by Betty Neels
‘That brings us back to my question. How far to Chagford?’
‘A hundred and eighty-seven miles from London.’
‘A good road?’
She frowned in thought. ‘Well, I don’t know it very well. It’s the M3 and then the A30 for the rest of the way, more or less.’
‘Good enough. We’ll go round the ring road and pick up the motorway on the other side of London. Leave at nine sharp? You’ll be home for tea.’
‘It’s quite a few miles to Plymouth from my home,’ she reminded him.
‘That’s all right, Letitia,’ he told her pleasantly. ‘I enjoy driving, it makes a nice change from theatre, you know.’
‘That’s settled, then,’ said Georgina comfortably. ‘Let’s have dinner, Mrs Stephens has made a special effort by way of a farewell gesture to you, Tishy, so we mustn’t spoil it.’ She turned to Jason. ‘You’ll be back in a day or two, won’t you? Spend a day or two here on your way home.’
‘Thanks, George, but only an hour or so—I can’t expect Bas to do my work and his for ever.’
‘You do his when he goes on holiday, but I know what you mean. Still, we’ll see you when we come over on holiday.’
‘Of course. Julius and I might even get in some sailing.’ A remark which triggered off a conversation about boats which lasted through dinner, and although the talk became general afterwards, Letitia, on her way up to bed an hour or so later, discovered that beyond casual remarks which she could count on the fingers of one hand, Jason hadn’t talked to her at all. She went to bed a little worried, for it augured ill for their journey the next day. Would they travel in silence, she wondered, or should she attempt to entertain him with lighthearted remarks about this and that? It was a great pity that she knew nothing about sailing and not much about fast cars. And it would bore him to talk about his work. She was still worrying away at her problem like a dog at a bone when she at last fell asleep.
CHAPTER THREE
IT WAS A glorious morning and bade fair to be a hot day; the tan jersey suit was going to be far too warm before very long. Letitia wished she had something thinner to wear, until she saw that Jason intended travelling with the BMW’s hood down. She prudently tied a scarf over her hair, assured him that she liked fresh air, bade her friends good-bye and got into the seat beside him, eyeing the restrained elegance of his cotton sweater and slacks; he was a man who looked elegant in anything he wore, she considered, blissfully unaware of the price he paid for such elegance.
‘Warm enough?’ he wanted to know, and when she said yes, nodded carelessly and with a last wave took the car down the drive, past the little lodge and into the lane. ‘Nice day for a run,’ he observed, then lapsed into silence. Now would be the time, thought Letitia, when she should embark on a sparkling conversation which would hold him enthralled, but there wasn’t an idea in her head, and the harder she thought, the emptier it became.
‘Ankle all right?’ asked her companion, and she embarked with relief on its recovery, her gratitude to Julius and Georgina and himself, and how much she had enjoyed her stay at Dalmers Place. But even repeating herself once or twice couldn’t spin her colloquy out for ever; she lapsed into silence once more, looking at the scenery with almost feverish interest in case Jason should imagine that he might be forced to entertain her.
They were slowing down to go through Epping when he said blandly: ‘This erstwhile young man of yours—did he train you to speak only when spoken to?’
She was instantly affronted. ‘What a perfectly beastly thing to say! Of course not. I—I can’t think of anything to talk about, if you must know.’
‘Dear girl, I’m in the mood to be entertained by the lightest of chat, and surely you’re used to me by now— Big Brother Jason, and all that.’
She laughed then and he said at once: ‘That’s better. I thought we might stop for coffee before we get on to the motorway—Windsor, perhaps, with luck we should be able to lunch in Ilminster, unless there is anywhere else you would prefer?’
