The Healing Stream (7 page)

‘Yes, I know. You’re Giles Lampton.’ She found herself gazing at him in awe. ‘Deirdre told me. You’re like I expected.’ And she believed she spoke the truth as she gazed at the creator of Burghton, the place she knew so well. He was tallish, slim and yet he gave the impression of strength, his brown hair was neither straight nor curly. But it was his eyes that seemed to hypnotize her, light blue and fringed with dark lashes, she felt they saw right through her.

Giles laughed. ‘What did she tell you then?’

‘I mean, I didn’t know what you would look like. I’d never thought about it. But because I know the characters in your books: Chilvers from the bakery, Reverend Maidment and the family at the rectory, Percy the milkman and his wife Margot, all of them, because I know them as if they’re family really, it’s as if I know
you
, too.’

All the time she’d been speaking he had still held on to her hand.

‘That’s the nicest thing you can say to any writer.’ What a delightful creature she was, he thought, aware that he was the object of her adolescent hero worship and enjoying the situation. He came in for plenty of flattery from the opposite sex and accepted it for what it was worth. But this girl was different. Despite her confident manner, she still had the innocence of childhood about her. And those luminous dark eyes refused to keep the secret of her innermost thoughts.

‘Daddy is at the dentist’s,’ Deirdre was saying. ‘But you can come in and have tea with Tessa and me if you like.’

And ‘like’ he most certainly did, meaning to milk Tessa for all the adulation she was willing to shower on him.

Much later, driving back to his cottage on the edge of Downing Wood he felt less certain. Yes, the adulation had been there, there was no doubt of that; what he hadn’t been prepared for was a strange and unfamiliar feeling. Tenderness? Yes, but not the sort of tolerant tenderness, probably tinged with humour at the situation, that might be felt for a hero-worshipping youngster. And that’s what she is, he reminded himself. I’m old enough to be her father. Remember the natural way she walked on those ridiculously high heels: straight-backed, seemingly unaware that she’d been bestowed with such natural grace. Smartly dressed in a suit with a tight-fitting straight skirt that had made him conscious of the slight movement of her bottom with each step. Fortunately for Giles there was almost no traffic on the country road, for his thoughts refused to be kept in check. Slender legs, legs right up to that provocatively moving bottom. His journey nearly over, he crossed the main Exeter-to-Torquay road and took the lane on the western side of the Dere estuary leading to Otterton St Giles, but before he reached the village he turned up a track to the right and there on the edge of Downing Wood was Hideaway Cottage, his isolated retreat.

Next morning he went back to Fiddlers’ Green.

‘Have you two any plans for this promising-looking day? I thought I might take you to a pub I know on Dartmoor. Is your father in? Do I need his permission to run off with you both for the day?’

‘He went early this morning to the works and won’t be back until the end of the week; I’ll just have to tell Miss Sherwin. Sounds nice, Giles. I’ll go and tell her now.’ As Deirdre spoke she was turning her chair to propel herself back indoors.

Face-to-face with Tessa, Giles lost some of his usual confidence; the memory of the way she had haunted his evening seemed to hang between them.

‘You said you wanted to take us. But Mr Lampton—’

‘We established yesterday that my name is Giles. I realize what you’re going to say: her chair won’t go in my car. And you’re right. It means the converted job that you drive.’ Then with a teasing smile, ‘I’m not used to being driven. You’ll take care of me, wont you?’

She nodded. ‘I’ll do my best. You could drive except that I don’t think the insurance would cover us if you did. It used to be just for Mr Masters until I came and then he added me as a named driver. That’s really why he engaged me, because he found he wanted Deirdre to go out more often. In the advert he said he wanted a carer-oblique-friend. Funny sort of job description, don’t you think?’

‘I’ll bear it in mind for the time I’m tired of my own company.’

‘But you never need to have just your own company. You have friends galore in Burghton.’

‘I’ll tell you a secret. They seemed all to shut their doors on me last evening. I went home intending to work, but it was your fault I couldn’t. I kept hearing your voice telling me you knew each one of them as if they were part of your family. Does it sound crazy when I say I felt it was I who was the outsider?’

‘Oh but that’s silly. If it weren’t for
you
they wouldn’t be there at all. You make them live and breathe.
They are you
. That’s really what I meant yesterday when I said I felt I knew you already.’

