‘Tom, Tom, the Piper’s son …’
The Austin’s engine chugged rather than sang as it tackled the shallow incline past Tillow Hill, a cloud of dust billowing behind to mark its passage. Always the son, never the daughter, Tilly thought bitterly.
‘Stole the pig and away she run …’
Run? She’d marched out. Families should shelter, not judge, surely? There’d been no haven for wounded chicks at her home, though – not unless she betrayed everything she believed in. Yet what, ironically, was she doing now? Why, motoring straight towards another family, her brother Laurence’s. Life at the Rectory was different, however, Ashden was different, and they sang to her a siren song.
‘Over the hills and far away …’ In the mildness of the Sussex air, it would be all too easy to abandon the fight, and let England drowse on. But she couldn’t, and some day soon she would be forced to leave even Ashden.
As the Austin motored over the brow of the hill, she glimpsed Lovel’s Mill and now the first tentative leaves of Gowks Wood, the cuckoos’ wood. It was early April and Ashden’s children would be listening eagerly for the sound of the first cuckoo, just as Laurence’s brood used to when they were younger. Caroline her favourite, Isabel, Felicia, Phoebe and nephew George. Well, my pretty darlings, here comes your cuckoo! Tilly laughed, but soon stopped, for it hurt to do so, and, besides, there was no humour left in her.
She turned the wheel of the tourer to round the bend, and the wind caught her face, attacking even the secure moorings of her black toque, and assailing her dustcoat. It exhilarated her. Something was thudding as loud as the engine, her heart perhaps, if she still had one. Then the wind was breeze, and before her was the rose-red warmth of Ashden.
From Stumbly Bottom, wild daffodils and primroses sang of spring, trumpeting her arrival, but the woman did not need trumpets. Already, perhaps, she had been over-daring, by choosing to drive here by motor-car. Call it her gesture, her snook at disapproving Society. Ashden, she thought with a touch of impatience, could call it anything it dashed well chose. She had promised her brother to abide by Ashden’s rules while she was here, both in the Rectory and in the village, and that meant slipping back into the role she had filled at home – no, not home any more, at Dover: dutiful, all fires damped down, and waiting.
Such had been the pace of events in her life recently, however, that it was nearly two years since her last visit to Ashden, and the village unfolded itself in one panoramic swoop as memory’s clutch released its hold. Bankside, rising from the Withyham road to red-brick cottages, the ugly Village Institute, the proudly white Norville Arms, and beyond it Nanny Oates’ cottage. She must go to see Nanny tomorrow; she’d be expected of course, Tilly realised with pleasure. Over to the left was St Nicholas, Laurence’s church, and beyond it the village high street. Wasn’t that a new sign? Teas! Who for, she wondered. Outside boys were playing, spilling all over the roadway. Marbles? Of course, in readiness for the great Marble Day of Good Friday in a few days’ time. A girl was bowling a hoop, pinafore skirts flying. Wryly, Tilly noted that she, who believed so fiercely that England needed change, was already being seduced by a scene that was yesterday, today – and, if she knew Ashden, had every intention of being tomorrow.
People were looking up. Surely now, in 1914, motor-cars were not so unusual even on this remote Sussex road? Motor-cars were the future, however, even Ashden must see that. She was glad that in a spirit of bravado she had kept the top down, for this, the Austin’s first outing since its winter lay-up.
Taking a deep breath, she gripped the wheel to turn in to the familiar driveway. Who would come racing out to greet her? Anyone? She gave a defiant toot on the hooter as she swept around the garden, its grass still sheltering the countless daffodils and tiny blue scillas that dotted it in clumps under the trees.
Somewhere a dog barked, her tyres crunched on the gravel, still muddy from the March rain. Loving mud they called it in Sussex, because it held so fast to you. Like Sussex itself in the mind and in the heart. Somewhere a door slammed, girls’ voices were raised in laughter, sounds distanced by her own memories. She had driven over the hills and far away, and now ‘far away’ was here.
The smell of the rich earth brought out by the spring sun caught her with a rush of emotion for the timeless England she both loved and resented. The late afternoon sun mellowed the red brick of the rambling Rectory, and the front door was opening.