn’t speak to them during the ride. And then through the gates of Buckingham Palace itself, with the policeman on duty saluting as they passed!

Axe knew he was out of his place. The size of the rooms, the height of the ceilings, the huge oil paintings, the gilding, the rich carpets underfoot, the uniformed soldiers, the liveried flunkeys, the quiet, authoritative gentleman in a black tailcoat and striped trousers who was in charge and was more frightening than the rest put together. Worst of all were the eyes, always scanning and judging him, the knowing there was some act he had to perform. He was afraid of doing the wrong thing, of offending some rule they knew and he didn’t. It was an unmanning fear. In his own world he was strong, capable; here he was a helpless fool.

And now he was actually standing before the King – the very King himself, Edward VII, by the Grace of God King of Great Britain and Ireland, Emperor of India, Defender of the Faith. It didn’t seem real. He noted, for future conversations when he would be asked, that the King’s hand was very soft and clean, his eyes were small and very blue, and his smile was kind. And when the King (the King!) spoke about what he had done and asked him a question, he found himself answering, and heard that his voice was not shaking at all. Then His Majesty hung the medal on the little clip they had installed on him beforehand, he remembered to bow as he had been instructed, and walked away to the side so the next man could come on.

And now it was over he wished, perversely, that he had taken it all in a bit more, had lived the moment, which would never come again.

The rest of the day passed in a dream, an exhausting dream, but not frightening, not after being face-to-face with the King of England. When they got back to Canons Ashmore station, there was a band waiting, which played ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’ as he walked down the platform. There was bunting strung, and tubs of flowers, and to greet him a double rank of local bigwigs headed by the deputy lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, Sir Robert Grenville Harvey (the lord lieutenant was Lord Rothschild and you couldn’t expect him to have time for a village affair). In the rank behind him Axe could see his family members, all in their best, Ruth craning and fidgeting and trying to catch his eye, not yet satisfied with the degree of her importance, though the deputy lieutenant’s elegant shoulders were right in front of her. He made a speech and handed Axe a rolled parchment bound with a red ribbon, which he said was the Freedom of Canons Ashmore, whatever that might be. The opposite platform was thronged with onlookers, who cheered the speech, and then they trooped out all-of-a-piece, as though they were stuck together, and there were open carriages waiting.

They drove along the bunting-decked street between cheering crowds – his lordship nudged him gently and told him to wave – to the Red House at the end of the village, where another deputation received them, headed by Lord Bexley, the local magistrate, and the Hon. Frederick Verney, the MP for the area. Mr Verney looked particularly pleased as he shook Axe’s hand. ‘Very well done!’ he said, beaming. ‘Your act of heroism, an example to all! Spoken of in the House, you know. The prime minister sends his particular congratulations. Awfully good for the constituency, and the Party. Well done indeed.’

Axe thought he meant the party they were about to have inside the Red House, which had a huge baronial hall into which a great number could be fitted.

But suddenly all the noise went away, the numbness and tiredness and longing to be at home and alone with Dolly evaporated, because in all that mass of faces his gaze had flown like a homing pigeon to the one face he could pick out from any throng, anywhere. She was there. She looked tired and unhappy, but when their eyes met her face transformed into a smile so personal for him (everyone else was looking at Axe-the-hero who didn’t really exist; she was looking at the him who lived inside his head, the real him) that his heart ached. The way she looked at him, he knew she had not stayed away from indifference because she had outgrown him. It made him want to push through all the bigwigs and take her in his arms, and comfort her.

It was only a moment, and then he was being moved from one person to another to shake hands, and then they were taken inside where two long tables joined a shorter cross table at the end, all dressed with white cloths and silver and glassware and arrangements of flowers, and he was escorted to the centre of the short table. He was joined by the bigwigs, everyone else flocked in and sat down, there were more speeches and applause and people looking at him. Then the meal began – dinner or luncheon, he wasn’t sure which.

Outside, he knew, there was to be a street party, everyone bringing out tables and benches and contributing sandwiches and pies and cakes, with jugs of lemonade and beer donated by the three high street pubs, the Crown, the Royal George, and the Trafalgar. He wished he was at that party, with his own sort, and not this one, worrying so much about eating nicely, like a gentleman, that he had no appetite. He wished he was out there with Alice, eating pies and drinking ale and laughing and chatting, and later when the tables were cleared away, dancing to various bands as the dusk deepened and the stars came out.

He scanned the room and found her face again at one of the side tables. He kept looking at her, because it kept him anchored, otherwise he was afraid his mind might drift away and go beyond pulling back. None of this really had to do with him. It was an Idea, which had taken hold of some people’s imaginations and achieved a life of its own, like one of those strange funguses he saw on tree trunks in the woods, which grows and swells until it resembles a head with a face. But the Idea was poison, like that fungus. He wanted nothing to do with it.

He wanted his woods, he wanted the silence, and space to breathe. But he gazed across the room at her and knew now he wanted more. He wanted the companionship of equal minds and trust and love, the person who knew you and would never mistake you or slight you, the person who needed you as you needed them. And he couldn’t have it.

The Castle servants were enjoying the street party, for which Mrs Terry had cut stacks of sandwiches and made trays of fat rascals and coconut buns (her ladyship had said to spare no expense). The tenants and the estate employees were there too, mingling with the villagers. Old friendships were renewed, new flirtations started. The beer flowed freely. Illicit bottles of a stronger nature circulated: home-brewed cider and ginger beer, home-made wines, Mrs Rowse’s sloe gin, and the mead made by Mr Batty of Cherry Lane, who kept bees. You had to be very cautious with Mr Batty’s mead.

Michael Woodrow had got hold of a small cup of it, and brought it to Rose, who was standing out of the way while the trestles and benches were cleared, watching the activity with the detached look that always made him shiver. It was as if she watched the world from a high place, and generally judged it wanting.

‘Try this,’ he said.

She looked at it suspiciously. ‘What is it?’

He smiled. ‘Mead. Do you think I’d offer you anything bad?’

‘My brothers were always trying to get me to taste nasty things. Ditchwater or worse. It was a joke to them.’