‘George Farrell,’ he said, taking her pale, perfectly smooth hand in his, then letting it go quickly in fear that she would think him too familiar. ‘P-P …’ he stuttered over the word ‘postman’.
‘Painter,’ she said and smiled.
That had been in May. The first month he had looked for her often but his searching had been in vain because he had later learnt that she had been away. She told him that she had been staying with Elizabeth Lyne, an old school friend in Carlisle: describing another world of tea taken on the lawn, with white cloths under spreading elms, and dancing after twilight, music spilling like magic from the open throat of the gramophone.
He had kept looking and had eventually been rewarded. Sometimes he just glimpsed a distant figure on the hillside as he passed with his bike and bag along the road below; then she would raise her hand to him and he to her, in salutation. Sometimes she would be coming towards him from home with her camera in its leather box slung across her shoulder and he would give her the letters for the house. Almost every day, in among a sheaf of bills in brown envelopes, there would be one creamy envelope for her with a Carlisle postmark. She would shuffle through the letters until she saw it and then stow it in one pocket and put the rest in the other. He imagined that she must miss her friend badly and feel the isolation of the spot after her companionable stay in the town.
When he had passed over the letters, he would turn around so that he could walk with her a while. He would wheel the bike alongside; her camera stowed with the post in the basket so that she might have a hand free to hold her long skirt clear of the dusty road. If she had letters of her own to send, in the pale blue envelopes she favoured, they would walk first to the postbox before strolling on, out into the countryside. Sometimes, the best times, when he climbed a track to one of the lonely hill farms, he would come across her leaning on a gate looking out over the valley and he would join her to share the view. They talked of the way the clouds chased the light over the hills, and of the hawks nesting in the copse near the house, which hovered, dark specks in the heavens, giving perspective and making the piled clouds mountainous.
George learnt that she was older than he was by three years. ‘An old lady of twenty-one,’ she said. An only child, she had been educated at a boarding school in Carlisle, then a finishing school in France. She spoke of its beauty: the French countryside softer than Cumberland with hedges rather than walls, low slopes and wide plains of rich pasture and standing crops. She described the rocky coast of Brittany, its crashing waves and spume-filled air, and a Normandy beach with a wide arc of sand, which she had walked from end to end, slipping away from her school party to watch the gannets dive like black arrows into the sea. Her eyes lit up as she told him of such things and she motioned with her hands to trace the sweep of the bay or the birds’ headlong plunge. Once he told her that looking out over the lake from the top of the fells was what made him certain that he had a soul, and she had touched his arm and said, ‘Yes, yes.’
He had told her how it had been at his school. How he was different, always in trouble when the master asked him a question and he was unable to answer because he had been staring out of the window at the clouds, making dragons and faces and genies from their ever-changing shapes. He had said less and less the more he grew afraid that he would get it wrong, until the other children called him ‘moony’ and ‘idiot’ and ‘simple’.
‘You’re far from simple, George,’ she said. ‘They mistook the distraction that comes from hard thought for no thought at all, and that’s their error.’ She touched his sleeve again and he thought his heart would burst with pride because although Kitty and his mother had always said such things this was different.
When she spoke of her parents, she always had a note of worry in her voice. Her father was often abroad attending to his business interests, leaving the land and Home Farm to the estate manager, and her mother to her own resources. Mrs Walter, too much alone, suffered ‘sick-headaches’ and fatigue and often withdrew to her room. Violet once let slip that her father, even when back in London, frequently stayed at his club and George wondered what had caused the breach between her parents, but asked no further, guessing at the hurt that a daughter would feel to know that she was not enough to tempt a father home.
From her room, Mrs Walter instructed the housekeeper, Mrs Burbidge, and took her lunch on a tray. Afterwards she wrote letters, but later in the afternoon, she required Violet’s company, wanting her to sit with her and talk or read aloud. As the sun grew hotter in the afternoon, George would notice Violet glancing back at the copse within which the house was hidden or at her silver wristwatch. He would rack his brain for a question. ‘What was the town like, where your school was? What did you sketch on your picnics?’ Anything to stop her saying the words he dreaded: ‘I must go.’
