Читать книгу Knockfane - Homan Potterton - Страница 8

2

Family

RATHER THAN BEING irritated that the peace of his pipe-smoking evening should unexpectedly be disturbed, Willis was charmed to welcome a visitor and, all the more so, as the visitor was someone he liked very much. Not that he knew Richard Benson well, he did not. Fresh from his ordination as a deacon, the young man had only been curate in the parish for a bare two months.

‘I can see I’m disturbing you, Mr Esdaile,’ Mr Benson said when Rose ushered him into the room. ‘It’s just that I was out for a cycle ride and passing by the end of the road and I thought I would call in for a few minutes. I don’t know many of the parishioners yet and the rector is keen that I make calls, although I’m not sure he would regard my coming here, when I’ve already been invited several times, a proper call.’

He shuffled from one foot to the other while still remaining at the door. He looked flushed, and ill at ease in his clerical collar, his dark grey suit ill-fitting and somewhat crumpled.

‘Well, I’m here on my own, a lonely old man, abandoned by his daughters, and with nothing in the world to do, so your coming in to see me is an act of great charity,’ said Willis ‘and I’ll tell that to Canon Shortt when I next see him. ‘Take a chair. You’re beginning to settle in and getting to know people, I hope?’

‘Well, it’s a bit of a change from divinity school and Trinity before that; and sometimes it’s hard to see how the teaching we got, theology and the like, applies to life as it’s lived in a country parish like this.’

He looked down. He wondered if he had been correct in coming to call. He crossed his legs and then he uncrossed them; he leaned forward, he leaned back; he put his hands on the arms of the chair and then removed them again. Ignorant of the fact that anyone familiar with Knockfane would never choose to sit in the chair he had chosen, he tried to make himself comfortable but succeeded only in looking awkward. Not that he was naturally ungainly; he was not. On the contrary, he was markedly athletic, tall with fine features and broad-shouldered. His chestnut hair was naturally wavy, well brushed and trimmed above his ears; his face, without being exceptionally handsome, was more than pleasing, with hooded eyelids and bushy eyebrows. An ample brow, an incisive nose, and a forceful chin gave him a certain authority, which, when combined with the hesitant shyness in his manner, lent him a particular appeal.

A fine young man, Willis thought, but lost around here with very few people of his own age for company. When Julia goes back after the vac, he will just have little Lydia to talk to when he comes here and that is hardly the same.

‘The girls should be home soon,’ Willis said, ‘they’ll be glad to find you’ve called.’

Mr Benson coloured.

‘This is a fine old place, Mr Esdaile,’ he said, ‘it reminds me of my grandmother’s house. It has the same used and untouched look.’

The broken leg of the sofa caught his eye.

‘I don’t mean that rudely of course,’ he added. ‘You’ve lived here forever, I suppose?’

‘Yes, and my grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather before me.’

‘And your son, Edward? Will he come into Knockfane after your time?’

It seemed to Mr Benson to be a natural thing to ask.

‘That’s a difficult one,’ said Willis. ‘It’s not straightforward. You see, his mother had no brothers so that when Edward was born, my father-in-law – Edward’s Odlum grandfather – decided to make him his heir. There was no one else for Derrymahon. It too is a very fine farm and has been in the Odlum family almost as long as Knockfane has been in ours. No one could have foreseen what would happen and that my wife and I would never have another son.’

There was a silence in the room. Mr Benson knew that the girls’ mother had died years previously but he had not intended that, in making a general remark about Knockfane, he would have encouraged Mr Esdaile to confide in him so readily.

But now that the conversation had taken this course, it would have seemed rude to change the subject. Besides, Mr Esdaile seemed quite philosophical about the tragedy of his wife’s early death.

‘History can sometimes repeat itself,’ Willis continued. ‘The family nearly died out in the nineteenth century when my great-grandmother died young like my late wife, in childbirth. But Great-Grandad married again, his wife was a second cousin, only eighteen and thirty years his junior and next thing is they had eight children.’

He chuckled and smiled across at Mr Benson. Getting up, he replaced his pipe on the mantelpiece.

‘Not that I can see that happening again,’ he said when he turned around. He grinned. ‘I think I’ll leave it to Julia, or even Lydia, to produce an heir. Things are clearer nowadays when it comes to property descending in the female line.’

Mr Benson looked embarrassed and Willis noticed that he had blushed. ‘He’s only known Julia for two months, and he’s already smitten,’ he thought.

‘I don’t know what my two good daughters are up to that is making them so late,’ he said. ‘Mrs Cox always hates to be left alone at the end of a good day. She must have detained them.’

‘Well, maybe I should be on my way,’ said Mr Benson.

‘I’m sorry you have only had an old man like me for company,’ said Willis. ‘Why don’t you come for your dinner after Morning Prayer on Sunday? You’ll have a chance to see the girls then.’

‘That would be great,’ said Mr Benson.

Willis showed him out to the hall and opened the front door. Tucking the turn-ups of his trousers into his socks, Mr Benson collected his bicycle and, with a wave as he mounted, stood on the pedals and headed off down the avenue.

‘A grand lad,’ thought Willis. ‘Julia would be lucky to get him.’