Chapter 1 #2
“Bow.” Daisy recognised Tish’s cousin, Erasmus “Cherry” Cheringham, a fair, serious-looking young man much larger and more muscular than she remembered him.
“Two.” Another large, muscular young man, dark-haired. He gave a quick, cheerful wave. Daisy assumed they had won the heat.
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Five.”
“Six.”
“Seven.”
“Stroke.” In contrast to the rest, the stroke looked sulky. Otherwise, apart from varying hair colour, they could have been septuplets for all the difference Daisy could see.
On the cox’s command, eight large, muscular, perspiring young men stepped out onto the planks, making them bounce beneath Daisy’s feet. She hastily moved backwards onto solid ground.
Bow and stroke held the boat while the other six laid the oars out on the grass. Then all eight oarsmen bent to the boat.
“Hands on,” ordered the cox. “Ready. Up!”
With one smooth motion, the boat rose from the water and swung upside-down over their heads.
“Ready. Split!”
The elongated, many-legged tortoise tramped towards the boat-house. “We took the trick,” it called gaily as it departed. “Be with you in a minute, ladies.”
Tish and Dottie each picked up one of the maroon, green, and white banded oars and followed. Eyeing the twelve-foot length and dripping blades of the remaining sweeps, Daisy decided against lending her aid.
The cox also stayed behind, staring after the rowers with a scowl on his face.
“I thought you won?” Daisy said with puzzled sympathy.
“What? Oh, yes, we won all right.” Orotund Oxfordian contended uneasily with a flat, nasal whine straight from the Midlands. “We may be a small college and we wouldn’t stand a chance in the Grand, but we’ve a good shot at the Thames Cup.”
“You don’t look very happy about it. Oh, I’m Daisy Dalrymple, by the way, Patricia’s cousin.”
“Horace Bott. How do you do, Miss Dalrymple? Of course I’m glad we took the heat,” he went on gloomily, “but even if we win the final, I’ll still be an outsider.”
“Because you don’t row?”
“Because I haven’t got the right family, or accent, or clothes, or instincts. When I won the scholarship to Ambrose, I thought all I had to do was prove I’d earned it, but I could
take a hundred Firsts with Honours and my father would still be a small shopkeeper.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being a shopkeeper,” Daisy encouraged him. “Napoleon said the English were a nation of shopkeepers, but we beat him all the same.”
“Nothing wrong as long as we know our place,” Bott groused, “which isn’t at Oxford competing with our betters.
‘Betters,’ my foot! Half the stuck-up snobs who treat me like dirt only got into Ambrose through their family connections, and with all the private tutoring in the world they’ll be lucky to scrape by with Pass Thirds. ”
Daisy didn’t care for his peevish tone, but she suspected he had reason for his disgruntlement.
If Gervaise had gone up to Oxford, it certainly would not have been on the basis of academic brilliance, nor with the intention of excelling academically.
She rather thought he would have scorned those who did, and he had certainly not shared her willingness to hobnob with the lower classes.
“Do you join in the other stuff?” she asked, adding vaguely, “Acting, and debating, and rags, and sports, and so on … Oh, sports, of course.”
“I thought sports’d do it, coxing, and I play racquets—got my Blue in that last year, actually.”
“You play racquets for the university, not just the college? Congratulations.”
“All very well, but the toffs still don’t choose to hoist a pint with me after a match,” Bott said resentfully.
His lack of popularity might have less to do with his birth than with the way he wallowed in his grievances, Daisy guessed. She nearly said so, then thought better of it. He
would be sure to take advice amiss, however well-meant, and though she felt sorry for him, she did not like him.
He took a packet of Woodbines from his shirt pocket. “Smoke?” he offered.
“No, thanks.”
He lit up the cheap cigarette, flicking the match into the river. “I suppose you never touch anything but Turkish.”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t smoke at all. I don’t care for the smell of cigarettes.” Pipe smoke was another matter, especially Alec’s pipe.
Bott moved a step away, wafting the smoke from her with his hand.
“Sorry. My girl doesn’t like it, either.
She’s coming down this evening—booked a room in the town—so once I’ve finished this packet, I won’t buy another for a few days.
” His momentary cheerfulness at the prospect of his girl’s arrival faded and gloom returned. “Can’t really afford them, anyway.”
Tempted to start listing the things she couldn’t afford, Daisy was saved by the return of the others from the direction of the boat-house. Beside it, the racing shell, too long to fit inside, now rested upside-down on supports.
