We ate our supper in virtual silence that evening. My mind was full of what had happened and I knew that Elizabeth was thinking of it too. She had made a casserole of lamb and leeks and left it stewing in the range while we went for our walk. I’m sure it was delicious but I ate it automatically, one forkful after another, barely tasting a morsel. After a while I pushed my plate aside and got up. I couldn’t sit opposite her in that silent kitchen any longer.
“I’ll go and fix the window,” I said, “before it gets too dark.”
She nodded but said nothing. She had pushed her plate aside too and I could see that she had eaten less than me.
All the way along the lane, I thought about that kiss and was overcome with shame. What had I done to her? She was a person, who according to all reports, was repelled by physical contact and I, in my jealousy and stupid longing, had violated her just as cruelly as my brother had. I hated to imagine what she must be thinking about me.
“Hello, Dick!” A voice broke through my thoughts and I looked up to see Fred Darlington, attired in his police sergeant’s uniform, walking along towards me. “I was just coming round to your house,” he said. “The Gate House has been broken into.”
I held up the hammer and the jar of nails I’d taken from Billy’s workshop. “I know,” I said. “I was just going to fix the board.”
“I’ll come with you, then.”
Elizabeth had found the front door key to the Gate House in a kitchen drawer and I had it in my pocket. In those days we never locked our doors, but I thought that perhaps now it might be a good idea. Something of a deterrent to the village louts if they tried to break in again.
I was glad Fred was with me once we got to the cottage and started on the repair, for the board was heavy and I’d have struggled to hold it up on my own and to hammer in the nails at the same time. “Damned youngsters,” Fred growled as he held the heavy piece of wood in place for me. “It was probably the Kirby boys and some of their pals. Right tearaways. Jeff Kirby will end up inside sooner or later.”
I thought about those children that Mrs Kirby used to leave in the pram outside the Golden Lion and remembered how Mother had condemned her. Jeff must have been one of them, poor lad. Dragged up, fostered out, sent to children’s homes, always in trouble and his brothers and sisters the same. As it happened, he did go prison later on. He got a couple of years for breaking into the mine office and stealing the wages, but after that, he came home and behaved himself until he joined up. He was killed at Tobruk, leaving a nice wife and a school age boy. Young Mrs Kirby used to do a bit of housework for me, until she married again.
But that evening, repairing the board in a sharp rain fall that was now set in for the night, I had nothing but anger for the whole Kirby family.
“Thanks, Fred,” I said when we’d finished and I’d locked the door securely. “Our Billy’s away, you know. I’m in charge and don’t want to let anyone down.”
Fred pursed his lips and shook his head. “Wouldn’t do to upset him,” he said and grinned to let me know that it was a joke. I think he felt embarrassed about what he’d told me before.
I laughed too. “You’re right there.”
Still grinning, he picked up his helmet and brushed down his jacket. I thought he looked smart in his navy blue uniform. Authoritative. But then I supposed I did too in mine, although the material that our khakis were made from, was very rough and you had to work hard to get the creases into the trousers. Our tropical clothes were better, but of course, out east we had dhobi wallahs to do the washing and ironing. I hadn’t worn my uniform since I came home, managing for the first week on my one civilian suit and a couple of shirts, but our Billy was having none of that.
“Come into town with me,” he’d said on the Friday and we’d gone to the men’s outfitters in town where he bought me a Harris tweed jacket and two pairs of slacks. He even paid for new underwear and a good pair of shoes.
“I can’t accept all this,” I’d hissed when the sales assistant had moved away. I was ashamed of having to be supplied with clothes as though I wasn’t able to pay for my own.
“You can and you will,” said Billy. He wouldn’t brook that sort of nonsense. “You can work off your debt,” he added, “if it makes you feel better. And there are spare overalls and boots in the scullery so you can keep this lot clean.”
Mother had kept some of my old clothes in the press in my bedroom, but they no longer fitted me. I had grown a lot both in height and breadth in the eight years away and these schoolboy’s clothes were good for nothing except a jumble sale. I had a good look at myself in the glass too while I was searching for socks in my old dressing table. The face that looked back at me was almost that of a stranger although uncomfortably, another face flickered through from the depths of my memory. It wasn’t as if this was the first time I’d seen myself in all the years I’d been away, but here, in this old familiar setting, who I was and who I had been, seemed desperately distant from each other. Now it was a man who stared back. A man with dark red hair and tanned skin with lines around his eyes even though he wasn’t yet thirty, a man of some experience and a man who could hold his own in a company of rough soldiery. I thought of the pale carroty youth I’d been and alone in my bedroom I laughed. How could I have possibly imagined that Elizabeth could have loved me then? I’d been nothing more than a child.
