by Lorna Gray
I slipped round to the boot of the Lagonda and tried its handle but it was locked.
‘What are you looking for?’
The voice came from a reasonable distance away. All the same it brought me round with a start and left me flushing like a guilty thief, for all that I knew that if I’d truly meant to hide, I wouldn’t have left my bicycle in plain sight of the window beside the kitchen door. In a way, that knowledge just added to my embarrassment. It felt as if this had been a ploy to lead him here on his own.
I confessed feebly, ‘I was hoping to reclaim my clothes.’ And watched as the Captain approached across the bare ground. He leaned past me with key in hand to unfasten the catch that secured the boot cover. He was faring better than I was. Somewhere he’d found fresh clothes that couldn’t have been castoffs from his father’s wardrobe. In his manner was that same natural assurance that had walked in with him last night. It was disconcerting to encounter it again so soon.
He drew out a canvas bag and handed it to me. It was pitifully small. I think he saw the swift dismay as my hope faded of finding better clothes to rival his present choice of a crisp and clean grey suit.
‘I was able to get someone to go into my flat and put a packet on the first morning train for me,’ he explained faintly apologetically. ‘It helps.’
His ease was making me nervous. There was too much I wasn’t saying and this was too much like last night in that moment when the enjoyment of his walk had still touched him and the surprise of his father’s condition hadn’t quite yet reached him. I wanted to treasure the cheerfulness and not be the one who surprised him into seriousness again this morning. So, by way of a solution, my mouth rushed into rivalling him for cheer. I said brightly, ‘Thank you for rescuing the survivors. It’s better than I’d originally feared, anyway, even if they’re probably all runkled by now.’ I was obviously nervous, I was using imaginary words again and it didn’t help that he’d clearly noticed. I tried to draw a steadying breath. This was insane. Any second now and I’d be running out of air again as I had on the Manor staircase.
The boot lid was pressed shut. I drew another breath. Finally, I said on a rather more sensible note, ‘I’ve got your groceries, by the way. The shopkeeper said you’d left an order earlier.’
He walked with me as I set off for the bicycle and his parcel. He told me, ‘I was at the shop briefly while dropping Mrs Abbey off at the doctors before racing to meet that train. Thank you for filling the gap, although I promise it wasn’t remotely expected of you, or necessary. I was going to stop there on my way into town. I was only waiting for you.’
He must have noticed my poorly disguised reaction to this mention of Mrs Abbey and misunderstood. He added by way of an explanation, ‘I had thought I’d promised to take you down to visit your cousin?’
‘Oh.’ The sound came out as a dry note. I was walking hurriedly across the wide cobbled space between barns. There was a short rise at the corner that met the long barn and I’d never noticed it before. Now it made me breathless as I said quickly, ‘Oh, well. There was no need to wait for me, actually. I finally managed to speak to her this morning.’
‘So did I. Just now. She’ll be ready to receive you in about an hour.’
I stopped and blinked up at him. There was nothing in his face at all, but I thought he’d noticed my sudden change of heart about seeking this conversation with him. This insistence on making steadying replies was his way of confronting it.
It was a very peculiar kind of trap. My heart was beating. I was very conscious of the bag of clothes in my hands, tying me to things I ought to say and yet hadn’t. I drew breath to speak. I thought about Mr Duckett. I thought about the state of Mrs Abbey’s eye and the boys and affairs and parentage, and knew it was impossible for me to tell him any of it. If anything, it felt dangerous purely because Duckett wanted me to.
So instead I found myself tripping headlong into speaking about that older, nearly forgotten difficulty that waited here. I told him about the contents of my cousin’s letter, the one he might have found, as if by telling him openly it needn’t be a trap for either of us any more when it turned out he knew what it said.
