The Girl by the River

by Sheila Jeffries

  ‘Ah,’ Freddie said, agreeing. He drew a deep lungful of smoke and blew it towards the ceiling. He played with the end of the fag, jerking it to make little smoke rings. But he didn’t talk. He wanted to tell Herbie everything. His concerns about Tessa, the relentless struggle to feed and clothe his family, the stress of living next door to Annie, and, top of the list, was Ian Tillerman. He shook his head, but he still didn’t talk. The two men sat in companionable silence with only the sound of a tap dripping into the Belfast sink. Freddie appreciated Herbie’s quiet acceptance of his need just to sit and calm down. The stone angels watched them from the yard, blushing pink in the sunset, the stacks of stone blocks somehow calming, grounding. Ian Tillerman couldn’t carve a stone angel, Freddie thought.

  ‘Women?’ said Herbie eventually.

  ‘Ah – women.’

  ‘And babies,’ Herbie said. ‘I couldn’t stand my lot when they were babies. Love ’em now. But I think babies are an abomination. If I have to carve anymore cherubs holding birdbaths, I’ll throw me chisels in the river.’

  ‘Ah – babies.’ Freddie finished the cigarette and ground the stub into the overloaded glass ashtray Herbie had filched from the pub. He stood up. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Where are you going now? Home?’

  ‘No,’ Freddie said. ‘Down the woods. Listening to owls.’

  ‘You ought to take your shotgun,’ Herbie advised. ‘Good gun that. Never use it, do you? I’d be shooting rabbits if it were mine. Pity, leaving it stuck in that cupboard.’

  ‘I don’t like shooting. If you look a rabbit in the eye, really look I mean, you wouldn’t shoot ’im.’

  ‘Get on – ya old softie. Here ya’ are, take another fag with you.’

  ‘Ta.’ Freddie nodded at Herbie and walked off, blowing curls of blue smoke into the late sunlight. As he headed for the woods, he was glad not to be carrying a gun. He liked to stand in the moonlight, motionless against a tree and become part of the woods, hardly breathing, just watching, waiting, knowing that birds and animals would come close to him, accepting him as part of their world. The gun had belonged to Kate’s father, Bertie, and she’d insisted on giving it to Freddie. He’d never used it. But now, as he struggled with his feelings, he could think of one very good use for that gun. Ian Tillerman.

  The woods stretched for miles along the southern slopes of the Polden Hills, broken only by the alabaster quarry, the railway, and the road to Hilbegut. Freddie wanted to go to a part of the wood where lime trees grew. He wanted the calm of their cool canopy. He wanted the old secrets Granny Barcussy had taught him. ‘Take your anger into the lime wood at twilight,’ she would say, ‘and let the tree spirits turn it into toadstools.’ Then she would cackle with laughter. ‘That’ll stop you eating poisonous fungi!’ It was part of the folklore he’d grown up with. Freddie had puzzled over it, but discovered there was truth beyond the words, a truth that did heal his anger, a truth that was nameless and mysterious.

  He walked on, through birdsong and fragrant hedges. He climbed a field gate and headed up towards the wood where the lime trees grew. Halfway up, a spring gushed out of the hillside, from under a clump of elder bushes, their creamy flowers richly perfumed. Freddie paused to look at the water glinting in the sunset, and to listen to its gurgling music. Something made him stand very still. His skin suddenly had goosebumps.

  At the source of the stream was a shimmering light. He watched and waited, hardly daring to breathe. It was how he felt when he had a vision. Unearthly.

  And then he saw her.

  A young woman, with chestnut hair. She had unusual clothes, such as he’d never seen a woman wearing. Light blue flared jeans, a light blue jacket with silver studs. Beads and ribbons gleamed in the long curly tresses of her hair and it rippled with life. She was beautiful. Just beautiful. But what took Freddie’s breath away was the radiance of her face, and the colour of her eyes as she looked at him. Pale blue eyes with a core of gold.

  ‘Tessa.’

  As soon as he whispered her name, the vision flickered and began to sink back into the shimmering light like a reflection glimmering in a lake of gold. He saw a rose in her hand, a peace rose, and she threw it with graceful fingers into the stream. He thought she blew him a kiss before she vanished and became a memory, an invisible sweetness on the breeze like the perfume of the elderflower.

  A vision of the future. He had seen his daughter, waiting for him, somewhere beyond the present time. Beyond his reasoning mind.

