The Fleethaven Trilogy (32 page)

Drawn towards him, she threaded her way through the throng, coming to stand a little way off, just watching him. Her gaze roamed over him, drinking in every feature. The flop of golden hair, the smooth skin tanned to a healthy bronze now by all his outdoor work. Reluctantly, she had to admit that he looked the picture of health – not a wounded soldier on sick leave. The realization terrified her.

As if feeling her close by, he lifted his eyes and met her gaze. She saw the fire burn in his eyes, saw the hunger in them as he took in her appearance. He had never seen her in her best dress, for he never accompanied her to church and that was the only time she ever wore it other than for the Harvest Supper. Suddenly, another memory pushed its way unbidden into her mind. She had worn this dress on that last Bank Holiday – when Matthew had taken her on the pier. So long ago, it seemed now. Another world, another life away.

Squire Marshall, following Jonathan’s gaze, greeted her. ‘My dear Mrs Hilton.’ He held out his arm to her as if to draw her closer, to include her in their conversation. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come. Of course you two know each other. I was forgetting – I met you at Brumbys’ Farm the other day, didn’t I?’

Esther looked sharply at the squire but the remark had been made so innocently and without guile. So, she thought, the gossip hasn’t reached the squire’s ears, or at least if it has he’s choosing to ignore it. She glanced
at Jonathan and that special look of a secret shared passed between them.

She held her hands clenched at her sides, willing herself to resist the urge to go up to him, to put her hands against his chest and reach up and touch his lips with her own. Instead she said, ‘How is Mrs Marshall, Squire?’

The older man’s face seemed to age before her. ‘Ah, my dear, she’s frail and weak, I fear. She’s never recovered from our great loss, you know.’

Esther’s green eyes filled with genuine sympathy. ‘I am sorry, Squire,’ she said softly.

‘Thank you, my dear, thank you.’ He smiled, making a great effort to play out his self-appointed role as host of the party alone. ‘Ah, there’s Tom Willoughby. Willoughby, over here a moment.’

Tom Willoughby’s huge bulk came towards them.

‘Squire,’ he greeted his landlord cordially but with due deference. ‘Hello, Esther lass. Any news from Matthew, then?’

Esther drew breath sharply and avoided looking at Jonathan. ‘No – no, I’m afraid I haven’t heard from him – in ages.’ She had told no one about the last postcard from Matthew, but even that had been several weeks ago now, so her answer was not exactly a lie. Yet Esther, always truthful, felt it to be. Her heart thudded a little faster, and she was sure her cheeks grew pink.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, lass, real sorry,’ Tom was saying.

There was a moment’s awkward silence between them, then Tom Willoughby and the squire both began to speak at the same moment.

‘I wanted—’

‘How—?’

‘Sorry, sir, after you . . .’

‘No, no, Willoughby, it was nothing really, just idle conversation. If you’ll excuse me I’ll get round to some of the other guests.’

He nodded and smiled at the three of them and as he moved away, Esther said, ‘What were you going to say, Tom?’

‘I was about to say that I wanted a word with you, Esther. I’ve a bit of bad news. I don’t know if you’ll be able to borrow the threshing tackle the squire lends us. It’s at my place now, but I’m having the devil’s own job wi’ the blessed traction engine! The man we usually get when it plays up has volunteered and I don’t know of anyone else who knows about engines.’

‘Oh, no,’ Esther groaned. ‘With so many hands short, I was relying on that.’

‘Er, perhaps I might be able to help,’ Jonathan’s deep voice put in quietly. ‘What sort is it?’

Tom Willoughby told him. A smile spread across Jonathan’s face. ‘I’ll take a look for you, Mr Willoughby, if you’d like me to?’

‘Well, if you think you can do owt, young feller, I’d be chuffed. Er, ’ow do you know about steam engines, then?’

‘Made in Lincoln, wasn’t it?’

Tom Willoughby nodded.

‘That’s where I worked before I joined up. I maybe even worked on it, Mr Willoughby.’

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ exclaimed Tom Willoughby
with such a comical look on his face that both Esther and Jonathan burst out laughing.

It was the only unfeigned laughter heard all evening and then it was heard by many only with disapproval.

Later the following day, Esther went to Rookery Farm to find Jonathan up to his elbows in grease and oil, clambering all over Tom Willoughby’s huge traction engine.

