Free Long Summer Day by R. F. Delderfield Page B

although perhaps that’s a bit unfair on the girl. Her father, Captain Bruce Lovell, is the family ne’er-do-well and even he is only a cousin. He took one of the Lovell houses at Coombe Bay after his retirement from the Gunners and was quite a charge on them all until he remarried. His wife was a Voysey, very wealthy family from Derbyshire I understand. But in marrying her Bruce bit off more than he could chew, or so I’m told. The girl’s been very troublesome too. She was to have married Ralph, the younger son of the old man, but Kruger put paid to that of course.’
    As always when he discussed the Lovells Rudd’s manner hardened but somewhere at the back of Paul’s mind a shutter opened and the girl’s display of anger at being discovered in the empty house began to make sense.
    ‘Was it a family match or were they fond of one another?’ he asked but at that the agent’s casualness left him and he looked at Paul with a kind of exasperation.
    ‘Look here, if you’ve been smitten by Grace Lovell my advice is forget her. She’s tarred with the same old brush, an indiscipline that can show itself in obstinacy, bloodymindedness, or a sort of madness. There’s congenital rottenness in that family somewhere along the line. Sometimes I used to dismiss it as arrogance coming from always having had too much money, but other times … well, I’m not going to bore you with more confessions. They’re all dead now, at least, the three I had to do with are, and I’m done with them, thank God, so take another glass before you go to bed and tell me what you thought of the house up yonder.’
    They talked for a spell of the fabric of the building and Rudd told him something of its growth from a manor farmhouse, older by far than any other farm on the estate, to its present unmanageable size. The main changes were made in the early eighteen-twenties, on the proceeds of prize-money won by the first Lovell’s brother, who had been lucky during the long war with France. Paul listened with assumed interest but his mind was not much exercised by Rudd’s estimates of how much it would cost to put Shallowford and surrounding property in order after two decades of neglect. It was engaged in following a flash of blue beyond the ford and across country to the sea. ‘Smitten’ was the word the agent had used, and Paul was regretting now that he had betrayed interest in the girl. Rudd, however, interpreted his polite affirmatives as a desire for bed and presently arose, knocking out his pipe.
    ‘We’ll do the round tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you the worst part first, over in the Coombe, and then we’ll look for something better at Hermitage and Four Winds in the west. Good night to you, Mr Craddock. There’s a candle on the hall tray.’
    He went up and Paul soon followed but it was a long time before he slept. His wound ached from the long ride and the owls in Hermitage Wood were hunting and making a great deal of noise about it. Soon the moon rose, flooding the tiny chamber with a silver light, and at last Craddock slept, most of his doubts unresolved.
    II
    N obody could have said with certainty how the Potters of Low Coombe received warning of The Prospect’s visit. They were usually the first to get news, even of insignificant events and Smut Potter, the poacher, who saw Craddock’s arrival at the station probably passed the word around. The Potters lived with a communal ear to the ground and could hear and interpret every rustle of rumour between the sea and the far side of the moor beyond the railway line. The green basin they occupied under the wooded, sandstone bluff suggested a gypsy encampment but in place of caravans were ramshackle buildings centred on a ruinous cob farmhouse and life revolved around the pump which, at this time of year, was hidden by docks, chickweed and shoulder-high nettles. A long clothes-line stretched from the pump to the nearest oak and along it, on any fine day, hung an