They foregathered in the saloon bar of the ‘Gun Dog’ afterwards, for one social drink together before they scattered for home: George and Bunty, Evan Joyce, Sam and Toby Malcolm (Jenny having gone straight home to relieve Sylvia Thomas of her watch), Miss de la Pole, and Willie the Twig, who came late and was unusually thoughtful and quiet. They talked about the weather, and the harvest prospects, and the forthcoming Flower and Vegetable Show, and the sad fact that the ‘Gun Dog’ was not a home-brewed house, like the ‘Sitting Duck’ at Mottisham. But never a word about Rainbow. Not until Miss de la Pole drained her glass and rose to set a good example, drawing her black shawl round her shoulders.
‘He won’t do, you know,’ she said with inexorable gentleness; and having pronounced her oracle, as gently and decidedly withdrew, leaving them room either for comment or for silence.
As it turned out, no one had anything to object, or to add.
CHAPTER TWO
« ^ »
Sergeant Jack Moon lived one short remove from the village of Abbot’s Bale, down the valley, and had been the law in those parts for years, evading transfer and passing up promotion with the single-minded assurance of one who has found his métier for life. In Middlehope law had to adapt itself to special conditions, and walk hand in hand with custom, which provided the main system by which behaviour was regulated. One assault from an intruder, and the whole valley would clam up and present a united front of impenetrable ignorance, solid as a Roman shield-wall, in defence of its own people and its immemorial sanctity.
Moon was a large, calm, quiet man with a poker face, and hands as broad as spades, and could look phlegmatic, and even stupid, at will, but was neither. And there was nobody better qualified to dissect the situation in Middlehope, a month or so after Rainbow’s house-warming. He and George had both been in court during the morning, and were snatching a quiet lunch together in Comerbourne before returning to the rest of the work-load, which at the beginning of October was relatively light.
‘Well, how are things in your barony?’ asked George. ‘And how did the harvest supper go off?’
‘You’re informed that far, are you?’ said Moon thoughtfully. ‘What would you expect? The vicar’d accepted the offer of the chap’s house, folks couldn’t stay away without making the vicar miserable, so the turnout was much the same as usual. Down a bit, though, and the Rev. couldn’t help noticing, and anyhow, by then I doubt if he was much surprised. He does fall over himself to think the best of everybody, but he can learn. Too late, of course. The man’s got a strangle-hold on the choir now, it won’t be easy to get it off him again. The professor’s taken it philosophically, but it’s a blow, all the same. And the grounds are offered again for the hospital fête, and if you ask me they’re already arranging all the show pieces for sale, sending out invitations to customers all over the Midlands.’
‘To be fair,’ George pointed out, ‘the hospital may benefit by boosted takings, too.’
‘It may! He will! He hasn’t ploughed all that money into the place without expecting a handsome profit. He’s talking of opening the gardens to the public for charity next summer. There’ll be an invisible price-tag on most of those lead sirens of his, and quite a turnover in garden stoneware.’
‘Oh, so he’s talking in terms of next year now. Digging in, Jack! What’s the valley going to do about it? They usually manage to weed out the unwanted pretty effectively.’
‘Trouble is we’ve left it late, not wanting to throw out any man until we were sure. And then, the vicar being newish and not thoroughly clued up yet made his mistake, and now he’s stuck with it, and so are we.’
‘And what’s he really like as organist?’ asked George curiously. ‘From all I hear, he can play any keyboard instrument like nobody’s business. Obviously the Reverend thought he was getting a prize. Does that work out?’
