They left the town in the direction of Adamslee, which Lancer found pleased him greatly. Not only was he going back towards the sweet Arabella and the provocative Sarai, but also he found that Adamslee had a pull for him. This came, he felt sure, from him having been in a sense reborn in the small fishing village.
‘Ye’ll get your money at the end of two months,’ Owens told him round a rattling belch. Stomach gas formed from fermenting apples wafted sickeningly past Lancer’s nostrils as the cart trundled along. Turning his head, keen to breathe in the air that was pleasantly fresh, he heard Owens going on, ‘That’s if ye works hard. Ye’ll get good grub, Ted, and a comfortable bed of straw. After dinner every Sunday the rest of the day be yours. Ye’ll find me a good man to be working for.’
There was no need for an answer, and they carried on along the track, unspeaking, although Lancer was aware that Owens had turned his head to study him.
‘Ye look like ye might have an eye for the ladies!’ the farmer suddenly commented.
‘No more than the next man.’ Lancer gave a meaningless answer that seemed to satisfy the farmer’s low intelligence.
Whipping the pony for no apparent reason – there was certainly no prospect of getting one more ounce of speed out of the ruin of an animal – Owens kept his eyes front as he warned Lancer, ‘Make sure ye stay that way, Ted. Had a fella work for me one time, skinny little bit of a thing he were. I comes back from haymaking one day to find him apeeping at my woman while she was taking a wash. I stomped on ’is guts, Ted, so ye’s best keep that in mind.’
‘Don’t threaten me, Owens,’ Lancer said tersely. ‘I don’t need to peep at women, and you’re a fool if you think you’re capable of stomping on my guts!’
Face flushing dark red with rage for a moment, Owens then gave a laugh that sprayed frothy saliva far and wide. ‘It’s ye that’s the fool, Ted. There ain’t a man in this district that could stand up to Euart Owens, and there ain’t one of ’em that would risk trying.’
Lancer let it drop. They journeyed on, with him amused by trying to imagine himself wanting anything to do with a woman who would marry some uncouth lout like Owens. He wanted no trouble with the farmer. Having done more than his fair share of fighting, Lancer rejected completely the hypothetical skirmish that Owens had just involved him in.
They veered slightly to the north, but had travelled far enough east to satisfy Lancer that he would not be far from Adamslee when they eventually reached Owens’ farm. He saw a cart heading slowly their way, the young man up on the seat waving a hand and smiling as he pulled his empty cart to one side so that Owens could pass with his loaded one.
‘It’s a fine day, Euart,’ the man up on the other cart called.
‘It is that, it is that, Ted,’ Owens agreed in a shout, before turning to Lancer to inform him, ‘That’s young Peter Wright who’s got the place near to mine, Ted.’
When they topped a rise, Owens halted the cart to sit looking ahead, pride on his moronic face as he looked down upon what Lancer saw as an example of neglect and decay.
In an otherwise pleasant hollow there stood three ramshackle buildings. Two were crumbling barns and the third a semi-derelict house that had at one time held pretensions for a veranda. This had never been completed, and was in evidence now only through some weed-strangled wooden planks and a collapsing rail that was tangled in brambles. All that saved the scene from absolute desolation were two conifer trees standing together liked bored sentinels at one end of the house.
‘There she is!’ Owens gave a cider-laden sigh of satisfaction. ‘I’ve got a dozen calves in that shed to our right, Ted. We does all right. I grows some hay meself, and I’ve two fine horses that I do use to mow meadows for other folks ’ereabouts. Besides that I regularly draws meal from a place up in Newton Arris and hauls it down to Footehill. Some days ye’ll be takin’ care of the calves, Ted, others ye’ll be haymaking, and then there’ll be times when ye’ll be ’elpin’ me out with the hauling.’
Having imparted this information, Owens moved the cart creakingly on towards the buildings, where Lancer saw a woman stood bending over a large wooden tub of washing. Hearing their approach she stood up, using a soapy hand to lift a mass of curly dark hair away from her face. She looked towards them for no more than a second or two, then bent back to her task.
