Windy Night, Rainy Morrow

by Ivy Ferrari

She glanced across at Carrie, busy in one of the other grids. The older woman was crouching on her heels, her sweater sleeves rolled up, a smudge of clay on one cheek, lost to the world as she peered at some fragment in her hand. All about her the students were easing stiff backs and producing their flasks and sandwiches. But to Carrie time meant nothing. She often missed tea altogether, and Tina hoped that this would be one of the days.

  She dusted the earth from her own hands, brushed back her hair with the crook of her arm, and approached Chris at his table.

  ‘Hallo, going off?’ he asked casually.

  ‘Yes. I’ve entered my lot. There’s a section of rubble you might look at. It could have been part of the camp rubbish dump, though the level isn’t consistent. I got one or two more shards of that baking vessel, nearly all the rim ... Chris, any chance of borrowing your car tonight?’

  ‘Sorry, Tina, I’m using it myself,’ he said firmly.

  ‘Chris, please!’ she pleaded.

  ‘You ought to know better than to try your tricks on me, my girl. And as I’ve said, I’m going out in the car myself.’

  Tina teased: ‘Taking a girl, I suppose? Is it Francey?’

  ‘Don’t be nosey, my child. Can’t you borrow Carrie’s car?’

  Tina hesitated. ‘I didn’t really want her to know where I’m going.’

  Chris gave her a curious glance. ‘What are you up to, Tina? You know I promised your father to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘I’m not up to anything. I might just go sick-visiting, that’s all.’ She tried to speak casually.

  ‘You mean—Helen Copeland?’ Chris eyed her rather more soberly. ‘Have you got her brother’s permission?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t say it was inconvenient.’ She began edging away. ‘Got to go in for tea now—’

  ‘But, Tina, wait a minute!’ Chris’s voice was raised in an authority she would normally have submitted to, but at that moment a student rushed up to Chris with news of a find and Tina was able to escape. The lack of a car would be a nuisance, but there were buses going Bellingham way, she knew.

  She was glad to get out of the ice-edged wind and into the warm kitchen at Hadrian’s Edge. Here she found Isa complacently viewing a tray of rather over-baked scones.

  ‘Hallo—what happened?’ Tina perched on the table and sampled one. ‘A bit burnt, aren’t they?’

  ‘Aye, they caught on,’ Isa said heavily. ‘And well they might, with me so upset.’

  ‘What are you upset about?’

  Isa set the kettle on the hotplate and turned an indignant face. ‘Why, it’s because I wasn’t asked to be on the tea committee of the Ladies’ Guild.’ She sighed gustily. ‘I knew I’d never turn out good scones the day!’

  Tina said curiously: ‘Why don’t you leave your baking until you’ve got over being upset, Isa?’

  Isa stared. ‘Leave it? I’m no’ leaving it. It helps to take my mind off things.’

  Tina found this logic more than a little confusing. She tried and abandoned a second scone.

  Isa, now wearing her text-reciting face, intoned: ‘She looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness.’

  After a suitable pause Tina asked, ‘Is Mr. Copeland in tonight?’ Better be certain he wasn’t visiting Helen too.

  ‘Oh, he’ll be in for the supper. Aye, and there’s a man from the County Planning calling to see him after.’

  ‘I shan’t be in to supper, Isa. Perhaps you’ll tell Mrs. Butterfield I’ll be out for the evening.’

  Isa brightened. ‘Have ye got a lad already?’

  Tina laughed, drank the tea Isa poured, but parried any further questions. After tea she consulted the bus time-table in the estate office. There was, though perhaps she didn’t deserve this, a bus going to Bellingham in half an hour, with a return one two hours later. Studying the local map on the wall she saw that Thornriggs was up a side road on the way to Bellingham, roughly a mile and a half. Not so far, after all.

  She longed to dress warmly, in trousers and a duffle coat, for instance. But the visit, she felt, called for an elegant dress and her white fluffy coat from one of the Rome boutiques. She hesitated between delicate strip sandals and heavier casual shoes. The sandals won, which in turn needed the complement of cobwebby tights.

