by Lorna Gray
‘Richard!’ My voice abruptly framed itself on an urgent undertone as I turned my head away from the policeman. I could suddenly feel everything. I thought with a blindingly panicked bolt that Richard was leaving me; going, now when I hadn’t yet said anything of any use. I swear it was this sudden wrench and not the unexpected clarity of seeing what Detective Fleece was really doing that made my heart race and made me straighten suddenly and bolt towards Richard.
Naturally, instinct worked quickly in Richard, as always. His arm came around me, gripping me to hold me against him as I gripped him in my turn, and my forehead found safety in his shoulder. I felt his mouth duck towards my ear and heard his murmur. ‘Not a real phobia, indeed.’
He was shielding me from the blood. Only I wasn’t shivering because of that and I certainly wasn’t trying to hide. I had my arms around his neck, hands restlessly moving on again to find his hair and I was drawing back enough to lift my head. I made him stay still to let me study those poorly disguised shadows on his face. The faintest of questions coursed through the warmth of his skin beneath my touch and his doubt unleashed the urgency of feeling that dwelt in me at last and it changed everything. That policeman was irrelevant. Nothing else mattered except this.
I was saying in a pleading rush, ‘I’m so sorry. Don’t go yet. Please. I’m sorry. This is what reaction does, I suppose. I feel muddled and wretched and I’m sorry, because I feel like I ought to be able to prove I’m fine, but I can’t do it. Because I do feel altered, Richard. I feel utterly numb. I can’t even begin to digest the bitter reality of this experience. But I should have trusted … I should have understood that you were like me and I wasn’t alone in thinking as I did in there. You said something once about the scope of your vocabulary. I think I saw it in action today in the way you engineered that scene of arrest and I should have known precisely who you are. Instead I’m making you feel like you have to reassure me when … when the only explanation required here is mine and there are some things I ought to be able to say without needing to feel confident first. It’s shameful that it’s taken me until now to admit this.’
My voice cracked on the word shameful and I gasped and put my face down to his shoulder again. This wasn’t a controlled explanation. I never was very good at saying what I felt under pressure and this was frantic because it truly mattered and I was shaking as I clung to him.
In my brief pause to draw breath I felt his other arm slowly lift to close around me. He followed it by saying rather quietly, ‘Emily, sweetheart, I’m not leaving you. I’ve just been trying to give you time to piece together what happened. I wasn’t going to make you talk about anything important now. It’s enough that I know you’re here and with me and I didn’t let you down. Is this because I told you that I loved you? Because I’m not demanding anything from you at this moment, I’m really not.’
It was a plea to stop, to let the shock ease first before making any decisions. I knew he could feel the quiver that ran through me as his grip tightened to thoroughly enclose me in comfort. He believed I was warning him to brace himself for a withdrawal, a rejection. Because the strain of being required to remember how to love the man as well as being grateful for his recent protection was too much to bear. But still I was clinging to him. I had my eyes tightly shut and pressed hard into the curve where his shoulder met his neck, while every nerve in my body was deeply conscious of the tightness of his arms. In a variation of Phyllis’s concern, he had thought this must be the end of something, but he didn’t know what this was.
I made his doubt worse when I dived headlong into speaking about Mrs Abbey. ‘She was the real hostage to those men, you know. She really was trapped. I saw her afraid today because her children were nearby and she didn’t show it for the sake of any trick. There was no scheme in the fear. She had absolutely no idea whether Duckett would leave her room to take those boys away, or use them to punish Abbey absolutely.’
In quite a different voice, Richard said very carefully by my ear, ‘Do you really believe that? Or are you being kind to her?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted desperately. ‘I know she’s very good at working me up into a sense of wretched sympathy for every motive she’s had.’
With a shiver that lurched into an absurdly frustrated note, I finally began to confess what was really keeping me trapped in that awful place. ‘I feel like each of them was working so hard to steer each other into making their crucial mistakes that they all kept on madly contradicting each other until they agreed on one thing. And that was that they all thought they could control me. None of them knew what they were doing. I don’t think any of them ever really acknowledged the scale of what they were working towards. Ever since Duckett stepped into that kitchen today, pretty much all any of them did was lecture me about how it was all someone else’s fault that they’d each got themselves fixed upon a certain path. And now Mrs Abbey has almost wholly managed to steer me into believing that, since it was impossible for her to escape either Duckett or her husband’s determination to cling to her, I can’t blame her for the way she let me work myself in deep enough that I could save her instead. Only I didn’t work myself into anything, Richard – she did it. She gave Abbey a reason to think of using me. She made sure Duckett came for me. And I hate that, even after I’ve seen the truth behind the choices she made, I still feel sympathy towards her because I know she was only ever fighting for her children and she really was trapped.’
I stopped. The memory of that letter was there too, the one the policeman had slipped into his pocket. I knew that because of it Detective Fleece was going to encourage me to keep a tight hold of my empathy. He was going to want to use me to ease the pressure on her while he kept her free to reclaim her life as a mother and therefore sensible enough to answer a few critical questions about her relationship with John Langton. My breath checked.
