Moments of Time

by Gloria Cook

  ^‘^I think archery will make a welcome addition, Perry,’ Emilia said, smiling at him, loathing Mrs Dowling for her coldness towards him. Mrs Dowling was a snob and a stickler for convention. She had made it known that she disapproved of Selina working. But she was fair-minded and Emilia couldn’t fathom what she had against Perry, who was liked and respected by the rest of Hennaford.

  Perry answered the woman he had fallen hopelessly in love with. ‘Thank you, Emilia.’

  ‘I also think it’s an excellent idea,’ Elena enthused. ‘But best kept strictly to the adults, of course. We don’t want any young Robin Hoods being hurt.’

  ‘Who around here can use a bow?’ Mrs Dowling’s tone was argumentative, sour.

  ‘I’m sure I can master it,’ Eliza Shore bawled out. ‘And so could Cyril Trewin and Mr Ben, eh, Mrs Ben?’ Eliza was devoted to her new mistress.

  ‘Absolutely, Eliza, and I’d like to try too,’ Brooke replied, frowning at the rector’s wife.

  ‘Just about any adult I know could try,’ Emilia said. ‘A prize for the three closest shots to the bullseye, was it something like that you had in mind, Perry?’

  ‘Something like that, Emilia,’ he replied. Their empathy was so strong that for them it felt as if they were the only two people in the room.

  ‘Show of hands!’ Mrs Dowling suddenly boomed.

  Old Mr Quick heard that and was alarmed. He clattered his teacup down on the saucer and shot his shaky ancient hand up with all the others.

  ‘Very well, I’ll add an archery contest to the posters. You will be responsible for everyone’s safety, Mr Bosweld. Anything else from anyone?’

  There wasn’t. A short time later Perry invited Emilia to walk with him down the short track on the other side of the schoolhouse wall to his pony.

  Brooke went with them. ‘I wonder why that old battleaxe didn’t like you, Perry. Sorry, but it was obvious. If it wasn’t for the good cause, you would have been justified in leaving early.’

  ‘She doesn’t bother me, Brooke. Emilia, are you walking home?’

  Emilia knew he was hoping they could spend time alone down the quiet lanes. She tried not to show her own disappointment. ‘Brooke’s invited me over to Tremore for lunch.’

  Crushed, Perry nodded forlornly.

  ‘Where’s your little girl, Perry?’ Brooke asked.

  ‘She’s at home with the maid. She’s got no one to play with today, the other children are caught up with the haymaking.’

  ‘Why not ride home and fetch her and join the rest of us? Ben mentioned that you’d been to the house for dinner, but you haven’t seen the farm, have you? Come and look around with us. Bring Libby’s puppy too, if you like.’

  His handsome face was a picture of happiness. ‘Thank you, I’ll do that. You make it sound cosy.’

  ‘Well, it’s important we all get along, isn’t it, Em?’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more, Brooke,’ Emilia agreed. She was looking at Perry.

  * * *

  Elena Rawley had spent a blissful day cycling from cottage to house, from field to farmhouse, to and from local businesses; the blacksmith, the flower and vegetable nursery, the animal feed shop, et cetera, as Mrs Dowling would have said, until the full complement of local musicians were duly engaged for the sports day. She had also collected the sum of one pound, three shillings, already more than enough for each child’s tea-plate-sized saffron bun. It was getting near teatime, and although her father had been invited to lunch with other ministers on the circuit, in Truro, he would be home by now and expecting her to soon be putting his next meal on the table.

  She was happy despite being sorely hot and perspiring, happy though her skin was raw and itchy due to the sultry heat of the sun and the number of hills she had ridden up, and her throat being desert-dry. Nothing satisfied her more than a well-drawn-up spot of organization, and serving others. It was what she was born for. Serving God and the community. A person didn’t have to belong to her father’s flock to benefit from her good works. And she intended her works to be of the genuine, not the interfering or self-generated-to-earn-praise kind. It was all she wanted to do. Not for her, a husband and marriage when she wouldn’t have so much self to give freely. She was a sort of nun, God’s handmaiden without the habit and cloisters.

