by Lorna Gray
And it seemed rudeness wasn’t only limited to her because I was a little startled when the Captain merely gave a mild agreement and reached out a hand to accept his cup. I instantly found myself speaking what he hadn’t; voicing my regrets for her loss only to fade to a mumble when it was clear that Mrs Abbey didn’t want them. When I moved to take my own cup from the tray I discovered that the Captain was watching me. Brown eyes curious in a guarded face. He covered the moment by addressing the first of many questions to Mrs Abbey about Bertie Winstone; about his visit here yesterday and the work Mr Winstone had done for her.
It turned out that this, at last, was the Captain’s real manorial duty. I wished very much that he’d told me before that he’d been coming here for the sake of asking this. His gaze raked mine once more, briefly, just before he asked Mrs Abbey why she’d chosen to go to the shop frequented by Mrs Winstone. He was observing that surely there was another, nearer shop in the village just a mile or two along the ridgeway. I could guess from that glance that he knew I must be made uncomfortable by this. And he was sorry, but he was going to pursue it anyway. Absurdly, I suspected that he even wanted me to feel the unbending nature of his resolve, just as Mrs Abbey did as he questioned her.
I looked away when Mrs Abbey remarked rather tartly and not without justification, ‘To be honest, Captain Langton, if you can ask me why I would walk all that way to the shop at Winstone, you’re obviously not a man who has often had to stand in a queue for your groceries. If you were, you’d appreciate the distinction between one shopkeeper’s sweaty leaves and another’s succulent greens. And we haven’t, you’ll have noticed, much soil in that yard for growing our own.’
For once, I was rather more on her side than his. I found my gaze drawn to the middle boy, who had crept from the bottom step into the doorway. I turned to him fully and he whispered something. My voice was gentler than my mood, purely because of the way the child shrank just as soon as he had my attention. I asked him mildly, ‘I beg your pardon?’
The boy was lean and undersized and had a sulky air, like a boy who frequently did wrong when he meant to do right and was stubborn enough to stick to his purpose either way. But not enough to speak it out loud. The oldest child piped up enthusiastically from the front door, ‘He fixed it yesterday. Do you want to see it?’
It transpired that Mr Winstone’s visit here yesterday had been for the purpose of repairing a rope swing. It was a swing that was, in my opinion, slung very dangerously close to a derelict well.
We’d been bustled outside, or at least I had. The boys had led me at a gallop past a more useable well that lurked at the heart of the farmyard. This well had a heavy bucket on a long rope and mossy alpines growing from every crevice, and it must be said that it left me feeling not even the smallest speck of jealousy after seeing the source of Mrs Abbey’s drinking water compared to mine.
The children raced past it, past the furthermost tip of the long barn and through a gap in the wall made when someone had carted away the stone to build anew elsewhere. We were in a second yard, even more derelict than the first. There was hardly any wall at all here, and nettles and trailing fronds of vicious brambles were growing from the cracks in the hard-standing. In the corner, where tumbled stone met the shade of the hilltop and a fringe of woodland, was another broken old well and a great ash tree with a rope dangling from its drooping bough.
The Captain wasn’t with us. In the moment of following me he’d been barred at the threshold by fine fingers clutching at his sleeve. I’d heard a murmur of ‘Just a moment, Langton.’ It had carried a softness with it that was completely out of place. It made my skin crawl. I thought she’d uttered the name like that before, and not necessarily for this brother.
The boys wanted me to admire the rope. They wanted me to admit that it was a very fine rope and the log that Mr Winstone had secured to the end of it as a seat was a remarkable addition. They weren’t impressed when I dared to observe that it wasn’t terribly safe to swing so close to the unguarded well. Quite appropriately, my comment was met with an agreement from the children of the sort that was only ever given to very stupid adults who stated the obvious and implied yes, of course it wasn’t safe. It was a swing.
