Sail Upon the Land

by Josa Young

  A fellow peer he had met in the Bishop’s Bar at the House of Lords had introduced him to St Anthony’s and his social life such as it was revolved entirely around the kind, impersonal people he had met there. Otherwise he would have been entirely bereft in the long sad years since Melissa had abandoned him. Castle Hey was much the same as it had been when she died. He hadn’t had the heart or energy to go on with the restoration, let alone fulfil their plans for turning it into a moneyspinner. He had the great Gothick bed dismantled and sent to auction. The room was locked up and he never intended to use it again.

  He had to suppress his memories of the last time he had seen Melissa or he would weep even now. He had bent over the coffin in the undertaker’s chapel of rest and kissed her smooth white forehead. To his lips it was rock hard and freezing cold.

  Nineteen

  Damson

  August 1983

  Damson was even more lonely once Clarice and Eunice had moved into Castle Hey after their parents’ wedding. They briskly instructed her to call them Clarrie and Noonie ‘as all our friends do’ but that didn’t help. Already very pretty and vivacious at fourteen, they didn’t mean to make her feel so dumpy and dull. They were sort of kind in a detached way, but turned inward towards each other in a flurry of private jokes, shared giggles and seamless communication. She told herself they were twins, they couldn’t help it.

  She longed for fun and parties, and their presence only highlighted how tedious home life was in the holidays. She was worried that they might be bored, and she tried hard to make friends with them and start up conversations. That just seemed to make them curl around each other like two little cats leaving Damson out in the cold. Her skin itched and prickled with embarrassment.

  When Margaret was sharp with her, which she quite frequently was once the first novelty of the marriage wore off, Damson sensed Munty’s discomfort. He didn’t intervene, although she had seen him retreat from the scene when Margaret was telling her off for being lazy in the house. This felt so grotesquely wrong, but she didn’t know how to complain, or who to. Granny looked disapproving when she tried to raise the subject.

  Damson knew she could be rude and difficult if she didn’t get her own way. She was uncomfortable about this and felt that Munty was only too happy to let someone else deal with her. Pauline had never made Damson lift a finger or told her off. Damson knew when Pauline was cross because she looked disappointed and refused to talk to her. Hugs and kisses and pleadings saw Pauline eventually forgive her.

  Damson was lying on her bed reading the latest Angelique from the library after lunch one Sunday when someone knocked on the door. She didn’t answer. There was no one in the house she wanted to talk to.

  ‘Damson, I know you’re in there. What are you doing?’

  It was her stepmother’s voice.

  ‘I’m reading.’

  ‘But we all need to clear up lunch, don’t we? Come on Damson, please unlock this door and come and help.’

  Damson unlocked the door and stood sulkily in her room, staring at the wooden floor. The room where she had been born, unchanged since.

  ‘Thank you, Damson. Now, I think we need to have a little talk about manners and helping around the house.’

  The girl cringed, as her stepmother let her know exactly what she thought of her behaviour. She realised it was fair, but it was excruciating to have it spelt out. Particularly as the twins in their odd twinny way often cheeked their mother and ran off without helping, and got away with it. Perhaps Margaret worried that they wouldn’t love her if she told them off. She clearly had no such worries about Damson.

  ‘I know you’ve never known a mother, but I’ve been here for six months now and you’ve never even looked at me. Please look at me, Damson. Look into my face.’

  Damson slowly raised her eyes and looked at her stepmother. She saw a woman not much taller than herself at fourteen. She was wearing pink lipstick. Damson scanned her stepmother’s face, hating the colour of her foundation, an orange shade that came to a halt at her chin.

  When she was cross her voice changed. Damson didn’t know anyone else who spoke like that.

  ‘I said look, don’t stare.’

  Damson lowered her eyes.

  Twenty

  Damson

  December 1984

  Damson had been invited to the party as a job lot with the twins. The hostess, whose sixteenth birthday it was, was at Farningham with her stepsisters. Damson was not at the same school as the twins. She went to a more academic girls’ school nearer to her grandparents. Her school looked down on Farningham, where the girls were told not to bother too much with exams and so on, as it was implied that they would all make ‘good marriages’. Damson, determined to follow her grandfather into medicine, found this odd and old-fashioned.

  She was nervous at the idea of meeting some boys. Bubbles popped in her tummy at the thought of kissing. It sounded disgusting, tongues and so on, but she was determined to do something about still being ‘sweet sixteen and never been kissed’.

  They’d all gone by train, clutching their sleeping bags, jewel-coloured taffeta party frocks stuffed into one suitcase between them. The only parties she’d been to so far had been schoolfriends’ girly sleepovers. There had been the odd brother lurking around, covered in spots and embarrassment, sneering at his sister yet hovering close to the hormonal soup.

  She hadn’t been to any that included boys before the twins came, as Munty seemed to have no idea how to make friends with neighbours who had children the same age as his daughter. At least the twins had shaken things up a bit.

  All the teenage girls were changing together on the attic floor of the big farmhouse occupied by their hosts. Noonie did Damson up when she found her clutching her dress helplessly and roaming the corridors. It had thin straps that you needed to cross over and tie at the back. It wasn’t a dress you could manage by yourself.

