The Day Gone By by Richard Adams

all this much later, of course) had originated God knows where, and before the First World War had been a strolling, needy adventurer - a sort of figure from the pages of ‘Sapper’ - with nothing much for ammunition except a pleasing geniality and a great ability for things like golf and bridge, which he played for money. Wounded in the war, he found himself in hospital, being tended by an ugly little V.A.D. nurse called Sally. From gossip he learned that Sally came from a wealthy family and had a lot of money. As soon as he was convalescent he set about courting her, and was successful.
    Sally Cornwallis was very small — tiny — with no physical attractions (to say the least) and so little intellect that even a child could perceive the lack. It was hard to tell whether she liked you or not, because her manner and brief speech, unsmiling and flat, were the same to everyone - except servants, to whom she was a tyrant and a bully. (When first married, the Cornwallises had spent some time in India.) Nevertheless, she and the Captain were happy enough on her money (though the Captain went in for brief absences now and then, which earned contemptuous inferences from my father - probably justified, I now think; though I personally can’t say I blame him or see that they did any harm).
    The Cornwallises arrived on Wash Common during my early childhood. The Captain bought a farm, its fields comprising the stony, unproductive upland of the plateau above the Enborne. It was about half a mile from our home. He employed two men, but the place was not a true farm; not a going, commercial concern. When not playing bridge or golf, though, he could shoot rabbits on the land. They had two sons; the elder, Duncan, was about my age and a cripple, his speech badly defective and his legs in irons. He could barely walk and used to get about the place on a tricycle. The younger, Arthur, was a year or two younger than myself, and as the years went by became my close associate, for I grew up fairly proficient at swimming and at hitting various kinds of ball, and the Captain thought it good for Arthur to have a slightly older friend who could extend him a little. During our ‘teens our friendship became more limited, since Arthur grew up a straightforward, practical, outdoor fellow, while I became a swot who went the length of liking poetry and classical music. We remained friends, however, right up till after Hitler’s war, when Arthur (‘Can’t farm here: it’s nothing but damn’ pioneering on gravel’) emigrated to Canada, where he has done well.
    The great attraction and benefit to me of the Captain was his easy-going generosity. What was his was yours, in effect. He built a swimming-pool and a squash court, and these our family were free to use whenever we liked. The summer holidays of the ‘thirties, when I was in my ‘teens, to a considerable degree revolved round the Cornwallises - sauntering up there in the hot mornings, along the verge of the big cornfield, to swim; tennis in the afternoon and perhaps a bridge lesson from the Captain in the evening. The Captain was most articulate and liked to talk gaily and freely, and this always seemed strange to me - almost unnatural - for my own father, of whom I was so fond, spoke little and smiled hardly at all. I have never forgotten that when my sister Katharine was about twenty-two, she and a friend called Dorothea Rowand decided to enter for an amateur tennis tournament at Hunstanton in north Norfolk and have a bit of fun at the seaside into the bargain. Captain Cornwallis, unasked, lent them his own Bugatti - a superb car - to drive up there and back and to use as their own for the holiday.
    My father detested the Captain for a jumped-up cad and a bounder, though he never tried to stop us going up there and mostly kept his feelings to himself. Now and then, however, he would come out with brief and contemptuous references to patent lies