‘Believe me, Tessa, the life I live is a far cry from the good folk of Burghton. Ah, here comes Deirdre all ready for our day of adventure.’

For some reason Tessa hadn’t tried to fathom, she hadn’t told Richard and Naomi about her meeting with Giles Lampton the previous day. She had wanted to hug it to herself, to relive each second. By the next evening, after their trip to Dartmoor she made herself talk about the outing, explaining that Giles was a family friend and it had been through him that Mr Masters had heard about Fiddlers’ Green.

So without her actually saying so, the impression was given that Julian Masters and Giles were friends and contemporaries. That ought to steer them away from guessing her innermost thoughts.

The Deirdre of earlier days might have given more thought to the frequent visits of Giles Lampton to Fiddlers’ Green. Not that she was particularly interested in him; she had known him all her life. Why he was a family friend she had no idea, for certainly he and her father didn’t appear to have much in common. Perhaps it had been her mother who had brought him to the house in the first place; and at the thought Deirdre’s expression showed her contempt. For, keen to shake off the ties of marriage and motherhood, Julian’s wife had deserted him for a younger and wealthier man leaving him with a toddler. Deirdre had never been interested enough to wonder where Giles fitted into the picture any more than she wondered why, as winter took hold, his car was so often parked in the drive.

Then, towards the end of the January, she glanced out of her bedroom window and there he and Tessa stood talking. What was so strange about that? If she and Tessa were around when he visited, he always came to talk to them. Watching them now, she turned the wheels of her chair so that she was close enough to the casement window to open it and then move out of their vision in case they turned her way. So from where she was shielded by the curtain she strained her ears to hear what was being said.

‘It’s on the edge of Downing Wood, west side of the estuary. I want you to see it, Tessa. Please let me take you there.’

‘We’d have to arrange a time so that you’d be in. I mean, there’s no point in your coming to fetch us when I’d have to bring Deirdre in the hybrid.’

Deirdre willed him to speak loudly enough for her to hear. Why did he want to take them to this Downing Wood place? Then she wished she hadn’t listened.

‘It’s
you
I want to see the cottage. What time do you finish here?’

‘At six o’clock. I’ll have to go home with my bike. Don’t call for me – I’ll meet you at the end of the lane at, say, half past six.’ Tessa’s spontaneous reaction was to say nothing to Richard and Naomi; the evening ahead was too wonderful to be idly enquired about.

But Giles misjudged the reason for the secrecy and laughed, putting his hand on her shoulder then moving it to the back of her neck and gently ruffling her short hair.

‘Funny girl. Are you frightened your family wouldn’t approve of your visiting a lonely bachelor’s cottage? You’ll be quite safe. We shall eat dinner together.’

It was the teasing note in his voice that made her embarrassed and prevented her finding a quick retort. She felt gauche and was uncomfortably conscious of the difference between his life and her own, and sure that he must be able to see into her mind. If only she were older, more worldly – more like the women he was probably used to entertaining in his flat in London.

Her only defence was to answer him coolly. ‘If you’d like to meet my aunt and uncle of course you can call for me at the farm. But it’s a rough, narrow lane; I thought it would be easier for you to meet me on the proper road.’ Even though she heard it as a lame excuse, she forced herself to speak calmly, sounding as if the whole incident were of no importance. He listened with his eyebrows slightly raised.

‘Not this evening. Next time, perhaps. Tonight we’ll have a secret assignation. I’ll pick you up at the corner of the lane at half past six. That should give you time to get home and give them some plausible reason for going out.’

Tessa clutched at the words ‘next time’, her hard-fought-for coolness lost and her eyes telling him more than any words.

Listening, Deirdre scowled. Her former jaundiced view of life must have been waiting just below the surface. The idea of going to the cottage hadn’t held much appeal, but hearing what Giles had said was a reminder, as if she needed one, of how different she was from other girls. She moved away from her listening post just as Miss Sherwin came into the room.

‘You still in here, child? I thought you and Tessa were going to take a ride out. If you don’t get a move on the daylight will be fading.’

‘She’s busy hanging around Giles Lampton. Haven’t you seen the way she looks at him?’

‘Then she’s sillier than I gave her credit for. She’ll bite off more than she can chew with that one. He’s a regular Casanova – and Tessa’s nought but a child.’