  She was offered a lift along the Military Road as far as Chollerford by a dumbstruck young man in a green van. At the bus stop by the hotel a few women and one or two workmen waited. They looked her over but glanced away again in country courtesy.

  Tina was glad to be on the bus at last, for she felt distinctly chilled in her stunning outfit. The conductor had some trouble understanding where she wanted to go. Thornriggs, pet? Why, we don’t go there. We’d as soon think of gannin’ to the moon!’

  ‘But you can set me down at the Thornriggs road, can’t you?’

  ‘Why aye! But yon’s a mucky walk—and two miles or more. By, you diven’t want to gan there the night! There’s a storm brewing an’ all! Why not change your mind and come into Bellingham wi’ the rest of us? I could just do with a bonnie lassie to keep me company!’ He winked broadly at the other passengers. But a stalwart country woman plucked at his sleeve. Tina heard the word ‘Copeland’. Instantly the man’s manner changed to reddened embarrassment ‘Just a bit of fun, miss. Thorniggs road-end it is. No offence meant.’

  Tina smiled, took the ticket and thanked him. She was surprised, a little awed. It certainly seemed, as Chris had said, that Adam Copeland’s name counted in these parts. Less encouraging was the news that Thornriggs was a two-mile walk. Already rain flecked the bus windows. Whenever the door opened to admit another passenger a blustering draught sent everyone shivering. Wistfully Tina thought of the despised trousers and duffle coat. Would she ever get used to the dramatic changes of an English spring?

  At Thornriggs road-end she was set down, pursued by a concerned good-night from the cheery bus conductor.

  She ducked her head against the driving spikes of rain and looked about her in dismay. The Bellingham road rounded a ridge which dipped into steep woods on the east. On the west, and the way she must go, a rough road, unsignposted and faced with a cattle grid, led over a desolate stretch of moor until it dipped out of sight. She picked her way over the cattle grid, then looked in dismay from her fragile sandals to the broken chippings of the road. There was nothing for it but to go on, hoping perhaps for shelter further ahead. She tied her pale hyacinth scarf over her hair, turned up the collar of the useless white coat, and began to stumble uphill.

  For perhaps half a mile she struggled gamely, her father’s obstinate streak very much in evidence. Buffeted by the chill wind, half blinded by the rain, she emerged at last on the top of the rise. The moors opened out before her in a dramatic backcloth, fold after fold of dun and tawny and pale green hills, the far ones lost in drifting white cloud. Here and there climbed patches of forest, she glimpsed a far farm or two, crouched in its windbreak of trees, but nothing yet that looked like a village or small hamlet.

  It was difficult now to even think coherently, so merciless was the battering of wind and rain. To be alone in such conditions, with the chance that her return journey must be made in twilight, was to Tina, child of the sunlit Roman squares, a frightening prospect

  She thought of Bruno and set her lips. She had to see Helen, and if this was the only way...

  The rain, without warning, became a deluge, falling with such brute force from the heavily sagging sky that Tina panicked. About quarter of a mile ahead a dark plantation nudged the track. She stumbled uphill towards it. Half way a sandal strap snapped, rotted with rain. She bent to whip off the shoe, to limp, wincing now, over the stones, wet through to the skin, until she reached the shelter of the trees.

  They were thickly planted larch and fir, so close together that there was no hint of undergrowth, just a dark mat of pine needles still blessedly dry. In the shelter of the trees it was no less cold, but a haven from the tearing wind and the pitiless rain.
Tina slumped to the ground and fought for her breath.

  What a country! she thought. What merciless, terrible weather! And they called this spring! Deep down she was afraid. If only Chris was with her, if only she had managed to borrow a car...

  No wonder so many Roman legionaries had died so young! No wonder so many children’s memorial stones were found on the digs. To work, to march, to live on the Wall in weather like this must at first have been a shocking ordeal for her countrymen.

  Her damp coat was making itself felt. She took it off, shook it and wrapped it loosely about her. She also considered stripping off the soaking tights, but decided she’d be even colder without them. Her sandals were past salvation, the paper-thin soles like sodden cardboard after their soaking. The very last time she had worn them had been in blazing sunshine on the Spanish Steps.

