“Well,” Sonia began, without looking at either one of the girls, “he’s really rather charming, and quite different to anyone here, of course. You see, he’s traveled a great deal, like me . . . like us.” She glanced at Cecily and smiled. “And I told him Bramley’s really rather dull . . . perfectly suitable for a summer, perhaps, but not to spend one’s entire life.”
Cecily looked away. She longed to know more, wanted to ask questions, but it seemed to her that both she and Annie, particularly Annie, had indulged Sonia Brownlow long enough. And she resented the remark about Bramley. Despite her desire for new horizons, a desire growing ever stronger, Cecily felt inherently loyal and protective of this small world. She gazed out across the field, watched Jack Staunton run forward, describe an arc and release the ball.
Due to Mr. Cotton’s wagonette having overheated and breaking down en route from the rectory with scones, cakes, sandwiches, as well as the tea urn on board, there was only a very brief interval at 3:30 p.m., when the players filed into the pavilion for cold refreshments. Tea would be served after the match, Mrs. Moody informed everyone, circumnavigating the field with a megaphone as Miss Combe tried to keep pace holding a parasol aloft. And every so often, forgetting to remove the mouthpiece from her lips, and entirely forgetting her public-speaking voice, Mrs. Moody’s offside remarks reverberated through the sultry air: “This ruddy heat’ll have me yet . . . it’ll make us all go mad . . . as though I haven’t enough to do . . . well, I’m not carrying anything from that blessed motor . . .”
Minutes later, Mr. Fox, Mrs. Fox, Miss Combe and a few others could be seen weaving their way through the long grass of the rectory field in a crocodile formation, carrying trays and platters, with Mrs. Moody a few yards behind, bringing up the rear. And later still, inside the sweltering pavilion, laid out upon a long trestle table, were the plates of curling sandwiches, scones with dollops of melting cream on top and fat slices of cake that had been rescued and carried through the fields. Mrs. Moody stood poised with a knife behind her lemon meringue pie; Mr. Fox, his whiskers smeared with jam and cream, was already seated and tucking in.
The girls sat in a row on a bench outside the pavilion with their tea. Beyond them, on the far side of a densely wooded valley, the tall chimneys of Temple Hill rose up into the blue. And it was this vista Cecily was contemplating when Jack Staunton emerged from the pavilion holding a cup and saucer in his hand. Sonia quickly rose to her feet and invited him to join them.
He smiled. “Miss Chadwick.”
“Oh yes, you two have already met . . . and this is Miss Annie Gamben,” said Sonia, wafting a hand, “from the post office.”
He reached out and took hold of Annie’s hand. “Jack Staunton, a pleasure to meet you,” he said, and then sat down on the grass in front of her.
Annie said, “You played very well. I’m not sure we’d have won without—”
“Remarkably well,” interrupted Sonia, seated once more. “One rather thinks you were the man of the match, Mr. Staunton.” And as she arched her back and lifted her head up to the sun, he glanced at Cecily, smiling, and said, “It’s Jack, please, and I have to say it was a team effort . . . the whole team played well.”
“My, but it’s hot!” Sonia went on, tugging for a moment at the lace of her blouse, and then fanning her face with her hand. “Makes one think of the South Seas . . .”
“Or Southsea,” said Annie, “on a hot day. No different.”
“Southsea? Ha! Oh Annie, you do make one laugh. The South Seas are, I think, a tad different to Southsea. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. . . . Jack?”
“I’m afraid I really can’t say. I’ve never been—to either.”
Sonia laughed, as though Jack Staunton’s reply was the funniest thing she had ever heard, as though there was some private joke hidden in his response to her, Cecily thought.
“But I’d like to,” he added, quietly.
“Southsea or the South Seas?” Cecily asked.
“Both,” he replied. “But perhaps one is nearer, more accessible than the other.”
“And duller.”
“Hmm. Not necessarily, not if it’s where one wishes to be, not if the sun shines.”
“If the sun shines . . . that’s a condition.”
