27

An Afternoon

FRIDAY 31ST JULY 2009

He met her at the station. This time there were no misunderstandings; both of them knew why she had come and what would happen. He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other holding hers. She shimmied over to his side so that their shoulders touched and their bodies collided at every bump and turn. Three times he stopped just to take her face in his hands and look into her eyes.

Parking the Land Rover by the barn, he took a blanket and basket out of the back and, without speaking, they walked hand in hand up the hill to the high meadow. The late July air was warm and scented. Some of the fields had already been harvested, ploughed and tilled. The hedgerows were tangled with wild flowers. Wolfe laid out the blanket on the ground and took Blaze in his arms, stroking her face and her neck with his lips. Wordlessly, he unbuttoned her shirt. She wriggled her hips slightly to help him free her jeans and underwear. He unclipped her bra and her breath caught in her throat as he kissed her breasts, her stomach and then her inner thighs. She rose to her knees and pulled his T-shirt over his head while he removed his jeans. Pressing their naked bodies together, they made love urgently, rolling off the blanket and into the grass.

Afterwards, they crawled back onto the rug and lay naked, side by side, warmed by the sun, their fingers and legs entwined. Raising himself on to one elbow, Wolfe kissed her face tenderly—her eyelids, her cheeks, her scar, her mouth, her throat—without taking his eyes off hers.

“I love you,” he said, again and again.

“I love you too,” she replied, knowing she had never uttered four words so sincerely. Happiness ripped through her. Rolling on to their sides, they looked into each other’s eyes. They made love again.

“I’m not letting you out of the valley this time,” Wolfe said when they were done. “Tell me you’re staying?”

Blaze hesitated. “There are still things to sort out.”

He sat up quickly and looked at her. “What does that mean?”

Blaze squirmed under his gaze. She’d wanted this for so long and yet, now it was happening, she was seized by panic. “I’m not ready,” she said, unable to articulate her true feelings: the fear of being vulnerable and of caring too much.

He shook his head in astonishment. “Not ready? How many more miscommunications, periods of silences, weeks apart do we need? This is ridiculous.” The last syllables caught in his throat.

Blaze sat up. “It came out wrong,” she stammered, trying to correct herself.

But Wolfe had heard enough. “Love is about actions not words. If I didn’t know about Trelawney, I’d assume there was someone else.”

“Of course there’s no one else,” she retorted. She reached out to take his hand, but he turned away from her. She half rose to her knees and tried to keep her voice level. “We’ve only just opened the house and it’s beginning to take off. Visitor numbers are picking up; there’s a lot more to do. And then there’s my mother.”

He sat up and searched for his T-shirt. “What is it with you?” he asked, his voice uneven. “The moment we get close, you pull away.”

“You froze me out for months,” Blaze exclaimed, irritated that he was putting all the blame on her.

“I thought, when you finally agreed to come here today, you had made a decision.” He stood and started putting on his jeans. “I can’t be with someone who puts their family’s past before their own future.” His voice was flinty.

“I have to settle my ghosts; I have to save Trelawney.” This, they both knew, was only partially true.

He was quiet for a moment or two. “I really care for you, but I can’t wait indefinitely,” he said, low and determined. “And I can’t cope with your vacillations; it’s too painful.”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Blaze replied miserably.

“It’s simple—you don’t love me enough.” He turned his back to her.

“You are so wrong.” Blaze got to her feet, naked, and walked towards him, catching his arm with her hand.

He shook her off. “I didn’t know it was possible to love another human being as much. I want to lay my whole self down before you, to protect you, to adore you, to love away your past hurts. There’s literally nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

“Joshua, please don’t,” Blaze said. “I love you. You must know that.”

He shrugged his shoulders and walked off down the hill.

“If you really loved me, you’d give me more time,” she called after him.

He stopped and looked back at her. “Another false horizon?” He laughed dismissively. “You prefer to be miserable in familiar territories than risk happiness in an unknown world. You care about your insecurities more than people. I fell in love with a brave woman, not a coward.”

Blaze remained silent; stung by his words, unable to think of any reply, she watched him walk away. The sun was still hot but she shivered violently. She found her scattered clothes and pulled them on. Below, she heard a car ignition and saw his Land Rover driving off up the lane. Clutching her shoes, she ran across two fields, grazing her feet on the sharp-edged golden stubble. She reached the farmhouse and sat down at the kitchen table to wait. Five minutes later, there was the sound of a car approaching. Her spirits soared: he had come back. She darted outside, but instead of Wolfe she saw a middle-aged woman.

“You must be Blaze. I’m Molly. Joshua asked me to take you to the station.” The woman had a kindly face. “Are you ready to go?” She was holding Blaze’s bag, left earlier in the Land Rover.

Blaze nodded miserably and followed Molly outside. Later, she couldn’t remember if she’d spoken a word on the way to Haddenham.

Blaze went back to Trelawney and moved out of the Mistresses’ Wing into her old childhood bedroom and waited for him to call. For the first week, Jane, without asking what had happened, looked after her like a mother tending to a sick child. She made Blaze soup and boiled egg and soldiers, never commenting when the food lay uneaten or sentences remained unfinished. Blaze resigned from her job in Bristol and threw herself into manual labour. She worked harder than anyone; there wasn’t a task she didn’t volunteer for, a chore that was beneath her. In the mornings she swam in the estuary until the water turned her extremities numb. At dusk she ran up the hill to the burial ground—all in a desperate, failed attempt to banish him from her mind.