by Connie Monk
‘This evening . . .?’ he prompted.
‘Well, don’t you see, it’s made me a different person? Even though I knew you were wrong when you used to say I was just a child, I can see now that I wasn’t really a proper woman. There was so much I didn’t know, don’t you see? I was a young girl and now, even though I’m only a few hours older, I’m a proper woman.’ In the darkness she couldn’t see his expression, but she took his soft chuckle as agreement. ‘I’m glad about it, though, Giles. I mean, we really know each other now.’ Never in her life had she experienced such a feeling of contentment and certainty. She wound down the window to let the cigarette smoke go out and the scented air of summer come in, so sure of the rightness of where she was that she didn’t notice Giles had not replied.
‘Just the two of us,’ she said, just as she had earlier. He understood what was left unsaid.
As the days of their fortnight passed all too quickly, she made two or three phone calls home to the farm; she even gave them accurate descriptions of where they had walked on the Shropshire hills and, during the second week, of the trip ‘she and Natalie’ had taken to Shrewsbury.
On their last morning she brought all her hotel training to bear as she cleaned the cottage before they left.
‘They’ll send a cleaner in; you don’t want to bother mopping the floors.’
‘Yes, I do. We walked an awful lot of mud in after yesterday’s storm. I won’t be long. What time do you want to be on the road? Oh, Giles, it’s all gone so quickly.’
‘Too quickly,’ he said, coming towards her.
‘Don’t walk on the wet floor. If you get the cases down I’ll be ready in five minutes. The floor is the last thing.’
‘I never doubted you were a Mary; don’t tell me you are a Martha after all.’
She chuckled, carrying her bucket out of the back door to throw the water by the hedge, then took off her shoes once she was back inside. ‘I’m a bit of both, I expect. Don’t you think most women are?’
‘Not those of my acquaintance. I’ll pack the car.’
Was it because she’d insisted on leaving the cottage looking as inviting as she had found it that he was so quiet on the drive south? It wasn’t that he was bad-tempered or angry with her, but he seemed withdrawn. Perhaps he was just sad to be going home, she told herself and, as if to console him, laid her hand somewhere near the top of his leg as he drove. For a second he covered it with his, the action driving away her doubts.
‘Doesn’t it seem silly that you have to put me down in Exeter so that I go home by bus, when you will be passing the end of the lane? I hate going home to lies and deceit. Can’t we tell them, Giles?’
‘Tell your uncle that I’ve taken his ward away a child and delivered her home a woman? Wasn’t that what you said that first evening? No, my sweet Tessa, what is between us is just for us. Soon you will be a free agent and until then I’m not chancing the wrath of an irate guardian because I’ve deflowered his ward who’s young enough to be my daughter. In any case,’ he went on firmly as she tried to interrupt, ‘I’m not going back to Downing Wood at the moment. After I’ve left you I shall get straight on to the London road. I must check into the apartment and see my mail, then I’m going down to Spain for a brief visit.’
‘Spain?’ He might as well have said he was going to the moon. ‘What? Another holiday? Or is it the setting for a new book or something?’
‘Neither. It’s my retreat from the fleshpots.’
‘Fancy you having a faraway house like that.’ She was determined not to let him guess how hurt she was that there were things in his life he didn’t share with her. ‘Deirdre never mentioned it.’
‘I doubt if I’ve ever talked about it to them. Why should I? I told you, it’s a retreat.’
She wanted him to know her every thought and yet, even now, she was on the edge of his life. ‘We could have gone there for our holiday,’ she said, horribly aware that such an idea wouldn’t have occurred to him.
‘Indeed we could if you’d had a passport and the freedom to live your own life.’
His answer took away her feeling of being isolated from him. She turned to him, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘Next year, Giles. As soon as I’m twenty-one I shall apply for a passport, and anyway by next summer we shall already be married.’
‘Bugger!’ He swore softly as he rounded a bend in the narrow lane and saw a herd of cattle ahead of them being driven home for milking. ‘I should have stuck to the main road. I know the district well around here and thought I’d take this as a shortcut. Damn it, just when I’ve got a long drive ahead of me.’
