by Pamela Pope
The sky had cleared since morning, the heavy clouds rolling away to the east without releasing more than a few drops of threatened rain, and as this was a particularly good viewpoint there were already several holiday makers parked at the roadside with picnic baskets and folding chairs. Meredith locked her car and started walking.
The damp, peaty soil covered in dark moss was springy beneath her feet. She kept off the main track and picked her way through heather patches, climbing higher all the time, and as she climbed she pulled the long pins out of her hair until it fell about her shoulders. When she reached the crest of a ridge she sat down. It was a perfect day for seeing into the distance, though country folk said it was a sure sign of rain later. If she could have seen as distinctly into the future, would that, too, have been ill-fated?
Far away to the left she could catch a glimpse of the sea, though an untrained eye might have dismissed the thin silver thread as part of the skyline. The sun glinted every now and then on a glasshouse or window with the brilliance of a fallen star, and there was hardly a sound except for skylarks. An Emperor moth settled on the heather near her hand, but was frightened away by a lizard that shot out of the woody stems. For a moment it sat there, fixing her with cold eyes, then it darted away into a crevice between the stones, hiding its nimble brown body among the leaves where it couldn't be seen. Right now Meredith wished she, too, could find a convenient crevice in which to hide, but that would solve nothing.
She closed her eyes, shutting out the sun, but bright lights flickered behind her eyelids and she buried her face in her hands. Always in the past she had been able to work things out logically and plan her life so that everything fitted into place. Even after Piers was killed she had waited a sensible length of time before deciding to come back to Edencombe, knowing that any impulsive move made immediately after losing someone was likely to be a mistake. But suddenly her brain was refusing to function with its usual sharpness. She hadn't lost Joss because he had never been hers to lose, but the shock of discovering how much she wanted him seemed to have robbed her of all sane judgment.
Perhaps it was delayed shock that made her give way at last to great sobs that racked her body. The stress that had been building up in her over the past days burst like a dam and there was no way she could check the flow of tears. There was no one to hear her, or witness what she considered to be self-pitying weakness, and she indulged in the merciful release for several minutes until she had no more tears to shed. Then she sat up, slightly disorientated but filled with a new resolve not to let any man get under her skin again. She would work with Joss a while longer because she didn't know where else to go, be as nice as possible to Corinne, and bury her feelings so deep no one would ever guess her heart was breaking. And above all Joss must never become aware of the havoc he had aroused. Never!
At the end of the week Julia Paxton came home. She had somehow managed to wheedle all the news out of her husband, including Ellen's sudden departure for the Middle East, and had packed her bags and headed for home with all haste, convinced everything was falling apart without her.
'The minute my back is turned it all happens,' she said, awakening the house with her vital personality and lifting the gloom that had settled. She handed Meredith packets of shortbread, oatcakes and butterscotch. 'The sweets are for the children. And what do you mean by leaving them up there with Corinne Loring, who hardly knows one end of a baby from the other?'
'Oh, Mummy!' Meredith protested.
'Poor Ellen would just about throw a fit if she knew Corinne was in charge of her offspring. A good job Joss is there. What on earth made the girl turn up here again all of a sudden? How is Ian, by the way? Any news?'
It was always the same when Julia had been away anywhere. For the first half hour at least she didn't stop talking and hardly gave anyone chance to answer.
'I managed to get through to the hospital in Mosquadec this morning,' said Howard. 'Ian is out of intensive care and amazing them all with his tenacity to stay alive. He'll make it.'
Julia sat down with a sigh. 'Thank God for that! Will Ellen have to stay with him until they can fly him home? I bet those little mites will be glad to see her back—Shaun and Gary too. The first thing I must do is go up there and see they're all right.' She paused, clasping her hands together before launching into her next thought. 'Oh, and Howard, I've had the most wonderful idea. It came to me while I was driving down the M6 and I've been working on it ever since. It's a wonder I'm here all in one piece, because I got quite carried away!'
Meredith and her father exchanged glances. Julia's ideas were famous and usually involved family and friends in work they wouldn't otherwise have contemplated. She was looking at them eagerly, her bright eyes the same lovely hazel as Meredith's full of enthusiasm for her latest scheme.
'Tell us the worst,' sighed Howard.
'The stables,' said Julia. 'You've always been saying what a waste it is they're never used now, so I thought it would be a marvellous idea to have them turned into the holiday centre. I mean, if we've got property available we're part way there, and it would make it a lot easier to raise money.'
Howard groaned and Meredith started to laugh.
'You can't be serious,' said her husband, putting a hand to his forehead.
'Why not, darling? And what's so funny about it? I'm quite serious.'
'You'll never talk Daddy into it, I can tell you now,' said Meredith.
'She's right. What's the matter with all you women? Corinne, Meredith, and now you, all wanting to fill the bottom of our garden with other people's children!'
Julia looked not the slightest bit crestfallen. If anything her enthusiasm increased.
'Meredith darling, did you actually have the same idea? Well that just goes to show it must be really worthwhile.'