  The sports day was always a delightful occasion, when the children ran races for fun as well as the hope of winning a little silver to spend, when the women proudly displayed a newly decorated hat, and the men – and Eliza Shore – competed by flexing their muscles to pitch a sheaf of straw on a long two-pronged fork the highest height over a graduated climbing horizontal pole. Sometimes the squire won this prestigious event, sometimes Eliza. Mr Ben Harvey always got into the last four or five. But last year Jim Killigrew succeeded in outclassing everyone.

  Jim Killigrew. Now there was a sad young man, she mused. Then she dismissed the salacious rumours about him of winning and losing some woman-friend, said to be the cause of his recent depression, and she recalled how one year he had asked, via Ruby Brokenshaw, if Cornish wrestling could be added to the sports day activities. Mrs Dowling had remarked it was worth pursuing but there hadn’t proved to be enough local men with the necessary expertise. Jim had not mentioned it again, but Elena knew he was still bitter over what he saw as a personal rejection.

  Elena had climbed the hill past Ford House – where Perry Bosweld had been arriving home with his daughter and her puppy; they were as happy as she was, going by the boisterous way they had waved to her – and she was now heading towards the main road, which she would cross over and then, after riding on a few hundred yards away from the heart of the village, she would turn down Henna Lane, go on for half a dozen twists and turns to finally reach the manse. A journey of ten minutes, but once she was in Henna Lane her legs were aching unbearably, their pumping action suddenly wavering and before she knew it she was falling sideways into a ditch.

  Screaming in fright, she landed awkwardly amid long grass, brambles, stinging nettles and wild garlic, picking up a multitude of bumps, bruises, scratches and stings. There was the pungent onion smell of the crushed foliage.

  ‘Ohhh.’ She put a hand up to her tangled hair. Felt blood there. And felt the terrible pain where her legs were at odds either side of the back wheel. ‘Ow! Ouch!’ Always hating the sight of blood, she shut her eyes, afraid to look at her wounds. ‘Oh, God help me. Help! Help!’

  The answer to her prayer was almost immediate. ‘Keep still,’ came a voice from somewhere high above. But it wasn’t a heavenly voice, her guardian angel’s voice. The tone was gruff and impatient. ‘Your ankle’s badly twisted and you’ve got deep cuts.’

  ‘Jim? Is that you, Jim Killigrew?’ Her voice sounded weak and pathetic and she even wasn’t sure if it really was hers.

  ‘Don’t move, Miss Rawley,’ Jim said, terse and unsympathetic from where he stared down at her from the highway. He had hurried towards her from the opposite direction after witnessing her plummeting into the ditch. He had no business to be here, idling away his boss’s time, and he would be in for another roasting for absconding from the fields, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care all that much about this young lady’s distress. He tossed away the cigarette clamped between his teeth. ‘I’m going to move the bike out of the way. It’ll hurt like hell but you’ll just have to put up with it.’

  ‘You will take me home?’ she cried, trying to fend off the hands he put on the back wheel, fearful of the promised pain.

  ‘Where else would I take you? Do you want my help or not?’

  ‘Perhaps you ought to take me to Ford House. Mr Bosweld’s a former surgeon and perhaps Miss Bosweld is at home. I don’t think I want Dr Holloway sent for, no one trusts him now.’

  ‘I wouldn’t take you to Ford House if you was dying!’

  The expletive he added to this so shocked Elena, she stared up at the furious face framed by his mop of fair scruffy hair bending over her and she wasn’t ready for the bicycle to be sh
ifted. The excruciating pain made her faint.

  When she came to she found herself looking up at the ceiling of her own bedroom. ‘How did I get here?’

  ‘Killigrew’s just laid you down on your bed, my dear. Be brave.’ It was her father and he was holding her hand.

  ‘Want me to fetch Dr Holloway?’ Jim growled at the Reverend John Rawley.

  ‘If you please, young man. I’m grateful to you for bringing my daughter home but I would appreciate it if you would dispense with your aggressive manner.’

  Jim had his hands stuffed in his pockets. ‘Oh would you? Forgive my disgusting manners, but I didn’t think you’d want anything from me, even help. Never had time for me before, never thought me good enough to lick your blasted shoes. Or hers.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ The minister, baggy clothed and baggy featured and almost hairless, blanched then reddened in equal amounts of annoyance and shame. He rallied quickly. He was at times a direct speaker and occasionally, when brought to passion, had been known to issue a mild swear word. ‘Now look here, Killigrew, I can’t leave Miss Elena and there’s no one else here who I can send to fetch the doctor. I’d be most grateful if you would go for me.’

