The Forbidden Path

by Jean Chapman

  ‘You didn’t even acknowledge me in there - in that bar place.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure I believed my eyes.’

  ‘And when you did?’

  ‘When I do, I’ll let you know. I’ll get the lanterns.’

  She watched as he went to the footplate of the engine, and saw the flare of the match. His hands were unsteady, the brass cover of the lantern rattling and tapping as he manipulated cover, wick and match. He was making a long, brooding task of the lighting, she thought. She had come to him, as her mother might say, like Christmas in late October, and still he wavered as if not aware of his good fortune She had expected at least some of the excitement of their last meeting to cling and colour this next one.

  He came at last, waited for her to climb in and then followed, gesturing towards the bunk as if he wanted to put as much distance between them as possible. Obediently she went and sat there, automatically spreading her skirt, tossing back her hair. He exclaimed under his breath. She looked at him without understanding his exasperation. ‘Cato,’ she began.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ He interrupted the appeal.

  ‘I’ve run away.’ The quick statement sounded almost prim.

  ‘And why?’

  ‘Why? I… well, because… .’ Although she tried to make clear sense, the mixture of facts, half-told truths and of instinctively knowing it was what she had to do, sounded weak - foolhardy, even. ‘I thought you’d be pleased!’ she exclaimed, jumping to her feet, throwing out her hands in an expansive gesture of irritation and sending the sack containing the trap thumping to the floor. It distracted her, and Cato saw her momentary concern.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s.. Just something I had to bring with me.’ He stooped to pick it up, and too quickly she added, ‘Give it to me! It’s mine!’

  ‘It’s in my van.’ He upended the sack, and the next moment was crouching over the trap in astonishment. ‘Belle? Why? Is this the… .’ he paused, bewildered, his face looking hard and uncompromising in the upward light of the lantern. ‘Why have you brought it?’ This time his tone demanded strict truth. She omitted only having seen her father at the osier beds; this was still too tender for telling, even to Cato.

  ‘So you’ve run away, and brought with you incriminating evidence of a pretty awful crime. Anything else?’ He stood up suddenly, and she instinctively pulled her cardigan over the fob-watch. The gesture was not lost on him. ‘Shouldn’t you have that either.’ It was more a statement of despair than question.

  ‘They’re mine - when I come of age!’

  ‘Are they? he emphasised, then just shrugged before asking, ‘And how long do you think it’ll be before they catch up with you?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked, jabbing her hands furiously into her waist and standing with them on her hips, shoulders pushed back.

  ‘God Almighty, Belle, don’t stand like that!’ His voice sounded strange, as if it echoed from some great depth. ‘I want to marry you, not rape you.’

  ‘Rape.’ She repeated the word with a kind of awesome delight. She never remembered ever having heard it spoken before. It was certainly adult and worldly enough even for her. She let her arms relax to her sides, and said without the need of any artifice, ‘Cato, I don’t care what happens to Ben Langton, or what anyone thinks of me. I love you, and I want to marry you.’ She held out a hand in a simple gesture or appeal. He immediately dropped the trap and enclosed her hand warmly in his. He drew her to the bunk, and as they sat side by side he squeezed her hand until it almost hurt.

  ‘Belle.’ He paused to stir the trap with his foot. ‘That doesn’t matter for tonight - but, your being here…. I’m an experienced man, not a young… .’ She fidgeted, thinking he was about to say something about her age again. ‘No, listen,’ he reprimanded, giving her hand a little shake, ‘do you know what I’m talking about?’

  ‘Of course I know. I’m not a fool. You’re talking about… .’ She paused, all kinds of foolish expressions running through her mind, but none of them quite appropriate, and she added, as if concluding her own mental argument, ‘Anyway, I don’t care what people think.’

  ‘And what will your parents think of me?’ he asked.

  ‘They won’t know.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Belle.’ He stood up, paced to the door and back, then stood over her. ‘I leave the village early this morning, and you disappear as well. I should imagine they’ve been scouring Leicestershire and Rutland for us. The only reason they haven’t found us is either my father hasn’t given them my route or, being already in Norfolk, I’m sufficiently in front of my schedule to have deceived them.’