Fred broke through my thoughts again. “Come and have a bite of supper with Miranda and me,” he said. “She’d love to meet you and I want to introduce her to my best friend.”
I was touched. He still regarded me as his best friend and I was glad of that but I knew that I mustn’t go this night. Things had to be said between Elizabeth and me. I wasn’t going to allow what had happened earlier to become another subject in the Wilde household that wasn’t talked about.
“Thanks, Fred,” I said, “But can we make it another night? Perhaps tomorrow? I’ve got things to sort out at home.”
“Tomorrow night, yes,” he said, “even better. I’m off duty and it will give Miranda time to prepare something.”
We parted at the gate, him turning towards the village and me back to the farm. “Dick,” he called, as I walked away, “bring Elizabeth with you.”
The light was on in the kitchen when I got home but the room was empty. The supper things had been cleared away and a fresh pile of ironed clothes lay on the table, smelling sweetly of washing soap and the outdoors where they had blown about on the washing line in the morning air. I wondered if Elizabeth had gone to bed but as I stood, frustrated that she had escaped further discussion, I heard a noise at the scullery door. The dog, Tess, trotted into the kitchen, wagging her tail and shaking her coat. It was damp and redolent of the fields.
Elizabeth walked in after the dog and I once again I could feel my heart melting. In the soft light, she looked younger, her hair curling after the rain and her cheeks pink from the recent exercise. I could no longer wait.
“We have to talk,” I said.
“What about?”
I groaned. “You know what about.” She was so frustrating. How could I make her sit down and talk to me?
She took off her mackintosh and went into the scullery to hang it on the row of hooks. When she came back in she still wouldn’t look at me but went to the range to move the kettle onto the hot plate. I waited anxiously for her to speak and watched her face. But when she did open her mouth, I was further frustrated.
“Do you want tea?” was all she muttered. I could feel the blood rushing to my head and knew that my fists were curling.
“No!” I shouted. “I don’t want fucking tea.”
The shouting and expletive shocked her and when she turned round to stare at me I could see fright in her eyes. I was immediately ashamed.
“I’m sorry,” I apologised, “I didn’t mean to swear. Forgive me.”
Her nodded agreement was slow and wary and I was sick with myself for upsetting her so. I knew what she was thinking. That I was the same as my brother and maybe the next thing I would do was hit her. I swallowed and forced myself to calm down. This was the last thing I’d intended.
Cautiously, I walked across the room so that I was beside her and I took her hand in mine. She flinched and went to draw away but I gently held on.
“Look, Elizabeth,” I said, softly. “I am truly sorry about what happened in the Major’s cottage. It was wrong of me, but,” and here I faltered, uncertain about saying what I was really thinking. So many feelings in this house were hidden, so much was never said that the occupants lived in it flat and unreal, like two-dimensional figures. In our home, all was on the surface, nothing beneath could be explored and if I didn’t speak now, it wouldn’t matter. Billy would be home in two days, Mother at the end of the week and in a month I would be gone. Everything would stay the same and life would carry on as usual. Perhaps that was indeed the best way.
But as I looked up at her, preparing to apologise again and leave it at that, I saw the glint of the necklace showing through the open neck of her blouse and knew that she had once felt something for me. I had to speak.
“I have loved you since I was ten years old,” I said, now not daring to look at her but addressing my words to the shadows in the corner of the room. “Before I went away, I had planned to tell you, but I was too young, too stupid and cowardly to speak up. And then you chose to marry Billy and I lost my chance. But I have never stopped loving you, not once. I don’t think I ever will.”
I took a deep breath; it was out. The secret I’d kept from her all these years, I’d finally managed to admit and in a way I did feel better. Maybe, I thought foolishly, she might laugh about my childishness and tease me out of my solemnity and we could then get on with our lives as before. My passion then would somehow magically transform itself into simple filial affection.
But first I would have to make sure that she realised that this afternoon had been a mistake. “I don’t know what came over me in the cottage,” I said and gave a short laugh. “I think that place holds too many memories for me. Unsettles me. You know.”
I dropped her hand and plunged mine into my pockets, waiting for her to say something, but she was silent, her face turned down towards the kettle. My heart was bumping. We weren’t a family who expressed emotions, that’s now how we’d been brought up and I’d broken a lifelong habit. I was scared and wanted desperately for her to respond. But I knew that she wouldn’t. She had lived with our family for far too long.
But there as ever, I was mistaken. Elizabeth slowly reached out her hand to move the kettle off the hot plate and turned round. When she looked up at me her eyes were glittering with unshed tears and before I could speak again, she put her face to mine and gently kissed my cheek.
