The Pride of the Peacock (17 page)

I opened it and read aloud:

Dear Miss Clavering, Thank you for your letter. By the time you receive this I shall be on my way. I shall come immediately to Oakland Hall when I arrive in England.

Yours truly, J. Madden.

“Is that all he says ?” cried Ben querulously.

“It’s enough,” I replied.

“All he has to tell us is that he is on his way.”

April had come. I should be nineteen in June.

“You’re growing up,” said my grandmother.

“How different it might have been. We should have done our duty by you and you would have come out with dignity. Here … in this place … what can we hope for? There isn’t even a curate for you. Mind you, your fondness for low company might exclude you from such as Miriam has turned to.”

“Miriam is very happy, I think.”

“I’m sure she is … wondering where her next meal is coming from.”

“It’s not as bad as that. They have enough to eat. She enjoys managing and I know she is much happier than she was here.”

“Oh, she was glad enough to get someone to marry her … anyone … it didn’t matter who. I hope you’re not going to get into that desperate state.”

‘you need have no anxieties on that score,” I retorted.

I was feeling very sad because I knew that Ben’s health ‘it V. for the worse; he was visibly deteriorating ^^of
^ what would happen when he died and I pro’ v sited Oakland. The future stretched out drearily afr^
I was still doing what my grandmother called des expected of people in our position, even though Are in such reduced circumstances. That meant taking
(e poor dusters and the preserves which had not turned ^ as well as my grandmother had expected them to, taking
harge of a stall at the church fete, attending the sewing class held at the vicarage, putting flowers on the graves, helping decorate the church and such activities, I could see myself growing old and sour as Miriam had been before she married her curate-but even she had had him in the background, I was no longer very young. I was now a woman and the older I grew the more quickly would the years slip by The days began ordinarily enough with prayers in the drawing-room where the family assembled with the servants while my grandmother, as I once irreverently observed to Miriam, gave the Almighty His instructions for the day.

“Do this …” and “Don’t do that…” By force of habit I counted up the injunctions.

That April Mrs. Jarman had been delivered of another child and Jarman was more melancholy than ever. Nature, he told me, showed no signs of curbing her generosity. My grandmother sharply retorted that he was not so simple that he did not know that a little restraint might ease the situation. He was indeed Poor Jarman; he looked at my grandmother with such reproach that he made me want to laugh.

“Talk of Poor Jarman,” she said to me sharply.

“I think it’s a case of Poor Mrs. Jarman.”

In an outburst of generosity she packed a basket for the fertile lady and even put in a pot of raspberry jam which had not started to go mouldy, a small chicken, and a flask of broth.

You can take this over to Mrs. Jarman, Jessica,” she said.

“After all, her husband does work for us. Take it while he is working, for I am sure he seizes the best of everything for himself and she needs nourishment, poor woman.”

That was how on a breezy afternoon in late April I came to be walking over to the cottage where the Jarmans lived, a basket on my arm, thinking as I went of Ben and wondering how soon the day would come when I went over to Oakland Hall and found that he had left it.

Outside the Jarman cottage was a muddy pond and a scrap , of garden overgrown with weeds. It was strange that Poor Jannan, who spent his days making other people’s gardens beautiful should so neglect his own. I contemplated that they could have grown some flowers there, or perhaps some vegetables, but instead of daffodils and flowering shrubs there were little Jarmans playing games which seemed to involve the maximum of noise, confusion, and an abundance of litter.

One of the young ones who must have been about three years old had a small flowerpot into-which he was shovelling dirt and turning it out into neat little mounds which he patted with hands understandably grimy, after which operation he rubbed them over his face and down his pinafore. Two others were tugging at a rope and another was throwing a ball into the pond so that when it bounced a spray of dirty water rose, splashing him and anyone near to the immense delight of those who were thus anointed.

There was a brief silence as I approached, all eyes on the basket, but as I went into the cottage the noise broke out again.

I called out: “Good afternoon, Mrs. Jannan.”

One stepped straight into the livingroom, and I knocked on a door which I knew from previous visits to be that of the connubial bedchamber. There was a spiral staircase leading from the room to two rooms upstairs which were occupied as sleeping quarters by the ever-increasing tribe.

