The Lost Days of Summer (47 page)

By the time she reached the little copse by the well, she was very thirsty. She was tempted to lower the bucket into the water and take a drink, but chided herself for her impatience. How embarrassing to be caught helping herself when she had not even had the courtesy to knock at the Swtan door. There was a stream, of course, where the animals drank, but she knew that the water was not fit for human consumption, so instead she settled herself in a little hollow from where she could watch the cottage.

After about ten minutes she grew restive. Hadn’t Nell said something about a dog? She could see no kennel and she knew enough about farm dogs to be sure that any resident collie would have given warning of her approach as soon as she had left the lane and walked across to the well. Deciding she had waited long enough, she got to her feet, returned to the lane, and followed it until she reached the cliffs. She went to the edge and looked down on the spot where she remembered the
Maud
was usually pulled up. Indeed, with the tide at this stage, there was only one spot where she could have been beached, and she was not there. Kath put her hand above her eyes to shield them from the sun and peered out to sea. Was that dark smudge on the shining blue water a boat? It certainly looked like one, and as her eyes adjusted to the brightness she saw that it was indeed a small craft, with a solitary rower at the oars, for on such a calm day it would have been wasted effort to have raised the sail.

Kath stood watching for a moment or two longer and was able to ascertain that the boat was moving away from the shore and not towards it. Good! The old feller was off on a day’s fishing, which would give her time to have a really good look, not only at the byres and outbuildings, but at the stock and at the Swtan itself.

As she retraced her steps, instead of passing by the wicket gate which led to the Swtan and its garden, she went through it, pausing to look with approval at the neatly laid out bed of herbs. She wondered if the old feller used the herbs when preparing food; if so, he was a better cook than most men. No dog had leapt out barking at the squeak of the wicket gate; clearly, if the man had once owned such an animal, he did so no longer.

Her hand was out, towards the door, when it occurred to her that though she knew the place was empty she should at least knock. However, she was already holding the latch, so she rattled it, then pushed the door open. She stepped inside, not because she wanted to – she had quite made up her mind not to enter the Swtan but merely to look around – but because she felt impelled, almost as though someone behind her had given her a push. And instead of the empty room she had expected, to her horror she saw a man, sitting with his back to her, holding out a slice of bread on a toasting fork towards the fire. She registered that this was certainly not the gypsy she had half expected to find here, for the man who had moved into the Swtan four or five years ago had been short and squat, black-haired and swarthy. This man was tall . . . taller than Kath herself, and fair-skinned, with dark brown eyes, and though his hair was grey he was much younger than she had thought, downright youthful compared to what she had imagined.

Kath began to apologise for entering without knocking and then stopped short, a hand flying to her mouth. Who did he remind her of? Somewhere, in the back of her mind . . . but then he dropped the toasting fork and came towards her. ‘Kitty?’ he said huskily. ‘Oh, Kitty, can it really be you?’

Kath had only time for one disbelieving cry of: ‘John! Oh, my dearest . . . but they told me you were dead!’ before she found herself in his arms. They clung together, unable to believe what was happening to them until Kath broke free with a shaken little laugh. ‘Oh, John, for a moment I thought you were a ghost, but you’ve certainly proved you’re flesh and blood. But I don’t understand . . . Owain told me that you were dead, and he would never lie. Oh, John, I’ve a million questions . . .’

‘Come to that, so have I,’ he said, an anxious look crossing his face. He sat down on the oak settle and pulled her down beside him. ‘Darling Kitty, are you married?’

When Kath shook her head, he gave her an exuberant hug, then settled back with his arm firmly round her shoulders. ‘We’ve a great deal of talking to do. I want to know how you ended up here, and I dare say you’ll want to know the same about me. Did you know I was here? Is that why you came?’

Kath, secure in the circle of his arm, gave a breathless little laugh and reached up to stroke his cheek. ‘No, I had no idea. I’m your landlady, Mrs Jones, the one who refused to let you pay rent, and was outraged when she heard you’d suggested buying the Swtan. Oh, John, if only I’d not been so pig-headed! If I’d behaved properly, we could have met when you first came here, but you see I thought you were the same as a gypsy who simply made himself at home in the Swtan five years ago. He seemed to believe that if he took possession he could either make me pay to get it back or steal anything worth stealing, or both. When that didn’t work he all but wrecked the place, so when my niece said there was a man talking about buying the Swtan I came here full of righteous fury to turn him out . . . oh, John, John, what a fool I’ve been! I’ve thought of you every day and never known you were so close.’

