Ferney (46 page)

‘We can do it,’ she read from the letter. ‘We can if we set our minds to it. No more of this hit and miss.’ Nothing came and she made the dress as vivid as she could, the
pattern developing in her mind’s eye then shifting and disappearing when she lost concentration. She ran her hand over the denim of her jeans, feeling only thin cotton print, and the pattern
came back. In this other time she was standing by the stone seat, looking down at her leg, feeling the rent in the dress, looking up again in horror at Cochrane who was holding her wrist
tightly.

‘Let me go,’ she shouted. ‘You’ve torn it.’ She wrenched her wrist free, turned and ran down the hill towards the lane, knowing he was coming after her, praying
Ferney would appear, shouting for help when she could spare the breath. Then the ground lurched up to meet her as she stumbled in a hole, knocking the wind out of her as she crashed down, but when
she rolled over, hands up ready to fight him, it was cold winter and she was in her padded jacket and jeans and the year was 1990 again and she was alone on the hill.

As soon as she could breathe normally, she hurried down to the lane trying to compose herself and by the time she reached Ferney’s house and saw through the window, to her relief, that he
was moving around his sitting-room, she was in shaky control. He opened the door to her and then opened his arms when he saw the look on her face and she stood there in the hall, suddenly finding
peace, with his arms tightly around her and his cheek against hers. After some time he led her into the sitting-room and they sat down side by side on the sofa.

‘I tried to do it,’ she said, pacing her words carefully to avoid the fear. ‘I went up to the hill and I said the words and I imagined the dress the way you told me, but that
man came, Cochrane. He was there on the top of the hill and he tore my dress. I ran away and I fell . . .’

‘You
really
fell,’ he said, looking at the mud on her jeans.

‘Yes, I did, but I knew I was falling in . . . in the memory and I knew he was going to catch me and do something terrible to me.’

‘Cochrane grabbed you, up on our hill?’ He sounded incredulous, catching up with what she had said.

‘Yes, he did. He was beside himself, bright red. His eyes were bulging.’ She shuddered.

‘He got you there. I had no idea.’ Ferney’s voice was grim. ‘All I knew was you disappeared. That must have been the day. Was it summer?’

‘It was, yes.’

‘July the tenth, 1933. I’m so very sorry.’

‘It’s not your fault.’

‘It is though, isn’t it? I got you to walk back straight into it. I didn’t remember that was the same dress you were wearing. I should have. It got driven out of my head, I
suppose. It’s not only that though, is it? There’s more worrying you.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Gally, love. Listen to me. We’ve got extra sight, you might say, you and me. We’ve had thirteen hundred years to get to know human nature. There’s only a certain number
of things that happen, of ways that people feel, and we’ve seen all of them a thousand times, you and me. We’re good at people, have been for ages and ages. We can see what they really
mean in every little twitch of them. We always know it when the words go only halfway. It keeps us out of trouble and ahead of the game.’ He smiled. ‘You may be a bit cut off from it at
the moment, but it goes without saying we’re best of all at reading each other. You used to say you could tell my thoughts. I don’t know about that but I can certainly read your
face.’

‘Last night. I seemed to be talking to myself, giving myself a bit of a going-over.’

‘Why?’

‘I upset Mike.’

‘Oh dear. Have you made up?’

‘I couldn’t. He left. He drove off to London in the middle of the night.’

Ferney sighed. ‘That was quite an upset, then. What happened?’

‘We were . . . in bed and I called out your name.’

‘Oh no.’ He looked down. It sounded as if it hurt him and she thought it was the idea that she and Mike had been making love. He shook his head as if irritated with himself.
‘Then you say you started talking to yourself?’

‘I don’t know what it was. It was just this voice in my head that wouldn’t let me off the hook. It kept forcing me to say what I really thought about everything.’

‘It was you. It was all your wisdom, I expect. You’ve got it there, all locked away, and it knows when it’s needed and I would say it sounds like it’s definitely needed
now.’

She nodded. ‘I think I need all the help I can get. How can I get at it?’

He turned and gazed out of the window. ‘You mustn’t think I’m saying this for my own ends.’

‘I won’t.’

‘I think you’ve got to go back and try again, up the hill. I think you’ve got something big blocking you off there. Just do that and you’ll know how to play it, I’m
sure.’