Mrs. Jannan was in bed, the new baby in a cradle beside her. She was very large. Like a queen bee, I had once remarked to Miriam, and indeed Nature had clearly furnished her for a similar destiny.

“Another little girl, Mrs. Jarman,” I said. , “Yes, Miss Jessica,” said Mrs. Jarman, rolling her eyes reproachfully up to the ceiling as though Providence had whisked this one into the cradle when she wasn’t looking, for she shared Poor Jarman’s complaint that it was Nature at her tricks again.

The little girl was going to be called Daisy, she told me, and she hoped God would see fit to bless her.

“Well, Mrs. Jarman,” I said, ‘you have your quiverful and that’s supposed to be a blessed state. “

“It’ll mean getting another bed up there in time,” she said.

“I only hope the Lord sees fit to stop with Daisy.”

I talked for a while and then came out of the house to where the noise seemed to have increased. The maker of dirt mounds had had enough of them and was cheerfully kicking them

down to the pond. The ball went into the pond and the Jarman who had thrown it shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

I was about to cross the road when the mound-maker having seen the ball go into the pond decided to retrieve it. He walked in, reached for the ball and fell flat on his face.

The other children were all watching with interest, but none of them thought of getting the child out. There was only one thing for me to do because he was in imminent danger. I waded into the pond, picked up the little Jarman and angrily strode with him on to dry land.

As I stood there with the child in my arms I was aware of a man on horseback watching the scene. The horse looked enormous, so did the man; it was like a centaur or some legendary creature.

An imperious voice said: “Can you tell me the way to Oakland Hall?”

The eldest Jarman present, who must have been about six, shouted: “Up the road there…”

The man on horseback was looking straight at me expecting the only adult to give the answer.

I said: “You go straight up the road, turn to the right and you will see the gates a little way along the road.”

“Thank you.”

He put his hand into his pocket and brought out some coins which he threw at us.

I was furious. I hastily put down the little Jarman and stopped to pick up the coins with the intention of throwing them back at him, but before I could reach them two Jarmans had swooped on them and had run off as fast as they could with their prize.

I looked angrily at the back of the horseman and turned on the small Jarman whose mud-spattered face was lifted to mine, one finger in his mouth while he regarded me with curiosity.

“You dirty little creature,” I stammered. Then I was sorry because it wasn’t his fault.

“All right,” I said.

“Go in and get one of your brothers and sisters to dry you. And don’t dare walk into the pond again.”

I strode off to the Dower House. As soon as I reached my room I looked at myself in a mirror, i There was a smudge of dirt on my cheek; my blouse was | muddy, my skirt wet at the hem and my shoes saturated. “| What a sight I looked. And the man on horseback had| taken me for a cottage girl! I guessed who he was. Hadn’t’j he asked for Oakland

Hall? Hadn’t he behaved in a per fe airogant manner? Hadn’t he the conceited looks of a peacock?

To think that my first meeting with him should have been like that!

“I knew I’d hate him,” I said aloud.

I could not bring myself to go to Oakland Hall the following afternoon. I thought: He’ll be there, and I don’t want to see him. Ben will be all right, I thought jealously. He’s got his precious Peacock.

He won’t want me.

I was wrong.

Maddy came knocking at my door.

“Hannah gave me a message for you.

It’s from Mr. Henniker. He’s asking you to go over there. He wants you particular I had to go then, so I dressed with care. I wore my blue alpaca, which if it was not my most becoming gown gave me an air of dignity.

As soon as I arrived at the Hall I was aware of the change. There was tense excitement in the atmosphere. Wilmot greeted me in the hall, urbane and dignified.

“Mr. Henniker wishes you to go straight up to his room, Miss Clavering.”

Thank you, Wilmot,” I said.

I knew it was no use asking the questions which came into my mind.

Wilmot would be too correct to discuss one visitor with another. But I did see Hannah at the top of the staircase where she was lurking, obviously hoping to catch me.

