Running Away

by Rosina Lesley

  ‘Oh, yes, Miss Long. How are you?’

  ‘I’m very well, thank you, but I do seem to have a bit of a problem.’

  ‘Oh?’ The dry voice showed a hint of reserve.

  ‘The cottage. It appears it is part of the Cranmore Hall Estate.’

  ‘That is correct, Miss Long.’

  ‘Oh? You didn’t tell me that when I saw you.’

  ‘I told you, if you remember, that your grandmother had been paying only a peppercorn rent for the cottage for the last – um – I think 32 or maybe 33 years, also that the tenancy could only be handed on once to a member of the immediate family. As you were her named heir, and in the absence of spouse or direct issue, you were able to take over her tenancy, provided that she was the original tenant. The tenancy agreement was so tenuous and informal, we have been unable to establish with any degree of accuracy that this was the case.’

  ‘But can’t Mr – er–’ Catherine had forgotten James’s uncle’s name.

  ‘Mr Hamilton. We have applied to him via his solicitors, but we have yet had a reply. He dealt with this matter personally, apparently, and has given no indication that there should be any change to the arrangements.’

  ‘But I haven’t paid any rent since I’ve been here.’ Catherine’s voice rose.

  ‘The rent was always paid annually on the first of January, so you are entitled to remain in Garth Cottage at least until then. Has there been some suggestion that you should leave?’

  ‘No, not exactly, but apparently Mr Hamilton has handed the Hall to his nephew–’

  ‘Ah, yes, Mr Grant. A very pleasant gentleman,’ interrupted Mr Smith, almost heartily.

  Catherine ground her teeth. ‘Well, Mr Grant only knew that the tenant had died and was intending to live in the cottage himself.’

  ‘Ah, I see. But surely his uncle would have informed him of the state of affairs? If he dealt with your grandmother personally he must have known her quite well and would have known about you?’

  ‘Apparently not, Mr Smith,’ Catherine answered wryly. ‘And my grandmother has never – ever since I can remember – mentioned Andrew Hamilton or the fact that the cottage was rented. I knew it was rented because years ago my father told me that Gran owned no property and I remember asking about the cottage then. But my father obviously knew no more than you do.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Then, without prejudice, Miss Long, I suggest you approach Mr Grant privately and try to obtain a solution between you, as neither I nor Mr Hamilton’s solicitors appear to be privy to the situation.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Smith,’ sighed Catherine. ‘I was afraid of that.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Mr Smith sounded querulous.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all – I’m sorry to have taken your time.’ Which will be paid for out of the estate, anyway, thought Catherine, disgruntled.

  Replacing the receiver, she wandered back into the kitchen and stared vacantly out of the window. She supposed she would have to ring James, now, as she had promised to be in touch, but what would happen then? Would she have to see him again? What would his uncle say when he asked him about Garth Cottage? Would she have to leave at the end of the year? Sighing, she reached absently for a mug and almost dropped it as the doorbell rang.

  Damn, she thought, hesitating in the hall. If only she hadn’t slept late – or at least got dressed before she phoned Mr Smith. That’s what came of being in too much of a hurry. The bell rang again, imperiously, and, deciding that whoever it was wouldn’t go away, Catherine reluctantly opened the door a crack and peered round it.

  ‘Good morning, Cat. Not up yet?’ James’s teeth flashed in a wicked grin.

  ‘Oh no,’ groaned Catherine, closing her eyes and leaning her head on the door jamb. ‘Not you.’

  ‘What a welcome. Yes, me. May I come in?’

  ‘I’m not dressed.’ Her eyes snapped open indignantly.

  ‘I don’t mind.’ James was still grinning.

  ‘But I do,’ asserted Catherine, grumpily. Nevertheless, she stood back and allowed him to enter, pulling her cotton housecoat around her more tightly.

  ‘You’ve gained a little weight, haven’t you, Cat?’ He looked her up and down, assessing.

  ‘Just because you’ve known me for ever doesn’t mean you can come here and say what you like, you know.’ Catherine was aware that she had slipped back into the familiar argumentative manner that had characterised their relationship years ago. Old habits die hard, she thought, leading the way to the living room.