‘But I’ll see Cochrane again.’ It was almost a wail.

He turned back to her. ‘No, listen,’ he said. ‘This time you’ve got to take me along.’

‘Ferney, you can’t possibly go up the hill today. You’re fresh out of hospital.’

‘I don’t mean like that. I mean take me along in your head. It was both of us were there, you know. That last time when Cochrane caught you, I wasn’t there, was I? If you put
me in your head too, you can’t go wrong. I’ll keep you safe from him. I only wish I could have done before.’

She thought about it and nodded. ‘Well . . . tell me about it. Give me a bit more to go on. How were we sitting?’

He moved a bit closer to her and put one arm loosely round her shoulders. ‘Like this, more or less. We were a bit out of breath.’

‘What were we doing?’

He looked at her and a slow smile spread across his face. ‘You might get a bit of a shock if I told you that.’

‘Ah . . .’ she leaned her head against his shoulder.

‘How does that make you feel?’ he said gently.

‘Like I did last night when I was more or less asleep and I thought it was you, like it was the best thing in the world.’

‘I’d like you to know how it should be. It’s a bit undignified being an old crock. When we’re both young together, it’s so good.’

‘I don’t see an old crock,’ she said. ‘I look into your eyes and that’s all I see, the inside, not the outside. You don’t need to feel ashamed of
anything.’

‘You were wearing the garland ring. Remember that. Get the feel of that around your head.’

‘I didn’t have that on when Cochrane . . . No of course.’ She answered herself. ‘If I’d been wearing it then, you wouldn’t have still had it.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘That will keep you safe. There was nothing to worry about that day. Everything we said and did was about love.’ Then he sighed again.

‘Fifty-five years,’ he said calmly. ‘That’s too long between the two of us. It makes no sense like this. It would be so good to be young with you again. I want that so
much.’

She got up. ‘I’m going back to the hill. Right now, while it’s fresh in my head.’

‘You’re a brave girl.’

‘I’ve got to do it. I know that now. There’s no other way.’

Up the slope she made sure she kept the image of Ferney beside her and, sitting down on top, she waited until she felt calm then thought of the slight pressure of the garland
ring around her forehead, the smell of the flowers woven into it. She put Ferney beside her in her mind and she wrapped the floral print of the dress around her. A strong physical thrill passed
through her so that she went no further for a while but was content to enjoy it with her breath coming longer and deeper. Then she tried the words and there seemed to be more of them.

‘We
can
do it,’ she said again. ‘We can if we set our minds to it. No more of this hit and miss.’ Ferney was beside her, his arm round her and his hand on her
breast, the finger and thumb gently rolling her nipple between them. She was flatbellied and her slim body was still singing from the love they had just made there on the hilltop, sure that no one
would interrupt them. She carried the immediate memory of hugging him face to face, straddling his lap as they moved in perfect, scorching unity under the dome of their sky.

He kissed her neck below her hair. ‘It seems a terrible thing.’

‘We’ve done it for illness.’

‘Some illnesses. The ones we know there’s no getting better from.’

‘Let’s do it for joy.’

‘I know you’re right. It will be so much better. There’s never been joy with anyone else. It’s only worth it when you’re here.’

‘Are we agreed, then?’ She had her face close to his with a wide, joyful smile. ‘Shall we swear to it, swear we’ll always, always do it whatever?’

‘Yes. What if one of us forgets?’

‘Then the other has some reminding to do, that’s all.’ She laughed and ran her fingers through his hair.

‘And if both of us forget?’

She stopped laughing. ‘Well, maybe that will just have to be that if both of us forget. But we mustn’t, we mustn’t. Other folks have God. We’ve only got us.’

He shook his head, amused. ‘You don’t know they’ve got God. You can’t be sure. Could be we’re luckier than them. They just stop, maybe.’ He stopped talking
then, holding her at arm’s length, looking at the woven hoop of flowers in her hair.

She let the silence spread for a while before she spoke again. ‘I think they might have. You know what it’s like when we die. The feeling that you’re going somewhere and
there’s the light coming at the end only we never get to see it. I like to think the others do get there.’

‘Doesn’t mean it’s God.’

‘Doesn’t mean it’s not. It’s something. Maybe one day we’ll find out.’

‘So long as we find out together.’

He stood up suddenly, staring at bushes down the slope of the hill.

