The Girl by the River (7 page)

‘Are you worried about Daddy?’ she asked, and Tessa actually looked at her for an instant before the crying started again. Kate tried to pick her up but she arched her back and went
rigid, holding her breath then coughing alarmingly. ‘I’m worried about Daddy too,’ Kate said in a quiet voice. She leaned her cheek on the top of Tessa’s head, stroking the
downy chestnut curls in a moment of sadness. Was baby Tessa picking up on Freddie’s strong feelings that day?

Freddie had gone out early. He’d kissed her goodbye and given her one of those long questioning looks. Usually he went out in the morning whistling, but today he was silent and withdrawn,
his cheek twitching a little as it did when he was stressed.

Kate was bitterly disappointed. She’d tried and tried to reason with him, but Freddie’s mind was set in stone. He was NOT going to the Tillerman wedding, and he was NOT going to be
manipulated. Kate had shown him her outfit, his favourite slinky red dress with the black lace sleeves and plunging neckline showing off her curvy figure. She’d shown him her hat,
wide-brimmed and elegant, and trimmed with red roses. It wasn’t new. Kate had found it in a jumble sale at the town hall, and pounced on it. ‘My sixpenny hat!’ she called it
proudly, and she looked stunning in it. She’d let Lucy put on her yellow organza dress that Susan’s mother, Joan, had made for her, and Lucy’s eyes had sparkled with joy when she
paraded and twirled for her daddy.

Kate had taken Freddie’s suit out of its mothballs, ironed his white shirt and tie, and hung it up, hopefully, next to her dress. She’d polished his best black shoes until they shone
like mirrors, and even put a beautifully ironed white hanky in the top pocket of his jacket.

It was an act of love, and hope.

Freddie was hauling loads of timber fence posts that morning. His heart was heavy with anger as he drove through the town on his way to the station. When he saw the array of
expensive motorcars parked along the kerb outside Joan Jarvis’s house, he put his foot down and roared past, with the timber thundering in the back of the lorry. His hands burned with
splinters, and his mouth felt parched. Normally he called in at home for a cup of tea, but not today. He had to stay out, keep his head down and lie low until the dreaded wedding was over.

The road to Tarbuts Timber wound upwards into the wooded hills. Shaded by tall conifers, the narrow road was always covered in pigeons and rabbits who weren’t used to the speed and sound
of a motor vehicle. Freddie usually took it slowly, blowing his horn to scare them away. But today the conflict in his mind had made him reckless, watching the wild creatures of the wood scattering
before him.

The sickening thud of a young rabbit’s soft furry body hitting the front bumper sent a shockwave through Freddie. He had killed a wild creature. A creature who hadn’t harmed him but
had simply been sitting there in its own environment.

Devastated, Freddie stopped the lorry, turned the engine off, and got out. The complex silences of the woods sank into his consciousness, fizzing through him like an aspirin in a glass of water.
A line from Oscar Wilde unfurled and flew like a flag in his mind.

‘Each man kills the thing he loves . . .’

On heavy feet he walked round the front of the lorry and found the young rabbit stretched out in the bright grass. Its eyes were wide open, and it was breathing. Freddie sat down and picked it
up with tenderness and sorrow. Under the velvet fur he could feel its heartbeat. ‘Stunned,’ he whispered, ‘you’re only stunned – and I’m sorry – I’m
so sorry.’ He stroked the rabbit’s long ears, so delicate, like pink paper. It trembled under his hands and it seemed to Freddie that the trembling was getting stronger. Was it
recovering? Should he put it in a cardboard box and take it home? The rabbit looked up at him with eyes that clearly said, ‘I have a right to live – and a right to be free.’

He opened his hands and, in a pulse of energy, the rabbit leapt out of his arms and disappeared into the woods with a flick of its white tail.

Freddie drew a great breath from the silence of the wood. He remembered what he’d said to Herbie. ‘If you look a rabbit in the eye, I mean, really look, you wouldn’t shoot
it.’ These words, coaxed out of him by Herbie’s quiet acceptance, were tucked in the inner pocket of his mind, like a key. A key he’d need one day. The key to a peaceful
world.

He had to look Ian Tillerman in the eye.

He looked at his watch. Was there time?

The sense of peace and quiet felt like a benediction to Kate. She lowered the sleeping child into her cot and stood watching Tessa’s magical transformation into an
angelic-looking cherub, her eyes closed, and the beautifully curved chestnut lashes fringing her cheeks. She was pale now. She had burned herself out. ‘Sweet dreams, my little one,’
Kate said kindly. ‘Mummy will be back later.’ She tiptoed out and peeped over the banister at Annie, now in her favourite chair with Lucy on her lap. Annie was reading a Beatrix Potter
book in a slow thoughtful voice, just like Freddie, and Lucy was loving it, her eyes wide, her yellow dress fanned out over Annie’s knees like a dandelion.