She had not seen him all day. Frustrated and feeling neglected, she had guessed that was where he would be. She didn’t stop to think of the consequences that parading her friendship with Jonathan before Martha Willoughby and her spiteful sister could bring.

She had to see him.

It was like a craving that would not be assuaged until she was with him. Even then, when he was near, all she wanted was to be in his arms, lying with him, being loved by him . . .

‘Have you mended it, then?’ she asked, truculence in her tone. His face wore a rapturous expression.

‘Oh, hello, Esther, what are you doing here?’ Without waiting for her answer, almost as if he were uninterested in it, he had turned away and bent his head once more into the workings of the great machine.

‘Good evening, Mrs Hilton.’ Martha Willoughby’s voice spoke behind her, with an underlining accent on the ‘Mrs’. ‘And to what do we owe this particular pleasure?’

Esther turned and her chin went a little higher. ‘I came to see how Jonathan – Mr Godfrey – was getting on with repairing the engine.’

‘Really?’ There was a simulated sweetness to Martha’s tone. ‘I hadn’t realized that his – er – services were your particular property.’ The sarcasm was evident and Esther was left in no doubt that Martha Willoughby knew exactly what the relationship between Jonathan and herself was.

Esther smiled with false amiability in return. ‘I’m sure Mr Godfrey is pleased to be able to help. In fact . . .’ She glanced over her shoulder at the two men laughing and talking together, gesturing to the internal workings of the engine, and there was a note of jealousy in her voice. ‘He seems to be thoroughly enjoying it.’

Martha nodded, a malicious smile on her mouth, the fold of fat beneath her chin wobbling. ‘Yes, he seems to enjoy his life here. Made himself quite at home, so I gather. Nicely hidden away from the war.’

‘He came to see Ma – Mrs Harris – to tell her that he had known her Ernie,
if
it’s any business of yours, Martha Willoughby, which it ain’t. And he was wounded, you can see that for ya’sen.’

Martha smirked. ‘Convenient though, ain’t it, that he can hide in a little out-of-the-way place like Fleethaven Point where the authorities won’t find him in a month o’ Sundays?’

‘Well, at least he’s done ’is bit. I see you hang on to your man well enough. You ain’t goaded him into joining up. Though I’m surprised the poor man hasn’t – if only to get away from you!’

‘Dun’t you get high ’n’ mighty with me,
Mrs
Hilton. We all know how you come to be where you are. A tramp from the Lord knows where who took old Sam Brumby
for the poor old idiot he was . . .’ She wagged her finger in Esther’s face. ‘Getting him to change his will when he was on his deathbed.’

Esther gasped. ‘I never did—’

Martha’s tirade continued. ‘My Thomas’s family was related to old Sam’s way back. All that should have been ours, by rights, not left to a scheming hussy like you!’ Martha was in full flow now, enjoying having Esther at her mercy. ‘To say nothing of how you tricked young Matthew into marrying you. Telled him you was pregnant by him, I don’t doubt. ’Tis the oldest trick in the book, that one.’

‘That’s not true,’ Esther shrieked, ‘and you know damn well it ain’t. My Kate was born nearly a year after we was wed.’

Martha cackled. ‘Huh, ya dun’t have to
be
pregnant to catch ’em. Only tell ’em you are.’

Esther’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oh,’ she said, her tone heavy with sarcasm, ‘is that how you caught poor old Tom Willoughby, then?’ It was a particularly cruel remark considering that the Willoughbys had no family.

Martha’s fat cheeks, already marked with tiny red veins, grew purple. ‘Why, you, you—’

At that moment behind them the great steam engine spluttered into noisy life and drowned Martha’s abuse.

Esther turned on her heel and marched away from Martha and off their farmland. She returned to Brumbys’ Farm. It
was
her farm, and everything in it, no matter what Martha said.

Esther wished now she had never gone up to Rookery Farm, particularly as Jonathan had hardly seemed to
notice her. His indifference had hurt her far more than Martha’s scathing attack.

So, Esther thought furiously, if he prefers a smelly old engine puthering steam and smoke to me, then he’s welcome.

Nevertheless, she found it impossible to sustain her anger for long, for when he came back to the farm, his face was grubby with oil and smuts and his eyes were shining like a little boy’s on Christmas morning.

