by K. M. Peyton
‘God, I feel better for that. I was bloody starving. Keeping clear, when I saw it was all in the newspapers … I just wanted to get home. Now I find out I haven’t got one.’
‘No. It’s now government property.’
‘So where does that leave me? God, what a mess! The old man shooting that geezer – I couldn’t believe it! And making me fly him to France! Crikey, Simon, but that was magnificent – we must do it together some time. But the whole thing – it’s like a dream, or a nightmare, I can’t work out which.’
He certainly looked as if he wasn’t quite of this world, his face drawn, his eyes wary, his clothes covered in bits of the countryside, seeds and thistle burrs – unlike the usual quite dapper appearance he usually displayed. Simon realized that Antony wasn’t used to not being cosseted by servants, loaded with money by his father, wanting for nothing.
‘You’ve been living rough?’
‘Yes, all the way from Wiltshire. I kept out of sight mostly and slept out. I thought the police were looking for me.’
‘They don’t seem much bothered. They don’t even seem to know how your old man got to Le Bourget. The only person who knows you flew away is Lily. She saw you. And she’s not said a word to anyone. Only to me, because she was so upset.’
‘She saw me? Crikey, I tried to keep away from everyone, especially the village, and even the farm – I made a big loop away. But of course I had to go right down to her house to turn round and take off. Why was she upset?’
‘She loves you, mate. And keeping mum when the police were all over the place asking questions was quite hard. She was frightened of giving you away. She’s only told me a few days ago.’
‘Oh, poor Lily! I must go and see her. She’s a brick.’
‘There’s some ginger sponge here, Antony. The custard’s a bit cold but there’s plenty of it.’ Mrs Goldbeater came back to the table with reinforcements.
‘That’s ripping, Mrs G. Thanks. I’m feeling a new man.’
‘You can have a bath when you’re finished, and I’ll make up a bed for you. You must be really tired.’
‘I ought to see Lily. Simon’s told me she—’
‘She’s upset, Ma. You know how she is about Ant. She was crying just now, down by the lake – I saw her when I was fishing, but I left her alone. I was trying to cheer her up only a few days ago. They’ve got no money coming in and now their cottage belongs to the government so what’s going to happen? And Ant gone missing. All that.’
‘Yes. There are a lot in the village with suddenly no money coming in, it’s very distressing. To be leading such a double life – it’s very hard to believe, such a quiet gentleman. Did you have any idea, Antony?’
‘No. I didn’t know my father very well, to tell the truth.’
‘Well, no one did, it seems. What a shock, in the village. We’ve not recovered yet. And there’s no word of his being caught yet.’
‘I don’t think they’ll find him. I got the impression he was really enjoying himself. He wasn’t a bit frightened, not like me.’
Antony finished the ginger sponge and when Simon’s mother had retreated back to the kitchen he said to Simon, ‘If you say Lily has been upset, I ought to pop down and show my face, cheer her up. I didn’t know she had to tell lies to the police. No wonder she was worried.’
‘Yeah, that would be nice. She’s not very good at dissembling.’
‘No. She’s not a natural liar like us. I’ll slip out before your ma tells me not to go.’
‘Fine. I’ll tell her you’re coming back.’ He saw Antony out to the door and said, ‘By the way, good to have you back. She wasn’t the only one worried about you.’
‘Thanks, mate.’
Antony took the path down to the lake. It was dusk now. Strange to think that this wasn’t his any more, but government property, already going to seed. Nobody in the government was going to look after it, that was obvious. Poor old hideous old house … And what about me? Antony wondered. Where to go after a couple of days with the Goldbeaters and an interlude with the police? No answer.
He squished through the reeds at the bottom of the lake and came out onto the path that ran in front of the row of workers’ cottages. Luckily there was no one about; most of them were in bed when the light went. But a lamp was lit in Gabriel’s cottage, thank goodness; he had never intended them to get out of bed.
He knocked at the door.
It opened cautiously and Lily stood there.