  ‘Don’t spit at me, Cat.’ He sounded amused, but she wasn’t going to look at him. ‘Well named, weren’t you?’

  ‘My name is Catherine.’ She swung round at this. ‘And I’ve just phoned my grandmother’s solicitor.’

  If she expected to surprise him with this information, she was disappointed, for he merely nodded his head.

  ‘And I’ve already spoken to my uncle’s. I expect they gave you much the same information?’

  ‘That it was a private arrangement between your uncle and my grandmother?’

  ‘Exactly. And that you have apparently paid the substantial amount of £10 this year, which entitles you to remain here until December 31.’

  ‘Ten pounds?’ Catherine gasped, sinking into an armchair. ‘Ten pounds?’

  ‘A peppercorn rent, but perfectly legal, as long as there is a tenancy agreement of some sort in force.’ James leant back against the edge of the desk and crossed his ankles, pushing his hands into the pockets of his beige cotton trousers.

  Catherine went cold. ‘And you don’t think there is one?’

  ‘As it was such a private arrangement, I doubt it, somehow.’ He raised his eyes to meet hers. ‘I shall have to ask my uncle.’

  ‘Oh, haven’t you done that already?’ Catherine asked sarcastically. ‘I am surprised. Seeing that you’re so keen to get your hands on the cottage.’

  ‘Oh, come, Cat. Surely it should have been “to turn you out”, shouldn’t it?’ He bared his teeth in a mocking smile.

  ‘Well, that’s how it looks from where I’m standing.’ Catherine raised her head defiantly.

  ‘And from where I’m standing it’s becoming quite difficult to concentrate.’ His tone altered and a different kind of tension filled the little room, as Catherine tore her gaze away from his to realise that not only had her housecoat fallen aside to reveal a lot of brown leg, but that the neckline was gaping alarmingly. Blushing furiously, she leapt to her feet, hugging her arms around her.

  ‘Would you go now, please?’ she asked, annoyed to hear how shaky her voice was.

  ‘If I must.’ He was still taunting her.

  ‘Of course you must. If anyone saw you come in–’ Even Catherine realised how thin this sounded and she stopped.

  ‘They aren’t that Victorian around here, surely?’ He laughed and levered himself away from the desk, taking a step towards her. Catherine tried to step backwards and realised she was still in front of the armchair.

  ‘What are you afraid of, Cat?’ He spoke softly, coming to stand right in front of her, so that she had to look up into his face or stare cross-eyed at his neat cream sports shirt. She could smell expensive cologne and an underlying male warmth which suddenly turned her stomach to water.

  ‘Nothing,’ she croaked.

  ‘Then why don’t you want me here?’ He lifted a hand to her face and laid it gently on her cheek. She jerked her head away, but he caught her jaw and tilted her face. ‘Is it the same reason you ran away?’

  Catherine twisted violently away from him.

  ‘Please go, James,’ she managed in a muffled voice, keeping her eyes on the ground. She saw the polished leather shoes stop in front of her.

  ‘All right, Cat, I’ll go. But when you’ve stopped spitting at me, we had better find out how things stand for both our sakes.’ She looked up sharply and he smiled ruefully. ‘I’ll be in touch.’ And he was gone, closing the front door quietly behind him.

&nbs
p; How long Catherine stood there looking at the closed door she didn’t know, only that when she moved she felt almost stiff from standing in one position for so long. Eventually, she dragged unwilling feet upstairs and ran a bath.

  At last, soaking in the warm, scented water, her mind cleared enough to focus on one thing. As she had suspected, she was still highly susceptible to James and what was worse, he knew it. That was what was so humiliating. That he could torment her and tease her, without it meaning a thing to him, just as he had tried to entrap her into an affair three years ago. Poor Diana. It was the first time Catherine had really thought about James’s wife this morning, but she thought about her now. What would it be like to be married to someone you couldn’t trust? Whom you would suspect every moment he wasn’t with you? Or didn’t she know? Catherine was struck by a new thought. Perhaps she didn’t care? Perhaps theirs was one of those so-called “open marriages”, with both partners leading separate lives? That made it even worse, and Catherine closed her eyes involuntarily against a picture of James with a succession of nubile beauties.

