by Mary Mackie
I started to be coy over the compliment, but, ‘I’m your only niece.’
‘I know,’ said Frank, and we both laughed immoderately, making other customers stare. Oh, it was good to be with him again. He always made me feel better. I determined to forget everything and enjoy this holiday.
* * *
Glorious Devon… everything the railway posters promised, with Westward Ho! a gem by the sea, full of holidaymakers. The Leeming cottage lay on the outskirts of the village, by a stream in a verdant valley where nightingales sang in the wood nearby.
Win and I enjoyed going about together, walking off the huge meals her aunt provided. The widowed Mrs Sidney Leeming was a quiet person, doing her chores with single-minded determination, as if keeping her house clean and her table laden with good food was her reason for existing. Perhaps it was, now that her son Stanton was gone. Win obviously felt familial duty towards her, though Mrs Leeming had never shown much interest in her. Now, she complained about everything, making Win feel guilty. Within a few days I knew it was not healthy and I urged my friend to come back with me to Norfolk. But she refused.
‘I’m all she has now, Kate. I shall stay with her, as I promised, until the end of September. I’ll see you back in Lincoln Square.’
On Exeter station, changing trains, I noticed a poster advertising the summer show at one of the theatres in Torquay. One of the acts was the Gala Girls. Ah-ha! Was that what had drawn Frank to the south coast?
I sent him a card, telling him I was going home and adding as a PS, ‘If you happen to see Judy Love, give her my regards.’ After I returned to Denes Hill I received a card from him, saying only, ‘Judy who?’
Vicky saw the card, and demanded to know what it meant. When I told her it was a joke, too complicated to explain, she scorned, ‘Oh, really! Frank is such a fool!’ Vicky was born middle-aged.
* * *
It was a year since I had left Berlin. A whole year. Since Carl-Heinz’s betrayal. Since Grandfather’s death. Soon it would be Eddy’s first birthday. Saffron and Harry were giving a birthday tea for him at Hawthorn House, to which I had been invited.
A few days before the celebration, waking early to find bright clouds breezing across a sunlit sky, I went down to the kitchen and shared an early pot of tea with Annie. Then I took my bike and pointed it inland, with the wind at my back, intending to ride the six miles to Lenhoe Manor; Mrs Lacey had sent to say she had another set of leaflets to distribute.
Toiling up the inclines and freewheeling down again, aided by a rising wind, I didn’t even see the clouds that came driving from the north. A rumble of thunder alerted me and when I glanced round I was horrified to see the sky coloured like mud, a menacing swirl shot through by flickers of lightning, trailing black skirts of rain that hid the Wash from sight.
I was four miles from Lenhoe, on an open track between dusty-gold cornfields, with no cottages nearby. Eveningham lay a mile or so behind me, Denes Hill a little further. I turned back, but the battering head wind made pedalling difficult.
Before long a curtain of rain hit me with drenching force, making me gasp and blink as I tucked my head well down. If any shelter had presented itself I might have stopped, but thorn hedges provided scant protection in a downpour that soon soaked my light summer clothes. The lane beneath my wheels turned to mud, running with rivulets of chalky reddish water. The tyres sent up a stream of wet mud to splatter my skirts and shoes. I wished I had never set out, but the rain wasn’t cold and since I was already soaked through there seemed no point in worrying. Just forge on.
I came to a place where the lane forked. The main branch headed up a rise, the other angled downhill. I had walked that way once and knew that, half a mile on, it ran past the rear gate into Eveningham churchyard. If I could get that far I might shelter in the church.
I started off pedalling, but soon momentum carried me, rattling and jolting, down an ever steeper slope. My brakes were too wet to work properly. Gritting my teeth, I hung on. High banks channelled the water, turning the lane into a stream. It grew deeper, up to the wheel-hubs, dragging at the spokes, spraying up…
Lightning stood white against slaty clouds. Thunder broke overhead. Was that a voice, a shout? I couldn’t tell. I could barely see. Twilight enfolded me, the rain still driving. All my strength went into holding the cycle upright in what was now a stream with a stony, uneven bed hidden from sight beneath a spate of watery mud. More lightning cracked, sizzling at a tree in a field nearby. Too close! Its light blinded me. The cycle bucked under me, hitting an obstruction…
The bank came up and thumped me breathless.
