The libertines, p.1
The Libertines, page 1
part #10 of Masters and Green Series
THE LIBERTINES
Douglas Clark
© Douglas Clark 1978
Douglas Clark has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1978 by Victor Gollancz Ltd.
This edition published in 2019 by Endeavour Media Ltd.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter One
Samuel Verity, farmer, of Ravendale Farm, Ravendale Bridge, Yorkshire, stood at the entrance to the big, black cowshed and peered into the gloom of the interior. Verity was fifty-seven years old, five feet ten, and heavily built. Anybody, anywhere in the country, would have recognised him as a farmer. The weatherbeaten cheeks, the strong, stubby, work-worn hands, the short greying hair and the fawn tweed suit all gave the immediate impression of a practical farmer and—judging by the well-fed look of him and the quality of his tweeds—of a successful, prosperous farmer.
“Are y’in there, Joss?”
“I’m here, mister Sam.”
Joss Hawk appeared at the entrance of one of the stalls. “Just fixing the last of these privvies,” he called. “I’ve given them all a fresh coat of limewash and there’s nowt to do but put up the bagging o’er t’doors.”
Verity walked in to inspect. The big cowshed was old, built in the days when there was nothing but hand-milking on the farm. Now there was a new shippon, built of concrete blocks with a corrugated asbestos roof, electric milking machines and a special sort of floor. This last, which was of metal grills set some inches above a concrete base, allowed dung and urine to percolate through, to be hosed away to tanks from which the slurry could then be taken for spraying on the land as fertiliser. But the old cowhouse remained: York stone walls, six feet high, topped by horizontal planks to the eaves. Verity kept it in good order; pitched outside and lime-washed inside, it was used as a machine store for fifty weeks of the year, and then for just two weeks in high summer—the last week in June and the first week in July each year—it was emptied of ploughs and harrows and turned into a lavatory and ablution block for the Libertines. Four of the former stalls were furnished with chemical toilets. The end wall carried a trough, made by the simple expedient of bending sheets of corrugated iron and nailing them up to run off into the corner drain. The wall opposite the stalls had a row of cold taps over a bench holding washing-up bowls. At the end of the bench was a large electric domestic wash boiler, with a pannikin for ladling. Hessian had been strung on wires at strategic points to give privacy to the toilets and urinal, while there were duck boards below the wash bench and small mirrors above it. All very spartan, but accepted with pleasure by the Libertines.
“Hurry it up, Joss. It’s after six. Time you were getting home to the wife and kids.”
“Kids, maybe. Not the wife. She’s over in’t barn with Becky Althorpe and t’missus, doin’ that up.”
Verity grunted to show he had heard what Joss had said and then paced round the cowshed like a sergeant-major taking a last look round ‘stables’ before the inspecting officer is due. “Make sure you’ve got plenty of sheep dip down that drain, Joss. Something to kill any smell.”
“Jeyes is best.”
“And you want to get a bigger light bulb.”
Joss, stringing the hessian curtain before the last lavatory stall, answered that he’d got a couple of 150 watts handy and he’d put them in later, when he’d got the step ladder.
Verity stood still and silent in the middle of the packed-earth floor, as hard as iron from decades of trampling by men and beasts, compacted down with urine and animal droppings into a surface that only a pneumatic drill could break.
“Who’s playing tomorrer?” asked Joss.
“Imps.”
“They’re good this season, I’m hearing.”
“Same as last year, but a twelvemonth older.”
“So’m your lot.”
“There’s a chance you’ll be wanted, Joss. I’ll let you know tomorrow at dinnertime.”
“Dinnertime? You reckon to start at eleven.”
“Not tomorrow. The Imps can’t make it. Two o’clock.”
“You’ll have a full team. If not, Mister Teddy’ll play.”
“You’ll maybe be wanted to umpire, though, Joss.”
“I’ll be there. Somebody who can’t make it by then?”
“Two or three of them doubtful till tomorrow night.”
“That’ll be Mister Gordon and Mister Huckle, I reckon.”
“They can’t get away until their maintenance engineers have made a report. Their workers on night shift don’t finish till six in the morning. It takes a few hours to get round all the static plant and make their minds up about what’s to be done while the works are closed.”
Joss had finished the last curtain and now went out to fetch the step ladder. Verity walked slowly to the shed door. He stood there looking about him and felt satisfaction with what he saw. The old farmhouse was still there, off to his right, as it always had been. Generations of Veritys had farmed here, but it had fallen to him to make the big changes. Where the midden had once been was now a hard standing for vehicles and tractors. Newish Dutch barns housed the ricks. The old barn, too beautiful and solid to demolish, still stood alongside the cowshed, separated from it by a lane a dozen or so feet wide, running down to a five-barred gate and into the orchard of old trees, interspersed with new plantings to retain the beauty while keeping up the yield. The Libertines would live in the barn for the next fortnight. They liked it, otherwise they wouldn’t come. A vast barn with lovely old arched beams and an upper floor for half its length. A flight of open steps ran up to this old bale loft where, by now, ten or twelve camp beds would be lined up as in a barrack room. Under the loft, from which hung a couple of heavy canvas rick sheets to ensure privacy, was another half dozen beds. The remainder of the floor was known as the mess. Down one side were trestle tables to take a score of people. Half way down the other side, another table served as a makeshift bar. In the corner to the left inside the door, in a stall, stood a bottle-gas cooker on which Mrs Hawk and Mrs Althorpe cooked for the Libertines.