It was with a nervous kind of delicious daring that I told him about Phyllis’s crushing judgement on my ideas of what constituted generous savings. I’d saved all of ninety pounds during my time at the chemists and had perhaps naively believed this would be plenty to fund any modest scale of future ambition. I told him about her promise to my mother to look after me and I even told him the silliest part too. I told him about her views on my father’s life’s work and how she said it had taught him that the things of greatest value were those that had a nice clean record of their path through life. It was just unfortunate, Phyllis thought, that my father hadn’t quite realised that when he lectured me in similar terms about my own future, he was actually implying I too should be recorded and graded on the provenance of my main changes of ownership as well.
‘Personally,’ I added a shade darkly as I relaxed into the strange giddiness that came from the way this man stilled when I spoke truthfully like this, ‘I don’t think Phyllis is making much allowance for just how much Dad worries. I think, for all of Phyllis’s supposed outrage and declarations of her support for my cause and so on, what she is really smarting about is the realisation that she, of all people, has been deemed the relative most suited for the role of responsible chaperone. I imagine she thinks Dad’s mistaking her for her poor deceased mother. I think she’s bitterly regretting staying on in the cottage for these past few months in order to conclude my aunt’s affairs and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that she threw herself off the bicycle just to prove she was still reckless at heart.’
We’d reached my cousin’s ridiculously heavy bicycle. I risked a glance up at him. It was then that I realised there was a considerable difference between knowing that the Captain had already read all this and speaking it out loud. Because I swear he had read the letter. I swear he knew exactly what it said, but instead of finding that my speech had undone a whole night’s worth of suspicion or even concealed all those other things I so desperately didn’t want to say, when I lifted my head I found that all he was doing was listening patiently to this whole ridiculous lecture, and looking a little puzzled.
It was the same air of puzzlement I’d noticed before when he looked at me sometimes. It hid itself beneath a faint trace of amusement. Usually I’d noted this feeling after I’d said or done something to work myself into a ridiculous tangle while I fought a fierce private battle between his claims on my honesty and a wish to avoid the risk of adding to his concerns. In truth, though, this peculiar tension happened whenever it seemed to strike him that I cared.
Really feeling tangled now and as though I were straying into something deeply complicated, I turned to the bicycle and set about exchanging the bag of clothes for the packet of items destined for his kitchen.
I heard him say briskly to the space above my bent head, ‘Thank you for your kindness to my father last night.’ It came after he’d bent to retrieve a fallen tomato, and in quite a different tone from what had gone before. Now he paused in handing it to me, hand in mid-air above my waiting palm.
It was a shock. Embarrassment was nothing. It had never occurred to me to imagine that my evasions might have been interpreted as a desperate attempt to avoid talking about this. It shook me into saying swiftly and seriously, ‘It was nothing.’
I saw him grimace as I lifted my hand those few inches more to take that tomato straight from his fingers. I’d spoken truthfully again and this time this little piece of honesty – because of course I really didn’t blame the Colonel – had only served to highlight the concealment in all the rest. At least, it seemed like that when he said sternly, ‘No, it’s not nothing. You know it’s not. I wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving you to pick up the pieces if it had ever occurred to me that Mrs Cooke’s resignation letter would tip him into fresh mourning. It’s being there in th
at house. It reminds him. He’s a little bit like you. Something terrible happened and it has shaken his faith in humanity.’
His words came like a bolt from nowhere. If I’d stopped before to blink at him, now I stood stock still and gaped. The implied sympathy broke the shield I’d been wielding in an effort to keep from talking about the nastier things of this morning. He’d meant it to because this man didn’t want my care; that is to say, he didn’t want protecting. Not by me. And certainly not when it carried a cost to myself. I had no idea where the packet of groceries had gone because I certainly wasn’t holding them any more. I found that I had turned my back to the wall so that one hand was gripping the bicycle handlebar and the other was flat against the leather panel of the saddle. All were radiating the increasing morning heat. I felt frozen. Exposed. No one had ever said anything like that to me before; anything so unnervingly perceptive.
He stood before me, blue sky behind and a faint shade across his face that would have been darker had it not been for the warm glow of reflected light from the yellow stone wall. Unworried, self-assured, he claimed the responsibility for judging the severity of this untold unpleasantness for himself like it was a birthright, so that the responsibility for dealing with it might presumably rest with him too.
