by Lorna Gray
Matthew was bending over the engine again and he barely even glanced at me as I stepped up through the doorway. I let my hands rest on the grill at the front of the car and concentrated hard on keeping my voice level.
“Are we still going?”
“You still want to come?” he asked, without lifting his attention from the nameless piece of metal that was being worked beneath his oiled fingers. His voice was as flat as mine.
“Matthew! Please!” I begged, losing all pretence with a rush.
He looked up at that. For a moment his face looked hard and full of icy feeling, only then it softened. “I’m sorry, Eleanor – I’m not really angry with you, it’s not your fault. It’s just that all this skulking around in the shadows is getting a bit much, that’s all.” He reached out his hand and it hovered above mine for a moment. There may have been a light whisper of contact from the very tips of his fingers but then the hand clenched into a ball and dropped away again.
Finally he said in a carefully measured tone, “I’d appreciate it if you came. You’ll make a much more credible witness than I could.”
I hung about while he finished the car, but he didn’t speak again. The line of his jaw seemed fixed by the unhappy tension that had settled about him and although it lightened a little as I curiously set about examining the contents of my father’s ancient tool box, his mouth sharply contracted again when, with timely irony, it transpired that John’s playful interference had drained what little power was left in the battery. Shamefaced and quietly cursing that man’s name, I sought out the crank, passed it to him and then climbed silently into the driver’s seat.
The handle jumped sharply as the engine kicked into life and Matthew had to hastily snatch his hand away before it could batter his fingers. I was ready with my foot to depress the accelerator but it still took a token cough and a splutter for the car to settle to a steady rumbling, and I climbed out again to hover nervously beside a newly arrived Freddy while Matthew gave it one final check. With a light touch to the pedal, the engine picked up and as soon as he was satisfied that it was running smoothly Matthew stepped out, closed the bonnet and beckoned me towards the car once more.
Leaving Freddy as a lookout, I drifted over only to stop, my eyes running from him to the open door and back to him again. He was looking at me expectantly.
“Hang on a minute,” I said, backing away in genuine alarm. “You never said anything about making me drive.”
Behind me, I heard Freddy stifle a giggle and there was a momentary lightening of the serious mood as he firmly guided me into the driver’s seat. He shut the door. “I’m sure you’ll be fine – just don’t let it stall …”
Matthew climbed in through the passenger door onto the pokey back seat and then settled himself low so that he could just see the road ahead but a casual passer-by would be unlikely to notice him. Not likely, I thought grimly as I put the car painfully into gear, they’ll be too busy leaping for cover.
The car, in a moment of charitable kindness, did not stall. It took me a while to get the hang of smoothly depressing the accelerator but I managed to navigate the bends through the inexplicably busy village without killing anyone so personally I was quite impressed. Leaving the cluster of mercifully distracted old ladies, their stray dogs and a suicidal cockerel behind, we swung past the empty gates of the Manor without seeing a soul and then we were streaking down the steep hill into thicker fog towards the Washbrook junction at the bottom. The road was awash, melt-water and ice running in great sheets down the crude metalled surface and I wondered if Matthew had been correct to decree that we would go this way, avoiding the risk of exposure by a brief stint on the main road.
“Er …” Matthew said hesitantly from somewhere near my left ear. The car was gaining speed at quite a rate and I had to fling the wheel hard over to make the first of the many bends. “The gate? … Eleanor!”
As we flew down towards the next corner I saw it and remembered at the same time. Somehow the fact that this was a gated road had completely slipped my mind. I stamped on the brake and the clutch and the wheels locked, wearing millimetres of tread on the ice-damaged surface as, with a horribly high-pitched whining sound, the gate raced upwards out of the white glare to meet us.
“You can open your eyes again now.” Matthew’s voice was slightly less controlled than usual. “We’ve stopped.”
My fingers were gripping the steering-wheel so tightly that my nails were digging into the palms of my hand and, rather unsteadily, I slipped the gear into neutral before reaching to open the door.