  ‘Would you like some help with your make-up?’ she asked. Damson shook her head, and put on a little mascara and lip gloss. Then they all huddled into their Huskies and Barbours, and climbed into a blanket-lined trailer behind a tractor to be towed across the freezing fields towards the barn where the party was to be held. The huge door was open and golden light flooded out on to the frosty grass. As they bumped closer, wood smoke met their eager senses. For ever afterwards, Damson associated the scent with anticipation.

  The two-storey barn had a beaten earth floor which had been partly covered with drugget. In front of the fireplace was the traditional Snog Pit, where cushions and rugs were piled up for people to sit on. As the evening wore on, the space became full. It was a badge of honour to snog someone at any party, and Damson longed to join in.

  She had been hovering upstairs, talking to some schoolfriends, but not having a very nice time at all as they were picked off by the circling males. She stood by the buffet and nibbled bits of the huge chunk of cheese that had been served with French bread and pickle.

  She was tired of trying to look pleased and happy despite the crawling embarrassment of not being a chosen one. As they were in the farm buildings, there was nowhere she could go and hide from the merciless exposure. She had not danced even once.

  She saw someone detach themselves from a group on the other side of the dance floor and walk through the prancing throng towards her. She stopped picking the cheese and stood waiting to see what would happen next.

  The music changed tempo, always the worst moment for the abandoned, when everyone was paired off and slow dancing. ‘Turned a whiter shade of pale,’ wailed Procol Harum. Then a boy was standing in front of her, smiling down at her. He took her right hand in his left and led her gently on to the dance floor. There he put his arms around her, encouraging her to put hers around his neck, and began to sway to the music, the length of his body pressed against hers. It had happened so quickly she hadn’t had time to see what he looked like, although she knew he was very tall. She rested her head against his chest, which smelt of Eau
Sauvage, and gave herself up to the music and the swaying sense of unreality.

  After a while, she peeped up at the underside of his chin. He sensed that she had moved and looked down at her and smiled. He had a sweet smile, his skin looked very white with dark freckles showing up in the ultraviolet disco lights. His hair stood out like an aureole of dark gold frizz. He had very full pink lips, a shapeless wodge of a nose and pale eyes with dark lashes. He dipped his head and kissed her upturned mouth.

  This is it, I’m being kissed. And then, at last. His lips parted and she felt his tongue against her teeth. What to do now? Oh well. She opened her mouth a bit and let it happen. A bit yuk, but not sweet sixteen any more, thank goodness.

  The music stopped, and the couples left the dance floor dreamily hand in hand, some to the bar for more cider, others downstairs to the Snog Pit to carry on horizontally what they had been doing vertically.

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked her rescuer.

  ‘Damson. What’s yours?’

  ‘Tamsin?’ He had an American accent.

  ‘No, Damson. Like the fruit.’

  ‘That’s kind of unusual. I’m Daniel.’

  She smiled and let him lead her downstairs to the Snog Pit. But he didn’t take her there, he led her through the door and out into the chilly starlit night.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ she asked.

  ‘Canada. I’m here studying for a term on an exchange programme.’

  She was a little sad that it wasn’t likely she would see him again, but so taken up in the moment of being chosen that it didn’t register. They walked a little way from the building and the noise, and he just stood, holding her hand and staring upwards at the sky. As they were out in the country the stars showed piercingly bright against deepest blue.

  He sighed.

  ‘Damson,’ he said. ‘My host family gave me something called damson jam. I had no idea what it was, but it was a kind of confiture. I like this peculiar English damson.’

  Then he asked her if she was warm enough.

  Damson had no experience of boys, let alone of one being kind, and she fell into bliss as if down a well. She was desperate to kiss him again, and she wanted to look at him properly.

  She pulled away from his encircling arm and turned towards him, looking at his face. He wasn’t handsome exactly, his light eyes were small and creased up as he smiled at her so sweetly.

  He flung his arms around her and kissed her upturned mouth, out there, under the reeling stars. The vast and endless chill of space above their warm teenage heads.

  Twenty-one

  Damson

  August 1986

  The sun streamed through the ogee-arched hall windows as Damson crept towards the front door. Beside it was a little mahogany and glass box into which the letters cascaded every morning. She had spent about seven slow minutes sitting at the top of the stairs before venturing down to meet her fate in the letter box. No one else was about, the house was very quiet. Only the tock of the grandfather clock, with its engraved brass face, disturbed the peace.

  Frightened that someone would come down and witness her triumph or disaster, she took a rush at it, lifting the little glass door and snatching the post inside. Brown, white and blue envelopes addressed to Lord Mount-Hey, Lady Mount-Hey, The Hon. Clarice Hayes (which she isn’t, she’s just plain Miss Clarice Mullins). All delaying tactics exhausted, Damson dropped the other letters on to the hall table and held in her hand an official white envelope from the examinations board.

  Her heart banged in her chest as she folded down the edges and tore with exaggerated care along the dotted line. She shut her eyes as she unfolded the piece of blue paper and held it up to her face.