‘That’s delightfully dangerous.’ The Captain’s voice was just behind. I tried not to jump guiltily as I turned to find him reaching past me for the rope. He must have followed me quite swiftly after all. There was no explanatory glance for me but his manner was brisk and inoffensive. The boys were delighted to show a man their toy. Sunlight dappled across the Captain’s shoulders as he dutifully tested the strength of the rope with his weight and asserted that the knot securing the seat was firm. ‘Just don’t fall into the well. Put a board across it or something.’
Needless to say, the boys nodded their agreement very seriously.
Now the Captain did look at me. ‘Ready to go?’
I followed. I hadn’t quite decided what I would do now, since I had no intention of trailing meekly along to his next interview, but I certainly wasn’t going to stay here.
‘Emily, dear.’ Mrs Abbey’s soft voice called me back as we passed the tip of the barn. After the dereliction of the second yard, this square with the serviceable well and the relatively robust boundary wall seemed positively grand. I turned a shade reluctantly. I’d had enough of her warnings against romantic entanglements. What I wasn’t expecting to find was that the restless, unceasing energy that had first met us at her door was back and in full unadulterated earnest. This was raw. This was fear and it had been with us the entire time. I didn’t know what the Captain had said to her after her unguarded use of his name, but it had certainly had its effect. I thought she was still mistress of the feeling, but only just.
Mrs Abbey drew near when I waited for her. She stood there in the lee of the high boundary wall where it cut into the hillside above us. Trees fanned their shade across her and towards the lip of the well.
She began by saying on an accusatory note, ‘You didn’t tell me about that man.’
‘Which man?’ I was losing track of who I ought to be gossiping about, whether Mr Winstone’s attacker, the balding man, the Captain or his criminal, philandering brother. I was also distracted by the way her hands had grown incapable of remaining still. First they rested on her hips, in the next moment they were wrapped across her middle, then toying with the button on her left cuff, only to finally settle upon reaching out and scooping the youngest child – who had introduced himself over that business of the swing as Ben – into the curve of her arm against her side.
She said rapidly, ‘The Captain told me that the man has taken the accounts ledgers from the squire’s office. That’s why the Captain’s here now – he’s got to go round all the tenants named in those books to warn them that this man may come a-knocking. He’s called on you already?’
Desperate. That was the way to describe the pattern of her speech now. It burned against my own discomfort at suddenly learning the truth of what had passed between them just now. Not rebukes or signs of irritation, but a warning.
And through it all, Mrs Abbey found the time to be the first and only person to actually acknowledge the impact the loss of my entire wardrobe would have on me. She said quickly, ‘If you’re not catching that bus and you need a change of clothes while you’re here, I expect we can find something that will fit. It’ll cost you a fortune to replace them all, won’t it; and even that expense only comes if you can get your clothing coupons to stretch beyond the usual two or three things, isn’t it?’
She drew a quick breath and added, before I could interrupt her with thanks and commentary on my approaching patronage of second-hand shops, ‘And yet, I suppose it will be helpful to the police that you got a good look at the man who bashed old Bertie Winstone over the head at long last?’
‘It will?’ I asked blankly. Her sudden eagerness had startled me. I was stupidly slow to comprehend. Then she gave one of those encouraging nods that hurry a person’s though
ts along and I realised the mistake. I said hastily, ‘Oh. No. They’re not the same person.’
She didn’t, however, respond in quite the usual way. She looked at me as though I’d lied. Her hand curved around the head of the little boy, smoothing his hair, nervous and protective. Then she said with stiff disbelief, ‘You’re sure? I thought they were, from what Captain Langton just said.’
I suppose no one liked to hear there were two criminals in the area: a brute and a thief. And I disliked finding myself suddenly exchanging information as if we were back in the kitchen and gossiping. I told her firmly, ‘The man I saw stepping away from Mr Winstone was tall and lean, just as you said last night. This man today was the opposite. He was stocky and balding with a grey suit, like a travelling salesman.’