I found myself clinging to the hedge, a torrent tearing at my lower body, trying to drag me away with it. My hands were slipping, torn by thorns. If I let go, the rash of water would sweep me away. I felt it take my right shoe. I couldn’t hold on. I hadn’t the strength. Dear God—
Then something fastened strongly round my wrist. A hand. A man’s hand. He was beside me, shouting incoherently. I couldn’t see him for the rain battering at my eyes, but he hauled me to my feet, clamped me to his side with a brawny arm about me, and forcibly dragged me with him, slithering and sliding as he forded through the spate, to where a smaller stream rushed down the bank through a gap in the hedge. Digging toeholds with his iron-shod boots, he clambered up out of the lane, leaning back to lend me his hand and pull me up after him. My left foot, still in its shoe, slipped in the mud. I would have tumbled back had my rescuer not held me firmly, saying hoarsely, ‘Come on, Kate!’
Looking up through blinding rain, my senses jerked as I recognized Philip Farcroft, hatless, hair flattened to his head and his face dripping. ‘Come on!’ he repeated impatiently. A final tug on my arm wrenched me to safety beside him and as my legs sagged weakly he caught me in his arms. I leaned on him, clinging to him, aware of sodden clothing plastered to his body. Hot tears joined the cool rain in my eyes. My heart was thumping from both fright and exertion, my blood pulsing a song of gratitude and love: Philip, Philip, Philip…
‘Oh, Philip!’ I croaked, lifting my head. ‘Philip…’
His face was dark, his expression fierce. But I saw it for only a split second before his mouth plunged for mine, shocking me with its savagery. A jolt of emotion shook me, and then something in me rose with answering ferocity and I struggled to get my arms free and wrap them about his neck, clasping him to me, lips, teeth and tongue melding with his in bruising kisses. His arms hardened about me, pulling me in closer until I could feel every sweet, strong contour of his ribs and belly. A rage of response flared like fire inside me, liquid heat rising to engulf me. I wanted to pull him down to lie with me. I wanted to wrench at his clothes and feel his nakedness against me. I wanted—
As my knees gave under me, he bent and swept me up into his arms and began to stride steadily across the squelching field. Over his shoulder, through misting rain, I saw we were in a cornfield, half of it harvested and gathered into stooks now sagging and sodden, the rest battered down. I could see the church tower on the next rise, and knew that behind me Denes Hill rose a dark mound on the horizon. But we might as well have been a million miles away from normality.
‘Philip—’
He didn’t look at me, though I saw the muscle jump in his jaw as he clenched his teeth. ‘I’m taking you home,’ he said.
‘My cycle…’
‘I’ll fetch it later.’
He had a wagon waiting at the far side of the field, with between its shafts a great shire horse securely tethered to the gatepost. Its coat was dark with water, its ears flattened under the relentless rain as it tossed its head and stamped uneasily, frightened by more lightning and thunder that battered the sky from horizon to horizon. ‘All right, girl.’ The reassurance was for the horse as Philip tossed me up to the wagon’s seat and went to unhitch the tether.
I was shivering uncontrollably, not so much from cold as from reaction. If he hadn’t come, I would have drowned. As it was I was scared half to
death, and shattered by the force of feelings that had flared so suddenly, mindlessly, inside me. Shocking, immoral feelings that horrified me now. What would he think of me if he knew? All the things of which Carl-Heinz had accused me… But I had never felt like that with Carl-Heinz. The embraces I had shared with him had been childishly innocent beside what had flamed in me when Philip touched me.
Soaked through, with water dripping from him, he moved as calmly and easily as if the sun were shining. He came round the wagon and, after an instant of uncertainty, our glances faltered and slid away. He swung up to the seat beside me, saying something that was lost in the tumult of teeming rain.
I wiped my face yet again. ‘Sorry?’
‘I said,’ he shouted across his shoulder, ‘you should have stayed on this top road. The back lane always floods when…’ More thunder cut him off and, shaking his head as if to say talking was impossible, he slapped the reins. ‘Walk on!’
