by Mary Mackie
‘I saw you. I saw you! All those nightmares… Because of you! That’s what John has been trying to tell me all this time, ever since I came back to Denes Hill.’
‘John?’ His eyes narrowed as he reached for me. ‘You’re hysterical.’
I fended off his hands, shuddering. ‘I saw you, Oliver. You tried to kill me, too, but Mother came. She turned you into a hero. Everyone thought you’d tried to save John, but— Oh, God…’
I remembered Saffron, weeping. ‘I shall never forgive Oliver Wells. He killed Harry as surely as if he’d stabbed him.’ And Tom: ‘I hate him. He likes to hurt.’ They had known instinctively that Oliver was not to be trusted. So had Harry, and Frank. Why hadn’t I listened?
His hands fastened on me, shaking me. ‘Listen to me, Kate! I didn’t intend to hurt John. But he panicked. He lashed out at me, and I lost my temper. He’d been bloody to Clara that day. She told me she wished him dead. She often said she hated him. Before I knew what I was doing… You must believe me, Kate. I did it for Clara. In a moment of madness. I didn’t intend to hurt him. Or you.’
‘You did! You would have killed me, too, if Mother hadn’t come.’
‘Don’t say that!’ His face was almost black with fury, as it had been that day, murderous rage blotting out his rational self. ‘Don’t say that!’ Strong hands reached for my throat.
I clawed at them, choking, ‘You can’t! Oliver, I’m having a child. Your child, Oliver!’
The pressure on my windpipe eased, letting me snatch a breath as he hesitated. In the same moment, a cry from behind made him start to turn. A howling figure launched itself at him, a fist raised with some weapon that caught Oliver across the temple. It made him reel, but as his assailant hit again he threw up his arm, deflecting the blow, coming up under it to charge with all his weight, sending the other man flying. He fell over a footstool, sprawled to the floor, sent the chess set flying…
It was Tom! Tom! Scarlet with fear and fury, wailing like a banshee, he lifted his arms to protect his head as Oliver snatched up the footstool, raising it – I launched myself at him. My shoulder caught him in the side, sent him off-balance. He crashed into the slender wooden rail that guarded the stairs. It cracked under his weight, split away from the wall. With a howl of fear, Oliver fell into the stairwell.
Silence.
‘Is he dead?’ Tom asked.
‘Oh, Tom!’ Trembling, I stood at the top of the stairs, rubbing my arms helplessly as I stared down at my husband’s body. He was horribly still, his head at an impossible angle. ‘Oh, Tom!’
‘I didn’t mean it,’ he wept. ‘He was hurting you.’
‘Yes, he was. You saved me. Oh… don’t cry, please! You didn’t do it. I did. I pushed him down the stairs.’
‘No. It was me,’ he said, and showed me what he had in his hand – what he had used as a weapon to hit Oliver. It was the ivory king from the chess set. There was blood on its crown.
* * *
I found Grandmother with Anderson in the small sitting room, both of them wondering why the place was in such chaos. Grandmother was tired, seeming very old and frail that day. How could I hate her for her part in deceiving me? She had done what she thought best for her family, and she too had been manipulated by Oliver. I found room for pity in my heart, but I knew I should never quite forgive her for what she had done to Philip and me.
There had been an accident, I told them, feeling deadly calm. Would they please telephone to the doctor, and to the police? ‘It’s Oliver. He fell down the stairs. I think he’s dead.’
The next few hours are a blur. I remember only feeling claustrophobic, fighting a desperate urge to get away. When the chance came, I simply walked out by the side door, intending to take a short, calming stroll in the garden. But the mist still clung thickly on the hilltop, filling the yards, making it hard to breathe.
My motorbike waited, offering escape from the shadows of the gloomy, fog-shrouded house. So I kicked the motor into life and set off, going I knew not where.
Within half a mile the mist began to thin. It parted ahead of me and I rode out into golden sunlight, finding myself on a familiar road. Now I knew where I was going. This lane led to Sedgeford. To Philip. If I could see him, just for a few minutes, I knew I would feel able to go back and face what had to be faced.
I heard the aeroplane before I saw it, coming in from the sea, trailing a plume of smoke from its engine like a black smudge against the sky. It looked like the one I had seen over Denes Hill earlier. I stopped to watch, straddled on the bike, my heart unsteady and my mouth dry. Was Philip the pilot?
I could hear the motor misfiring, stuttering. Oh, let him be safe. Let him be safe! I can’t lose him now! The aeroplane seemed to lurch as it dipped and rose again, straining to maintain height, to reach the hilltop airstrip. It looked like a wounded bird, fighting valiantly to hold the air. I held my breath, fighting with the pilot, sensing how hard he was trying to bring the machine safely in. It must have been damaged. Had it been in a fight? Was Philip injured, too? Hang on, darling! Hang on!
The engine stopped. The aeroplane seemed to glide briefly, then pause and hang. In shattering silence and slow, slow motion, its nose lifted, one wing dipped. It tipped over, started to fall, twisting in the air. Choking back nausea, I remembered the silver lapel pin, twisting between my fingers in just that way, that day in the church when Philip and I first talked. A premonition? Had I known then how our story would end?
I didn’t see the crash. The aircraft dived behind a stand of shimmering golden beech trees. But I heard the sound as it hit, and saw smoke belch above the trees.
No!
