Читать книгу Death at the Bar - Ngaio Marsh, Stella Duffy - Страница 15

It was understood among the three friends that each should go his own way during the weeks they spent at Ottercombe. Watchman had played with the notion of going out in the dawn with the fishing boats. He woke before it was light and heard the tramp of heavy boots on cobble-stones and the sound of voices down on Ottercombe Steps. He told himself comfortably that here was a link with the past. For hundreds of years the Coombe men had gone down to their boats before dawn. The children of Coombe had heard them stirring, their wives had fed them and seen them go, and for centuries their voices and the sound of their footsteps had roused the village for a moment in the coldest hour of the night. Watchman let the sounds die away, snuggled luxuriously down in bed, and fell asleep.

He woke again at half-past nine and found that Parish had already breakfasted and set out for Coombe Rock.

‘A mortal great mammoth of a picture Mr Cubitt be at,’ said Abel Pomeroy, as Watchman finished his breakfast. ‘Paint enough to cover a wall, sir, and laid on so thick as dough. At close quarters it looks like one of they rocks covered in shell-fish, but ’od rabbit it, my sonnies, when you fall away twenty feet or more, it’s Mr Parish so clear as glass. Looking out over the Rock he be, looking out to sea, and so natural you’d say the man was smelling the wind and thinking of his next meal. You might fancy a stroll out to the Rock, sir, and take a look at Mr Cubitt flinging his paint left and right.’

‘I feel lazy, Abel. Where’s Will?’

‘Went out along with the boats, sir.’ Abel rasped his chin, scratched his head, and re-arranged the objects on the bar.

‘He’s restless, is Will,’ he said suddenly. ‘My own boy, Mr Watchman, and so foreign to me as a changeling.’

‘Will is?’ asked Watchman, filling his pipe.

‘Ah, Will. What with his politics and his notions he’s a right down stranger to me, is Will. A very witty lad too, proper learned, and so full of arguments as a politician. He won’t argufy with me, naturally, seeing I’m not his equal in the way of brains, nor anything like it.’

‘You’re too modest, Abel,’ said Watchman lightly.

‘No, sir, no. I can’t stand up to that boy of mine when it comes to politics and he knows it and lets me down light. I’m for the old ways, a right down Tory, and for why? For no better reason than it suits me, same as it suited my forebears.’

‘A sound enough reason.’

‘No, sir, not according to my boy. According to Will it be a damn’ fool reason and a selfish one into the bargain.’

‘I shouldn’t let it worry you.’

‘More I do, Mr Watchman. It’s not our differences that worry me. It’s just my lad’s restless mumbudgetting ways. You saw how he was last night. Speaking to you that fashion. Proper ’shamed of him, I was.’

‘It was entirely my fault, Abel, I baited him.’

‘Right down generous of you to put it like that, but all the same he’s not himself these days. I’d like him to settle down. Tell you the truth, sir, it’s what’s to become of the Feathers that troubles me, and it troubles me sore. I’m nigh on seventy, Mr Watchman. Will’s my youngest. ’Tother two boys wurr took in war, and one girl’s married and in Canada, and ’tother in Australia. Will’ll get the Feathers.’

‘I expect,’ said Watchman, ‘that Will’ll grow out of his red ideas and run the pub like any other Pomeroy.’

Old Abel didn’t answer and Watchman added: ‘When he marries and settles down.’

‘And when will that be, sir? Likely you noticed how ’tis between Will and Miss Dessy? Well now, that’s a funny state of affairs, and one I can’t get used to. Miss Dessy’s father, Jim Moore up yurr to Carey Edge Farm, is an old friend of mine. Good enough. But what happens when Dessy’s a lil’ maid no higher than my hand? ’Od rabbit it, if old Jim don’t come in for a windfall. Now his wife being a ghastly proud sort of a female and never tired of letting on she came down in society when she married, what do they do but send young Dessy to a ladies’ school where she gets some kind of free pass into a female establishment at Oxford.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘’Ess and comes home at the end of it a dinky lil’ chit, sure enough, and husband-high; but speaking finniky-like and the equal of all the gentlefolks in the West Country.’

‘Well?’ said Watchman.

‘Well, sir, that’s fair enough. If she fancies our Will above the young sparks she meets in her new walk of life, good enough. I’m proper fond of the maiden, always have been. Good as a daughter to me, and just the same always, no matter how ladylike she’m grown.’

Watchman stood up and stretched himself.

‘It all sounds idyllic, Abel. A charming romance.’

‘Wait a bit, sir, wait a bit. ’Baint so simple as all that. These yurr two young folks no sooner mets again than my Will sets his heart, burning strong and powerful, on Decima Moore. Eaten up with love from time he sets eyes on her, was Will, and hell-bent to win her. She come back with radical notions, same as his own, and that’s a bond a’tween ’em from the jump. Her folks don’t fancy my Will, however, leastways not her mother, and they don’t fancy her views neither, and worst of all they lays blame on Will. Old Jim Moore comes down yurr and has a tell with me, saying life’s not worth living up to farm with Missus at him all day and half night to put his foot down and stop it. That’s how ’twurr after you left last year, sir, and that’s how ’tis still. Will burning to get tokened and wed, and Dessy –’

‘Yes?’ asked Watchman as Abel paused and looked fixedly at the ceiling. ‘What about Decima?’

‘That’s the queerest touch of the lot, sir,’ said Abel.

Watchman, lighting his pipe, kept his eye on his host and saw that he now looked profoundly uncomfortable.

‘Well?’ Watchman repeated.

‘It be what she says about wedlock,’ Abel muttered.

‘What does she say?’ asked Watchman sharply.

‘Be shot if she haven’t got some new-fangled notion about wedlock being no better than a name for savagery. Talks wild trash about freedom. To my way of thinking the silly maiden don’t know what she says.’

‘What,’ asked Watchman, ‘does Will say to all this?’

‘Don’t like it. The chap wants to be tokened and hear banns read, like any other poor toad, for all his notions. He wants no free love for his wife or himself. He won’t talk to me, not a word, but Miss Dessy does, so open and natural as a daisy. Terrible nonsense it be, I tells her, and right down dangerous into bargain. Hearing her chatter, you might suppose she’s got some fancy-chap up her sleeve. Us knows better of course, but it’s an uncomfortable state of affairs and seemingly no way out. Tell you what, sir, I do blame this Legge for the way things are shaping. Will’d have settled down, he was settling down, afore Bob Legge come yurr. But now he’ve stirred up all their revolutionary notions again, Miss Dessy’s along with the rest. I don’t fancy Legge. Never have. Not for all he’m a masterpiece with darts. My way of thinking, he’m a cold calculating chap and powerful bent on having his way. Well, thurr ’tis, and talking won’t mend it.’

Watchman walked to the door and Abel followed him. They stood looking up the road to Coombe Tunnel.

‘Daily-buttons!’ exclaimed Abel, ‘talk of an angel and there she be. That’s Miss Dessy, the dinky little dear. Coming in to do her marketing.’

‘So it is,’ said Watchman. ‘Well, Abel, on second thoughts I believe I’ll go and have a look at that picture.’