‘If you’d let him finish, Danielle, he could only say that I left Stephanie in the care of a level-headed, capable adult. My mother. Is that not so, David? And what do you mean by a sick child? Stephanie was perfectly well when I left.’
But was she? The things that Jan hadn’t properly registered with her eye, but which her brain had stored up for later recollection, flooded into her awareness. Stephanie’s funny colour, the rose points in the cheeks of an otherwise pale little face. Her lack of bounce and fun which amounted to listlessness.
‘I’ll grant that your mother is a very capable woman, considerably more so than you are. But tell that to Stephanie, not to me. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you missed the signs and didn’t deliberately walk out, knowing that she was sickening for something. Your mother is most insistent that her temperature flared up after you’d gone, but the fact remains that Stephanie has got herself worked up into a state because you aren’t there. She isn’t going to settle down until you come. Will you do so voluntarily, or must I take you by force. Make no mistake, you’re coming even if I have to drag you every step of the way by the roots of your hair.’
‘If you’d told me that Stephanie was ill in the first place, there would have been no argument,’ Jan flung at him, rising to her feet. ‘I’m sorry, Martin—’ Twisting round to look at him—‘but you see we must go.’
Martin didn’t see. ‘Must we? Kids are up and down all the time. Surely you know that. And as you’ve just said, she’s in your mother’s excellent hands. I don’t see what you can do if you go back. It’s a ridiculous idea.’
It was evident that Martin wasn’t going to have his fun curtailed. He was digging in his heels to stay.
With ill-concealed impatience, so perhaps she could appreciate how David felt, she said: ‘If you could drive, Martin, I’d go home with David and leave Dad’s car for you to make your own way in your own time. But you can’t drive with that arm, so you have no choice but to come with me.’
‘May I make a suggestion,’ Danielle said, taking the role of mediator upon herself. ‘If Martin wants to stay, I’ll drive him back. Or, better still, he could shack up for the night with Tom, my manager. He’s got a spare room in his flat, and I know he’d willingly put Martin up if I asked him. What do you think, Martin?’
Martin thought it was a splendid idea, and Jan was free to go with David.
In the car park David said: ‘You found your way here all right, so presumably you know the way back?’
‘Yes,’ she replied meekly.
The sarcastic inflection dropped from his voice. ‘You drive first, and I’ll follow to keep an eye on you. I’m sorry for spoiling your evening,’ he added unexpectedly.
‘You haven’t really,’ Jan admitted. ‘And you’ve made Martin’s. Is Martin at all like Stephen?’
‘Strange that you should ask that, but yes. He is the same character type. What put you on to that?’
‘Danielle’s interest in Martin, I suppose. People are invariably attracted to the same type of person, don’t you agree?’
‘No I don’t. You’re talking utter rubbish. If it’s been an unhappy experience, anybody with a grain of sense will be wary of seeking happiness with the same type.’
Jan opened her mouth to reply, but shut it again with her thoughts unvoiced.
They got into their respective cars and she led off on the homeward journey.
Sense doesn’t, or shouldn’t, come into it. Love is. It’s not something that can be coolly and sensibly sought out.
If only David had come looking for her, threatening to drag her back by the roots of her hair because he loved her and couldn’t live another moment without her, and couldn’t bear the thought of her being out with another man. And not because Stephanie was ill and fretfully crying out for her. This would always be the way of it, which is why she must not weaken in her resolution to go away.
How unrealistic and absurd of her to imagine, even for a brief moment, that David cared enough to be jealous because she was with Martin.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Martin had been right in one respect. Children are up and down. By the time they arrived at Larkspur Cottage, Stephanie’s fluctuating temperature had dropped to a safe level and she was sleeping normally.
Jan’s mother met them at the door with a rueful smile. ‘Sorry I panicked. The child is undoubtedly cooking something up and it would be a wise precaution to have the doctor to her in the morning, but I shouldn’t have sent you out again, David, when you’d only just come in from work, and also spoil your evening, Jan.’