George rattled the latch of a garden gate and then stood stock-still to listen, in case he had missed the Moot Hall bell. He heard nothing but nonetheless quickened his pace, the bike wheels juddering as he turned into Leonard Street where he lived. As he bumped the bike to a stop outside the house, his mother came to the door to meet him carrying a package wrapped in paper and with Lillie hanging on to her apron and sucking her thumb.
‘I thought I heard you; you made such a clatter,’ his mother said. ‘Have you got a bit behind?’ She passed him the package of sandwiches and a billycan of cold tea.
‘Carry!’ Lillie said and let go of the apron to lift her arms up to him.
‘You mustn’t get behind, George. Mr Ashwell’s a tartar for punctuality.’
‘Carry!’ Lillie said again, imperiously, and George put the food down on the step and lifted her under the armpits: a bundle of warm body and petticoats. He put her on his shoulders where she grabbed on to handfuls of his hair.
‘Ow! Lillie!’ he said and loosened her fingers, laying them flat against his head.
‘Horsy! Horsy!’ Lillie said and George held on tight to her skinny knees and jogged obligingly up and down the street.
The sound of the Moot Hall bell reached him, a single sonorous note, and he lifted Lillie down, detaching her fingers from his ear as he did so, and handed her into his mother’s arms.
‘You’d better cut along,’ she said. ‘You’d think it was a holy calling the way Mr A. goes on about duty and professionalism and “the mail must get through in all weathers …”.’ But George was already on his way, billycan rattling from the handlebars and the corner of the sandwich packet clamped between his teeth as he ran with the bike to the end of the road, threw his leg over the saddle and freewheeled down Wordsworth Street.
He pedalled along the road towards the park and left the buildings behind him, out into the elation of open space and over the bridge where the river flowed shallow and glittering and ducks and moorhens pecked at the trailing green weed. He passed the bowling greens where men in whites and straw hats were playing a tournament, while the ladies and elderly gentlemen watched from the benches, and then he took the back paths through the exotic trees, keeping out of sight of the park keeper, who would curse at him and make him get off his bike and walk. Then he was out on Brundholme Road with open fields either side, the sun hot on his back, soaking through his dark uniform jacket like warm water, the material prickling through his shirt.
By the time he had delivered the mail to the village post offices and to the scatter of farms beyond, he was starting to worry that he would arrive too late and took the last farm track down from the hill at a rate that rattled his teeth. A mile or so further on along the main road to Carlisle he reached the familiar gatehouse and turned in to the drive through the wood, his way lined by the dark glossy leaves of rhododendrons and the straight boles of Scots pines. Here and there, copper beeches made a splash of colour against the massive bulk of Dodd Fell that rose up behind, cluttered with rocks and strewn with sheep: small, pale dots on its upper slopes.
As he rounded the bend to face directly into the sun, he was dazzled momentarily; he p
ut his hand up to his brow and squinted. A familiar figure, carrying a brown leather box, was making leisurely progress along the drive towards him. His pulse quickened. He felt a sensation run through him like a current through a wire making his grip on the handlebars tighten and his sense of the board back of his sketchbook in his pocket keener, as if it had imprinted itself on his skin. He forced himself to slow, to sit down on the saddle, to rehearse his speech in his head. He would greet her as usual, turn the bike around as usual, give her the post for the house and then, just casually, as if it were something extra he’d just remembered, take out his sketchbook, slip out the painting and say to her, ‘This is for you, as a small token of my esteem.’ She would thank him in her solemn voice to show that she took his gift seriously, and would look at it and exclaim to see that it was her favourite view – from Dodd Wood, out over the lake – and perhaps admire the workmanship. Here his stomach made a strange kind of tumble, as if he had swung so high in a swing that he thought he might fly right over the top of the bar. Perhaps she would put it carefully into her camera case and say she would treasure it … The bike jounced into a rut that nearly unseated him. He swerved and squeezed on the brakes; then he took a deep breath and got off the bike, just as she raised her free arm and waved: a wide, expansive gesture that made his heart lift. He forced himself to walk slowly towards her, concentrating on the soft shushing that the tyres made on the drive.
