Jubilee (29 page)

Martha seemed like the only person who’d stayed the same. When I came back she was just as I remembered her. I didn’t treat her well, Evie. But she was always loyal to me, no
matter how I spurned her. She helped hide me when the barn burned down. We forgot about my motorbike, though. I’d left it in the lane. If the police had taken more of an interest in the fire
they might have asked Martha some searching questions at the inquest. Be that as it may, Martha helped me get away to Holyhead, where I caught the boat to Ireland.

Perhaps I felt guilty about having turned away from her before, back in the war. That’s why I kept in touch with her, writing occasional letters to her from Australia. And I came back
to Craven at the time of the Coronation in 1953. You didn’t see me, though. I watched you and Matthew. You were happy together. Martha wasn’t very happy.

My guilt about her might have been the reason why I paid attention when Martha told me to take the child. ‘Just for a while,’ she said. ‘Do it for Matthew. Let poor Evie
pull herself together and take care of things at Winter’s Copse. It’s hard being a widow and managing it all. Give it six months or a year and then we can see about sending Jess back to
the
farm.’

Just a year, I thought. But then when Jessamy was with me I couldn’t let her go. She was all I had: the only thing that wasn’t spoiled. When she was with me the voices in my head
seemed to die down.

The worst thing I did was tell Jess you were dead.

Thing is, Evie, I am no longer sure whether you’re alive or not. Perhaps you did die. I can’t always tell which of you is here. I pulled that jasmine plant out of this garden
because the smell reminded me of Thailand. But sometimes I still think I’m there.

I know I’m dying. I don’t know how to finish this.

I never stopped loving you. You won’t believe it, but it’s true.

I don’t know what else to say to you.

Robert

‘Psychotic episodes,’ I said when Jessamy had finished telling me the contents of the last letter. ‘He means he was off his rocker.’ The sympathy I felt
for Robert Winter seemed to ebb and flow. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forgive him for what he’d done to my aunt. And to Jessamy.

‘But the delusions took the same pattern: he was always trying to look after a little girl.’

She put a hand to her mouth and yawned. I sensed that my own weariness had settled like cement into my bones. I could hardly bear the thought of hoisting myself upstairs to bed.

‘Where would you like to sleep?’ I asked Jessamy. ‘You can have your old room if you don’t mind my sheets. Or . . .’ I hesitated, thinking of Evie’s bed,
which I’d stripped but could be quickly made up. ‘There’s your mother’s, if . . .’

Her eyes filled again. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I’d like that. It would make me feel close to her again. When I was little and had nightmares I used to go into her at
night.’

I forced myself to stand. ‘That’s where you’ll sleep then.’

We found sheets and quilt covers in the airing cupboard and with two of us it took only minutes to prepare the bed.

‘There’s something silly that’s been on my mind.’ She straightened a pillowcase. ‘I let you think that it was you who dropped that baton in the relay. It was
actually me.’

I had to think hard to work out what she was talking about. Then I remembered. The races at the Silver Jubilee party, just before Jessamy left.

‘I wasn’t a very good loser.’

‘I forgot about that relay almost immediately.’

‘You were always generous, Rachel.’

I laid a folded towel on the end of the bed. ‘Do you need anything else?’

‘Everything I need is here.’ Jessamy laid a hand on one of the pillows and stared at it as though she could see her mother’s face. The lump in my throat threatened to prevent
me from breathing.

‘Night then.’ I kissed her cold cheek and wondered how she’d sleep in that bed. ‘I’m just next door if you need anything. Just call.’

‘Rachel.’ She caught my sleeve. ‘You’ve been so kind. Thank you.’

I shook my head, unable to say more. But as I undressed I knew I’d simply managed to keep some of the doubts and mixed emotions I’d felt under cover.

I fell into immediate sleep, deep and dreamless. I woke with cautious daylight slipping under the blind. Seven-thirty, my watch said. I wondered whether Jess wanted an early
morning cup of tea. Last time I’d been in this house with her, twenty-five years ago, she’d woken before me and I’d met her in the farmyard coming back from a walk somewhere.
Where had she been? I sat up in bed, trying to remember if she’d told me.

Of course. She’d been up on the hill talking to Martha. Because that’s where Martha always was: up on the hill, looking down at us. My heart filled with a cold dread. I dressed
quickly and ran downstairs. Jessamy was in the kitchen, pulling on a pair of rubber boots.

