Freddy’s face regained colour almost the moment we stepped back outside into the warm evening and I was relieved to see it. There was no question now of dithering to telephone my cousin in the hope that she’d suggest I gave up the cottage and instead take a room in a hotel near her in Gloucester, nor did I spare much thought for worrying about strangers or the whereabouts of Mrs Cooke. This was more vital; this was my responsibility because I had brought him here.
The sense of it lurked in knowing that the time I had spent seeking that telephone was the time that had preyed on Freddy’s nerves until he had finally grown desperate enough to come inside to find me. His decision must have been prompted by a premonition of something very terrible indeed. I knew it had because the release as we left by that kitchen door shone in the flush that burned the boy’s cheeks. This was a kind of bravery that hurt. It was all wrong that such a kind, harmless youth like this boy should have ever known fear enough to think it necessary to overcome the memory of it in this moment for the sake of me.
I could see now that my cousin’s description of a wintery incident with the Colonel’s younger son had misled me. Her letter had led me to imagine something along the lines of an over-bred buffoon caught up in a tragic accident involving the March bad weather. The winter had been a chaos of deep snows and extreme freezes but, all that aside, several things were now very clear to me. The first was that the fracas in March was no more an accident than Mr Winstone’s collapse on his path. The second was that while my cousin had at least hinted that the chill of last winter had left its mark on the whole community, it had taken their reaction to Mrs Abbey’s mistake to make me realise the shadow of what had befallen still lived in this place. For Freddy, it dwelt in that house if not in that beautiful room with the bay window. And now there was a chance that the family was set to be brought back into his sphere again and a trace of the dread that haunted Freddy was even detectable in a grown man like the Captain. In the man it took a different form, but all the same, even in the Captain’s voice I thought there had been a glimpse of something that came strangely close to fear.
I could hear it in the boy’s voice now when he asked above the creak of the valley gate as it was opened and pressed shut, ‘They’re coming back then?’
‘They are,’ I confirmed gently. ‘Or rather, the Colonel is.’
I took Freddy swiftly onwards down the hill because I didn’t know what else to do. True twilight had descended in the time that we had been indoors and the hillside was a picture of warm summer tranquillity. I eyed my companion carefully as we neared the valley bottom. His face was angular in this light; sharp beneath unruly hair. He didn’t seem so much afraid now as resolutely expressionless as we passed beneath the scented dark of the small plantation of pines.
‘Did he say why the Colonel was coming back?’
I noted that Freddy didn’t consider himself one of the Colonel’s subjects. It was left to men like Danny Hannis to pay the squire his due deference. ‘No,’ I said carefully, ‘Captain Langton didn’t say why. He didn’t have much time because the train was being called. I imagine his father wants to come back and check that the harvest is progressing as it should. I do remember that he said something about the barley.’
‘Oh, is that all?’ He said it in that flat way youths have of dismissing something desperately worrying quite as if it didn’t matter at all. Then he said briskly, ‘They’re taking in a late cut of hay at the moment. The corn’s behind because of the late summer.’ It was said in a rush of an apology because he didn’t like to contradict. Then he asked in an altogether brighter way, ‘Do you think we should go and have a look at it?’
This last question was because we had reached the last turn of the track above the turbine house. The brickwork was rendered in crumbling plaster and it shone white before us against the curling black line of the stream. Now that I knew, this tiny hut really was quite unlike a dwelling. It was also unlike any electricity station that I had ever known. The power stations of London were great smoking beasts with towering black pillars for chimneys. This small brick house straddled a neat platform and water made a faint shushing sound somewhere beneath, where it was released following its racing fall through a pipe from a pond high up by the village. Further downstream I could just make out the broader area of the ford and, a short way beyond that, the end wall of my cousin’s cottage shone grubby silver where the trackway rounded the base of the hillside.
‘We can take a little detour to the turbine house to have a look, if you like.’ My agreement was given doubtfully. Then I perceived the fierce concentration in Freddy’s face and wondered if people persisted in asking him questions, probing what he knew, and it was this little inquisition he was presently bracing himself for rather than any particular concern about our recent trespass in that house. Immediately, I found I would like to examine the turbine house very much. ‘I know it would make me sleep more easily if I knew we’d done our bit to check that poor Mr Winstone has really left no sign behind.’
