Meanwhile, work on the reservoir continued at great speed. Every day now our once-peaceful village was choked with trucks, vans and the noise and fumes they brought with them.
‘D’you think people actually know,’ I asked Lena, ‘what has to happen for there to be fresh water in their taps?’
‘I suppose it’s convenient, but there’s a price to pay, isn’t there?’
‘Yeah, there is – Syndercombe.’
Yet amazingly, many of the locals had already accepted what was happening, calling it progress and ‘for the greater good’ and saying how a country that had beaten Hitler deserved the very best for its growing towns and cities. I suspected this was something Mr 128Clatworthy had told people – and told them again – until they believed him. Village talk was full of what was happening next, not what had been. All eyes were on the future.
In a way, I could understand it: we too, were taking a huge, exciting step into the unknown with the Channel swim swap, which, if it worked out, would change our lives for ever. Yet I also knew that saying goodbye to Syndercombe was going to break my heart.
Already in the lower valley the dam wall was visible over the treetops. It’d gone up so quickly my brain couldn’t make sense of seeing so much concrete against the bright, budding oaks and elms. The fact that spring had arrived and the valley looked so beautiful made it harder. I’d been born here. My mam had died here. It felt wrong to move her from the churchyard to the new cemetery in town. Yet that day was fast approaching, which made me all the more determined not to lose Lena as well. Our wildly unlikely plan simply had to work. For it to stand a chance, though, I’d need to be on board the pilot boat: the question was how to make it happen.
*
129Quite by chance, a peach of an opportunity came along one day after school. We’d taken the horses out for a ride: with little work for them to do nowadays, they were excitable and fresh, so we went for a canter over the fields. Back in the village, we stopped at the post office because we’d heard Mrs Lee had sugar mice in stock and it was first come first served. As Lena went in to buy some, I waited outside with the horses.
‘What do you think about leaving here, boy?’ I asked Perry, clapping his neck. ‘D’you fancy going somewhere new?’
Though there’d still been no word on the Blackwells’ plans, I was certain they’d be moving to another farm. Mr Blackwell wouldn’t be parted from his beloved horses. Him without Perry and Sage was like me without Lena, the sun without the stars. It wouldn’t – couldn’t – happen.
Just as Lena exited the shop with an impressively large bag of sweets, Mrs Lee called her back.
‘You girls don’t have a minute to deliver this, do you?’ She was holding a telegram. ‘Only my usual boy’s got chickenpox.’
‘Who’s it for?’ Lena asked, craning her neck to see the address.
‘The captain. At Hadfield Hall. You’ll have to be 130quick to catch him, he’s moving out this afternoon.’
All week we’d seen removal vans going to and from the hall, carrying carpets, oil paintings, crates of straw-packed valuables.
‘Doesn’t he have children to give it to?’ Lena had asked, when Ma Blackwell told us what the captain couldn’t fit into his new house was being sold at auction.
‘There’s never been a wife or a child.’ Though she’d said it with a nervous cough which made me wonder if she wasn’t telling us everything.
I reached for the telegram.
‘We’ll do it, Mrs Lee,’ I agreed.
Hadfield Hall had always intrigued me. It was built in Elizabethan times as a hunting lodge, and rumour had it Queen Elizabeth I had stayed there. The house had very tall, twisting red-brick chimneys: the new reservoir, so Ma Blackwell had said, had to be especially deep to cover them. There was another reason too. Hadfield Hall was where Mam had worked, and I’d not been back since she died. This would be my final chance to visit.
Perry set off at a raking trot, Sage having to canter to keep up.
‘Slow down or I’ll drop the sugar mice!’ yelled Lena.
Easing into a walk, we turned left before the ford, and followed the lane uphill slightly. A hundred yards 131or so along it, we came to a pair of iron gates that today were almost lost under the ivy and knotweed. The drive itself looked neglected too, and ended in a courtyard so familiar I almost burst into tears.
There was the old horse trough and beside it the smaller, lower one for the captain’s dogs to drink from. Various herbs still grew in pots outside the kitchen door, and the boot jack, caked in fresh mud, hadn’t moved from its spot by the tack room. I almost expected Mam to appear, duster in hand.
We slid down from the horses, knocked on the back door, and waited. From inside came the sound of furniture being moved. Someone shouted instructions. A door slammed.
‘I don’t think they heard you,’ I said, when no one appeared.
Lena tucked the telegram under her arm, flicked her braid over her shoulder, and this time used both fists to pound the door.
Still no one came.
‘Wonder what’s in this telegram?’ Lena muttered, flipping it open.
‘Lena!’ I gasped, shocked and impressed. ‘You can’t just open—’
The look on her face shut me up. 132
‘What is it?’ I cried. ‘What does it say?’
She thrust the message at me to read.
‘ONLY ONE SWIMMER PLACE AVAILABLE FOR JUNE *stop* PROVIDE NC DETAILS BY RETURN TO SECURE DATE FOR SWIM *stop* Fiona Lamb.’
NC had to be Nate Clatworthy. The details, I guessed, would be his address, date of birth, and maybe – just maybe – anything else the officials might need to know, like, for instance, who would be accompanying him on the pilot boat.
Before I could read the telegram again, Lena snatched it back, hastily refolding it.
‘Someone’s coming!’ she hissed. ‘Act normal.’
The door opened. There, in the hallway, was the last person I expected to see.
‘I … I was just leaving,’ Ma Blackwell stuttered, clearly taken aback. ‘What are the horses doing here? More to the point, what are you doing here?’
I was wondering the same thing about her.