Verity filled his pipe and Joss came back with the folding steps. As he passed his boss, Joss said: “I can hear summat’s coming.”
Verity nodded. He could have said exactly where the car was. It was, when first heard, on the lane in the bottoms between the small field with the poultry sheds and the bit of land his son Teddy called the Gaza strip—an inconvenient, narrow offshoot of the seven-acre pasture, which yielded good hay but was difficult to cut by tractor. To get there, the car had come off the main road and had turned south-west down the dale until the point where the track turned due south to cross the bridge over the stream—the Raven—that gave the dale its name. After that, the lane turned slightly west again and climbed the south side of the valley, half way up which was the farm itself. It was when cars made the south turn that they could be heard. They grew louder as they crossed the hump back—their engine notes seeming to crescendo in congruence with the shape of the bridge, then, as they revved to climb to the house, came a slight rise in engine note which, by some trick of acoustics, the valley magnified as if a skilled organist were manipulating some giant swell stop.
Verity listened. This one was powerful. A sports car. He guessed at Stephen Dunstable. Stephen liked fast cars. A young man with some of the—to Verity—modern drawbacks of attitude and behaviour, leavened, thank God, with some of the commonsense standards and a great deal of the character of his parents. Stephen had paid a deal of attention to Sarah, Verity’s daughter, during last year’s cricket fortnight, and since then, as he understood it, they had met whenever possible. Verity didn’t object to the friendship, but wished that Stephen, if he were intending to continue a close friendship with Sarah, would grow up just a little more.
The car, long and low and green, turned right off the track, swept past the front of the house and came to rest on the hard standing a yard or two away from Verity.
“Do we leave it here as usual, Mr Verity?”
“Back her up to the hedge when you’ve unloaded, Stephen. We may be a bit pushed for space.”
“Evening, Sam.”
The passenger door opened and William Dunstable, Stephen’s father, emerged and stretched his arms and legs as if pleased to be free from his cramped position. “We had to leave Dorothy a car and she didn’t want this spacecraft, so I had to come up with the boy. It’s like travelling in a jet propelled soapbox. You feel your backside is so near the ground you ought to be wearing steel-lined Y fronts.”
“How are you William?”
“How’s yourself, Sam?” The two men, of an age, shook hands.
“Can’t complain.”
Dunstable looked about him. “I’ll bet you can’t. It’s running out of your ears.”
“And I suppose solicitors are going bankrupt in their hundreds?”
William smiled and looked to see that Stephen was not within earshot. “I shouldn’t say it—wouldn’t say it in his hearing—but Stephen seems to be knuckling down a bit these days and I have to admit he’s an asset. These youngsters can’t recognise difficulties, Sam. They’re less inhibited than we were at that age. Venturesome enough to jump over pitfalls you and I would have treated warily at their time
of life. He’s a tonic in the practice. My other two partners, incidentally, agree with me, so I hope you don’t think I’m banging the drum. I’m merely saying it to indicate we’re still afloat.”
“I’d never have said you’d blow the lad’s trumpet, William. And I’m pleased to hear he’s pulling his weight. So many of them don’t.”
“I’m not sure of my facts, Sam, but I seem to think your girl has been a good influence on him.”
“Sarah? Are they close enough for her to influence him?”
“As I said, I’m not sure of my facts. Just an impression.”
Verity grunted. The two old friends stood in companionable silence as Stephen offloaded the car. The last item to come out was an old-fashioned, brown canvas cricket bag.
“Still got it, William!”
“They make them of plastic these days. They don’t last like that one has. Not that I use it much.” He turned to his companion. “We’re too old for it now, Sam.”
“Not many of the originals left, William.”
“Four of us, is it?”
“Three this year. You, me and old Tom Middleton.”
“Ah, yes, Tom! He must be even more past it than us, Sam. I saw him—when would it be?—January or some such time—and he was so crippled he could hardly move. I thought he must have got arthritis, but he insisted he hadn’t and that whatever it was would wear off.”
“Actually it isn’t arthritis. It’s something to do with his arteries.”
“He’s told you what it is?”
“He wrote, saying he wouldn’t stay in the barn, but he’d like to bring a caravan if I didn’t mind. Said it would be more comfortable for him and he could bring his wife to look after him.”
“Look after him? He needs nursing?”
“Apparently not. He said something about his complaint coming and going.”
“Hardening of the arteries, you said? I’ve long suspected it. He’s an irascible old devil. Always was.”
“You reckon hardening of the arteries makes a chap bad tempered?”
“I’m no doctor, but I always associate it with having a hobnailed liver, and that makes a chap peevish I believe. Don’t you remember, when we were in the army, he was always bad-tempered with his men? It’s always been a mystery to me why, when we first discussed forming the Libertines, just after the war ended, we invited him to join us.”