They pulled into the debris-strewn yard, sitting up on the cart as a snarling, snapping, teeth-baring, half-starved cur circled it. Owens appeared to be afraid to get down from the cart because of the dog. He shouted a one-word command. ‘Woman!’
Straightening her back, the woman shook both her arms vigorously to free them of soapsuds. Then she walked their way. She had a natural swing to her hips that was attractive, but the rest of her had the used, abused, defeated and dejected look that Lancer had expected to see in a woman married to Euart Owens. Her profusion of curly hair, which was streaked with grey, tumbled over her face so that it was impossible to see what she looked like.
As she neared the cart it was apparent to Lancer that there was some kind of affinity between the woman and the dog that had ribs sticking out so that it looked more like a skeleton than it did a living animal. Staying close to the heels of the woman, it desisted in its snarling and snapping.
Stopping in front of the cart, she tilted her head back and used one hand to push hair away from her face. Properly fed and decently treated, she would have been a good-looking woman. Not pretty, but with an individual kind of face that Lancer, who had become something of an expert during his army days, was aware had much sensual potential. She gave him a hurriedly nervous glance with eyes so black that they could have been all pupils and no iris. Then she stood in front of her husband like an obedient slave, eyes down.
‘Get us a meal, Nancy,’ Owens ordered gruffly, climbing down from the cart with an uncertainty of movement caused by the cider he had drunk. Waiting until its master had both feet on the ground, the cur leapt savagely, mouth open wide as it went for Owens’ ankles.
Cursing, Owens kicked out viciously, his boot catching the dog where its left back leg joined the side of its body, sending it hurtling through the air, crying out shrilly in its agony, about four feet above the ground. Lancer saw the distressed woman cover her face with both hands as the dog hit the side of a barn, from where it fell to the ground and ran off yelping, its thin, injured leg held up awkwardly as it went.
‘Blasted animal!’ Owens muttered, adding, ‘Get that food going, woman. Me’n Ted have got an early start the morrow.’
When the meal was ready, all three of them sat around a table constructed from a rough but reasonably flat piece of wood to which four rough posts had been nailed. The woman sat opposite to Lancer, head down, as silent as her ugly husband was garrulous.
‘I’ll do the meal hauling down from Newton in the morning, Ted, while ye can plant the top field with tatties,’ Owens said, breaking bread with hands that were as large as shovels, muscles standing out in bunches on bare arms that were as thick as tree trunks. ‘That’ll let me have the rest of the week to clear Arthur Browne’s meadow.’
Nodding agreement, not really taking in anything the farmer said, Lancer ate his meal with nothing in his mind other than the two months’ money he would eventually collect. That wasn’t strictly true, for he wondered a little about how the woman across the table from him had become involved with a cretin such as Euart Owens. Although now dragged down to her husband’s level so that she blended with the decaying surroundings of the farm, Nancy Owens would seem to Lancer to have known better days.
Later, when Owens had taken one of two blackened-glass oil lamps to go out and bed down the horses for the night, she revealed that she had similar difficulty in fitting Lancer into the situation at the farm. She spoke for the first time since his arrival, her voice low-pitched and seductively husky – totally out of keeping with her unkempt appearance.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked urgently.
‘Earning some money,�
�� Lancer gave the obvious answer.
‘That’s not what I mean.’ She shook her head of wild hair. ‘Men like you don’t work for the likes of Mr Owens.’
There was more sadness than amusement in the way she had given a title to her oaf of a husband. Calling him ‘Mister’ came from fear not respect, and Lancer made a comment that contained an in-built question.
‘Women like you don’t marry the likes of Mr Owens.’
Using a forearm to push her hair clear of her face, she looked into his eyes, unspeaking, her black eyes strangely compelling. He guessed that she was trying to read something with which to measure him, to gauge his sincerity before she was prepared to commit herself to even a short exchange of words. She had all the restless insecurity of a caged but untamed animal. Then she asked, her eyes still holding his, an arm remaining raised to keep her hair back from her face, ‘Why are you pretending an interest in me?’
