by Lorna Gray
He fixed me with those kindly grey eyes and stared straight into my mind.
“No, Inspector. I do not.”
Well, it wasn’t really a lie, he could be anywhere.
He gazed at me appraisingly. The assessment seemed to last forever. But then, all of a sudden, with a sharp nod, he simply turned and walked away to the waiting car.
The slush reformed behind him, swallowing his footsteps and shining brightly against the blank seamless sky. It swam and shivered, blurring before my eyes as the tatty police car veered out onto the road and then was set at the hill. All that was left for me now was the shattered state of my emotions, the ruins of a morning, and a faint, fragile glimmer of hope that through this desperate trade of ideas, I might have just bought us a little more time.
Chapter 16
I would have given almost anything just then to have been able to take myself off somewhere to sit in a cool and quiet corner, but instead I walked slowly back along the track towards John and Freddy who were peering down into the engine compartment of the dusty black car. As I watched, John climbed into the driver’s seat, turned the key and pulled the starter button. The car gave a cough or two before spluttering into life.
“Turn it off!” I yelled breathlessly over the roar of the engine, having covered the last few yards at a run. “Turn it off!”
John grinned up at me like an excited child at Christmas before seeing my expression. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist. She’s lovely, isn’t she? Practically a miniature!”
“Yes, very nice. But we haven’t checked the oil yet, you’d better not have done any damage.”
“Oh, I won’t,” he said carelessly, climbing out of the car again. “Anyway, Freddy said I could.”
“Sure he did,” I said, trying not to laugh at the schoolboy comment. “Do I have to sound like your mother and scold you for telling tales?”
John looked askance at my humour and turned to poke into the engine. He peered down at it, reaching out now and then to test the fit of some socket or other. “Hmmmm, I see. Very interesting. Overhead camshaft, dynamo here …”
I really did laugh then, “Oh, come on, John, you don’t know any more about cars than I do.”
John was not impressed. He frowned. “Is Freddy your mechanic then?” He cast an ill-concealed look of surprise at Freddy who was hovering nearby, once more looking flushed and awkward.
“He does well enough. We’ve only got to get it moving.” I told him about Mr Dixon and the offer he had made last Easter then again in the autumn, and the exchange that had at long last been agreed for next Tuesday.
“Is he? That’s nice,” John said vaguely, not really sounding like he was listening. Then he suddenly snapped, “Don’t do that! If you don’t know what you’re doing, don’t do it at all.”
I put a protective arm around Freddy who was trying rather forcibly to turn the oil cap the wrong way. “He’s only trying to help, aren’t you, Freddy. Oh, John, you’ll get oil on your clothes, don’t mess about in there – I must say you look very smart for visiting farm girls. Where are you off too? Oh, come away do, Freddy can manage much better without an audience.”
“Just the usual monthly meeting with the bank, nothing special.” Finally John turned to follow me and I led him down through the old doorway onto the yard only to instantly regret it as Beechnut kicked up a fuss.
“You should never have taken on that horse,” he commented, amiably enough. “She’s a true chestnut mare, isn’t she? All fire and brimstone and,” he added, sensibly stepping back a pace, “teeth.”
I picked up a couple of headcollars and slipped them onto the heads of a pair of waiting ponies before replying, “She’s certainly quite feisty when men are around, she’s as soft as anything the rest of the time though.”
“Fascinating. Well, you know what they say about animals and their owners …”
“No, what?” I said, more crossly than I intended. The day had only just begun and I was already feeling exhausted.
“Oh, nothing,” he said with a gentle smile. “I’m just teasing, don’t mind me. Are you still coming to the dance tomorrow?”
I nodded, letting the ponies out of their stables.
“Good. I’ll pick you up at about six then, shall I?” He stepped backwards out of my path, narrowly missing the muck barrow so that I had to hastily smother another laugh; I knew from fond experience that the spoilt boy of my childhood still lurked in the man somewhere only waiting for an excuse to come out. Unfortunately, however, this was then swiftly followed by the unhelpful impression that to compensate for my mirth, I had been far too bright in giving my reply, because the look he shot me as he left was alarmingly proprietorial. It had been something akin to the looks I had observed him make at whichever pretty woman was the current object of his determined courtship, and it worried me.
It took me an hour to get back to the car. A soft plaintive bleat as this latest visitor drove away was enough to bring me sharply out of my thoughts and back to a sense of my real duties, and it came as a shock to realise that the poor goats had been neglected yet again. In spite of my guilt, however, it was almost pleasant to be reminded that whatever else happened, the animals and their needs never changed, and the sun had reached its uncertain heights in the sky to cast a strange halo through the white blinding haze before finally I was able to slip back to the car and whisper into the darkness.
“Matthew?”
There was no reply.
Reaching across the engine, I lowered the bonnet carefully, finding it hard to feel reassured by this latest disappearance. The car and its maintenance could wait, but my fears for the man were only growing and as I stepped down into the yard it was to be met by a fresh concern.