“We didn’t. He was there, in the mess, and he played for the Division that summer. He knew what was going on and he invited himself. He’s pulled his weight since, too.”
“I know. But there wasn’t one of us original members didn’t have a run-in with him at some time, and when we started getting younger men in, they became even more outspoken about his attitude than we were. I can never remember calling him ‘a pompous old git’ no matter what I felt about him, but young Gardner did last year—and with some justification to my way of thinking.”
“Well, he won’t be playing this year, and if he lives in his caravan we might avoid any unpleasantness.”
“Let’s hope so. But what’s he coming for if he’s not going to play?”
Verity shrugged. “He said he could score or stand as umpire perhaps. Anyway, he’s bringing his usual contribution. We’re getting all the booze from him—except beer—at wholesale rates and he does furnish the bar for us.”
“I should hope so. I suspect that the only reason we’ve tolerated him all these years is because he’s a wine-shipper and can produce the goods on demand.”
“He was also a useful bowler, William.”
“True. Fiery, for about four overs. Then he got tired, and if the skipper took him off because he’d slowed down he got the sulks.”
Verity smiled. “You don’t like him, William.”
“And I’m not the only one. The young abominate him.”
Verity didn’t reply because Stephen Dunstable came from the barn towards them. “You’re down below, Dad. I’ve put your gear near the corner bed. Old’uns are given the privilege of not having to climb the stairs, Joss says. Blokes like me are on the shelf.”
“At least somebody has some consideration for age.”
Stephen didn’t reply to his father. Instead he turned to Verity. “Would it be in order for me to call at the house, sir? That’s if Sarah is there?”
“She’s there. No doubt she’ll be expecting you, since she couldn’t have missed your arrival in that . . . that . . .”
“It’s a Lotus Elite, sir, if you’re not familiar with the brand.” He grinned at his father. “Bought with the illegal transfer of certain monies paid without benefit of gains tax in respect of some small success I had in certain law exams.”
“It’s the firm’s car,” protested Dunstable senior, “and the tax man gets his unjustifiable cut.”
“At a rate which means I’ll start to earn pocket-money in the year 2000,” explained Stephen to Verity. “Now, with your permission, sir . . .” He went off at a half run towards the house. They saw him wave as he went, which presumably meant that Sarah had seen him from the window. He didn’t bother to use the gate, but took the low wall in a leap.
“If he’s landed on my carnations,” growled Sam, “I’ll spifflicate him.”
“Youth!” groaned Dunstable. “We spent too much of ours in hairy battledress and ammunition boots ever to do that sort of thing, Sam. I reckon we lost out.”
“No,” said Sam. “If it hadn’t been for the war, I’d never have met Sally and you’d never have met Dorothy, then there’d have been no Sarah and Stephen—not as we know them. And as like as not you and I would never have met and there’d be no Libertines.”
William said: “Do I take it from your discourse on philosophy that you are not unhappy about Stephen knowing Sarah?”
“Knowing?”
“I didn’t mean in the biblical sense.”
“I know that, William. But knowing? That leap . . . it seemed to me he was in a mighty rush to get to somebody he just knows.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“It’s up to them, William. We’ll have no say in it, even if we want to.”
“But you don’t have to like it.”
“I’m content, if you are. No lad is good enough for her. But that’s a father’s view. If she wants Stephen and he wants her, I’ll think I’ve been as lucky as a father can get.”
“That’s handsome of you, Sam. I need hardly say that I’m very happy and Dorothy’s prepared to be overjoyed at the prospect.”
“Nothing’s settled. We’re speculating.”
“Reading signs, you mean.”
Verity grunted. “Come in and have one before anybody else comes. The women have laid on a cold supper in the barn so you can have it when you like.”
“Thanks. I’d like to say hello to Sally. How is she?”
“As bonny as ever. Put on a bit of weight, perhaps, but it’s happiness fat. We’ve been lucky, William.”
*
William Dunstable was standing with Sally Verity in the wide window of the farm’s sitting room. It was a well-to-do room. There was nothing ultra-modern or garish about it, but every item in it was of good quality and—to Dunstable’s eyes—as tasteful as anything he had met, and he was accustomed to visiting many homes professionally. He could have guessed—had he taken the trouble to do so—that the chintz covers on the five armchairs and the three-seater settee would alone have cost a king’s ransom. But the price meant nothing. It was the choice of colour—delphiniums and roses on an off-white background—that mattered, after one had taken note of the fact that the chairs were big and down-cushioned for comfort. One could feel the carpet through the shoe leather, if one’s senses were not more attracted by the wink of silver and cut glass. And yet it was a family sitting room. A lived-in room that announced it was happy to see you as you went in, because it liked company. At his corner wine cupboard, Sam Verity was pouring drinks.
“Gin, William?”
“Please.”
“You take it with tonic, don’t you? Mustn’t get you mixed up with old Tom Middleton. He drinks pink—exclusively. I once gave him one with tonic and he poured it away.”
“He’s an old boor,” said Sally, accepting her sherry. “But I’d have thought, being a wine-shipper, that he would have drunk wine.”
