The Healing Stream (11 page)

Deirdre chuckled. ‘Aunt Naomi and I are a working partnership.’ At the farm it had felt natural for her to call the Pilbeams Auntie and Uncle just as Tessa did. The first time she had said it, it had slipped out by mistake, but when she’d opened her mouth to correct herself, Naomi had given her a broad smile and simply said, ‘That’s nice. Richard’ll like it too.’

Now Deirdre’s words weren’t lost on either of the others. Taking the handles of the chair ready to push it to the van, Julian caught Naomi’s eye, the ‘Auntie Naomi’ in both their minds. Naomi remembered hearing him spoken of as an aloof man, surely a man who would suppose she had suggested herself as an honorary aunt to gain favour. Instead as he pushed the chair, over the top of Deirdre’s head just for a second, he held Naomi’s gaze and mouthed the words ‘Thank you’.

‘What time do you workers expect to finish? I’ll bring her car down and fetch her.’

‘She’s fine with us, so come when you like. If we’ve done our chores in the dairy, we’ll occupy ourselves with something else.’ And again that broad smile that spoke to him of contentment with her lot. ‘We bumble along from one thing to the next; there’s no clocking on and off at Chagleigh.’

Julian noticed the admiration on Deirdre’s face as she gazed at this newly acquired Aunt Naomi. But was it simply admiration? As the question sprang to mind, so too did the answer. And he was ashamed. How could he have let it happen that the daughter he loved could have felt herself so isolated that she turned to comparative strangers to bestow her affection? With Deirdre on the front passenger seat of the van and the wheelchair stowed where half an hour ago had been the daily deliveries, he put out a hand to hold Naomi back as she turned from closing the back doors.

‘With Tessa away, are you sure she won’t be an encumbrance?’ he whispered.

‘If I weren’t sure, I wouldn’t be here. I’ll collect her again tomorrow unless she doesn’t want to come. There’s so much she can do there – and what better therapy than being useful?’

Then, her quick smile telling him that her mind had moved on, their brief association already faded into the past, she climbed into the van and switched on the engine. Julian Masters wasn’t used to being brushed aside in that way; he didn’t like it. Grateful though he was on Deirdre’s account, he had no intention of being beholden to the Pilbeams. So as the van disappeared he took the hybrid and set out for Exeter.

That was how he came to buy Deirdre’s electric wheelchair, her gateway to independence. They spent the evening in the garden while the ‘learner driver’ became accustomed to her new mode of transport. Miss Sherwin stood by, clucking in fear of the harm that could be lying in wait. With growing confidence, Deirdre became adept at handling her new acquisition, turning in circles first to the right, then to the left, braking suddenly, stopping and starting. Already he could picture the look on Naomi’s face when she surprised them by arriving unaided and ‘ready for work’ in the morning.

Every emotion was heightened for Tessa. She wanted to cling to the glorious feeling that she was a woman in love, yet even as she thought it she knew she wasn’t being honest. Of course she was in love, so much in love that she couldn’t believe what was happening, that her idol wanted her as much as she wanted him. It was so wonderful that it was beyond the realms of possibility. But that silent voice that wouldn’t be ignored reminded her that, although she was twenty, she was uncertain of what was ahead of her. She was going on a fortnight’s holiday with the most wonderful man in the world; they would make love. But what would that be like? It must be wonderful; if it weren’t it wouldn’t be so important to people, they would just do what they needed to get children if they wanted them. Of course she knew all about what you had to do – she had discussed it many times with Natalie – and then there was that almost frightening feeling she’d had when Giles had done what he had when he’d been holding her breast. Even thinking about it made her clench her teeth. This time tomorrow she would be different: she would no longer be a virgin.

‘You’re not going to let yourself miss anything.’ Giles laughed, his voice cutting across her thoughts. ‘I’ve never had a passenger so interested in the scenery.’

