Kilgarthen

by Kilgarthen (retail) (epub)

  ‘Mostly.’ They left the field by an easy climb over the stone wall and were on open moor. Andrew felt the cross-winds tugging at his coat and buffeting his face. His eyes watered and he screwed them up. He knew from Laura that the mountainous hill up ahead was called Hawk’s Tor. He hoped they wouldn’t have to climb it. In this wind it would make talking rather difficult. He glanced at Tressa. The wind didn’t seem to have any effect on her. She wore the same inscrutable expression.

  ‘Is Jacka far from here?’ Andrew had to raise his voice to be heard above the whistling of the wind.

  ‘Yes, but I know where he is. I can follow his tracks.’

  ‘Can you?’ he asked incredulously. He couldn’t see any sign of anyone having walked over the moor. ‘How?’

  Tressa turned her head to look at him. Andrew’s heart fell, the expression on her lovely face told him she thought him stupid. She answered in one biting word. ‘Practice.’

  Andrew strode on beside her in silence. Trying to get to know this girl was harder than trying to crack walnuts with no teeth. After a while she stopped and spoke in the longest sentences he’d had from her yet. She pointed to the summit of the tor.

  ‘See up there? ’Tis said the ghost of a lost eighteenth-century traveller haunts the top of the tor. If you get the sun behind the tor at the right angle, like it is today, some of the rocks shine and form the image of the lost soul on horseback. He rode up there to try to see his way off the moor, fell off his horse and broke his neck. Keep looking and you’ll see him.’

  Feeling he was getting somewhere at last, Andrew shaded his eyes with one hand and peered up at the summit. He stayed motionless for several moments. ‘Whereabouts is the horse and rider supposed to be? I can’t see anything.’

  He received no answer. He looked at Tressa but she had gone on many yards ahead with Meg. She beckoned to him. Andrew walked forward eagerly but after only three steps he felt his feet sinking in thick mud. He carried bravely onwards, reasoning it must be safe as Tressa and Meg were standing on firm ground up ahead, then he cried out in fright as his legs sank down to the knees into a wet oozing bog.

  ‘Help! Help! I’m sinking.’

  Tressa stood and watched him, her face a straight mask.

  ‘Don’t just stand there, Tressa. Help me!’ Then the horror that he would sink down and disappear in a boggy part of the moor was replaced by a greater horror. Tressa and her dog had obviously skirted round what was only a small patch of bog marked by a growth of reeds, and she had deliberately let him walk into the bog to make a fool of him. She had probably made up the story about the lost traveller too.

  He dragged one foot to the side of the slimy sucking mud and followed it with the other. In four side steps he reached the edge and after a humiliating struggle he hauled himself out onto firm ground. Tressa had not moved. She and Meg were like two statues blending into the bleak background behind them. Only Tressa’s hair moved, lifting on the wind. She was still watching him.

  Sucking in a deep angry breath, he strode up to her. ‘Very well, Miss Davey, I get the message loud and clear! But it’s more usual when a woman is not interested in a man simply to tell him!’

  She didn’t reply and she didn’t change that same stone-cold expression. Andrew was completely at a loss with her. He shook his head. ‘You’re… you’re not human.’

  There was nothing he could do to pull even a few shreds of dignity together. He headed back the way they had come. When he got to the stone wall of the field, he turned to see if Tressa and her dog were still standing on the same spot. They were nowhere to be seen. He sat down on the wall and put his head in his hands.

  * * *

  ‘Come and look at all this.’ Joan danced about excitedly as her brother and niece came into the kitchen for their evening meal.

  Jacka laughed. ‘What’s up with you then? You won something on a raffle?’

  ‘Look! Both of you.’ Joan had laid out the contents of the box Andrew had left with her along the widest part of the dresser.

  ‘Where did all this come from?’ Jacka exclaimed, scratching his head and making a rasping sound on his thick coarse hair.

  ‘From Mr Macarthur. He said it’s the custom where he’d come from to return hospitality to travellers in distress. He said he was ever so grateful to us for helping him yesterday. Kind of him, wasn’t it? There’s more than what you can see there. I’ve put half a pound of butter in the cold cupboard. We haven’t had this much food in the house for years.’