“Don’t say you’re sorry, Dick,” she said, “for I’m not. What we did this afternoon was the best thing that has happened to me in eight years. I’m glad you held me. I’m glad you kissed me. I wanted you to.”
It’s so hard for me to say how exultant I felt then. Elizabeth had wanted me to kiss her. She had wanted to be held and loved. Loved, that was what it was. She loved me, like I loved her, now I knew it and it was bliss. Any thoughts of Billy and Mother flew from my mind and I bent over her again and took her in my arms.
All these years on I can still remember that rapturous feeling. It was glorious, so exciting and breathtaking. Our embrace now had a sense of urgency, quite different from how it had been in the cottage. There, it was sudden snapping of the moral sense of two people who had been taken by surprise. Now it was passion. We tore at each other, mouths and hands exploring and intimate and I knew that we couldn’t stop. No words were needed, as we walked hand-in-hand out of the kitchen and up to the little bedroom above the front door.
These things are difficult to talk about, but still so alive in my memory. The smell of my sweat mingled with her fresh scent, the feel of her delicate hands on my bare skin and the softness of her body as I crushed it beneath mine. I have only to close my eyes to see and feel that surging emotion and even all these years afterwards, the breath catches in my throat as I remember that first time I made love to Elizabeth.
She cried afterwards but I knew that they weren’t tears of fright or shame. It was as if a great dam had burst and all that she had been holding in and hiding from the world had exploded into the light.
“Don’t cry, my darling,” I crooned, holding her closely in my arms. “Don’t cry.”
But she sobbed as if she could never stop and all I could do was lie there in the narrow bed, rocking her and kissing the soft skin of her neck until eventually the shuddering breaths subsided and she became more peaceful.
“Don’t worry,” she whispered after a while and managing a small laugh, “I’m all right now.”
“You’re better than all right,” I growled. “You’re wonderful. I love you.”
She laughed out loud then and when we made love again it was glorious and joyous. We were two young people enjoying the most natural act in the world and for the moment, not caring about the consequences. When we’d finished, the bed groaned in relief as we collapsed back against the pillows.
“I am so…” Elizabeth sighed, giggling gently.
“So what?”
“So relaxed. I can’t believe any one could feel like this.”
“Mm.” For once I couldn’t speak. My heart was so full that I felt in danger of those stupid tears that I had been so prone to as a lad. Nobody could have been as happy as I was, that night. So happy, that I refused to think about Billy or the inevitable consequence of what had just happened. I would leave that until tomorrow. Now all I wanted to was to drop off to sleep with Elizabeth in my arms and wake up to the first morning of my new life.
I turned my head to look at her. Her eyes were closed and she was beginning to breathe deeply. I couldn’t resist tracing my finger across her smooth jaw line and kissing those dark lashes that rested so tenderly on her flushed cheek. She gave a little wriggle and tucked her body more closely next to mine so that we were like two spoons in a velvet-lined box. We slept.
I woke next morning, at first confused about the strangeness of my surroundings and then as I remembered, happy. It was light and I was alone in the bed. I rolled over to look at my wristwatch that I’d left on the floor with my hastily thrown clothes.
“God!” I said. It was already eight o’clock and the men would have been at work in the milking parlour and the barns for two hours. Elizabeth must have got up and brought the cows in from the field, a job that I’d been doing since I came home, so that they would be ready for milking when the men came. She had let me sleep on.
When I rushed into the kitchen, barely washed and still buttoning my shirt, Elizabeth was dishing up breakfast to the farm hands. She paused, holding the big black frying pan, which held half a dozen fried eggs, poised above the table. The three men turned round to look at me. I was surprised to see that they uniformly had expressions of sympathy on their faces.
“You feeling better, Mr Richard?” said the oldest of the men. He was facing a plate piled high with eggs and bacon and reaching for a piece of home-made bread. The mere sight of it made my stomach growl and nodding a good morning to them all, I went to sit at my usual place.
“Miss Elizabeth said you’d been taken with a bit of a fever.” This from the younger man. “Having a lie in.”
Ernie, the lad, said nothing but just gazed bovinely at me while he chewed on a piece of bacon. His life had improved with Billy’s absence and that’s all he cared about, he couldn’t have guessed that I had spent the night with the Master’s wife. The others might though, if I wasn’t careful. I looked up to Elizabeth and saw the grin hovering at the corner of her mouth. She had covered for me.
“Yes,” I said seriously, “a touch of malaria. You get it out East.”
