Their pace had slackened once they had left the lane and crossed into the fields. Anstace was touched that Bertie stayed at her side despite the pull (she sensed it) to range more widely, to engross himself in everything around him. She would not tell him to let her make her own way. She would never play that role again. And if he chose to stride ahead or rush off along a different course, she would not care. She grudged him nothing.
Anstace had never been beyond the first copse in all the years she had visited Bertie while he was at school. Below them was the combe; the ground fell away so sharply, they had to walk obliquely along the cloven-printed sheep tracks to descend to the valley and take the path that ran along the stream.
Ropes of briony were draped through the hawthorn and sloe bushes which grew along the bank. There were rosehips too beginning to colour and Anstace realised she had been wrong to see no hint of autumn in this summer morning. The hedgerow fruits were ripening fast; harvest was anticipated. And then it would be impossible to separate the garnering from the barren aftermath.
They had reached a stile. Bertie held out his hand for hers as she stepped onto the rickety, wooden tread.
‘For all the world, a country swain,’ she said.
‘Swain?’ It was another word to learn.
Something in the way he then smiled snagged her. He was, in that moment, so extraordinarily like Hubert. He was, of course, so close in age to Hubert’s when his aging stopped. She caught her breath, staring into him.
‘What is it? What have you seen?’
‘Someone from a long time ago.’
‘The brother?’
‘Yes. How did you guess?’
‘You said once before I reminded you. And now, when you have that same old look, I guess. Is it happy or sad this time?’
‘It’s happy. It’s always happy now. But it still takes me by surprise.’
‘Do you remember when you last saw him?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘But you didn’t know that.’
‘No, I didn’t. I hoped it wouldn’t be the last time — even though the war showed no signs of ending.’
‘Everything might have been different.’
‘Most certainly.’
‘Better or worse?’
‘Just different. Better or worse depends on what we make of it.’
‘Can you run?
‘No, Bertie, I can’t!’ she laughed.
‘I can. I’m going to.’
He pulled off his jacket and stuffed it into her arms before hareing off, leaping the fronds of bracken which had encroached onto the grazed grass from the sloping sides of the combe. An old ewe, fleece ragged and soiled, was startled and ran ahead of him, veering ineffectually from right and left before careering up the hillside.
It was little more than a year ago, she thought, that he ran free like this along the Breton cliffs. I still prayed that peace would hold. Now, I pray his exemption will not be rescinded and conscription will not take him. His simplicity and the Friends surely will keep him out of the fighting.
Perhaps in mockery of her optimism a tribunal of rooks began to caw in their desultory, raucous way, as they circled the crowns of three Scots pines on a low hill.
Will it be old men—cawing, croaking birds—who once again decide the fate of our young? Will it be the rooks who circle around our marriage, settling on it like so much carrion? If so, there’ll be few pickings. What have we done except appropriate a social convention, legally (albeit privately) done in a registry office, to acknowledge our indissoluble bond? My marriage is less extraordinary than a nun’s who pledges herself as a virginal bride. I pray that he and I may be allowed to spend our days gladly.
Bertie was sitting on the gate at the end of the combe, flushed, his rib cage still rising and falling from the exertion.
‘We have to cross that field,’ he pointed as she approached him, ‘and then there’s a bit of a climb. But it’s worth it, I promise.’
The field was planted with turnips and, as they bruised the leaves, a strong smell of brassica arose. Cabbage-white butterflies swirled away from the laced leaves. Bertie took her hand again to help her step across the clods.
‘Would you mind if we left Dunchurch, Bertie?’ Anstace asked.
‘I left it when I came here to school.’
‘Yes. You did.’
‘Robert Kingsnorth said the South Lodge had been flattened anyway.’
‘That’s true. Perhaps we haven’t much choice.’
‘The Big House is too big.’
‘I think we might give up your claim to the Big House.’
‘Let Geoffrey’s cousins have it, you mean?’
‘Just leave it to the solicitors to sort out. Just be rid of it.’
‘Geoffrey’s cousins want it more than we do.’
‘The army will have it for as long as they need it anyway.’ She paused before continuing. ‘Once I thought it ought to be yours but now it doesn’t seem to matter.’
‘Because we’re married?’
‘Partly. It is the coincidence somehow of everything happening together: getting married that day took us away just when the plane crashed into the lodge. I think it’s time to move somewhere else.’
‘So where shall we go?’
‘Anywhere we like but Joachim Place first, I think. Would you mind? Just while we discover if anything survived the South Lodge. Dorothy will let us stay. And we need to be clear about your exemption.’
‘You mean from the war?’
‘From fighting. But there may be other ways to serve.’
‘Like Geoffrey.’
She was pleased he acknowledged Geoffrey’s legacy.
‘I hope we can help other people make gardens. We could show them how to put even little bits of land to good use.’
‘I’d like that.’
‘And afterward, when the war is over, lots of people will want different gardens with flowers as well as vegetables.’
‘Plenty of digging.’
‘Exactly.’
They had crossed the turnip field and he pulled her through a tangle of hawthorn and scrubby oak. She abandoned his jacket, leaving it hanging on the stub of a branch. There were nettles and brambles, laden with pippy fruit, wine-red and black, but he stepped high and broke down a path for her to take. Now, as the land began to rise, he led the way, showing her which stems to tread down and how to haul herself up the steeper incline by pulling on the saplings’ low branches. Above their heads, loomed an outcrop of limestone, mottled with lichen. Anstace paused to catch her breath. She could not see how they were to move forward.
‘Follow me,’ he said.
There was a cleft between two boulders. The way was strait but, by using both hands and her elbows, she found it was possible to edge upward. She cursed her inappropriate dress, watching Bertie ascending effortlessly, experienced.
Anstace felt exhausted. A wave of panic nearly made her lose her grip on the boulders. The strain of bending her head back made her feel dizzy and, when she looked up, she could not see how she could go any farther. Bertie was nowhere to be seen and the two rocks seemed to have closed into a circle: a tight cervix of stone. She could not push through.
This is as far as I can go, she thought. This is as far as my struggle will take me.
Above her, the light was blocked.
But it was him, standing astride the two boulders, with the sun behind him. He knelt and extended his hand to her, coaxing her to relax her grip on the stone.
Anstace reached out. She felt the unexpected strength in his arm as he took her weight and lifted her up. She scrambled through the swollen lips of stone into a new world above the treeline.
The tall grass bucks and dips to the wind. Clouds scud freely across a bluer sky. Everything is new. He is off, spinning, his arms thrown wide, his shirttails loose like wings unfurling.
Anstace runs to join him, singing wordlessly.
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