“A secondary condition. Happiness can’t be dependent on fine weather.”
“No. But it can be defined by a sense of place . . . and . . .”
“People?”
“Yes, people,” Cecily agreed.
“Then we’re in agreement. Nowhere is dull, only people are dull.”
Cecily smiled, and Sonia, whose head had been turning from Jack to Cecily and back again, said, “One hasn’t the foggiest notion . . . what are you two on about?”
“Only the weather,” Jack replied. “So queer you should mention fog . . .”
Sonia laughed again, and for a few minutes they sat in silence before she started, “I must say, your grandmother’s a remarkable lady, Jack. It was such an honor to be invited to meet her . . . to hear about Rome and Paris and all. One could listen to her for ars and ars . . . and one simply can’t wait to read the book, the memoirs. But”—she paused and frowned—“it must be unspeakably dull for her here.”
Jack looked at Cecily and smiled. And Annie, leaning forward, staring along the bench at Sonia, said, “Oh dear, one appears to have spilled some tea on one’s blouse, Sonia.”
Sonia glanced down at her frilled bosom, “No . . . really? Where?”
“Perhaps not,” Annie replied, sitting back, turning her face away. “It must’ve been a shadow.”
For what seemed to Cecily excruciating ars and ars, Sonia monopolized the conversation, determined Jack Staunton should understand the nuances of being Sonia Brownlow, determined to make the distinction between herself and the two sitting next to her. When, eventually, she rose to her feet, she said, “Well, my dears, I’m afraid it’s toodle-pip time pour moi. One has one’s pianoforte lesson at six.” She opened her parasol. Jack Staunton stood up. She extended a gloved hand to him. He took it in his. “So lovely to see you again,” she said, blinking. “I believe you and your grandmother and Miss Dorland are to dine with us tomorrow.”
“I look forward to it,” he replied.
Cecily watched him as he watched Sonia stroll off across the grass. She wondered what he made of her. She was handsome, yes; and she could certainly speak of things that neither she nor Annie—nor most in Bramley—had any experience of. Sonia wanted to impress, and she was impressive. How could she not be? How could anyone not be impressed by her knowledge, accomplishments, even her wardrobe? And Jack’s grandmother was obviously impressed too. After all, she had invited Sonia up to Temple Hill to meet him, her beloved grandson. Handpicked, Cecily thought. But then Sonia had a proper family, a mother and a father, and the requisite full complement of siblings. And the family had money, more money than anyone else in the parish. Mr. Brownlow’s seemingly endless pounds had funded the modernization and extension of the village hall, an extra classroom at the school, and the new cricket pavilion. Oh yes, the Brownlows weren’t short of a bob or two, or ten.
When Walter, Annie’s brother, appeared, he squeezed himself on to the seat and turned to Cecily. “My, my, you’re looking very fetching today, Cecily.” He placed his arm along the bench behind her, moved his head under her hat. “And we don’t usually see you here . . . do we?” he whispered, his mouth to her ear.
Cecily stared ahead, smiling, and said nothing. Walter liked to tease her. He was two years older than Annie and had recently celebrated his twenty-first birthday with a rumbustious dance at the village hall, which Cecily, her mother and sister had attended, and left long before its end. Cecily considered Walter solid and dependable, a brick: Annie’s big brother. And he was. He was easily over six foot tall, with broad shoulders and huge hands. Like Annie, he was fair-skinned, with mousy-colored
hair and pale far-seeing gray eyes. His disposition, too, was like Annie’s, with a natural inclination toward happiness. Walter, Cecily thought, was innately kind; comfortable with himself and his lot in life, without pretension, malice, or ambition.
Jack Staunton sat tugging at the grass, his head bent, listening to Annie. She was going on and on about a fair at Linford, saying what a ripping idea it would be for them all to go. It had been at the Whitsun fair, right there on the green, that Annie had been told she would be married before she reached twenty. She had been euphoric, over the moon, had spent all of the following week cogitating upon her future, that forthcoming marriage, and with whom it was likely to be.
