He gripped her shoulders more firmly, his head – not much taller than hers – now so close to hers that she could see the moonlight glint off his pupils.
‘I will take the blame with your mother,’ he said, his voice sombre. ‘And I will do my very best to return.’
The impossibility of his promising this struck her properly for the first time. He might not come back. Everyone knew of someone who had lost a loved one. Barely a month went by without the news that another acquaintance had been killed. Brenda Edvyean in the upper sixth had lost both her brothers; Patrick Trescothick, three of his.
Edward had always been in the background: as solidly predictable as lambing in February and March, and rain in March and April. His visits a part of the farming year: like harvest and ploughing and hoeing and sowing once more. But what if he never returned? If his name was added to the roll-call of the dead, read out in church, to silence and a few stifled tears, by the vicar. What if this was the last time she ever saw him?
The world seemed slightly less hazy now: the sky had stopped swaying; the grass no longer tipped beneath her feet. He leaned closer, and she thought, with the rum still spilling through her veins like liquid gold, that, really, he wasn’t unattractive. He was almost sweet if she could get over the fact he was barely taller than her, and that she had known him for ever.
She closed her eyes and tried imagining she was Merle Oberon to his Laurence Olivier as he pressed his mouth to hers. His lips were warm and moist, not unpleasant, and then with his tongue he tried to part her teeth.
She broke away.
‘Sorry, dearest,’ he muttered, then pulled her towards him, gently. Was this what kissing was all about? Perhaps it got better with practice? Tentative, she tried again.
The second kiss was better: less frenzied, more gentle, and he seemed to draw confidence from it.
‘Perhaps I shouldn’t rush you,’ and here his eyes gleamed, ‘but if you could somehow wait for me, until the war is over. Not an engagement, if you don’t want that, but an understanding …’
‘An understanding?’
‘That you would be here for me to come back to? That would mean the world to me.’ He looked embarrassed and scared: the boy who’d been caught stripped to his underpants by Evelyn. ‘I suppose I’m scared, Maggie,’ he said.
She didn’t know quite what to say. How to tell him everything would be fine, when there were no certainties any more beyond the fact they were relatively safe in their small bubble in Cornwall? And so she said what she knew he wanted to hear.
‘Of course I’ll be here. Where else would I go?’
She could feel herself trying to make light of what he’d said, for if he was asking for some sort of commitment – less than an engagement but still, some sort of understanding – then she couldn’t give that. Perhaps she should make that clear? But as she started to speak, he shook his head and his eyes filmed with tears.
‘Edward …’ she tried, desperate to correct any misunderstanding.
But: ‘You have made me happier than I could ever have imagined,’ he was saying. ‘You do know that, don’t you?’
‘But I …’
‘You are wonderful,’ he said.
He pulled her tight and she felt his heart pound through the coarse serge of his uniform. Beyond her the moor waited, silent, the stars winking at her.
And all she could do was nod.
Twelve
It was Joanna who alerted Will to Maggie’s news.
‘And what do you think of Maggie and Edward?’
He was off to do the afternoon milking. Had only stopped by the kitchen to grab a flask of tea, for the milking parlour was cold, despite the warmth of the cows.
Joanna gave him a wink, delighted at having some gossip to impart.
‘You’d have thought she’d have given us a hint!’
‘A hint of what?’ He stopped filling the flask with the ribbon of thick, dark tea and put it down next to the milk jug. His throat was dry; his tongue thick in his mouth.
‘Well, I suppose it’s not an engagement so it’s not official,’ the maid continued, drawing out the release of information, making the most of her power. ‘But then again, Mrs Retallick seems to think it’s as good as.’
She paused, looked him up and down.
He returned her gaze, blankly, refusing to give her the satisfaction of asking what she was talking about: incapable of articulating something, he had only just realised, that was his greatest fear.
With an effort, he resumed refilling the flask; screwed the lid on tight.
‘Don’t you want to know?’ Her crab apple of a face scrunched up with frustration. ‘Maggie and Edward. They’ve an understanding.’