  ‘I didn’t think of anyone trying to follow me,’ she admitted.

  He shook his head at her, adding, ‘It won’t take long for them to trace us tomorrow. A steam-engine doesn’t travel anywhere without being remarked on.’

  ‘I’m not going back!’ She stood up quickly and was so close she had to put her hand on his chest to steady herself. ‘Ever! If you intend to give me up, I’d better go now – find a railway station — get a train in the morning to some town. I’ll find work. I can do something…. I could serve in a shop, for one thing. I’d better go now,’ she repeated, and made as if to walk round him, but his arm circled her waist.

  ‘Do you think I’m going to let you go wandering off into the night? Like as not you’ll finish up in some dyke or other.’

  ‘Perhaps be a good thing.’ She attempted to push his arm aside, but as her hand spanned the muscular forearm locked around her, she thought that what they were saying had little or nothing to do with what they were both feeling. It was as if there were four people in the van: two arguing and debating, and two waiting and watching for the opportunity to fall into each other’s arms.

  ‘Now you’re talking foolishly,’ he said, but released her pushed at the trap again with his foot and declared, ‘We’ve got to be practical.’ She wondered then, again bereft of his touch, whether after all they were not more like duelists, sparring, then stepping back for an opening to slip in the fatal blow. The next moment, she felt her cheeks blaze and was glad of the dim light, as he took her bags from the bunk and put them on the side cupboard, and next took up her coat. ‘I’ve been sent on business and I can’t let my father down,’ he went on, ‘or his old customer in Yarmouth. I don’t want to hurt my family in any way.’

  Honour thy father and thy mother - Belle felt her thoughts were becoming as feverish as her cheeks. She remembered looking up the commandment years ago, to satisfy herself that its end read ‘that thy days may be long in the land that the Lord thy God giveth thee,’ and not as she had feared ‘that their days… .’ If she had at times lost respect, she had no wish to curtail lives anywhere.

  ‘If only Meg Silver had delivered my message,’ he was saying, as he carefully hung her coat on a hook above the bunk. Then another puzzle struck Cato. ‘How did you know I would be driving the engine when you hid in the van?’

  Meg Silver!’ she picked up the snippet and held it as if by the scruff of its neck. ‘You sent a message with that gipsy?’

  It seemed a good idea. She was sure she could handle either of your parents, and it’s more likely your father would’ve shot me on sight than given you a message. So I gave her your clothes to return as an excuse, and I really thought she would do it.’

  ‘She did,’ Belle acknowledged. Remembering the reception she had given Meg, she added, ‘But it was difficult, all she said was that you were leaving the next day — I had to guess the rest. Anyway, I thought you hated her. I’m surprised you should give her a message for me.’ The irritation she felt was with herself. Why was she going on about Meg Silver - she was just another unwanted distraction at that moment. Belle ran her hands up through her hair, not averse to using one of Meg’s own devices to concentrate a man’s attention, but Cato seemed not to notice and obviously felt obliged to explain further.

  ‘She’s a hanger-on my father could do w
ithout,’ he Plained. ‘I wouldn’t have used her if there had been time to do anything else.’ He sat down and spread his hands on the bunk, pressing down; one of the apples overlooked in his tidying rolled forward over his fingers. He picked it up, holding it cupped gently in his hand, as if weighing its worth. His action sent a thrill of anticipation through her. ‘Is this all you’ve had to eat today?’ he asked.

  ‘No, I brought bread and cheese.’ She was stupidly breathless; up to that moment she had had some control, but now she felt like her apple, cupped and weighed. She watched as if mesmerized as Cato let the apple run to the end of his fingers, then tipped his hand and let it roll back into his palm, where the big fruit seemed to fit perfectly. He did this several times. She half wanted to shout at him to stop, as his cool-seeming, capable play roused her to a fever pitch. She wanted his hands on her, whatever the consequences, whatever the proprieties — society’s judgments meant less than nothing to her at that moment. Then, so suddenly it made her jump, Cato tossed the apple up into the air. In the second his hand formed to catch it, she found herself retrieving the apple an inch above his outstretched fingers. She held it for a second, then slowly turned her wrist and pressed the apple into his palm.