‘You can dump me off before we get right down to Exeter if you like. I’ll get a train or a bus.’
‘I’ll put you off at the bus stop in Exeter as we arranged. There’s no point in trying to get to London cross-country. From Exeter I shall have main road all the way.’
There were so many questions she wanted to ask him. Whereabouts in Spain was his retreat? Was it a house or an apartment? Who looked after it when he wasn’t there? What was he doing in Spain when he found it? Did he drive all that way or go on a train? Yet there was something about his expression that prevented her questioning him further.
An hour later he drew up at the bus stop in Exeter. Leaning close to him she wound her arms around his neck. ‘The end; once I get out of the car it’s really all over. Now I have to go home and tell fibs.’
‘It’s their own fault. They should realize you are old enough to make your own decisions.’
‘Will they know I’m different? It’s all been so wonderful. Was it wonderful for you too, Giles, darling Giles?’
For a moment he was silent, his expression inscrutable. Then, looking at her very directly, he said, ‘It has been a fortnight I shall remember all my days, if I live to be a hundred. Out you get, sweet Tessa.’
‘How long will you be away?’ she asked, not loosening her hold of him.
‘I don’t know. There are things I have to arrange. I’ll come back as soon as I can.’ Then, kissing her very gently on her forehead, he unwound her arms from him and got out of the car to get her case.
It was all over. In that moment as she climbed out and held her hand out to take her luggage, she seemed to see the fortnight flash through her mind. She too would remember it for the rest of her life. And soon he’d be back; at the thought her imagination took her to the cottage in Downing Wood and the hours they would spend together there. Before the holiday she had known nothing of love, not as she did now. As she watched him get back into the car, her memory carried her to the moments when their love-making had brought them to that pinnacle of joy, a sensation that each time had been more than physical: it had been a union of their bodies and their spirits. She wished the car door wasn’t shut and Giles already looking over his shoulder to make sure he was safe to pull out into the traffic; she wanted to remind him, to rekindle the wonder of it in his mind. But the car was moving away and she was left at the bus stop with her case.
If only she could talk about it to someone. But she mustn’t. And in any case, who could she talk to? She believed Naomi would have understood what she meant, and yet surely there was no logic in her thinking. Naomi and Richard were ancient, thought the twenty year old, and yet there was something about them that told her they would understand the wonder of what she had discovered. But she knew she couldn’t. And if she were honest with herself she knew she wanted to hear herself put it into words and yet she wanted to hug it to herself. Soon Giles would come home from Spain and then there would be no need to find the right words; for him as well as for her what they had shared had been glorious. She thought of Amelia and seemed to hear her familiar voice: ‘Rejoice’. Yes, Gran knew.
Back at Fiddlers’ Green, Tessa’s routine was very different from before her holiday. In two short weeks Deirdre had found an independence that had changed her life.
‘Your aunt and uncle have been amazingly kind,’ Julian told her when she put her bike in the one-ti
me carriage house just as he was getting his car out. ‘A day hasn’t gone by when the child hasn’t taken herself down to the farm. I could have bought her an electric chair before, but on her own where could she have gone with it? It was her lucky day when you came here, my dear. Without you none of it would have happened.’
‘Aunt Naomi is very special. From the first time I took Deirdre down there they took to each other. It’s being useful that’s important, don’t you think? And she is useful. Aunt Naomi doesn’t make concessions because Deirdre’s in a chair; she works as hard as anyone.’ Then, laughing, ‘A bit of a cheek, really: you pay me to be a carer-oblique-friend and I take her down to the farm to be an unpaid worker.’
‘There are things more important than money,’ he answered. ‘You had a good holiday, I hope?’
She nodded. ‘The best ever.’ She made sure her voice gave nothing away; ‘best ever’ had a hearty sound to it, the sort of comment that might come from a girl who had spent a fortnight hiking with an old school friend.