‘There’s one person I do blame even more than him, one person who generated all this misery.’ She stood.

‘Where are you going?’ But of course I knew. ‘To find Martha.’

‘I have to have it out with her.’

The wind was still battering the house, seeming to want to force its way inside. The rain belted against the window-panes. ‘At least put on a decent coat, that light jacket won’t
keep out the wet.’ I sounded like Evie. But Jessamy put on the waterproof when I handed it to her.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked as I pulled on my own coat.

‘Coming with you.’

I thought she’d object but for a moment the hard expression on her face slipped. ‘C’mon then.’

As we opened the kitchen door the wind seemed to grab it from us, flinging it open so that wet air gushed through the kitchen, rattling the cupboard doors and sending the
papers pinned to Evie’s fridge with magnets rustling to the floor.

With difficulty I shoved the door shut and followed my cousin into the lane, wind hitting us from the right, roaring in from the Atlantic and funnelling down the gap between the Downs, the
Chilterns and the Cotswolds. I gasped as it hit me. It felt as though I was pushing myself back through the years, through history, almost, to a time when people had lived up on the Downs for
months at a stretch, minding the sheep, cut off from the village by the weather and the nature of the work. I remembered Jess telling me unemotionally about Martha’s mad Welsh drover forebear
and wished I hadn’t let that thought slip into my head. I recalled Martha’s own stories about the White Horse leaping out of its chalk imprint and galloping over the down to have its
hooves shod, and the ghostly drovers driving cattle along the Ridgeway. It was daylight but still these images chilled me. I glanced at my cousin and wondered whether she remembered any of these
things.

As we climbed I almost expected to see myself and Jessamy as little girls running down the lane towards us, carrying the pots of honey or cakes which Martha’d given us. Rain ran into my
eyes and down the back of my coat. We could wait until the weather calmed before making this visit: Martha would always be up here. We could go back and have breakfast by the range. The sky had
taken on a dirty yellow tint. Evie had taught me what that meant at this time of year: snow. But Jess’s set jaw told me she had no intention of postponing the encounter.

Something brushed my legs and I jumped. Pilot. Once my heart had stopped racing I was glad to see the dog. ‘Come here, boy.’ He walked beside me and I rested my right hand on his wet
back.

Martha’s cottage ought to have been pretty; it was built of the same Sarsen and chalk stone as Winter’s Copse and the chocolate-box cottages in the village, with the same muted
orange brickwork picking out the outlines of its windows. But green damp patches flecked the walls and the roof lacked several tiles. The gate hung off a single hinge and creaked in the breeze. I
forced myself to follow my cousin up the path. She rapped on the door. No answer. Martha had probably risen early to carry out her usual patrol of the hillside. Pilot barked, obviously believing us
to be insane to stand here in the wet.

‘Let’s go back,’ I said, shivering as the rain ran into my eyes and plastered my hair to my cheeks. But Jessamy’s answer was to turn the door handle. It wasn’t
locked.

The cottage felt damp and probably would have done so even if the sun had blazed outside. ‘Hello!’ Jess called. ‘Anyone home?’ She stood, hands on hips, lips pursed,
ready to demand answers. But I noticed how her lip trembled.

Nothing.

She walked inside and I followed. ‘Stay here,’ I told the dog, pointing to the front door mat.

Martha’s walls sported no pictures. There were no vases or photographs on the few pieces of old, dark furniture in the rooms. ‘Where is she?’ Jessamy scowled.
‘You’d think she’d come inside from this rain.’ But Martha and her ancestors had spent their lives up on the hill in all weathers; she’d be impervious to rain. I
followed Jessamy through the house and into the kitchen, scrubbed but spartan, with a green lino floor and old Formica kitchen cabinets. An old television set sat on the dresser. I couldn’t
remember ever coming in here. One of the shrubs in the overgrown garden swayed backwards and forwards in the wind, tapping the windowpane. The kitchen overlooked the down, where the Winters’
sheep had grazed for centuries. A perfect vantage spot for one who’d seen herself as the family’s sentry, always on duty. The thought made me shiver. I tugged at Jessamy’s sleeve.
‘Let’s go. We shouldn’t—’ I couldn’t finish the sentence.

Someone moved behind me. An old woman, all in black, clutching a shepherd’s crook, stood in the doorway, her eyes like two searchlights.