The huge horse took up the strain, leaning all its weight into the harness. Slowly, the wagon oozed free of sinking mud and began to move out of the gate, on to the top road. The rain continued. But what did it matter? Once you’re soaked to the skin you can’t get wetter. I tore off my ruined hat and lifted my face to the downpour, hoping it might clear my head. It didn’t. My senses were still reeling. All I could think of was the reality of Philip beside me. So close after all this time, and so much I wanted to say to him. I’m not like that. Really, I’m not. I’ve never… I don’t… But I couldn’t speak. I was too mortified. I should never dare look him in the eye again.
Reaching the main coast road, he pointed the wagon straight across, heading down into the village.
‘I thought you were taking me home,’ I said.
‘I am,’ he answered with an unreadable look from green eyes fringed by wet lashes, rivulets writhing down his face. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Gaywood will be there today.’ His home, he meant, not mine. So we would be together a little longer. A chirrup of joy quirked inside me, quenched at once by dismay: what if his father were there? What if my family found out? I ought not to go to the farm. I tried to find words to say so, but they wouldn’t come. Fate had taken over.
By then the storm centre had passed, thunder moving away behind us, rain settling to a steady stream. The lane rippled with water, around jagged stones dislodged by the flood, leaving holes and hazards. But the wagon trundled sturdily behind the horse as she plodded on, head down, feathered hooves bedraggled and sploshing. In the village centre, the green was flooded, the pond twice its normal size with families of duck and moorhen enjoying the unaccustomed space. People peered from cottage windows at the teeming rain, or watched anxiously from open doorways as the tide rose towards their thresholds.
We went on, down the drowned lane to the farm.
Halting the wagon at the gate of the rear walled yard, Philip leapt down and came to offer me his hand. I accepted it, burned by his touch but avoiding his eyes, and trailed after him to the kitchen door, which was flung open by a plump woman wearing an apron.
‘Bless us all!’ she exclaimed. ‘Now what’s to do, Master Philip?’ And to me, ‘Come you in, my beauty. Come you on in by the fire. Why, poor soul, you’re all a-shiver! Master Philip—’
‘Take care of her, will you?’ he said. ‘I have to see to Plum.’ With which, he returned to the horse.
To my relief, Mad Jack was not there. The kitchen was empty but for a cat stretching on a peg rug by the big hearth where a fire burned bright and blessedly warm. From the oven came a delicious aroma of baking bread.
‘Come you along o’ me.’ Mrs Gaywood led the way to the big beamed parlour, up the stairs in the corner to a passageway all dark panelling and brown paint, creaking boards and enfolding shadows. She showed me into an unused bedroom – bare mattress, surfaces thick with dust, faded lavender flowers piled in a bowl on a bow-fronted chest of drawers. A low window, festooned with cobwebs, peered out under jutting eaves.
‘Get you out of those clothes, my dare,’ Mrs Gaywood enjoined. ‘Here’s some towels. Get you dry while I find something for you to wear. That’ll have to be whatsomever I can find, mind. There hen’t been no young ladies in this here house, not for many a long year.’
Left alone, I stripped off my clothes with numb, fumbling fingers and wrapped my shivering self in towels, rubbing at my limbs and body in an effort to restore some warmth before taking all the pins and pads from my hair and towelling that, too, as dry as I could. My flesh felt clammy, blotched and goose-pimpled, and uncontrollable shivers shook me. Bruises were flowering, too, red scratches and, my hands torn by thorns…
‘You’ll soon feel better,’ Mrs Gaywood assured me, returning with an armful of clothing which she tossed across the mattress, along with some slippers. ‘There, see if them’ll fit you. That’s some of Mrs Farcroft’s things. Mr Jack hen’t had the heart to clear that all out, though that’s seven year since she went to her reward, dare soul. They’re aired, mind. But listen to me a-runnin’ on, and you standing there quaking. Get you dressed, my beauty, and come you on down by the fire. I’ll now go and put the kettle on. A nice cup of tea’ll soon set you right.’
She took my wet clothes with her.