‘You know it’s all right by me, Mum. I’d rather be called back on a dozen false alarms than have Stephanie really poorly.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Briskly fastening on her apron she said: ‘I’ll get you something to eat now, David.’
‘I don’t really want anything, thank you, Muriel. I’m not hungry.’
‘What’s that got to do with it? If I say you eat, my boy, then you eat.’ She looked up at him, and as she was even smaller than Jan, she had a considerable way to look. ‘A big frame like yours needs filling.’
It was comical to see her mother’s diminutive figure standing up to David’s tallness. He could have picked her up and moved her aside quite easily with one hand. As it was he succumbed to her bossy tone, sent her a shy smile and dropped obediently into the chair she had set for him at the table.
Jan, whose own appetite had been whipped away by her concern for Stephanie, could sympathise. At the same time she smiled inwardly because someone could get the better of him. Not for long did she smile, though.
‘She didn’t get round to eating either,’ David said treacherously, and to Jan’s dismay a second knife and fork clattered on to the table.
Jan glowered at him, attempted to say something, but caught his absurd, little-boy look before she could channel her pique into words, found it was all too much for her, and burst into reluctant laughter.
* * *
When it came to bedtime, Jan didn’t know which room to head for. If Martin wasn’t going to use her room, she might as well. But what if Martin changed his mind, or for some reason Tom, Danielle’s manager, couldn’t put him up for the night and he came back to Larkspur Cottage? Rather than risk the problem that would create, Jan decided to slip in with Stephanie. She managed this with minimal disturbance. Stephanie stirred, flung out her arm, but remained asleep. Her edge-of-the-bed position was not the most comfortable perch Jan could imagine, but she was very tired, quite drained, and eventually she slept.
A crash awakened her. She had no idea what it was. Something . . . somebody . . . moving about downstairs. It had sounded more like a splintering breaking crash, rather than the resounding thud of a chair being knocked over.
She was on the point of getting out of bed to investigate, not too urgently because her first theory of burglars had been replaced by the thought that after all Martin must have decided to come back, when the bedroom door opened.
As she raised up in the dark, a gentle hand on her shoulder persuaded her to lie down again.
‘Hush, darling. I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I was only checking that you were all right.’
Jan’s alerted senses identified the tall figure, even though it was too dark to see, and her heart missed a beat at being called darling, even though the cherished endearment had come to her by courtesy of false pretences. Her heart almost stopped altogether, as David’s lips lightly brushed her forehead. ‘You’re cool, anyway.’
She could tell by the laughing inflection in his voice that the game was up, because now David had recognised her.
Cool was something she was not.
‘We’ll have to stop meeting like this,’ he said humorously.
‘David, I . . .’
‘Jan, if ever you are in this sort of situation again, do you mind speaking up a bit sooner. At first I did think you were Stephanie. I might just have slid in beside you for a cuddle.’
‘Such talk.
Will you please go before you wake her up.’
‘Is she all right?’ His eyes would now be more accustomed to the gloom, and he appeared to look over her at the hump under the bedclothes that was Stephanie.
‘She’s fine. Now go.’
‘If she’s fine, what are you doing here?’
‘I’m trying to get some sleep. I know that’s not the answer you want. I’ll explain fully tomorrow. Just before you go, what was that noise?’
‘What noise?’
‘A sort of crashing, splintering sort of noise.’
‘It was just that. A crashing, splintering sort of noise. I accidentally knocked over Mrs. Weaver’s blue vase, and it’s now in pieces on the floor.’
Jan burst into tears.
‘But you didn’t like it. It was hideous. I’ve done you a favour.’
Jan couldn’t say that it had nothing to do with the vase. That it was hideous, and she had never liked it, and that in breaking it he had done her a favour. If she’d said that she would have had to tell him why she was crying, and she couldn’t tell him that because she didn’t know. She didn’t know that her emotions were in such a tight knot that the most trivial thing was capable of acting as catalyst and activating the tears.
