They had lain awake. It wasn’t worth going back to sleep, he would have to rise very soon and she wanted to be part of the farm’s daily ritual of hard work and long hours from the first full day. Loving with Spencer had been different to her past experiences. Bill Jennings had been brutal on the first night, uncaring of how much it had hurt taking her virginity. He’d been the same every time he’d sought her bed. Marital relations had ceased, thank goodness, long before he’d died. Her next time, the one occasion she had made love with Ince, had been performed in a gentle, self-giving harmony. It had been too soon for her to form a lasting relationship and they had drifted apart, Ince being the one to bear the brunt of the hurt. And now she had given herself to Spencer, had positively encouraged it! Despite his long abstinence he had been sensitive, skilful, masterful, bringing her to her first real intense feeling of total fulfilment. She would seek that pleasure again.
Laura marvelled at how this most intimate of things had turned out for her. She had thought she might have given a wife’s duty to Spencer, regularly and willingly, because he was an attractive man. They might even have developed a mutual enjoyment and understanding. She had not expected the physical side of their married life, on her part anyway, to be based on lust.
Now in the kitchen she giggled and pushed him gently away. ‘Ince will be here in a moment.’
Spencer kissed her on the cheek before she moved away to the range. He watched her. She looked just right there, wearing an apron over the skirt and blouse of her bridal outfit and the slippers she kept under the sink next to the dustpan and brush.
‘Pity you had to get up at four thirty the day after your wedding. I should have insisted you lie in for a couple more hours. I’m sorry I never asked you if you wanted a honeymoon but we didn’t talk about anything much, did we?’ Then he grinned, pushing out his chest, his hands in his pockets. He was in high spirits this morning. ‘But we managed to make love all right. We should have got married ages ago.’
She turned and smiled at him. ‘I was just thinking that.’ She was also wondering how he felt about taking another woman into Natalie’s bed but felt it wasn’t the right time to ask him. Perhaps she never should. But she wanted everything to be out in the open between them; they should talk more.
‘It will be good for Vicki to see us getting along so well, right from the start.’
‘Yes, it will. I wonder how she slept at Felicity’s. It will be lovely to have her back home.’
‘Seems like she’s been gone for ages.’ Spencer would have tossed and turned all night worrying about his beloved daughter whom he loved more than his own life, but while he’d thought of her, other things had taken precedence in his mind for the first time since her birth. Laura lying next to him. The silky ivory smoothness of her skin as he’d touched her while she’d slept. Breathing in her feminine scent and subtle perfume. Wanting her again. He’d closed his eyes and his skin had leapt deliciously to feel her touching him. He had only been able to hold out for a moment…
Laura gazed at the array of photographs of the little girl at various ages that Spencer had put up on each wall. ‘I’ve never spent the night here before but I’m missing her dreadfully.’
There was a tap on the door, it was opened slowly and Ince came in in his stockinged feet. He looked pink and embarrassed.
‘You don’t have to knock before coming in, Ince.’ Spencer was aghast. ‘For goodness sake, this is your home. You’re my best friend.’
‘Well, I just thought… Good morning, Laura.’ Ince was feeling awkward. Spencer had done his share of the milking in a decidedly jaunty manner, had even cracked a joke, so evidently the wedding night had gone well. Ince had been worried about that. It hadn’t been easy for Laura settling into the village and she had turned to him after a particularly harrowing time. When they had gone upstairs in Little Cot, it had been a natural progression of their romance. Her marrying Spencer had been more of an arrangement than anything else and last night could have gone badly. But Ince knew his friend was a very possessive man. What would Spencer say if he ever found out he and Laura had been lovers?
‘Breakfast’s all ready,’ Laura said jovially to break the tension, but in these circumstances she found it hard to face Ince, similar thoughts to his now running through her mind.
The three sat round the table, and when Spencer realised his friend’s and bride’s embarrassment, he too felt discomposed. The food stuck in their throats, tea making a noisy follow-up journey.
Spencer had a sudden thought which would have saved them all this awkwardness had it occurred to him earlier. ‘It’s Sunday today,’ he said. ‘You should have had the day off, Ince.’