With my hair turbanned in a damp towel, I climbed into a voluminous pair of drawers and a camisole with pretty broderie anglaise trim. The blouse she had brought was sprigged blue, the skirt black. Both fitted only where they touched, made for a woman three times my width. The well-worn, shapeless slippers would serve to protect my feet from bare boards and cold flagstones. I found some safety pins in a pot on the dressing table under the window and managed to make myself decent after a fashion, though it was far from haute couture.
Beyond the window, the tree-clad hill brooded behind veils of weather, as it must have brooded for centuries, sheltering the farm from the north wind. The farm had been here long before the house on the hill. It knew its place and was content with it, the rhythm of changing seasons, seed time and harvest. So it had been. So it would be. To belong in such a place was to be one with the earth. To belong… But that was wishful fantasy: all my saner instincts clamoured to be gone. My family would not be pleased if they knew I had been here. And what if Mad Jack came home?
As I shook my hair free of the towel, combing the damp strands with my fingers, I caught sight of my face in a mirror set in a swivel stand. A long bruise spread round a red lump on my cheekbone. My skin was pale, tinged blue under eyes which, in that grey light, looked luminously pale against the darkness of my tumbled hair – eyes that saw the unseen, windows to a mind that dreamed impossible dreams. Witch’s eyes, Philip’s girl Lou had said with unthinking cruelty. Philip…
Though my shivering had stopped, I was still cold, beginning to feel stiff and sore. The thought of the fire in the kitchen tempted me out into a passageway lit only by grey rain-light filtering up the stairs. Another thought – of coming face to face with Philip again, and maybe encountering his father – slowed my steps, making me pause to examine the pictures on the walls: sentimental prints; a couple of remarkably bad oils that Frank would have scoffed at; and old sepia photographs, stiff studio shots and a few blurred snaps…
This was Michael, surely, a gangling youth in his first suit with long trousers. This must be Philip, angelic in tumbled curls and sailor dress, aged about four. And here was Michael again, sitting on a bale of hay with, behind him, peeping from the barn doorway, a girl with long fair hair. She looked familiar.
Then a board creaked and, as I turned towards the sound, all thought of photographs faded to insignificance beside the living reality of the adult Philip, watching me from beyond a mist of light that flowed up the stairs. He had changed into dry working clothes, but his hair was still damp, curling crisply to the shape of his head.
Self-conscious, not knowing what to say, I felt my hand creep to my throat, where a pulse leapt against my fingertips. ‘I was just…’
‘I saw.’ Moving without haste, hands in his pockets,
he ambled along the passage towards me, making the boards creak. ‘Are you feeling better?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ The closer he came, the more unsteady my heartbeat. Unable to look at him, I looked again at the photographs. ‘Is this…’
‘Clara Rhys-Thomas,’ he confirmed, pausing beside me. ‘I told you she was a friend of Michael’s.’
‘Yes.’ I touched the glass, removing a faint film of dust so that the girl’s face came clearer. Incredible though it seemed, here was proof that my mother had been wont to visit the farm. ‘And is this you? You were a beautiful little boy.’
‘I keep telling Dad he ought to get rid of some of these wretched old pictures,’ Philip said, embarrassed, ‘but he won’t have them touched. He likes to keep everything as Mother left it.’
Why did we always talk about such irrelevant things? ‘Philip…’ I ventured, and cleared a frog from my throat. ‘Up there on the hill, in the storm, I—’
‘You don’t have to explain.’
‘I do! I want you to know, I’m not the sort of girl who…’
‘Neither am I – that sort, I mean.’ He was as much in knots as I was.
Unwisely, I turned to look at him, startled to find him very close, his gaze intent as he searched my face, saying things that spoke directly to my heart. If he had been a beautiful boy he was even more beautiful now he was grown. So male. So strong. So gentle. Remembering the way he had kissed me, I felt my heart plummet and then soar. Maybe I was ‘that sort’. Or could be, with him, if he wanted it. ‘You saved my life.’
‘I saved you from a ducking, that’s all.’
‘You mean, if you hadn’t been there, I might have got wet?’ I tried to laugh, but he wasn’t listening: he was watching my mouth, which had begun to tingle. I couldn’t help myself. I wanted him to kiss me again. I wanted him to touch me, hold me…