‘Tomorrow is Saturday. I don’t have to go to work. I’ll go out and buy you another blue vase, every bit as hideous.’
‘Goodnight, David.’
She thought he would never go, but eventually he went.
* * *
Doctor Ives said that Stephanie had picked up a virus. The root cause was undoubtedly Stephanie’s troublesome tonsils which, unless a vast improvement took place, would have to come out.
The kindly doctor went. Muriel Ashton observed the mischievous-eyed patient.
She said: ‘This little madam is enjoying the extra bit of fuss and attention.’
Stephanie had certainly picked up. Jan was kept on the trot meeting Stephanie’s endless chant of, ‘Fetch me a book . . . a drink . . . sweeties.’ She was more than a little relieved when her mother called up the stairs: ‘Jan. Aren’t you supposed to be going shopping?’
‘I want to come shopping with you,’ Stephanie promptly announced.
‘Sorry, poppet, it’s just not on. You’ve got to stay in bed and get better for my birthday tomorrow. I don’t want a poorly little girl spoiling my birthday, now do I?’
Stephanie considered. ‘Will you have a birthday cake?’
Jan said confidentially: ‘At this very moment my mother is baking a cake. I have my suspicions that it just might turn out to be a birthday cake.’
‘With icing and candles?’
‘Of course. It wouldn’t be a birthday cake without icing and candles.’
‘How many candles will it have?’
‘Lots and lots.’
‘A hundred?’
From the doorway, David teased: ‘Jan’s getting to be quite an old lady now, but not that old. How many candles will there be, Jan?’ Knowing laughter lurked in his dark eyes, even though his face was serious.
The devil, he knew!
One of her parents must have blabbed on her. The likeliest candidate was her mother because she had the liveliest tongue.
‘Twenty-one,’ she admitted on a lilting laugh, because she seemed to have caught his mood. ‘As if you didn’t know.’
He didn’t admit that he did, but neither did he offer a denial. ‘I’ll walk down to the village with you,’ he said. ‘I’ve some shopping to do myself.’
* * *
Walking down towards the jumble of stone buildings in its vale setting, with the sun warm on their faces and the encircling hills wearing identical Summer-green hats and amiably sharing the twisting ribbon road that tied up with the path Jan and David were walking on, it was peace personified. More than that, this haven that Jan was contemplating leaving was indisputably her spiritual home. In the gloomily appraised future, wherever her body might take up residence, her thoughts would for ever remain here.
With painful decision she said: ‘There is something I must tell you, David, and now is as good a time as any. I want you to find someone else to look after Stephanie. I had planned to go home with my parents when they leave, but I’ve since come round to thinking that it wouldn’t be fair to you. I won’t leave you in the lurch, but I want you to make an all out effort to find someone to replace me.’
‘I don’t rightly see how I can let you go, Jan,’ he said, sounding superbly casual.
‘Nobody is indispensable. You’ll get somebody as good as, or better, than me,’ she affirmed. ‘See you.’ And she shot into Alice Spink’s general store.
She was glad it was a busy Saturday morning. When it got round to her turn to be served, she could give her order in a reasonably composed voice.
Alice Spink slammed the provisions on the counter, totting them up in her head as she went along, and Jan transferred them to her capacious shopping bag.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t the exact amount,’ Jan said, proffering some notes.
‘That’s all right, dear. I’m not short.’ Alice Spink resorted to her old trick of not handing over the change. When change is given the customer is free to make a quick getaway. When change is withheld, the loquacious proprietress had a captive audience. This time it was with definite purpose and not gossipy intent. ‘Remember when you first came here asking for all manner of out of the ordinary commodities, and I said we only stocked the basics because we’d no call for the others. Well my Diane, she’s a bright girl, said that perhaps we’d no call for the others because we didn’t stock them. So on Thursday when the traveller called, I went a bit mad and put an order in. All being well it should be delivered on Tuesday, which is the regular delivery day. So now you won’t have to go trailing all the way into Didsford for this type of thing.’
