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

inclined and with whom she went about it was a personal matter. Doctor Maureen, however, had other views and after making no headway at all with Hazel consulted her husband, declaring that the father of the child should be sought out, encouraged to marry the girl or if he was disinclined, compelled to contribute towards its upkeep but John told her not to waste time and shoe leather. ‘That child has lived rough in the woods for years,’ he said, ‘and I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before! It might be any one of a score of men and no one is likely to own to it.’
    ‘If that child is promiscuous I’m Boadicea!’ Maureen declared. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she’d been raped and threatened and that’s why she’s holding her tongue!’ but John said, wearily, ‘Why do we have to put such a dramatic construction on a Potter producing a bastard? They were doing it when I came here!’
    ‘The circumstances are different,’ his wife said, ‘ very different and not on account of the child being born in a cave. That Hazel Potter is fey for how else did she conceal her pregnancy all the time?’
    ‘With the help of the Great God Pan I wouldn’t wonder,’ John said, grinning and resumed his attempt to teach his seventeen-month-old son to walk a straight line across the carpet.
    So Maureen turned elsewhere, questioning patients up and down the Valley but adding nothing to her knowledge. Few recalled having seen Hazel Potter during the last few months and those who had declared she was always alone. She persisted, however, and it was while casting about for some means of providing for the child’s future that she was approached by Keith Horsey, the son of the rector, whom she recalled as being a friend of the absent Ikey. Keith came to her with a practical suggestion. If Hazel would domicile herself within walking distance of Coombe Bay, he said, the rector was prepared to pay her a small weekly sum out of parish funds for cleaning the church and helping Marlowe, the sexton, keep the graveyard free of weeds. She thanked him and recalling that it was he who had summoned her the night the child was born asked if he or Ikey had any knowledge of the company Hazel kept. He was on the defensive at once.
    ‘Certainly not,’ he said, stiffly, ‘why should I have? Or Ikey either for that matter!’
    ‘Oh come, lad,’ she chaffed. ‘I’m not suggesting it was either one of you but you and that lass you’re courting walk the woods of an evening whereas Ikey, whenever he was home, was through them on horseback often enough. He’s sharp enough to have noticed and remembered if he did see her with anyone. Will you mention it when you write?’
    The boy turned aside and it seemed to her that he found the subject distasteful. Then she realised why, recalling that he had burst into the cave and seen the girl in labour and it had probably been a considerable shock to a person as shy and withdrawn as Keith Horsey. He said, finally, ‘I’ll write and ask Ikey but I don’t think he’ll know anything. Won’t the girl say?’
    ‘No,’ said Maureen, ‘she won’t but for your information that isn’t at all unusual in these cases.’
    ‘Why?’ he asked, genuinely surprised. ‘Why should that be so?’
    ‘All manner of reasons—fear, a bribe perhaps, or even mistaken loyalty. Sometimes they break down when they are faced with angry parents but this won’t happen in Hazel’s case, for that gypsy mother of hers thinks no more of a bastard than a litter of kittens under the stairs.’
    He flushed and she was sorry she hadn’t chosen her words more carefully but after repeating his father’s offer he left abruptly and she tackled her husband again, this time on the subject of accommodation for Hazel.
    ‘There’s a half-ruined cottage near the old mill a mile or so along the river road,’ she said. ‘Do you think Paul would do it up and let the girl have it on a peppercorn rent?’
    ‘I daresay he