Death at the Bar

‘I’ve always thought I’d like to play Napoleon.’

‘A fat lot you know about Napoleon.’

Parish grinned tranquilly.

‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’d read him up a bit if I had to. As a matter of fact Luke looks rather like him.’

‘The shoulders should come round,’ said Cubitt. ‘That’s more like it. Yes, Luke is rather the type.’

He painted for a minute or two in silence, and then Parish suddenly laughed.

‘What’s up?’ asked Cubitt.

‘Here comes your girl.’

‘What the devil do you mean?’ demanded Cubitt angrily and looked over his shoulder. ‘Oh – I see.’

‘Violet,’ said Parish. ‘Who did you think it was?’

‘I thought you’d gone dotty. Damn the woman.’

‘Will she paint me too?’

‘Not if I know it.’

‘Unkind to your little Violet?’ asked Parish.

‘Don’t call her that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well damn it, she’s not very young and she’s – well, she may be a pest, but she’s by way of being a lady.’

‘Snob!’

‘Don’t be so dense, Seb. Can’t you see – oh Lord, she’s got all her gear. She is going to paint. Well, I’ve just about done for today.’

‘She’s waving.’

Cubitt looked across the headland to where Miss Darragh, a droll figure against the sky, fluttered a large handkerchief.

‘She’s put her stuff down,’ said Parish. ‘She’s going to sketch. What is there to paint, over there?’

‘A peep,’ said Cubitt. ‘Now, hold hard and don’t talk. There’s a shadow under the lower lip –’

He worked with concentration for five minutes, and then put down his palette.

‘That’ll do for today. We’ll pack up.’

But when he’d hitched his pack on his shoulders and stared out to sea for some seconds, he said suddenly:

‘All the same, Seb, I wish you hadn’t told me.’

II

It was understood among the three friends that each should go his own way during the weeks they spent at Ottercombe. Watchman had played with the notion of going out in the dawn with the fishing boats. He woke before it was light and heard the tramp of heavy boots on cobble-stones and the sound of voices down on Ottercombe Steps. He told himself comfortably that here was a link with the past. For hundreds of years the Coombe men had gone down to their boats before dawn. The children of Coombe had heard them stirring, their wives had fed them and seen them go, and for centuries their voices and the sound of their footsteps had roused the village for a moment in the coldest hour of the night. Watchman let the sounds die away, snuggled luxuriously down in bed, and fell asleep.

He woke again at half-past nine and found that Parish had already breakfasted and set out for Coombe Rock.

‘A mortal great mammoth of a picture Mr Cubitt be at,’ said Abel Pomeroy, as Watchman finished his breakfast. ‘Paint enough to cover a wall, sir, and laid on so thick as dough. At close quarters it looks like one of they rocks covered in shell-fish, but ’od rabbit it, my sonnies, when you fall away twenty feet or more, it’s Mr Parish so clear as glass. Looking out over the Rock he be, looking out to sea, and so natural you’d say the man was smelling the wind and thinking of his next meal. You might fancy a stroll out to the Rock, sir, and take a look at Mr Cubitt flinging his paint left and right.’

‘I feel lazy, Abel. Where’s Will?’

‘Went out along with the boats, sir.’ Abel rasped his chin, scratched his head, and re-arranged the objects on the bar.

‘He’s restless, is Will,’ he said suddenly. ‘My own boy, Mr Watchman, and so foreign to me as a changeling.’

‘Will is?’ asked Watchman, filling his pipe.

‘Ah, Will. What with his politics and his notions he’s a right down stranger to me, is Will. A very witty lad too, proper learned, and so full of arguments as a politician. He won’t argufy with me, naturally, seeing I’m not his equal in the way of brains, nor anything like it.’

‘You’re too modest, Abel,’ said Watchman lightly.

‘No, sir, no. I can’t stand up to that boy of mine when it comes to politics and he knows it and lets me down light. I’m for the old ways, a right down Tory, and for why? For no better reason than it suits me, same as it suited my forebears.’

‘A sound enough reason.’

‘No, sir, not according to my boy. According to Will it be a damn’ fool reason and a selfish one into the bargain.’

‘I shouldn’t let it worry you.’

‘More I do, Mr Watchman. It’s not our differences that worry me. It’s just my lad’s restless mumbudgetting ways. You saw how he was last night. Speaking to you that fashion. Proper ’shamed of him, I was.’

‘It was entirely my fault, Abel, I baited him.’

‘Right down generous of you to put it like that, but all the same he’s not himself these days. I’d like him to settle down. Tell you the truth, sir, it’s what’s to become of the Feathers that troubles me, and it troubles me sore. I’m nigh on seventy, Mr Watchman. Will’s my youngest. ’Tother two boys wurr took in war, and one girl’s married and in Canada, and ’tother in Australia. Will’ll get the Feathers.’

‘I expect,’ said Watchman, ‘that Will’ll grow out of his red ideas and run the pub like any other Pomeroy.’

Old Abel didn’t answer and Watchman added: ‘When he marries and settles down.’

‘And when will that be, sir? Likely you noticed how ’tis between Will and Miss Dessy? Well now, that’s a funny state of affairs, and one I can’t get used to. Miss Dessy’s father, Jim Moore up yurr to Carey Edge Farm, is an old friend of mine. Good enough. But what happens when Dessy’s a lil’ maid no higher than my hand? ’Od rabbit it, if old Jim don’t come in for a windfall. Now his wife being a ghastly proud sort of a female and never tired of letting on she came down in society when she married, what do they do but send young Dessy to a ladies’ school where she gets some kind of free pass into a female establishment at Oxford.’

‘Yes. I know.’

‘’Ess and comes home at the end of it a dinky lil’ chit, sure enough, and husband-high; but speaking finniky-like and the equal of all the gentlefolks in the West Country.’

‘Well?’ said Watchman.