Groaning Spinney Page 3

  Jonathan did not accompany them because, in accordance with a humane custom introduced by Deborah, the maids had been granted Christmas leave from tea-time on Christmas Eve until ten o’clock in the morning of the day following Boxing Day, and he did not propose to leave his wife alone in a very lonely house. He did not realize that Deborah felt perfectly safe with Mrs. Bradley there.

  He lit a cigarette, stoked up the fire, went out to the kitchen to impound sausage rolls and mince pies in case his guests came in hungry, and then he sat down, picked up a book, and took no more notice of time. But at a quarter past eleven there came a quiet tap at the window. Jonathan was not at all startled. He had been accustomed for years (before his marriage) to admitting eccentric or delinquent friends by all manner of entrances to all manner of enclosures—school dormitories, College rooms, lodgings, fortified places of various types in various parts of the world, and once, against Admiralty regulations, to a submarine. So now he stepped over to the window and asked quietly who was there.

  The reassuring and well-known voice of Bill Fullalove answered him.

  ‘Thought I wouldn’t knock at the door, in case I disturbed your missus.’

  ‘All right,’ said Jonathan. ‘I’ll go to the door and let you in. Come round to the front, will you? … Well, now, what can we do for you?’

  ‘Oh, nothing, really. Tiny and I had a sudden flap lest we’d got the time of the invitation all wrong. You can’t want us for mid-day dinner and supper to-morrow as well as to tea and dinner on Boxing Day, can you?’

  ‘Yes, of course we can, you old ass! Why ever not?’

  ‘Well——’ Bill looked embarrassed. ‘Fact is, it’s all over the village that you’ve sent your cook and the maids home for Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and so we rather wondered—especially as we’ve saddled you with Obury and Mansell——’

  ‘Whether you’ll be asked to do the washing up? Well, you will! So if that puts you off, say so now.’

  ‘Oh, Lord, no! Only——’ he eyed the three empty glasses.

  ‘Yes, Mansell and Obury have gone out ghost-hunting in Groaning Spinney,’ said Jonathan, grinning.

  ‘But to-night it’s as black as a parson’s hat,’ said Bill, ‘even out in the open! I know my way blindfold, but I’ve brought my torch, all the same. Anyway, I believe it’s going to snow. Oh, well, I’ll push off.’ He eyed the decanter wistfully. Jonathan, who was a strong-minded, non-suggestible man, put the decanter into the sideboard cupboard and took out a bottle of gin. He grinned again as he put it opposite his guest. Bill laughed, and helped himself.

  ‘You’ll get one peg, and one only, to-morrow evening, and the same on Boxing Day,’ stated Jonathan. ‘That’s the only bottle of Scotch I’ve been able to scrounge from anywhere, and I’ve had to open it already.’

  Bill swallowed his drink, and had been gone half an hour when Mansell and Obury returned. They had signs and wonders to report. Between mouthfuls of sausage roll they reported them.

  ‘Well,’ said Jonathan, gathering what he could from the tale, ‘everybody round here has seen him, so why not you?’

  ‘But we couldn’t have seen him!’ said Mansell. ‘Had it been moonlight, I’d have thought my eyesight was playing me tricks, but it was as black as pitch except for this queer light shining on a dead-white face. I’m convinced it was merely somebody playing the fool.’

  ‘Then it must have been Bill Fullalove,’ said Jonathan. ‘He dropped in while you were gone. You’d better have it out with him to-morrow. He’s coming to dinner.’

  ‘When did he come?’ asked Mansell.

  ‘Oh, elevenish, I believe.’

  ‘And when did he leave?’

  ‘The same. I mean, he wasn’t here more than ten minutes, I should say.’

  ‘Must have been Bill,’ said Mansell.

  ‘Rot!’ said Obury, flatly. ‘It was the ghost. I won’t be done out of my spook!’

  Mrs. Bradley, whose French chef, Henri, would never allow her to cook at home, begged permission to help with the Christmas dinner, and she and her nephew had the kitchen to themselves. Deborah, who was inclined at first to be obstinate and to demand the position of housewife, was turned out gently and firmly by her husband, and threatened with punitive measures if she returned.