  What Jim really wanted to say next was ‘Go to hell!’ The anger and frustration inside him overwhelmed any finer feelings. Then Elena said in a frail, frightened voice, ‘Thanks for your help, Jim. I could still be lying out there if it wasn’t for you.’

  He saw her then not as a condescending young madam but a woman, a woman with shapely long legs exposed by her ripped skirt, and made all the more sensual by the blood on them. He was assailed in the loins by the sort of lust that Selina Bosweld had bred in him, the lust that had no outlet now unless he went looking for one. Its intensity, the shame of feeling like this here in a sedate virginal bedroom, the humiliation Selina Bosweld had subjected him to when throwing him over, and the anger he felt about all the trouble he had got into at the farm made him hurl himself towards the bedroom door. ‘I’ll call at the bleddy doctor’s for you. I’m not heartless.

  ‘I’m not!’ Outside he was running, running back down Henna Lane with a primal rage growing inside him and crying scalding hot bitter tears. ‘I’m not! I’m not…anything! But just you wait, Selina Bosweld, I’ll be somebody soon when I bring you down!’

  Chapter Twenty

  What music have you got, Alec?’ Polly said, at the mahogany-cased gramophone.

  ‘All sorts, my dear.’ He came to her, debonair in his dinner suit, tanned, rugged. ‘Jazz. Ragtime. Opera. There’s an outstanding recording by the American blues singer Bessie Smith, although we haven’t played it since we bought it last Christmas.’

  ‘I don’t fancy that. Let’s take a look.’ For Polly there was already too much American presence in the room. Wishing Ben well in his marriage over the telephone was one thing, but it had been different altogether when actually faced, on the visit to see Louisa, with the homely but sparkling pretty young thing that had taken her place in Ben’s life. It was hard to be polite to Brooke now, particularly with Emilia, the rather gleeful little bitch, watching to see if she would be ungracious. And it somehow seemed a slap in her face that Ben was on good terms again with Emilia.

  Life wasn’t fair, so Polly thought, and even more so when Alec reached round her to the shelf on which the music recordings were stacked. The sheer silvery stuff of her dress was slashed nearly to the waist and feeling the tantalizing contact of his sleeve on her skin and his warm breath on her neck brought to her mind his attractions, and she wanted to lean against him. Alec had left his haymaking to issue a personal invitation to her to attend here tonight, but unfortunately she could read nothing into it. Alec was the faithful sort, damn it! How lonely life was.

  Alec withdrew a handful of shellac discs. Although not inclined to eye women, for a brief moment, because his love life had lost some of its sparkle and spontaneity now Emilia was insisting on contraception, he treated himself to the alluring sight of Polly’s bottom moulded within the clinging material. ‘What would you like, Polly? Caruso? Dame Nellie Melba? Something faster? How about Creole jazz, we’ve got a couple by Joseph “King” Oliver.’

  Male company. A lover. A husband. ‘Anything you’d like, Alec, is fine with me.’

  Emilia was down the other end of the room, near the door. With her parents opting to spend the evening in the small parlour, their own little domain, apart from Alec and Polly, and Selina who was finishing her coffee alone on the sofa, she had an eager audience of the other dinner guests, including Reggie Rule, who had made up the numbers at the table. ‘Isn’t it wonderful that Perry can now walk with just the aid of a stick? I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw him coming towards me on two legs, so to speak.’

  Her eyes were glittering and fastened on Perry, who was close beside her. He had one arm propped on the bureau to underpin his balance, his walking stick near at hand. His confidence, his happiness was infectious, and when he made some silly remark the group laughed, although not with gusto. No one had forgotten the household was still in mourning.

  Selina viewed the larger clique with unquiet eyes and started on the champagne – Perry had brought a magnum along to celebrate his achievement. Would anyone else notice the other reason for his happiness? She had a secret reason to hope he would quickly work this new happiness out of his system, but an affair appeared to be in the offing. Emilia was equally attracted to Perry – it was what was making her so dazzling tonight.