Matthew’s arm shot past me as he lunged for the handbrake. “I’ll put that on, shall I?”
I threw him an evil look.
The drive to the bottom of the hill went considerably more smoothly, despite the river that appeared to be running down the roadway, and the gate at the bottom was opened and closed without so much as turning a hair as we rolled on towards the descriptively named Washbrook. This stream, swelling grossly with the newly melting snow, had escaped the normally shallow bounds of its crossing and was dirtily fording the road with intimidating force, but I managed to ease the car through without either flooding the engine or grinding to a halt in the middle. Quite impressive I thought, although the occasional sharp intake of breath by my ear suggested that my companion was not quite so admiring.
The run up the hill was relatively easy by comparison, snaking past the Keeper’s Cottage with its tidy allotment garden and up onto the level road that formed a branch of the ancient ridgeway. The surface was drier here and the fog less oppressive, and the surrounding landscape seemed suddenly awash with colour as we cruised past the impressive Park gates and then turned off to swing down the winding road that would eventually lead to the village. There, at long last, the road turned onto the rough farm track, steeply dropping below the invisible gaze of the house high on its cloud-bound ridge and winding round the hill and out of range onto the Warren Barn fields at its feet.
I slowed to a crawl as we neared the farm, dimming the headlights and trusting on nothing unexpected meeting us on the trackway. The dripping roofs of the stone barn and crumbling outhouse were just visible as shapeless masses over the brow of the hill and I could see Matthew’s nose out of the corner of my eye as he scanned the terrain for a suitable place in which to conceal ourselves.
“There,” he said, pointing into the wooded copse beside us on the hillside.
I eased the car past before reversing back up the narrow dirt track into the trees. Although he said nothing, I felt rather proud of myself for not veering off into the undergrowth and, killing the engine, I turned in my seat to look at him expectantly. His eyes were narrowed as he surveyed the muted scene. Then, abruptly and without a word to me, he folded the passenger seat forwards and climbed out.
“Stay here,” he mouthed through the glass as if I had any intention of wandering. I settled down in my seat to wait.
The straggling array of farm buildings lay about three-hundred yards away just beyond the shoulder of the hill and through the unhelpful blur of thickened haze I could just see what might have been a gleam of grey metal nosing out of the darker shape of heavy barn doors. The house lay further downhill and only the very faintest suggestion of its roof could be made out from behind a fringe of trees, and that only because I knew it was there. It was eerie waiting alone in the car, trying not to think about it and yet knowing all the while that two men, armed and lethal, were still about somewhere. The whole place seemed dead and abandoned; there were no signs of life except for that same raven which was somewhere nearby, calling hoarsely, and the few pheasants which were scuttling about in their brainless fashion on the grass. I suppressed a cold shiver of apprehension. It was hard to resist the urge to keep turning around to check that the two men were not behind.
Not surprisingly, I very nearly screamed when the car door opened and Matthew climbed in beside me. I hadn’t heard his approach at all.
“Any sign of them?” I as
ked, somehow managing to sound much more nonchalant than I felt. “I saw their car.”
“Yes, they’re here; in the barn as before – which pretty much tells us where to concentrate our search.”
“It does? Oh. Good.” A pause. “What do we do now then?”
“We wait. They must eat sometime; my guess is that they go somewhere else.”
“Oh,” I repeated lamely. We sat there in silence, saying nothing and doing nothing except listening to the car tick as it cooled. A rabbit hopped by and it reminded me of dinner.
The sun was dipping lower in the sky so that the effect of its muted halo was barely showing at all anymore across the streaked and snow scarred grass, and I hoped it would not turn to a heavy frost when night fell; my toes were already feeling chilly. There were sheep droppings everywhere but no sign of the culprits; evidence, I presumed, that the fields were let out to someone else as Jamie most definitely had never been a farmer.