She shook her head. She didn’t know of any restaurants as far-flung as that; when she had gone out with Mike he had taken her to unpretentious places where he always made a point of assuring her that the food was good however humble the establishment appeared to be. She suspected that his ideas of good food weren’t quite in the same category as Jason’s; certainly the hotel where he chose to stop for coffee was a four-star establishment, the kind of place Mike would have considered a great waste of money. She savoured the luxury of their pleasant surroundings and began to enjoy herself. Jason was a charming companion and amusing and not in the least anxious to impress her. They went on their way presently, nicely embarked on the kind of casual talk which demanded very little effort and allowed for the maximum of laughter. Letitia hardly noticed the miles as they slipped by under the BMW’s wheels, and when they stopped in Ilminster, she said regretfully: ‘How quickly the time has gone!’
The doctor smiled gently, remarking merely that he was hungry and hoped that she was too as he ushered her into the George Hotel. ‘See you in five minutes in the bar,’ he suggested, and left her to tidy her wildly untidy hair and re-do her face. The freckles were worse than ever, she noted with disquiet, and then decided to ignore them; Jason had said he liked them.
The hotel was a pleasant place. They had their drinks and then ate their lunch with healthy appetites; cold roast beef, cut paper-thin, with a salad so fresh that it looked as though it had just been picked from the garden, and a rhubarb pie which melted in the mouth to follow, accompanied by enough clotted cream to feed a family of six. They washed down this splendid meal with a red Bordeaux and rounded everything off with coffee before taking to the road once more, making short work of the miles to Exeter, and once through that city and out on to the Moretonhampstead road, with the hills of Dartmoor ahead of them, they slowed down so that they might miss nothing of the scenery around them.
Somehow it didn’t surprise her to learn that the doctor had been that way before, she suspected that he was a man who got around quite a bit without boasting about it—all the same, she was able to point out some of the local sights as they went along, and when they had gone through Moretonhampstead and slowed down still more to go through Chagford, she told him about the Grey Wethers stone circle close by before directing him to turn off the road and take a winding lane leading off towards the heart of the moor.
‘It’s such a small village that it isn’t on all the maps,’ she explained, ‘and the road isn’t very good, although a few people use it when they want to see Yes Tor, but most of them go from the Okehampton road, it’s easier.’
Her companion grunted and dropped to a crawl; the lane had become narrow and winding, sometimes passing through open wild country with enormous views, and then dipping into small, densely wooded valleys which defied anyone passing through them to see anything at all.
‘We’re almost there,’ offered Letitia placatingly as Jason swung the car round a right-angled bend, ‘and you won’t need to come out this way; there’s a good road over the moor that will get you on to the Tavistock road.’ She pointed down into the valley running away to their left. ‘There’s the church.’
The lane became the village street with a scattering of cottages on either side before it widened into a circle with an old-fashioned drinking trough for horses in its centre. The church lay ahead with the rectory alongside, a wicket gate separating its garden from the churchyard, past which the road wandered off again, up the hill on the other side. Jason, still crawling, afforded Mrs Lovelace, who ran the village shop and post office, and was the natural fount of all local gossip, an excellent opportunity of taking a good look at both him and his beautiful motor-car as he turned into the rectory gateway, slid up its short drive and stopped soundlessly before its porch.
The garden had appeared to be empty, but all at once it was full of people; her father coming round the side of the house to meet them—a middle-aged, rather portly man, of medium height
and with a cheerful face, and her mother, who rose, trowel in hand, from the middle of a clump of lupins ornamenting the herbaceous border, and four girls, all pretty, who came tearing out of the door to cluster round the car.
Letitia cast a lightning glance at her companion and found him to be as placid as usual, only his brows were raised a little and a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
The introductions took quite a few minutes and the doctor bore up under them with equanimity. They were out of the car by now and Letitia, having made Jason known to her parents, started on her sisters.
‘Margo,’ she began, ‘back from Scotland, I daresay you’ve seen her at St Athel’s, and Hester, she’s married to a doctor in Chagford, and Miriam who’s married to a vet in Moretonhampstead, and this is Paula, who’s still at school.’
He shook their proffered hands and submitted to a battery of eyes without appearing to mind.
‘A little overpowering,’ murmured the Rector as Letitia was drawn, with a lot of talking and laughter, into the family circle. ‘So many women—of course, I’m used to them, bless their hearts, but they might possibly strike terror into a stranger’s heart.’
