‘Joe in?’ The vet asked.
‘In the stables,’ said Evelyn and flushed: a Methodist minister’s daughter, she wouldn’t want to be seen with her hands inside a joint of meat.
It always surprised Will that the vet referred to the farmer by his first name, though he couldn’t have been thirty. But then everything about him suggested he felt entitled: from the way in which he carried himself, to the cut of his tweed jacket, to his voice – like a posh Londoner, though he was Cornish born and bred.
He was good-looking, Will had to admit, with thick dark hair that flopped just so, and a face that could still be described as boyish. Joanna adored him, and even Alice, twelve now, looked at him admiringly. He’d attracted more attention since two of his three brothers were killed. Both RAF pilots. ‘Tragic,’ Aunt Evelyn had murmured to Uncle Joe. ‘His poor parents. Thank goodness they have one son who can stay here.’
Will knew he should feel huge sympathy, and yet he still didn’t trust him. Something about the way his eyes slid over Maggie; the curve of his lip as he laughed at something that didn’t strike Will as funny, put him on edge.
He was doing it now. Eyes flitting over her as he mentioned his reason for calling, for Uncle Joe only used him if it was really necessary. But Noble, the youngest Shire horse, was suffering from the shivers and barely able to lift his rear hooves at the minute. The costliest animal on the farm, he needed to be checked.
‘Lovely to see you, Maggie,’ the vet called, as he started for the stables.
She smiled, and nodded politely. Will felt an immense rush of gratitude that she didn’t seem the least bit affected by him, and wasn’t simpering like the maid.
‘And where’s your sister, Will? She’s fond of the horses. Thought she might like to see what the problem is?’
‘She’s at school,’ said Will, stating the obvious, and feeling absurdly protective. For some reason, a shiver ran up the nape of his neck.
‘What a shame,’ said the vet, his bottom lip sticking out in an exaggerated pout that made his mouth look almost pretty. ‘Looks like it’s just me on my own then.’
He gave Evelyn and Joanna a mock bow, causing the maid to giggle and to bat her lashes, so stubby compared to his long ones. And, still with that infuriating smile, he turned away.
Eleven
Maggie Retallick smiled at the young woman staring out at her from the mirror.
The creature smiled back at her.
So it is me. She felt a jolt of surprise. She smiled again, less self-consciously this time, and reached to pat her curls, newly bobbed and set. I look so different, she thought, as she admired the curve of her neck, the delicacy of her profile. The hair and her lips – coated in a red lipstick her mother didn’t know about – made her look distinctly older.
She turned to admire herself side-on, taking in her nipped-in waist and, well, a proper bosom. Amazing that she could have metamorphosed so. The silk fabric of her mother’s green dress rippled over her breasts and caressed her hips. She was no longer Maggie, the county schoolgirl who blushed when American GIs called out to her in Bodmin, or Evelyn Retallick’s daughter who was all set to take her Higher School Certificate and train to be a teacher, but Maggie: seventeen years old, elegant, sophisticated, and about to set off to an RAF dance with Edward Pascoe, her childhood playmate and second cousin.
She pulled the dress down a little and smiled again, though the smile was more equivocal this time, the excitement replaced by a hint of unease. A steady, reliable sort of chap, said her father, when she had announced that Edward was taking her to the dance. ‘A good prospect,’ her mother had added as if he was a type of livestock. Evelyn approved of Edward not just because he came from her side of the family but because, after the war, he meant to study law at university, making the sort of break she had never managed. Even if he returned eventually, he wouldn’t waste his talents in a small north Cornwall town.
Despite – or perhaps because of – her mother’s approval Maggie still found Edward a little earnest: her feelings for the boy she had tried to chide into swimming further or climbing higher were those of a sister for a slightly studious older brother. Still, there was no doubt he’d become more intriguing since enlisting and spending eight months training up in Scotland. And there was supposed to be something attractive about men in uniform, wasn’t there? Or so Miss Jelbert, her French teacher and the most sophisticated woman she knew, had always commented. Certainly, many of the girls at school thought so.
