Chapter Twelve #2
But suddenly all the noise went away, the numbness and tiredness and longing to be at home and alone with Dolly evaporated, because in all that mass of faces his gaze had flown like a homing pigeon to the one face he could pick out from any throng, anywhere.
She was there. She looked tired and unhappy, but when their eyes met her face transformed into a smile so personal for him (everyone else was looking at Axe-the-hero who didn’t really exist; she was looking at the him who lived inside his head, the real him) that his heart ached.
The way she looked at him, he knew she had not stayed away from indifference because she had outgrown him.
It made him want to push through all the bigwigs and take her in his arms, and comfort her.
It was only a moment, and then he was being moved from one person to another to shake hands, and then they were taken inside where two long tables joined a shorter cross table at the end, all dressed with white cloths and silver and glassware and arrangements of flowers, and he was escorted to the centre of the short table.
He was joined by the bigwigs, everyone else flocked in and sat down, there were more speeches and applause and people looking at him.
Then the meal began – dinner or luncheon, he wasn’t sure which.
Outside, he knew, there was to be a street party, everyone bringing out tables and benches and contributing sandwiches and pies and cakes, with jugs of lemonade and beer donated by the three high street pubs, the Crown, the Royal George, and the Trafalgar.
He wished he was at that party, with his own sort, and not this one, worrying so much about eating nicely, like a gentleman, that he had no appetite.
He wished he was out there with Alice, eating pies and drinking ale and laughing and chatting, and later when the tables were cleared away, dancing to various bands as the dusk deepened and the stars came out.
He scanned the room and found her face again at one of the side tables.
He kept looking at her, because it kept him anchored, otherwise he was afraid his mind might drift away and go beyond pulling back.
None of this really had to do with him. It was an Idea, which had taken hold of some people’s imaginations and achieved a life of its own, like one of those strange funguses he saw on tree trunks in the woods, which grows and swells until it resembles a head with a face.
But the Idea was poison, like that fungus. He wanted nothing to do with it.
He wanted his woods, he wanted the silence, and space to breathe.
But he gazed across the room at her and knew now he wanted more.
He wanted the companionship of equal minds and trust and love, the person who knew you and would never mistake you or slight you, the person who needed you as you needed them. And he couldn’t have it.
The Castle servants were enjoying the street party, for which Mrs Terry had cut stacks of sandwiches and made trays of fat rascals and coconut buns (her ladyship had said to spare no expense).
The tenants and the estate employees were there too, mingling with the villagers.
Old friendships were renewed, new flirtations started.
The beer flowed freely. Illicit bottles of a stronger nature circulated: home-brewed cider and ginger beer, home-made wines, Mrs Rowse’s sloe gin, and the mead made by Mr Batty of Cherry Lane, who kept bees.
You had to be very cautious with Mr Batty’s mead.
Michael Woodrow had got hold of a small cup of it, and brought it to Rose, who was standing out of the way while the trestles and benches were cleared, watching the activity with the detached look that always made him shiver.
It was as if she watched the world from a high place, and generally judged it wanting.
‘Try this,’ he said.
She looked at it suspiciously. ‘What is it?’
He smiled. ‘Mead. Do you think I’d offer you anything bad?’
‘My brothers were always trying to get me to taste nasty things. Ditchwater or worse. It was a joke to them.’
‘How old were your brothers? I’m a grown man, in case you haven’t noticed.’
‘Men never grow up. And I have noticed.’ The first was said scornfully. The second hinted of a softening.
‘I’m glad to know it,’ he said. ‘Try it, it’s nice.’
She sipped. ‘I’ve never had mead before. Nice. It’s strong, though.’
‘Not as strong as the cider old Fegarty sells round the back of the Dog and Gun.’
‘You shouldn’t be going to a place like the Dog and Gun. It’s not respectable.’
‘I don’t. I’ve heard about it, that’s all.’
A band was setting up as quickly as the trestles were cleared, eager to be playing and get the dancing started.
A squeeze-box and a trumpet and a couple of violins – one in the hands of Frewing, the hall porter from the Castle – and a banjo played by young Peter Brinklow from the Red House, who was only fifteen and too young for the official banquet.