  It wasn’t until she was out of the bath that she remembered the cottage.

  All the rest of the day Catherine spent trying to write and unconsciously waiting for the telephone to ring. When, by four o’clock in the afternoon, it hadn’t, she gave up all pretence of writing, switched off the computer, and went out to her elderly car. The big supermarket on the outskirts of the nearest town was open 24 hours a day and it was about time she stocked up her larder. Although perhaps she wouldn’t be there long enough to need siege stores, she reflected gloomily, swinging the car round the corner of her cottage and on up the road away from the coast.

  Why hadn’t James rung? Hadn’t he asked his uncle? And if not, why not? A few miles further on and Catherine asked herself whether, if this had been an unknown landlord, she would have been this on edge waiting for his call. She tried to tell herself that of course she would – she was anxious about her home – but finally had to admit that it was only because it was James, and that his apparent disinterest in her fate argued a similar lack of interest in her altogether.

  However, she still found herself buying a number of abnormal purchases, such as red wine, a whole chicken for roasting, some decent cheese and some horribly expensive biscuits to go with it. Puzzled, she watched the conveyor belt carry these items inexorably towards the checkout and wondered briefly at the power the subconscious mind could have on a normally sane human being.

  A perverse desire to delay her return and therefore prevent herself from being disappointed when the phone didn’t ring led her to take the alternative route back to the village, crossing the river bridge in town and taking the meandering lane that followed the route of the river down to the promontory, where a little bridge crossed it just before it widened out into the sea. There were few houses or farms, just gently undulating fields and a few trees, and the sun glinting intermittently on the little river as it reappeared at intervals alongside the lane. Just before the bridge lay Gardener’s Cottage, isolated from the village, but near enough to walk. Catherine didn’t know who lived there, but it had always intrigued her, with its thatch so low that the windows could hardly be seen and its almost circular garden filled with even more old-fashioned cottage garden flowers than Garth Cottage.

  Catherine slowed the car as she rounded the garden wall before turning left over the little humpbacked bridge and almost stalled the engine.

  James was walking slowly down the garden path, his head bent, his hands thrust deep in the pockets of the cream trousers he had been wearing that morning. As he heard the car, he looked up and his steps faltered, a look of surprise and something Catherine did not recognise crossing his face. He lifted a hand in greeting, and Catherine, not knowing whether to stop or go on, crashed the gears and juddered to a halt, her face flaming.

  ‘It’s all right, I won’t comment.’ James looked amused as he strolled up to her open window.

  ‘Good,’ said Catherine between clenched teeth.

  ‘May I ask why you’re over this side of the river?’ He leant back against the stone wall and crossed his ankles, as though prepared for a long chat.

  ‘I’ve just been shopping. I often come this way home. It’s quieter and prettier.’

  ‘Hmm.’ James regarded her thoughtfully. ‘I just tried to ring you.’

  ‘Oh?’ Catherine’s mind baulked.

  ‘I thought you might like to come and talk to my uncle.’

  ‘When?’ Catherine looked up, surprised.

  ‘Well, I was going to suggest after dinner this evening, but as you’re here now, why not come in?’

  ‘Come in?’ Catherine looked blank.

  ‘Come in – now,’ James repeated gently, as if to a small child. ‘This is where he lives. It used to be the Hall gardener’s cottage.’

  ‘Oh.’ Catherine stared at him. ‘Well, actually, James, I really need to get my shopping home before some of it defrosts all over the car.’

  ‘Fine.’ James shrugged elegant shoulders, levering himself upright and looking unconcerned.

  ‘Shall I – um – well, should I– ’ Catherine faltered to a halt.

  ‘Come round after dinner?’ James took pity on her and grinned. ‘About eightish? I’ll call for you, shall I?’

  ‘Oh, no, don’t bother,’ said Catherine, putting the car back in gear. ‘I’ll wander up just after eight.’ She paused. ‘You will be here, though, won’t you?’