This dance – the last time she’d see Edward before he set off for Glasgow and a ship to somewhere unspecified and secret – need not signify anything, Maggie reassured herself, as she pulled the dress back up again and wondered if the lipstick was, perhaps, too bright. A chance to send him on his way with a smile on his face and for her to escape the tedium of a long evening at the farm where her mother was becoming increasingly irascible, Alice was being irritating and Will … Well Will was making her distinctly uncomfortable.
Besides, there would be music and perhaps jitterbugging. She and Alice had tried to practise in the barn this afternoon as she hummed ‘Tuxedo Junction’ and ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’, though it was hard to get a proper sense of the moves when she was always the man.
Alice had whooped and squealed as she’d swung her round, and Maggie had joined in, their cries startling the hens perched on the bales and the doves in the rafters who had stopped pecking to watch.
‘Faster, faster,’ Alice had squawked as Maggie swung her from one side to another, counting the beat in her head as she hummed loudly. And then, in a gasp of delight: ‘Wiiiiiiiii-ll.’
She had stopped abruptly, mortified at the thought of someone watching.
He had grinned, leaning against the bales with a lazy smile.
‘Have you been there long?’
‘Long enough,’ he had said. ‘Enough to know you don’t do it like that, you do it like this,’ and he did a little shimmy, surprisingly agile in his overalls and heavy boots.
‘Yes, well, we’re just learning.’ She had been defensive. ‘It’s very difficult.’ She had paused: ‘Come on then: you show me if you think you can do it better.’
‘Well I dunno,’ he had admitted. ‘But I’ve seen Joanna doing it like this, down in Padstow,’ and he had stepped forward, with some hesitation, put one hand on her waist and, with the other warm, slightly calloused hand, held hers.
He was a head taller than her now, which still came as a bit of a shock. He seemed to have shot up in the past few months, as well as broadened, with a smattering of light stubble on his jaw and a not unpleasant but distinctly male smell.
She could feel his breath on her hair and then on her forehead: a light breeze that brushed against her and synchronised with her breathing. For one long moment, she forgot Alice and the rustlings in the barn; was only aware of the warmth of his hand on her waist, his long fingers, just inches from her breast, touching her curves.
She broke away. ‘Yes, well. I’m not sure this is going to be that helpful. Come on, Alice.’ And she had turned to his sister. ‘Let’s try it again: a one and a two and a three and a four.’
She flushed again, just thinking about it now. A distance had grown between them. It wasn’t just that she no longer knew what to say to him; it was that he seemed so different. Distinct from the boys in her class, their pale bodies packed into blazers, and a world away from the child who had turned up three and a half years ago: shy, gangling, ready, if teased, to flush. Time – and farming – had made a man of Will, and she found this disconcerting. How to respond to this new Will when what she missed was the old, familiar one?
The door inched open and she rubbed at her lips in case it was her mother. The crimson lipstick gashed her mouth like a stain.
‘Maggie …’
‘Oh, it’s only you.’ She opened the door to reveal Alice hesitating to enter her boudoir, as they jokingly called it.
‘You look beautiful.’ The younger girl seemed awes
truck. ‘Like a … sea nymph, or something.’
‘Oh, really?’ Maggie never quite knew how to take Alice’s flights of fancy. ‘Not quite the look I was hoping for.’
‘It’s meant as a compliment! You’re just so … slinky.’ Alice reached out to touch the fabric, stroking it lightly, before Maggie, anticipating Evelyn’s response should the fingers be sticky, moved sharply away.
‘How are my lips? Too bright?’
‘Dab a bit more … There, that’s better. No one will be able to accuse you of being “garish” this way.’
She had got the inflection of Evelyn’s voice just right. Maggie glanced at her as she perched on the side of her bed, stroking the eiderdown, taking in the bedroom with its rosebud wallpaper and heavy velvet curtains, decorated before the war began. Sometimes Alice surprised her. Just when you thought she was a mere child, she said something far more observant – far worldlier – than you would ever think.
‘Edward’s here. Waiting for you in the drawing room,’ Alice revealed with a new air of solemnity. Then, more boldly: ‘Do you like him?’
