Larkrigg Fell (5 page)

He went into a small white tent and after some moments returned, dressed in a white silk sleeveless vest and pants tucked into black stockings. Over these he wore velvet briefs, very finely embroidered with swirls and flowers.

‘Don’t you dare giggle,’ Tessa hissed into her ear. ‘This is a traditional costume. Serious stuff.’

And so it seemed. Moving forward, the two opponents shook hands then grasped each other around the back, each man placing his chin on the other’s right shoulder.

‘This is the hold which makes this kind of wrestling distinctive,’ Tess whispered. ‘They rarely hurt each other. The object is to get their opponent to take three falls.’

The two men were stamping their stocking feet, set well apart for good balance. They made strange little grunting sounds as they moved round and round.

‘Good God,’ Sarah said, ‘They look like a four-legged beast.’

‘They might only seem slim and wiry but some of these men are so tough I wouldn’t care to get on the wrong side of them.’

‘I wouldn’t mind a tackle.’ The grey streaks in Sarah’s violet eyes sparkled with interest. Beth said nothing, but her own gaze was fastened upon the two figures in their strange balletic stance.

The match lasted for some time, as several throws failed. Then Andrew slid his hip under the other man’s stomach and using it as a lever, threw him over his shoulder. She couldn’t help but cry out when both men hit the ground but Andrew had won the fall. He took one himself next when the other man struck his legs out from beneath him. They heaved and panted and swung about and the girls became completely engrossed, willing Andrew to win. The men rolled and bounced and Beth wondered how many bruises they suffered, despite the lushness of the green turf.

‘He needs one more fall,’ Tessa murmured and Beth cast her a surreptitious glance. Her first impressions must have been correct. Tessa did have a soft spot for this Andrew Barton. Again she felt an odd sinking of her heart as she noted Sarah’s equally avid interest.

Moments later it was all over. Andrew brought his rival to his knees and down he went. A great cheer went up and the older man hurried forward to slap Andrew on the back with great gusto.

‘That’s William Barton, Andrew’s father. Everyone calls him Billy. Was a champion himself in his time.’ Lots of other people crowded round to congratulate the boy. He grinned at them all before grabbing a towel and started to vigorously rub his head with it.

Then Tessa was weaving her way through the crowd towards him. ‘Hi, Andrew. Congratulations. Good contest.’ She planted a kiss on his sweating cheek and laughed. ‘You look in good shape.’

‘I’m fine,’ he said, his gaze shifting to Beth, and then on to Sarah. Beth stifled a sigh as she saw his eyes widen slightly as he recognised the full impact of her beauty. Wasn’t it always so?

Tessa was busy introducing them both and didn’t see. Andrew nodded his head slowly as he’d done before, by way of acknowledgement. ‘If you wait while I get changed, I’ll buy you all a beer.’

‘You’re on,’ Sarah purred, managing to insinuate herself closer to his side, lifting her smiling face to his. He looked down at her for a long moment then smiled. ‘Give me one minute.’

Before he disappeared into the nearby tent he again lifted his gaze across to Beth. There was interest in the glance, and a shrewd speculation. Not that she noticed. Her own eyes were fastened on the ground and she was telling herself sternly that it was entirely unreasonable to be troubled because no man ever looked at her in that way. Sarah and Tessa were welcome to fight over him, if it made them happy. She was done with men, wasn’t she? Larkrigg Hall was all that mattered now. She resolved to broach the subject with Meg at the very first opportunity.

It was the Monday following the sports day and the family were assembled at Ashlea for a celebratory meal. Lemonade was found for the children and Sally Ann opened a couple of dusty bottles of home-made elderflower wine for the adults. There was much relaxing laughter amidst the fetching and filling of glasses and when each held a glass of wine, Sarah and Beth, Tam, Meg and Sally Ann, her son Nick and his wife Jan, a toast was made to the Queen and to their own happy reunion. Glasses were clinked and smiles exchanged. As they sipped the wine and watched pictures of the Silver Jubilee celebrations in Windsor Great Park on the tiny television set in Sally Ann’s front parlour they planned how they would light the beacon fire on Dundale Knot that evening, to link up with the hundreds of others lit the length and breadth of the land to celebrate this momentous day.