Meredith's heart sank. She had already had words with her father and had a job to convince him it had all been a misunderstanding, and now here was her mother coming up with the plan for real. The last thing she wanted was to have the stables turned into anything else. It would be wrong.
'No, Mummy, I didn't think of it,' she said. 'It was a spur of the moment mistake I made that landed me in trouble, and I'm afraid I agree with Daddy—it would be quite impracticable.'
Julia pouted prettily. 'Oh, how mean of you both!'
'What you don't seem to realise, Julia, is that you can't just open up a home for anybody, no matter how worthy the cause. It would have to go before the Parish Council first, and then planning permission would have to be passed. There would be any amount of difficulties.
'Which could all be overcome,' insisted Julia, with incredible optimism. She launched into a list of details and described her plans so vividly Meredith found herself becoming interested in spite of everything. 'Just think of all the happiness we'd be giving those poor unfortunate children who don't know what it's like to run around in countryside like this. We're too selfish. We ought to be sharing some of the lovely things we take for granted.'
Meredith listened, and was gradually carried along on the tide of excitement her mother inspired until a similar excitement stirred in her, bringing her fully alive for the first time in days. Maybe this was just what she needed, a project that was so absorbing it would take her mind off Joss Hamblyn. She would devote all her energy to it and leave herself no time to think of anything else. Oh, yes, this was going to be the answer.
She went to Julia and surprised her with an enormous hug, for Meredith was not normally demonstrative.
'You're right, Mummy, we are selfish, and maybe it was an inspired mistake I made after all. I'll help you to talk Daddy round, and we'll go all out to get the barbecue organised for next weekend so that the fund can get under way.'
Her mother was almost in tears with pleasure. 'Darling, I knew you would! And I'll get on to Joss. He'll want to be involved, I'm sure.'
'Hey, now, wait!' Howard exclaimed. 'Women! First, Julia, let me tell you what happened to Joss.. . .'
&nbs
p; Meredith left them and went up to her room. If she wanted proof that a distracting occupation was needed she had only to examine her feelings at the mere mention of Joss's name.
Joss had refused to rest after the stitches had been put in his arm. His work schedule was unaltered, and after the first day he had discarded the sling, which he found too embarrassing.
'It impedes my work, and interferes with my love life,' he had said, when Meredith had questioned the wisdom of doing without it, and had lifted his arm without too much trouble so that he could grasp her round the waist. She whipped free as if she had been scalded.
'I don't want to know anything about your love life,' she said, her skin feeling strangely raw where his fingers had pressed through the thin material of her skirt for that brief moment. 'I don't like sordid fiction.'
He had roared with laughter, and she had felt like hitting him. Even if she hadn't been in love with him she wouldn't have wanted to hear flippant references to his relationship with Corinne, who was now wearing a very beautiful diamond engagement ring.
Meredith opened her window wide and leaned on the sill, propping her chin in her hands. The rash promise she had made her mother was already becoming a doubt in her mind. Oh, she wanted to work for the holiday centre, no question of that, but the stables meant a lot to her and she must have been mad to agree with their conversion. There had to be an alternative site for the scheme somewhere.
The fruit on the cherry tree was ripening fast and if it wasn't picked in the next few days the birds would swoop. A blackbird tilted its head at her and winked a beady eye before nipping a cherry into its beak, leaving the stone hanging cheekily bare on its stem. Meredith loved the garden. She loved to watch sunlight on cobwebs spun between the hydrangea blooms and glisten on raindrops on the magnolia leaves. She liked to listen to the bees in the escallonia bushes by the wall and watch white and yellow butterflies in the buddleia. If all this had to be sacrificed to make room for a modern development she would have to go back to opposing it strongly, but if there was some other way of sharing the garden and stables with children like Shaun and Gary, she would work for it wholeheartedly. It was something she would have to think about and discuss with her mother before any definite plans were put forward. Meanwhile, the barbecue sounded as if it could be fun.
Next day Meredith tried not to brood over the project, and was glad of a complicated report which Joss had left her to wrestle with while he was away for the day. Life had never been so full of problems when she was in London, or if it had been they had belonged primarily to Piers and she had not been so deeply involved. It was much easier to sit on the sidelines and offer wise advice. Wisdom seemed to have deserted her now that she needed it herself, and she felt as if she was wading in a fast-flowing stream, being taken along on an ever-increasing current which threatened to sweep her off her feet because she hadn't the strength to fight it.
The weather was at its seasonal worst. A stiff breeze had been blowing all day, and by evening it had turned into a gale, bending the trees and spoiling the flowers, howling across the moor with relentless fury. Meredith didn't like the wind. It made her restless and on edge at any time, but in her present mood she found the incessant pounding of it driving her nearly mad.
Howard was at a meeting, and Julia had gone up to Eden Farm straight after dinner to make quite certain the children were being put to bed on time and didn't need anything, so there was no one in the house except Meredith. The gale bombarded the windows, and she could hear it above a particularly loud rendering of a Wagner overture which she had put on with mutinous satisfaction, thinking it would be suitable opposition. With an exasperated sigh she turned it off again and decided she had to get out of the house. Tying a scarf round her head, she set off down the path to the stables, battling against the wind. From past experience she knew that those stout old walls would provide a quieter shelter.
