Post of Honour by R. F. Delderfield Read Free Book Online Page A

more. While he was gone she hitched up her skirt, tore away the trailing edge of her petticoat hem and tried to tidy her hair by rearranging pins but she could do nothing about her bare neck and shoulders until Joannie said, ‘Taake my jumper, child, and go along home! Us can manage now and you can ride Sam’s pony backalong, and Passon’s boy can return un in the mornin’.’ Gratefully Rachel slipped on the soiled jumper that hung about her like a cloak, tucking it into the waistband of her skirt and giving a final, fascinated glance at Hazel, as she sat propped against the rear wall of the cave, the child at her breast. Then she went out to find Keith and said, apologising for her appearance, ‘It’s Joannie Potter’s jumper! I . . . I had to use my blouse in there,’ but she didn’t mention her petticoat thinking that the poor boy had had a surfeit of embarrassments that evening. It was when he helped her climb up behind him and she clasped him round the waist, that she began to feel happier and more serene than she had felt in twelve months for somehow, after all that had happened back there in the cave, his angular body was a source of comfort and what had occurred seemed, perversely, to have given him more confidence, for he said as they crossed over Codsall Bridge, ‘You were wonderful, Rachel! I was proud of you, and some time . . . some time I’d like to . . . to speak to Mr Eveleigh about you, Rachel.’
    It was not the proposal she had daydreamed about either before and since the entry of Keith Horsey into her life, but it was valid she supposed and she hugged him in silence. There was really nothing she could reply to such a delightfully old-fashioned statement of his intentions. When they reached the yard and got down, unbridling the pony and turning him loose in the duck field, Keith found an excuse to linger by the gate. She could have wished that he had sought an elbow-rest further from her own kitchen door for she could hear the clatter of dishes and the voices of the children, any one of whom might appear bawling, ‘It’s Rachel, Mum!’ for it was late enough to merit explanations. She said, therefore, ‘I must go in now, Keith dear. It’s late and Dad’s very strict about time,’ and then, without the slightest prompting on her part, he seized her by the shoulders and kissed her on the mouth, and she kissed him back and ran swiftly across the cobbles towards the oblong of light in the kitchen yard. As she ran she giggled, partly with excitement but also with relish at the thought that it had taken Hazel Potter’s bastard child, born in a cave in Shallowford Woods, to convert him from a possible into a certainty.
    II
    T here was less speculation in the Valley as to the identity of the man responsible for bringing Hazel Potter to bed than there was comment regarding her reply to every enquiry, a sullen, reiterated, ‘Tiz mine an’ my man’s, baint it?’ to which she would sometimes add the admonition directed at Joannie Potter at the time—‘Dornee pester me!’ as though requests for enlightenment on the subject were not merely impertinent but frivolous. Her sisters, who were shocked by the event, came up with a list of probables that included a half-witted crowstarver employed on the Heronslea estate and all three of the Timberlake boys. Fathers were canvassed in Coombe Bay and among the labouring population on the western side of the estate, the Potter girls reasoning that if Hazel’s lover had lived on the eastern side they would have been sure to have seen him coming and going about his shameful business. Meg, for her part, did not seek information, realising that one might as well ask a vixen to name the dog-fox that had crossed into Shallowford country when she was last in season. She was, moreover, resigned to the arrival of babies without fathers and in any case did not consider it her business. In her view any grown woman could renew herself if she felt so