  The ordinary colours of earth filtered back into his consciousness. The grass, the cuckoo flowers and speedwell on the banks of the stream. Reed warblers and blackbirds singing. The apple green leaves of the woods.

  Freddie walked on, into the lime wood, holding the vision in his heart. As the last spark of the sun went down over the distant Quantock Hills, he found his favourite lime tree. It was ancient, and the trunk had a little alcove where he could sit. He leaned his head back, looking up into the canopy.

  The vision of Tessa had been a gift, a pearl to tuck away in his heart. Another, less welcome vision was waiting. A shadow loomed over the lime wood, something that shook the earth and made the foliage jingle like bells. He saw birds and animals fleeing from their homes, and the bees searching hopelessly for nectar in a barren wasteland of ashes and dead wood. He opened his hands and watched the seeds of an impossible dream fall into them like jewels.

  Clearly, he and Tessa had work to do in the far distant future. Ian Tillerman was just one of the obstacles. The others were fear, poverty, and self-doubt.

  Freddie walked home in long strides through the honey-scented dusk. He lingered in the garden, below the bedroom window, and smiled at the sound of Kate reading Lucy a bedtime story. Lucy would be listening, wide-eyed, as Kate put deep sorrow into her voice.

  ‘. . . down came a basket all over Ping and he could see no more of the boy, or the boat, or the sky, or the beautiful yellow water of the Yangtze River.’

  Thinking he shouldn’t break the spell, Freddie went over to his workshop, a low stone outbuilding with a sagging roof and no glass in the window. The air inside was beautifully cool, and there were swallows’ nests in the rafters. He switched on the light and saw a row of baby swallows peeping over the rim of one of the nests.

  He chose the block of Bath stone he wanted, and imagined the carving he would do of the girl by the stream. The waves of her hair, the grace of her hands.

  But first – he picked up a piece of pink and white alabaster, and began to carve a rose.

  Chapter Four

  ‘SHE’S A BRAT!’

  On the day of the Tillerman wedding, Tessa had her worst ever tantrum. At eight months, she was crawling and into everything.

  ‘She was putting stones in her mouth,’ Annie shouted to make herself heard above Tessa’s enraged howling. ‘I had to bring her inside.’ She groaned with the effort and put the grubby infant down on the sofa. ‘You stay there, madam.’

  Kate stood at the top of the stairs in her white satin petticoat, her feet bare, and her make-up half done. She’d been unrolling a brand new pair of nylon stockings with fancy seams when she’d heard the commotion. Her one concern on this exciting day was that she had to leave Tessa with Annie.

  ‘Can you come down and deal with her?’ Annie shouted, her face dark with an unhealthy flush as she tried to hold the thrashing child on the sofa.

  Kate ran downstairs. ‘Stop that noise,’ she said in her ‘I-must-be-obeyed’ voice. Her eyes glittered imperiously at Tessa. ‘Do you want a smack?’

  Tessa squinted at her through shiny tears, her pale blue eyes drowning in a whirlpool of fear and fury. She held out her arms to Kate.

  ‘Don’t give in to her,’ Annie said.

  Kate ignored her and sat down on the sofa next to Tessa. Her hand tingled with the desire to smack her hard, but the need to understand was stronger. She’d watched and learned from Freddie. ‘Let her cry,’ he’d said, so often, ‘no matter how much you
want her to stop. She’s gotta cry all of her tears, not half of them.’

  ‘There you are! Spoil her,’ Annie said contemptuously. ‘I wash my hands of her. I never spoilt MY children. There – look at her – she’s getting worse. Today of all days,’ she added, as Kate tried to hold Tessa close and the furious child struggled even more violently, kicking and pushing her mother away, her hands smearing mud on the clean white petticoat.

  ‘Look at the MESS,’ said Annie, and Kate suddenly wanted to scream herself. Caught between Tessa’s extreme distress and Annie’s avaricious judgements, her head rang with the conflict. And now Lucy was at the top of the stairs, wailing, in her yellow organza bridesmaid’s dress, the sash trailing on the floor. ‘Mummy, I can’t do my bow. I want you to do it.’

  ‘Will you help Lucy, please?’ Kate said directly, looking into Annie’s hovering eyes. She took a deep breath, the way she’d done in her years of nursing, and held on to calm as if it were a real rock in a torrent. She was glad to see Annie hauling herself up the stairs, the ageing banister creaking under her weight. Kate didn’t care about the mud on her petticoat. No one was going to see it, she figured. She didn’t care what Annie thought. Priority was to understand what was causing the intense distress in her child.