“So where’s Ethne today?” Walter asked.
“Oh, probably at church,” Cecily replied.
He threw his head back and laughed.
“It’s not that funny, Walter.” She turned to him: “She may well be.”
He leaned closer. “Really?” he replied, looking into her eyes, “But you always make me laugh.”
Walter had been like this a lot recently: staring and intense. And it made her feel awkward, uncomfortable. Weeks before, at his twenty-first birthday, a little befuddled and bleary-eyed, he had pulled her close as he danced with her and said, “You know I have plans, Cecily Chadwick . . . plans for the future. I’m going to make something of my life. You wait and see.” She had said, of course, she wouldn’t expect otherwise. Because Walter had a brain, a very good brain, and it would be wasted at a post-office counter, she thought. “So don’t you go running off with anyone whilst I’m not looking,” he had added, smiling, half-joking. She had laughed. “I’m not planning on running off with anyone,” she replied, turning away from him, toward her mother’s watchful gaze.
Now, she could hear Annie telling Jack Staunton everything the fortune-teller had told her at the Whitsun fair. “. . . she said she saw the letters R and W, and a large stone-built house and lots of animals.”
“A farmer?” Jack suggested.
“Yes! You know, that’s exactly what I thought. It has to be, doesn’t it? But I can’t think of any farmers, not round here, with those initials . . .”
“Could be middle names.”
“Yes, or someone who’s going to take up a tenancy, because I’ve got almost another year yet, you see. He might not have arrived yet.”
“There’s that old duffer, Richard Wakeford,” Walter broke in. “He’s got a big stone-built butcher’s shop, no wife, and plenty of dead animals.”
“Ha-ha,” Annie replied, flicking a hand in her brother’s direction. “I seem to recall that you, Walter Gamben, weren’t quite so glib at the time, were you?”
“It’s bunkum, Annie. All of it.”
“Oh really? And I suppose that’s why you were so keen to know if your name had been mentioned in connection with a particular young lady—whose name I shan’t mention . . .”
Walter’s face reddened, and for a short while no one spoke.
When Cecily stood up, saying, “I should go now,” Walter and Jack simultaneously rose to their feet.
Walter said, “I can walk you home . . . if you want.”
“There’s no need. And anyway, I have my bicycle.”
Jack Staunton stood kicking a toe at the grass, his hands in his pockets. “I’ll walk with you,” he said. And then, looking at Walter, as though he might say something, object, he added, “After all, I’m going that way too.”
At first, without Annie and Walter there to chivvy things along, the atmosphere was awkward, and they walked in silence down the road. He had insisted on taking her bicycle, pushing it along between them.
He said, “Annie’s a jolly sort.”
Cecily smiled, nodded her head.
“And Walter,” he said, turning to look at her: “He seems like a nice chap.”
“Yes, he is, although . . .” She paused.
“Although?”
“He’s become a little . . . solemn of late. But he’s a very nice person. One of my favorite people.”
“I could see,” he said, looking away.
“Sonia says you’re going to university, to Cambridge.”
“Yes. I’ve been offered a place at Trinity.”
“How exciting.”
“I suppose it is. Yes . . . I suppose it is,” he said.
“So you’re here for the summer then?”
“Mm,” he said, pushing the bike along, lost in his thoughts.
“Well, you know a few folk here now,” she went on, wanting him to feel . . . What was it she wanted him to feel? At home, welcomed, part of the village? Yes, all of those things and more. She wanted him to feel happy. She wanted him to look forward, not back.
“You know Sonia,” she said, “and now you know Annie and Walter, and me.”
“Yes, it’s good to make new friends.”
When they reached the hill that led down to the huddle of the village, he stopped, stepped over the bike, turned to her and patted the seat behind him. “Come on, hop on.”
He stood upright on the pedals and she sat on the saddle, her hands behind her, clutching it, as they glided down the hill. As they swerved to the right, toward the ford, she felt the tilting of the bike and grabbed hold of his waist. “Not through the water!” she shouted, but their approach was too fast, and then they were in it, and through it.