Freddy had long since given up pretending that he knew anything about the mechanics of the thing and was, I saw with dismay, now mucking out the stables with an angry vigour that I had rarely seen. I realised then that what with Matthew’s dramatic arrival, my recurring histrionics and this latest upset of the Inspector’s excruciating questions, his life had been rather unusually disrupted; and now, it seemed, the poor boy had quite simply had enough.
With a last glance behind me into the shadows, I carefully shelved my private alarms, stepped down through the old doorway and out onto the yard.
Freddy was forking soiled bedding from a stable into a barrow and when he saw me coming, he hurried over to the muckheap, setting about levelling it vigorously.
“Freddy, are you all right?” I asked. He turned his head away so that he could pretend not to have heard and then hurried back to the stable again.
I followed. “Has something upset you?”
No reply.
“Freddy?”
He barged past me back to the muckheap again. I trailed doggedly after him, refusing to be put off. “Is it the questions the Inspector asked you? Because I think you did very well.”
“It’s not that.”
If I didn’t know any better, I would have called his tone surly, and he was clearly very determined not to look at me.
“Then what is it?” Silence. “Freddy!” I begged helplessly. “Is it John? Because I’m sure he didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“It’s not that,” he muttered again, still refusing to look at me.
“Is it something I said?”
Staring at the back of his head, I saw his shoulders lift in a tiny shrug and at last I began to feel that we were getting somewhere. “What did I say?” A little trail of manure rolled past my foot in a miniature avalanche, disturbed by the boy’s frenetic levelling. “If you don’t tell me how can I make it better?”
“You can’t make it better!” Freddy suddenly shouted, stepping back from the steaming heap and throwing his fork to the ground. “There is nothing you can do. Nothing at all! You’re going to marry Mr Langton and live with him in his big house and have babies, and … and …”
He stopped. He stood there, an angry child glowering furiously with clenched
fists and breathing hard while dismay rose within me. For eight long years people had been linking my name with Matthew’s. It had been painful and occasionally extraordinarily distressing; and typically now, when it could not possibly be worse timed, everyone seemed suddenly determined to link me with John.
I said quietly, “Freddy sweetie, I’m not going to marry John, really I’m not.”
“You’re just saying that.”
His voice came as an unhappy whine through his flushed scowl and on a sudden impulse, I stepped closer and pulled him into a gentle bear-hug. There was a moment of resistance but then, with surprising fierceness, his arms came round me and we stood there, hugging each other in the middle of the yard while stray drifts of fog parted from the mass to lift and curl around us.
I stroked his hair and realised suddenly that he was crying. I felt like joining him. Instead I said, “Freddy, love, don’t be sad; you can believe me, you know. I really am not going to marry John. Whatever gave you that silly idea?”
He pulled away, blinking at me through puffy eyes, “You promise?”
I nodded, smiling at him gently. “So come on, spill. What made you get all upset like this?”
“You said it didn’t matter.”
“What didn’t?”
“You said that Matthew didn’t matter! You did, I heard you.” He started crying again. “And it’s not fair, I like him. Why do you have to like Mr Langton? He … he … he’s rich.”
“That’s not a crime, Freddy,” I said very gently indeed, and then pulled him back into my determined bear-hug. “I don’t know what to say, Freddy. There’s nothing I can say other than to repeat that I do not love John, not in that way at least, and I am not going to marry him.”
“And Matthew?” His muffled voice came from somewhere near my right shoulder.
After a short silence, I said with difficulty, “It isn’t fair to ask me that.”
There was a pause and then his voice rose again into anger. “You’re going to leave, aren’t you? You say that you won’t, but I know you will. You’re going to sell this farm and move away and marry someone and then I’ll be all alone!” His voice cracked a little and then he added on a whisper, “I don’t like being alone.”
“Oh, Freddy,” I said sorrowfully. I tightened my arms again. “I won’t let you be alone, you matter far too much to me. And who would I get to muck out as well as you? Sorry, that was a very bad attempt at a joke.” I felt him close his grip on my jumper. “But in all seriousness, I promise that whatever happens, you’re still my number one man and you’ve always got a place in my house and heart for as long as you want it. Do you hear?”
The brave words ought to have sounded painfully hackneyed but every single one was meant, truly. I gave him a squeeze and finally he nodded into my shoulder. “Now dry your eyes and pick up your broom. Come on, we’ve got jobs to do.”
I helped him finish the stables, giving him little nudges every once in a while and chattering incessantly about the plans we should make for the coming spring. Eventually I was rewarded by a return to something like his customary cheerfulness. It was a relief to know that regardless of what followed, I had at least managed to successfully avert one little disaster this morning, and it was still more of a relief to at long last see him walk happy and smiling back into the house.
The same could not be said for me, however, and watching him go, I felt a sudden desperate urge to regain some tranquillity of my own. Despite my concern about where he could have got to, I was really quite relieved not to have to talk to Matthew. After such a morning, I knew it would only need one minor misunderstanding to break my remaining self-control, and with my emotions already whirling in a senseless chaos, I suspected that it would not take much beyond that to tip me over the edge into a total screaming mess.
But Beechnut, my ever-present source of comfort and peace, seemed of all the residents of my farm to be perfectly cheerful, and she inspected my pockets carefully as I lifted the saddle onto her back and reached under her belly for the girth. She kindly lowered her head to accept the bit before lipping up the last few strands of hay while I fiddled about with the stirrups and then finally, after an infinite number of other tiny adjustments, we were ready.