There was a deep rut in the ground where the heavy wooden door had dropped on its hinges and ground through the earth every time it was opened over the years, and this evening Meredith had difficulty heaving it. She managed to get it open halfway by pulling on the bar that slotted into an iron cradle to keep the door fastened from outside. It took all her energy, the wind seeming determined to thwart her every move, and she staggered thankfully inside, not noticing that the bar had struck at an angle. But she left the door open just in case it proved too hard to push from inside. The wind must have built up an extra layer of grit, causing it to jam.
And inside the stables she began to breathe more easily. Though she could still hear the wind she felt sheltered from its ferocity as she had not done in the house, and the churchlike quietness within the old walls had its usual calming influence.
She climbed the ladder up to the hay loft which she had been trying to convert into something habitable, but straw had blown over everything and it looked as if her time had been wasted. There was a lantern hanging from one of the rafters, but she didn't need to light it yet. The summer evening might have the feel of November, but it was still close enough to the longest day for there to be a good light through the narrow window for quite a while yet. She picked up the notes she had made several weeks ago about Piers and started reading through them, confident that if she could get engrossed once more in compiling the story of his brief but eventful life her own peace of mind would be restored.
She had been sitting there perhaps twenty minutes when she glanced up and saw a figure approaching with long strides down the wind-torn path. Her heart contracted sharply. It was Joss, pushing aside branches that caught in his dark hair, and even at a distance he was too handsome for any girl to ignore; shirt open, tie draped untied round his neck and windcheater jacket slung over one shoulder. Meredith drew an unsteady breath, wondering what had brought him in the vicinity of the stables.
She expected him to go on through the gate and take the path up to the moors, though what pleasure there would be walking up there on an evening like this she couldn't imagine. Instead, he stopped at the open doorway, and she heard him come in. There was silence for a moment and she could sense him looking round, his aristocratic nose sniffing the air for confirmation of her presence, for he would know that no one else was likely to be inside. She kept perfectly still, feeling like a trapped animal. If she didn't make a sound perhaps he would think the door had just blown open and there was no one there after all. She wanted him to go away again.
At the bottom of the ladder he called her.
'Meredith? Are you there?'
The force of the gale was as nothing now compared with the noise of her clamouring heart. It thudded like thunder in her ears, deafening her to all sound except Joss's voice, and she trembled in case his feet sought the rungs that would bring him up here. She could cope with being in close proximity in the office, but in the hay loft which had always been her sanctuary, the thought of him near her was too unnerving.
'Meredith!'
He was on his way up. The ladder creaked under his weight and swayed slightly. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor by the narrow window, the notebook open on her lap, and she waited for him to appear. Her scalp began to tingle and she snatched off the restricting headscarf, shaking back her hair. A bubbling excitement welled up in her, creating an urge to smile, but she drew in her breath, bit her bottom lip and managed to compose her face.
Joss came up slowly, his green eyes immediately seeking her out in the gloomy light, and when he stood over her, legs astride like a ship's master, she was unable to move. He completely dominated that confined space beneath the rafters.
'Why didn't you answer when I called?' he demanded. 'What's the matter with you, sitting there like a discarded gnome from somebody's garden?'
She giggled, easing the tension within her. 'I was working, and rather hoped you'd go away.'
When she lowered her eyes they focused on his legs. He had changed into beige cords which fitted tight over his hips and emphasised the strength of his thighs. After
a second he bent his knees and crouched in front of her, balancing on the balls of his feet.
'What are you doing up here anyway?' she asked.
'I could ask the same thing.' He turned the notebook in her lap so that he could read what she had been writing. 'As a matter of fact your mother is at my house eulogising about her plans to have this pile of stones converted into a holiday centre. I seem 'to feature largely in her schemes, so I thought I'd come along and have a proper look. And I did call at the house first to ask your permission, but there wasn't anyone around. I guessed this was where you'd be. You like this place, don't you?'
'Yes, I do.'
She had never been so aware of him. All she had to do was reach out and she could touch his thatch of soft brown hair, run her finger along the muscles of his forearm, bend her head and let her lips seek his. She held herself rigidly still.
'So why did you let her latch on to that ridiculous notion you came out with the morning Corinne arrived? It sounded to me like the first thing that came into your head.'
'It was,' said Meredith. 'And my mother's idea was entirely her own.' She told him about last night's conversation, and he sank down beside her, stretching out his long legs over the straw-covered boards. 'I wish you could talk her out of it, Joss.'
He lay back in the hay, staring at her thoughtfully.
'And if I did, would you keep coming up here indulging in maudlin reminiscences? Why don't you bury the past? Life's too short to keep dwelling on what happened yesterday.'
Meredith closed the notebook and put it aside, but the intensity of his gaze was so disturbing she had to take refuge in pretence.