  ‘Cato.’ Her voice was soft, tender, as she saw his concentrated stare at their hands and the fruit between them, and realised he was battling with himself. ‘I knew what I was doing when I came with you. I wanted… you… everything.’ She wanted to add that she would never be like her mother, given to pithy sayings but in truth prim as a puritan’s collar.

  ‘Belle.’ There was some kind of appeal in the word, perhaps a final effort to resist her, but he looked up at her as she stood so near, within the compass of his knees, and twisted the apple from her grasp and threw it back on to the bunk. All hesitation gone now, he stood and took her into his arms, closing his eyes momentarily with the sweet ecstasy of love for her. ‘So no one parts us,’ he said, ‘and if your father won’t let us marry… .’

  She reached up and put her fingers on his lips. ‘He has no part in this,’ she whispered, and when he would have answered she pressed her fingertips more firmly over his mouth, smiling up at him. ‘I love you, Cato.’

  She lifted her fingertips just a little, as if to allow him to say what she wanted to hear, but ready to silence any unwanted words. He laughed gently. ‘I love you, Belle Greenaugh.’

  ‘Just Belle,’ she said raising her lips to his. He kissed gently, as if testing, and she felt her skin quiver and quicken as his hand cupped the side of her face, his fingers falling beneath the collar of her blouse. ‘I love you, more than anyone else in the whole world,’ she breathed. As he kissed her neck, she pushed her face into the open neck of his shirt. ‘You smell of smoke,’ she whispered, and smiled at him.

  He undid the first two buttons of her blouse to kiss deeper into her neck. ‘I washed in the back yard,’ he said, running his lips along the top of her shoulder, ‘but it clings.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ She undid two buttons on his shirt.

  ‘This is not a game.’

  I know.’ She shivered deliciously, and her hand crept up beneath his shirt to his bare shoulder. ‘I know… I know.’ She thrilled at the touch of her cooler fingers on his flesh as thought, action and emotion seemed fused in a single beat.

  He ran a hand down from her shoulder into the small of her back, pressing her to him, then slowly lower until his hand encompassed her buttocks. She responded with equal pressure, equal intensity, in spite of herself feeling like a breathless pupil led through an astonishing lesson - but one she was keen to learn, perhaps keener than her teacher was to impart it - perhaps feeling it beyond her standard. Then almost immediately she had to learn another part as his hand moved up to her shoulder again and she found the release more tormenting than the pressure.

  His fingers were now beneath the collar of her blouse, Pushing it from her shoulders. A fire ran ahead of his fingers. She hastily undid the remaining buttons of her blouse and her bodice, revealing her breasts to him. He sat on the bunk and drew her between his knees again, his face Pressed for a moment between her breasts, her hands running into and through his hair, gasping with pleasure as he ran his lips first this way and then that, but never quite reaching her nipples.

  ‘Cato,’ she whispered, urged, and knew that if there had been a moment when they could have restrained their passion, it was now long passed. She felt his fingers on her waistband, clumsy with unfamiliar hooks and eyes, and helped him. The unfamiliarity, she knew, was a new tenderness for him, an utter gentleness. He stood, and whether his action was instruction or not, she undid his clothes. They both stood naked — his desire revealed in form, her love in acceptance as he drew her down, and in their private time lay by, and on, and in her.

  Thoroughly and passionately their loving, their sleeping and their awakenings travelled the night, and in one space she marvelled: ‘It’s strange — but wonderful.’ And in another he quoted: ‘“From earthly things, we do to such heights rise.”’

  Then before they slept like satiated children, finding a new innocence curled at last in each other’s platonic arms, she asked, ‘Was that poetry?’ ‘Hmm,’ he murmured, ‘I wrote it in the trenches. It’s called “The Crucifixion”.’

  ‘Oh!’ The exclamation was surprised but soft, and closing her eyes she could push away the thought of cold dawn, in the security of their rudimentary bed.

  13

  A warmth greater than her own was the first sensation Belle registered as sleep ebbed away, then the smell of smoke – heat and smoke. All her instincts registered fire and danger – and more… she was trapped, caught and held. ‘No! No!’ She wrenched her arm from the weight that lay on it, restraint and her father irrecoverably linked in her mind. She fought free, shouting, ‘I won’t go back!’

