Read Online Long Summer Day by R. F. Delderfield - Free Book Online
Authors: R. F. Delderfield
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great sweep of the woods and the Sorrel, ten yards wide, and spanned by a wooden bridge, began its final curve to the sea. He could even see the sun glinting on a roof in the distant village and as his eyes followed the course of the shallow stream a kingfisher flashed and then disappeared into the brake.
Rudd said, ‘Ah, it looks tame enough now, Mr Craddock, but some of its moods are damned ugly! You should see it when the sou’westers come roaring in from over the Whin, and sleet drives at you from every point of the compass!’, and he led the way down on to the track that followed the bend of the river; a broad path thick with spurting white dust that swept up in clouds and then settled to bow the stalks of cowparsley in the hedgerow on their side of the river.
It was this tall bank that held Paul’s attention until they passed the angle of the grey stone wall, bordering the park, for its colours defied the dust every yard of the way. Tall ranks of foxgloves grew there, and at their roots a thick carpet of stitchwort, ragwort, dandelion, honeysuckle, dog rose and campion. The air throbbed with the hum of insects and huge bumble bees droned from petal to petal, like fat, lazy policemen checking the doors of silent premises. As they trotted past the wooden bridge Rudd told him that it was the only one spanning the Sorrel between the railway and the sea, and rightly belonged to Codsall of Four Winds but was used by everyone when the ford from which the estate derived its name was impassable. As the little grey lodge came in view beyond the Home Farm buildings, he added, ‘I took the liberty of getting Mrs Handcock, the housekeeper, to make you up a bed in my lodge. There used to be a lodge-keeper of course, and I lived up at the house, but when he left I moved in and have been too lazy to shift. I’m a widower, and can look after myself although one of Tamer Potter’s sluts looks in to clean up every once in a while. I live a solitary life down there and get sick of my own company, so you’ll be welcome to stay with me as long as you are here. The guest rooms up at the big house are in poor shape. If we get a wet spell after this long drought the ceilings will leak.’
‘The lodge will suit me very well,’ Paul said but absently for he was still a prey to pleasurable excitement and nagging anxiety, sparring one with the other just below his belt. The whole place, he thought, was so immense, and not only vast and awesome but overpowering. By acquiring suzerainty of such a domain, he would be shouldering the cares of a small kingdom and that without a notion of how to rule unless he placed himself under the thumb of this square-faced, unpredictable agent, a man who rode with a chip on his shoulder, a chip the size of a French Prince. He must, he told himself, take plenty of time to think this out, and do his thinking in solitude.
The park gates looked as if they had remained open for years and hung by rusting hinges to a pair of fifteen-foot stone pillars, crowned by stone eagles. A stone’s throw from the entrance was the ford, paved with flat stones and no more than six inches deep where the river ballooned into a pond. Geese honked among buttercups and anemones growing on the margin, and the lodge, a snug little house with a pantiled roof and trim muslin curtains, stood only a few yards inside the drive. All that Paul could see of the house itself was a cluster of chimney pots soaring above the last few chestnuts of the drive which curved sharply at the top of the steep ascent, where grew huge clumps of rhododendron, now in flower.
Mrs Handcock, the housekeeper, came waddling to the lodge door as they clattered up and Rudd, dismounting, introduced Paul, giving the horses to a boy of about twelve who somehow contrived to hoist himself on to the cob and rode away across the paddock to the Home Farm. The housekeeper was a large, pink-faced woman about fifty, with greying hair and a rich Westcountry brogue, the
Rudd said, ‘Ah, it looks tame enough now, Mr Craddock, but some of its moods are damned ugly! You should see it when the sou’westers come roaring in from over the Whin, and sleet drives at you from every point of the compass!’, and he led the way down on to the track that followed the bend of the river; a broad path thick with spurting white dust that swept up in clouds and then settled to bow the stalks of cowparsley in the hedgerow on their side of the river.
It was this tall bank that held Paul’s attention until they passed the angle of the grey stone wall, bordering the park, for its colours defied the dust every yard of the way. Tall ranks of foxgloves grew there, and at their roots a thick carpet of stitchwort, ragwort, dandelion, honeysuckle, dog rose and campion. The air throbbed with the hum of insects and huge bumble bees droned from petal to petal, like fat, lazy policemen checking the doors of silent premises. As they trotted past the wooden bridge Rudd told him that it was the only one spanning the Sorrel between the railway and the sea, and rightly belonged to Codsall of Four Winds but was used by everyone when the ford from which the estate derived its name was impassable. As the little grey lodge came in view beyond the Home Farm buildings, he added, ‘I took the liberty of getting Mrs Handcock, the housekeeper, to make you up a bed in my lodge. There used to be a lodge-keeper of course, and I lived up at the house, but when he left I moved in and have been too lazy to shift. I’m a widower, and can look after myself although one of Tamer Potter’s sluts looks in to clean up every once in a while. I live a solitary life down there and get sick of my own company, so you’ll be welcome to stay with me as long as you are here. The guest rooms up at the big house are in poor shape. If we get a wet spell after this long drought the ceilings will leak.’
‘The lodge will suit me very well,’ Paul said but absently for he was still a prey to pleasurable excitement and nagging anxiety, sparring one with the other just below his belt. The whole place, he thought, was so immense, and not only vast and awesome but overpowering. By acquiring suzerainty of such a domain, he would be shouldering the cares of a small kingdom and that without a notion of how to rule unless he placed himself under the thumb of this square-faced, unpredictable agent, a man who rode with a chip on his shoulder, a chip the size of a French Prince. He must, he told himself, take plenty of time to think this out, and do his thinking in solitude.
The park gates looked as if they had remained open for years and hung by rusting hinges to a pair of fifteen-foot stone pillars, crowned by stone eagles. A stone’s throw from the entrance was the ford, paved with flat stones and no more than six inches deep where the river ballooned into a pond. Geese honked among buttercups and anemones growing on the margin, and the lodge, a snug little house with a pantiled roof and trim muslin curtains, stood only a few yards inside the drive. All that Paul could see of the house itself was a cluster of chimney pots soaring above the last few chestnuts of the drive which curved sharply at the top of the steep ascent, where grew huge clumps of rhododendron, now in flower.
Mrs Handcock, the housekeeper, came waddling to the lodge door as they clattered up and Rudd, dismounting, introduced Paul, giving the horses to a boy of about twelve who somehow contrived to hoist himself on to the cob and rode away across the paddock to the Home Farm. The housekeeper was a large, pink-faced woman about fifty, with greying hair and a rich Westcountry brogue, the
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