Later, the family all sat down to one of Sally Ann’s famous tatie pots, rich with mutton gravy, followed by thick slices of apple pie and homemade crumbly cheese. A feast to warm any heart.

Staggering under the weight of full stomachs, Tam, Nick, Jan, and the children went off laughing to see to the bonfire and the women thankfully relaxed to talk about family and farming matters.

Meg and Sally Ann recalled the tough days of the war, of Effie, their ragged evacuee, who was terrified of cows. They recalled how Lissa had come to them and how she had stayed on at Broombank and come to terms, eventually, with her lack of proper parents. Then they moved on to the twins.

‘You were no more than bairns when you left for America. You won’t remember my father, Joe?’

The twins shook their heads.

‘He died shortly after you left in 1965. Cantankerous to the end he was. He did have a heart but you had to work hard to find it.’ Meg gave a wry smile. ‘Funny how things change. Just when you imagine everything is calm and settled, all problems solved, something goes wrong and you have to find the strength to fight all over again. As I fought Kath for Lissa, and Jack Lawson for Broombank.’ Her eyes clouded and even Sarah held her silence, troubled by her grandmother’s bleak expression as she gazed into her wine for an endless moment. Then she lifted her head and gave them all her most dazzling smile. ‘That’s life, I suppose. And we shouldn’t dwell in the past. We must look to the next generation to bring us the future. Nick’s children, and you two, my lovely twins. What are your plans then? What are you going to do with your lives? Have you decided?’

‘Nothing definite.’

‘No, not yet.’

‘A good holiday.’

‘We do have one or two dreams,’ Beth admitted, wondering if it was too soon to mention them.

‘I’m sure you do. I remember the glorious optimism of youth, when you feel so strong you think you can do anything, fulfil every dream.’ Meg gave a little laugh. ‘It’s a pity it fades so quickly.’

‘You should never let dreams fade,’ Beth said, quite vehemently, and Meg regarded her usually quiet granddaughter with some surprise.

 
‘You’re right, Beth. They’re too precious to lose. Well, I’ll let you into a secret. Tam and I do still have a dream. We’d love to visit Lissa in America but I don’t suppose anything will ever come of it.’

‘Oh, but you should. Mom would love to have you,’ Beth was all eagerness.

‘But I wouldn’t want to go for a week or two. I’d like to stay for months to make up for all the lost years, and who’d look after the farm?’

‘We would.’ And everyone laughed.

‘You know about sheep, do you?’

Beth grinned. ‘Not a thing.’

Then Meg asked lots of questions, wanting to hear all about Lissa, Derry, and the two younger children, Thomas and David. They talked contentedly for an hour or more while Sally Ann nodded off to sleep over her knitting which she always seemed to have in hand. Meg lapsed into silence once again, her mind slipping away on to private thoughts.

Beth heard Sarah sigh, could almost feel her sister’s boredom yet didn’t quite know how to deal with it. She so much wanted her to like it here, in Lakeland. Then to her great surprise Sarah leaned forward, violet eyes vivid with a sudden gleam of excitement.

‘Right now we’d just love to see inside Larkrigg Hall. We’ve been here a week and not yet seen inside it and we’re burning up with curiosity. Do you have a key?’

Beth stared at Sarah in surprise and whispered under her breath. ‘I didn’t know you were so keen.’

‘Sure.’ To Sarah, Larkrigg Hall offered the only possibility of excitement in this quiet dale. It was her last hope. ‘Please do say that you have, Gran.’

Beth added her own plea. ‘We walked up there when we first arrived and saw it from the end of the drive. It looks every bit as wonderful as I’d imagined. Only dreadfully neglected of course, and so sad and forlorn.’

‘I dare say it is.’ Meg’s mind had slipped back to the past and difficult confrontations with old Rosemary Ellis, Lissa’s grandmother. What a dreadful woman she’d been, rejecting Lissa like that just because she was illegitimate.

‘It has such a magnificent setting,’ Beth was saying.