  So she went to church, leaving the new puppy and his mother at the farm, which was on her way, to be cared for there until the puppy was weaned. Obury and Mansell stoked up the drawing-room fire and settled down to enjoy a thoroughly lazy Christmas morning. They had offered to accompany Deborah to church, but were greatly relieved when she merely laughed. They watched from the window until they saw her join Will North, the tall gamekeeper, at the junction of the drive and the lane, and hand him over the puppy, and then they sighed luxuriously and settled themselves in deep chairs on either side of the fire.

  ‘Shall you recognize the ghost if he turns out to be Bill Fullalove?’ Jonathan enquired, coming in to find out whether they wanted anything. Mansell and Obury were not at all certain that they would.

  ‘Of course, we’ve both known Bill for some time,’ said Mansell, ‘but that rather sickening face we saw last night looked simply like nothing on earth. What did you think, Obury?’

  ‘Oh, I agree. Bill or not, I shouldn’t recognize it. But I’m still convinced it was the ghost. Anyhow, if it was Bill, well, although we went badger-watching together here during the summer, I couldn’t swear to him at that distance and with that ghastly light on his face.’

  They discussed the phenomenon of the ghost until Jonathan was needed in the kitchen and Mansell became bored and went to sleep. Obury then played with the cat, smoked, ate chocolates, read a novel and contrived to amuse himself until the busy Jonathan, his dark locks disordered and his middle girt about with a large white apron, rushed in again, this time to give his guests some drinks.

  Obury woke Mansell, and as they were helping themselves the Fullaloves appeared at the front door, and almost immediately afterwards Deborah arrived from church, bringing with her the principal of the Emergency Training College, Miss Hughes, who had been invited for Christmas dinner and for as long as she cared to stay.

  Miss Hughes proved to be a red-haired, hazel-eyed woman of forty-five. She had been for twenty years an outstanding success as a schoolmistress, although her first few years at her schoolmarming had been hell. She was highly intelligent and very strong-willed. Her intelligence saved her from pig-headedness. Her few friends she had made for life and their fondness and loyalty never faltered. She had, rather strangely, no enemies. She had been the third child of a family of twelve, and life in such a very large household had made her a competent improvisor, and her Welsh blood had supplied her with imagination and warm sympathy. She was hard-headed, too, as so many Welsh-women have always had to be, and to run a college, with its problems of discipline and catering, its servants, its workmen, its outside contacts with Education Committee and Ministry, and its own internal problems too numerous and, individually, too unimportant to name, came to her as second nature.

  One great stroke of luck she had had, and that was in the situation of the College. The Cotswolds were not the hills of Wales, but they warmed her heart and reconciled her emotionally to what she knew she had sacrificed in leaving her own Welsh valley.

  She had made it one of her first duties to call upon the tenants of the ancient manor house, and had taken to Jonathan immediately. Deborah she loved as she would have loved a daughter, and when she heard that Jonathan’s lovely wife had lectured in English for a short time at the famous training college of Cartaret, their friendship was complete, and it followed naturally that Miss Hughes would spend Christmas with the Bradleys instead of remaining in solitary grandeur in the house on the opposite hill.

  ‘Ghost?’ said Miss Hughes, having listened with great interest to a conversation between Mansell and Bill Fullalove, in which Mansell challenged Bill to deny that he had been the ghost. ‘I didn’t know you had a ghost so near at hand.’


  ‘Oh, but we have,’ said Jonathan. ‘A very well-authenticated ghost, too, and extremely well-behaved. He never comes nearer the house than that gate over which Mansell and Obury saw him leaning. I’ve been digging him up since we’ve been here. He’s the Reverend Horatius Pile, who skippered this parish from 1801 until 1857, but nobody seems to know for certain how he came to be found dead, leaning over the gate. Yes, of course I’ll take you along to see the gate. Have some more sherry. Aunt Adela brought it with her, so I know it’s all right.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what Obury saw, or Mansell, either,’ said Bill. ‘But, whatever they saw, it wasn’t me. I went back through the stable-courtyard and up the village street. It was a darned sight easier way to take on such a pitch-black night. The last lap, up to our place from the village, was quite bad enough. I certainly didn’t propose to walk back through Groaning Spinney. I didn’t want to bash my brains out against an immemorial elm.’

  ‘They’re mostly beeches,’ said Obury.