  She turned her head away, trying to catch a glimpse of her A Level results out of the corner of her eye without looking. But what she glimpsed caused her to collapse to her knees on the stone floor.

  Maths: A, Biology: A, Chemistry: A, Biology S Level: Distinction.

  She could hear someone’s slippers flapping down the stairs behind her and turned around, beaming through her tears when she saw it was her father.

  ‘I did it, Munty! I did it!’

  ‘I thought you’d hurt yourself. What have you done?’

  ‘Straight As, Munty. I got straight As!’

  ‘Oh darling, you splendid girl. I’m so, so proud of you. Is it too early for champagne?’

  Damson was relieved that her father was alone for a change. Margaret would somehow have made it all about her.

  ‘It’s only eight o’clock. But we can have some later. I’m so excited. Do you think I’ll get into Cambridge now?’

  ‘They can hardly keep you out can they? But don’t you have to go back to school next term to do that other exam?’

  Not having gone to Oxbridge himself, Munty was vague about the details.

  Damson shuddered at the idea of being at school for another moment. Lots of her friends were going to Artillery Tutors in London, which seemed infinitely glamorous.

  ‘If you don’t mind, Munty, I would like to go to London and get a change of tutors. At the end of last term we were starting again at the beginning of A levels.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see what we can manage. We must ring your grandparents.’

  Damson jumped up. ‘Grandpa will be so pleased I’ve got the chance to follow him to St Bennet’s, if they’ll have me.’

  She was seized by a sudden doubt. She hadn’t expected As. She glanced at the paper again, and there they were. Lovely as a row of teepees. She would always love the letter A.

  There was a hot light burning in her chest as she went over to the old sedan chair beside the front door. Inside lived the black Bakelite telephone with its chrome dial and its cohort of phone books, address books and doodled notepads, with a biro attached to a shelf with a piece of string and a drawing pin – Munty’s vain attempt to stop people wandering off with it.

  ‘I’ll go and make some tea for Margaret,’ said Munty, pottering in his old sheepskin slippers down the passage to the kitchen. She looked after him with affection – with results like that she could love anybody. And she liked the way his hair was fluffy and silvery in the mornings.

  Her grandmother answered the phone quickly. A lifetime of calls from patients, before all these things became automated, had accustomed her to grasping the point very fast.

  ‘Oh darling, that’s simply marvellous news. I must go and tell Grandpa.’

  It had always been to Granny that Damson fled whenever she could, and to her kind, faintly antiseptic grandfather. While she knew she was no replacement for their beloved lost Melissa, she was at least female and loved and physically there, in arms and on laps, in cots and on sofas.

  Everywhere that her mother wasn’t.

  Her grandmother – and indeed anyone who’d lived through the war – would not burden others with her grief particularly not her own granddaughter. The warm thrum of love in her grandparents’ house was uninterrupted, as if her being born just before her mother died had allowed for no hesitation or breaking off. Damson was aware that she had a very different relationship with Granny from that of her other Reeves cousins, her uncles’ children. She sometimes felt more like their child than their grandchild, as Munty was so detached and Melissa just a kind of absent presence.

  Visiting Mummy’s grave had been a regular ritual since she was very small, whenever Munty took her to the church down in Hey. Damson had run her fingers across the words inscribed on the gravestone.

  Melissa Marilyn

  Lady Mount-Hey of Castle Hey

  1948–1968

  ‘Do not grieve; she cannot fade,

  Though thou hast not thy bliss

  Forever wilt thou love and she be fair.’

  ‘What does that mean, Munty?’

  ‘Just that your mummy was lovely.’

  Even at nine, Damson had sensed she shouldn’t ask anything else. She tried asking Granny and learned that her mummy had always been delicate but no
one had realised that having a baby might prove dangerous to her health – hesitation on that word. Granny would talk about the midwife Miss Smith who had delivered Damson and looked after her for the first few weeks, retired and living now in an Eastbourne nursing home, and whom she would visit still. Perhaps Damson would like to? It was clear that the death had been a complete shock to everyone. Damson had been just five weeks old. She was so used to the story that she didn’t think to ask for more.

  Her response to her grandmother’s going uncharacteristically quiet was to climb up on to Sarah’s knee and nestle into her warm, comforting and sweetly scented bosom. As she grew older she would carefully move the reading glasses on their string out of the way first.

  ‘Darling Damson,’ her grandmother would murmur, resting her chin on the little girl’s head and holding her tight.

  Twenty-two

  Margaret

  April 1987

  ‘Iris, I need to look at the guest list. Can you bring it here?’ Margaret was in her boudoir, as she liked to call it, a lovely room with a high ceiling overlooking the lake at the front of Castle Hey. Her Biedermeier desk was positioned in front of the triptych of arched windows framed in chintz scattered with creamy, golden-hearted lilies, and she gazed out across the sparkling water at bright trees in new leaf. What had been rank grass and mud when she had arrived as a bride, was now turfed to an Englishman’s dream of a lawn, running down beyond the carriage sweep to the neat and tidy gravelled lake shore beyond.