brown, sliding back and forth over their pumping haunches.
The procession receded, reached the further bend, was gone. The youth whimpered again; he seemed an exceptionally fainthearted lad. The Rector took him under the arms and dragged him to his feet.
âMavis Trent weâll hear about later,â the Rector said, âand no two ways about it. Meanwhile you come along with us to the Fete and have a word with the doctor about your bum.â
2
In all its two hundred and thirty years, Aller House - designed by Hawksmoor, destined for ornamentation by William Kent which never eventuated - had never been properly occupied even for a single night. A series of dooms had attended it: ever since the first Sir George Stanbury had run decisively out of money in the course of building it, its owners had regularly gone mad or bankrupt or to the colonies, and it had continued to stand empty even during the Hitler war, when accommodation was at a premium. Now Clarence Tully had it - but not to live in; he had bought it for the arable which was its only recommendation other than the antiquarian and the aesthetic, had converted part of what had been going to be kitchens into a ground-floor flatlet, and had leased this at a nominal rent to the Major, on the thin pretext that the place needed a caretaker, ifonly to keep an eye on the occasional parties of sightseers from Museum Societies and other such bodies. The Major, who had only his pension - and that less than it should have been, thanks to a bureaucratic muddle at the time of the granting of Indian independence - had accepted this arrangement without false pride, as indeed almost everyone in the neighbourhood accepted almost all Clarence Tullyâs numerous dispositions for their comfort: he was a man whose unaffected goodwill made churlishness virtually impossible.
Either Hawksmoor had been in an uncharacteristically austere mood when planning Aller House, or else he had surreptitiously delegated his tiresome provincial task to some apprentice uninterested in the baroque. The place was really quite plain, its central mass rising in three well-proportioned storeys to a hipped roof with a balustraded surround, its two equal two-storey wings (flat-roofed) elegant, but apart from their balustrades, unadorned; its only serious concession to decorativeness lay in the pair of large circular bas-reliefs, depicting tangles of robust, helmeted Roman matrons, which were situated equidistant on either side of the pillared main door. Though very little had ever been done in the way of upkeep, Clarence Tully having confined himself to replacing two or three broken windows, weathering had been uniform, and the general effect was by no means dilapidated. Moreover, the gardens at the front had been kept under some sort of control, even though now reduced to trees, grass and shrubs exclusively. Their main feature was the huge lawn, bisected by the stony, unsurfaced driveway, where rankness had been kept at bay partly by sheep and partly by the occasional attentions of a man with a rotary mower: Clarence Tully was tidy-minded, and even on this white-elephant segment of his property had no intention of letting nature get the upper hand.
On the Aller House lawn, twice yearly, the Burraford Church Fetes were held.
The youth Scorer, fearing for his rump, was wheeling his motor-cycle, not riding it; his original destination abandoned without even a pretence of argument, he trailed along the lane, sweating lavishly, behind Fen and the Rector. Presently they came to where the action was. And it was a surprising amountof action, Fen thought, for a place as small as Burraford: despite its size, the Aller House lawn was crowded, as also was the adjacent field where cars could be parked.
âPeople come to our Fetes from miles around,â the Rector said complacently. âAnd it isnât all women, either; the men come because they can get pickled in the beer tent and enter their tykes
The procession receded, reached the further bend, was gone. The youth whimpered again; he seemed an exceptionally fainthearted lad. The Rector took him under the arms and dragged him to his feet.
âMavis Trent weâll hear about later,â the Rector said, âand no two ways about it. Meanwhile you come along with us to the Fete and have a word with the doctor about your bum.â
2
In all its two hundred and thirty years, Aller House - designed by Hawksmoor, destined for ornamentation by William Kent which never eventuated - had never been properly occupied even for a single night. A series of dooms had attended it: ever since the first Sir George Stanbury had run decisively out of money in the course of building it, its owners had regularly gone mad or bankrupt or to the colonies, and it had continued to stand empty even during the Hitler war, when accommodation was at a premium. Now Clarence Tully had it - but not to live in; he had bought it for the arable which was its only recommendation other than the antiquarian and the aesthetic, had converted part of what had been going to be kitchens into a ground-floor flatlet, and had leased this at a nominal rent to the Major, on the thin pretext that the place needed a caretaker, ifonly to keep an eye on the occasional parties of sightseers from Museum Societies and other such bodies. The Major, who had only his pension - and that less than it should have been, thanks to a bureaucratic muddle at the time of the granting of Indian independence - had accepted this arrangement without false pride, as indeed almost everyone in the neighbourhood accepted almost all Clarence Tullyâs numerous dispositions for their comfort: he was a man whose unaffected goodwill made churlishness virtually impossible.
Either Hawksmoor had been in an uncharacteristically austere mood when planning Aller House, or else he had surreptitiously delegated his tiresome provincial task to some apprentice uninterested in the baroque. The place was really quite plain, its central mass rising in three well-proportioned storeys to a hipped roof with a balustraded surround, its two equal two-storey wings (flat-roofed) elegant, but apart from their balustrades, unadorned; its only serious concession to decorativeness lay in the pair of large circular bas-reliefs, depicting tangles of robust, helmeted Roman matrons, which were situated equidistant on either side of the pillared main door. Though very little had ever been done in the way of upkeep, Clarence Tully having confined himself to replacing two or three broken windows, weathering had been uniform, and the general effect was by no means dilapidated. Moreover, the gardens at the front had been kept under some sort of control, even though now reduced to trees, grass and shrubs exclusively. Their main feature was the huge lawn, bisected by the stony, unsurfaced driveway, where rankness had been kept at bay partly by sheep and partly by the occasional attentions of a man with a rotary mower: Clarence Tully was tidy-minded, and even on this white-elephant segment of his property had no intention of letting nature get the upper hand.
On the Aller House lawn, twice yearly, the Burraford Church Fetes were held.
The youth Scorer, fearing for his rump, was wheeling his motor-cycle, not riding it; his original destination abandoned without even a pretence of argument, he trailed along the lane, sweating lavishly, behind Fen and the Rector. Presently they came to where the action was. And it was a surprising amountof action, Fen thought, for a place as small as Burraford: despite its size, the Aller House lawn was crowded, as also was the adjacent field where cars could be parked.
âPeople come to our Fetes from miles around,â the Rector said complacently. âAnd it isnât all women, either; the men come because they can get pickled in the beer tent and enter their tykes
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