  ‘How flattering.’ James was sardonic. ‘Yes, I’ll be here.’

  Catherine smiled hesitantly and nodded, taking her foot smoothly off the clutch and negotiating the bridge without further mishap.

  It took no time at all to put away her purchases, and still less to eat a hunk of new bread and some of the cheese, followed by a yoghurt and an apple. With still an hour to go before she needed to leave, she wondered whether she should change. Her jeans were still comparatively clean, but perhaps not the sort of thing in which to visit an elderly gentleman, so she toiled upstairs and began a review of her wardrobe, all the while trying not to wonder why James wanted her to talk to his uncle. It sounded ominous.

  At eight o’clock precisely, Catherine left her cottage and turned right along the main street of the village towards the bridge. Knowing now that Gardener’s Cottage had indeed been just that, she realised that this little enclave of houses had probably once all been part of the Cranmore Hall Estate. No wonder they resisted change so much, she thought. They all resented the outside world coming into their safe little community, probably felt that their protector, in the form of James’s uncle, had deserted them. In spite of herself, or perhaps because of herself and her feelings for James, Catherine had to agree with them. It was like a mother deserting her children, she thought to herself, leaving them with a nanny while she went off to do something else. James wouldn’t understand these people, she was sure of it. He was too self assured, too arrogant, too dismissive of people’s weaknesses. She frowned down at her sandalled feet as she crossed the bridge, scuffing angrily at a pebble. If that was what James was like, if that was what she really thought of him, why was her whole body singing with anticipation at seeing him again?

  ‘Penny for them?’

  As though her thoughts had conjured him up like a genie, James materialised in front of her.

  Confused, Catherine came to a halt and blinked.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You were obviously thinking very unpleasant thoughts as you came across the bridge. I wondered what they were. Or ...’ He smiled wryly. ‘Can I guess?’

  ‘I don’t know. Can you?’

  ‘I would think so. I would think I figured somewhere in those thoughts. Right?’ He laughed as Catherine blushed. ‘I can see I did.’

  ‘Well, what do you think I would be thinking about when I’m on my way to meet you and your uncle? The price of beef?’ She was aware that this was a fairly inane reply, and pushed unceremoniously past him to cover her
embarrassment.

  James grinned down at her and opened the gate in the garden wall.

  ‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Come and meet Uncle Andrew. I think you’re in for a bit of a surprise.’

  The doorway was so low that James had not only to duck but to bend over to go in. A step down onto a stone-flagged floor, and then they were going through another doorway into a large, low room where, on a deeply cushioned footstool, sat a small, gnome-like gentleman with snow white hair and a beard, in front of a large easel.

  ‘Andrew, this is Henrietta’s granddaughter, Catherine Long. Catherine, this is my uncle, Andrew Hamilton.’

  Andrew Hamilton turned, brush suspended in mid air, and bent an abstracted gaze on Catherine. Slowly, his vision sharpened and his mouth broke into a wide smile. He put down his brush and rose to his feet, coming forward with hands outstretched.

  ‘My dear. How like your grandmother you are.’ He stopped before her and took both her hands in his. He was only just as tall as Catherine and she was able to smile back directly into the sea blue eyes.

  ‘Am I?’ she asked. ‘Nobody ever told me that before.’

  ‘Oh, yes, when she was about your age – which was when I first knew her.’ He dropped one of her hands and led her by the other over to the long sofa overlooking the garden. ‘Now, let’s sit down and James can fetch us a drink.’ He looked up at his nephew, still standing by the door, a ruefully amused expression on his face. ‘James?’

  ‘Yes, Andrew. Scotch for you? Cat?’ He turned his eyes on her and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I’ll have a scotch too, please,’ she said, lifting her chin defiantly.

  James raised the other eyebrow, but made no comment.

  ‘Cat? Is that what they call you?’ Andrew turned to face her, still holding her hand.

  ‘James always did.’ Catherine looked down. ‘So did my parents and my sister. I prefer Catherine.’

  ‘So James must have known you well?’

  ‘Quite well. He told you we used to know one another?’

  ‘Yes. He said your parents were dead and you had looked after your younger sister. Is that right?’