‘And you’re certain, I suppose? I thought you said the man last night wasn’t tall. As you said before, the idea that he was tall was mine. Whereas I recall that you said he was quite short really?’
Her insistence made me smile, but not in an amused way. I conceded unhappily, ‘Perhaps he wasn’t all that tall, I think. But the man today was very different. And he had a distinctive taste in yellow alma mater schoolboy ties.’
That last was a sudden recollection. The image was suddenly vivid and brought with it a physical memory of that brief but intensely bitter anticipation I’d felt as he’d paused to grip me on the stairs. Or perhaps it was the way my nerves recoiled from the sting of Mrs Abbey’s sudden grip upon my wrist now.
Her hand was locked over mine. Her voice was an urgent murmur. ‘Emily …’
We were disturbed by a more distant echo of my name as the Captain called to me over the roof of his car. He used my first name too and rather less patiently. In a way it felt like a rescue. Or perhaps that was just wishful thinking to countermand the inconvenience of having that degree of intimacy implied here. I turned my head to acknowledge him.
When I turned back I saw the flicker. I saw the lift of her chin that was driven by a feeling more complicated than fear.
My silly bout of nerves evaporated again and reformed into something rather wiser, almost quickly enough for pain. I felt my eyes narrow as, instead of bridling at the implication she too had noticed the Captain’s use of my name, I began seriously, trying to be bold, ‘Mrs Abbey. Is something the matter?’
The change in her own demeanour was demonstrated by her grip. Instead of pinching the skin of my wrist any further beneath tightened fingers, she merely gave my hand a brisk pat. Like a bossy aunt does when the child has said something foolish. ‘What? No. Of course not. Only, with this man around, if you happen to see my children out, will you keep a kindly eye on them?’
The cheery way she was speaking now implied she was asking for the sort of care that involved nothing more valuable than an occasional good morning or a share of my sweet ration if I should meet them at the shop. She was very good at shifting from one feeling to the next, so I answered the intent within her request rather than the manner of its delivery.
I said firmly, ‘Without question.’
Relief didn’t show on her face. I saw her cast a glance down at the boy beside her. Sandy-haired, bright-eyed and bored out of his mind, only wishing to be released so that he could join his brothers in a race through the dingy passage by the house. Mrs Abbey smoothed this last child’s hair and then let him go after them. Her anxiety about imposters in the neighbourhood did not seem to extend to keeping her children close by. And probably they’d been alone here last night.
It was a very disconcerting note to leave on. Particularly when, as I dropped into the passenger seat beside the Captain, it dawned on me that in asking and failing to gain a fuller picture of her state of mind since her late-night walk home, I really ought to have been also asking the rather more mundane question of whether she might return my cousin’s torch.
Chapter 10
After the strangeness of our visit and the endless waiting that must surely have irritated him no matter how well he hid the feeling, I had expected to find, somehow, that the Captain was angry with me. But there was no temper in the way he steered the car in an arc around the crumbling wall of the well and then up the short rise onto the trackway above the farmyard. The car went with a smooth acceleration that was admittedly quite fast, but really implied only readiness to get on with the next job in hand.
There wasn’t even any temper in the way he spoke as we approached the heavy dark of the chestnuts that marked the turning onto the lane. He asked me as if it were only a matter for idle curiosity, ‘What were you and Mrs Abbey talking about so intently just before we left?’
‘Her children,’ I replied promptly, biting my lip. ‘I promised I would keep an eye on them.’ And found suddenly that anger was lurking in me instead. I couldn’t fully tell what he’d meant by the question. I didn’t know if he now disliked the promise I’d given or he disbelieved me when I implied that this was all we’d said. I only knew that I had become so bewildered by all the contradictory questions that had crowded in through the course of my various exchanges in that rotten farmhouse that my mind was abandoning the lot and simply answering the injustice of having to feel like I’d done something wrong.