I led her over the road into the small dirt paddock that doubled as a school. The snow had been laboriously and regularly cleared from this little corner, or at least cleared as much as it was possible to be in that incessant wind, and so there were only a few areas that were thick with slush. Even more impressively, the thaw was actually quite advanced here and the saturated ground had finally softened enough to give a little, although thankfully it had not yet turned to clinging mud. Giving the girth one last tug, I clambered up onto the gate and swung my leg over her back.
Our warm-up unfolded a little inconsistently. The horse’s attention strayed every time something caught and glittered in the blinding light – which given the conditions was pretty much every other yard – and I was about to start being a little irritable with her when I realised that I could not expect her to concentrate if my own mind would persist in wandering. It was going over and over what Freddy had said in an everlasting cycle and I wondered what I would do if everyone thought the same. And by everyone I meant the Inspector, John and…
I halted, put myself into a more correct posture and then started again.
“You angel.” Beechnut rose fluidly into a collected trot, her back lifting as her weight settled onto her hind legs. To encourage her to relax – she always was a worrier – and to open her shoulders, I sent her moving diagonally across the school in a half-pass and was rewarded with a more expressive trot than I had felt in a long time. My body relaxed into her movement as if it knew what was intended before even my mind had formulated the instruction and the feeling of power that lifted through the saddle brought a smile to my flushed cheeks. We cantered and she lifted sweetly from my leg to carry the contact into my hand; it is hard to describe the joy that is inspired by riding to such an intense level of communication, but as we settled back from canter into a steady trot it was as if all the stresses and strains of the past week had become simply a distant memory.
A hard splutter of gunfire brought me sharply down to earth. The sudden clenching of my fingers on the rein snatched Beechnut to so harsh a halt that she almost sat down. Then the distant shotgun fired again. I bit my lip.
All happy schooling was over. I led Beechnut back across the road and lifted the saddle down from her back. Using a twist of straw, I wisped the sweat from her coat before slinging a blanket over her. It took a while, and I had to tidy her bedding and replace the hay in her stable before, at long last, the horse having relieved my pocket of all its treats, I had nothing left to do but to collect my tack and carry the saddle into the house. I dreaded the emptiness of the kitchen.
Taking the turn from the passage into the house, I very nearly dropped the saddle on the floor. Matthew was standing by the stove with my kettle in his hand seeming perfectly at his ease and he turned to greet at me calmly, quite as if nothing was amiss. Instantly flooded with an overwhelming sense of relief, I could have laughed aloud. Instead, rather more sensibly, I said, “That wasn’t you then?”
“Eh?” Matthew looked completely taken aback.
“The guns,” I said hoarsely.
“What? Oh, no, pheasants, I think.”
“Oh.”
It was only when I saw him begin to look faintly bemused and then lift a questioning eyebrow that I realised that I was staring dumbly. I must have been standing there for a good minute before I recollected the saddle in my hands.
Swiftly, I swept away into the back room. Once there and safely out of sight behind the door, I finally set the saddle down and covered my mouth with my hand. I allowed myself one long trembling breath, my eyes screwed tightly shut. Then, forcing a cheerful expression onto my reluctant cheeks and making myself turn back to the open door, I walked out and across the room towards him.
He
was spooning loose-leaf tea into the pot. “Not too much,” I said, tension making my voice coming out in a kind of complaint. “We can’t have any more for another week.”
I smiled to show I did not mean to sound so stern but he had turned away and did not see. Instantly that unpleasant tightness closed around my chest again, making my heart beat uncomfortably, and in an attempt to remedy the situation I propped my elbows on the sink beside him, saying casually, “Where did you disappear to then?”
“Langton’s place. I couldn’t miss a perfect opportunity to have a look round.” His voice sounded oddly flat and he barely acknowledged me as he made me step aside so that he could rummage in the drawer for a teaspoon.
“And did you find anything?” I asked politely, trying hard to keep the surprise out of my voice.
“Nothing.” He was lifting cups down from the rack.
I raised my eyebrows. “Well, you needn’t sound so disappointed.”
“You seem very determined to discount him,” he observed curtly, somehow managing to pour tea through the strainer into the cups in a manner which implied thinly veiled impatience.
“And you seem determined to convict him,” I replied, beginning to lose my cool. At long last he turned to face me and something in his unsmiling expression prompted me to add, “And it is very unfair, you know. If I believed you, I can certainly believe him.”
That really did not come out how I had intended. I tried to find words to remedy it but before I could speak he had snatched up his cup from the counter and left the kitchen. I expected to hear the front door slam but it shut quietly, which was even worse.
Chapter 17
Freddy was happily watching the stew cook on the hotplate by the fire. I had prepared him a meal just in case Matthew was not so angry as to go alone to Warren Barn. I sincerely hoped not, but he had been outside for a long time and I fidgeted and waited and fussed around the house until Freddy finally lost patience and told me to go away and mess about with the ponies. Taking orders from Freddy was a new one and I realised that I really needed to pull myself together.