Cementing the effect, he claimed my heart as well. He asked gently, ‘Emily, darling, what is it?’
And suddenly I was experiencing such a bewildering sense of his confidence in me that it nearly made me laugh. The endearment came so naturally from him. I’d thought myself alone in this. I’d almost depended on it. The question carried openness and reassurance, and no blame to imply that I had made a mistake or was inadequate; and I knew this was the last time I’d imagine I could attempt concealment with him. I began to reply, but the moment was stolen from me by a scrape of grit beneath footfalls and the inconvenience of Danny Hannis stumbling hastily down from the footpath by the watershed.
The companion from my earlier climb out of the valley was looking hot and dishevelled from a morning in the field. Judging from the lift of his hand he had come for the sole purpose of speaking to the Captain. I’d have left them to it but for the fact that I found that my right hand was inexplicably fixed in its grip upon the handlebars between the twin heats of skin and sun-warmed metal. I turned my head and found that Richard had placed his hand firmly over mine as a silent request to stay. His gaze was fixed on the approaching man. In his profile there was the expectation that I would comply and I watched as he fended off the cheerful enthusiasms of the dog and released his grip on me to take one step forwards to meet the other man.
Danny didn’t share the Captain’s sense of value for my company and he certainly didn’t like having to speak in front of me. His eyes grazed my face and a scowl formed on his own, as if he were suddenly taking in the colour of my cheeks and learning all sorts of things there he didn’t like. His gaze settled upon the Captain. He said brusquely, ‘I’m glad I caught you. The tractor couldn’t really be spared from the set, but I thought you should know. There’s been a bit of trouble at the squatters’ camp.’
‘Trouble?’ All gentleness left the Captain’s manner now.
Danny’s eyes were narrowed against the sun. ‘Fire. Their bonfire went up last night and only escaped ruining half of Hardings’ corn by the grace of good luck and a light breeze that was blowing the other way. And, before you ask, the main point is that they didn’t light it. They also swear the stack didn’t just happen to spread towards the boundary. They’d built their pyre on one of the concrete platforms for a reason.’
The Captain remarked grimly, ‘If they think that’s enough to stop a stray wisp from drifting in the air and catching in the standing crop, they’ve forgotten what life was like in a hot country with a grass fire.’
‘They might have forgotten,’ conceded Danny, ‘for all that some of these people served in far-flung places with me. But the point is you’re forgetting who employed them. They know precisely what fire does to a harvest because they’ve got the memory of your brother’s voice ringing in their ears giving them a stern lecture on the rules against smoking whilst out on the strip. Whatever else anyone says, that man knew his job and he knew how to train his farmhands. That’s what they reminded me of today.’
This forceful eulogy had its effect. ‘They really didn’t light their bonfire.’
‘No.’
I was thinking that it was the first time anyone had dared to betray their deep abiding respect for the leadership of John Langton. Other than Mrs Abbey. Then the Captain’s head turned to me. ‘Pardon?’ I hadn’t realised that I’d spoken.
I cleared my throat. ‘The vegetables,’ I repeated doubtfully. I wasn’t entirely sure that this wasn’t one of those moments when the woman was expected to remain silent. It wasn’t. Both men waited so I persevered. ‘The fire we saw yesterday followed in the wake of a theft of vegetables. But it didn’t seem to me that the vegetable plots at the squatters’ camp had been sullied at all.’
I saw the Captain’s brows furrow. ‘So are you implying that this is the work of this vegetable-stealing vagrant, or that it isn’t? Just to be clear?’
I told him frankly, ‘I have absolutely no idea. I noticed the smoke last night. It woke me up.’