“Oh, Miss Jessica,” she said in an awe struck voice, ‘he’s come. the gentleman from Australia. “

“Oh?” I said, waiting.

“My word!” The expression on her face irritated me. Usually sensible, Hannah looked quite foolish.

“He seems to have had an extraordinary effect on you,” I said sharply.

“Mr. Henniker’s that pleased. I reckon ifs given him a new lease of life. He came into the hall yesterday it was … You’d have thought he owned the place. Wilmot says it looks like the place could belong to him. I don’t know when I’ve seen such a big gentleman, and he’s got a way of talking too. You can hear him all over the place… one of them carrying voices. My word! I reckon he knows what he’s about.

Wilmot seems to think he’s some sort of relation. A son, Wilmot’s heard. Though we didn’t know Mr. Henniker had been married, and he’s a Mr. Madden. “

“I suppose I’m to meet him,” I said, cutting her short, ‘so I

must go and see this-‘ I was going to say ‘peacock’ but I changed it to ‘paragon’- “of yours whose huge body and booming voice seem to have bewitched you.”

I went past her, knowing she was thinking I was very touchy today.

I knocked at Ben’s bedroom door and heard him say: This will be Jessica. ” Then loudly: ” Come in, my dear. “I went in. Ben was sitting in the chair by the bed in a dressing-gown and with a rug about his knees. A tall figure rose and came towards me. I was annoyed because I had to look up so far.

Of course it was the man I had met on horseback outside the Jarman cottage.p>

He took my hand and kept it too long for me.

“So,” he said, ‘we meet again. “

“Hey? What’s this?” cried Ben.

“Come over here, the two of you. I want to make a proper introduction. This is a very important occasion. I want you two to know each other, and when you do you’re going to like each other a good deal. I’ve never had any doubt of that. You’re two of a kind.”

I couldn’t help showing the resentment which flared up with ini me at the thought of being compared with this man. I noticed his eyes then-those deep blue eyes the colour of a peacock’s feather; I noticed the rather large nose, slightly aquiline, which suggested the arrogance I was convinced I would find, and the long, rather thin lips, which could have been cynical or sensuous or both. It was not so much a handsome face as a distinguished one-the sort that would never be passed in a crowd and once seen remembered. The brown velvet jacket and the very white cravat suggested fastidiousness, but the brown riding boots and corded breeches were essentially masculine.

What I disliked most was the mocking expression in his face which told me that he was remembering the sight of me ^ emerging from a muddy pond with a grubby Jarman in my ‘| arms. That was his first impression and it was something he | was not going to forget.

“We have met before, Ben,” he said.

“Come and tell me about it.”

I said quickly: “I went to the Jannans. Mrs. Jarman produced again and my grandmother sent me over with son things. As I was coming out of the house one of the childr< fell into the pond. I got him out and Mr. er …” I nod de towards him.

‘you must call him Joss, my dear,” said Ben.

“We don’t want any formality. We’re all too friendly for that.”

“But I don’t know him,” I protested.

“We have met before,” said Joss Madden, and I sensed the mockery.

I said firmly: “Mr. Madden came by, asked the way-and paid for the information.” I turned to him.

“I can assure you the fee was unnecessary and would have been returned to you had not the children seized whatever it was and run off with it.”

Ben laughed.

“Well, fancy that! And you didn’t know each other?”

“Having heard that Mr. Madden was due, I guessed it was he. His actions fitted what I had heard of him.”

joss Madden laughed. It was a quick bellow of a laugh. It exploded and was over.

“I trust that was meant as a compliment,” he said, ‘because I’m going to take it as such. “

“I will leave you to judge,” I replied.

Ben Was smiling as though-I found I was using this simile often in connection with him-he had found the Green Flash.

“It does me good to see you here getting along so well with Jessica,” said Ben.

“It’s the best thing that’s happened since my fall. Now, let’s all sit down and get comfortable, shall we? We’ve got a lot to talk about, and I don’t know how much time there is left to us.”

“Don’t say that, Ben,” I cried.

“You’re going to be so much better now that er… Mr. Madden has come.”

“Let’s look the truth straight between the eyes,” said Ben.