‘Hello there, I don’t suppose you have anything for me?’ she said with a smile as he reached her and swept the bike round in a circle to walk back with her the way he had come.
He handed her the sheaf of letters that he had saved until last. Straightaway she picked out the cream envelope and tucked the rest into her pocket. She felt the letter between her thumb and forefinger and frowned as if surprised by its thinness. She turned it over as if she were about to open it, but then turned it back and started to walk alongside him.
He glanced sideways at her but she didn’t turn to look at him and the words he had planned to say deserted him. ‘Do you have anything to send?’ he asked instead. She shook her head. ‘Nothing from the house today, and I … I’m not sure. Perhaps I should read this one first.’
‘Where are you planning to walk today?’ he asked. ‘It’s very hot once you’re out in the sun, you might find it tiring.’
‘I thought I’d go up through Dodd Wood. I can take advantage of the sun and get a view of it brightening the lake without getting overheated.’
George nodded, pleased that he could go with her for most of the way as Dodd Wood was on his route back. ‘I know a good spot where you can see the different colour of the shallows and the deeper water,’ he began, thinking to turn the conversation to lake views in general and from there to painting them and then to one painting in particular, but the thought was enough to cause him to break into a deep blush and he found himself suddenly rushing to jump ahead, ‘In fact I’ve brought something, as a token—’
‘I’m sorry, George,’ she said, fingering the letter. ‘Forgive me, but I feel that I can’t wait; I must open this. Would you mind?’
George shook his head dumbly; a sense of misgiving filled him and he knew that he would not now take out the sketchbook from his pocket; that, indeed, he felt afraid that its angular lines must show through the material, its bulky shape exposed, as if he carried his feelings like a foolish badge for all to see.
Violet took a few quick steps and then stopped; he drew to a halt a little behind her. She slit the envelope with her thumb, pulled out a single sheet of paper and bent over it, quickly scanning the page. Her hand dropped to her side.
She turned to him. ‘It’s Edmund,’ she said. ‘He’s being sent away for more training, then he’ll be posted abroad.’
‘Edmund?’ he said.
‘Edmund Lyne, Elizabeth’s brother.’ She looked at him as though he were being obtuse. ‘We were going to be engaged,’ she said flatly. ‘I was hoping to see him again when he got leave, to have one more visit to Carlisle before … before …’ She looked away, into the trees, unable to trust herself to speak.
‘I see,’ George said as he began to understand. What a fool, he thought, to have imagined all those letters were exchanges between school friends: gossip and girlish confidences. Of course – they were love letters; of course they were. The phrase ‘a token of my esteem’ floated through his mind as though his brain was working minutes behind and had finally located the words he had so carefully chosen. An engagement! He swallowed hard; he mustn’t let her even glimpse his feelings. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said; then, taking a deep breath: ‘Is there anything I can do?’
She didn’t answer but refolded the letter and then folded it again into a thin slip. Slowly, she returned it to its envelope and carried on folding, turning the letter into a small rectangle that fitted into her closed hand. ‘He writes in haste; they’re to travel to a training camp, and then be sent abroad. That’s all they’re allowed to say. He says he’ll write again.’ She nodded twice and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. At last she looked at him and her face was blotchy, her eyes reddened. ‘So silly of me,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I had better go back to the house.’
‘I’ll walk back with you,’ George forced himself to say although he longed to get away so he could be on his own, where no one could see him, where he could think.