‘I didn’t mean to scare you.’ One of the old woman’s black-clad arms reached out and her hand touched Jessamy’s sleeve. It reminded me of a crow’s talon.
‘I’ve just been out checking the lambs.’

Lambs which didn’t belong to the Winters any longer; animals for which Martha had no responsibility. Something in her genes refused to let her adapt to the changed circumstances of life in
the early twenty-first century.

‘Jessamy, my love,’ she said, staring at her. Jessamy was silent.

‘Hello, Martha,’ I said, to break the spell. ‘I haven’t seen you for a long time. Though I suppose you’ll come to the funeral next week.’ I was speaking
slowly, quietly, because Martha scared me. I think she’d probably always scared me, in a way I hadn’t noticed because she was always so good to us. Tonight she seemed to be one of
Macbeth’s Weird Sisters. She could only be four or five years older than Evie, but a hard outdoor life had weathered her skin. Her eyes were still the same strange, almost greeny-blue colour
but filmed and milky now. Her gaze seemed unfocused, as though she was looking beyond the kitchen to something we couldn’t see.

‘I saw you,’ she told Jessamy. ‘You were at the house that day. You went to the hospital when Evie was dying. You spoke to her before she passed?’

Jessamy nodded.

‘She knew where you’d been?’

‘I didn’t have time to tell her.’ I could see a vein stand up in Jessamy’s arm as Martha gripped it. ‘Her heart gave out before I could finish.’

The look she gave Martha was penetrating. ‘I didn’t have time to tell her the woman she employed on her farm had conspired to have me kidnapped.’ She shook herself free.

‘Robert wanted the child with him. It seemed for the best.’ Martha spoke matter-of-factly. ‘He was family. I knew Jess’d be safe out there.’

‘You wanted to separate me from my mother?’ Jessamy’s voice rose. ‘Why?’

‘You’d be better off away from her, my dear. That’s what Martha thought.’ She nodded. ‘And seems I was right. Look at the woman you’ve become.’ She
smiled at Jessamy. ‘Robert did a grand job with you.’

‘Why? What the hell possessed you?’ I asked. ‘You must have known you were doing something completely evil.’

‘Evie was no fit mother for you, Jess,’ she said, ignoring me. ‘And she wasn’t coping well with the farm.’

Jessamy and I looked at one another in confusion.

‘The cows had TB. Robert and Matthew’s precious herd. Built up by their father before them.’

‘A single case of TB!’ Jessamy spat. ‘Three reactors. So unusual that I remember it after all this time.’

‘There were other things.’ Martha folded her arms.

‘Don’t tell me. She lost an occasional ewe. The fox got into the chicken shed. Things that happen on every farm in this parish.’

‘Farming is a hard business. Evie found it hard to look after a child and mind the farm.’ Martha still spoke in the same calm tone.

Jessamy’s lips were pursed together. She seemed to be finding it hard to speak.

‘Evie was struggling,’ Martha went on. ‘That’s what I told the police when they came up here to ask me those questions after the Silver Jubilee party.’

‘What?’ I took a step towards her. She eyed me without showing any anxiety. ‘What did you say to the police?’

‘I said there was always trouble at Winter’s Copse and had been from the moment Evie arrived in 1940.I said young Jess had probably run away because her mother wasn’t able to
give her enough care.’

Jessamy shook her arm free. ‘Why did you tell those lies?’

‘I was meant for Robert Winter, not her.’ The old woman spoke with utter conviction.

‘You?’ I couldn’t help the incredulity in my voice. I was comparing my aunt with this dishevelled woman with her staring eyes.

‘He and I were in love before he went off to fight. There was an understanding between us.’

I wondered whether Robert had allowed himself a last fling with Martha in preparation for the years ahead of him in the army. He wouldn’t have been the first young man to take advantage of
a willing girl. I felt a kernel of pity for her. Had she waited and waited for him to come back to her, building what had happened between them into a declaration of intent?

‘When we were children Matthew, Robert and I played in the farmyard together, jumping off the bales in the barn. I showed them where the adders lie out on the chalk on hot afternoons. I
taught them how to save a lamb that was dead to the touch.’ Jess started to say something but Martha held up a hand. ‘We went to school together. When they were older they took me out
rabbiting in the copse at night. We went to all the country fairs together and Matthew and Robert bought me rides on the merry-go-round. The Winters and the Stourtons belonged together. If I
couldn’t have Robert I should have had Matthew.’ Her voice rose on the last words.