  She sighed and shivered. Somehow she must crouch here and be patient until the rain ceased. But Tina had never been particularly patient and never seen such rain. Gradually its force increased until it was a silver blinding curtain before the trees, the stones and chippings of the path washed in rivulets downhill. Above her the branches lashed, and now rain was seeping through the feathery leaves. And beyond the veil of rain a tangle of swollen clouds raced across a wild sky, grey upon dirty sable upon black, layers and layers of more rain to come and the promise of an early dusk.

  Now she knew she had no hope of reaching Thornriggs, and very little more of regaining the Bellingham road and the chance of a lift. It would be madness to plunge back into this endless deluge, even if anyone were out driving in a storm like this, which she doubted. She had long ago given up hope of seeing a vehicle on this track.

  She supposed this was what they called Wall Weather. How right Adam Copeland had been, and how little she had known of conditions on the real Wall, while she had traced milecastle and turret, ditch and vallum on a plaster model in a sunny Rome apartment.

  Tears pricked her eyes. She huddled herself lower in her coat folded her shivering arms for warmth. Rome, the apartment, the loved streets and squares of the Eternal City, the Appian Hills ... a rush of homesickness came. Why had she come here, and of what use had she been? Chris scarcely needed her help at the dig, she had discovered nothing to clear Bruno, had met almost hostility at mention of his name.

  Then her aching heart stilled. Did she really want to go home, to leave Adam Copeland’s roof at this point of their stormy relationship? How could she possibly leave him still despising, still resenting her brother’s memory? That unresolved barrier between them would haunt her for ever if she could not destroy it.

  ‘Don’t dig into the past,’ he had ordered. ‘Seekers after truth don’t always find pleasant things.’ And what of his past? What other women had there been besides Francey Finch? What had Carrie called them—the hopers and seekers? Had he ever in his whole life, she wondered, shown tenderness to a woman? Tenderness from such strength would be a wonder indeed...

  She jerked herself out of the daydream to find the rain had lightened. She walked shivering to the wood’s brink. Should she make a run for it back to the main road and hope to pick up a lift? It would be dark soon. Through the slowing needles of rain she could trace now that high ridge where the Wall ran. It was easy in this dim light to imagine those ghostly legions on the march...

  Carrying both sandals, she limped and lurched her way down the puddled track, wincing occasionally as a stone rolled painfully under her feet.

  Fifty, a hundred yards—she was almost in sight of the rise which hid her from the main road when the skies opened again and whole water fell. She spun in panic under its weight and force. Blinded and almost deafened, she essayed a turn towards the plantation again. Her soaking scarf plastered her face, her tights’ feet were in ribbons and there was blood on her toes. The rain had penetrated to her very skin.

  The high whine of a car horn rent the air. She jumped blindly to the side of the track, seeing a dirty Land-Rover loom and stop. Her heart leaped wildly. In the driving-seat was Adam Copeland.

  She stood helpless, saturated, her hair plastered cruelly to brow and cheekbones, her coat a soaking ruin. She knew, with misery in her heart, that her plight must be laughable.

  But there was no laughter in his voice as she heard him rasp, ‘Are you out of your mind, wandering about in a storm like this?’

  Without waiting for an answer he glanced at her bleeding feet, whipped her up into his arms and marched over to the Land-Rover, to dump her without ceremony in the passenger seat His heavy body crashed down beside her, the door was slammed and for the next few moments there was nothing but the savage revving of the engine, the clashing of gears, as he turned the Land-Rover with what seemed like his own force on the narrow track. Only when the vehicle had bounced and torn its way down to the hard road did he speak again. ‘And where the devil did you think you were going?’ he demanded. His slanted glance at her face was without mercy or sympathy.

  Tina hesitated, mortally afraid. She had never met anger as violent, had never known such lack of poise or courage in herself. Her forget-me-not eyes were drowned in misery and panic.

  ‘I was—just walking,’ she lied.

  ‘Just walking!’ He approached and overtook a lorry before going on. ‘Just walking, you say? And a good eight miles from home. Oh yes, my dear, I believe you.’ She heard the weight of his sarcasm.

  ‘I took a bus first I—I’d never seen the country on the north side of the Wall.’

  His grey eyes scanned her face. She saw utter disbelief and more than a touch of derision.