‘Antony!’ She flung herself at him with such ardour that he nearly fell over backwards. She wrapped her arms round him, sobbing, burying her face in his sweaty old shirt.
‘Hey, steady on! Put me down, you lunatic—’
‘I thought— Oh, Ant, I thought you were dead! Where’s your aeroplane? You never came back …’
‘Well, I’m back now. Put me down, Lily. I’ll explain. I just came over because Simon said you’d been upset. I went there, only place I could think of really when I found the house all boarded up. Mrs G fed me and I slipped out just to see you.’
‘Come in, come in. Pa and Squashy have gone to bed. If we’re quiet they won’t hear us.’
She took his hand and dragged him over the threshold. In the lamplight he could see that her face was shining with relief and joy and that tears still ran down her cheeks. A tangle of wool and half-darned socks lay under the lamp where she had been working.
‘Oh, Ant, I’ve been so worried about you! Here, sit down.’ She gestured to Gabriel’s chair and almost pushed him into it. ‘Tell me what happened.’
It was strange to Antony to be ensconced in this threadbare little cottage straight from the elegant modernity of the Goldbeater home. He had never been in it before – how poor it was! It obviously did not get any of the devotion from Lily that some of the village women spent on their similarly impoverished homes: no flowers, rag rugs, embroidered cushions or treasured china dogs. Lily was an outdoor girl, Antony knew that, and her home was spare, clean(ish) and masculine, Lily herself the only pretty thing in it. Gabriel’s chair was hard, but Antony felt himself relaxing for the first time in what felt like weeks and realized he had no desire to return to the cosseting of Mrs Goldbeater. Just seeing Lily’s joy made him acknowledge that he had made the right move.
He explained to her everything that had happened while she sat listening on the hard bench that serviced the table. When he had finished he felt so tired that he knew he hadn’t the strength to get back to the village. He had scarcely slept at all since leaving the aeroplane: sleeping out had not come naturally to him.
‘Can I stay here tonight?’
‘Yes, of course! I’ll show you a bed.’
The only empty bed in the house was hers, but she did not say this, nor did he question her. He followed her up the ladder to where two small rooms sat side by side. In one slept Gabriel with Squashy beside him, where once his wife had lain, and in the other was Lily’s bed pushed hard against the eaves to make room for a dressing table made out of boxes and a chair with a few clothes thrown over it. The bed looked to Antony so appealing that he unlaced his shoes, kicked them off and fell into it.
‘Oh bliss, Lily! I am so tired.’ And he fell asleep before she could make an answer.
She crept down the ladder, her heart surging with joy. To see him again, know he was safe: her whole life took on a different complexion. She wanted to sing and dance. She went to the door and went out. It was dark now and the lake lay glittering in the light of a small, bright moon lying on its back over the willows. So quiet and beautiful, what she always took for granted. Seeing Antony again banished from her mind all the depressed thoughts she had been having recently about their future; they paled into insignificance now.
She walked along for a bit, calming herself down, ashamed at how she had thrown herself at him – how could she help it? It made her laugh now. He must think she was a real idiot. Well, she was where Antony was concerned. What was in it for her, in the future? Nothing at all. It
wasn’t as if she hadn’t always known.
After a little while, calm now and still happy, she went back indoors and shut up for the night. There was nowhere for her to sleep, no sofa, only the floor, or Gabriel’s hard chair. She went silently up the ladder to see if Antony was comfortable and stood for some time looking at him heavily asleep, sprawled on his face, one arm dangling down. His face was brown and scratched, the dark hair dusty and tumbled, his clothes dirty. He looked like a gypsy, not a public schoolboy.
God, how she loved him!
Without another thought she slithered silently down beside him. There was just room and he did not stir. She would be gone in the morning, he would never know. But she would remember sleeping with him all her life.