“Stop fidgeting,” Matthew suddenly said, making me jump. He had spoken quite coolly without taking his eyes from the ghosted barn but a faint smile was threatening to show at the corners of his mouth and I had to resist the urge to stick my tongue out at him.
We sat there for a while longer, watching nothing happen, before I finally broke the impasse. “So did you look in the Colonel’s rooms too?”
“No.” His gaze didn’t falter from its attention on the vacant trackway. “His office was locked.”
“Oh,” I said uselessly. I might have added ‘You didn’t bother, did you?’ but I held my tongue.
An uncomfortable silence yawned between us once again. An owl twitted shyly and I waited for the usual quavering twooo in reply from across the valley. Instead, its muted question was answered by the coarse cooing of a woodpigeon and judging by its volume, it was thoroughly determined to make its presence known before the day was finally forced to surrender to the growing dusk.
“What do we actually know about your John?”
Matthew’s abrupt question shattered the tentative peace completely. I looked at him in surprise, forgetting to correct him on the ‘your John’. “What do you mean?”
He kept his gaze level on the unmoving car but his fingers were fiddling with the window catch as he expanded on his query. “Where did he fight, for example?”
“He didn’t fight. He was signed off as unfit for active service.”
“Was he?”
Matthew’s voice was perfectly level but the increase of tension in the car was palpable and I realised with a sinking feeling just where exactly this line of questioning was going. I said; “Don’t you remember what happened to his leg? It’s amazing he can even walk.”
Matthew frowned. “He doesn’t look particularly lame to me. In fact I don’t really recall him ever being that badly hurt. Is there a chance – no, listen for a minute – a chance that Jamie found out it was a lie? Perhaps Jamie found evidence that he had forged his injuries. Maybe that was what he wanted to tell me. You can go to prison for that, you know.”
“And then what?” I asked, struggling to keep my tone light. “John murdered him to save his own skin?”
“You have to admit it’s a theory.”
“A pretty lame one,” I said. His frown deepened at my poor attempt at a pun and I sighed. “Fine. There are several reasons why this theory is utter rubbish. One – I saw John’s fall from his horse and it wasn’t pretty. Trust me when I say there was bone, and it really wasn’t where it should have been. He was in hospital for a very long time, but you won’t remember that because you were away in London doing your studies. Two – I thought we were here to find out what it is that those two are hiding which, although I may be being presumptuous, I imagine is a touch more valuable than a pair of crutches. And three,” I took a breath before finishing, “I should have thought that you of all people would know better than to be accusing perfectly innocent bystanders on utterly flimsy grounds. Particularly when that person was elsewhere at the time. With witnesses.”
This time it was Matthew’s turn to say, “Oh.”
There was another very long pause, then he said, “But what if …”
I cut across him quickly. I was getting heartily sick of being put on the defensive about John. “Look; I don’t mean to be rude, but John is one of my oldest friends and I think I can safely say that he’s not prone to murderous tendencies. Can we just leave it until we get some tangible evidence?”
“Of course. I’m sorry. I was forgetting that he was one of your particular friends.”
There was an unpleasant emphasis on the ‘particular’ and I very nearly snapped at that. Instead I pressed my lips tightly shut and concentrated hard on simply breathing. I felt like screaming at him. It was unfair, and utterly absurd that having so ruthlessly denied me the comforting prop of my own resentment, he should be subjecting me to the worst of his. I opened my mouth, not to scream, but to say something, anything that might defuse the tension but when I dared to glance at him, his expression was so formidable that the words died on my lips.
Jealous…
The thought came unbidden and was dismissed just as quickly. I stared hard out of the window once more but there was still no sign of life at the barn. The pale outline of the sun had very nearly vanished behind the valley ridge that flanked the farmhouse and the air was noticeably cooler though it was not yet dark. Another rabbit, or possibly the same one, hopped by completely oblivious to our presence; I was surprised that it couldn’t sense the tension.