  ‘Don’t try stories like that with me, my lass! Even you would never go country walking in a town coat and beach sandals. You were dressed for visiting, and there was only one place at Thornriggs which could have interested you—’

  He paused for breath, then rapped out with such force she winced: ‘It was Turret House, wasn’t it? Despite my orders you were determined to visit my sister.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ she faltered. Even now she could not find in herself the courage to admit the truth.

  For a while he was ominously silent. At last he turned the car on to the Military Road at Chollerford. Not until they were in the lane leading to Hadrian’s Edge did he speak again. Suddenly he braked on the verge. The windscreen wipers, until now inexorably swishing before them, were still. In a second the windscreen was awash, the outer world curtained off. In the eerie waiting silence, his face seemed almost brutal.

  ‘Look, don’t waste my time. I’m not gullible and I’m not a fool. Also your friend Chris told me what was on your mind ... Well?’ Tina tried to throw back her hair in the old gesture of defiance, but plastered to her head as it was, the action drew a sardonic smile. ‘Too bad, isn’t it?’ he goaded her. ‘You look like the wrath of God, my dear. And I may tell you here and now that none of those tricks are going to work. What I want to know is why were you so determined to go to Turret House—against my orders?’

  ‘To see your sister, of course!’ she flashed, now very near to tears. ‘To talk to her about Bruno. Why do you bother to ask, when you already know?’

  ‘Why do I ask?’ he rasped. ‘Because I doubted the evidence of my own eyes and ears. When I lay down the law, as I frequently do, I seldom find it so flagrantly disregarded.’

  Tina’s eyes sparked dangerously. ‘I’ve told you before, you may be my host, but I don’t take orders—at least not where anything to do with Bruno is concerned.’

  He lit a cigarette with a maddening deliberation. ‘And if you had made contact with Helen, if in doing so you had learned some unpalatable truth—what then?’

  ‘I’d think your sister was mistaken.’ she said steadily.

  He blew smoke towards the drowned windscreen. ‘Be careful, Tina Rutherford Your late brother has already hurt my sister beyond bearing. I will not take such insolence from you.’

  There isn’t much you can do about it, is there?’ She was recklessly defiant now.

&nbs
p; ‘Isn’t there?’ His eyes glinted dangerously. She caught her breath at the sudden bracing of that sweeping jawline. ‘It happens to be getting dark and this road is very isolated. Doesn’t it occur that I could humiliate you without mercy and that you could do damn-all about it, my bedraggled little Roman goddess?’

  Panic swamped her. ‘You—wouldn’t dare. I’m not Francey Finch, you know. You may treat her like dirt, for all I know. No man has ever made love to me against my will.’

  She heard him laugh softly in the gloom, and knew with a sinking heart that she had said a foolish thing.

  ‘Never.’ he repeated ‘Never? My poor deprived little Coventina! With all the grandeur and glamour which is Rome you have to come all the way to Northumberland to find a man who sees your vain struttings and posings as merely pitiful, who sees underneath all that eyelash-batting and Latin head-tossing, a silly spoiled schoolgirl. Someone who needs to be told what to do in no uncertain terms—who needs to be kissed—without regard to her feelings.’

  ‘No—Adam...’ Why had she used his Christian name? Then all thoughts melted as he jerked her towards him with a movement at once brutal and deliberate. Her bones became water as he crushed her against his hard body. That merciless mouth was over hers and struggle as she might she received the full smothering force of his kiss.

  Long after she thought all breath had gone, even as she felt faintness stealing over her, he held her imprisoned. Then, with just as sudden and violent a release, she was gasping and sobbing in hysterical reaction in her corner.

  ‘Right,’ he said calmly. ‘That’s the way we do it on the Wall. Maybe you’re right and we are barbarians. It may teach you not to play me up again, my dear!’

  Tina scrubbed at her eyes, gulped once or twice, then managed to control herself. ‘I hate you.’ she said clearly.

  He switched on the ignition again, leaned forward to let in the clutch. ‘That is a sheer waste of a very useful emotion.’ The windscreen wiper came into play as he drove on, revealing the grey road winding into a blue stormy dusk. ‘Especially as it leaves me completely unmoved.’