a former tenant, farmed on, but the Willoughbys had never been a robust family and the asthmatic Francis, a confirmed bachelor, had no prospects of continuity. South again, at Low Coombe, sometimes known as The Dell, the two hundred acres once held by the Potter family were going through another of their periodical crises and the farmhouse, Paul believed, was a clearing house for the local black market, supervised by that old poacher, and First World War sniper, Smut Potter, and his avaricious French wife, Marie. He had no proof of this and Brissot, the French Canadian, was a sober enough fellow, but Brissot’s partner Jumbo behaved as if he would have been more at home behind a barrow in Aldgate than cultivating land and raising stock in a remote corner of the Westcountry. Paul had seen Smut and Jumbo hobnobbing together in the private bar of The Raven and their presence there was proof that they were up to something for, until recently, both had used the public bar where private conversation was out of the question. Smut, he felt, could be trusted to keep the Valley out of the police courts, if only for his landlord’s sake. The two men had a warm personal relationship that went right back to the Edwardian era but Jumbo Bellchamber was a relative newcomer to the Valley and his place there had been won by marrying one of the Potter girls, herself a reformed harlot.
It was in the attitude of these two men that Paul noticed the first signs of dry rot in the system of benevolent despotism that had prevailed in the Sorrel Valley for so long. Neither had ever been subservient but he had always looked upon them as friends, owing him the kind of allegiance still paid by people like Henry Pitts and other tenants who consulted him on major changes of policy. Since the summer of Dunkirk, however, and the passing of the imminent danger of invasion, Smut and Jumbo had gone their own way with the air of freeholders and this was too clean a break with tradition to pass unnoticed by a diehard like Paul Craddock. He had said nothing, not even to Claire, but he had brooded on the possible effects this new attitude might have upon post-war trends. So much was changing and so quickly, far more rapidly than it had changed under the terrible stresses of the last war. For a time, back in 1940, the unity of the Valley families had seemed as indestructible as in the days when he had first settled there, but once the fear of national extinction had receded there had been a curious reaction evidenced in so many ways. He saw it in the cynical approach of men like Smut to the rationing regulations, and in the prices charged by Smut’s wife to Royal Marines who patronised her shop. It was noticeable in the shallow, ultra-left chatter of Archer-Forbes’ wife at High Coombe, and in a general atmosphere of let’s-see-what-we-can-make-out-of-the-damned-war spirit that was like an epidemic that never ran its full course but was always breaking out in odd corners of the estate, like the pig-sties of the genial Henry Pitts, and could even be found in his own wife, Claire. It was nothing very much, he told himself, frankly admitting that his love for the Valley often made him a prig, but it was there, lurking in the superior smirk of that damned Archer-Forbes woman, or the casual ‘Giddon, Maister, us have to live, doan us?’ of Smut Potter, when Paul warned him that he could be prosecuted for hoarding eggs that should have gone elsewhere. And now, as though the sickness had suddenly appeared on his own doorstep, here was Rumble Patrick talking of abandoning his acres for the duration and opting for what was, despite all the claptrap they talked, the far less demanding life of the Forces.
He turned away from the estate map and, hands deep in breeches pockets, returned to the library, running his eye along a shelf of brown leather spines as though searching for a subject to take his mind off his immediate problem. He did not reach for a book however, for
It was in the attitude of these two men that Paul noticed the first signs of dry rot in the system of benevolent despotism that had prevailed in the Sorrel Valley for so long. Neither had ever been subservient but he had always looked upon them as friends, owing him the kind of allegiance still paid by people like Henry Pitts and other tenants who consulted him on major changes of policy. Since the summer of Dunkirk, however, and the passing of the imminent danger of invasion, Smut and Jumbo had gone their own way with the air of freeholders and this was too clean a break with tradition to pass unnoticed by a diehard like Paul Craddock. He had said nothing, not even to Claire, but he had brooded on the possible effects this new attitude might have upon post-war trends. So much was changing and so quickly, far more rapidly than it had changed under the terrible stresses of the last war. For a time, back in 1940, the unity of the Valley families had seemed as indestructible as in the days when he had first settled there, but once the fear of national extinction had receded there had been a curious reaction evidenced in so many ways. He saw it in the cynical approach of men like Smut to the rationing regulations, and in the prices charged by Smut’s wife to Royal Marines who patronised her shop. It was noticeable in the shallow, ultra-left chatter of Archer-Forbes’ wife at High Coombe, and in a general atmosphere of let’s-see-what-we-can-make-out-of-the-damned-war spirit that was like an epidemic that never ran its full course but was always breaking out in odd corners of the estate, like the pig-sties of the genial Henry Pitts, and could even be found in his own wife, Claire. It was nothing very much, he told himself, frankly admitting that his love for the Valley often made him a prig, but it was there, lurking in the superior smirk of that damned Archer-Forbes woman, or the casual ‘Giddon, Maister, us have to live, doan us?’ of Smut Potter, when Paul warned him that he could be prosecuted for hoarding eggs that should have gone elsewhere. And now, as though the sickness had suddenly appeared on his own doorstep, here was Rumble Patrick talking of abandoning his acres for the duration and opting for what was, despite all the claptrap they talked, the far less demanding life of the Forces.
He turned away from the estate map and, hands deep in breeches pockets, returned to the library, running his eye along a shelf of brown leather spines as though searching for a subject to take his mind off his immediate problem. He did not reach for a book however, for
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