Her voice lingered over the words, but if she continued talking, he didn’t hear. He was out of the kitchen.
‘Here. Don’t you want your flask of tea?’
He found her leaning over the gate to the top field, watching the newborn lambs springing across the grass.
‘Hello.’ She gave a wide, open smile. ‘Aren’t they gorgeous? Look at that tiny, black-faced one.’
She pointed to one of the smallest, gambolling towards its mother; still wobbly on its soot-black legs. But he didn’t want to talk about the lambs.
‘Is it true?’ He stood stock-still in front of her.
‘Is what true?’
‘That there’s something going on between you and Edward. That there’s some sort of understanding?’ He searched her face, trying to detect if Joanna had been exaggerating. ‘You’re not … you’re not going to wait for him, are you?’
She shifted away from the gate, her lovely face pinched and closed.
‘Has that girl being spreading rumours?’
‘Is it true?’ he persisted. To his shame, his voice wobbled, and he felt a flush of blood rush up his neck.
‘And what if it is?’ She tossed her head, and looked at him in a challenge. Her eyes were hard, and he could see Evelyn in her for a second, hear her in her high-handed tone with its potential for contempt.
‘I haven’t said I’ll marry him or anything … just, you know, that I’ll, well, court him, I suppose you’d call it, when he gets back.’ She gave a little harrumph. ‘The poor boy’s going off to war. What was I supposed to say?’
He was silent. How could he explain what he had barely admitted to himself, and what could he do to make things better? He thought of how they had danced together, just the afternoon before, and briefly held hands. Of the warmth of her hip beneath his fingers, the curve of her waist. It had all been so fleeting: their chests primly apart, though he was all too aware of the rise and fall of her breasts just inches from him; the smell of her freshly washed hair, the top of her head within kissing distance. He must have touched her like that for just a couple of minutes, but they were the most intoxicating of his sixteen years.
‘I just thought you might have told me,’ he managed, at last.
‘Oh, Will.’ She gave a quick, affectionate laugh. ‘Is that all it is? It only happened last night – and it’s just a silly thing. Nothing official. Nothing formal that will bind me. Goodness!’ Her tone was as bright as a hard-boiled sweet. ‘I don’t know why I’m having to explain it to you, at all!’
She reached out to touch his upper arm – the reassurance you might give a dog or a child. He shifted brusquely away before her fingers brushed him. He couldn’t bear it: her treating him like this. Behaving as if everything was all right, all very jolly, and there wasn’t a splintering in his heart.
‘This won’t change anything, you know. I’ll still do my leaving certificate next year, then my teacher training, and get a job. And I’ll still come back to Skylark. Crikey!’ Her voice turned shinier than ever. ‘The war might continue for ages – and goodness knows when Edward will get back.’
He might not come back at all, Will thought, and felt an automatic spasm of guilt at the idea, and the fact it filled him with sudden hope.
‘S’all rig
ht,’ he muttered, rubbing at some lichen at the top of the gate and wishing he could expunge Edward for ever. She wanted Edward of all people. ‘Just came as a bit of a surprise. I wasn’t expecting it, that’s all.’
‘It’s not going to make a jot of difference,’ she said, in that over-jolly voice she seemed to be using for him now. ‘It won’t happen for ages, and, even when it does, we’ll still be just as firm friends.’
She looked at him, her smile wide and bright, though her eyes looked troubled and sought his reassurance.
He gave her a tight, polite smile, and wondered how someone so clever could be quite so stupid.
Thirteen
They were feeding the fortnight-old calves, when it happened. It was a two-person job: Will clamping a calf between his thighs while Alice scooped the milk into her mouth and helped her drink.
James was hosing down the muck in the milking parlour, and Uncle Joe was leading the cows back to the top field to graze. The grass was at its most lush at this time of year, sodden from the April showers and sprouting up thick and fast. The cows, kept in over the winter and fed on dredge corn and silage, couldn’t get enough of it.
So Will didn’t see the accident; didn’t spot Clover slip on the wet slick of dung on the concrete standing, just before the yard’s cobbles, and do the splits on the floor.