The change in Freddy’s demeanour was instant. It was, I thought, a reassuring sign that the boy’s life did not appear in general to give him much sense of fear but all the same I expended significantly less effort on looking the part of a valiant sleuth as I followed him over the last of the roughened hillside and worked rather harder at staying alert to signs of life.
There was no one here. The hut’s rotten door was locked. The single metal-framed window with its flaking white paint was securely fastened and nothing could be made out through the filthy glass. Concealed within would, I knew, be the neat little turbine and an array of vast batteries that stored the generated power for future use. It was all wonderfully clean and efficient, and also decidedly exclusive.
My voice sounded loud in the hush of a sleeping valley. ‘Don’t the villagers mind that their houses stay dark while all this awaits someone’s return to the Manor?’
‘Not really. It’s very old. It’s always been like this.’ Freddy seemed surprised by my question, which in turn surprised me. It seemed an odd mixture that he should dislike the Colonel and his family and yet apparently easily accept this. Freddy wasn’t set to be a revolutionary. He was just a boy who was very afraid that the Colonel’s return brought the threat of fresh harm to his tall and caring Matthew Croft.
We were peering for footprints in the baked mud of the bank above the stream. There was nothing there but the neat little hoof prints of thirsty sheep, at least nothing that we could see by starlight. There was nothing here to shake the overriding sense of my own care for this boy. I found that I was saying clumsily, ‘Mr Croft didn’t kill him, did he? Didn’t cause the son’s death, I mean?’
I shouldn’t have said it. I had only meant to establish the limit of the bad feeling between the Langton family and the other man before adding something reassuring, but the boy beside me, naturally enough, completely misunderstood my intentions. He was suddenly very ready to be angry.
‘No! Of course not.’ He stood there glowering at me in the night, hands balled into fists by his sides and hair all dishevelled again. This really was something that he was asked all too often. It also, I think, cut far too close to a memory of a near loss of his own.
‘Well then,’ I persevered gently. ‘I really think you needn’t worry any more. From the way Captain Langton reacted when I mentioned Mr Croft by name, it seems to me that the family is just as desperately keen to avoid an encounter with that past as you are. You mustn’t think the Colonel means to create a fuss by coming back, or that his return is designed to bring fresh upset for Mr Croft. Captain Langton was …’ I searched for a sensible way to put it. ‘Well, to be brutally honest, he sounded like a normal human being who’d had a bit of a shock when I mentioned that Mr Croft was helping Mr Winstone. You can believe me, Freddy. Really you can. So don’t be afraid for Mr Croft any more, Freddy, please.’
The boy blinked. I’d surprised him. He hadn’t expected my only objective to be plain reassurance. But he did, I saw with relief, understand it. For a moment, his fierceness had made him seem suddenly very young indeed. Then he abruptly relaxed.
Shyly, like a guilty child after a fit of the rages, he gulped and said quietly, ‘You’re very nice, Miss.’
‘Not really. It’s just the truth.’
‘You hope,’ he retorted, but he was only contradicting me for the sake of form. Then he abruptly abandoned the search of the riverbed and led the way across rough ground towards my cottage.
A drowsy bird twittered in one of the taller trees. It set off a cock pheasant, who set off another, and so on until the warning cry barrelled up and down the valley in a relay from one tree to the next. There were an awful lot of pheasants up there. Their voices mapped the twists and turns of the valley far beyond the point where it curved away into the smothering oblivion of darkness.
It made me think again that I really ought to walk Freddy home. I said as much and he sniggered with that boyish confidence that never fails to charm. ‘It would pose a bit of a problem though, wouldn’t it, Miss? We’d be up all night walking each other back and forth.’
We were at my garden gate. I set a hand on the weathered wood and tipped my head thoughtfully at him. ‘You don’t seem very nervous.’
I saw him shrug with hands in pockets. His attention was on a pebble he was turning underfoot. Tangled hair was falling over his brow as he said, ‘You said yourself that the fellow brought Mr Winstone home before he met you and bolted. There’s not much point in being afraid of a man like that. He probably didn’t mean to hurt Mr Winstone anyway. He’s probably just a vagrant who came back from the war a bit strange and Mr Winstone caught him unawares.’
‘You think it was one of Mrs Abbey’s squatters?’
The boy’s gaze lifted. ‘Well,’ he said simply. ‘No one who knows Mr Winstone would do it, so it must have been. Goodnight, Miss.’