  ‘He was here today?’ Jackie pushed out his lower lip and picked up a packet of sugar and a bag of plain flour, one in each hand.

  ‘Aye, didn’t you see him? He said he was going to look round the farm with you, like you said he could. He left here to find Tressa.’ Joan looked at her niece who was hovering behind the table. ‘Didn’t you see him either, Tressa? Oh, no! Don’t say he got lost on the moor!’

  Jacka turned to inquire and saw the defensive expression on his daughter’s face. ‘Well?’ Jacka demanded.

  Tressa tilted her chin and her dark eyes burned with defiance. ‘I saw him briefly. He didn’t like getting his feet wet so he changed his mind and went back to the village.’

  Jacka and Joan exchanged puzzled looks. ‘What do you mean he didn’t like getting his feet wet?’ Jacka asked severely.

  ‘Yes, what do you mean, maid?’ Joan repeated suspiciously. ‘He had proper walking boots on.’

  ‘Were you offhand with him?’ Jacka roared, beating a hasty path round the table. He clutched Tressa’s arm, gently but firmly. ‘Tell us what happened.’

  Tressa blinked, something she rarely did. ‘He walked through a boggy patch, that’s all.’

  ‘He what? He wouldn’t have walked through it if you’d pointed it out to un. Why didn’t you do that?’ Then as the truth dawned on him, Jacka’s face drooped to his chest. ‘You never made him walk through it on purpose?’ he wailed. ‘What on earth did you do that for? Are you bleddy mazed, girl? What’s he ever done to you? And him coming here and being so kind to us too! Well, I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You won’t taste a thing out of his kindness to we until you get down to the pub where he’s staying and apologise to un.’

  Tressa tried to wriggle away from her father. ‘But Dad—’

  ‘But Dad nothing. There’ll be no supper for you until you get back. Now you get up those stairs this instant and wash and put on a dress and off to the village with you. You’re not to take Meg with you and don’t you dare come back until you’ve put things right with Mr Macarthur. Go on, before I really lose my temper with you and smack you one.’

  Tressa rushed from the room and ran up the stairs. Jacka followed her to the foot of the stairs and shouted after her, ‘I should never have spoiled you the way I did! Just cus you’re the only child I’ve got left! That man’s got as much right to walk over the moor as we have! It all belongs to the Lord! And comb your bleddy hair!’

  ‘Jacka! Calm down,’ Joan implored him, pulling on his arm. She was worried when her brother got so angry he swore. ‘You’ll bring on one of your turns. She’s doing as you said, now leave her be. Come back to the kitchen and have a mug of tea. I’ll dish up the supper.’

  At his place at the table, Jacka kept up a barrage of grumbles. ‘She isn’t like no other young maid. Spends too much time on her own, she does. If she’s not working, she’s out on the moor alone or else she’s in her room reading, reading, reading those damned books she gets off the travelling library. Not romantic stuff but adventure and war stories. Where’s that going t’get her? You know, Joan, I wish she’d meet some nice young man and get married and give me some grandchildren.’

  * * *

  Lighting the candle in her room, Tressa pulled off her clothes and stood in her underwear, a long flannel vest and a most unbecoming pair of white cotton knickers. She poured out the hot water from the pitcher her aunt had carried upstairs for her into the bowl on the washstand. She shivered with the cold but she was
more concerned with the way her father had shouted at her. Jacka seldom got angry with anyone, especially her, but at the moment he was furious with her. Things had happened today to rock her private little world.

  ‘Blast Andrew Macarthur,’ she muttered, moving to the alcove where the few clothes she owned hung from rough wooden hangers on a rope. She took down a plain grey dress with contrasting white collar and sleeve cuffs, a dress that had once belonged to Daisy Tamblyn’s niece and was too young in style for her. She contorted her slight form to get the zip up at the back then impatiently fastened a row of tiny pearl buttons down the front. The dress was a reasonably good fit but Tressa wouldn’t have liked it if it had been made to measure and suited her. She preferred to wear her brothers’ clothes.