  ‘What is it?’ Cato struggled from sleep. ‘Belle? Are you all right?’

  ‘Oh!’ Her heart beating fast with the fright, she crept back under his outstretched arm, shivering after her sudden explosion into the cold grey air of morning. ‘I didn’t know where I was. I could smell smoke. I thought there was a fire.’

  He held her to him, murmuring, ‘If you will run away on a steam-engine… .’

  ‘Yes.’ She considered the matter seriously. ‘By tomorrow morning I’ll probably not notice it.’ He laughed indulgently and pulled her close as if settling back to sleep. Belle made careful study of the arm her head lay on, a curl of her chestnut hair on his skin, thrilled with the wonderment of their night together. He had been tender with her inexperience, but she would soon be his equal in love-making, she sensed it. No, she thought, she would be more, she would –she sought for words she had read recently in a magazine story – ‘pleasure her man’, that was it. She felt a thrill of anticipation shiver up her spine. She had difficulty in keeping still, but wanted to prolong these moments lying together. She knew that once fully awake Cato would want to be up and on the way again.

  ‘Later today we shall go by my mother’s old home, Oakholm Manor. I’ll point it out,’ Cato murmured, his mind, too, already on the day’s journey.

  ‘It’s not your pedigree I’m interested in.’ She squirmed sensuously against his side.

  ‘You’re nothing but a… .’ He searched for the right word.

  ‘Brazen hussy,’ she supplied. ‘A teacher called me that once — and I got into trouble for laughing. I began school as a “pert miss”, so I suppose I made progress — and do you know what I am now?’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare to guess,’ he answered, putting his free arm across his eyes as if to hide from the awful revelation about to be made.

  ‘Hungry!’ she cried, drumming her heels on the bed in an excess of energy, ‘Hungry, hungry, hungry!’

  ‘Me too.’ He leaned over and took her ear-lobe into his teeth, but whispered, ‘In ten minutes you shall have a breakfast to satisfy a navvy.’

  ‘Ten minutes?’ she looked doubtfully at the small cold stove.

>   ‘Less than.’ He was out of bed and pulling on his clothes. She drew the blanket around her shoulders and sat up to watch as he opened the front of the stove, then went out of the van. He returned in a few minutes with a shovel of glowing cinders extracted from the damped-down fire of the engine. These he put into the stove and added more small pieces of coal, and in no time it seemed a small black kettle was singing and a pan sizzling with thick pieces of home-cured bacon, then thick slices from the top of a cottage loaf and eggs were fried. Belle propped herself up in bed, first to draw in deep breaths of the meal cooking and then to devour what she felt was the most delicious breakfast she had ever tasted, followed by a huge mug of scalding hot tea.

  ‘We must be moving, before anyone catches up with us.’ Cato handed her his empty plate.

  ‘We’re not sure anyone will follow us.’

  ‘They will,’ Cato said with heavy conviction, ‘but I’d like to get as far as the coast - give us more time to decide what we are going to do.’

  Where are we going?’ Curiosity suddenly overcame all other emotions.

  ‘My father’s hired this engine out on a contract of work to a chinaman.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were any Chinamen in Norfolk!’ she exclaimed.

  Cato nodded as if he would have expected everyone to have known, adding, ‘And his family - wife, son, daughter-in-law, two grandchildren. We’ve known them for years.’

  How strange,’ Belle pondered, her mind creating pictures of colourful satin pyjama-like garments and long black pigtails. ‘Is this a joke?’

  She saw a quirk of amusement pull at the sides of his mouth, but he shook his head solemnly and repeated, ‘A chinaman.’

  She lay back and stretched luxuriously, almost wantonly, and he bent to kiss her, but warned, ‘Don’t put your hands on me. Not a finger, you brazen hussy, or we’ll never get under way.’

  She didn’t, instead lying passive, arms stretched out above her head, her tiny breasts exposed, inviting. He groaned as he brushed her lips with his. ‘That’s worse, of course. I’m going to have trouble with you.’