And on that practical piece of reasoning, he left me and loped complacently off into the gloom. I walked rather less energetically into my cousin’s house and bolted the door. It was, I thought, one thing to be giving reassurance to a frightened youth about the way Captain Langton had spoken of Matthew Croft, but it didn’t do much for my own worries about letting the boy go. Responsibility always did take the form in me of a vivid awareness of the present set against all the things I should have done before but hadn’t. It was complicated marriage between duty and an enduring feeling of guilt that stemmed from all those childhood moments that had long passed and the knowledge that there would never again be a chance to repay what I owed to those people, so I’d better act well now.
But committed as I was to the idea of playing a fuller part these days, it must be said that helplessness was sometimes still preferable to the occasional experience I have had of the other end of the spectrum; the sheer chill of sometimes acting calmly where care and duty had united to override every other serious principle. Those were the moments that brought me into an acquaintance with the dark things in this world that I would otherwise have quite cheerfully ignored, and I hated them.
They made me wish I could run away. They saddened me. The idea that this life was placing me in the company of conflict filled me with a sense of hopelessness for the future and an urge to seek peace elsewhere. It was the principal motive for this visit to my cousin’s house, after all. Only now I had the memory of the other responsibility that had met me today; the one that had led me to pick up an old man from his path and brought me into an encounter with the long list of other worries that went with this place. So at this moment I was contemplating leaving this place again tomorrow and walking the two miles to the bus stop with a view to riding into Gloucester and joining my cousin, as if peace might be found there instead.
The single thing that checked me was my other fear; the one where I am afraid I will discover a few years from now that instead of finding the tranquillity I crave, I’ve actually developed a terrible habit of dramatising the more ordinary parts of life and fleeing from them for absolutely no good reason at all. So really I had no intention of going anywhere.
Except, of course, to bed and the hope that tomorrow would be an easier day.
Unfortunately, as it turned out, I also have a habit of falling into naïve optimism, and in this instance the lesson came in the form of a light knock upon the front door at about eleven o’clock as I prepared to go upstairs at last.
My visitor was Mrs Abbey and I’m afraid to say that for a brief childish moment I was tempted to feign deafness and leave her out there. But then maturity or responsibility or pure idle curiosity or whatever it was dictated that I opened the door and let her in.
As first entrances went, hers wasn’t favourable. The first thing she did as she stepped in a slinking manner out of the dark and along the cramped hallway was to eye the proliferation of oriental vases on the narrow shelf that snaked away at head height into the kitchen and remark, ‘I see Miss Jones hasn’t yet brought herself to clear away the old lady’s ugly knickknacks.’
They were very ugly and it was, I realised then, absolutely no wonder that I’d been running a long argument with the past and loneliness tonight. These feelings dwelt here in this house. Each of the rooms in this cottage was consumed by the fuss and clutter of a dead person’s tastes. In the hallway, my aunt’s commemorative plates joined a flight of ducks to soar away up the stairs. In the tiny sitting room, fading cross-stitch samplers competed for space with Victorian day beds and fragments of broderie anglaise. Upstairs, in the room designated to be my bedroom, there was just enough space between the display of thimbles and the miniature hazel hurdles for my suitcase and the bed. I’ve never met anyone before or since who could compete with the scale of Aunt Edna’s commitment to traditional crafts. All the time that I’d been working myself up towards going to bed, I’d struggled to convince myself that her shade wasn’t watching from the collection of shadows on the coat rack. She’d died six months ago and in hospital rather than here, but I wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t the sort to indulge in a spot of haunting all the same.
Suddenly, in an unexpected way, Mrs Abbey’s bluntness made me like her. It made me lead the way down the short step into the kitchen and I should probably explain why my cousin Phyllis wasn’t presently in it herself. The explanation for her sudden trip to the city of Gloucester had been left for me on the front step in the form of a note dated yesterday with instructions on where to find the key. Cousin Phyllis was trapped in hospital by the inconvenience – her words not mine – of a broken wrist. A friend of hers had scrawled a postscript upon the envelope with the information that the doctor was intending to keep Phyllis for a day or two yet and that this friend would drop by at some point to see that I was managing.
I thought for a moment that Mrs Abbey was the author of this postscript and that was why she was here. I even had the horrible suspicion that this woman was actually here now to break the news that my cousin’s bicycle accident hadn’t been an accident at all, and I had to add another act of violence to the day’s tally.