Kate was proud of Lucy. She’d taken her to the church on the previous day for a rehearsal, and Lucy had behaved impeccably. She quickly understood exactly what to do and how slowly she had
to walk down the aisle in front of the bride. ‘She’s perfect!’ Susan had said in delight. ‘What a wonderful little girl you’ve raised, Kate. You’ll have to give
us some tips on child rearing when the time comes.’

Kate had given Susan a hug. ‘I’m so happy for you.’

‘I’m scared stiff, Kate!’ Susan had confided in a whisper.

‘Oh, you’ll be fine – we’ll be there to help you – won’t we, Lucy?’

Lucy nodded. ‘And my daddy.’

‘Cross fingers,’ Kate said, and on the way home she tried to explain to the excited Lucy that Freddie might not be there.

‘He WILL be there,’ Lucy insisted confidently. ‘I told him he had to come and watch me be Susan’s bridesmaid.’

Kate felt sad as she slipped the red dress over her head and rolled the new nylon stockings up each leg, clipping them carefully onto the suspenders. She brushed her hair and put on her red
shoes with the high heels, the ones that Freddie loved so much. She laid her hat and long gloves on the bed, and looked at the clock. Half an hour before they must set off down the road to the
church. With a rare slot of time to herself, Kate sat down on the edge of the bed and looked at the photograph of her father, Bertie, who had died in the wartime after years of illness.
‘I’m still your golden bird, Daddy,’ Kate said, and felt an overwhelming need to weep the tears of grief that she’d never allowed. ‘I hope I am,’ she whispered.
Her father had named her Oriole Kate, after a rare golden oriole had appeared in the garden on the day she was born. Just before he died, her parents had hoped to move back home to Hilbegut, into a
lovely cottage close to the farm where Kate and Ethie had grown up. Sally had been devastated and had chosen to stay in Gloucestershire to be close to Bertie and Ethie’s graves.
I wish Mum
was at Hilbegut
, Kate thought sadly.
I could go on the bus, and take Lucy. She’d love to walk down through the copper beeches with me, and see the old court.
More sadness. The
magnificent Hilbegut Court was now an abandoned ruin.

Stop it
! Kate thought.
Stop being morbid on the day of Susan’s wedding!

The truth was that any romantic occasion triggered the tears in Kate. Tears she’d never permitted herself to cry. It was happening now, that huge ache in her throat. Could she really stand
in church and watch Susan pledging her life to Ian Tillerman? When she knew only too well what Ian was like. Susan was sweet and vulnerable. She’d kowtow to Ian and pretty soon those stars in
her eyes would go out, probably for ever.

Kate stood up and looked at herself in the mirror. She saw a curvy young woman with wavy black hair and bright brown eyes. ‘You get a hold of yourself, girl,’ she told herself, and
pasted a smile on her face. The smile said, ‘I am in control of my life. I can manage Tessa. I can cope with Annie. And I’m going to enjoy Susan’s wedding. Even if I am the only
woman there without her husband.’ She smoothed Freddie’s suit with her hand, and gave it a hug.

Moments later, the ache of tears surged in her throat yet again when she glanced out of the window and saw Freddie getting out of his lorry. Kate flew down the stairs.

Worn out and covered in sawdust, Freddie looked sombre and nervous. But all Kate saw were his blue eyes coming in the door, lighting up with love as he saw her in her red dress. His eyes said
everything. They said he wanted to peel that dress off her and take her to bed with tenderness and passion. They said he’d come home from the war, the war within his mind, the Ian Tillerman
war. But his mouth said, ‘I hit a rabbit up on the road to Tarbuts.’

‘Did you dear?’ Kate looked puzzled. She waited. ‘It – made me think – I ought to go with you.’

Kate’s mood lifted. ‘You’ll have to be quick then, Freddie.’ Giggling, she bundled him upstairs and pushed him into the bathroom. ‘You need a wash.’

‘Me hands are full of splinters,’ Freddie said, ‘and oily. I can’t shake hands with anyone.’

Freddie felt proud as he walked down the road in the hot sunshine with Kate swanning along beside him. He thought she looked like a film star in her ‘sixpenny hat’.
‘Don’t you dare tell anyone where I got it,’ she’d said, and her eyes flashed up at him mischievously. ‘Let them think I’ve been up to London and bought it from
Harrods.’

His first glimpse of Ian Tillerman was a surprise. Standing in the front pew, Ian looked smaller than Freddie’s image of him. He was slightly tubby and had a bald patch at the back of his
head.