‘I don’t mind. I would have woken up early anyway.’ Ince closed his eyes for a moment. He was feeling the most strained of the three. When Vicki came home later it should be a strictly family occasion. ‘But if you can do without me, I have some things I’d like to do in my room before chapel, then I’ll go straight over to Les Tremorrow’s. Don’t worry about dinner for me. It’s a lovely day. I’d prefer to take some sandwiches and eat them on the moor.’
‘That’s settled then,’ Laura said, clearing away dishes. ‘I’ll make them for you and a flask of coffee as well.’
* * *
Celeste didn’t go to chapel but presented herself at the vicarage at twelve fifty-five in the afternoon. She sniffed the air and smiled under her pillbox hat. Lunch was cooking and smelled as though it was not long off serving.
Roslyn Farrow rushed from her kitchen, hoping a pan of greens wouldn’t boil over before she could get back. ‘Oh, Miss Cunningham. Is everything all right?’ People usually only called at the vicarage at such an inconvenient moment if they had an urgent problem or were terribly lonely.
‘All is well, Mrs Farrow,’ Celeste replied politely. ‘I was wondering if I might have a word with the good vicar.’ Celeste took in Roslyn’s apron, nicely permed but scatty thick black hair and slightly harassed face and smiled sweetly. ‘But only if it’s a suitable moment, of course.’
‘Well, Kinsley is out in the garden going over his sermon for evensong. I daresay he will welcome the interruption,’ Roslyn said doubtfully. Kinsley would be looking forward to his meal, as ravenously hungry as their three young children who had been popping into the kitchen every few minutes to ask if the meal was ready.
‘Something smells delicious,’ Celeste said meaningfully as she was being escorted through the large square-roomed house, decorated in muted colours and containing shabby but solid furniture. Wild and cultivated flowers, from cowslips and crab apple blossom to camellias, which looked as if they’d been thrown into every imaginable receptacle, added charm. Celeste was reminded that Laura did the church flowers, the vicar’s wife obviously not having a flair in that direction.
A gawky fat girl aged about ten or eleven with stiff black pigtails looked up appealingly from where she lay sprawled on the sitting room floor gluing magazine pictures of animals into a scrapbook. ‘Is the dinner nearly ready, Mummy? I laid the table ages ago.’
‘It’s almost done, darling. This is my daughter Rachael,’ Roslyn murmured to her unexpected guest, keeping a keen ear open for hissing and boiling sounds in the kitchen.
‘How sweet,’ Celeste purred, thinking she had never seen a plainer child, hoping she wouldn’t be subjected to tales of boring trivia about the girl’s hobby.
Roslyn led the way through the French windows and shouted to Kinsley at the other end of the wide lawn. He was pacing up and down with a piece of foolscap paper in his hand. ‘Kinsley! Miss Cunningham is here wanting a word with you.’
‘Eh? What, dear?’ Kinsley was stopped in full flow, propounding a point on the certainty of the afterlife for all believers. He folded his sermon and hastened over to the two women, thrusting out a welcoming hand. ‘Good afternoon, Miss Cunningham. Nothing wrong, is there?’
Celeste returned his firm handshake and looked him straight in the eye. ‘As I told your wife, Mr F
arrow, my reason for being here has nothing to do with doom or disaster. I would like a word with you, concerning a family in the village actually, but I can see I’ve called at an inopportune time. I shall leave and call back later, perhaps tomorrow if that is better for you.’ She rarely cooked for herself and fancied a free meal and was daring the vicar and his wife to allow her to leave unfed.
‘No, no, you mustn’t go. We wouldn’t hear of it, would we, dear?’ Kinsley protested. In his vocation there were a lot of calls on his time and he was concerned for his one precious day off each week, Monday.
Roslyn readily offered hospitality to anyone but she liked Sunday lunch to be just for the family. However, she smiled resignedly, it would give her a chance to find out something about this painted creature who she was sure was more than a mere social butterfly. Right now Roslyn could smell the water of her greens scalding on the top of the range. ‘If you haven’t already eaten, Miss Cunningham, perhaps you would care to join us for lunch. There’s plenty to go round, it’s roast lamb, local meat.’