But she didn’t. She had nothing to say on the subject at all. She was far too busy proving that she was at least a little bit of a genuine gossip because she was enjoying the horror of the attack on Mr Winstone and the inconvenience of Eddington being half a mile on from here and the irritation that certain self-important gentlemen didn’t consider it necessary to drop a woman home.
‘Did you help them ferry Mr Winstone to the doctor after all?’ My bewilderment wasn’t easy to hide.
Eyebrows lifted. In the greasy light of the oil lamp on my cousin’s kitchen table, her hair looked more frayed about the edges than it had been before. The yellow glow was casting her cheekbones into strong relief and it made the shadows under her eyes stronger. She looked tired. But no weariness could affect her presence. She was, as I have said, rather tall and immaculately clad in a navy skirt and jacket, and she had a jaw that implied considerable strength of will and carried its own kind of beauty. There was, I’d noticed, something about the confidence of women of that age – all over thirty – who knew these days exactly what they were capable of and wore it as easily as a dash of lipstick.
Mrs Abbey’s mouth only formed a little smirk as she conceded, ‘If I’d gone with them on their little jolly to see the doctor, they’d have insisted on driving me straight home and I’d have been safely tucked up under the sheets by now instead of bothering you on your doorstep. No, the truth is I’m here because it’s getting horribly late and it’s still a long way home and I’ve done something rather foolish.’
The smirk eased to show a brief gleam of teeth.
I repeated blankly, ‘Foolish?’
She leaned in to confide dramatically, ‘I went to where it had happened and to see if this vagrant had left any signs behind.’
Ah. She wanted to discuss her squatters again. I disarmed her as best I could. ‘It’s not foolish at all. Freddy and I did exactly the same thing. Would you like a cup of tea?’
It was only after I made the offer that I remembered that my cousin’s kitchen was like Mrs Winstone’s house. Here too we were dependent on an ancient cast-iron range for any cooking. My parents’ home in Putney had running water, gas and electricity laid on. This kitchen had a big stone sink without taps, a tiny window that looked out onto the privy and the single luxury of a full jug of water on the sideboard waiting to be used. Unfortunately, I hadn’t lit the beast of a range yet and it was going to require a minor war to get it going. Then Mrs Abbey chose that moment to break the latest shocking news of the evening. She actually laughed at my offer and said, ‘No tea for me, thank you. I know where you get your water.’ Then, seeing my face, added, ‘You did know it came from the stream, didn’t you?’
I’d been drinking from that jug all afternoon. While I was hastily resolving to boil the water very thoroughly from now on, Mrs Abbey drew out a seat at my cousin’s tiny table.
The kitchen was whitewashed on both walls and ceiling and the clean austerity of the room was a direct contradiction of the clutter that swamped the rest of the house. I moved to the sideboard and propped myself there. Now that I’d let this woman into my home and gone through the brief flutter of companionship I had time to wonder why she was here at all. I prepared to let the silence stretch. I was beaten by Mrs Abbey’s sly sideways look and murmur of, ‘How did you get along with Freddy?’
Her manner puzzled me. It was the sort of tone a woman might use while probing an illicit liaison, only this boy was barely fifteen. I said helplessly, ‘He seems very nice.’
‘Didn’t you find him a little simple, poor boy?’
This was what she was probing. ‘No.’
‘I suppose you didn’t know him before, did you? That’s one thing that can be said for Matthew Croft, he’s certainly improved the boy.’
‘Mr Croft isn’t his father, is he? I mean, he’s not Freddy Croft?’
This question amused her. She laughed. ‘He certainly isn’t. Matthew married Mrs Croft in the spring. Or Eleanor Phillips, as was, I should say. And she isn’t his mother either.’
I conveyed my enquiry with a look. The name was not one that had made its way into my cousin’s letters. Which, to be frank, meant my cousin liked her.
Mrs Abbey added cheerfully, ‘Her farm is the one just up the lane from the village. You’ll see her out and about exercising her horses. Or, at least, usually you do but I haven’t seen her ride for a while. Freddy’s helped her with them since he was evacuated here. He’s from London, like you. Although perhaps not quite like you. His former home is presently a flat piece of ground in one of those cleared spots around the East End.’
‘And is yours?’