A few days later she had a dream. It was so vivid she never forgot it; it stayed in her brain as clearly as if it was something that really happened. So clear, in fact, that in later life she sometimes wondered if it was no dream at all, but the truth …
She dreamed she was making porridge over the stove for her father’s breakfast when a strange spasm of sickness took hold of her, and she ran outside and vomited into the potato patch. She couldn’t understand it – she was never ill and she certainly hadn’t eaten anything that could upset her. But after she was sick nothing more seemed to ail her and she forgot all about it until the next day when it happened again. Lily was not ignorant when it came to the basic facts of life and she knew what this condition usually presaged, but she knew it could not have happened to her. Nevertheless, as the weeks went by she could not dispute the fact that she was pregnant. She was not showing much in her stomach, but by the fifth month she definitely felt movement and her breasts were telling her that she was pregnant. She told no one. She did not dare. She took to wearing her mother’s old loose pinafores that covered her front, and old Gabriel never noticed any change. What he would do when the baby was born she had no idea. The thought of another mouth to feed would destroy him, let alone coming to terms with her sin.
The baby was due to be born in May, and Lily felt her pains come on one evening after a day of hot sunshine. She went out into the woods behind the house, and as the sun went down she found herself a sheltered spot beneath an oak tree. In her dream, the pains of birth were blurred but the baby was sharply realized: a tiny blonde-haired girl, perfect and pretty in every way. Her cheeks were pale rose petals, her little fingers perfect, softly coiled, her hair like golden thistle-down, but no breath fluttered her nostrils. And even as Lily held her close, the warmth of the tiny body faded.
‘She’s dead, like Cedric’s cow,’ said Squashy, who was there. ‘We must bury her in the garden somewhere. I’ll dig the hole.’
‘No, she must go in the churchyard. She’s a baby, not a dog.’
‘I’ll fetch a spade.’
They took the baby to the churchyard and looked for a good place, but hidden so that nobody would notice. They passed the beautiful Sylvester grave and the grave of their mother, and behind some old elm trees with low branches they found a patch of long grass where nobody went.
Squashy dug a big hole and they laid the baby in it.
‘Her name is Rose,’ Lily said. ‘She’s my baby Rose. She will be happy here. I will plant a rose on her grave.’
‘And flowers,’ said Squashy. ‘She needs flowers.’ He filled in the hole, and on the disturbed earth sprinkled a packet of seeds that he took from his pocket.
A few days later she decided to walk over to the churchyard and see the place where they had buried her baby. It was another hot day: summer was just starting and the wild swags of hawthorn blossom were just fading, and throwing down petals like confetti. The smell filled the air. She went to the churchyard and walked down the main path past the beautiful Sylvester grave, past her mother, and out towards the elm trees where the grass was unmown and no footsteps showed. The deep shadows of the elms fell across her, blocking out the sun but, beyond, the long grass shone brightly, and a wild pink rose, all alone in the grass, was just putting out its first buds exactly where they had buried the baby.
She went on and stood looking down at it and saw that in the surrounding grass were the spent and faded flowers of cowslips and violets and white wood anemones. If she had come earlier the patch would have danced with wild flowers, just the patch around the rose, the patch where her baby was buried.
Was Rose real?
Was it just a dream …?
19
In the morning Antony went back to Simon’s house and Lily went with him. She knew she shouldn’t but she did. The dream still danced in her head, so strong, so real – what was called wishful thinking, she supposed (though not for the fate of the baby), but her love for Antony, although so real, had never had a carnal element in it, not for either of them. She was too young, only just fifteen, it was a childish thing, and he didn’t love her in that way; he never had.
In the dream the baby had come as if by magic, and magic was the word that best described her happy hallucinations where Antony was concerned. The dream was disturbing, but it must be put away. It mustn’t spoil her fragile world of make-believe. It had been magic enough to lie beside his heavily unconscious body for a few hours, feeling his warmth and listening to the soft, regular music of his breathing. No more.
