Castle Orchard (35 page)
Authors: E A Dineley
Robert slipped from one group to another, looking and looking, but avoiding his uncle who was doing the same thing. His uncle would not know how to find Jacky and James. You needed to look under tables and inside bushes. Where was the girl who was meant to mind them? A woman laughed and seized his arm, but he hastily pulled away, starting to skirt the bank and the hedge.
Jacky and James were huddled together, fast asleep, against the bole of the chestnut tree, an empty mug in Jacky’s hand. Robert removed it from his loose grasp and sniffed it suspiciously before chucking it to one side. He took each twin by the arm and shook them awake before marching them in the direction of the rectory. They dragged their feet, but they went with him, sleepily, biddably.
A figure rolled towards them, bore down on them. It was Jackson, emerged from the boot room. Robert asked himself, Where does Jackson sleep?
‘Got they little ones, ’ave yer? Scamps, they is. Boys is soft as butter nowadays.’
Jackson swayed over them, his breath heavy with drink.
‘Go as yer volunteer, they will. Funny thing, yer volunteer, eats with they, fights with us an’ there ain’t nothing fancy about that. They all be young gentlemen, some o’ them near young as yerself, Mr Conway, sir.’ Jackson slurred the word
sir
with drunken insolence. ‘They dies usual, but if one gets by without ’aving is ’ead blowed off, ’e becomes yer officer an’ orders yer about, dang ’im.’
‘Jackson, you are drunk,’ Robert said, his voice frigid but at the same time sounding exactly like his father’s.
‘An’ why not, me young fellow –
sir
I should say? Why not? I what laid down me leg an’ me eye, dang it, why can’t I enjoy meself, same as yer officer what has the best claret? Spike the Frenchies in the guts for the honour of yer regiment, young fella.’
Jackson poked a menacing finger in Robert’s chest and the boy hastily tugged at the twins. As they moved away they could hear Jackson muttering, ‘Why should I be cleaning they boots, I what ’as laid down ’is life for ’is regiment’s glory?’
The front door was open. Robert hauled his charges laboriously upstairs. In their dormitory, half-lit by moonlight, he made them take off their clothes, which they did in a shambling daze. He hauled their little nightshirts over their heads and put a nightcap on each before tumbling both into one bed. They fell instantly asleep, wound together like puppies.
Robert wrote a note for his uncle and left it by the candles on the chest in the hall. He then went to bed himself, feeling grown-up and righteous. After a while, lying very still and gazing at the pattern the moonbeams made on the wall, he decided, when he was a man, he wouldn’t throw his life away on being a soldier. Was it to be the Church? The prospect had no charm.
Captain Allington had given Mrs Arthur his arm and they had walked the short distance up to the house. They were silent. She thought everything that he could say had been said. In the hall he had lit her a candle and told her he had a little more work to do, a letter to write, and that it was his intention to lay out all the documents pertaining to herself on the table in the morning room. He wished her good night, his manner now formal, even brisk, as if he was glad to part with her.
Upstairs, slowly preparing for bed, she again contemplated what sort of house she could find, how she would educate Phil. And intermingled with these practicalities were the images with which Allington, and also Pride, had filled her head – the little boy with his mother, soldiers in the Peninsula, brutality and gallantry, boat cloaks, colour and want, gaping wounds and hideous pain, struggling horses, fleas and dirt and fever . . . but Allington’s account of Waterloo overrode them all.
She then thought about Captain Allington’s mother. Had she not been alone with her child, worried and struggling to make ends meet, fretting over the future of her little boy? She had known, oh how briefly, enduring love. She had done the mundane, the sensible thing, sacrificing the memory of it to secure the future of her son. There, Mrs Arthur surmised, they parted company. She herself had nothing to sacrifice but pain and bewilderment, a confused sense of longing and of emptiness.
When she finally slept, her dreams were filled with those letters fluttering about the battlefield, lying in the mud (and, she knew, though he had not said so, the gore), those letters epitomising the abrupt severing of the loved from the beloved.