Patched and repaired very neatly, the thin material of the dress she wore was ripped under the arm. As profuse as that on her head, her underarm hair bushed out, alive with a fundamental sensuality.
‘I am not pretending,’ Lancer told her, and his honesty reached her.
‘It’s a long story,’ she said wearily, letting her hair fall back over her face and turning away.
‘I’d like to hear it,’ he assured her.
‘I’m not sure that I could bring myself to tell it—’ she was saying, a tangible sorrow having settled on her, but she broke off as Owens walked back in.
Replacing the lamp he carried on the table, he picked up a hardboiled egg and put it whole, sideways, into his mouth. Chewing the egg, he spat fragments of white and yellow out as he jerked a thumb at the door and spoke to Lancer.
‘You’ll find straw to lay on in the first barn, Ted.’
Nodding, Lancer walked out into the cool night air. Standing still, head raised to the quarter moon that glowed orange in an unsettled sky, he filled his lungs and ran his hands through his long hair as he tried to expel an image of the harassed and abused Nancy Owens from his mind. Not a man to ever wear his heart on his sleeve, it perplexed him that in the short time that had passed since he had been pulled from the sea he had met three women, and was unable to free himself of any of them.
Sometime in the depth of that night he was awakened by the sound of raised voices coming from the house. Euart Owens’ voice was shouting, and Lancer believed he heard Nancy make some kind of verbal protest before there came the unmistakably meaty sound of a fist hitting flesh, which was followed by a muffled scream.
It took Lancer a long time to get back to sleep after that, and he was weighted down with tiredness at dawn when Owens kicked the side of the barn to rouse him. He was shown the field in which he was to spend the day digging, and then Owens mounted the cart to head for Newton Arris. There was no sign of Nancy, a fact that Lancer wasn’t pleased to discover, disappointed him.
At noon on that day of bright sunshine he saw her coming up the sloping field towards him. Her hip-swinging gait was more pronounced on rough ground, and she carried a small parcel in one hand and a jug of modest size in the other. She had used a strip of sackcloth to tie her unruly mop of hair back from her face. Really seeing her for the first time, Lancer noticed that the walk had painted a touch of colour into her thin cheeks, and that the narrow paths of grey swathed through her hair enhanced her appearance rather than detracting from it.
‘I’ve brought you some food,’ she said diffidently, gesturing with the hand that held a clumsy lump of bread and irregularly cut cheese.
She was wearing a different dress from the previous day. It was blue, and in slightly better condition than the one Lancer had seen her wearing on her slender, small-breasted body. As he studied her now, causing her cheeks to flush a darker, deeper pink, the leaves of the elm tree behind him were stirred by a weak movement of air to play shades of light and dark over the dress that he was fairly sure she had purposefully put on.
‘Sit down,’ she suggested rather than ordered, indicating a grassy bank at the foot of the tree.
Sitting, Lancer realized for the first time that day how painfully stiff his body was. He had undertaken no physical exertion since the shipwreck and it was telling now.
Taking the hunk of orange-hued cheese and the grey bread, he was breaking it in preparation for eating when she held out the jug, asking.
‘Drink?’
‘What is it?’
‘Cider.’
‘No thank you.’ Lancer gave an emphatic shake of his head. Since coming to Devon he had seen how cider had first robbed men of the use of their legs, and then their brains. Where some of the older men were concerned the latter effect had been permanent.
‘I think I could get you to like it,’ she said, and there was a mixture of trepidation and daring in her husky voice.
‘I think not,’ a determined Lancer told her.
Looking at him levelly for a few moments, standing just feet from him, she then closed her eyes, tilted back her head and parted her lips. Raising the jug she put it to her mouth and drank. Then she stooped to place the jug on the grass, coming very near to him as she did so. He caught the scent of her hair, a natural perfume that was her very essence.