  Selina wanted to move on again, to a more exciting area, London perhaps, with all its challenges, opportunities and thrills. And where, as her one and only lover at the moment had suggested, she could train as a doctor. It was something that had passed often through her own mind and was now her burning ambition. She could go now, of course, set out on her own. Her consultant lover was a generous sort and had offered to fund her studies, but she could never leave Libby behind. Her daughter was the only person she had ever loved.

  She had ignored Ben and his bride since their introduction, not sharing Hennaford’s decree that Brooke’s transatlantic origins were exciting. All this stupid talk about cowboys and Indians. Boring! To pass away the time she flicked over the remaining guests. Tristan Harvey and his comely wife; a couple ingrained in the institution of marriage. Nice and lacklustre. Tristan Harvey and Perry were to form a link in their charitable activities for ex-servicemen, well, bully for them, but they’d bored her half to death about it over dinner. She wished Reggie – the poodle – had not been invited. It seemed he had chosen her as a likely wife for himself and dogged her movements, given the chance. Only her abrasive stares were keeping him presently at bay.

  There were only two people here, or anywhere else locally, she would enjoy seducing. Alec was one of them. How sexy he was. Emilia, comfortably married for a few years, had forgotten how alluring he was. She had not noticed the doe eyes Hetherton had turned on to him. If he so desired, Alec could easily win her over, and the divine young creature that was Sara Killigrew. Selina smiled to herself. Earlier this evening Jim had tried to harangue her with insults, with threats. She had told him if he made trouble for her then she would make trouble for his sister. Jim had had no notion what she was talking about but it had sent him skulking off.

  Alec was a worthy prize, and winning him over was something to do while she stayed hereabouts. He would be one of her greatest challenges, yet the other person in her sights would be her ultimate conquest. That person, who was never likely to capitulate, made her dizzy with desire, shaky in the limbs, break out in a nervous sweat, sensations she had experienced only at the beginning of her long and varied journey into sensuality.

  She lit a cigarette. ‘Does anyone know any of the new dances?’ Her voice cut through the pleasantries. ‘Brooke? There’s a new marathon dance craze in America, isn’t there?’

  ‘Oh, that’s not happening anywhere near where I come from,’ Brooke replied.

  ‘Do you know any, Selina?’ Polly asked. She thought to
suggest a tango to Alec, far more provocative than kicking up one’s feet and flapping one’s hands about.

  ‘One or two, but I can’t be bothered to dance tonight.’

  ‘Have you been run off your feet all day in the hospital?’

  Selina dismissed Polly’s enquiry, made only, she was certain, to infer to the company that she had to work for a living. She zoomed in on Emilia. ‘You can take all the credit for Perry’s triumph, you know. He’d never have walked off without you. You arrived at the house at just the right moment. He always looks forward to your regular visits. I believe you’ve been good for each other. And tonight, Emilia, you are the most beautiful woman in the room. Isn’t she, everyone?’

  ‘Yes, she is,’ Polly answered at once, truthfully, trying to conceal her jealousy. She had hoped Emilia would grow fatter and plainer with each succeeding pregnancy. And now Alec had deserted her and was staring at his wife as if he had never seen her before. Polly, who had thought of Selina Bosweld as witty and charming at Ben’s dinner party, now saw her as more common than Emilia, someone who should never be invited to a refined table, and she was sure she was trying to cause trouble with her carefully chosen remarks, but she was not above shooting a barb herself to unsettle a rival. ‘I do like your silver locket, Emilia. Alec gave a smaller version of it to Louisa a while ago. He does spoil her.’

  ‘She’s worth every bit of it.’ Apart from preferring Elena Rawley as Reggie’s opposite number tonight, Emilia had given Polly no thought, nor did she now. She was too involved in keeping her emotions under control at Selina’s shamefully accurate observation about her and Perry being good for each other. Did Selina suspect? She and Perry must be careful. No, what was she thinking of? There was no ‘she and Perry’ needing to ‘be careful’. She must put an end to the inappropriate closeness she had allowed to spring up alarmingly fast between them. She should move away from him and keep a distance. But she didn’t. It wasn’t as if they were going to do anything while in a roomful of people, Alec included. ‘I haven’t seen Louisa for a while now. You must bring her over to the farm for a picnic with the other children, Polly.’