And so began what she thought of as a new period in her life, for it could never be simply a continuation of what had gone prior to the glorious fortnight. The thought of it coloured her every minute; no matter what she was doing it was there at the back of her mind. She felt loved; she felt that everything that had gone before had been leading her to the glorious fulfilment of sharing her life with Giles. Each morning when she arrived at Fiddlers’ Green she hoped to hear that he was back in Devon. But one week, then a second passed. Please, please make today be the day he comes, she pleaded silently, for with every passing day it became more imperative that she talked to him. She knew so little and he was the only one she could talk to. Could it be that her period had gone out of kilter because she had made love for the first time? Perhaps she would just miss a month. If only he were here he would make everything right, and even if she wasn’t twenty-one no one would stop them getting married.
She had been home for five weeks when, as she was laying the table for their evening meal and Richard was scrubbing his hands in the outer scullery, Naomi said, ‘Fancy your forgetting to tell us about Giles Lampton. They must know at Fiddlers’ Green.’
‘Know? Know what? I think they said he was away. Is he back?’ Please, please let him be back. Now it’ll be all right. He’ll talk to them and make them realize we love each other and he’ll get a special licence. Please, please . . . But her silent sentence didn’t get finished.
Five
At Naomi’s announcement Richard came back into the room, still drying his newly scrubbed hands.
‘So Marlhampton has lost its nearest claim to celebrity,’ he said casually. Then, with far more interest, ‘I say, that smells good. Are you ready for me to start carving?’ Food held priority over the comings and goings of Giles Lampton.
‘Yes, I think that’s everything.’ But Naomi couldn’t dismiss Giles so easily. Perhaps it was feminine intuition, but she sensed that his departure would upset Tessa more than she would let them see. ‘How funny that they didn’t tell you at Fiddlers’ Green, Tessa. Or perhaps they did and you didn’t think to mention it. When he’s around he spends so much time there. I’d have thought that Deirdre would have said something to me, too, for that matter; she knew you did all that typing for him not so long ago.’
‘They must have got it wrong in the village, Auntie. He’s been away for some time so I expect they are putting two and two together.’ It took all Tessa’s acting ability to sound no more interested than the other two while her heart was banging so hard that she wondered they couldn’t hear it.
‘Oh no, it’s true enough. Mavis Bright saw the notice in an estate agent’s window in Deremouth. She said she was pretty certain it was his cottage, but when she took Herbie, her spaniel, for a walk she drove that way and let him run in Downing Wood. I wonder the agent wasted a For Sale board on it; no one much ever walks that way to see it.’
‘Giles has a house in Spain,’ Tessa threw in casually. ‘He calls it his retreat, just like he did the Downing Wood place.’ But this was stupid. Why was she pretending that he was no more to her than just a friend of the Masters? Anyway, if what she was getting more and more certain about was true and she was to have his baby, even they couldn’t raise objections to her getting married without waiting until her birthday. But for the present, the baby was her secret, hers and, as soon as Giles got in touch with her, his too. ‘He’s out there now.’
‘So Marlhampton will have to interest itself in someone else,’ was as far as Richard’s interest stretched as he deftly sliced the home-produced topside of beef.
Naomi was uneasy. There was something in Tessa’s expression that warned her that she didn’t believe he wasn’t coming back to Downing Wood. But she said nothing, simply passed the vegetable dish across the table to Richard . . . and waited.
‘Look,’ Tessa blurted, her voice coming out louder than she intended and taking the couple by surprise. Naomi instinctively held herself in readiness. Whatever was coming spelled trouble. ‘I wanted to tell you but Giles said I must wait until my birthday. He thought you would be against our getting married because I’m a lot younger than he is.’
‘Married?’ Richard put down his knife and fork and turned his full attention on her. Naomi’s mouth felt dry, her heart was thumping. His voice was as cold as steel; surely Tessa must sense the change in his manner? ‘Married? To a man you hardly know? I’ve never heard such utter rot! Just be thankful he’s cleared off. You may be sure he won’t come this way again.’
‘But he will.’ Tessa gave up all pretence of eating her food. Her voice was strident as she looked first at Richard then at Naomi, then back to Richard. Was it fear or anger that drove her? She put Naomi in mind of a trapped animal. ‘He will come back. And I do know him. I lied to you about Natalie. Giles rented a cottage in Shropshire. That’s where we spent the fortnight, just as if we were married.’