He stopped the bike on the dirt track on the other side of the stream. “Sorry about that, I forgot about the ford,” he said, laughing.
“And I’d forgotten it’s almost dried up,” she replied, climbing from the bike, glancing along the path of the stream to the pool where watercress and forget-me-nots grew. The yellow water lilies were in full bloom, the air above thick with tiny white butterflies.
They continued up the track. He said, “I’m getting a motorcycle next week. I’ll take you out on it, if you’d like.”
“A motor bicycle? I don’t suppose my mother would allow me to go out on one of those.”
“Don’t ask her . . . don’t tell her. I shan’t go too fast, you know. I promise. Just a spin through the lanes, but only if you’d like to, of course,” he added, without turning to look at her.
When they reached the privet hedge they stopped. She took the bicycle from him. The rubber grips of the handlebar were warm and wet where his hands had been. He pushed his palm up over his forehead into his hair and said, “My God, it’s hot. Hard to believe we’re in England, eh?”
“Yes,” she said, though it wasn’t for her, because she had never been anywhere else.
He stepped away from her, to the other side of the track, staring out over the scattered rooftops, the straggling line of the village beneath them. Across the valley a hot-air balloon rose up above the trees and he raised his hand to his brow, watching it. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to do that? To go up into the sky, just float above the world,” he said, and she smiled. Because every summer, every time she had seen one of those huge colored balloons rise up over the hill, intermittently roaring, breathing fire, she had thought the very same thing.
“One day I’m going to fly,” he said, his eyes still fixed on the balloon.
“You mean go up in a flying machine?”
He turned to her. “Yes, why not? Geoffrey de Havilland’s already building himself another flying machine, as you call it, at the balloon factory at Farnborough. He’ll be taking it up sometime next year, I imagine. And you know, one day, one day soon enough, people will be flying all over the place in them, across mountains, land and seas, traveling the world through the air.” He smiled. “It’s a stunning thought, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure. I think a balloon’s far safer, and more sedate.” She moved the bicycle toward the open gate.
“If we only ever did what was safe we’d never learn anything, never have new experiences . . . never move forwa
rd. We have to take risks in order to progress. Science has, at the very least, taught us that much.”
“I’m afraid I’m not very scientific, and I simply can’t believe science has all the answers.”
He stood with his hands pushed deep into his pockets, looking downwards and kicking at the ground once more. He said, “No, well, you might be right . . . I don’t know anything really. I thought I did. In fact, up until quite recently I rather thought I knew it all. But things happen, inexplicable things that one never saw coming . . . that one couldn’t possibly have foreseen or anticipated, and then everything . . . everything goes back to the beginning. Right now, I’m probably as clueless as the day I was born.”
“Sometimes all of us, no matter what our circumstances, feel like that,” she offered, searching for something better. “I lost my father when I was very young, rather like you . . . but of course I still have my mother.” No, that wasn’t what she meant, not what she meant to say at all. “What I mean is . . .” She faltered, and he smiled.
“It’s all right, I know what you mean.”
Seconds later, when she turned her head, saw his white figure disappearing into a tunnel of shadows, it was all she could do to stop herself from dropping the bicycle to the ground and running after him.
Chapter Three
He says he thought it was her in the bed, and she simply stares at him, her breathing loud and fast—as though she has been running, running very fast, her chest rising and falling, her jaw clenched. She shakes her head and speaks quietly when she says, “It can’t happen . . . can’t happen again.” He laughs, turns to walk away and she reaches out, grabs hold of the back of his shirt, pulling on it and saying, “Do you hear me? I’m telling you now.” His fist glides through the air so smoothly, so swiftly, swiveling his body, almost lifting him off his feet, meeting the side of her face in a loud crack. Then he looks across the room at the girl sitting on the chair by the fire. And he raises his finger to her as a warning.
The Memory of Lost Senses Page 4