The doctor laughed: ‘Hardly that.’ He turned round to look at them, gathered in a charming bunch round Letitia. ‘You must be delighted to have them all home together,’ he observed to Mrs Marsden.
She smiled at him, a small, still pretty woman. ‘Yes, it’s wonderful, and it happens so seldom. How kind of you to bring Letitia home—such an unfortunate accident…’
‘I was the cause of it, Mrs Marsden.’
She shook her head. ‘But not to blame; Letitia wrote and told me exactly how it happened; it was hardly your fault that she was pushed into the road.’ She looked with interest at the BMW. ‘It’s a beautiful car, Doctor…’ she wrinkled her nose, ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.’
‘Jason.’
She smiled at him. ‘Such a nice name. You’ll stay to tea?’
‘I’d like to very much.’
‘That will be delightful,’ observed the Rector, who had joined them silently. ‘You and I will be able to hold a rational conversation and let these featherheads gossip themselves to a standstill.’ He beamed at his visitor. ‘Do come inside—are you by any chance interested in porcelain? I have one or two pieces of which I’m very fond, they are in my study…’
‘Tea first,’ decreed his wife firmly. ‘Perhaps afterwards, if Jason has time.’ She turned to look at the doctor. ‘You’re more than welcome to stay the night, we have any number of empty rooms.’
‘I should have liked that, but I have to be in Plymouth this evening, but perhaps I might call on my way back and be shown the porcelain?’
‘Splendid—I shall look forward to it,’ his host agreed. ‘And now—tea.’
They had the meal round the large rectangular table in the dining room, because, as Mrs Marsden explained, they had never quite got used to the idea of just a cup of tea and a biscuit. ‘When they were younger, the girls had long cycle rides to and from school and always came home famished, and the Rector usually finished his visits about half past four or five, and somehow, even though all the girls are away from home, excepting Paula, we keep to the old habit.’
If the doctor found a table spread with a starched white cloth, plates of bread and butter, scones, little dishes of jam and cream, a variety of small cakes and a large fruit cake only waiting to be cut, a little different from his own idea of tea, he said nothing—indeed, he made a hearty meal, equally happy discussing eighteenth-century soft paste figurines with the Rector and the pleasures of living in rural surroundings with his hostess, while goodnaturedly answering the questions the girls put to him—all but Letitia, who was a little silent; it had just struck her that she was unlikely to see him any more. He had only taken over Julius’s work at St Athel’s to oblige him, and Julius was due back—he would go back to his own country and become, in time, a vague someone she half remembered. Even while the thought crossed her mind, she knew that wasn’t true; Jason wasn’t someone easily forgotten. She longed to ask him what he was going to do in Plymouth, and when Paula, who had no inhibitions about asking personal questions when she wanted to know the answers, asked just that, Letitia listened with both ears, while at the same time gazing attentively at her mother, deep in a tale about repairs to the organ.
‘What are you going to do in Plymouth?’ Paul asked with shattering directness.
‘I have to meet someone.’ The doctor’s voice was mild.
‘I bet it’s a date—or are you married?’
He laughed at her, not in the least put out. ‘You might call it that, and no, I’m not yet married.’
The word yet worried Letitia. Did that mean that he was about to get married? It seemed likely, and she was a little surprised to find that the idea didn’t please her at all, which, for a girl who had recently broken her heart over another man, seemed strange, especially as she neither liked nor trusted men—young men—any more, although he had assured her in the most avuncular fashion that he had no interest in her, hadn’t he? which meant that she could like him without changing her ideas… She frowned and then smiled when he spoke to her. ‘I’m coming back this way in a couple of days, Letitia—just for an hour or so. Will you be here.’
‘Oh, yes—I’m not going anywhere.’
He nodded. ‘Good. If your ankle is up to it, you shall show me some of your beloved tors.’