‘Of course I’m interested. Giles, don’t you see how exciting it is? Except for during the war, when the school was evacuated to a huge manor house in Berkshire, it was in London – no, not even as exciting as being actually
in
London; it was stuck in the suburbs. Not that it makes much difference where you are, there’s no chance of being let out and seeing much if you’re at a girls’ boarding school. Apart from that I lived on the Isle of Wight until I came to the farm, so I want to see every single thing. Last year Natalie and I went walking in Derbyshire, but I got there by train. Some of the countryside we went through was lovely, it wasn’t all drab by any means, but train journeys are so miserable, don’t you think? You see hundreds and thousands of houses from the back, mean little back gardens, yards, some with bath tubs hanging on the wall, everything looking so dingy. In a car you see the fronts, you see people. I don’t want to miss any of it. I’ve never been north from Devon.’

Giles took a quick glance at her. She was like a child going to her first party. Was he being fair to take advantage of her juvenile crush on him? For he had no illusions: she was in love with love; she was in love with his association with Burghton and the characters who had peopled her unnatural existence living with an elderly grandmother.

‘I was brought up not ten miles from here,’ he said.

‘You’ve never talked about your family. Are they still around here? Is that why you’ve come this way, so that you can take me to meet them?’ Her interest in the village they were passing through evaporated; he wanted to take her to see his roots, to introduce her to his family: ‘. . . my fiancée, Tessa.’ She could almost hear him saying the words.

‘I don’t remember my father. He was killed on the Somme and my memory doesn’t go back that far. My earliest recollections are of living with a bachelor uncle, my mother’s brother, but mercifully I was sent to boarding school when I was eight. My uncle was the vicar of Saint Agnes church in Moorbrook, over there to the left some ten miles, and my mother kept house for him.’ He didn’t answer her second question.

‘Did you base any of your characters on him in Burghton?’

‘Most certainly not. From what I learnt from him, I just trust he didn’t get the chance of catching a choirboy alone.’

‘Did he beat you? But he could never do that to a choirboy; there would be awful trouble in the parish.’

‘Beat me? Good God, no. Smarmy, over-kind, then when he thought he had my trust – but never mind.’

Tessa frowned, knowing there were things implied which he assumed she understood.

‘Are they alive, he and your mother?’

‘My mother moved out while I was at university. She never told me why and I didn’t ask. She was still relatively young and got a job as a sort of personal assistant to Julian Masters’ secretary. In those days Julian used to live in the village and I dare say he took her on to give her an escape route. Anyway, she was still quite young – she’d married at eighteen so must have been in her thirties. She married a captain in the Canadian Army in nineteen forty-three and lives in Alberta. I haven’t heard from her for years. We hardly knew each other; she was no more important in my life than I was in hers. I did have a letter about a year after she went to Canada, saying she had a daughter.’

‘And your uncle? Has he retired?’

‘Gone to the home in the sky for clergy. I dare say he’ll find companionship.’

‘I don’t understand. You sound so bitter – so, almost, full of hate.’

Taking his eyes from the view ahead on the fortunately straight road, he turned to look at her.

‘I hate hypocrisy, pretence.’ But was that true? The question sprang into his mind uninvited. Was he not being hypocritical in his treatment of this precious, innocent girl? No. He
must
genuinely love her or why would his conscience trouble him? Through all the affairs he’d amused himself with over the years, never once until now had he looked to the future and felt guilty. Aware that Tessa was waiting, uncertain of what was behind the story he had told her, his expression changed. Looking straight ahead at the still-empty road, his face broke into a smile and, peering at him, she felt reassured. ‘I know just the place for lunch,’ he told her. ‘A pub I’ve known since I was first old enough to frequent such places. They do remarkably good food.’ Taking her hand in his he raised it to his lips and gave it a kiss that held more pleasure than passion. ‘We’re on our holidays and what better to set us on our way than a pub lunch in the garden of the Cat and Fiddle?’

‘Two weeks, Giles. Today it feels like eternity. Do you know what I’d like more than anything? I’d like us to just keep driving until we got to Gretna Green. Two weeks would turn into all the years of our lives.’

‘No, Tessa, it wouldn’t bring happiness. You couldn’t start the rest of your life knowing you had deceived people who love you.’

‘But for two weeks we can pretend.’

Giles imagined the cottage that awaited them at journey’s end. This certainly wasn’t the first time he’d booked it, and neither was Tessa the first companion he had taken there. But he had never felt even the slightest twinge of guilt. Don’t look ahead to things that may never happen, he told himself. Even though Tessa’s adolescent love was something he’d never known from anyone else, surely it was up to him to make sure that tonight was so rapturous for her that hero worship was turned into mature love.