‘The setting is splendid,’ Meg politely agreed, ‘but I’ve always thought it a rather gloomy house with very little by way of character. I do have a key somewhere.’ She glanced about the room in a vague sort of way, as if wondering where it might be but made no move to look for it.

‘Can you find it? Please,’ Sarah begged and Meg frowned.

‘Don’t expect too much. I doubt it will live up to your expectations. Your mother visited once or twice and every occasion proved a most unhappy experience.’

‘But that was a long time ago,’ Sarah protested.

‘True. Oh dear, is it seven o’clock already? We really ought to be getting out to that bonfire. Nick will wonder where we are.’ She got up and went in search of her coat.

But Sarah persisted. ‘Mom would never talk about it, which only made us want to see the house all the more.’

Meg smiled at that. ‘I expect it did. Darling Lissa. Feels things so keenly but then we are all vulnerable at times. I didn’t much care for the house myself. It’s never seemed to me as warm or comforting as Broombank.’ Meg’s thoughts seemed to shift to some private memory and the twins were forced to subside into frustrated, respectful silence.

Only this time it was Beth who broke it, her voice all excited and breathless. ‘We’ve quite fallen in love with it, and we thought if we liked the inside as much as the outside, we might restore it.’ She didn’t dare glance at Sarah, knowing they hadn’t even discussed the idea, which was entirely her own. She blundered on, her voice rising with enthusiasm. ‘We feel we’d like to make Larkrigg beautiful again.’

Sarah was staring at her, mouth open in stunned surprise, then she raised a speculative eyebrow and added her own point of view. ‘We’d sell it afterwards, of course, and make a vast profit.’

‘Or live in it ourselves.’

‘It’s only an idea.’

‘We’re seriously considering it.’

‘But we need to see inside first.’

Sally Ann had woken with a start, her knitting falling to the floor as she and Meg gazed in open astonishment first at one twin and then the other, as in their turn they glared furiously upon each other.

After several minutes Meg reached for her hat. ‘The bonfire. Her Majesty’s Jubilee celebrations must be given priority to family matters tonight.’

So Beth and Sarah had to bite their tongues and dutifully follow their grandmother out on to Dundale Knot where the rosy glow of a bonfire already lit the sapphire blue of the short Lakeland night. Sparks flew like fireflies and the tangy scent of woodsmoke filled their nostrils. It made Beth sigh with contentment and inside her grew such a yearning she felt almost breathless with the wonder of it.

Beth was in despair. No further mention had been made of Larkrigg Hall that day or the next as everyone struggled to get back to work after all the fun. And neither of the twins dared pursue the subject again. The hot days of June were drawing to a close and soon it would be July. Time for them to leave with nothing at all resolved.
 

She sat by the tarn, bare toes curled on a cushion of emerald green sphagnum moss, eyes watching the tufts of silky cotton grass which floated like flakes of white as if they were a summer snowstorm. They caught on tall thistles, bounced off rocky knolls and attached themselves to the fast growing bracken.

These last weeks had passed by in a whirl. They’d been introduced to various neighbours including Hetty Davies, a grand old lady who used to look after their mother, Lissa, when she was a baby. She’d invited them for tea as a matter of fact, and they’d promised to attend the Women’s Institute meeting with her in the evening to see a demonstration on soap sculpture. Sarah said she could hardly wait. Beth giggled. But her sister had behaved rather better recently.

The holiday had been wonderful, no doubt about that. Meg had driven them around half the county, proudly showing them the sights. They’d enjoyed a steamer ride across Lake Windermere, exclaimed over pretty Lakeland villages, shopped in the nearby market town of Kendal and walked for miles over rough fell country, up mountain and down dale so that the names, Hardknott, Skiddaw, III Bell, Longsleddale, gradually became real places in their mind, instead of names on a map.

On two or three occasions Andrew Barton had come with them, encouraged by Sarah of course, who declared she liked to have a man around, as if he were some sort of trophy. He certainly didn’t seem to object, Beth thought, rather ruefully. But she’d made a point of keeping well out of his way. There was enough tension between Sarah and Tessa, without adding more.