‘Pardon?’
‘You, me and Freddy; we’re all from London. It’s starting to feel more like home by the minute.’
Mrs Abbey looked askance at my comment. It made me realise what it was about this visit that felt slightly out of kilter with my expectations. She wasn’t here for tea. She wasn’t really here as my cousin’s friend and she certainly wasn’t quite succeeding at becoming mine. That was the point, I realised. The problem here wasn’t so much that I didn’t think that I would like her but that I felt she wasn’t quite letting me know her. I might have decided that I thought she was wrong for sifting through so many subjects just as soon as she entered the house but they were all shifting so rapidly from genuine humour into sharp edges that I still couldn’t say that even these rather harder gossipy kind of comments were truly giving me a clear measure of who she was.
Actually, there were two things I could tell. The first was that she didn’t have a very nice way of repaying the way everyone tended to be kind to her. And they did it without seeming to like her very much either.
I also could tell that she was only prepared to allow a discussion on her old life amongst the barrow boys of the London East End in that it gave her a chance to return to a discussion of those squatters.
‘Sweet of you, Emily, dear,’ she remarked with the crisp elocution that comes from superior schooling at an early age, ‘to imply that I rank amongst the Freddys of this world as an evacuee but actually my old home was levelled years ago for a new gas works. But if it’s Londoners you want, you’ll find this place feels even more like home soon. There’s a whole bunch of émigrés in a camp a mile or two away at the old air-raid look-out station on the Gloucester road.’
Her little conversational turn was so neatly done it made me smile. I understood at last why she’d been so keen to talk about Freddy. His origin would have brought us to this point if my comment about hers hadn’t.
I was standing with my back to the cast-iron stove leaning against the rail that dried the dishcloth. Mrs Abbey’s attention didn’t enjoy the subject of the squatters for long. Her mouth was already running on to fresh sympathies for the old Colonel and his prolonged absence which had allowed the squatters to arrive unchecked. At least, I thought she meant to seem sympathetic. What she actually said was, ‘Silly old coward. The whole family knows how to make a mess of things, so I suppose we shouldn’t expect them to step into the breach about this. I suppose your cousin told you about young Master John Langton’s antics and passed them off as if they were just a little misstep?’
I stilled against my prop of old metal while she added a shade sourly, ‘Everyone does it. It’s a great conspiracy of silence out of respect for the old man, but I can tell you that nothing the son did should ever be classed as forgettable. They have no right to do it to him. Master John was unreasonable, beautiful, vibrant and terrible and he gambled everything, including his life here, as if they were just counters to be won and lost. At the end, those fearsomely blue eyes—’
‘Mrs Abbey, don’t.’ The plea was sudden but forceful. The way that her voice dwelt on the man’s nature was almost like a caress.
My urgent interjection came as she drew breath to start telling me about how John Langton had died. Only I already knew how he’d died. He died like anyone does losing a game they had intended to win. Unwillingly.
She persisted, ‘Didn’t you say tonight that the man you saw was tall and dark?’
Now Freddy’s white face was in my mind, and the way the Captain had sounded when I had unwittingly dredged up the memory for him. When I didn’t manage to formulate a reply, she added it for me. Musingly, seriously, she added, ‘Yes. Yes, you did. When you were telling Mrs Winstone that you’d seen him on the path you said that he was wearing summer clothes that were too good to belong to a farmhand, that he had black hair and was tall. Lean, was it?’ This was as I corrected her. ‘Well that’s just another way of saying tall, isn’t it? And if he should have happened to have a limp …?’
‘I—’
She was sitting there with her hands spread on the table. It was the sort of manner a person contrives when they think they’re being very daring and I didn’t like it. I suppose I was easily spooked tonight. Her mistake in Mr Winstone’s house had sent all sorts of shadows racing about the room and Aunt Edna’s slightly mad collection had accompanied me all evening. I certainly didn’t need Mrs Abbey to begin conjuring the dead man’s shade from the corners again now.
I told her more clearly, ‘I don’t want to know about it. Don’t you think it might be time for bed?’
She didn’t take the hint. She told me with relish, ‘Master John had a physical weakness in one leg. He took a riding accident in his youth and his body never quite allowed him to forget it. Its waxing and waning was a barometer of his darkest moods.’
