discreet, secret. Just occasionally scandal broke loose; but Angelina had many friends. Quite a number of her queen bees had outflown her and attained what she had missed, married status; they, and those who had been content with less, were always ready to weigh in with the favourable word. After all, but for Angelina where would they have been?
Mr and Mrs Shelmadine were on their way to Angelina’s. They would arrive, their luggage would be taken to some hidden place; Linda would go and sit in what Angelina called her ‘Pretty Parlour’ and Richard would climb the stairs towards the gaming-room. Habituees would say, ‘Ha, Shelmadine, we’ve missed you’, and would hardly know whether he had been away five days or five months or five years; and he would settle down and lose everything he had, and that would entitle him to one of the bedrooms at the back of the house, the charge for which, unless enough loose change remained in his pockets when he left the tables, would be docketed against him. Linda, in the Pretty Parlour, would be served with tea; would look through the current periodicals on the gatelegged table and wait … and wait. And there would be—one must admit and be philosophical about it—one night in a comfortable bed. It was folly to look beyond that.
‘Mr Shelmadine, sir! Welcome back, sir, Madam, your servant!’ The big Negro doorman, one of the features of Angelina’s, whose greeting was—once you understood things—an exact barometer of your standing and credit in the house, was considering the unpaid debt, now five years old, surprisingly warm in his welcome.
‘Miz’ Everton, sir, sez whenever you come back, do it be in the middle of the night, she is to be told, sir. And you is to wait in the Pretty Parlour.’
It sounded as though Angelina did not intend to allow Richard on the gaming floor until that debt was paid.
One midget page—deliberately gin-dwarfed—led the way to the parlour; another vanished through the door which led to Angelina’s own sacrosanct part of the house.
It was the dead hour of the day, three o’clock in the afternoon, and the hall and parlour were alike empty. Linda sat down thankfully in the comfortable chair and began to glance through the new papers; Richard walked about, cracking his fingers and cursing in a mumbling undertone. They were not alone long; the door was flung open and there was Angelina with her inscrutable thickly painted mask of a face, the piled-up mass of dead white hair, the eyes as cold and black as flint. She never smiled, never frowned—perhaps on account of the false, china surface of her face; and even when she spoke she moved her lips as little as possible. Yet it was her mouth which indicated her mood. When she was angry her lips, scarlet paint and all, disappeared; when she was pleased they swelled, two sated leeches, the lower one more prominent than the other. She was pleased now. She stood in the doorway and dropped a mocking little curtsey towards Richard and at the same time shot a flinty glance at Linda. ‘Welcome home, Sir Richard,’ she said.
It was July. The hay from the common pasture had been cut and scrupulously divided among those who had rights to it, and the cows, with the calves born to them this season, were turned out to graze upon the tussocks which the scythes had left and the young grass springing up anew. In the Layer Field a glint of gold was spreading through the green of the corn; in Old Tom an embroidery of poppies and scabious and knapweed and thistles gave evidence that though he had lain fallow he had not been idle this season. The new Squire was up at the Manor and had already made two rounds of his estate, accompanied not by Lawyer Turnbull or Sir Edward Follesmark, who had attended to things during the interval, but by Mr Montague of Greston.
That was significant. To Steve Fuller, Bert Crabtree and one or two others who had for years hankered after enclosure, it was the star rising in the east, promising the imminence of the millennium. To a number of others, especially the freeholders on the Waste, it was a very ominous
sign. Greston had boasted the biggest commonland in the East of England, its cottagers had been the envy of every village in Suffolk and Essex. Then Greston had been enclosed and all the Greston Common had come under the plough—Mr Montague’s plough. And, as Sir Charles had so often said, forty decent families, hitherto self-supporting after their fashion, had been thrown upon the parish. If the new Squire meditated enclosing and took Mr Montague and Greston as his pattern, it was an ill look-out for those who lived in the cottages on the Waste. Matt Juby’s old cow might cough day and night, but she kept the family in milk. Shad Jarvey’s donkey might be of an incredible age, but, given time and enough stick, he could perform a number of profitable errands in the course of a year. If this new Squire, with his yellow-bilious face, went hobnobbing with Mr Montague, things would go ill for people like Amos Greenway, Shad Jarvey, Matt Juby—and Matt Ashpole.
Matt Ashpole owned a gun. It was old and demanded skill of its user, for it threw high and slightly to the left. Moreover, Matt was not legally entitled to own it at all (he did not hold a freehold of �100 a year or a leasehold of 150, pounds he was not the son or heir-apparent of an esquire or person of greater degree) and every time he fired— aiming low and slightly to the right—he was committing a felony. Still, he had kept his gun, and more than once, when the larder was empty, he had used it, both in Layer Wood and in the coppice which lay between Bridge Farm and Wood Farm.
One evening towards the end of July he took out his gun, cleaned it carefully and loaded it, carried it to the place where the Waste ended with the Dyke and hid it there, under the gorse bushes, with a bit of sailcloth to protect it from any rain or dew which might fall. He’d had, in the past week, a little talk with his daughter, Sally; and he had seen the new Squire out with Mr Montague. And he had made his plan. Every evening, regular as sunset, Danny Fuller went down to the pasture to make sure that, whatever might have happened to
other beasts, those belonging to the Fullers were on their feet and feeding well. Matt stood on the wooden bridge this evening, and when Danny came and jumped the little ditch between the pasture and the Lower Road he turned and hailed him cheerily.
‘I got something up at my place that you’d like to see, and I’d like you to hev a look at.’ he said. ‘Got a minnit to
spare?’
‘What is it, Matt?’
‘Something I picked up real cheap and want to get off me place. No room for it.’ Matt said mysteriously. ‘All right then, if you must know, thass a horse; lovely blood mare. But she was lame, see, hoppy-go-bob, off to the knacker’s. I doctored her up and she’s a clinker. Fred Clopton, he want her; but you know me, Danny, I don’t favour Fred Clopton—all airs and graces these days. I’d ruther you had her.’
‘I doubt if I could afford it, Matt.’ ‘Dirt cheap. Five pound.’
‘Well …’ That might be managed. He knew now that he would never marry. He just wasn’t made to stick to one girl long enough. And that reminded him. ‘I don’t much fancy coming up to your place, Matt. You know
how it is.’
‘I do.’ said Matt heartily. ‘But this what I hev to show
you is only just past the Dyke.’
He dived into the sagging pocket of his dirty, ragged old coat and produced, most surprisingly, one the flat, capped hunting-flasks which gentlemen carried. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘hev a pull at this. Right good stuff that is—French
brandy.’
‘And a nice flask too.’
Tut in with a job lot over at Summerfield when they sold old Major Telford’s stuff. Can’t think what they were about. Four cracked jugs and a brass fender, a pair of bellows and this boy. Bought the lot for a shilling. But the stuff in it I got from … well, that’d be telling. You taste it and tell me if you ever had the like. You got quite a bit of drinking to catch up on like, ain’t that so?’ He
watched Danny’s face and went on, kindly, ‘There’s no pleasing ‘em, is there? So drink up and thank God for good liquor!’
They drank, turn and turn about, until the flask was empty and then walked in warm, brandy-flavoured friendliness towards the Dyke and reached the place where Matt had hidden his gun.