He heard her though. A frightened moo, her voice dipping then rising in a surprised cry as she crashed down, cracking her femur.
‘Easy, girl. Easy, does it.’ James, a herdsman with thirty years’ experience, got to her first. ‘We’ll need to use a pulley.’ He assessed the cow, which watched him, silent and trustful, only the grinding of her jaw indicating that she was in pain.
Will moved his hand to her belly and felt her rough hide quiver. Her sides kicked; she was due to calve in eight weeks’ time, but her calf didn’t seem distressed. If they could just get her upright, perhaps all would be well. But the process of righting a heavily pregnant cow weighing nearly ninety stone was always going to be hard.
Moo-oooo. She began to call again as they wheeled the pulley over to her, placed the harness under her front legs and tried to lever her upwards.
Moo-oooo, mmmmmoo-ooooo.
Her front legs slipped and skidded before the rope snapped under the strain of lifting such a heavily pregnant beast.
‘I can’t do it,’ Will gasped as she came crashing down.
James wiped his face with his hand. ‘See what Farmer Retallick says, but I think ’tis broken.’
‘Her leg?’
‘At the hip bone.’
‘I couldn’t hold her.’ Will knew he sounded pitiful.
‘Not your fault. She did the splits, didn’t she? Just one of those things.’
They both looked at the cow, one hip poking higher than the other at a freakishly jaunty angle. Will crouched down to comfort her and turned his head so that James wouldn’t see he was close to tears.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ Maggie’s voice rang across the yard as she half-ran from the kitchen.
His heart plummeted. She was the last person he wanted to see.
‘Where’s Father? Why can’t you get her up?’
‘We tried. The pulley broke. The two of us can’t shift her.’
She looked at him, and smiled, as if the solution were simple: ‘Then we all will,’ she said.
She grabbed at the broken rope, and crouched down to place it beneath the Guernsey’s legs.
‘It’s all right, my darling. We’re going to right you.’ She patted the cow’s flanks and stroked her head gently.
‘Maggie.’ Will bent down opposite her and stayed her hands. ‘We think her leg’s broken.’
‘But it can’t be.’
‘We think it is.’ He said it quietly, calmly.
She looked down at their hands, hers warm beneath his, and he dropped them abruptly.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
They had barely spoken since he had confronted her about Edward. That was two weeks ago, and, in three days, she would return to Bodmin. Frankly that was all he wanted. He didn’t know how to behave around this new Maggie. This thing with Edward had made her unreachable. And then there was the way in which she spoke to him, when they did talk: like a jolly big sister. The girl who nestled next to him on their ledge, who taught him to swim, had disappeared for ever, and he didn’t like the young woman who had appeared in her place.
The cow lowed again, ground her teeth and tried to struggle upwards.
‘James?’ Uncle Joe was running into the yard now. He crouched beside the milker, assessing her hip bone.
‘We were about to dry her off, weren’t we?’
‘Last day of milking.’
‘Ruddy hell.’ The farmer chewed his bottom lip.
He looked at her hips again. ‘Will I get the vet? See if we can save the calf.’
‘Might be too early.’
‘Sixty days; yes it will be.’
‘And,’ the herdsman gave a cough and glanced at Maggie and Alice. ‘Not sure as I trust him. They weren’t too pleased with him last week at Tredinnick.’
‘Well. He’s had a lot on his mind,’ the farmer said.
They remained silent. The vet had killed a horse clumsily at the neighbouring farm the previous week, taking three shots to manage it. ‘’E e’dn much cop,’ James had told Will afterwards. ‘A shifty bugger,’ the herdsman had added.
‘I’ll get him just in case we can save the calf.’ The farmer paused. ‘I’ll get him now,’ he repeated, and it was as if they all needed to be convinced.
Patrick Trescothick had a wild look in his eye as he peeled himself from his Talbot Sixteen and ambled into the farmyard. Will felt his usual irritation and something more perturbing: that distinct shiver of unease.