Celeste smiled disarmingly, ‘Well, I don’t want to be a nuisance…’
‘Do join us, Miss Cunningham,’ the vicar urged. ‘It will give us the ideal opportunity to get to know you better.’
‘Put like that,’ Celeste purred, ‘how can I refuse?’
With that agreed, Roslyn rushed off to save her range from further spoiling.
Celeste accepted a sherry from Kinsley and sat down in a clumpy oft-recovered armchair in the sitting room. She was uncomfortably under the scrutiny of all three Farrow children, the other two being chubby boys, one younger, the other older than their sister. The boys had inherited their father’s brown hair and large expressive dark eyes. There was a hint they might grow up to make rather attractive men, their father wasn’t too bad, Celeste observed. He was somewhere in his forties and had weathered well, was straight-backed, no paunch sagged out of his shiny old suit. His wife had left the room but he seemed perfectly comfortable in her company.
Kinsley was wondering if the lady wanted a private interview. He hoped it was something simple that could be brought up over the dinner table, then he wouldn’t have to forsake his Sunday afternoon snooze, and if the children took themselves off to roam the bit of moorland they were allowed to play on, Roslyn would probably join him on the bed…
He was in luck. After grace, when the family and their guest were sitting round the long oval table in the dining room, their plates laden with steaming, delicious-looking food, Celeste brought up the purpose of her visit.
‘I’ve made an unusual friend since arriving in the village – Alfie Uren. I’m concerned, Mr Farrow,’ and she included Roslyn in the conversation, ‘that he and his brothers, and probably his baby sister, are undernourished and somewhat neglected. I would like to help them and you were my obvious first port of call for suggestions.’
‘That boy smells,’ Richard, the elder boy at twelve years, spouted disgustedly. ‘They all do.’
‘He can’t help it!’ Rachael responded heatedly. ‘He’s just as important in the Lord’s eyes as we are.’ She was apt to take her father’s sermons on board and she had a desperate crush on the wild-natured Alfie Uren, even if he did spit and swear and did his wee-wee in the ditches. He didn’t tease or thump her, or hide her toys away, like her big brother sometimes did.
‘He let me play with his slingshot,’ Ross, the third child, remarked, helping himself to mint sauce, then grinning impishly at Celeste. He was in love with Celeste, seeing her as a film star type who rivalled his favourite heroine, Rita Hayworth.
‘I’ve noticed your kindness to Alfie,’ Kinsley said after swallowing a big mouthful of food to deal with his hunger. ‘I’ve tried to welcome the Urens into the village but have only been met with rebuffs. I offered to help them in any way I could and I said I’d give all the children a quick private baptism but they only saw my efforts as interfering, I’m afraid. Someone like yourself, not from the village, could have more luck. I would like to see the children in better circumstances.’
‘We could collect some good used clothes for them,’ Roslyn said enthusiastically. ‘There are certain kind folk who would be glad to help. I’m thinking of Tressa Macarthur. She’s a pleasant young woman. We could ask her to try to befriend Mrs Uren, as one young mother with another.’
‘That sounds like a very good idea,’ Celeste said. She had a man’s appetite and had almost cleared her plate. ‘But isn’t Tressa very quiet and reserved? She hardly spoke a word to anyone at the wedding.’
‘She is rather quiet, but very kind,’ Kinsley said. ‘We can but ask.’
Celeste sipped from her glass of water, wishing it was wine. ‘If I can keep Alfie’s trust then perhaps I can call at his home and do something positive. I worked with underprivileged children during the war. I found that if one approached the family in a way that left them their dignity, one was invariably successful. If only to find out if the little ones have had their inoculations, that sort of thing.’
Roslyn could hardly believe this woman had actually worked with children, she seemed uninterested in her three children and even Vicki Jeffries, but she did have a way with Alfie who could be a difficult child, sharing his parents’ distrust of ‘do-gooders’.