“Aah!” they nodded sagely as though they knew all about tropical diseases and were absolutely prepared to believe that I was ill. That was all very well, but I was famished and wanted to join in on the breakfast.
“I’d go back to me bed, if I were you,” said the first man. “You’ll do no use about the yard.”
I shook my head. “Oh, I’ll be all right. When you’ve been soldiering, you get used to worse than this. A bite of food will set me up.” And I nodded to Elizabeth, who kept her eyes away from mine. I could tell she was working hard not to burst out laughing while she set a plate in front of me and poured me a big cup of tea.
I was kept busy for the rest of the morning in and about the farm, trying hard to give the impression of a person bravely carrying on, despite illness. Elizabeth spent her time in the dairy, preparing cheeses and butter for market and the gallon of cream for the weekly delivery to the best hotel in town. I managed once to pop my head round the door and ask how she was this morning.
“I’m wonderful,” she said, not bothering to lower her voice and indeed, she looked it. She had a lightness about her, a grace of step that hadn’t been there before, and her face? Well, her face was lovelier than I could ever have imagined. The flush that had followed our love-making remained and she seemed to be glowing with health and happiness.
I wondered if the men had noticed and remarked to each other as they worked in the big field. How would they put it, I mused, after I’d left her and gone back to my tasks in the stables? “Miss Elizabeth looks right bonny today, mind,” one of them might say.
“Aye,” the other would answer, “must be because the Master’s away and Mr Richard is seeing to her.”
My own cheeks flushed at this imaginary conversation and the coarse laughter that could ensue. In no time, the gossip would be all over the village and in two days time, when Billy returned, the scenes that might follow didn’t bear thinking about.
The men left at five o’clock and we were finally on our own again. I stood aimlessly in the kitchen and watched her, as she packed the baskets ready for the market and took them to the pantry.
“Fred Darlington wants me to go for supper at his house,” I said, following her into the long narrow room. I had forgotten about his invitation until now. “He invited you too.” She said nothing but I could see her back stiffening. Elizabeth had become something of a recluse and now didn’t socialise about the village. In all the years since she and Billy had been married I doubted that they had more than a couple of meals away from our own kitchen.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Oh, come on,” I said, “we’ll have a bit of fun.” In truth, I would have preferred to stay in the house with her. We hadn’t touched since last night and I think we both felt shy but I knew we were going to. I put my hand on her shoulder and immediately a frisson of excitement ran through my stomach and into my loins. I bent her back against the cold slate slab and nearly devoured her with fervent kisses. This time there was no coy walking upstairs hand in hand. I took her on the quarry tiles as bold as one of the farm animals and she put up no resistance. She was equally keen, crying and panting out her enjoyment. Then we laughed like two naughty children and struggled to our feet.
“Oh, Elizabeth,” I said, holding her to me. “I do love you. You must be mine for ever.”
That wiped the smile from her face. She pulled away from me and walked back into the kitchen and sat heavily in the chair at the head of the table.
“I can’t, Dick,” she said with that old sad look. “You must know that. I’m a married woman.”
“Married!” I exploded. “What sort of a marriage is it when you don’t sleep with your husband for fear he’ll hurt you?”
She looked away and her head drooped onto her chest.
I pulled one of the other chairs close and sat in front of her, taking her hands in mine. “It’s true, isn’t it? He beats you. Everyone in the village knows it and even Mother told me that you were frightened of him. You just won’t admit it.”
For a moment I thought she was going to cry again but when she looked up her eyes were dry and cold. All the happiness and passion we’d just experienced had disappeared and replaced by such melancholy that I could have bitten out my tongue for having spoken. Like the impulsive boy I’d once been, I’d gone too fast with her and spoilt her happiness.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, “I shouldn’t have said that. I wouldn’t hurt you for the world.” And I got to my knees on the stone flags to put my arms around her waist so that she was, once again, close to me.
When she spoke, her voice was clear but seemed to come from a long way off as though she was reciting something she’d thought long and hard about for years. “He can’t really help it, you know,” she said slowly, putting her hands around my shoulders and resting her head on mine. “It’s as though he confuses passion with violence and once he loses control, he can’t stop himself. William thinks lovemaking is something dirty and he’s that sickened by it, that when he’s done he has to take his revenge. He thinks I’m a slut, you know. He told me on that first night of our honeymoon when I got into bed. ‘How can you lie there, barely dressed,’ he shouted so that I thought that all the people in the hotel would hear him. ‘But, Billy, love,’ I said, ’it’s our honeymoon. This is what happens.’”
She shuddered at the memory. “ ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But I never thought you’d be that eager.’ And afterwards, he gave me a slap on the face as a warning. ‘Don’t you be bold again.’”
