Read Online Coromandel! by John Masters - Free Book Online Page B

sailor, noisily cleared his throat and cupped his hand to his mouth. He was drunk as a fiddler’s bitch by now, but Tom could call the Harvest Ring unconscious. He usually did.
    Jason held both Jane’s hands and looked steadily at her until her head came up and her eyes met his. He pointed his left foot, and she pointed hers. The caller would call only once in each part of the dance, because it was a competition. After that the dancers had to remember the turns, but Jason knew no one was going to miss a step today. The prize would be won by the grace of their turns, by the poise of the movements and the pointing of the toe and the straightness of the leg.
    Tom Devitt called, ‘The maidens in the middle and the men outside. To the left, to the right, dance the Old Wife’s Pride.’ Jason and Jane began to dance.
    After ten minutes Jane whispered breathlessly to him as they turned back to back in the sixth change, ‘There are only two other couples left.’
    He muttered, ‘Don’t look at them.’ She must not even think of the other dancers, or hear the singing of the drunkards outside the Cross Keys, or notice the amazed surprise in Parson’s smug face, or her father’s strange look, or Master Hugo’s black disapproval.
    But he himself could not help seeing the Parson call one of the other couples out of the ring, and noticing their disappointed, sweating faces on the side. Now they’d be saying to each other, to console themselves, that he was still in there because his partner was Jane Pennel. Let them say. He and she were the best dancers in the Ring.
    The other couple was good too. But he must not think of them, only of the shape of the dance, and the moves as fluent as the Avon flowing. Tom Devitt began to call the changes faster, until they were having only a single round of each. ‘Benjamin the Fiddler, call him down; Back-a-back and ride to town. . . . Green grass grows in the field, and turn. . . . Alton Chimes . . . Meadowsweet, meadowsweet. . .’
    ‘Oh, Jane,’ he whispered. Her eyes shone like large green stars. ‘Oh, Jane!’ he reached out his hands, and she caught them and held fiercely. They couldn’t put a foot wrong or miss the grip of their fingers for ever and ever.
    ‘Come to the spinney tomorrow afternoon.’
    She muttered, ‘Yes.’
    Something caught at his sleeve, and he brushed it off, not thinking, not taking more notice of it than of a fly.
    Again it caught him, but harder, this time nearly pulling him off his balance. Angrily he glanced round, and Parson was shouting, ‘Go away!’ It was Softy Turpin, frowning ferociously beside him and ludicrously swinging round after him so that all the people rocked and screamed and slapped their thighs with laughter. Softy bawled, ‘She’m not started yet, your grace. She’m not started. No need for you to hurry!’
    Jason stopped. It was no use. All the power of movement flowed out of his legs, and he could only stand there, trembling. He saw his father, hunched and dark beside the church wall, with three of his cronies. He saw Jane’s huge, soft eyes.
    He muttered, ‘The red cow’s calving.’
    He left her standing in the middle of the Ring and ran off. Mary was running after him across the field, and Molly was trying to stop her, but as soon as he got into the lane he left them both far behind.
     
    Ten days later there was no moon, and it was a thick night, compounded of darkness and autumnal rain that flowed in a soft black stream over the Pewsey Vale. The wind had changed with the new moon, and blew this night quietly against his cheek as he hurried across the shoulder of the Plain on his way to Pennel Manor.
    He came to the spinney and went carefully through it. He stroked his hand against the body of an ash as he passed it. The Oak and Horn had brought Jane here on that Sunday in the hazy afternoon, to lie down together with him here, so that afterwards they could look speechless into each other’s faces. Twice more they’d