‘No need, I’ll be fine,’ she said and took in a huge breath. ‘I’m sorry about all this.’ She half turned but then seemed to remember something. ‘Did you say you had something else for me?’
‘It was nothing, really,’ George said, trying to keep the misery from his voice. She was looking at him more closely now, her brows furrowed in puzzlement.
‘George?’ she said and he could see her expression change to concern as she scanned his face.
‘I told you; it was nothing!’ George said more loudly than he intended, his voice coming out hoarse and strained as he yanked the bike straight and moved past her. ‘George, I didn’t think, I’m so sorry …’ she started.
He could hold on no longer and threw himself at the bike, nearly overbalancing as the postbag swung sideways. He pushed off and stood up on the pedals to gain speed, forcing it along the rutty drive and away from her in a spatter of grit. Gasping for breath, he looked back only once as he reached the bend. She was standing looking after him, silhouetted against the light at the end of the tunnel of trees, her camera slung across her shoulder so that it bulged at her side, her shoulders drooping and her fist still closed over the letter. Then he swung away into the trees that would hide him from view.
2
AT THE TWA DOGS
When George regained the road after leaving Violet, he wanted to be alone and so he turned the opposite way from home and rode out towards Carlisle. He cursed himself as a fool to have harboured affection in the first place for someone he knew to be so far above his own station, and called himself an idiot not to have guessed that she would have an admirer. He imagined how he must seem in her eyes: a callow boy, not yet a man, a lackey, someone you had to be kind to … Yet, when he thought about her tears, the feelings he had were not boyish: he felt fierce, angry with anyone or anything that could dare to hurt her. He wished, more than anything in the world, that he could wipe the tears away, and that he could comfort her and hold her in his arms. It had been weak to run away! Yet, now that he had run away, now that she must think him a cad, how was he to face her again? The thought of the way they had walked and talked together, the camaraderie they had shared and the feeling that this would never be recaptured weighed upon him; he rode on and on, seeking to blank out emotion with physical sensation, pushing his aching muscles further, seeking relief through sheer fatigue.
He rode and rode until he eventually came to the suburbs of the town, where dirty redbrick terraces crowded straight on to the roads and children dodged unnervingly in and out between the carts and cycles and motors. He turned out of the mêlée and into the haven of a leafy park
where he sat on a bench for a considerable time, thinking about Violet and her sweetheart.
After a while he realised that Kitty would be wondering why he hadn’t come back for tea. Three young men were kicking a football around on the lawns and larking about. The light began to wane and he remembered that his mother would be worried, yet he sat on, idly watching them and feeling dispirited.
One of the young men, showing off, kicked the ball high into the beech tree above him, showering him with leaves and breaking his reverie. He listened to them daring each other to get the ball down and watched as they threw sticks, unsuccessfully, until eventually two of them shinned up the tree. There they jumped up and down to shake the branches and urged each other to go higher and further while the third shook his head in disbelief and sat down on the bench next to George. He introduced himself as Ernest Turland, and said to George, ‘One of the bloody fools is going to break his head. Probably Rooke,’ he added. ‘Haycock’s taller and stronger.’ The bigger chap triumphed at last by hanging from the branch where the ball had lodged, his boots appearing alarmingly in mid-air as he swung. The branch creaked ominously but the ball fell with a sound of snapping twigs and rustling leaves just as a park keeper appeared and started to lock up the tennis courts. Catching sight of them, he let out a shout. Turland scooped up the ball and had taken George’s bike by the handlebars before George had even worked out that he would cop it too if he stayed.
‘Come on!’ Turland said and George got on the bike and pushed off, standing on the pedals with Turland perched on the seat with his legs dangling and the ball held tight against his stomach. Behind them, the others clambered down, dropped to the ground and then took off running after them.
‘Go to the Twa Dogs!’ Haycock called out as he swerved between two metal bollards and along a footpath, leaving the bike to take the road.
The Moon Field Page 2