In an effort to disguise my rising frustration, I said shortly, ‘Wherever did you get this monster of a car anyway?’
‘It’s a Lagonda and I didn’t get it anywhere. My brother did.’
I saw his grimace. He knew that his answer had carried a sting. His foot eased its pressure upon the pedal and allowed the car to slow a little for the curve ahead. Over the deafening rattle of the rough trackway, he told me quite blandly, ‘Technically, it’s my father’s car now. Luckily for us, Bertie’s been religiously topping up the tank and a few spare cans with his petrol allowance over the past months, so I’ve got enough fuel to run about the countryside on Father’s errands, and then that’s it. It’ll have to be sold. My father doesn’t want it and I don’t need a car in London. I couldn’t run a thirsty beast like this anyway since I’m not yet in the habit of exploiting my position in the army to claim more than my basic petrol ration under the guise of having official duties.’
I was watching him, so I caught the swift sideways glance as the dark beneath the trees enfolded us in its shroud. And, in that last second before the brakes bit ready for the junction onto the lane, I saw the truth about his mood.
I saw that his restraint was as much about control as Mrs Abbey’s drama had been. She wasn’t unique in being disturbed by the private conversation they had shared and it wasn’t for her alone to feel the shock of our visit. But while her distress was all put into nerves and slander, here was withdrawal and a hard control of a different kind that was presently focused very firmly on keeping his worry contained and well shielded from me.
He still didn’t believe me or my part in this. But while I digested that unpleasant reality and all its implications in terms of what it said about how my general nature must be perceived, I saw something else. I saw his reserve and caught a brief, devastating glimpse of what true loneliness was. I saw the deep, dark isolation of a mind used to facing battle alone.
Concern welled so fiercely that I forgot myself. For him there was something here more grave than even I knew. A hand reached for his sleeve. ‘Richard!’
I surprised myself. I certainly surprised him. A quick drift of his eyes ran left to the touch I had laid upon his arm, and then on towards me. Then again and a curse as they widened and made my own eyes forget embarrassment, forget the impulse to snatch my hand away again; to instead tighten my fingers compulsively and wrench round to follow his gaze to the glass in my doorframe. Everything exploded in the rush as something large and black and metal plunged out of a piece of undergrowth beside me.
There was a jolt through the leather seat as the brakes engaged. They gripped, only I didn’t slow with the car and I slid as the wheel flung us into a swerve that sent me crashing into a parallel arc with our roaring neighbour. We took the inner turn. Brakes scream
ed. So did I, probably. Black metal veered and became instead the trunk of an enormous tree that had previously been on my right. The bellow of dirt and rubber and gravel smothered the frantic plea that formed around the hold I still had on his sleeve, either before, during, or shortly after we hit.
Then silence.
I think at some point during the tossing I might have raised my left arm so that it connected with the roof of the vehicle in place of my head. There was a blazing pain in my elbow. Now everything was still, even the engine, and there was a fearsome pressure on my hip too. I was crumpled horribly into the corner where my seat met the hard barrier of the door with my eyes tightly shut and half my body in the footwell. Now I blinked and saw that my left hand was rammed against the dashboard. I remember being very glad that the hand had snatched for that and not the door handle. It was painfully easy in this sort of car to be flung out onto the road because the hinge was at the rear of the door, meaning that the opening acted as a kind of funnel in an accident. Unluckier people had been thrown out and killed.
In this instance, however, the door remained safely closed. My other hand had abandoned his sleeve to find instead the sheer leather of the seat back. Fingers unclenched. The hand moved and moved again in an adjustment of its grip and slowly I eased myself out of my painful heap.
Beside me I heard the squeak as my driver adjusted his own position in his seat. With my eyes inescapably drawn to the rough bark of the trunk barely inches away from the glass of my passenger-side window, I murmured slightly hoarsely, ‘At least you needn’t disbelieve me any more about the existence of that man.’