She woke rather early, unrefreshed, and lay in bed trying to dispel the images that had beset her mind. Captain Allington had said he would lay out her papers in the morning room. She may as well dress and at least learn her true state, hers and Emmy’s and Phil’s. Did not their whole future depend on those papers? He had constantly reassured her, yet she would remain in ignorance until she saw it all for herself. It would be another hour before the household stirred. She dressed, scooped up her little old dog, half-asleep in her basket, and went downstairs. She opened the front door and put Meg outside. It was a beautiful day.
Closing the door again, she crossed the hall and went inside the morning room. There were indeed a few papers on the table. Dominating the room was a portrait of a soldier that had not been there before, on the wall facing the windows. It was large, on a dark ground, and striking. The young man, in the uniform of an officer in the dark blue of a Light Dragoon, stared out of his own picture with indignant impatience. The artist had captured the peculiar fiery intelligence that emanated from his face, little more than a boy’s. How old had he been then? She thought twentytwo or -three, with no white in the hair that covered the wound to his head. This was how he had been, how she might have remembered him, had he not altered. Yes, he had altered, but she could still see his present self with perfect clarity within the image. Why had he chosen to hang it there? Was he finally laying his proper claim to Castle Orchard?
She turned to the papers on the table. They were very few, considering the time that had been taken by the various lawyers to produce them. There was a letter addressed to herself in Captain Allington’s own hand. Beside it was the pouch in which she had placed her necklace when she had given it to him to sell for her. It was still there, so what of the hundred pounds? Bracing herself, she now opened the letter, unable to anticipate its contents to the slightest degree.
Dear Mrs Arthur,
Your late husband often used to say he would be hanged. His words came back to me that day you told me your signature was required to release the money provided by your father. Forgery is a capital offence, so I do wonder that he risked it. I suppose risk is what he liked, though it certainly tormented him. Jonas and Co, in a fit of the sulks, had chucked all the Arthur papers, several hundred years of them, into a huge tin trunk. It took many a threat of a legal nature to get them to unearth the necessary documents and then to trace the witness. There was only one to trace, for the other, Sir John Parkes, is dead. Arthur’s own French valet was the second, and he, having absconded with the remains of his late master’s wardrobe, was unanxious to be traced. When run to earth, he agreed to having witnessed Arthur sign the document. He was only bound to witness what Arthur wrote, a signature, albeit not his own.
Of course Jonas should have been suspicious, but he pointed out that you had signed away one legacy already. There is really no redress. The money is gone. I have therefore put the deeds of Castle Orchard back into your name. You will find them there on the table. I leave behind my portrait but I will send for the rest of my belongings at some more convenient time
Your most obedient servant,
R. Allington
Mrs Arthur’s first reaction was one of disbelief. How could he possibly suppose she would allow him to make such a sacrifice? He might have acquired Castle Orchard in an unorthodox manner, but it was his, and she knew he loved it, the place where he might come to rest. Had he told her that? No, but she knew it. Where was he now? Not, she also knew, asleep in the lodge. As if shaking herself awake from a dream, she hastily crossed the hall and went outside. Meg was waiting for her, trembling on the doorstep. She scooped her up and half-ran across the lawn to the stable. A cursory inspection confirmed that the britchka was gone.
But Dan was in the yard, methodically strapping the long-tailed grey. She thought, He never said what were his plans for Dan, and would Dan know them?
Dan turned round to look at her. It was pure chance that he did so. When Mrs Arthur considered the blank wall that was Dan, she thought it like the final trick that fate could play on her. Dan, if he knew, could tell her nothing.
He pulled his hat off and surveyed her quizzically. He had sharp, bright eyes, like a robin, and he did indeed cock his head and observe her every move as she stood helpless before him. He dropped the wisp from his hand, patted the grey on the rump and walked off towards the harness room. He then stopped and looked back at her. She could see she was to follow him.
In the harness room he was hurried. He made a little soft whistling noise between his teeth, the only sound he ever made. He sat up at a three-legged stool and pulled open a drawer. It was filled with bits of paper covered with all the strange little drawings and ingenious hieroglyphics Allington so patiently executed in order to communicate with his servant.