  ‘Are you worried about Daddy?’ she asked, and Tessa actually looked at her for an instant before the crying started again. Kate tried to pick her up but she arched her back and went rigid, holding her breath then coughing alarmingly. ‘I’m worried about Daddy too,’ Kate said in a quiet voice. She leaned her cheek on the top of Tessa’s head, stroking the downy chestnut curls in a moment of sadness. Was baby Tessa picking up on Freddie’s strong feelings that day?

  Freddie had gone out early. He’d kissed her goodbye and given her one of those long questioning looks. Usually he went out in the morning whistling, but today he was silent and withdrawn, his cheek twitching a little as it did when he was stressed.

  Kate was bitterly disappointed. She’d tried and tried to reason with him, but Freddie’s mind was set in stone. He was NOT going to the Tillerman wedding, and he was NOT going to be manipulated. Kate had shown him her outfit, his favourite slinky red dress with the black lace sleeves and plunging neckline showing off her curvy figure. She’d shown him her hat, wide-brimmed and elegant, and trimmed with red roses. It wasn’t new. Kate had found it in a jumble sale at the town hall, and pounced on it. ‘My sixpenny hat!’ she called it proudly, and she looked stunning in it. She’d let Lucy put on her yellow organza dress that Susan’s mother, Joan, had made for her, and Lucy’s eyes had sparkled with joy when she paraded and twirled for her daddy.

  Kate had taken Freddie’s suit out of its mothballs, ironed his white shirt and tie, and hung it up, hopefully, next to her dress. She’d polished his best black shoes until they shone like mirrors, and even put a beautifully ironed white hanky in the top pocket of his jacket.

  It was an act of love, and hope.

  Freddie was hauling loads of timber fence posts that morning. His heart was heavy with anger as he drove through the town on his way to the station. When he saw the array of expensive motorcars parked along the kerb outside Joan Jarvis’s house, he put his foot down and roared past, with the timber thundering in the back of the lorry. His hands burned with splinters, and his mouth felt parched. Normally he called in at home for a cup of tea, but not today. He had to stay out, keep his head down and lie low until the dreaded wedding was over.

  The road to Tarbuts Timber wound upwards into the wooded hills. Shaded by tall conifers, the narrow road was always covered in pigeons and rabbits who weren’t used to the speed and sound of a motor vehicle. Freddie usually took it slowly, blowing his horn to scare them away. But today the conflict in his mind had made him reckless, watching the wild creatures of the wood scattering before him.

  The sickening thud of a young rabbit’s soft furry body hitting the front bumper sent a shockwave through Freddie. He had killed a wild creature. A creature who hadn’t harmed him but had simply been sitting there in its own environment.

  Devastated, Freddie stopped the lorry, turned the engine off, and got out. The complex silences of the woods sank into his consciousness, fizzing through him like an aspirin in a glass of water. A line from Oscar Wilde unfurled and flew like a flag in his mind.

  ‘Each man kills the thing he loves . . .’

  On heavy feet he walked round the front of the lorry and found the young rabbit stretched out in the bright grass. Its eyes were wide open, and it was breathing. Freddie sat down and picked it up with tenderness and sorrow. Under the velvet fur he could feel its heartbeat. ‘Stunned,’ he whispered, ‘you’re only stunned – and I’m sorry – I’m so sorry.’ He stroked the rabbit’s long ears, so delicate, like pink paper. It trembled under his hands and it seemed to Freddie that the trembling was getting stronger. Was it recovering? Should he put it in a cardboard box and take it home? The rabbit looked up at him with eyes that clearly said, ‘I have a right to live – and a right to be free.’

  He opened his hands and, in a pulse of energy, the rabbit leapt out of his arms and disappeared into the woods with a flick of its white tail.

  Freddie drew a great breath from the silence of the wood. He remembered what he’d said to Herbie. ‘If you look a rabbit in the eye, I mean, really look, you wouldn’t shoot it.’ These words, coaxed out of him by Herbie’s quiet acceptance, were tucked in the inner pocket of his mind, like a key. A key he’d need one day. The key to a peaceful world.

  He had to look Ian Tillerman in the eye.

  He looked at his watch. Was there time?

