Читать книгу Time and the Hour - Howard Spring - Страница 38

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She found him in the paddock. She said: “I’m sorry about that, Anthony.”

He had a stick in his hand, and swished at the grass with it, not looking at her. “So I should think,” he said.

“Let’s have a walk.”

“It’s not the day for it. It may rain any minute.”

“Oh, no. It’s cleared up a lot since the morning. Look at the sky coming through.”

It was, and the wind had dropped. The daffodils down one side of the paddock were a golden file, standing at ease.

Anthony had been looking forward to her visit, and so he was the more annoyed that she had had her part in making it unhappy for Septimus. Now he didn’t want to walk. But a maniac Cerberus came along, running round in tempestuous rings, a vital invitation to the dance.

“That dog wants exercise,” Lottie said.

“Very well. Come along.”

He chose to be glum for a mile or two, and Lottie wisely let him have his sulk out. She walked at his side, occasionally whistling to the dog, occasionally whistling a tune; and now the sunshine became warm and all the air rang with springtime music.

“You see,” she said, “Chris can’t help it. He thinks in French.”

“That’s more than he ever did in English.”

There had been no letter since the one in which, almost a year ago now, she had told him how much she disliked Chris Hudson. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask him to come with us, since you admire him so much,” he said. “It would have been delightful to learn from him that these things leaping around are agneaux, and that the soleil is in good form.”

She laughed. “Really, you are a fool. If you go on like this, I’ll think you’re as big a fool as Chris.”

“You don’t think he’s a fool. You think he’s a wonderful person who can think—in French at that.”

She stopped, and stamped her foot in the dust. “I don’t think he’s wonderful, and I don’t think you’re wonderful. I think you’re a pair of odious beasts. I have tried to be good-mannered with you, but you’re not”—she puckered up her little face and got the word—“you’re not reciprocating. Do you want me to go back?”

Anthony said gruffly: “Don’t be daft. Come on.”

“Very well, then. Listen to this. My mother told me when Chris came that I was never to speak a word to him except in French—never, not one single word about one single thing. And neither would she. Well, you can see what it’s done for him, and we’re both proud of it. He hated it for a long time, and then he began to tumble to it, and now he loves it. There’s nothing wrong in that, is there? As for thinking him a wonderful person, that’s a different matter. And I’m not going to say another word about him. I think it’s time you said a word to me. How do you get on with Mr. Pordage?”

She looked fierce. She was laying down the law. And as Anthony’s sharp word to Chris had taken the bounce out of him, so these words warned Anthony to watch his step.

“Let’s just walk,” he said. “Never mind Chris Hudson or Mr. Pordage. But he’s a funny customer, I can tell you.”

And, despite his “never mind,” he began to tell her about Septimus’s letters, and the big room in the barn, and the days on end when he would not so much as see Mr. Pordage except at meals, and other days when they would talk about everything on earth, sometimes in the barn-room, sometimes in Septimus’s study, sometimes walking the roads and taking lunch in a pub or tea in a cottage.

“And that reminds me,” said Anthony, “we could have tea out to-day. There’s a cottage we’re coming to ...”

“No. It would be rude to Mr. Pordage. We ought to go back.”

“Oh, he won’t mind. ‘You are not a felon in gaol, my dear boy, or a wretched beast in a zoo. Come in if you want to, and if you want to stay out, stay out. Sleep out, if that would please you. I often did when I was young.’ That’s what he said once, when I apologised for missing a meal.”

“Did you ever sleep out?”

“Once. Cerberus found me, though, and kept on licking my face till I had to get up and go in.”

“You couldn’t sleep out in Bradford. Perhaps it would be all right in Manningham Park.”

“The police would arrest you.”

“Yes, and Mother would give me a terrific talking to. I think you’re lucky. You have the best of it.”

“I don’t do so badly. Look, here’s the place for tea. Have you any money? I’ve got sixpence.”

“So have I. Will a shilling be enough?”

“I should think so.”

“It seems a lot of money to spend. Mother says take care of the shillings and the pounds will take care of themselves.”

“Then she would disapprove of Septimus. He said to me once: ‘Despise the pounds, and the shillings will despise themselves.’ ”

“He seems a funny schoolmaster.”

“He’s funny whatever way you look at him, if by that you mean not like most people.”

They had climbed a hill, and on the top of it was a cottage with roses, innocent yet of bud, climbing the walls, and with aubrietia and snow-on-the-mountain carpeting the small front garden. A notice nailed to a post said: “Stop here for a Reight Yorksheer Blow-out.” Cerberus, who had looked with interest at the notice, had apparently interpreted it aright, and was thumping the door with his tail.

The woman who brought their tea to a table in the garden looked a Reight Yorksheer Blow-out herself: round as a barrel, blowsy as a bumble-bee. To be on the safe side, Anthony said: “We’ve got a shilling between us. Will that be all right?”

“What abaht t’tyke?” she asked. “Is he included?”

She looked at the immense earthenware teapot, the plates of ham, the bread-and-butter, scones and jam. “That lot’ll be ninepence to a courtin’ couple,” she said. “Ah’ll make up the bob wi’ a bone for t’tyke.”

She went in, and returned with what might have been the thigh-bone of an aurochs. “There, lad,” she said to Cerberus, “get thy molars into that, an’ tha’ll not hurt.”

“Thank you very much, madame,” Lottie said with Parisian politeness and self-possession.

The woman grinned and said: “On second thoughts, tha’d better have that lot on the house. It’ll bring me luck laike for t’season.”

She disappeared into the cottage, which seemed a close fit for her, but which miraculously contained her double. The two faces appeared at the window, contemplating the children with the amused interest of archæologists who have unearthed a toy that a baby played with ten thousand years ago.

But Anthony and Lottie were not aware of that.