John Langton’s part in this was over for Richard and his father, yet that man’s memory could never be truly laid to rest. It was a reflection of the true part of the damage these people had done to me by forcing me to accept, even briefly, that their world was the norm. I could escape it, but I wasn’t fully free of it. I whispered, ‘I suppose it’s a good sign that I can still worry about her like this because it means that they can’t have changed me very much. But I can’t help seeing the pattern of the trap she was working and feeling as if I’ve discovered that I’m just like them after all.’
‘Why?’ Richard’s voice was suddenly severe. ‘Because for a brief moment you were afraid I’d choose to shoot Duckett?’ He had noticed my guilt there and his almost angry dismissal of it gave me a jolt. Presumably he hadn’t been entirely certain himself.
I turned my head a little against his shoulder to give a faint negative. Knowing he’d already guessed the rest made it hard to say this. It came on a whisper. ‘Because I didn’t want to be cruel like that former love of yours, and the Abbeys and all the rest, who, in their way, have tried to take whatever they needed from you. I read your note.’
‘My note?’ I suppose as confessions went, it didn’t really make much sense. I felt the moment when surprise was briefly followed by relief because he too had heard about the discovery of the letter he’d written to John. He thought I was worrying about this other love. He remarked considerably less seriously, ‘The detective told me you’d found my brother’s letter when he relieved me of my guard over Duckett. He was warning me that he means to subject it to all possible scrutiny. And I’m sure he will because, whether he means it to or not, I expect this day’ll notch a few more marks in the ladder to his next promotion and you can’t tell me that a policeman who pursues his investigation in the midst of a scene like this isn’t as driven as they come. But Emily, you have to know, I don’t mind. I said something like this to my father last night and I’ll say it again to you now. That letter represents old news.’
It was a kind of joke on that former lover’s article. It made me smile a little, but I was already rushing on to
say gingerly, ‘Not that one. Duckett’s. I read what you said about Greece …’
I learned how Richard felt about that in the way his hand clenched in its grip upon the fabric of my frock.
His reaction drove mine. He made me blunder onwards into admitting the harder things. I added clumsily, ‘I thought I was helping you. I thought it was a good thing if I worked to prove that I didn’t want to lean on you in the way they do. But when I read your note it was like borrowing a little bit of your confidence. It carried me through and it was wonderful, only they ruined it because I can’t tell any more if it’s right I should want to go to Athens or if you should even ask me for both our sakes, because if I can’t shrug off a scene like today’s, I certainly can’t cope with a brush with your work. And it’s all part of the trap of that old, reluctantly confessed, horror of war. I’m making you believe that I’ve been led at last into that awful place where some unspeakable cruelty has succeeded in teaching me that I have no choice but to accept the inequality of being me and depend absolutely on the bravery of people like you. But the truth is inescapable and I ought to have told you long before. Because I do need you, Richard. I really do.’
Suddenly, this was easier. Any other man would have interrupted this floundering struggle to explain. Only he didn’t make a sound. He didn’t correct me. All the while he held me with his head down beside mine, submitting to the way my fingers coursed through his hair, leaving me the room in which to speak while I raced on to say it all in one breathless jumble and probably made him believe this really must be rejection after all.
It wasn’t rejection. Or, at least, it was, but only of my own habit of denying his right to help me in any way he chose, even while he trusted me with the responsibility of trying to help him. This was real bravery and it was small and personal and made no difference to anyone except the man within my reach. And it began by risking this last little part of me.
I drew a ragged breath and made a final effort to explain. Unexpectedly, my voice was steadier. I said emphatically, ‘The truth is, I’ve always needed you, Richard. I really have. In all sorts of small and harmless ways. Just you. This way I feel now – which is so powerful it feels as if my heart might tear – it’s unshakeable and decisive and it’s got no parallel except for the way you make me feel when I see that you’ve been moved again by some little gesture of mine. And it grows from finally having the courage to let you, in your turn, give whatever you want to give, and trusting you for it too.’
Trust. It was a quiet refrain of that old question he’d levelled at me in the car outside the station, when he’d asked if I might not simply trust him. This time my reply staggered him in a very different way.
I felt his hand move in my hair. A brush of his hand across my ear and onto the tangles of my hair, so that it encouraged me to lift my head.
It was hard to do it, but I managed it. My hands drifted from their hold about his neck, to settle more easily upon the lapel of his jacket. I had to work hard to dare to lift my eyes to his face. I found something very serious there.
His hand was still against my hair. I turned my cheek a little into the warmth of his palm and felt a whisper of real comfort. I think I might have discovered grief at that moment. Only I didn’t. Not quite. My heart was beating in slow, powerful strokes as I caught the way his breath checked. I felt the tenderness as he brought his mouth down to mine. This was relief after fear. This was an intense fire that gripped us both almost to the point of oblivion and it was part of the exhaustion of terrors of that day.
Then there was the simple normality of being confronted, after all, with what was for me a familiar sense of being wrong and easily contradicted when his head lifted and his hand smoothed my hair again and he confided, ‘I really wasn’t going to leave you just now when I stepped away from the doorway.’