Not Philip. Not Philip! Please God…
Sick with terror, I was about to let in my clutch when I saw Philip running towards me along the lane. Thank God! Oh, thank God! He was safe. Safe! I let the bike fall and went to meet him, throwing my arms round him, holding him with all my strength. ‘Philip! Darling, I had to come. I needed you. Oliver…’ I don’t remember what I said. It poured out of me incoherently. And Philip soothed me, held me, stroked me, kissed me, told me it was all right.
‘It’s not all right.’ I shuddered in his arms, my head ducked under his chin as I hung on to him. ‘But it will be. One day.’ No tomorrows, he had said. Only this moment.
I let myself savour his nearness, enjoying it to the full while it lasted. Bad times lay ahead, but beyond them, perhaps… ‘I’m going to have a baby, Philip. It’s your baby. I know it is.’
‘Yes, darling.’ He sounded sure of it. He sounded calm and infinitely peaceful, and when I looked up I saw him smiling down at me. ‘I love you, Kate,’ he said. ‘But I have to go on ahead, sweetheart. I’m sorry, but I can’t stay now. I’ll see you…’
He was on duty, he meant. He would see me at the airstrip shortly. I let him go, hauled the bike upright, and climbed aboard, looking back to say goodbye… Behind me, and ahead, the lane stretched. Empty.
I think I knew then, but I didn’t want to believe.
By the time I reached the airstrip, a little knot of people had gathered by the crumpled biplane, helplessly watching it burn. Such a small, frail thing it looked, flames gulping at its puny, mangled skeleton.
As we later learned, it had joined two other aeroplanes in an action against a Zeppelin, over the Wash. In the fight, its navigator had been killed by rifle fire, its pilot wounded, its engine damaged.
They said Philip had probably been dead before he hit the ground. He wouldn’t have known much about it.
This time, dear Maggie, the shadows won. In this life they always do, sooner or later, for this earth is the clouded land and none of us escapes its final darkness. But our heritage is the light, which awaits beyond.
Almost eighty years have passed since Philip ‘went on ahead’, not long in terms of eternity, but for me it has stretched too far. I have tried to use the time wisely – writing, involving myself in local politics, enjoying my family. Passing time, only waiting.
My grandmother, Violet Rhys-Thomas, lived on to be eighty-three. She became very fond of the ex-dancer whose arrival as Frank’s wife scandalized her at first. But Judy produced four fine grandchildren and so redeemed herself. She made a merry mistress for the old place.
Vicky’s husband remained in the army. They lived mostly in India. Aunt Saffron remarried and also moved away, with young Eddy. Over the years, we lost touch.
I stayed at Denes Hill until after my son was born. My son, the green-eyed boy with nut-brown curls, who became your father. Philip’s son, of course, as everyone knows. I could not let the world believe I had borne a child by the sad, flawed man I married. When your father was a few months old, we moved to the farm, to be with Jack Farcroft, and I wore the Farcroft sapphire with pride. Oh, folk gossiped, for a while, as folk will. But the boy brought comfort to his grandfather, and he loved the farm, and finally brought an end to the old feud. The old man left the farm to him, and it was there he took his bride, and saw his daughter born – you, Maggie. You, in turn, will wear the sapphire after I’m gone. Pass it on to your daughter, or to your son’s wife.
All this time, Philip has never been far away. I haven’t seen him clearly – all my ghosts fled on that last day – but I’ve felt him there on the other side of silences, breathing behind draughts of air and sudden gleams of sunlight. And his picture has kept me company, smiling from above the hearth. I know he is proud of his son, and of you, Maggie. One day soon, I shall tell him all about you, face to face. With love,
Grandee
My father still farms the broad acres of Far Drove. My husband works with him, and our son has just left agricultural college. So the Farcroft family tradition will continue. At Denes Hill, Frank Rhys-Thomas’s son runs art courses and birdwatching weekends. But Grandee, my grandmother, Catherine Louise Brand, Katarin von Wurthe, Kate Wells, or her pen-name, by which she was more commonly known, Kate Farcroft, has now ‘gone on ahead’, to rejoin all those people of whom she wrote in her story.
Yesterday, I carried out her last wishes and scattered her ashes in the woods, at the place where the boundaries of Far Drove meet those of Denes Hill. It was a gentle evening, soft after rain, golden with late sunlight slanting through the trees. As the last trace of dust spilled from the container, I looked up and saw, watching me, a tall young man in uniform. I knew him at once. His portrait, painted by Frank Rhys-Thomas from a photograph, hangs over the hearth at Far Drove. It has hung there as long as I remember, beside the portrait of my grandmother as a young woman.
Nor was he alone in the sunlit wood. By his side stood a slender young woman with dark hair and pale, luminous eyes. Both of them were smiling as they waved to me. Then, hand in hand, they strolled away, into the bright evening haze.
Maggie C. Mapleby (nee Farcroft)
Far Drove Farm
Eveningham
KING’S LYNN
Norfolk
About the Author
Mary Mackie is an English writer of over 70 fiction and non-fiction books since 1971. Work of hers has been translated into 20 languages. She is known especially for light-hearted accounts of life looking after a country house for the National Trust.
Also by Mary Mackie
Sandringham Rose
The Clouded Land
A Child of Secrets
First published in the United Kingdom in 1998 by Knight, an imprint of Brockhampton Press
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2021 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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Copyright © Mary Mackie, 1998
The moral right of Mary Mackie to be identified as the creator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781800324978
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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