‘What is it?’

‘Someone there, maybe. I saw something move.’

‘A rabbit?’

He stared for a long time. ‘No, it was too big for a coney.’

‘What then?’

‘I don’t know.’

She got up, put her arm through his and they started to walk back down to the house. A lark was singing and as she turned her head to it she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. The smith,
Cochrane, unmistakably. He was creeping away behind the hedge from the hiding-place where he must have watched them. Watched them as they made love? The thought sickened her. She opened her mouth
to tell Ferney, but shut it again. Three times already Ferney had clashed with Cochrane, having it out with the smith after his drunken propositions to her. Three times he had taken damage at the
smith’s brutal hands. The man was wrong in the head and she did not want Ferney to be hurt again, but she knew Ferney, for all his abhorrence of violence, would not shirk the issue if it came
to it so she stayed silent, and the present Gally, knowing the tragedy to come, could do nothing to change that. She found herself able to separate herself a little from this remembered twin, and
in doing so she was able to get a sudden sense of the depth of understanding she used to have at her command.

They were heading down the hill to the gate and beyond it the track was rough, potholed earth and stone. She was still submerged in this past time but now she made a bid to exert herself,
swimming to the surface of this joint person and reimposing the present. The road was tarmac. She was in control and her body had changed to enfold the baby kicking inside her. For the first time
she had managed the transition back to the present deliberately by herself, but it still came as a shock to lose Ferney from her side, to know that same man had gone on to a lifetime of loneliness.
She wanted him back. She stood, irresolute for a moment in the road, then turned towards his bungalow.

He knew as soon as he saw her that this time it had worked.

‘The nurse will be here soon,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got long. Tell me how it was?’

‘I learnt there was something I didn’t tell you that day,’ she said. ‘Cochrane was up there on the hill watching us. You thought you saw something. You were
right.’

He frowned, trying to remember. ‘Was I?’

‘I saw him afterwards and I didn’t tell you because I thought there’d be another fight. I should have done.’

‘It might not have made a difference.’

‘Oh yes it would. If we knew what sort of things he was prepared to do we’d have been more careful.’

‘He wanted you from the moment he saw you. It would have made him even madder to see you and me like that. So what are you thinking, that if you’d told me then maybe you
wouldn’t have died?’

‘I’m thinking that you wouldn’t have spent all this time by yourself.’ She took his hand. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘We could spend all our time looking back. No use doing it unless it helps you look forward. Tell me what else you learnt.’

‘I heard it all through. I know it was my idea and I know what it’s like for us to be together and to be young. I know the difference it makes when our bodies match each other like
our minds do and I know the house doesn’t matter a bit except as the place where we are both happy together.’

‘But can you handle it?’ he said

‘That’s the bit I don’t know.’ She gazed at him and the part she saw was the same young man who made her mind and body exult together. ‘I have a sense of a way that
seems right.’

He just waited.

‘I think I must do it,’ she said and he let out a long breath. ‘I can’t talk to Mike about it. It wouldn’t be fair. I think I’ll know for sure when the
baby’s born. If I know it’s you then I’ll know it’s what you want, more than you could want me there as a mother to you.’

‘You’ll know it’s me.’

‘Yes. But there’s another thing. That promise was about a simpler situation. The fact is Mike’s there and I have to think of that too. I had a feeling of wisdom up there.
It’s faded away a bit now, but I think it was telling me I couldn’t prejudge it, that I would know when the time came what I had to do.’

‘I can’t argue with that,’ he said, and looked out of the window as a car drew up. ‘I think the nurse is here.’

It wasn’t the nurse. It was Mike.

Effie Mullard was carrying a large shopping basket completely full of parsnips and it was not immediately clear whether she had just bought them or was perhaps trying to sell
them. Gally had taken Mike Christmas shopping in an attempt to get some seasonal spirit into their life. Three weekends had passed since his midnight departure and miserable return – weekends
in which he had skirted the issue, keeping the conversation on male, practical lines. On each of those nights he had said different variations of ‘I’m tired’, put out the light
and gone to sleep as soon as he got into bed, and in truth he did look tired. If he was keeping his outward emotions under tight wraps Gally could see there was a battle going on inside and she
wished it were in her power to help, but there was an equally powerful struggle going on in her own mind whenever she allowed it.