It was worded as a consideration, but it sounded suspiciously like a command. Jan had only been to Didsford the once, and that was to buy the plaque for The Retreat. It had duly arrived and looked rather splendid on the door of David’s quarters. While she was in Didsford she had made a point of buying in one or two delicacies which were not obtainable from the village shop. Had one of Alice Spink’s spies spotted her and reported back, and was she having her hands slapped for disobeying the unwritten law to trade locally?
‘It’s kind of you to let me know and I appreciate it, but I won’t be doing my shopping here much longer.’
‘Oh!’ said Alice Spink, visibly rising on her dignity.
‘Oh, nothing wrong. Just the reverse. You’ve spoilt me for town shopping. But you see, I’m planning to leave quite soon. I’ll be off the moment Mr. Spedding finds a replacement to look after Stephanie.’
‘I’m not surprised at that,’ said Alice Spink putting on a sympathetic face. ‘The surprise is that a sweet young girl such as yourself has stood that man for so long.’
‘What do you mean, Mrs. Spink?’
‘Well, it stands to reason that you only stayed on this long for the little girl’s sake. And don’t misunderstand me because we all admire you for it. No blame’s been put on you for tolerating the likes of him. I mean, the facts speak for themselves. He hasn’t a drop of common decency in his body.’
This gossip wasn’t new. Jan had heard it all before, but she hadn’t known David then. Just as Alice Spink and the ladies who had come in after Jan and were waiting their turn, didn’t know David. She could tell by their expressions that they were all in agreement with Alice Spink.
Turning to the assembly at large, shrivelling up every last one of them with the heat of her anger, she let rip. ‘You couldn’t be more wrong. Just as I’ve been wrong. Not only about David Spedding, but about you. I looked upon your endless gossiping as a bit of harmless nosiness to compensate for the narrow lives you lead. But you are nothing but a bunch of spiteful old biddies. If you carry on voicing such misinformed, malicious rubbish, you could just find yourself tangling with the law. Except that David Spedding is too kind and caring to put
you through the distress that your destructive tongues have caused him. He is the kindest, the most fair-minded, just and noble person I’ve ever met or am ever likely to meet.’
Alice Spink took a step back, dumbfoundedly gathering her wits. Shocked breaths were drawn all round Jan, but it was left to Alice Spink to retaliate.
She was obviously going to do it in style. Never short of words for long, she said with dignity and—to Jan’s intense surprise—with approval: ‘Bravo, my girl. I didn’t know you had that much explosion in you. My husband has always said that I’m a bit too handy at giving out the stick, but I don’t yelp when it’s turned back on me. Most of what I’ve said has been related to me by someone else, and I freely admit that I prefer to rely on my own observations. The moment I set eyes on you I figured you out to be a no-nonsense girl with a good head on your young shoulders. You’ve given me no cause to modify that first snap judgement. Many a stronger person would have quailed at what you’ve had to tackle. We all admired Annabel Spedding for her courage, but on the quiet we had a sneaking suspicion that she put you through it. And there’s none more ashamed than me for letting you get on with it, with never a complaint or a grumble passing your lips, although you must have been hard pressed at times. I reckon we had to blacken somebody else’s character to make ours look white. I admit that without a lot of pride, I can tell you.’
‘But you were the first to offer help, Mrs. Spink,’ Jan protested.
‘Aye, that’s as may be. But I didn’t do much pressing when it was turned down. As far as David Spedding is concerned, you’re nobody’s fool, my girl, and I reckon if anybody’s got his measure, it’s you. It’s not easy to change tune mid air. If you’ve been one of the crows it’s a bit difficult to start singing like a canary, so you’ll just have to bide with me for a while. You could perhaps tell me one thing. If he’s as fine and honourable as you make out, how come he didn’t show up for her funeral?’
‘I don’t know,’ Jan said, the wind taken out of her sails by Alice Spink’s deep dip into her own sense of justice. ‘One thing I do know. There will be a perfectly valid reason why he didn’t come.’
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