“I expect they’ve promised their girl-friends, standing at the front windows or, possibly, at the garden gate, an uninterrupted view of the pageant. I shouldn’t worry. We shall get there in the morning just the same,” said Laura consolingly. Kitty sank back.
“Well,” she said, “there’s nothing for me to stampede about, after all, until that Town Hall do this evening.”
Such proved to be the case. The procession, although wrongly routed by the town band, contrived to get to Squire’s Acre at only a little after the appointed time. It was then addressed by the Mayor and was dismissed in good order and at an hour when the pubs were opening their hospitable doors. The schoolchildren were warned not to be late for the afternoon’s displays, and the rest of the morning passed off without incident.
Colonel and Mrs Batty-Faudrey had elected not to take part in the procession, but would don their costumes for the display of dressage they were to give in the afternoon. Their nephew, Mr Giles Faudrey, did turn up at the Butts, however, and was with difficulty constrained to take his rightful place in the procession. He evinced a strong inclination to ride alongside the lorry which held Henry VIII, the six wives and Cardinal Wolsey, and Kitty had to exercise a nice blend of persuasion and bullying to get him into line. The attraction, she deduced, was the girl who was taking the part of Catherine Howard.
Lunch at
“Can’t stand official lunches,” he explained. “Kay’s
They got back to Squire’s Acre at three, in time to witness an unrehearsed but popular item. An involuntary contributor to the display of dressage by Colonel Batty-Faudrey, his lady and his nephew, was a small boy on a donkey, with the donkey literally making all the running. As an example of dignity and impudence, the spectacle had a quite delightful side, but the Colonel was not particularly pleased to have his group’s activities, including the donkey, photographed by the local press and recorded by some privately-owned cameras as well, this amid cheering and laugher.
Where the donkey had come from, nobody seemed to know, but there could be no doubt of its popularity with the people of Brayne. Mrs Batty-Faudrey was even more incensed than her husband, and commanded her nephew to “get that ridiculous animal out of the way.” Giles Faudrey dismounted and attempted to haul the donkey out of the roped enclosure in which the gymkhana had been held, but the donkey, true to the tradition of its race, dug in its dainty forefeet and refused to budge. Giles gave up the contest and remounted, amid renewed cheering, and, led by Mrs Batty-Faudrey, the dressage abruptly dismissed itself and cantered out of the ring.
“That kid on the donkey is the one who takes the part of Falstaff’s page in
CHAPTER FIVE
Doings at Squire’s Acre and the Town Hall
“…with all its tenements, meadows, pasture land, woods, rents, and service.”
« ^ »
Colonel Batty-Faudrey (retired) was not a very happy man. To begin with, the house and estate had been purchased with his wife’s money, and, to go on with, one of her stipulations had been that her nephew was to live with them. Colonel Batty (he had added his wife’s name to that of his own at her instigation when they married) did not like his wife’s nephew, and men, in his opinion, are better judges of other men than are women. In this, he was, no doubt, correct, for, in Kitty’s terms, young Mr Faudrey was a mess, and, in her nephew’s idiom, a pullulating little wen.
However, on the afternoon of the pageant, young Mr Faudrey did not betray these characteristics. He was, in fact, the life and soul of the party. He supervised the setting up of the maypoles, helped to get the schoolboys’ portable apparatus into place, tested the trampoline by performing a most creditable couple of somersaults—“look, boys, no hands!”—on it, and finished up by putting his horse over some four-foot railings—all this, it seemed, to impress a young lady, one of the lesser lights of the drama club, but a nubile wench for all that, albeit she had not been given a part in
She was seated on the open-air dais from which the notables—including the Mayor, the Mayoress, the Borough Councillors and Kitty—had watched most of the proceedings, so, under cover of a spirited rendering by the Boy Scouts of
“What do you know about Giles?”
“Giles?” repeated Mrs Batty-Faudrey. “What
“He’s just gone into the woods.”
“Well, no harm in that. He’s probably feeling the heat. It absolutely poured down on the paddock. I gave that little idiot on the donkey a piece of my mind.”
“He has a girl with him.”
“Who has?”
“Giles.”