  The sense of peace and quiet felt like a benediction to Kate. She lowered the sleeping child into her cot and stood watching Tessa’s magical transformation into an angelic-looking cherub, her eyes closed, and the beautifully curved chestnut lashes fringing her cheeks. She was pale now. She had burned herself out. ‘Sweet dreams, my little one,’ Kate said kindly. ‘Mummy will be back later.’ She tiptoed out and peeped over the banister at Annie, now in her favourite chair with Lucy on her lap. Annie was reading a Beatrix Potter book in a slow thoughtful voice, just like Freddie, and Lucy was loving it, her eyes wide, her yellow dress fanned out over Annie’s knees like a dandelion.

  Kate was proud of Lucy. She’d taken her to the church on the previous day for a rehearsal, and Lucy had behaved impeccably. She quickly understood exactly what to do and how slowly she had to walk down the aisle in front of the bride. ‘She’s perfect!’ Susan had said in delight. ‘What a wonderful little girl you’ve raised, Kate. You’ll have to give us some tips on child rearing when the time comes.’

  Kate had given Susan a hug. ‘I’m so happy for you.’

  ‘I’m scared stiff, Kate!’ Susan had confided in a whisper.

  ‘Oh, you’ll be fine – we’ll be there to help you – won’t we, Lucy?’

  Lucy nodded. ‘And my daddy.’

  ‘Cross fingers,’ Kate said, and on the way home she tried to explain to the excited Lucy that Freddie might not be there.

  ‘He WILL be there,’ Lucy insisted confidently. ‘I told him he had to come and watch me be Susan’s bridesmaid.’

  Kate felt sad as she slipped the red dress over her head and rolled the new nylon stockings up each leg, clipping them carefully onto the suspenders. She brushed her hair and put on her red shoes with the high heels, the ones that Freddie loved so much. She laid her hat and long gloves on the bed, and looked at the clock. Half an hour before they must set off down the road to the church. With a rare slot of time to herself, Kate sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the photograph of her father, Bertie, who had died in the wartime after years of illness. ‘I’m still your golden bird, Daddy,’ Kate said, and felt an overwhelming need to weep the tears of grief that she’d never allowed. ‘I hope I am,’ she whispered. Her father had named her Oriole Kate, after a rare golden oriole had appeared in the garden on the day she was born. Just before he died, her parents had hoped to move back ho
me to Hilbegut, into a lovely cottage close to the farm where Kate and Ethie had grown up. Sally had been devastated and had chosen to stay in Gloucestershire to be close to Bertie and Ethie’s graves. I wish Mum was at Hilbegut, Kate thought sadly. I could go on the bus, and take Lucy. She’d love to walk down through the copper beeches with me, and see the old court. More sadness. The magnificent Hilbegut Court was now an abandoned ruin.

  Stop it! Kate thought. Stop being morbid on the day of Susan’s wedding!

  The truth was that any romantic occasion triggered the tears in Kate. Tears she’d never permitted herself to cry. It was happening now, that huge ache in her throat. Could she really stand in church and watch Susan pledging her life to Ian Tillerman? When she knew only too well what Ian was like. Susan was sweet and vulnerable. She’d kowtow to Ian and pretty soon those stars in her eyes would go out, probably for ever.

  Kate stood up and looked at herself in the mirror. She saw a curvy young woman with wavy black hair and bright brown eyes. ‘You get a hold of yourself, girl,’ she told herself, and pasted a smile on her face. The smile said, ‘I am in control of my life. I can manage Tessa. I can cope with Annie. And I’m going to enjoy Susan’s wedding. Even if I am the only woman there without her husband.’ She smoothed Freddie’s suit with her hand, and gave it a hug.

  Moments later, the ache of tears surged in her throat yet again when she glanced out of the window and saw Freddie getting out of his lorry. Kate flew down the stairs.

  Worn out and covered in sawdust, Freddie looked sombre and nervous. But all Kate saw were his blue eyes coming in the door, lighting up with love as he saw her in her red dress. His eyes said everything. They said he wanted to peel that dress off her and take her to bed with tenderness and passion. They said he’d come home from the war, the war within his mind, the Ian Tillerman war. But his mouth said, ‘I hit a rabbit up on the road to Tarbuts.’

  ‘Did you dear?’ Kate looked puzzled. She waited. ‘It – made me think – I ought to go with you.’