Three of the men started up the lawn towards the house, a Georgian manor built of age-mellowed red brick with white sash windows. A shout followed them: “Don’t hog all the hot water!”
Tish, Dottie, Cherry, and four others came towards Daisy and Bott.
“Daisy, you remember Cherry?” said Tish.
“Yes, of course.”
“How do you do, Miss Dalrymple?” the fair-haired bowoarsman greeted her.
“Daisy, please. We’re practically cousins, after all.”
A grin lit his face. “Daisy it shall be, if you promise never to call me Erasmus.”
“I promise!”
During this exchange of social amenities, two of the men picked up a pair of oars each and returned towards the boat-house, while Daisy heard the dark number two rower say to the cox, “Jolly good show, Bott.”
“Thanks to St. Theresa’s hitting the booms,” the fifth oarsman said sarcastically. He was dark-haired, like Number Two, but his hair was sleeked back with pomade. Daisy thought he was the sulky stroke.
“Lots of boats are hitting, with this experimental course being so deucedly narrow. Bott’s steered us dead straight. We’ll beat the tar out of Richmond tomorrow.”
“Not if we’re all poisoned by those filthy things he smokes.”
Bott gave the stroke a malevolent look, then turned and headed for the house.
“Oh, come on, DeLancey, pack it in,” said Number Two. “Not everyone’s so frightfully keen on those foul cigars of yours.”
“It sticks in my gullet taking orders from that beastly little pipsqueak twerp,” DeLancey fumed.
“All coxes are small …”
“Bott’s no twerp!” Dottie interrupted, flaring up. “He’s brainier than the rest of you put together.”
“Oh, I say,” Cherry protested.
“Well, nearly,” his fiancée affirmed, unrepentant. “You’ve got a good mind, my dear old soul, but his is tip-top.”
Cherry looked chagrined.
“Better watch it, Miss Carrick,” DeLancey said nastily, “or you’ll be an old maid after all.”
“Here, I say!” Cherry stepped forward. “You mind your tongue, DeLancey!”
Tish put a hand on his arm. “Don’t come unbuttoned, old thing. The best way to make him eat his words is to stay engaged to Dottie.”
“I shall!” her cousin snapped, “but I’d like to stuff his rotten words down his gullet, all the same.”
“This isn’t the time for a dust-up. You’ve got a race to row tomorrow,” Tish reminded him.
“Common sense and pretty, too,” DeLancey applauded mockingly. “A girl with your looks is wasted on books and lectures. I’d be glad to show you how to have a good time.”
Tish turned her back on him.
Number Two, his face red with suppressed fury, said through his teeth, “Didn’t I tell you it’s your turn to help with the oars, DeLancey?”
“So you did, Captain, so you did.” With insolent slowness, DeLancey strolled towards the remaining two oars.
Captain—so Number Two was Tish’s Rollo, as Daisy had already surmised. Fists clenched, he stared after DeLancey, then shrugged and turned back to the others.
“I’m so sorry, Daisy,” Tish apologised unhappily. “What a welcome!”
Daisy murmured something soothing.
“Oh, didn’t introduce Rollo, did I?” The ready blood tinted her cheeks. “Roland Frieth, the crew captain.”
“And a pretty sorry specimen of a captain you must think me, Miss Dalrymple,” Rollo said ruefully. “Unable to squash dissension in the ranks.”
“I thought you squashed it very neatly,” Daisy said with a smile. “The oars are on their way to the boat-house, aren’t they?”
They all glanced at DeLancey’s retreating back.
“I ought to have introduced him, too,” Tish worried.
Dottie snorted. “He hardly gave you much opportunity.”
“One of these days,” said Cherry darkly, “he’ll go too far and get his teeth shoved down his precious gullet.”
Rollo shook his head. “I doubt it. He’s a boxing Blue, remember. What I’m afraid of is that one of these days he’ll biff Bott.”
“Oh, Bott! He can scramble Bott’s brains with my goodwill, as long as he waits till after the Regatta.”
“But, Cherry, he’s twice Bott’s size!” Dottie protested.
“I can’t see that stopping him,” said Rollo. “For all his pater’s an earl, the way he goes around insulting ladies proves he’s no gentleman, and he’s really got his knife into Bott.”
“Bott’s no gentleman either,” Cherry muttered, “even if he is a bloody genius.”
“Oh darling!” Standing on tiptoe, Dottie kissed his cheek. “Bott’s brains are absolutely the only thing about him I admire. I wouldn’t marry him for a million in cash. I mean to say, how could I bear to be called Dottie Bott?”
Laughing, they all moved towards the house.