Читать книгу Time and the Hour - Howard Spring - Страница 35

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The road with the water-splash that ran past the front gate of Easter How could not be dignified even by the name of secondary. It was an immemorial track that men had followed: it had come into existence by the mere fact of wheels and feet and hoofs going along it. Anthony had never seen a motor-car pass that way. The postman’s trap, announced by the gaiety of a horn, was its most dashing vehicle. Occasionally a farmer trundled by, and every day at 10.45 a.m. precisely, there was the victoria. Anthony had noticed the victoria often enough before he could be said to have met it. Always it had the same occupants: a coachman with a cockaded top-hat, a severe-looking lady, and a girl whom he took to be a little older than himself. Nothing changed where this victoria was concerned: it appeared at the same moment, slowed down on the brief and easy descent to the water-splash, went over it with the horse going gingerly, climbed the rise on the other side at a walk, and then moved off on the flat road to Smurthwaite at a steady lope. In the winter the hood was up and the ladies’ hats were small. In the summer the hood was down and the ladies’ faces were shaded by large flowery hats and parasols. That was the only variety. Septimus said the lady was Mrs. Halliwell, and the girl her daughter Joanna.

It was on a day of midsummer, a few months after he had come to live with Mr. Pordage, that Anthony exchanged his first words with Joanna Halliwell. He was dawdling along the dusty road to Smurthwaite, accompanied as usual by Cerberus. In the hedges roses had taken the place of hawthorn, and honeysuckle was droning with bees. It was a drowsy day, without cloud, and Anthony sat on the wayside grass among the dog-daisies and campion. Cerberus, however, was in no restful mood. He rushed at the boy, stopping suddenly, braked by splayed feet, barking, and doing all he could to say: “Come on, you lazy toad. This is no day for loafing in hedges.”

Anthony was not responsive, and Cerberus trotted away to find fun elsewhere. The approaching victoria, drawn by this placidly-loping brown horse, looked promising, and he ran back to meet it. He greeted it with joy, running alongside and filling the scent-drowsed morning with a furious clamour of barking. The brown horse took no notice. He came steadily on; a fly on his flank would have been more discommoding. Anthony stood up and began to call, but Cerberus maintained his cheerful uproar. It accompanied the carriage for a few hundred yards to where Anthony stood. Then the lady said: “Stop,” and the coachman pulled the horse to a standstill. The lady did not look at Anthony. She spoke into the air in front of her parasol. “Is not this Mr. Pordage’s dog?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I take it you are the boy who has come to stay with him?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We had heard of you. Will you please take that dog by the collar.”

Anthony did so.

“We are entitled, I should hope, to use the public roads without annoyance. Go!”

The last word was to the coachman, and the horse went. Cerberus struggled to follow, but Anthony held tight. Ten minutes later he went on towards Smurthwaite, pondering the brief encounter. A pair of stuck-up pieces if you like, he thought. The woman speaking into the air in front of her nose, the girl looking into the air in front of her nose. Neither of them—nor the coachman, come to that—had given him a glance.

Three-quarters of an hour later he was in Smurthwaite, and he remembered the place where, on the day of his arrival with Aunt Jessie, Septimus had taken them to eat sticky buns and drink coffee. Under the noble sycamores in their dark-green summer dress he walked to the coffee-house. On the glass door a notice uncompromisingly said: “Dogs not admitted.” He looked down at Cerberus with a sigh. Cerberus looked up at him with a tongue-lolling grin of anticipation. He was about to turn away when the glass door opened and the girl of the victoria came out. “Are you wondering about the dog?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Bring him in,” she said, smiling. “I’m sure they won’t mind for once. They know me well.”

She went back to the table at which she had been sitting, and Anthony followed. She said to Cerberus: “Lie down there!” and the dog miraculously obeyed. “You should be firm with dogs,” she said.

There could be no sticky buns to-day. Anthony’s pocket-money was small and ran only to a twopenny cup of coffee.

The girl said: “My name is Joanna Halliwell.”

“I am Anthony Bromwich, and this dog is Cerberus.”

“What are you doing at Mr. Pordage’s place?”

“What has that to do with you?” He had not forgotten her bleak stare ahead on the road, and thought her now over-inquisitive.

She was not put out by his rudeness. “Nothing,” she said. “However, I see hardly a soul from week’s-end to week’s-end, and so, when someone turns up, I ask these impertinent questions. Besides, I like to do what Mother says I mustn’t do. You’d be surprised how many things I mustn’t do. I mustn’t even look at strangers, much less talk to them.”

She was a fair girl, with pale shining hair and blue eyes. The blue eyes smiled at Anthony and he could not help smiling, too.

“I’m with Mr. Pordage to be prepared for a public school,” he said, and added proudly: “I am learning French and Latin, English history, English literature and mathematics, though Mr. Pordage dodges the mathematics whenever possible. My father sent me to Mr. Pordage, but I have never seen my father.”

“My father is dead,” she said. “He died five years ago, when I was ten. He owned a woollen mill here in Smurthwaite. Now it is Mother’s. She drives in every day to talk to the manager. I have my morning coffee here and then wait till she comes for me; then we drive back. It’s a dull life. Perhaps it will be better in Switzerland.”

“Are you going to Switzerland?”

“Yes—next week. I shall have a holiday till the school term begins there in the autumn.”

There seemed nothing more to say to one another. They drank their coffee in silence till Joanna said: “Mother is never very long at the mill. I don’t think there’s any reason why she should go there at all. The manager looks after everything. She’d better not find me talking to you. So will you please take your dog to another table?”

However, it was too late for the move. Mrs. Halliwell came through the door. She was a determined-looking woman. She had been a mill-girl and her husband a mill-hand who had prospered. Joanna was wrong in thinking her mother’s visit to the mill was unnecessary. There was not much that Mrs. Halliwell didn’t know about a woollen mill, and she had just come from a stormy ten minutes with her manager. Anthony expected to be barked at, but Mrs. Halliwell said: “Joanna, what are you doing sitting there with that strange dog? Come at once, child!”

Joanna’s back was turned towards her mother. She got up, and, as Anthony rose too, her blue eye gave him a wink. Wandering back to Easter How, he felt sorry that she was going to Switzerland so soon.