His touch encouraged me to return to the sanctuary of his shoulder once more. As his arms closed about me, I knew a slow smile was forming on his mouth. I felt it as the merest whisper against my temple. There he added softly, ‘I was thinking that if this nastiness had worked itself through all your memories from these few days of knowing me, I should ease at least one of the worries in your mind. I was going to see if you felt like simply starting again, properly, as it ought to have been done in the first place. I was going to put out my hand to you. I meant to introduce myself.’
He did it now. He put up his left hand to cover my right where my fingers were tangling with his collar. His hand was steady over mine. So was his voice by my ear as he said gravely, ‘Hello. I’m Richard Langton.’
‘Richard?’
‘Yes.’ His brisk agreement drew a shy smile from me before he added gently, ‘I wonder if it might be about time that I provided a meal for you. If, that is, you can bear to wait while we go through the inescapably difficult formalities of getting away from the people here and find a means of travelling down the hill to check on the health of my father. And, of course, hopefully find him well enough to be left for the night. Would you like to have dinner?’
There was a distant shout that momentarily dragged both our heads round, but then his gaze returned to me. It was a shock, somehow, to acknowledge the personality burning in those eyes. It felt like a first introduction after all. There was still strain there, in him and in me, but beneath it was an electrifying hint of that energy in him that I thought I was beginning to know so well. It grew stronger when his hand abandoned mine to instead trace an arc across my cheek. It was for the sake of brushing away a speck of debris left there by the burning hay.
I found my true nerve at last. And with it, I managed to lift my chin and say with creditable calmness, ‘Given that we can be reasonably confident what our feelings will be once we’ve had this dinner, do you think by the end of it I might have managed to find a simpler way of telling you that I love you too?’
I was brave enough to silence his reply with a kiss that belonged to my very soul.
Reluctantly, my certainty was followed by the compromise of leaning against his shoulder once more, but this time with my hand gently laid against the line of his jaw and my cheek turned against the warmth of him, so that I too could see what lay beyond us on the busy yard. His arms enfolded me in comfort and assurance. This was because we had both found room, at last, to become conscious of the chaos the car had caused. There had been a crash of damaged timbers down by the machine barn as the farmhands began to make a full survey of the roof in case the flames had got into that dark void. The yell had come from Matthew Croft as he worked with them and it had been designed to politely – but not entirely tranquilly – let Richard know that responsibility was waiting for him there. I hadn’t forgotten that for Richard the day’s work was not yet over. It probably wasn’t for me either. There would be a difficult statement to give.
But for now, at least, Richard’s worry about what he would find at the hospital during his visit to his father eased a little with the knowledge I would be there with him. So did the complicated moment of approaching Matthew Croft to see what was needed. The record of old conflicts ran on and on in every shadow and every memory of this place, but the measured greeting he would receive from that man would carry a murmur of Richard’s own identity this time and that in itself was a new kind of liberty.
Because this present feeling had nothing to do with other people’s grand schemes and lies any more. This was about the small things we each could control in the pattern of our own choices. This was about the little peace we were creating for ourselves.
A Letter from the Author to the Reader
Thank you for reading The Antique Dealer’s Daughter. I absolutely loved writing it.
The original idea for this book came from a chance conversation. I’d just finished writing my second novel, The War Widow, and my mind was toying with a new idea about the challenge people must have faced after World War Two to establish life on a different footing now that peace had come. I’d read about the lives of the older women who were
called up to the war effort to work as Land Girls and WRENs and in the munitions factories and so on, and I’d certainly understood a reasonable amount about the experiences of those younger children who were evacuated. Then I delivered a talk about books and writing to a WI group in Gloucestershire and met a wonderful lady called Vivian. This was the chance conversation that started it all. Only, in truth it wasn’t entirely chance because of course I’d chosen to speak at that WI in the first place.
Vivian told me about her own experiences as a teenager in wartime London. She was only in her mid-teens in the early days of the war and she was able to tell me how schooling became a nightmare of disrupted lessons in air raid shelters. She explained how, like many young people, she left school and took up the counter work that the older women had left behind.
Vivian made me think about how strange it must have been to have had her entire adolescence consumed by conflict. She made me think how hard my heroine, Emily Sutton, might have had to work to adjust to life after the war, and how the reality of the newfound peace might not have quite been how she’d expected it to be. Vivian also, because of the varying aspects of chance and choice involved in meeting her at all, made me think about how Emily’s life might have been changed through the single act of answering a ringing telephone.
Chance features a lot in Emily’s account of her story, or rather, those choices that other people make, which are out of her control. There’s the powerlessness of her adolescence in wartime London, which was filled with the blackout and rules and ration books. There’s the pressure she feels now to mould herself to a future she doesn’t want within her father’s antiques business, and the steadfast way she resists it which ultimately brings her into Richard’s life. Finally, there’s the burden of being the only person brave enough to step into the squire’s deserted house for the sake of answering his telephone. That single decision brings Richard home to confront the unhealed memories of his brother’s last criminal acts, only to find himself face to face with fresh danger.