Jubilee (24 page)

‘Never mind. We’ve got something for you, Robert and me. Follow me.’

It seemed a strange game to play.

‘Oh, and we’ll take this ahead of time.’ Martha pulled a mug off the top of the box. As they walked out of the tent Evie and Rachel were standing with their backs to them.
Rachel would still be feeling bad about that dropped relay baton. It hadn’t been her fault but Jessamy couldn’t bring herself to tell her this yet. ‘Come on.’ Martha gave
her a little nudge towards the fence. She squeezed herself through the planks, nimble as someone half her age. Jessamy followed.

‘Where are we going? I don’t want to miss the cake.’

Martha pointed to a grey car in the lane, one she didn’t recognize. ‘It’s your uncle. He’s got a surprise for you.’

Of course, the surprise.

‘Hello, Uncle Robert.’ She opened the door. ‘What’s the surprise? Mum was talking about it.’

‘Was she?’ For a second he looked flustered. Then he recovered. ‘It’s a trip to Australia.’ He held out a piece of paper in his hand. ‘Here’s your
ticket.’

‘What about a passport?’ Jessamy was on her mother’s passport, obtained last summer so they could both go on holiday to Spain with Rachel and her parents.

‘You won’t need it.’

‘Oh. I thought—’

‘We got you a brand-new one.’ Martha smiled. ‘Remember that lovely photo we took of you?’

‘That trip to Oxford, the backstreet photographer’s studio . . .’

‘You need to hurry, child,’ Martha said.

‘Where are we going? Australia?’ He’d already told her about Australia, about the animals and hot sun, the long beaches. ‘I’m going to Australia? Really?’
Nobody she knew had been to Australia. She’d be the first in the school.

‘Yup.’

‘What about Mum? And Rachel?’

‘Your mother knows. But she didn’t want to make a fuss about it in front of your cousin. It wouldn’t have been fair. I can’t take Rachel with us. It’s just you. You
can see how much your mother’s got on her plate. This will give her a bit of time for herself.’

Mum always was very fussy about being fair. She’d been pleased when Jessamy had dropped out of that race so that Rachel would have a chance of winning. She never liked Jess to go on about
successes in front of Rachel in case she hurt her feelings. It seemed strange that Mum hadn’t packed her stuff, though.

‘What about my clothes?’

‘We’ll get new ones.’ He held up the teddy bear she always slept with. ‘Got this for you, though.’ She got into the car.

‘Bye, Jessamy, be good for your Uncle Robert.’ Martha handed her the Jubilee mug and shut the car door. Jessamy still wasn’t certain, but this was
Martha
telling her to
go with him. Martha, who’d made clothes for her doll, taken her to look at the new lambs, shown her the right herbs to give to her pony so his coat would shine. Martha, who’d always
time to listen to Jessamy, who was never too busy or tired or flustered for her. Martha, who’d watched over her, so she’d told Jessamy, from the day she was born.

‘How long will it take to get to the airport?’ She’d enjoyed the airport last year when she’d flown to Palma.

‘An hour and a half.’ He started the engine.

She waved to Martha as they moved off. ‘And Mum will know where I’ve gone?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will she be OK?’ Jessamy bit her lip. ‘Can’t she come with us now?’

‘Not yet, sweetheart. She needs some time.’ He turned the key in the ignition. ‘You’ve got to be a brave girl, Noi.’

Rachel

2003

Robert Winter. I still couldn’t get my mind round it. More questions needed answering. They burned a hole in my tongue but still I managed to hold on to them. Even as a
child you could never get much from Jessamy by questioning. You had to let the information drop out of her at her own pace; even if it was just something as simple as the location of a
robin’s nest or the first strawberries. And I felt physically weary.

‘Perhaps I should leave you for now,’ she said, reading my mind. ‘It’s been a lot for us both to take in, hasn’t it? You’ll need time to catch up on all of
this.’

I nodded. Then felt terrible. ‘This is your home, Jess. You don’t have to leave it.’ I looked at the window, blind still open, revealing the grey, stormy evening.
‘You’ll get soaked. How did you get here, anyway?’

‘I walked. It’s only about two miles. But I won’t walk back. I’ll call a taxi.’ She pulled a mobile out of her pocket.

‘No.’ I put up a hand. ‘Stay here.’