He would sooner be out here anyway, because he wasn’t allowed to play his banjo at home – his siblings said he made a terrible noise (but they were just being mean).
A tune struck up, a polka, and the first few couples jumped into action.
‘Dance with me?’ Woodrow said.
‘I’m not making a fool of myself to amuse you,’ Rose said.
It sounded like an automatic rejection – Woodrow was getting used to her manner – so he held out a hand to her insistently and said, ‘Come on. You know you want to. Doesn’t the music make you want to jig about? I can’t keep my feet still.’
She actually laughed, and he found she looked more different when she laughed from when she didn’t than anyone else he’d ever met.
‘You’re a fool,’ she said, but she took his hand, and he put his other on her waist and they joined the dancers.
They danced in the road, which was shut to traffic for the day, while onlookers stood or sat on benches along the pavements and clapped their hands to the music.
Afton was strolling with Miss Hatto along the space kept clear by common consent between the onlookers and the buildings. The pubs were open, and there was a constant traffic in and out, and where side-turnings and courts made a little extra space, knots of people clustered, laughing and chatting.
‘It’s turned into quite a grand affair, hasn’t it?’ Afton said. ‘It must be gratifying to Axe Brandom that the village admires him so much.’
‘People will celebrate anything if there’s free beer attached,’ Miss Hatto said. He looked at her. She shrugged. ‘I don’t take away from what he did. But look at all this lot. Do they look as if they’re thinking about Mr Brandom and his bravery?’
‘I take your point. Everyone’s glad of an excuse to have fun.
It comes rarely enough to most people.’ Through a gap in the heads and shoulders he caught a glimpse of the dancers.
‘I wish I could ask you to dance,’ Afton said, ‘but I suppose it wouldn’t fit our dignity, given our positions at the Castle. ’
He hoped she would say, ‘Damn our dignity,’ or something to that effect, but her attention was elsewhere. ‘Do you know that woman?’ she asked. ‘Over there, standing by that house with the black window-frames, black coat and black hat with cherries on it.’
Afton looked. The woman seemed in her fifties, and must once have been quite good-looking, but now had a careworn face, with an indoor pallor.
Her black coat was worn grey at the seams with age, the hat was shabby, and from under it her greying fair hair was escaping in wisps.
Just an ordinary working-class woman: he’d have placed her as a laundress or factory worker, something of that sort.
‘I don’t know her,’ he said, ‘but I expect there are lots of people who’ve come from the villages around for the celebration. Why are you interested in her?’
‘She’s interested in you,’ said Miss Hatto. ‘She’s been following us around.’
‘In a crowd like this, everyone’s following everyone else around,’ he pointed out.
‘She stares at you like she knows you from somewhere.’
‘If she knew me, she’d come and talk to me, wouldn’t she?’
‘Depends what she knew you for.’
He looked at her uncertainly. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Are you accusing me of something?’
‘I don’t know what you did before you came here, any more than you know what I did. There’s any number of ways someone could know you. They don’t have to be bad ways.’
‘I think you’re imagining things,’ he said. He glanced across, and the woman was no longer there. ‘You see? She’s gone now. It was just a coincidence that you happened to notice her.’
Miss Hatto shrugged. ‘You can believe me or not, it doesn’t matter to me.’
He felt he’d offended her. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe you. But I really don’t know that woman.’ Miss Hatto didn’t respond. They were just coming up to the Crown. ‘Will you allow me to buy you a cherry brandy?’ he asked.
‘I can’t go into a pub,’ she objected.
‘They’ve put chairs and tables out in the yard, look, with coloured lanterns. We can sit there – it’s quite respectable. I can see Mr Moss and Mrs Webster sitting there.’
When she laughed, her nose wrinkled in a manner that charmed him. ‘You know how to tempt a girl, don’t you?’
He laughed too. ‘We don’t need to sit at the same table.’
‘They’ll call us over, you’ll see, and we’ll have to join them. But go on. I could do with sitting down for a minute.’