‘You could see them just as easily from Plymouth,’ pronounced Paula. ‘With that car of yours, it would only take you…’ she paused, ‘though perhaps it would be wasting your time—I mean, you can see a for any time you’re this way, but if you’ve got a date…’
She was frowned and shushed into silence. ‘Oh, all right, I won’t ask any more questions and I’m sorry if I was rude—I was only trying to save your time; Tishy knows the country round here awfully well. She goes about looking in hedges and badgers’ setts and birds’ nests and things—she’ll be better as a guide for you than anyone else I know, and if you’re not stuck on her, you’ll pay more attention to the tors, won’t you?’
This outrageous speech brought a choked back laugh from the doctor, a surge of colour to her knowledgeable sister’s cheeks and a chorus of protest from everyone else. When it had died down Mrs Marsden said apologetically: ‘I’m sorry that Paula has been so rude. I don’t think she meant to be impertinent; the trouble is that in these days the young are encouraged to speak their minds.’
Jason’s face was calm and placid once more. ‘Don’t apologize, Mrs Marsden. I have a young sister myself and I’m quite accustomed to her expressing herself in much the same way.’ He smiled at Paula, who grinned back, quite unrepentant. ‘Have you any more brothers or sisters?’ she wanted to know.
‘Four other sisters,’ he told her with a twinkle, and the rest of the girls, but not Letitia, chorused: ‘Five of them—just like us.’
Letitia found four pairs of eyes turned on her ‘Tishy, you didn’t tell us.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Oh, Tishy darling—’it was Paula again, ‘why didn’t you ask? I know you don’t like men any more, but Jason’s used to girls—I mean sisters, if you see what I mean.’ She smiled in a kindly way at Letitia, who was fuming silently. ‘I expect he thinks of you as a kind of sister—and sisters ask questions,’ she shot a look at Jason. ‘Don’t they?’
She looked round the table triumphantly and her father remarked dryly: ‘I think it must be very nice for Jason to have five sisters, but I wonder if they annoy him sometimes?’
‘Oh, frequently. Luckily the four eldest are married so their husbands get the lion’s share of them, and I don’t see a great deal of Katrina, the youngest.’
The talk became general after that and not long after Jason declared that he would have to go. Everyone went outside to see him off with a great deal of waving and a host of instructions as to the best way to go, and a reminder that he was to call i
n on his way back. Letitia watched him drive away, her temper still doubtful, for he had said almost nothing to her other than the briefest of good-byes; she went back indoors with her sisters, feeling peevish.
But it was impossible to feel put out for long; she hadn’t seen any of them, save Margo, for some time, and there was a great deal to talk about. The evening flew by, and when she went to bed she was so tired that she went to sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. And in the morning she had no chance to be by herself, even if she had wanted it. Margo was going back to St Athel’s after lunch, and before she went she wanted to hear all the latest news of Georgina and the hospital too, and now that Paula had gone off to school and Miriam and Hester had gone to their own homes, they had the time for a talk while they did the household chores together.
The house seemed very quiet after Margo had gone, Letitia left her father to work in his study and joined her mother in the garden. It was a gloriously hot day, and Letitia lay back on the grass, aware that the sun was playing havoc with the freckles again, while her mother’s gentle flow of conversation eddied and flowed round her head; it was the kind of conversation which needed almost no answering, and Jason wasn’t mentioned once.
She borrowed her father’s car the following day and drove her mother into Chagford to have coffee with Hester, and then on to Moretonhampstead to have lunch with Miriam and admire the baby. It was almost tea time when they left, and that evening her mother had to attend the Women’s Institute, which meant that Letitia got the supper ready while she was away, played a rather one-sided game of chess with her father, and took Shep, the old retriever, for his short evening amble. She thought she wasn’t in the least tired when she went to bed, but she slept at once, to wake to yet another lovely morning. Her ankle felt fine again and there was nothing for her to do at home; a walk would be splendid and perhaps resolve the puzzling restlessness she seemed unable to shake off, so that when her mother suggested that she might like to go for a ramble up towards Yes Tor, she was more than ready to agree.