‘Like him?’
‘Is he your … beau?’ She half-laughed the word.
‘My beau? How Victorian. He’s my second cousin, Alice, and a friend.’
‘Well, that’s good,’ Alice’s voice floated down the staircase in front of her as Maggie followed her out of the room and down to meet Edward.
‘How so?’ Maggie shot back, practising her new, arch tone, and irritated by Alice’s disarming knowingness.
Alice remained silent.
‘Alice?’
But the girl was suddenly reticent. And, turning, she ran down the stairs.
The evening was a huge success. Maggie practised saying this as Edward took her hand on the dance floor and led her into a quickstep that almost took her breath away. The hall at RAF Davidstow was heaving with young couples: the girls bussed in from as far afield as Launceston as well as Camelford, and the men – American, English and even Polish pilots – taking their pick. Edward and a couple of other Duke of Cornwall boys stood out, as much for their callowness – they hadn’t seen any action yet, unlike the Americans smoking their Player Lights – as for their khaki uniforms. Perhaps they shouldn’t have been there, but who was to begrudge three local lads, green and anxious, on the eve of their first tour?
Maggie wasn’t quite sure what was expected of her tonight. She knew she shouldn’t be stand-offish, suspected that Edward might want her to be more than just friendly. So why did the thought of kissing him leave her cold or – worse – make her want to laugh?
She looked at him now, concentrating next to her as he moved her lightly between the other couples through the crowded aeroplane hangar. He was a competent dancer. The result of ballroom dancing classes, insisted upon by his mother when he was a boy. His grip was light and his tread delicate. But she couldn’t help thinking he approached dancing much as he might a legal conundrum: something to be mastered after applying considerable thought.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asked, glancing at her quickly, a hint of anxiety in his blue eyes. His tongue peeped between his teeth – a mannerism that suggested he was concentrating hard.
‘Glorious – wish I could go faster.’
As it was, her heart was hammering in her chest, though whether from the vigorous exercise or slight nervousness she couldn’t be sure.
The music came to a stop and ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ started up. Maggie, humming it under her breath, would have liked to continue, but Edward seemed to want to pause.
‘May I get you a drink? A lemonade – or a punch?’ He was looking at her in a way she couldn’t quite get used to. If he weren’t Edward – a regular fixture in her early years, before he was sent off to boarding school – she would describe it as beseeching. No, that was wrong. A soldier, with wind-chapped skin from training in the wilds of Scotland and newly acquired muscles, didn’t need to beseech anyone. But it wasn’t the way he usually looked at her.
‘Oh, a punch would be delicious!’ She imagined this was the sort of thing Miss Jelbert would say. She felt slightly reckless. Aware that she had the chance – away from the farm and Evelyn’s sharp eyes – of doing something completely forbidden.
‘Not a word to your mother.’
‘Evelyn Retallick would not approve.’
‘Do you remember when she caught us in the stream?’ Evelyn had discovered them, aged six and eight, in the copse by the beach, stripped to their underpants.
Edward blushed. Oh, come on, she wanted to tease him. We were children. Evelyn had given her a brisk thrashing, but she could hardly respond like that now.
‘What about one small punch – and a lemonade to disguise it, later?’ She sought to reassure him.
‘Do I seem terribly cautious?’
‘You just know my mother.’
‘I think very highly of Aunt Evelyn. I just have absolutely no desire to offend her in any way at all.’
‘Well you won’t. You can do no wrong, these days. Not since you’ve said you’ll apply for Oxford, once this is over.’
‘You sound a little … cross?’ He gave a slight cough.
‘Of course not.’ She touched his arm to reassure him, then dropped her hand. ‘It’s just … you know Mother. You’ve set the bar high. Still, at least she doesn’t want me to languish – even if I wanted to.’
‘No. Well, quite.’
‘Nothing short of headmistress will be good enough for me, the way she’s talking at the moment.’
‘Well, it is an admirable job.’
‘I know … though I’m not sure it’s really what I want to do.’