‘George, if we’ve got a resistance movement in the general population, believe me, we’ve got seething revolution in the choir. You won’t hear a voluntary in our church now earlier than Durufle or Messiaen, or an anthem or a chant or a hymn-tune more than twenty years old. The things he’s asking those boys to sing you wouldn’t wish on a dog-pack! You should see young Bossie’s face, soaring to that high F of his and looking like it tastes vile. All new and fashionable and with-it, I’m sure, but with what? Not harmony, nor melody, that’s for certain. And what about all the rest of us, brought up on Welsh hwyl and classical form? Nothing to get our teeth in at all! Congregations are dropping off you know how frustrating it can be, coming all primed to sing your heart out, and very creditably, mind you, we know what’s what; and then to be baulked by a parcel of discords fighting out a life-or-death struggle! No, let him be as expert as he likes, he knows nothing and feels nothing about music. If he did, he’d know what he’s stirring up, and believe me, he hasn’t got a clue.’
George thought of Miss de la Pole, with her finger on the valley’s pulse like a family doctor, saying almost absently: ‘What a pity he isn’t in the least degree musical!’
‘You do seem to have acquired a king-sized headache,’ he said with sympathy. ‘You’ve frozen out tougher propositions before, though. What’s so special about this one?’
‘A hide like a rhinoceros,’ said Sergeant Moon succinctly, ‘and far better insulation. With the money he’s got he can isolate himself inside his own world, apart from actual functions at which he has to appear officially. He can bring in his own society, be independent of us and anything we may feel about him. Do you realise we’ve never had a rich man living among us since the eighteenth century? The mistake was ever to let him in. Now he’s in I’m damned if we know how to get at him.’
‘Somebody’ll find a way,’ said George, rather too lightly.
‘That’s what I’m afraid of,’ agreed Sergeant Moon, not lightly at all.
‘As bad as that? Look, Middlehope has digested some pretty odd customers in its time, and turned them into part of the soil. Is Rainbow really impossible?’
‘Others,’ said Moon seriously, ‘have blundered in and fought it out with us on equal terms, we can appreciate that. They end up talking loftily about the next arrivals as incomers, and then go on to assimilate them. Nobody’s going to assimilate Rainbow, he isn’t fighting it out on equal or any terms. He came in and asserted his own terms, no question of adapting, no question of parleying or feeling his way, no acknowledgement that Middlehope has any identity of its own. Have you ever walked round with a twig of blackthorn stuck in your sock? He’s got to go! He’s something we can’t afford. He cripples us. So something’s got to be done. The hell of it is, everybody’s asking, what?’
And well they might, where the foreign body was fully provided with funds, society, interests of his own, independent of the community in which he had set up house. Even if they gradually froze him out of all the offices he had acquired – and that would take some doing! – he still had space and wealth enough, transport to where he was welcome, the means to import his own kind to fill any gaps left by the defection of the natives. He was the least vulnerable intruder with whom Middlehope had ever had to deal. What had begun almost as a joke began to look like a serious problem. You cannot drop a large foreign object into a still and mantled pool without starting dangerous and disruptive ripples.
‘What about his wife?’ George wondered. ‘How’re they making out with her? She could well be the last straw.’
‘Ah!’ said Sergeant Moon cryptically, and sat thinking for half a minute before he expressed any further opinion. ‘Now there we’re up against a different problem. How did he ever come by her, in the first place? And if you know what to make of her, you tell me, because we don’t! All that Estee Lauder and haute couture, and sports car and all, and she breezes into the shop and asks for Woodbines, and cheerfully, too. Or drops off when Charlie’s frying, just by the way when she smells the oil, and picks up a paper-full of fish and chips. Not when he’s with her, but then, he seldom is. And still looking like a million dollars, with all the aplomb in the world. I bet she does the lady of the manor as to the manor born – if you’ll pass over the pun. Out of the manor she looks the same but acts different. As if she’d bust out of school. And I tell you this, she fetches a few of her husband’s mates buzzing like bees round a flower – that big fair fellow who’s been advising on marketing some of the Mottisham Abbey stuff, for one – but there’s more than one local chap been risking his fingers round the fire, too. And I wouldn’t say but what she enjoys them just as much, if not more. Novelty, I reckon. Most people thought she’d be bored to hell, stuck up there in the hills at the back of beyond, but if you ask me, she’s not losing any sleep over being rusticated, the other way round, in fact. It’s been an eye-opener.’