Finally, I said rather cautiously, “Can we talk about something else?”
“Of course.” His reply was a little abrupt but then, after a moment, he turned to look at me and with an effort to sound pleasant, said, “What are your plans for the future?”
I think that the question had been meant innocently enough but I was feeling so sensitive about any possible reference to John that like a fool I snapped some curt meaningless reply.
Matthew blinked at my spiteful tone. Then his mouth curled into a sneer and he turned back to gazing at the barn again. “Sorry. As you’ve already told me, it’s none of my business, is it?”
Shame hit me painfully in the stomach once more and made me forget my reserve long enough to touch his arm briefly with the tips of my fingers. “No, I’m sorry, Matthew. I didn’t mean that. I’m just not used to having to talk about myself.” I gave him a weak attempt at a smile. “I’m so used to being limited to ‘Yes, Mrs Whatsit, your boy will make a fabulous rider’ and the weather that I’m out of practice with talking about personal things. I truly am sorry; I didn’t mean to be rude.”
His frown faded then, genuinely. “All right. We’ll start with something easy and you can tell me to push off if it gets too personal. Will that do?”
I nodded my agreement, feeling a different little flutter touch at my core.
“Where did you learn to ride like that?”
Modesty made me want to misunderstand his meaning but with a great effort I decided to be honest instead. “Dad taught me. You remember that Dad was a northern lad? Well, before their war, and when he was still a young man, he found a job with a stud in Cheshire. They used to import mares from all over the place and he was sent to France to find some new blood. He liked it so much out there he ended up staying over there for five years and was lucky enough to fall in with a man from the Cadre Noire – the French Classical riding school – lucky man. You wouldn’t know it but he was a fabulous rider, my father. He would have taught me too but unfortunately there isn’t much demand for hunters trained in the classical style so I had to glean what knowledge I could on the unschooled youngsters. But now I have Beechnut. She’s the first horse I can call my own and so I’m finally getting to put it all together. There are a lot of gaps though, and of course Dad’s not around any more to ask.”
I stopped, suddenly embarrassed. “Sorry; I bet you didn’t expect a great monologue. I told you I was out of practice.”
“You’re doing very well,” he
said soothingly. “Ready for the next question? Do you plan to carry on with the ponies, or will you get back into horses now?”
“Now?”
“Er, now that the war is over.”
I had the very strong impression that wasn’t what he had meant, but I wasn’t brave enough to broach the subject of John again. It was ludicrous, I thought in frustration, that I was allowing the myth to become the acknowledged truth simply because the idea of talking about it to him of all people was so laughable that my mind would not even begin to find the words.
“Now that the war is over,” I said carefully, without betraying the thoughts in my mind, “I honestly don’t know. Ponies are easier to care for, cost less and don’t tend to injure themselves on the tiniest little thing so potentially the profit, although small, is more reliable. But, and this is a big but, what I’d really like to do is start breeding and training riding horses. Not hunters, you understand? Proper riding horses, and hopefully grow a reputation for producing dressage horses. It’s a bit of a remote dream though.”
“Your dad would be really proud of you, you know.”
His words sounded startlingly sincere. I shot him a stealthy glance, feeling uncertain again as I found myself saying; “Flatterer. Anyway, enough about me. What about you – what do you plan to do now?”
“Now? As in now that the war is over? Well, I don’t know. Hard to say really, I haven’t …” He stopped. “Sorry – I’m obviously out of practice too.” His mouth twitched. Then, with a return to seriousness, he added, “Though if I have to be perfectly honest; at the moment I’d settle for taking a step out from under the shade of the gallows. But presuming that all this is just academic however…I don’t quite know. I love my job and living here, but … well, let’s just say my plans aren’t fixed. I might move away, or I might not. It all depends.”
If ever there was an invitation to say “on what?” this was it, but unfortunately I was too busy trying to interpret my own reaction to manage to speak and I missed my chance.