She shook her head. ‘We need some space, Rache.’ I saw how white her face was. She looked as though she needed to crash out. So did I.

‘I’ll drive you. If we go now we can probably get through.’

The water in the lane seemed only a foot deep. To get to Jessamy’s guest house I’d need to negotiate the dip under the railway bridge: a flood blackspot. As we drove through the
village I could hear, above the beating of the windscreen wipers, the gurgling of water through drains. ‘Reminds me of floods we had in Queensland,’ Jessamy told me. ‘At least
here you don’t have to watch out for snakes being sucked up into the inside of the car as you drive through the water.’

I shuddered. She grinned and for a second my ten-year-old cousin sat beside me, trying to wind me up. ‘I won’t tell you about the crocodile we found in the garden one
morning.’

‘Nice surprise.’ It was a relief to talk like this. But the mention of a surprise had brought my mind back to the method Robert and Martha had used to lure Jessamy away. ‘You
thought taking you off on a trip to Australia was the same surprise Evie had mentioned earlier that Silver Jubilee day?’

She nodded. ‘Mum told me it was actually a new pony.’

‘She thought we’d have more fun riding with two ponies.’

Her head drooped and I wished I hadn’t told her that. She was probably picturing the two of us riding up on the Ridge-way, picnics in rucksacks. ‘And Robert Winter whisked you
straight to Australia?’ I went on, to change the subject.

‘Sydney first.’

‘With a new passport?’

She wrinkled her brow. ‘I don’t know how he managed that. But there was no trouble at the airport.’

I pulled the car up onto the bank as a large four-by-four approached. The driver gave me a thumbs-down. Looked like the road under the railway bridge wasn’t going to be passable.

‘I think we should turn round.’

Jess nodded.

‘We’ll be fine together back at the farm.’ I laid a hand on her arm. ‘Anyway, I may need you if this rain carries on.’

‘The roof,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it leaks. And you have to make sure the drainage ditch in the lane doesn’t get blocked.’ She smiled. ‘I remember, you
see.’

I turned the car round and headed back towards the village. ‘Tell me more,’ I said. ‘If you want to, that is.’

It felt safe in the car. I kept my eyes on the road and couldn’t see her face. Somehow it was less emotional that way.

‘Whatever he’d done with my passport it worked. No computer records and electronic passport reading devices at airports back then, I suppose. And he relaxed once we’d got on
the plane. I remember that bit. Once we were in Australia we took another flight in a small plane up to Queensland. Right into the outback, miles from everywhere, I couldn’t even show you
where it was on the map, that’s how remote it was. That was the first year.’ Words tumbled out of her now.

A question was on my mind but it was one that even the warm security of the car’s interior couldn’t prompt me to ask.

‘I know you’re wondering why I didn’t try and escape from him.’

For a moment I was looking at her mother, sitting silent and white-faced by the stove, her dog beside her.

‘You’re thinking that I couldn’t have missed my mother and my home very much if I didn’t try and get back.’ She sounded angry.

‘No, I’m not—’

‘How could I not miss Mum? I couldn’t work out why she hadn’t written. I was worried that there might have been more cases of TB in the cows. It seemed like such a strange
holiday for me: a dustbowl in the middle of nowhere.’

‘Jessamy, I know you must have wanted to come home, I—’

But she wasn’t going to let me complete my sentence.

‘I kept asking when I’d be going home again, when I’d hear from you and Mum. “Not yet,” he kept saying. “It’s so wonderful for me to have you here,
Jess.” But I kept asking when I’d come back to Craven. So then he told me . . .’ She sounded choked up.

‘What?’

For a second or so Jessamy couldn’t speak. I lifted my foot from the accelerator and changed down a gear so that we were moving forward through the murky waters very, very slowly.

Jessamy

Queensland, July 1977

Evie was sick. It was the only reason why her mother would not have written to her. By the third week away from home Jessamy knew this as a certainty. Her mother was unwell,
bed bound or in hospital. This was the only reason she’d let Jessamy go off without her. Could humans catch TB from cattle? She glanced over the breakfast table to Uncle Robert.

‘Is my mother ill?’

The colour seemed to drain from his face. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘She hasn’t written. She hasn’t even tried to telephone.’

‘It’s hard to ring Australia from England,’ he said, quickly. She couldn’t seem to get his eyes to stay on hers.