That was the moment I recalled that I hadn’t yet found the way to frame my thanks for the effort he’d gone to in walking down the hill yet another time last night to assure himself that my house was secure. Now I stumbled on the memory that he’d gone from there to do the same for Mrs Abbey and felt the true weight of the morning. It wasn’t made any easier by the revelation that today this man had been drawn into the act of delivering her to the doctors. The concept of an injury disturbed me, naturally, not least because this might be a second assault of the kind that had befallen Mr Winstone, but I remembered Danny’s advice that next time I went to the shop from my cousin’s cottage I should abandon the hill and take the easier route by way of the footpath along the watercourse. And with that in mind, I couldn’t help noticing the lucky chance that had led her to choose instead to take the lane at just the same time that the Captain had happened to be driving past. And then I felt wretched because this sort of cold, calculative thinking without any relief of kindness was precisely the insidious evil that I dreaded. It dwelt in precisely the same part of my mind where the idea about the boy grew, and fed on the knowledge that none of these suspicions were founded upon anything Mrs Abbey had actually said.
To my left, Danny seemed to be struggling under the weight of concerns of a different sort. He remarked sourly, ‘If you’re worrying about missing vegetables, Captain, you might do well to look at your own garden terraces. They’re bare.’
It hadn’t occurred to me to perceive the newness of their dereliction. The flowers had been long neglected but only because in a time of shortage like this Mrs Cooke as the housekeeper would have been duty-bound to concentrate her efforts upon the everyday staples such as root vegetables and other greens. I didn’t think, though, that Danny was making the point to endorse my view.
Then Danny sighed under the steadiness of the other man’s rather suppressive stare. ‘Very well,’ he conceded grudgingly, ‘I’ll ask the folk from the camp if anyone’s passed through. And if they happen to be able to describe Miss Sutton’s idea of the man who left Pops on his garden path, we’ll know we’re really on the trail of something.’
‘You should ask about cars too. There’s a man by the name of Duckett.’ I suppose it wasn’t the best moment to choose to introduce the information. In my head was the confusion of Duckett’s parting shot ‘tell that to your boyfriend’ and I cringed a little when I felt the weight of the Captain’s gaze as his attention turned to me. I hadn’t thought hazel eyes could be so dark. Now I think he was regretting letting me think I was remotely adequate. I tried to convey as much as I could by a single look that the encounter with Duckett hadn’t actually done me any harm and it wasn’t entirely Duckett who had been upsetting me before b
ut it turned out that I needn’t have attempted it anyway because Duckett wasn’t the object of his concern.
The Captain demanded sharply, ‘Mrs Abbey told you this man’s name? You’ve met her today?’
And the sudden alteration of the pitch to his voice left me in absolutely no doubt of the force of his feelings at that moment. It shook me because he’d only just mentioned meeting her himself and there had been none of this tension then.
‘No,’ I said hastily. ‘No. Duckett himself was at the shop today when I was placing my telephone call to the hospital. I haven’t seen her. He’s her husband’s friend and I think he knows you.’
He dismissed that with a shake of his head. Something had changed here. I suddenly felt very slight standing before the two men, one crisp and ready for a day of business, the other tanned and stained from his work in the fields, but not much difference between their physiques.
‘Right.’ The word from the Captain was bracing; decisive and alienating. It turned out that I really needn’t have worried before about finding the words to convey my thoughts, because, whatever it was about Mrs Abbey that was troubling him, it ran far deeper than a few unformed concerns of mine. Now the mention of her name carried a sharp thrill of true danger. Fierce and certain.
The Captain was saying, ‘No point in standing about here. Hannis, I think I’d better go back with you to the field and ask your chaps what they remember one more time, if you can marshal them? Then Miss Sutton and I have some errands to run in Gloucester and I think I’d better hear precisely what this Duckett fellow had to say for himself at the shop.’
This at least was said more warmly for my sake. I found that the bag of groceries was being passed into my hands. Apparently I’d set it down rather roughly beside my feet. I was meant, I think, to lead the way to the house but I couldn’t because Danny was still standing there, a square barrier of a man deliberately barring my path as if it were nothing and saying in a very peculiar growl, ‘I hope to God you know what you’re doing.’