I think she could tell I was about to protest rather more precisely. She turned her eyes to an ugly vase on the high shelf before she said with a different kind of eagerness, ‘Of course, if you’re about to tell me that the man on Mr Winstone’s path today didn’t have a limp and piercing blue eyes—’
‘You think I remember the colour of his eyes?’
‘— There is someone else who matches that description, who didn’t die last March. Someone who is also tall and capable and to whom, for all they say he was innocent, everyone was happy to attribute all manner of violent tendencies until young Master John’s death put it clear out of their minds …’
Her gaze returned to me. It actually made me laugh. ‘Mrs Abbey, if you mean to hint at Matthew Croft, I have to tell you I think you’d do better to stick to the version that blames the squatters. There must be someone amongst them who matches your description of tall and dark with blue eyes.’
For a moment I thought my tone had shocked her. Then I realised that she was just amused by my tart adoption of her idea of Mr Winstone’s attacker. It didn’t really matter what I said I thought he looked like. She knew what I’d told them at the village.
With rather more frankness and rather less play at scandal, she asked me with a coolness that was the most authentic curiosity I’d had from her, ‘When you were with Freddy just now, did you see anything? Find anything he’ll feel obliged to tell the others?’
Oddly enough I appreciated the honesty of this open question. She wanted to know what we had found because if Freddy lived with Matthew Croft and Freddy told him that we’d searched the spot, she knew perfectly well that the information would not be returned to her. The exclusion almost explained her visit here, except that this might have just as easily waited until the morning.
I told her the truth. ‘We tried to look about but it was dark and more than a little unnerving. We didn’t find any great clues, if that’s what you’re asking.’
Mrs Abbey wasn’t smiling in the lamplight. This was the real woman and she was deeply alert for something. I could feel its energy emanating from her; building in hard waves ready to break. The thought came unbidden – ready to break like anger.
‘Mrs Abbey,’ I began tentatively, ‘Why don’t you like Mr Croft?’
Her gaze flickered and cooled to a wry smile. ‘I wasn’t very tactful earlier, was I? That man … well, that man is everything John Langton can’t be. He’s alive and he’s frustratingly reserved. He won’t talk about what happened, regardless of how I ask – and don’t look like you think I’m only probing for the sake of gossip because, believe me, I knew young Master John and of all the ways we could manage what went wrong, this conspiracy of silence so that we never dare to even speak his name is the worst kind of healing. There isn’t even a grave where we can lay his ghost to rest—’ Something passed across her face like a settling of control. Afterwards, her words were steadier and less inclined towards revelation. I still wasn’t allowed to know her. ‘And to crown it all, that man refuses to buy my old car that’s mouldering in my barn.’
Her mouth plucked into amusement. I mustered a vague smile in return as I was meant to. Then she asked in her own version of my earlier hesitancy, ‘Emily, dear, tell me the truth. Did you really see as little as you declared earlier? Or are you just displaying the practical city-dweller’s approach to a drama and walking swiftly by on the other side of the street?’
‘Do you mean to ask if I’m minding my business in case someone minds it for me? What do you think?’
Mrs Abbey hadn’t meant to offend. At least, I presumed not. She said benignly, ‘I think it’s very unfortunate that poor Mr Winstone can’t remember the man’s face …’
‘… Since that just leaves my description and I barely saw him at all.’ I finished the point for her. Foolish honesty made me add, ‘Although, I should say that I think I’d recognise him if I saw him again.’
I didn’t expect Mrs Abbey’s demeanour to transform to decisiveness quite so abruptly, but it did, all the same. The change might almost have been with relief. This feeling was certainly running high. She was suddenly dragging out a wristwatch on a broken strap from a pocket. I suppose it mattered to know that I knew enough that this man might be identified and caught; in a strange way I suppose it promised safety even if this night had to be got through first. And that in itself was a clue to her real purpose here, because then she was telling me about the footpath to her little farmhouse and doing one of those funny twists people do when they mean to point out its location only to find themselves waving a hand at the impenetrable screen of a wall. This was the reason why she was here. At last I understood that she wanted to feel in control and at last I was allowed to know the reason for all this odd circular conversation that she patently didn’t really enjoy. She’d given herself a fright at the turbine house and couldn’t quite bring herself to face the long walk up a darkened path to her farmhouse alone.