‘Is it very serious?’ She clenched her hands together so hard it hurt.

He swallowed. ‘Yes.’ He put down his cup of tea. ‘It was very bad, Jess. In fact . . .’ he paused. ‘You need to prepare yourself for bad news, sweetheart. I’m
afraid she died. I only got the telegram after you’d gone to bed.’ His face was set, rigid. ‘I was going to tell you after breakfast. I’m sorry, Jess.’

Her brain refused to accept what he’d said at first. Then the information started to percolate through the cells of her body, reaching the inside of her, her heart. She dropped her head to
her hands. ‘She can’t have died.’ The sobs were starting now, coming up from somewhere deep inside her. ‘She was fine when we left.’

‘It was an accident. On the farm. She slipped in the field and one of the heifers kicked her in the head. They must have been frightened. Perhaps a dog had got into the field.’

Hadn’t Mum always warned them about the heifers and dogs? ‘She can’t be dead.’ Her crying shook her as though a giant was shaking her by the shoulders.

‘She never wrote to me.’

His hand reached out and touched her shoulder. ‘The letters may have got lost. And you’re fine with me, aren’t you, sweetheart? We get along, don’t we?’ He sounded
upset himself.

‘Will we go back now?’ She looked up at him. The tears were flowing so fast now she could hardly make him out. ‘I want to go back to the farm.’

‘Listen, Jess, there’s no family left there.’

‘There’s Rachel.’

He paused for a second. ‘Her father’s taken her abroad. The farm’s going to be sold. There’s nobody to run it now. It’s really just you and me, Jess.’

No, she wanted to scream. She’d never have died without me knowing she’d gone. She wouldn’t let that happen.

‘I want to go to her funeral and see the grave.’ The tears were pouring so thickly now her shirt felt wet. ‘I want to see Rachel.’

The hand tightened round her. ‘The funeral’s been and gone and one day I’ll take you back to see the grave. But not now. I’m going to look after you. I’m all the
family you’ve got left now and I’m going to take such good care of you, Noi.’

Rachel

2003

Sickly yellow light bathed us. A car drove through the village towards us. ‘Robert was a bastard.’ I spat the words out. ‘What an utterly cruel thing to
say.’

‘And yet he wasn’t a cruel man. Not intentionally.’

The wake from the oncoming car left a wave which rocked us. I clutched the wheel, suddenly on the edge of feeling nauseous, of wanting to pull over and open the door and abandon the car. And
Jessamy. This realization shamed me. But it wasn’t my cousin I found overwhelming. It was the revelations she brought with her, the emotions which churned like the dirty water under the
wheels.

‘I know, I know, it’s a crazy thing to say about the person who ruined my life. But he didn’t mean it cruelly.’ She tapped her fingers on her head. ‘Up here he was
all broken.’

‘What happened then?’

‘We carried on at the cattle station for a while longer.’ She shuddered. ‘I hated that place so much. There was nobody my age to play with and it was such an arid, dusty place,
you couldn’t even go to school, it was all done by radio.’ She paused. ‘At night I’d cry and he’d come in and stroke my head and tell me he’d look after me. I
believed him. He was so . . . tender.’ She made a quick movement with her hand over her eyes.

‘That’s it for today,’ the teacher said over the radio. ‘Complete exercise five on page twenty-eight and exercises six and seven and send them in. Well
done, children, you’ve all worked hard.’

Jessamy said goodbye, switched off the radio and hung up her earphones. At home in Craven they’d have spilled out into the playground at the end of school, asking one another home to play,
or running down to the shop to buy sweets. Here she just had the dog to play with when she finished lessons. The small terrier gave a wag of his tail.

‘It’s too hot. We’ll go out later.’ She could read, she supposed. A box of new books had arrived this morning. Robert liked her reading. But the pad of writing paper she
kept on her desk drew her to it. She’d write another letter.

‘If it’s cool we can go riding later on,’ she told Rachel. Rachel never wrote back but Jessamy liked to keep sending the letters. Perhaps her cousin had moved house again.
Robert took the letters off every week when he went to the post office. She’d asked if she could come with him and he’d promised she could, now she was feeling better about her mother.
Now she was getting used to her new life.

‘And we’ll be moving on, too,’ he told her. ‘It’s too hot for you out here. I’m trying to find something nearer the coast. You’d like the beaches,
Jess.’