Kinsley sighed, he had been recalling some spiteful gossip he’d heard about the Urens in the churchyard this morning. Two of the boys had impetigo and mothers were warning each other not to allow their offspring to play with them. Kinsley could sympathise, impetigo was very infectious, but those concerned had made it sound as if the Urens had the plague. ‘If we could get them cleaned up a bit and get some decent clothes for the older boys to go to school in it might dispel some of the prejudice against them.’
Looking round at the three clean, tidy and well-fed children at the table, Celeste fixed them each in turn with a hard stare. ‘Not one word from you lot about our plans for the Urens or they’ll slam the door in our faces and the children will suffer. You wouldn’t like that, would you?’ She looked down at her empty plate, wishing Alfie and his family had eaten so well today. And she vowed to deal very severely with any villager who thwarted her plans to help them.
Chapter 8
Ada Prisk was fetching water from the village pump. Her arm was slower these days, owing to her arthritis, but she still managed to make the steady rhythm of creak, squeak, creak, squeak. She could only carry half a bucket at a time the short distance to her house but she didn’t mind the extra journeys, it gave her more opportunities to ensnare someone and pass on the latest news. This afternoon she was hoping to chew over yesterday’s wedding. A victim was coming down the hill at that very moment and she straightened up, easing her stiff back, making the alarming figure that so many of the locals feared. This one wouldn’t try to slip past her hastily though – Ince Polkinghorne was too nice a man for that and she would get more than ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Prisk’ out of him.
Ince was just as glad to see Ada. After carrying a full bucket of sparkling clear water into her house he lingered in her spick-and-span back kitchen which smelled pleasantly of stored apples.
‘I’m on my way to Carrick Cross, Mrs Prisk,’ he volunteered.
Ada sharpened all senses. She had been going to ask him about that.
‘People say it’s haunted,’ Ince continued, watching the old woman equally keenly. ‘I’ve heard all the rumours about Tholly Tremorrow, about how he’s supposed to have ridden with the devil and haunts it himself as an earthbound lunatic spectre. Apparently he was a rotten man.’
‘He was,’ Ada snorted indignantly. ‘When I was a girl he used to ask me to…’ Ada coloured and put her hands together primly, ‘to see what he had in his trousers. When I ran away screaming he’d shout after me laughing that it was only a ferret, but everyone knew Tholly Tremorrow never kept ferrets! He was a disgusting old man. He’d do anything to lure young girls onto his smallholding.’
Ince knew nothing had been proved against Tholly Tremorrow bu
t Ada wasn’t the only woman to have complained about his habits. ‘What about the other ghosts? Do you know any of the stories?’
‘Why?’ Ada thirsted to learn more. Ince wasn’t the sort of man to take legends and rumours seriously. ‘Has something happened to ’ee there? Have you seen something strange?’
‘Well, I keep getting this feeling that someone is watching me. First I thought it was Les, but I’ve heard him snoring in his chair and seen him sitting outside in the sun, his face leaning in a different direction, and I’ve still felt like something is watching me. It gives me the creeps.’
‘Something watching you?’ Ada shuddered. ‘There’s the ghost of the lost hiker who died clawing at the wall. He’s said to wail on windy nights.’
He would, Ince thought impatiently. ‘Anyone else?’
‘There’s Les’s late wife, Ruby. She was a good woman, quiet and ordinary, dark in looks, a wonderful cook. We all thought it a great shame she married that miserable so-and-so. Treated her like a slave, he did – well, you should know, he’s got you breaking your back for him in your spare time when you should be out looking for a wife.’ Ada had noted that Ince had spent a lot of time dating available women in the last few months, and had mentally ticked them off her list when nothing had come of it. She ignored the blush that rose in Ince’s face and cuffed his arm. ‘I know just the woman for you. My cousin Myrtle’s maid, Penny. She’s a bit older than you at thirty-five but she’d make you a fine wife. She lives down Camborne and goes to chapel. Is a lovely cook and hardworking, still young enough to have children. I’ll invite her to tea then you can meet her. How about next Sunday? That’ll give me time to write she a letter and her to answer it. I’ll make my specialty, apple crumble with lots of clotted cream.’ Ada’s mind shot to her sideboard and her best white damask tablecloth and matching napkins.
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