When the music started, the heads turned to watch four-year-old Lucy in her yellow dress parading ahead of the bride, her little face radiant and confident. She glanced up at Freddie with a
beguiling smile, so like Kate, heart-stopping. The air shimmered around her and around Susan in her rustling taffeta dress and veil, a bunch of cream lilies and the pinkest of roses in her hand.
Mesmerised, Freddie stared at the golden light around them and realised he was seeing his daughter’s beautiful aura. It stirred a memory of the spiritual visions he’d had in his youth.
Would they come again? He gazed around the church, half expecting to see an angel, a real one. It was there, camouflaged in the sunlight pouring through the stained-glass windows, he was sure. The
immensity of it lived in his memory. The angel he’d seen had been a massive being of light. It would have made Ian Tillerman look no bigger than a fly. Was the angel talking to him now? Into
his mind in secret? Telling him to follow his dreams – and dream big – and not be afraid.

Kate was nudging him, and Freddie realised he was supposed to be singing. He looked at the hymn book she was sharing with him. ‘
Love divine
. . .’ He heard Kate’s sweet
voice singing it next to him. Love divine! That wasn’t what Ian Tillerman was going to get with Susan, he thought.

By the time the moment of eye contact arrived, Freddie felt powerful. He felt full of light and gratitude. With Kate staunchly beside him, he looked down at Ian Tillerman in the porch, after the
photographs had been taken. Susan’s mother, Joan Jarvis, came up to him in a whirl of ostrich feathers and scarlet lipstick. ‘You MUST meet Freddie and Kate,’ she gushed, and
dragged him towards Ian and Susan. ‘Well, you know Kate already. But look, Ian, Freddie is so clever. He carved this statue of St Peter. Isn’t it marvellous?’ She waved her arm at
the statue on the stone shelf inside the porch, of St Peter with the ‘keys to the kingdom’. It had been Freddie’s first commission.

Ian didn’t know whether to look at Freddie or at the statue. He looked overwhelmed. So he blurted, ‘Excellent, my man. Excellent!’

His eyes shifted to and fro, avoiding Freddie’s steady gaze. Then they came to a halt on Kate, sweeping over her with blatantly lustful approval. ‘You should see the new horses
we’ve got now, Kate,’ he said. ‘When we move down here, anytime you fancy a ride – you’re welcome.’

Freddie tensed. He felt Kate squeeze his hand reassuringly, and, as always, she knew exactly what to say. ‘Well, thank you, Ian,’ she said, with her back very straight, ‘but
I’m sure you’ll be too busy looking after your wonderful new wife.’ She beamed at Susan, who fluttered her eyes nervously. ‘And I’m a busy mum with two beautiful
little girls,’ Kate added, looking fondly at Lucy who was leaning adoringly against the cool taffeta of Susan’s dress.

Right on cue the happy atmosphere with the ringing voices and posh hats was ripped apart by the sound of a child screaming. Freddie and Kate looked at each other in disbelief.

‘Who on earth is that?’

The crowd of wedding guests parted as an old woman struggled up the church path pushing a battered pram with a squeaky wheel. It was Annie, her face puckered with fury, her grey hair stuck to
her brow with sweat, her feet in moth-eaten carpet slippers. She saw Freddie and Kate in the porch with the Tillermans and made a beeline for them. She was emanating such anger that people were
leaping out of her way. All conversations stopped, and shocked faces watched the invasion of earthy rage. There was only the squeak of the pram wheel and the roar of the baby inside.

‘Annie!’ Joan Jarvis was first to speak. ‘My dear! What’s happened?’

Annie brushed her aside. She shoved the pram at Kate. ‘I’ve FINISHED with this child,’ she ranted. ‘She does nothing but cry and she won’t let me change her. She
fights like a wild cat. I’m not looking after her, Kate. She’s a BRAT and that’s the truth. I’m at the end of my tether. I’m leaving her here, wedding or no
wedding.’

‘Annie!’

‘Don’t touch me!’ Annie shook Joan off as if she was a wasp. She took her ebony walking stick from the pram, straightened her back and limped away down the path. Again, people
jumped out of her way and someone whispered, ‘WHO is that angry old woman?’

‘You should go after her, Freddie – take her home,’ Kate said, concerned. But Freddie leaned over the pram and looked at Tessa, sad to see her little face swollen with crying.
She was too big for the pram now and Annie had strapped the covers down to keep her in there. Tessa was crying, and hiccupping, and coughing, and she had made herself sick. She looked up at Freddie
like a drowning cat. ‘Now then – what’s all this about? Eh?’ Freddie undid the straps and picked up the distraught child with his quiet hands. ‘There. Daddy’s
got you. Now you quieten down.’