Dance of the Years by Margery Allingham

even taught him to feel that his pleasure in the open air was not quite what was expected of him.
    On this occasion she recognized his outburst of weeping as a premonition of the legacy of trouble his mother had bequeathed to him, and was furious and frightened. Her unreasonable behaviour frightened James still more and he fled howling; not only from the house but from the garden also, and out over the fields.
    He forgot his troubles in the bright weather. It was early June and the earth was tricked out in lace and coloured ribbons over her green gown. Her breasts were warm and damp, and her breath scented and voluptuous. James began to cavort in the meadow behind Jason’s house; he threw his arms up over his head, and snorted and stamped and heaved his top-heavy little body like a bull. Presently he rolled among the clover and the coltsfoot, and rubbed his forehead in the grass.
    â€œI am happy,” he shouted in the earth’s soft neck. “I am happy. Happy. Happy.”
    He strained his lungs to their utmost, and he felt it was like drinking a great pail of beautiful water, the soft kind, which came from the well at the basketmaker’s; not the thinner, harder sort they pumped in the kitchen at home. After a bit he scrambled up and began to walk sedately. A notion had come to him that his happiness was not quite a right thing; it was not a clear thought, but something to do with Dorothy, and his being the third most important person in the world. In this new and dignified mood he decided to go on to the stables. He had been round them several times with his father, and had been charmed by the animals. Also he had been made to feel proud and secure by the atmosphere of deference which had surrounded the two of them as they had walked among the smiling hat-touching fraternity gathered there. James had liked that, and now he had a mind to sample it again.
    He had to get through the hedge to reach the track, and because he could not straddle the ditch on the other side, he dropped into it, and walked along it for a bit, watching the clear water play round the soles of his sturdy, buckled shoes.
    When he reached the place where the bank was lowest, he came out and his dark head rose up from among the cow parsley like a foal. Jason himself was on the track talking to Larch. The old man was very shaky in these days, but he could still get about and give advice. Both men turned as the little boy appeared so suddenly, and then seeing he was alone, they began to laugh together. It was shrill, east coast laughter; not altogether kind and very informed. James felt uncomfortable, and for a moment he stood looking at them. Then he went forward steadily. Their faces did not harden as he approached; rather, he thought, there was a sort of knowing welcome in their eyes as though they had been expecting him for a long time. But they did not touch their hats, and the third most important person in the world noticed the omission at once.

Chapter Five
    All the men working for Jason bore the names of common English trees, except one, and he was called Eucalyptus. This apparently incredible circumstance had a reasonable explanation. Jason’s grandfather had not been able to read, so the Galantry of the period who had wished to make him his overseer had invented a system whereby the man could keep a record of the labour done by each worker on the estate in spite of the disability; and the system entailed, among other things, the re-naming of all concerned.
    As a method of book-keeping it was wildly complicated, and much mental effort would have been spared the Jason family had they scrapped it and attempted straight scholarship. But this they preferred not to do, seeing, since they were free men, no reason why they should be reasonable. So when Jason “did his books” he took seven small flower pots for the seven days of the week and set them in order on a shelf. Every week into each pot he put as many bits of stick