She bent over him then, so close that he was erotically awash in the body aroma that the long walk on a hot day had generated in her. Her eyes, just inches away from his, had clouded so that he couldn’t fathom what was going on behind them. Held in her spell, a powerful entrapment that no witch could cast, he waited what seemed an eternity to him as her face came closer and closer. Then her mouth was on his.
It wasn’t a kiss, but merely a fairly meaningless contact. Initially mystified and disappointed, Lancer then found his senses reeling as he realized what was taking place. She was transferring cider, warmed and sweetened, from her mouth to his. He drank from her lips as eagerly and hungrily as an infant at its mother’s teat.
He was reaching out to hold her when, all too soon, the magically arousing exchange of liquid ended and she jerked back upright, away from him.
Coming up from his sitting position, arms outstretched, Lancer found himself clutching nothing but air as she stepped back, let out a strangled ‘No!’ in what was almost a shout, and turned to hurry away. He watched her making her way back down to the house, body held stiffly, shoulders hunched, not once looking back at him.
The flea-bitten wreck of a family dog did its best to bound towards its mistress as she walked across the yard. Nancy stooped to pat the animal while still on the move. The cur circled her in an exercise that involved the offering and seeking of affection. Observing this, Lancer was aware just how much both the woman and the animal were in need of tender consideration. He willed her to turn her head his way, mentally pushing the message through the clear spring atmosphere. But he failed to reach the woman. She went straight into the house, with neither herself nor the dog looking to left nor right.
Picking up his spade, Lancer recommenced digging, the sun hot on his back, the woman and her unexpected, blood-racing action on his mind. He toiled on for half an hour at a task that in normal circumstances was too mundane to occupy him. These were far from normal circumstances, and he swung the spade down with one hand to cut a deep, symbolic entry into the earth. Leaving it there, he threw his head back, eyes closed, letting the sun burn his face with all the power of high noon.
It was a brief but meaningful communication with nature. When it was over he used both hands to smooth back his hair before walking off down the hill in the invisible track left by Nancy Owens.
When he silently entered the house she was standing at some task, her back to him. Her stance was so obviously saying that she didn’t know that he was there and that she wasn’t expecting him, that he knew it was false. The opposite was the case, and she turned as he took one step towards her.
For just a moment apprehension had command of her face. But then her needs chased all fear away as she waited for him to come to
her.
Sarai Adams rarely went riding so late in the day. When she did so it was in the hope that the rushing wind might whisper a solution to her worry as she rode along the cliffs. The chance meeting with Joby Lancer that morning was at the root of her problem. In the short time she had been with the erudite, intelligent man, his presence had caused her to take stock of her personal situation. Finding that Gray Sawtell was waiting for her had cancelled out or, hopefully, postponed the resolutions she had made while with Lancer. It had suddenly come to Sarai that she was heading fast towards trouble. The cellars of Adamslee House were now packed to the ceilings with contraband. John Nichol had abandoned his vigil, but he was so astute that this was no consolation for Sarai. One day, sooner or later, the Revenue officers would pounce.
For the first time since she had been engaged in the heady business of smuggling, Sarai was more aware of the dire consequences of being caught than she was the thrill of carrying out the illicit work. Drifting along, in the control of her physical urgings rather than her well-educated mind, she had become caught up in all the lower-class trappings of the people she had been mixing with. The greatest tragedy of all was that she had accepted without thinking the standards of the likes of Gray Sawtell and those of his ilk.
Although Joby Lancer had made neither a comment nor an observation, just meeting him had caused Sarai to question everything about the sump of iniquity into which she had so willingly descended. Boredom, she was aware, was at the root of her difficulties. They were self-imposed difficulties at that. For the past ten months she had dallied in answering a proposal of marriage from Emil Edelcantz, a Swedish nobleman whom she had met during one of her sojourns on the Continent. Should she accept, then in the way of the majority of aristocratic marriages, every angle but love would be taken into consideration. Yet being the wife of Emil Edelcantz would be the kind of achievement that destiny had planned for Sarai since her birth into the distinguished family of the Devonshire Adamses.
The Toll of the Sea Page 7