‘You could stay,’ I offered doubtfully. ‘Unless your hus—someone will be out looking for you?’ I’d almost said husband then and saw from the way she jumped that I’d cut rather too close to that deeply private pain. For a moment she stared at me with that vacancy of expression that a person gets when they’ve been tested unexpectedly on an unhealed wound.
Then the moment passed and she was saying with elegant amusement that was also very genuine, ‘What, will you make room for me amongst all the Welsh love-spoons? No, I’ve got to get back. It’s practically neglect as it is and if I hadn’t been foolish enough to meet with Mrs Winstone by the shop I’d have been home hours ago. The path from the ford is very overgrown—’
‘Let me just fetch a jacket,’ I interrupted, ‘and a torch.’
I stood up from my lean against the stove. Mrs Abbey’s eyes followed the movement. In the lamplight, her face was wan. ‘As easy as that? You’re coming with me?’ Her voice was odd. Shaken would be the best term I had for it, as though guilt strode in on the heels of getting what she wanted.
I pressed my lips into a hapless line. After all those musings on responsibility, this particular question didn’t even require debate. There were some things that you would agree to do without forcing a person to ask first.
I moved past her into the hallway. She rose to follow me and seeing her afresh in a different light I was startled to perceive the faint sheen of moisture on her skin. There was an energy to her movement that had nothing to do with her endlessly shifting humour. She had that look of exhaustion where she was growing so tired of her lot that she was coming out the other side. She was very glad I’d offered to come with her. It hadn’t been temper before. I’d mistaken it. This energy came from the unpleasantness of being horribly spooked by her night-time prowling and the release of finally admitting it.
I found the torch as I struggled into my shoes. It was jammed inside a large and genuine Grecian urn that stood beside the elephant’s foot umbrella stand in the hall. The umbrella stand was inevitably a mark of the old lady’s taste, but the urn might just have been my cousin’s. Phyllis’s war had been a rather different experience from mine.
Having lingered silently beside me for the past five minutes while I searched, Mrs Abbey abruptly spied a different object of interest. My suitcase was standing at the foot of the stairs where I had left it many hours before. She asked in a curiously strong voice, ‘Have we driven you away?’
I didn’t quite trust myself to reply. It was too complicated. So instead I blew out the last of the lamps and stepped out into the surprisingly well-defined landscape beneath a starlit night in August. My companion took the torch from my hand and waited while I fumbled with the key. It was an enormous thing and I had a vague suspicion my aunt had taken it, lock and door and all, from a church somewhere. I only hoped the church had been a more willing participant in the transaction than the elephant who had supplied the umbrella stand.
The night air seemed to revive Mrs Abbey. I heard the increase in the rate of her breathing while I struggled to turn the key. With the sort of embarrassed haste that, in my experience, is commonly used when one has just found a lost object in one’s own pocket after initiating an extensive communal search, I heard Mrs Abbey say, ‘You know, I don’t really need you to come with me at all. I’m bothering you unnecessarily. I’ll just borrow the torch, if I may, and return it tomorrow if I catch you before you go. Otherwise, I’ll leave it for Miss Jones. Goodnight. I’ll be quite safe, and thank you for the company tonight.’
She left me standing there so swiftly that I didn’t even have time to formulate a protest. Or perhaps I was relieved to believe her and let her go. The garden gate clanged shut and then I briefly saw her shadow as a darker shape against the white streak of the stone track. There was a brief flash from the torch as she found the path beside the ford and then the light was extinguished long before her shape was swallowed by the scrubby woodland at the base of the hill. Wood smoke that wasn’t from my stove hung in a silver mist on the silent valley air. The idea of darkness in this desolate place really took on a very different quality compared to the sooty gloom I had known in Putney.
Closer by, something rustled in the dry stalks of the bean plant behind me. It made me shiver and step back in through that heavy door very rapidly indeed. What, I wondered, had she been so afraid was waiting for her out there that she’d come to find me, only to abruptly change her mind? Because she had been afraid for a while there, I knew she had. It had been the only feeling she had shared, but it had been genuine. And then the feeling had passed for her with a suddenness that had carried its own kind of violence.
I bolted the door and checked all the windows. This house was wonderfully secure. No intruders would be working their way in here except in the same manner as the one who had lately stepped in after knocking on the front door. I shut out her visit like I shut out the night. It was, however, impossible to shut out the overwhelming sense that I had just escaped something, only I didn’t know whether the relief had really been hers.