  ‘Anyhow, I thought the ghost only appeared by moonlight,’ put in Deborah.

  ‘Ah, you’d probably only see it by moonlight,’ said Miss Hughes. ‘But that wouldn’t necessarily prove that it wasn’t there at other times. You’ve heard about ghosts which are only footsteps, but nothing seen? Well, in my opinion, such a ghost can be seen by animals, particularly by dogs, who are well-known to be susceptible to supernormal presences.’

  ‘Talking of dogs,’ said Mrs. Bradley, ‘it did seem as though the gamekeeper’s dog, Worry, disliked that gate the other day.’

  The story of Worry was received respectfully by everybody except Mansell, who continued to suggest that as there were no such things as ghosts, even a dog would not be able to see them, and Bill Fullalove who, rather surprisingly, said that dogs were fools and cowards. Tiny Fullalove challenged this, and stated that a good dog was better than a good man any day. The argument was not entirely good-natured, although both cousins conducted it smilingly. Mrs. Bradley turned the conversation with great adroitness on to the subject of the Roman antiquities found in the neighbourhood, and the subject of ghosts was shelved in favour of a discussion of the finds at Chedworth.

  Ghosts cropped up again, however, on Boxing Day morning. Snow fell on Christmas night, and in the morning the sun shone brilliantly on pine branches laden with soft crystals, and upon hills of purple-shadowed silver. Obury proposed to take a walk, and invited others to join him. Jonathan intended to remain at home in order to prepare the vegetables for Boxing Day lunch; Deborah was not anxious to walk over snow, which she disliked; Mrs. Bradley was to help with the cooking again—her one chance in the year, she explained, to practise the fascinating art, so Obury, Mansell and Miss Hughes took a long cast upwards into the hills, proposing to bear left at the top of the rise and to return across the snow-covered fields which bordered the manor house wood.

  They returned to find that two more guests had arrived; these were the village choirmaster, a delicate-looking young man with effeminate hands and a cruel mouth, and a certain Mr. Baird, a retired stockbroker, a widower, who lived with his man-servant next door to the doctor in a modern and delightful little house just past the mill.

  The introductions and greetings concluded, the stalwarts back from their walk had news to impart.

  ‘The ghost leaves footmarks,’ said Obury.

  ‘Not boots or shoes, either,’ added Miss Hughes.

  ‘More like stockinged feet,’ said Mansell, laughing. ‘Anybody here guilty?’

  ‘Let’s all go and look,’ suggested Jonathan. How this suggestion might have been received remained obscure, for at that moment a knock at the front door, followed by the clanging sound of its ancient bell, announced the arrival of the Fullalove cousins, who had returned home on Christmas night and now had come to spend Boxing Day. Cocktails having been handed round by the attentive host, and strange but palatable snacks having been supplied as the result of Mrs. Bradley’s experiments in the kitchen, the conversation became split like the effects of light in a prism, and the ghost’s footmarks were left for the time in limbo, that magic fourth-dimension of the psychologists.

  Mrs. Bradley, returning from the kitchen with reinforcements of the dishes she had concocted, decided that her strong feelings about Tiny Fullalove had not altered at this second meeting, and she also found that she distrusted the bluff Bill as much as she disliked his brown-faced, jovial cousin. Bill was good company; there was no doubt about that. He was a man of wide experience and knowledge. He was good-humoured, good-looking and attractively jolly. No one would share her feeling about him except Miss Hughes, she thought.

  She tried to rationalize her emotional reactions, but about both cousins there was something which repelled her; something which, to her analytical mind, did not ring true. She could not account for the feeling, for Jonathan most obviously liked Bill, and Deborah’s little revelation that it was within Tiny’s scope to play the wolf with a lovely girl affected Mrs. Bradley not at all. Deborah, like most lovely girls, was very well able to lob back undesirable passes, particularly since her most happy and satisfying marriage, and a layman who never deviated from the path of monastic virtue was a phenomenon which, so far, Mrs. Bradley had not encountered. It was not, therefore, Tiny as a potential home-and-heart-breaker to whom Mrs. Bradley objected, nor to Bill as a lively good fellow. No; there was something else; but what it was she could not, so far, hit upon. She put the subject out of her mind and joined in the animated noise of a roomful of people, most of whom were obviously and heartily enjoying themselves.

