‘Well, then. I have news for you. You’re going to no Sandhurst whether they’d have you or not, and I even doubt if the Empire is that hard up. And you’re not going to the Sinclairs’ this Saturday or any other Saturday, for that matter. I was a fool to countenance the idea in the first place. Well, what do you have to say for yourself?’
‘I say that I’m not going,’ the boy said, barely able to speak with disappointment and anger.
‘And you can say it again if you want,’ and the father left him, well satisfied with the damaging restraint of his performance, his self-esteem completely restored.
The following Saturday the Sinclairs lingered a long time over breakfast but at ten-thirty the Colonel rose. ‘He’s not coming. He was always punctual. He’s been stopped.’
‘There’s a chance he may be ill,’ Mrs Sinclair said.
‘That would be too much of a coincidence.’
They prepared as usual for the garden, but neither had heart for their separate tasks. They found themselves straying into one another’s company, until Mrs Sinclair smiled sadly and said what they had been avoiding. ‘It’s a hurt.’
‘Yes. It is.’
‘That’s the trouble. We can’t help but get attached,’ she added quietly. It was the end of no world, they had been through too much for that, but these small hurts seemed to gather with the hurts that had gone before to form a weight that was dispiriting; and, with the perfect tact that is a kind of mind-reading, she said, ‘Why don’t we forget the garden? I know we have a rule against drinking during the day, but I think we can make an exception today. I promise to try to make an especially nice lunch.’
‘What kind of wine?’ he asked.
‘Red wine,’ she said at once.
‘I suppose the lesson is that we should have let well enough alone,’ he said.
‘I had my doubts all along but, I suppose, I was hoping they weren’t true. I don’t really think we’d have managed to get him into Sandhurst in the first place; but if we had, his trouble would have just begun — his whole background, his accent most of all. It’s hopeless to even contemplate. Let’s make lunch.’
The boy hung about the gravel outside the barracks that morning. Casey was the barrack orderly again. All the others were out on patrol. After he had finished the Independent, Casey came out to join the boy on the gravel.
‘This must be the first Saturday in a long time you aren’t away helping the Colonel,’ Guard Casey probed gently.
‘I was stopped,’ he replied with open bitterness.
‘I suppose it’ll be the end of the free fruit and vegetables. I hear they were threatening to make a British officer out of you.’
‘I wouldn’t have minded. Many go from here to England to work.’
‘Your father would never have been able to live with that. You really have to be born into that class of people. You don’t ever find robins feeding with the sparrows.’
‘Will the Sergeant be out on evening patrol?’
‘I’ll have a look.’
Johnny followed Casey over the hollow, scrubbed boards of the dayroom, where the policeman looked in the big ledger.
‘He is. From six to nine. In the Crossna direction.’
It was in the opposite direction to the Colonel’s. During those hours he would go to the parsonage to explain why he had not come to them, how it had ended.
Just after six, as soon as the Sergeant was out of sight, the boy crossed the bridge with a hazel fishing rod. Though it was too late for the small fish, perch or roach, he could say he was throwing a line out as a sort of experiment, for fun; but as soon as he was across the bridge he hid it behind a wall and took to the fields. Running, walking, running, scrambling across the stone walls, keeping well away from the farmhouses, he was soon close to the parsonage, which he circled, coming up through the orchard at the back. He was so mindless with the fear of not getting to the house in secret that he could hardly remember why he had set out, when he found himself at the kitchen window looking in at the Colonel and Mrs Sinclair seated at the big table with wine glasses in their hands. They were so absorbed in their conversation that he had to tap the window before they noticed. They both rose to let him in.
‘It wasn’t my fault, I would have come today as usual if he’d let me.’ Hard as he tried, he wasn’t able to beat down a sudden attack of sobbing. They allowed him to quiet and Mrs Sinclair got him a large glass of raspberry cordial.
‘Of course it wasn’t your fault. That’s the very last thing anybody could imagine.’ Mrs Sinclair put the glass in his hand, gently touching his hair.
‘In fact, it was all our fault. Our proposal upset everything,’ Colonel Sinclair said. ‘We didn’t think it through.’ He didn’t know what to give the boy, knew he wouldn’t accept money and, in a fit of weary inspiration, he went upstairs to fetch a book on natural history that had been their son’s favourite book when young. He first checked with his wife, and when she nodded he gave it to the boy. ‘It’s something we want you to have. We intended to give it to you for Christmas.’
In spite of the gift, he knew that it was all closing down. With kindness but with firmness, the Sinclairs were now more separate than the evening the Colonel had come to the barracks with the basket of apples. A world had opened that evening; it was closing now like curtains being silently drawn, and all the more finally because there was not even a shadow of violence.
It had not been easy to face the Sinclairs. He had made clear his own position, and he felt freed. When he got to the bridge, he took the hazel rod from beneath the wall and held it in full view, hiding the book under his coat. He met no one. There were no bicycles against the barrack wall. The policemen hadn’t come in off patrol. He was about to drop in on Casey when he noticed that there was already someone there, a tall young man who was standing in his bare feet against the wall beneath the measuring bar, which Casey was adjusting.
‘You’re the height, all right. A good five-eleven and a half. Now lift your arms till we find out if you have the chest measurements as well.’
‘I’ve them, all right, Guard Casey,’ the young man laughed nervously. ‘But what I’m most afraid of is the Irish.’
‘You needn’t be a bit afeard. I’m one of the few guards fluent in two languages, the best Rosses Blas from the cradle, and I haven’t a quarter use for even one language, so don’t you worry about the Irish.’
The weak sun was going down beyond Oakport Wood. Only the muscling river moved. In another hour the Sinclairs’ car would be crossing the bridge to Charlie’s. An hour after that the Sergeant would come in off patrol. That seemed the whole endless world then.
The burning of Rockingham House stood out from all else in the still-emptying countryside in the next few years. In that amazing night all was lit up, the whole lake and its islands all the way across to the Rockadoon and first slopes of the Curlews, the great beech walk going towards Boyle, the woods behind the house, and over them the High Plains, the light leaping even to Great Meadow. The glass of the three hundred and sixty-five windows shattered. The roof came down. Among the priceless things said to have been lost was a rocking chair that could be drawn as a sleigh, beautifully carved leopards asleep on the armrests, one of three made by the great German craftsmen of St Petersburg for Catherine the Great. All that remained of the front of the house overlooking the lake and islands was the magnificent shell and portals, now full of sky and dangerous in high winds. Only rooms in the servants’ quarters in the part of the basement next to the sunken tennis courts had escaped the fire. Sir Cecil and Lady King-Harmon, who had been much photographed during the week at the Newmarket Yearling Sales, came home at once, and took over a floor of the Royal Hotel.