  Her brothers had been several years older than she was and had doted on her. She missed them desperately. From the moment they had marched off to war she had retreated into the world of boys’ adventures they had shared with her from comics and storybooks. She didn’t want a life outside that fantasy world or a life outside the farm. She objected to strangers coming into her life, whatever the reason. She couldn’t understand what interest the stranger with the hoity-toity voice who’d stumbled on to her father’s land yesterday could have in her or her family. She’d given him short shrift, but instead of getting rid of him for good, it had led to her having no choice but to see him again.

  Next she took a cardigan out of her chest of drawers. Joan couldn’t sew well but she was a good knitter. She had saved up the money to buy the wool and had made the cardigan from a pretty pattern for Tressa’s birthday two years ago. Tressa hardly wore it and it smelled musty. She wrinkled up her nose but she wasn’t really worried; she didn’t care what Andrew Macarthur thought of her. He had called her ‘not human’; she didn’t know what he’d meant by that, but she hoped he wouldn’t be happy to see her when she turned up at the pub. With a bit of luck he might have returned to London and her apology wouldn’t be necessary.

  Her legs were cold and she pulled a pair of thick black stockings out of her underwear drawer. This would mean she’d have to wear a suspender belt and she detested the very thought of it. In a fit of temper she threw the contents of the drawer onto the floor.

  The face that looked back at her in the small square mirror on the wall showed a sulky young woman with a pale face who looked much younger than her twenty years. She was narked that she looked so feminine. She wished the weather would wrinkle up her face and make her look rough and masculine. She yanked the scarf out of her hair and grudgingly obeyed her father by combing her hair until all the tangles were out. The longest length of the earthy-coloured mass that she shook down her back nearly reached her waist and as she retied the scarf she vowed that if she had her way she’d cut it all off in a short back and sides. Her father called a woman’s hair ‘her crowning glory’ and he had forbidden her to have it cut short; he only allowed her to trim the ends but she rarely bothered.

  Tressa hated upsetting her father and didn’t want to face him again until she’d come back from the Tremewan Arms. She crept down the stairs, put on her straight unflattering camel coat and her only pair of shoes, flat brown lace-ups, and reluctantly left the warmth of her home.

  Chapter 13

  ‘Oh, damn!’ Spencer was struggling to sew a button on one of Vicki’s dresses. When he tugged on a knot which had formed in the thread it snapped. He threw the dress aside.

  Ince got up from his chair across the hearth and picked it up. ‘You’re making a mess of this. She’s supposed to be wearing this in the concert, remember?’

  Spencer got up and paced the kitchen floor. ‘I can’t think why I let you talk me into letting her take part in it,’ he said moodily. He picked up one of Vicki’s toys discarded on the floor and dropped it in her doll’s cot.

  ‘It’ll do her good,’ Ince said bluntly. He was beginning to find it harder to stay patient with Spencer’s insistence on keeping Vicki wrapped up in cotton wool. ‘She’s got a sweet little voice and it will give her the chance to show what she’s been doing in her dancing lessons. It’ll help build up her confidence.’

  ‘Can’t think why I let you talk me into letting her take them.’

  ‘It’s what Natalie would have wanted for her,’ Ince pointed out gently. ‘She would have wanted Vicki to enjoy herself. Can’t you see that, Spencer?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Spencer admitted reluctantly.

  He went to the window over the sink, pulled the curtains aside and moodily stared out. The sky was cloud free and an illuminated indigo, sparkling with a myriad stars and a bright full moon but he didn’t notice them. He was thinking about what had happened in his house yesterday.

  He’d felt a little ashamed of his spiteful behaviour towards Laura after the Sunday morning service and it had been pricking his conscience as he’d driven back from Launceston. He’d asked himself why he was so hostile towards her. She was a reminder of her late husband and the way he had once hurt him and Natalie, but why did it matter so much? He didn’t mix much in the village; apart from church he just had the occasional drink in the pub so he wasn’t going to see much of her.