Gabriel was too depressed to give her orders. He spent his time now in his own garden, extending it into some rough ground beyond his boundaries to grow more food. He had always brought all he needed from the vegetable gardens at the Hall, now fast going to seed. He could not bear to go up there any more, it hurt too much. Lily told him he was stupid – the vegetables were still growing amongst the weeds and other people from the village were stealing them – but he would not go.
‘I don’t know what we’re going to do,’ she said to Antony.
‘Same here. My father’s a— Well, I won’t say it … but leaving all those people in the lurch, apart from being a murderer. I want to get in the house and see if there’s any money around. I know there’s valuables.’
‘The police turned it over, searching.’
‘Yes, but I know places they could well have missed.’
‘But it’s all boarded up.’
‘It only needs a crowbar to a window – Cedric could do it standing on his head. We’ll have a go – but don’t tell Simon’s parents. They’re depressingly law-abiding.’
‘No.’
Of course the Goldbeaters were put out by Antony’s disappearance the night before, but when Lily told them he fell asleep in mid-conversation (a slight exaggeration) they understood how it had come about, forgave him, and supplied him with another large meal. Lily, who only ever had a slice of bread for breakfast, was also offered toast and marmalade.
Simon’s parents made it clear that Antony must go to the police and tell them what had happened.
‘And then you must go to your Aunt Maud. You’re not of age yet and she will be responsible for you. At least you’ll have a roof over your head in London.’
Antony was silent. Lily knew that the last thing he intended to do was go to his Aunt Maud.
‘Simon’s father has to go into Guildford tomorrow. You can go with him, Antony, and he’ll take you to the police and get things sorted out. We can’t see they’ll have any grounds to hold you as you had no hand in the shooting. It should be quite straightforward.’
‘And I’ve got to go back and get my plane.’
‘Yes, but first things first. Guildford tomorrow, then the plane, then off to London.’
What a bossy old boot she was, Lily thought. As soon as the meal was finished they went out. Antony wanted to avoid the village, with so many people wanting to know his story, and suggested they went to Lockwood Hall straightaway, to see if they could get in. Simon came with them to help. Although the driveway had a chain across it and there were notices saying KEEP OUT all around the boundaries, there seemed to be no watch on it. It was obvious that most of the village had been snooping around, judging from the pilfered f
lowerbeds and now almost bare vegetable garden, and when they got to the house it was clear that there had also been quite serious, but unsuccessful, attempts to break in.
Antony seemed upset. ‘Bloody jackals! What a nerve, thinking it’s up for grabs.’
‘What do you expect, with the place abandoned? There’s nobody guarding it.’
‘Quite easy to break in really. Not the doors, but a window round the back. With the right tools – Cedric will have them.’
They inspected the boarding of the windows that overlooked the lake and decided that one underneath Helena’s apartments looked the most likely.
‘A couple of big crowbars should do it easily. Lily, go up to the farm and find Cedric and get a couple of crowbars. We’ll wait here.’ Antony dropped down to the grass and lay on his back, hands behind his head. ‘Off you go.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because you love me and want to please me. If you come back with two crowbars I will love you more.’
‘No you won’t. You’re a pig.’
‘Yes, I’m a pig. A loving pig.’ He snorted happily. ‘Get a move on.’
‘I hate you.’
But she went, Simon not offering. She was used to the treatment they meted out; nothing was any different. But Cedric would be on her side; she depended on him more these days because he was kind and took her side, although the two of them would never win. They were bottom of the pecking order, only Squashy even lower.
Cedric was fiddling about with the reaping machine but fetched a couple of crowbars and came back with her to where Antony and Simon were still lying on the lawn. They talked for quite a while, Cedric having to learn all the news, and then got up to attack the house. Cedric had already surveyed it and agreed that the window at the back, underneath Helena’s apartment, was the least secure. Someone had already loosened the boarding but obviously hadn’t had a man-enough tool with them to finish the job. Cedric got to work with one of the crowbars and Simon helped with the other and Antony sat on the grass and watched. Lily noticed how strong Cedric was compared with Simon; he made quite short work of it, levering off the boards and then smashing the window so that they could get in.