The Blue Field Page 21

  We said goodnight to Vicky, Joe took her out into the kitchen to find a candle, while Sir Gerald opened the door and a few snowflakes came drifting in with the wind. My last memory of the evening is a rather odd one. Halliday as he put his glass down on the counter caught sight of the statue of the Long Man among the snuff-tins and suddenly leaned across and picked it up and set it on the counter in front of him. For a moment he stood smiling at it; and then he repeated once more that stray phrase which had pleased him earlier in the evening. ‘You cannot legislate against the wind.’ I don’t know what he meant by it, nor whether he really knew himself. But I thought, as I looked at the little figure, that there was a great tearing wind of laughter and mischief blowing there, like the gale which had swept William Hart through life; and that was a wind which never blew in Westminster. You couldn’t legislate against that!

  Then Vicky came back with the candle, and Halliday put his arm round her, and they went through the kitchen and up the creaking stairs. Just as I followed Mr Chorlton out, Mrs Trentfield bustled into the bar for a final tidying-up, saw the Long Man on the counter, and observed cheerfully as she put him back behind the snuff-tins:

  ‘Well, we do See Life, don’t we?’

  Epilogue

  Three or four weeks later I walked down to the churchyard with Mr Chorlton to see the memorial headstone which, we heard, had been put up on William Hart’s grave. It was a still sad day in January, and the village after its brief Saturnalia had gone back to the humdrum routine of sprout-picking. On the way to the churchyard we passed Alfie Perks’ smallholding and recognized as we went by the patched breeks of Jaky Jones, the sombre backside of Count Pniack, and the behinds of the five Frolick Virgins-bent over the sprout plants. Alfie in his gumboots went plop, squelch, plop, squelch through the mud. No, you certainly wouldn’t suspect my people of their turbulence and their wildness and their dreams!

  As we approached the lych-gate we met Pru coming out. As usual she was pushing her pram, in which the two tough little babies were happily sucking the paint off a couple of wooden toys which William Hart had carved long ago. The one baby licked the bowler hat of Jaky Jones, the other was chewing the feet of Joe Trentfield. Pru gave us a modestly downcast glance and a small, grave smile.

  We walked across the cut grass to the grave. Betty, Joan and Pru, we understood, had together composed the wording on their father’s headstone after days of cogitation and argument. The task could not have been an easy one; for the virtues and vices of William Hart were large ones, which might be chronicled in a whole book but could not baldly be set forth on a stone tablet. But in the end they hadn’t made a bad job of it: and with a strict regard for truth and an admirable ecomony of words they had paid their modest tribute to William. ‘Well ... I wonder,’ said Mr Chorlton, and we stood before the tombstone and read the lettering on the new stone. It said, briefly and simply:

  HERE LIES

  WILLIAM HART

  HE WAS SAID TO BE A

  DESCENDANT

  OF THE

  POET

  SHAKESPEARE

  R.I.P.

  * These Victorian Valentines are not, as you might suppose, pretty -pretty or simpering, but are mocking and mischievous, taunting the young women for whom they were destined with possessing long noses or spots on their faces, or accusing the young men of being idle boasters, bar-loungers and cads. The rhymes are as rude as the pictures. One goes like this:

  You advertise your charms in a very noisy way,

  Resolved to have a sweetheart, if it’s ever to be done,

  But after all your mighty efforts, there seems a strange delay,

  And while other girls have Lovers, alas you’ve nary none!

  To

  COMPTON MACKENZIE

  in affectionate regard

  This electronic edition published in July 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader

  Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

  Copyright © John Moore

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  ISBN: 9781448204069

  eISBN: 9781448203475

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