‘Here we are,’ he announced as the swinging sign of a cat playing a fiddle came into view. There were one or two bicycles leaning against the side of the building, just one car already in the car park and, completing the rural scene, a pony and trap. As Giles got out of the car a portly, middle-aged man wearing a butcher’s apron tied round what at one time had been his waist, came out of a side door then, recognizing him, waved a greeting.

‘That’s Jack Milton,’ Giles told Tessa, ‘the landlord. Just wait there. He and I go back a long way.’

She waited as he said, watching in the driving mirror as he and the landlord shook hands. In a minute Giles would bring his old friend over to the car to be introduced; in anticipation she glanced in the mirror to make sure she looked her best. She heard their voices but not their words, and there was no sign of their coming towards her. She frowned, her confidence again threatening to desert her. Then Giles came back alone.

‘Out you get,’ he said, opening the door for her. ‘I told Jack I wanted that table by the stream and he’s seeing that we have an umbrella to shield us.’ Ever the optimist, Tessa’s spirit rose. ‘Jack’s wife is Swiss. I said we’d have fondue; she makes the best sauces I’ve ever tasted.’

Once they were seated at their table, a barmaid brought out the umbrella, which Giles took from her and fitted into the table. While they waited for the fondue they strolled by the stream and then out came the same barmaid carrying the pot of hot oil, the flame from the heater flickering in the breeze. She was followed by a girl too young to have left school, who must have been employed to do a Saturday job, bearing a tray with a selection of home-made sauces, two long-handled forks and two dishes of raw meat cut into cubes. So the feast commenced. It was Tessa’s first experience of fondue and she forgot her disappointment at not being presented as the future Mrs Lampton as they cooked their meat, sometimes losing it in the oil and catching the wrong piece, dipping their catch inelegantly into the delicious sauces.

‘This is the best possible start to a holiday,’ she said as she dug around in the oil for her lost piece of meat. ‘So much more fun than ordinary food with a knife and fork, don’t you think?’

‘That, my dear Tessa, is why I brought you here.’

‘We’ve made a memory. When we’re very old we shall look back and remember every second of it.’ Not the most tactful remark she could have made, as she realized when she saw his sudden frown. ‘When we’re very old’ was a reminder to him of the gap in their years, and even more of the gap in their experience. The words seemed to hang between them.

At two o’clock The Cat and Fiddle closed, but it was nearer three and the other tables in the garden were empty; whether there to eat or simply drink the occupants had all gone.

‘Here’s the car key. You can get in while I just go round to the kitchen to say hello to Heidi. She’s lost none of her skill.’

Tessa felt like a child. ‘You run out and play while the adults talk,’ he might have said to her. Watching him walk away, the joy of the last two hours evaporated. She wished she could hate him for being so insensitive but she couldn’t – it wasn’t in her power to hate him. So, alone, she walked back to the car and sat waiting. In fact, he was only two or three minutes, even though to her it seemed much more. Then he appeared; his smile as he got behind the driving wheel was all it took to chase away her momentary blues.

In Bridgnorth they stopped again and wandered around the delightful old town where they found a tea room and ate scones with jam and cream. Pouring the tea banished any lingering feeling of inferiority and when, as they walked back towards where they’d left the car, he disappeared into a florist’s with a brief ‘Wait here’, emerging a minute or two later with a bunch of hothouse roses, her happiness was plain to see.

She had never before seen the hills of Shropshire.

‘So lovely, you can see for miles. It’s gentle and yet it’s – what’s the word? – strong, that’s it, it’s
strong.
Devon is gentle with its narrow lanes. Craggy places are harsh, don’t you think? But this is, yes, it’s strong, strong and kind. Have you been here before, Giles?’

‘Many times. The cottage is isolated, but it’s a far cry from my work place in Downing Wood. It’s centuries old but has been thoroughly modernized, mostly before the war but they have done a few things since. It has its own generator for electricity and a bathroom as good as I have in my London flat, but the low ceilings have their original beams, and there’s the original open fireplace. You’ll like it.’