I groaned. Poor Elizabeth, what a terrible way to start a marriage. She’d only been a young girl and it should have been the happiest time of her life.
“I put up with it for a year,” she said. “The slaps and punches and cruel way he had with me. I was no better than one of the animals in his mind. I was to be rutted and then ignored, if I was lucky. If I wasn’t, then I got what I deserved.”
I felt a tear drop splash down the side of my face. Was it mine or hers? It could have been either because now she was crying and her shoulders shook in agony while great drops had gathered at the corner of my eyes too. I wanted her to stop. It was an awful tale to tell and I couldn’t bear for her to be so broken hearted. But she had kept it to herself for so long that now it all had to be said.
“One night he came in from the barn where he had to shoot one of the cows,” she continued, “and was in such a temper, that when he came to bed he nearly killed me. ‘Slut,’ he yelled, ‘common whore,’ and words far worse than that. I jumped out of bed and tried to get out of the room but he grabbed me round the throat and started squeezing and squeezing until the room was spinning and was beginning to fade from my eyes. I don’t know where I found the strength to lift my knee but I did and caught him a right kick in his privates. He screamed and let me go and in that minute I managed to open the door and run downstairs. That’s where your Mother found me.”
“Couldn’t she do anything? Couldn’t she have spoken to him?” I was shocked to think that Mother must have known that this was going on and done nothing.
Elizabeth gave a bitter laugh. “Mother likes to pretend,” she said. “Haven’t you noticed? She’s got so many secrets of her own that she is terrified of anything being brought into the open.”
That was it, of course. I could see it now. “But you could have gone to the authorities.” My voice petered out even as I spoke. I knew that would have been the last thing anyone in my family would have done.
“We’re all right now.” Her tears had abated and her voice was stronger. “We don’t bother each other any more. Now that I’m in my own room and he’s in his, he can pretend that I’m just a farm servant again and have nothing really to do with me. I do my work and he gives me wages every month. It works well. As far as anyone else is concerned we are a respectable couple.” She took a deep breath and when she spoke again her voice was low and awfully sad. “Although unfortunately not blessed with children.”
It was a dreadful story and I wanted to ask so many questions but they would have to be for later, because she got up and smoothed her hand down my cheek.
“I love you too, Dick,” she said, “but I can’t leave here. I couldn’t shame him. As I said, I don’t think he can help how he is.” She walked towards the hall. “I’ve changed my mind. I’d enjoy that supper with Fred. I’ll go up and change.”
We could have been any young couple walking down the lane towards the Police House. I held her hand when we were alone but respectability demanded that we moved further apart as we came into the village. Few people were about, but the ones who were, greeted us normally, without any suspicion, although I was sure that I must have looked different. With the facility that lovers have, I had somehow managed to put aside Elizabeth’s sad story and simply think about what had gone between us.
“You look like that cat that’s got the cream,” said Fred while we were sitting at his table. Miranda had made a grand spread and was a cheerful girl with a nice nature and I liked her straight away. Once Elizabeth had got over her initial awkwardness the two women had talked comfortably and were even now chattering in the scullery as they washed the dishes.
“You give Richard another glass of beer,” Miranda had instructed her husband from round the scullery door. She had an uncommon accent and I had enjoyed listening to it. It made everything she said sound exciting and exotic and I could see why Fred had been entranced. “Elizabeth and I have pickled walnuts to talk about.”
Fred raised his eyebrows at that and jerked his head towards the door. “She tends towards bossiness. Perhaps you’ve noticed.”
I laughed. “I think she’s very nice and suits you well. You couldn’t have found better anywhere.”
“I know,” he said and then looking at the stupid grin that kept stretching my lips, he mentioned the cat and the cream.
“I’m just happy, that’s all.”
He was quiet for a moment and then looked slyly towards the scullery. “Elizabeth looks lovely tonight. Better than I seen her for ages.”
She had dressed in a white lace blouse and a slim mauve skirt and she did look radiant. The temptation to tell him, to tell anyone, was almost overwhelming. A wonderful thing had happened to me in the last twenty-four hours, something that should be shouted about from the rooftops. But I knew it couldn’t be. As with everything in the Wilde household, it would have to stay a secret. So I merely shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know why you think that,” I said.
The smile faded suddenly from Fred’s strong face. “Be careful, Dick,” he said.
That night, when we got home, we were calmer and lay quietly in each other’s arms exhausted by powerful emotion. I don’t know what Elizabeth was thinking, but my mind whirled with plans of how I was to get her away from here. Now that I had got her, I was never going to let her go no matter what might happen.