‘She’s nearly twenty.’

‘It’s not the number of years that count; it’s whether or not you hang on to the trust and innocence you had as a child. It’s my guess young Tessa has never been pushed into the rough and tumble. Well, let’s hope Giles Lampton soon loses interest in the Devon countryside and takes himself off back to London. I’m not stupid and I’ve watched that young man for years enough – well, he was no more than a lad when first I knew him when you were a babe in arms. And I tell you, I’d not mind a five-pound note for every woman he’s kept dancing attendance on him. Keen as mustard some of them; silly creatures. Give a man a bit of success – and he’s had more than his share of that – and they’re all over him. Now then Deirdre, before I help you into your coat I’ll just take you along to the bathroom. By then I dare say Tessa will have brought the car round to the door.’

Promptly at half past six Tessa hurried up the lane to the road where she could see his car waiting.

‘They let you out?’ he greeted her in that same teasing note.

‘How do you mean, let me out? I told them you asked me out to dinner,’ she answered in a voice aimed at showing she was mistress of her own destiny. Then, that established, she settled in the passenger seat prepared for what she thought of as a magic evening. In her mind’s eye she saw a country cottage, tastefully and elegantly furnished, a log fire burning in the open grate, a faithful retainer bringing a tray of food to the table. She imagined Giles taking her to his study and perhaps even showing her the work he was doing on this latest book about the people of Burghton. In her wildest and very private dreams she imagined him falling in love with her – but such were the dreams of many an adolescent whose head was filled with thoughts of some hero of screen or literature. Tessa allowed herself to dream, but even when at the end of the day she was in her own warm bed and cut off from the world, as she let her thoughts carry her where they would, she had no illusions. Dreams and reality were poles apart and she knew that was how they would remain. But on that evening reality was carrying her across the border; in a few minutes she would be warming herself by that great open fire, letting the atmosphere and elegance of his country retreat paint a lasting picture on her mind.

The evening was a milestone and there would be no turning back.

Reaching the main road, they turned to the left then, instead of continuing over the long bridge that crossed the Dere Estuary, Giles took a turning to the right towards Otterton St Giles. Before they reached the village he again turned right into a narrow lane, the dark night made even darker by the trees of Downing Wood.

‘There’s only just enough width for the car. Are there any passing places?’ Tessa asked in a voice she hoped sounded politely curious enough to hide her wild excitement for the evening ahead.

‘The track turns into a footpath, hardly that even once we get to Hideaway Cottage. Hideous name for it, even though it’s very appropriate. The postman leaves my mail at the village post office; I have no telephone. When I want to work undisturbed, this is where I come. No visitors, and not even a wireless. A week here is worth a month in London. Sometimes with so much going on, it’s hard to stay immersed in the atmosphere one is creating. So if it’s only to be for a few weeks I come to Devon. In Spain I have a finca – a house in agricultural ground – but it’s not worth driving all that way for just a few weeks.’

But it wasn’t the seldom-visited house in Spain that interested her, it was what he’d said about the cottage: no visitors, no wireless. And yet he was bringing
her
there. Did he see her as different from an ordinary visitor?

‘That’s a contradiction in terms,’ she laughed. ‘What am I if not a visitor?’

‘You? I am bringing you to my hideaway because I have imagined you there when I’ve been alone in the evenings. This evening we have to fend for ourselves, no silver service. Just a gas cooker. Are you still glad you’ve come?’ There was a teasing note in his voice, almost as though she were still a child.

‘I like cooking. When I lived on the island with Gran I always did the cooking on the days I wasn’t working at the hotel.’ A reminder to him that she had lived an adult life before she became carer-oblique-friend to Deirdre. ‘Look! I can see a light through the trees.’

‘I left the lamp on in the porch. We leave the car on this patch of scrub – there’s no room for it in the garden. Nearer the truth, there’s no garden; the woods are my garden. Out you hop.’ Leaning across her he unlatched the door and pushed it open for her to get out. ‘Wait there while I park, then I’ll guide you around the puddles.’ Once the lights from the car were out nothing pierced the darkness but the dull light from the porch. ‘Now then,’ Giles said as he walked unerringly to her side, ‘there’s a puddle just here, I’ll steer you round it.’ He had his arm around her shoulder; she wanted the moment to last forever.