‘It was good to get me hand in again, Esther,’ he told her as he sluiced away the grime under the pump in the yard. ‘Eh, but I’ve missed it – my work. I hadn’t realized just how much until . . .’ He spread his hands out before him and looked down at them and laughed. ‘Until I got them all mucky with oil and grease again.’

She watched his lean body rippling in the sunlight and longing burned inside her. Again she saw the bandage covering the wound on his shoulder; that jagged, purple scar that was a constant reminder of what he had seen and suffered.

It was a reminder to her too that he was still a soldier and that the war was not yet over. Not for either of them.

That night their love-making was as tender as ever and when they lay together quietly afterwards, she cried against his shoulder, and kissed the scar with tender lips, her tears falling on to it as if to wash it away if she could. But it would always be there. It was as if the scar on his body was like a scar on their happiness. An unceasing reminder that it all must end.

E
STHER
watched the rotund figure of a man on a bicycle riding with solemn concentration along the lane towards the Point.

The sun glinted on the silver buttons of his black uniform and her heart gave a lurch of fear as she saw him dismount and lean his bicycle carefully against the gate.

A policeman! Why was a policeman coming to her farm?

He walked slowly across the yard towards the back door of the house. ‘Mrs Hilton?’ he greeted her.

She nodded and ran her tongue over lips that were suddenly dry.

‘We’ve – er – reason to believe that there’s a soldier staying hereabouts, Mrs Hilton.’ He paused, but she returned his gaze steadily and remained silent. Her heart thumped so loudly she was certain he must hear it. She was praying that Jonathan would not appear out of the cowshed.

‘Well, now . . .’

At that moment there came a clang from the cowshed and the sound of a man’s voice. ‘Steady, girl. Steady, Clover.’

The policeman raised his voice so that it carried across the yard. ‘This ‘ere soldier, been in these parts a while now, so we understand. And – er – whilst he might have
been on sick leave at first, if you understand me, well, time’s gone on, so to speak, and if he’s fit and healthy enough to be working on a farm, then . . .’ The man spread his huge hands palms upwards.

Esther caught her breath. Over the man’s shoulder she could see Jonathan emerge from the cowshed and walk across the yard towards them. She made an involuntary movement to stop him, to try to prevent the inevitable. But purposely Jonathan avoided noticing her gesture and came to stand quietly beside the policeman. The older man turned slowly to look at him as Jonathan asked, ‘Could it be me you’re looking for?’

‘I really couldn’t say, sir.’ The policeman was polite with a hint of apology in his tone. ‘I have to follow up these – er – reports we get, you know. People get some funny ideas, about deserters and such.’ He lifted his huge shoulders in a shrug. ‘Ugly name, isn’t it, for a man who’s probably done more than most for his country and rightly deserves a bit of respite, but – well – you know how it is, sir?’

Jonathan nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. ‘I do indeed,’ he said quietly. ‘You have your duty to do.’

‘I’m glad you see it that way, sir.’ He paused, his keen eyes searching Jonathan’s face. ‘So may I take it,’ he added quietly, ‘that you will be reporting back to your unit in the very near future?’

Jonathan nodded. ‘Yes, officer, you may.’

‘Perhaps you’d call in at the station when you go for the train?’ He paused, glanced towards Esther, and back again to Jonathan. ‘Shall we say in a couple of hours?’
There was sympathetic understanding in his tone, but nevertheless an underlying firmness.

Esther gave a little cry and her hand fluttered to her mouth to still the sound. She watched, wide-eyed, as Jonathan slowly nodded agreement.

‘I’ll bid you good day then, sir.’ The policeman touched his forefinger to his helmet in a gesture of farewell, nodded to Esther and turned away.

As the man mounted his bicycle and rode off, a little unsteadily, Esther could contain her anger no longer.

‘How dare he? How dare he come here . . . ?’ She was shaking with fear. Fear that the moment she had dreaded had come. Now Jonathan would leave her.

Jonathan put his arms about her. ‘Don’t, my darling, it had to come.’ He put into words her dread. ‘We both knew that one day I would have to go. I’m lucky it was not the military who came looking for me. They would have arrested me on the spot.’

‘Why?’ she cried. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong? They—’

‘Esther, my darling. I should have gone back weeks ago. But I—’ His voice broke with emotion and he buried his face in her neck, his words becoming muffled. ‘I couldn’t tear myself away from you.’

‘You mean – you mean you’ll be in trouble when you get back?’

Jonathan did not answer her.