  Boxing Day lunch, tea and dinner passed pleasantly enough, and immediately dinner was over the Fullaloves and their two friends went off. Mrs. Bradley was interested to observe the reactions of the others at their going, for it seemed early to break up the party.

  The first thing she became aware of was that their going did not break up the party at all. The village choirmaster, deep in a discussion with Miss Hughes of the associations between heraldry and mass psychology, seemed not to notice their going. Deborah was obviously glad to see the last of them, and Baird, a semi-bald, shrewd Scotsman, looked up at them, nodded, and continued to talk to Deborah about the Edinburgh festival. Mansell and Obury were to return at about eleven, which accounted, perhaps, for the off-hand nature of the farewells.

  ‘That’s that,’ said Jonathan, coming back from seeing the four men off. ‘Now, then, people! Let’s have some more port.’

  ‘I thought you liked them,’ Deborah remarked, passing on the bottle without filling her own glass.

  ‘I did, more or less, Bill especially, until this Christmas,’ replied her husband. ‘But there’s been something a bit wet-blanket about them to-day—or am I liverish? Anyway, to be frank and inhospitable, I’m sorry I asked them—all four of them—especially Tiny and Bill—and I’m glad to see the back of them, and yet I don’t really know why.’

  ‘I hope it’s not my fault,’ said the young choirmaster suddenly. ‘I had a bit of a row with Tiny. He caught some of my choirboys on Christmas Eve pinching holly. He clouted them on the ear, and pretty hard. I’m not going to stand for that, and I told him so. In any case, the holly wasn’t even on his ground. It was on yours, Mr. Bradley. I’ve threatened him with a summons if he touches my kids again. He can keep his Indian ideas for Indians, and I hope they cut his throat for him, at that!’

  ‘How long have you been choirmaster here?’ Mrs. Bradley tactfully enquired; for the young man spoke hoarsely and with what Mrs. Bradley privately thought to be exaggerated and dramatic anger.

  ‘Two years and a bit,’ he replied, as though glad of the change of subject. ‘I’m really a pianist, you know. I used to accompany professional singers in London, but I collected a bit of a packet during the war, and lost the use of one wrist. It’s not much better now, but I can manage to play the organ in church. Anyway, the doctor told me I was crazy to stay in Town when what I needed were country air and a quiet atmosphere. Out here a room was going,
and so I took it, and, although I don’t earn much, I manage to get along.’ He looked challengingly at the company.

  ‘And have you benefited from the change of environment?’ Mrs. Bradley discreetly enquired.

  ‘Well, I might,’ said the young man, flushing, ‘if I didn’t straightway find … Oh, I’m sorry! You’ve had it once. Anyway, I can’t stick Anglo-Indians. My father was one, and he and I …’

  ‘I’ll have a word with Tiny myself,’ said Jonathan. ‘If the boys were on my land I suppose he thought he had a right to interfere. Boys are destructive little beasts, and it’s part of their lives to be so. Still, of course——’

  ‘Yes, he is your agent,’ put in Miss Hughes, without waiting for the sentence to be concluded, ‘and boys can be cheeky and provocative. We should need to know the whole tale before we could judge. In my opinion——’

  The young choirmaster seemed prepared to make an angry reply to her eminently reasonable remarks, but he thought better of it when he met Miss Hughes’ amused but challenging stare, and merely replied that he thought he could trust his choir boys to tell the truth even if they were not successful in the impossible task of shaming the devil.

  ‘“Truth, they say, lives in a well,”’ quoted Mrs. Bradley solemnly. ‘“Why I vow I ne’er could see; let the water-drinkers tell; there she’ll always stay for me.”’ In support of this statement she helped herself to port, a hybrid beverage which she had always detested. At this point Mansell and Obury came back.

  ‘We didn’t go all the way with them,’ they said.

  When young Emming had gone to his lodging, Jonathan remarked, ‘First time I knew his father was an Anglo-Indian. I heard he was a London man, and that young Emming was—Oh, well! Not our business. What shall we all do to-morrow?’

  ‘That young man reminds me of somebody,’ said Mrs. Bradley, refusing to be side-tracked. ‘Tell me more about him, please.’