She was quiet for a moment, wondering if she should admit that, really, she just wanted to remain on the farm, or at least stay in farming. In this, she was her father’s daughter: someone who loved the excitement of harvest, and enjoyed the day-in, day-out routine of milking, the hiss of warm milk squirting into a pail, the comfort of resting your head against the side of a cow.
The strange thing was, Evelyn didn’t want the farm to go elsewhere: to Joe’s younger brother or his sons. Skylark – or Polblazey as her mother insisted on calling it: ‘Can we please use its proper name’ – would be farmed by Maggie when he retired. But she didn’t want Maggie to be constrained by it. She was to experience a different world first – the world denied to Evelyn by the first war, and an early marriage – before she did her duty and came home.
‘The thing is,’ she went on in a rush, ‘I’m not sure that being a farmer, or a farmer’s wife, would be so terrible. I mean, I can see the point of getting away for a bit, but I can’t imagine life away from the farm.’
She wrinkled her nose, half-embarrassed by this confession, and the arch air she had adopted all evening slid from her like a chrysalis shed by a butterfly. For a moment, she wanted to be sitting in the sand dunes, the silk of the sand soft against her thighs, the breeze buffeting her cheeks; or hiding in the milking parlour. The hangar, with its mass of excited young men and women, seemed claustrophobic all of a sudden.
‘You think that now, but once you’re at teacher training college you’ll realise there’s a whole world out there,’ Edward said, with the air of someone who had now experienced such things. ‘Now: about those drinks?’
‘Yes. Quite.’ She rallied herself. ‘Punch, please. There’s quite a crush. Hope you can squeeze through.’
‘I’ll see to it right away.’ And he leaned forward, and, reddening quickly, brushed her cheek with his lips.
Two hours later, and the punch was proving most delicious. That initial burn was quickly over, and her arms and legs relaxed so that her dancing was faster, more fluid than before. Or at least, the second glass made everything more fluid: the third was making her feel a little woozy. The floor tipped suddenly, lurching up at her, though she didn’t think she’d stumbled. But then the trumpets started blaring and the noise and the crush became unbearable.
‘You’re fine, yo
u’re fine.’ A voice came at her through the blur of sound. ‘Let’s just go outside for a minute.’
Someone – Edward – was leading her out of the hangar into the chill early March night. The lush sound from the gramophone – a dense mesh of strings – grew softer and softer, and she found herself concentrating on not falling down on the tilting airfield. Above her, a velvet sky bore down then skittered away in a whirl.
‘Here. Put this round you. It’s cold.’ Edward was placing her mother’s best wool coat round her shoulders and holding it tightly to her, as if to stop her falling as much as to keep her warm.
‘Just breathe gently. You’re going to be fine. Here.’ He was walking her away from the entrance, from which another couple, huddled against the night, were leaving, their laughter soft and intimate. ‘You’ll be OK here.’ He glanced at the other lovers, now kissing passionately, then back at her, and she managed to register that his eyes were shot with concern.
The ground seemed to be righting itself, and she tried to focus on the stars, bright in a clear sky, and the full moon: a help for any passing Focke-Wulf. Her breath hit the air in steamy bursts then dissipated like mist, and, suddenly, she was overwhelmed: by the vast night sky, the emptiness of the moor, and her impotence.She tried to explain, but it came out as a sob.
‘Maggie.’ Edward’s face was a pool of concern. ‘My dear, is it Aunt Evelyn you’re worried about? Or my going away from you?’
She looked at him, uncomprehending, but it seemed too much of an effort to make herself understood. How could she tell him that being a young woman in a country three and a half years into a conflict that everyone said had reached a turning point – with the fall of Stalingrad – but which was still continuing, was wearing. That she was tired of the nagging, low-level anxiety, the uncertainty, the sense that the end could not be foreseen – though the Allies had to win, didn’t they, especially now they had started bombing factories – that came with being at war?
She knew that, compared to those who’d been through the Blitz – like those in Plymouth, where the flames lit the sky down to Cornwall – they were protected. But she still had this niggling nervousness she couldn’t admit to someone about to experience it first-hand.
The Farm at the Edge of the World : A Novel (2016) Page 7