‘Bloody man!’ Richard shouted. His voice was as beyond his control as the tic in his cheek. Pushing his plate to one side he glared at Tessa. She saw his expression as being full of hate; only Naomi understood his hurt and disappointment. ‘To take an innocent young girl—’
‘I’m not stupid.’ First he’d raised his voice, now Tessa raised hers. ‘I knew just what I was doing. So now you know. Just because he’s decided to sell the cottage doesn’t mean he’s getting rid of me too. Of course he isn’t.’
‘And you try and make me believe you’re not stupid! Use your sense for Christ’s sake and see him for what he is. If he’d thought of you as anything more than an easy companion for a holiday he would have talked to us about his intentions.’ Only Naomi noticed the sudden change in him, and even she couldn’t put a name to it. He seemed more distant. Tessa was still talking but what she was saying didn’t register with either of them . . . If Giles was giving up the cottage in Downing Wood he would spend more time in Spain . . . after they were married that would be their main home. Words, just words, while Naomi’s mind concentrated on Richard, and Richard seemed unaware of both of them. His eyes were closed and his breathing was fast and shallow.
‘Richard?’ she said softly, reaching to lay her hand over his. ‘Let it go, Richard. Eat your food, darling.’
Opening his eyes he looked at her. It was as if Tessa wasn’t there at all.
‘Bloody indigestion,’ he said breathlessly.
‘You started to eat too quickly. Take it slowly. You said you hadn’t had a proper meal all day.’
He shook his head.
‘I think there’s a drop of brandy in the sideboard cupboard,’ Naomi said. ‘Tessa, can you get it?’ The previous conversation might not have happened.
‘No. It’s easing. Doesn’t last. Had it in the market.’ He opened his eyes and looked directly at Naomi. ‘Frightened me, I’ll tell you. But it passed. Then later, I had to stop on the way home. Better now – almost gone.’
‘You’ve been too long without food. There’s some soup from yesterday I
can warm. Would that be easier to digest? Or porridge?’
Recovering, he looked at her with an expression that made Tessa feel uncomfortable to witness. ‘Better now,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll have that brandy and sit out in the fresh air for ten minutes. Can you keep mine warm for later?’
Outside he sat on the five-bar gate gazing unseeingly at the lower field, a field that rose to the stile leading into the High Meadow. They assumed his thoughts to be on what Tessa had told him. She let herself imagine that he was seeing reason and when Giles came back from Spain and got in touch with her she would not only tell him about the baby but, also, that she had talked to Richard and he was in agreement for the wedding to go ahead.
Naomi’s mind had no room for Giles Lampton. She had never known Richard to be ill. You couldn’t say he was ill, she corrected herself; a twinge of indigestion was nothing to worry about. She wanted to follow him outside to reassure herself that the fresh air had put him back on form but believed he needed to be by himself to think about what Tessa had told them.
It was with relief that she saw him coming back across the yard.
‘We’ve had ours –’ she greeted him – ‘but I’ve kept yours warm in the oven. Can you manage it now?’
‘I feel fine again. I’ll eat it slowly this time,’ he said. Then, putting his arm around her in a casual embrace, ‘Sorry, love. Where’s Tessa gone?’
‘Out on her bike. Oh dear, what a mess. It’s all his fault. Tessa would never have deceived us.’
‘Poor kid. Things hurt so badly when you’re young.’
‘We’re so lucky.’ She nestled her head against his shoulder. ‘Now, I’ll get your dinner out of the oven and you mind you don’t bolt it.’
As she had so many times, Tessa took the Deremouth road then, just before she came to the long bridge over the Dere estuary, she turned right towards Otterton St Giles and Downing Wood. She knew it was crazy but she felt she would see his car on the patch of wasteland by the side of the cottage. But there was nothing, only the estate agent’s For Sale board. Pressing her face to the window she saw the living room was still furnished. Perhaps that was how he had bought it. Nothing there had been of his choosing and so he would sell it on.