  Laura Jennings was a beautiful woman. Natalie had been beautiful. Did he resent the fact that the Jennings woman was alive while Natalie was dead? That was unreasonable. Was he that unreasonable? He hadn’t felt the least bit concerned when he’d heard Bill Jennings had died. He had upset Ince by refusing to attend the funeral and hadn’t given the dead man’s widow a single thought. It was suddenly seeing her outside his house, talking to Vicki and touching her that had made him behave in such an unreasonable way ever since.

  As he’d turned off Rosemerryn Lane for the farm he’d told himself to watch his attitude in the future; it wasn’t good for Vicki to see him sniping at people. Then he’d seen Laura’s borrowed bike and felt dismayed. Why was she so pushy? If she had come to ask questions about him and Bill Jennings then here with his child around wasn’t the time and place. He’d try to be friendly but tell her firmly the past was in the past and it would have to stay there. But when he’d found her in his bedroom, looking at the photographs of Natalie, something inside him had exploded. His bedroom was his sacred place. It was where he had first made love with Natalie and where Vicki had been conceived. It was where he had spent every bitter night without her since she’d died. How dare this woman invade his sanctuary? Only after he had blown his top and she had become hysterical had he seen how unfair he’d been. And Vicki had been badly frightened.

  The cold air seeping through the window chilled Spencer’s raised arm and he finally noticed the sky. ‘There’ll be a hard frost tonight,’ he muttered aloud. He began pacing the floor again.

  Ince had sat down with the dress and rethreaded the needle. Without looking up from his work, he said, ‘You’ll feel better if you take the courage to go and apologise to her.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Spencer returned guardedly, turning round and leaning his back against the sink. ‘You know very well what I’m talking about.’

  ‘Don’t you start preaching at me, Ince!’

  ‘I don’t need to,’ Ince replied patiently. ‘Your conscience is telling you what to do. Hate and unforgiveness is a terrible burden for any man to carry for five years. Add guilt to it and it could crush him.’

  ‘Who do you think you are? A damned oracle or something?’ Spencer felt cornered and fought his way out of it by making excuses. ‘How was I to know the woman didn’t have a happy marriage? I thought she was one of those women who spent their lives happily manipulating their husband’s career. Holding dinner parties for company directors and judges and hoping one day her husband will get a knighthood. I didn’t know that bastard had been cruel to her. You thought he was,’ Spencer asserted accusingly, pointing his finger. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Would it have made any difference? You found Laura guilty of a crime she didn’t commit merely by association. You would still have treated her cold
ly.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have gone for her so wildly!’ Spencer hurled across the room, grinding his foot in the corner of a rug and curling up its edge.

  ‘So, it’s my fault now, is it?’

  Spencer made a gesture of hopelessness. ‘Of course it isn’t. I just didn’t expect her to turn up at the house. I… I don’t know what to do now, what to say to her.’

  ‘Saying sorry would make a good start. And if you want Vicki to settle again you’ve got to show her that things between you and Laura are all right. She was really upset and you can’t blame Laura for that. You treated her disgustingly.’

  ‘You’re a good friend, Ince,’ Spencer said wryly, prodding the mg back into place. ‘You’re making me feel worse by the moment.’

  ‘That’s what friends are for, aren’t they? To put us right on our faults. Why don’t you go over to see Laura now? The sooner you say you’re sorry, the sooner you’ll feel better. You could invite her to tea tomorrow.’

  Spencer’s face had begun to show acquiescence but Ince’s last statement brought the anger back. ‘Invite her to tea! What the hell for?’

  ‘For Vicki’s sake,’ Ince stressed, remaining in command of the situation. ‘I’m sure Laura would come for Vicki’s sake if you put it to her in that way. The sooner Vicki sees the pair of you on good terms, the less time she’ll have to think about your quarrel and get things distorted in her little mind. She likes Laura. She can’t understand why, in her words,’ Ince pointed a finger, ‘you were being beastly to her, what you could have said to make Laura become hysterical. You did a lot of damage to them both yesterday. Laura you may not care about, but I do, and you’ve always said you’d do anything for Vicki.’

  Running his hands roughly through his fair hair, Spencer trod about on the spot then walked over to the armchair Ince was sitting in. He crouched down before his friend and put on his most appealing face. ‘You go and see her for me, just at first. Tell her I’m going to apologise. She seems to trust you.’