The third of his brothers had just died in action, and perhaps it was grief that had tipped his cockiness into something unnerving. His thick dark hair was dull with grease and his face grey, as if he hadn’t washed recently. He was only twenty-eight, but suddenly seemed older. His beauty had become as tarnished as a shilling soaked and then offered up by the sea.
He seemed reckless, too. Yes, that was the word. From the way in which he pulled a shotgun from the back of the car, without seeming to check the safety catch, to his half-stumble over the cobbles, to the over-the-top nod of appreciation made to Maggie and Alice, who watched, intrigued.
Perhaps he had been drinking? James was watching him through narrowed eyes, and Will wondered if he thought the same. As he walked past, he caught a hint of whisky remembered from a London Christmas. It wasn’t even nine in the morning.
‘You wanted me, Joe?’ Mr Trescothick stood the gun on the ground, and leaned against it as if it was a stick. He bent down next to the cow. ‘Yes, I can see that you might do … Poor old girl. Well, there’s nothing for it, is there?’
Uncle Joe nodded, his jaw jutting forwards like Maggie’s when she was trying not to mind.
‘You can’t save the calf?’
‘Wouldn’t live this early. Would just burden you with another vet’s bill.’
The farmer cleared his throat. He hated to lose any animal. ‘Well, I have one of them already. Such a waste: of a good cow, and your time.’
‘Do you want me to do it?’ The vet looked up at the farmer and Will saw a challenge in his eyes. ‘Not a problem. Killing seems to be all the rage, these days.’ He stood up, his height filling the small space between them, and gestured, theatrically. ‘Anything’s fair game, isn’t it? Cows, dogs. Even men.’
Will ducked his head. So this was what grief did to you. Allowed you to say what was usually kept quiet. He swallowed, wanting Mr Trescothick to shut up: to revert to being his usual flippant self again.
‘Do you not think so, Will?’ The vet came so close he could smell his breath, then raised a finger and let it hover near his chest. He didn’t jab – there was no need – he just let it rest there, barely touching. Will glanced at the shotgun; the ha
ndle in the vet’s left hand, his index finger stroking the trigger, lightly. For a moment, he felt a shot of intense fear.
Then Uncle Joe came forward, breaking the tension.
‘The boy feels for your loss, Patrick. We all do. It’s a terrible thing you’ve experienced.’ He paused, his face impenetrable. ‘But perhaps I’ll deal with Clover, all the same.’
‘No, I insist.’ The vet smiled, his eyes steely. ‘You’ve called me out anyway so there’s no extra charge. And I’m a clean shot, whatever they’re saying at Tredinnick.’
‘I’ve no doubt you are.’
‘Then that’s settled.’
Will watched as Joe tried to assess which was the worst of two evils: offending a bereaved man by questioning his ability, or allowing him to shoot an animal, anyway.
To his surprise, the farmer nodded to the vet. ‘Right you are then.’
‘Fine.’ The vet, so cocksure a moment earlier, suddenly seemed a little uncertain. He rubbed at his right eye with the back of his forefinger, ran his hand through his hair.
Will glanced at the girls. Alice looked pale; Maggie, pinched – her body shrunk in on itself, her usual bravado gone.
‘Best be getting on with it,’ the farmer said. ‘Maggie, Alice: inside.’
‘But I want to be with her.’ Maggie looked from the cow to her father.
‘I said go inside.’ Joe Retallick, usually such a measured man, sounded angry. ‘Go and help your mother. This isn’t something you need to see.’
She turned and walked back to the farmhouse, her back rigid with fury, Alice racing away.
‘Are we ready then?’ Patrick Trescothick tossed his shotgun from his left hand to his right, as if bored.
The cow looked up at him and made one final effort to stagger up.
Uncle Joe bent to pat her side. Will crouched down on his haunches and stroked the velvet skin at her temple. She rolled her eyes, showing the whites.
‘Come along, come along.’ The vet was impatient. Will waited for the vet to bend down, too, to stroke her flanks and offer a brief word of reassurance, to calm her in the moments before death. But he was having none of it.
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