Dan produced a piece of paper and a pencil. She thought, If I can think how to ask him where his master is, he wouldn’t think it proper to answer. Had not Allington left deliberately? She looked at Dan with despairing eyes.
He thrust the pencil further in her direction, she thought irritated by her slowness to respond. He then took the paper back, folded it in two and wrote carefully and very slowly, yet neatly, on the outside,
Capt. R. Allington.
He then gave it back to her and she realised he would take a message. She clutched the pencil tightly, as if her life depended on it, and then she thought her life
did
depend on it – and she had no idea what to say.
Dan reached for another pencil and started, impatiently, to draw pictures of clocks.
She wrote,
Please don’t leave me.
Dan took it and put it in his pocket. He reached down a saddle and bridle.
Meg whined and scratched with a feeble paw at her skirt. She walked away across the yard. In a moment Dan passed her on the grey. If she wanted to call him back, he wouldn’t hear. She considered the things she ought to have written to Captain Allington, had she been able to tell Dan to wait. But she had spoken the truth. It was an acknowledgement of what she felt – all she felt. There had been no time to dress it up or arrange it. In that one short phrase she had risked as much as Johnny when he had settled to play his last game of chess.
As she came face to face with the rambling old house, she felt no sense of possession, only the deeper conviction that Castle Orchard belonged to Captain Allington, whatever the deeds might say.
Indoors, she asked Annie to give the children breakfast. She said she would go and lie down because she had a headache. There was a letter from Louisa to read and also one from her mother-in-law, but how could she concentrate? She opened the latter first, though in a desultory manner, for such a letter was a rarity. The old lady’s handwriting had deteriorated since her stroke. The address was written in another hand, she assumed that of the paid companion, Miss Blakeway.
Dear Caroline,
I wish to speak to Johnny on the subject of my will, but he never could be bothered with correspondence. He is too lively and writing letters doesn’t amuse him. I dare say he comes to Castle Orchard from time to time so you must see if you can influence him towards paying me a visit.
Miss Blakeway is a little mad now, but for old times’ sake, I try to look after her. She will say Johnny died in an accident but I would have heard about it, had it been so. The creature does go on and on, but I humour her.
Now get yourself some fresh gowns for the summer, something utterly fashionable and absurd. It is no good expecting Johnny to be an attentive husband if you are not up to the mode. No man likes to see his wife in what was new two seasons previous. It is that sort of thing that drives them to take mistresses, though sometimes I wished Johnny’s father had taken a mistress as it would have turned his mind away from what he considered my extravagances. Now Johnny is extravagant and talked of going to Paris, the naughty creature . . .’
The letter dribbled to a halt mid-sentence and the old lady had then signed it. Mrs Arthur shook her head in bewilderment. It was curious to be receiving such a letter just now. Ought she to write back, stating the truth about the death of Jonathan Arthur? Certainly not.
Louisa’s letter ran thus:
My dearest Caro,
I suppose Captain Allington has not returned yet. John is very anxious on the subject of your affairs and is inclined to be hurt you don’t confide in him. I have told him I know you will come just the minute Captain Allington returns from Cornwall and I have written the same to my mother.
Now, Caro, I don’t want you to be offended with me but you must know it really will look strange if you stay at Castle Orchard after Captain Allington returns. My mother said things most unpleasant which I know aren’t true, concerning yourself and Captain Allington. I know you are good and innocent and go to church like you always have, despite that wicked Johnny I wish you had never married.
I believe it is shyness and the uncertainty of your affairs that has kept you away from us until now. That is what John’s father says, and I think I have been insensitive in pressing you so hard.
Your ever loving and affectionate sister,
Louisa Westcott
Dan returned not that day but the next. He nodded and smiled at Mrs Arthur, but she thought he looked disturbed. He brought no message with him, but if Captain Allington had anything further to say he could have used the Royal Mail like anybody else. Dan came round to the front door the day after that with Allington’s grey and the side-saddle as if nothing had altered, expecting Mrs Arthur to take her ride. She thought, while Dan was employed, Captain Allington still had control of her life, for Dan could never be redirected nor did he ever show the slightest inclination to be redirected. His continued presence remained unexplained.