‘Me too,’ John said, and his voice was a low hum, like a contented bee. ‘If only I’d plucked up my courage and come up to Ty Hen – I take it that is where you live? – we could have had two blissful years . . . oh, my darling!’

They kissed, then drew apart, each one gazing into the face of the other, each one regretting the lost days, weeks, months. Kath was the first to break the silence.

‘Well, John? Who’s going to start explaining what has happened over the past twenty-odd years?’

‘It had better be you,’ her lover said, after a moment’s thought. ‘My story is both lengthy and complicated.’

Kath drew a deep breath. ‘After I was told you were dead, I was ill for a long time . . .’

Kath finished her tale, then got up and pulled the kettle over the fire. ‘After all that talking, I need a cup of tea, and so will you,’ she said. ‘It’s your turn now, John; I just hope your story isn’t as complicated as mine.’

John smiled at her, then he also drew a deep breath. ‘The trouble is, I don’t really know what happened to me around October 1918, because I lost my memory. The first thing I can remember now was waking up to find a sloping ceiling, very clean and white, just above my head. I ached all over, I couldn’t move my right arm or my right leg, and there were unbearably loud noises in my head. I know now that I was shell-shocked as well as injured, but as soon as I was well enough to take in my surroundings, and see the people who were nursing me, I realised that I was in a small bedroom in a French gîte, which is a little farm, a smallholding perhaps, and the young woman who was looking after me was the farmer’s daughter. The trouble was, having lost my memory, it seems that I had lost my command of English too, for I continually addressed my rescuers in Welsh – I suppose you could say I went back to my native tongue. As you can imagine, this added to their confusion, but Maria took to sitting beside my bed for hours at a time, patiently teaching me to speak French, and I must say I took to it like a duck to water.’

‘They were good people. When Monsieur Duval – that was the farmer’s name – found me, I was a long way from the action. I was all but dead and he thought I must have crawled away from the noise and fighting, injured though I was. He and Maria got a door off its hinges, put me aboard, and carried me to their home, where Maria nursed me devotedly.’

‘But surely they must have known you were an English soldier. Didn’t they recognise your uniform?’

‘By the time they found me my uniform was in rags and filthy with mud; unrecognisable, in fact. They burned it and gave me a striped nightshirt and a pair of big felt slippers of Monsieur Duval’s.’

‘What good people. I wish I could thank them. Go on, my dearest.’

‘As I said, I’d lost my memory. I didn’t know who I was, or where for that matter. The Duvals did their best to discover my identity, but Europe was in a ferment, what with the war and the influenza which had decimated the troops in all the countries involved, so they had no luck. As I grew better I was allowed to get up and give a bit of a hand in the house. Marie had christened me Henri for some unknown reason, since they had to call me something.’ He chuckled grimly. ‘I didn’t care what they called me, as you can imagine. I could have wept – sometimes I did – when I tried to remember who I was and came up against a closed door. My injuries healed and I grew strong, but my mind was another matter. There were times when I thought the door which had slammed on my past life would never reopen, yet a little thread of hope kept reminding me that the local doctor, who had examined me when I first arrived at ‘La Picurie,’ had said he was sure my memory would return some day.’

‘My poor darling,’ Kath said tenderly. ‘After what you’d gone through, to have to suffer such a terrible deprivation . . . So you grew better and continued to call yourself Henri . . . What happened next?’

‘Next I had to find work, because I could scarcely expect anyone to pay me for doing nothing and anyway, with every day that passed I was growing stronger. Monisieur Duval was in his seventies, and needed a strong, healthy man to help him on his farm. I was delighted to work for him and could not help hoping that the tasks he set me might bring my past back, because he often did not have to explain what he wanted done; the knowledge of farming was a part of me and came to the surface when needed.

‘I was sure, by now, that my memory really was sleeping and had not gone for good. But at first I just enjoyed the work and revelled in simply being out of doors once more. And what caused my memory to begin to function, oddly enough, happened in the most ordinary and unromantic way. I’d gone into the nearest town with Maria, where there was a street market in full swing, and as I was pushing my way towards the stall Maria wanted to visit I saw a saw a small boy playing “The Skye Boat Song” on a wooden whistle.’

John put his hand up to his eyes in an involuntary gesture and Kath saw a tear trickle down his cheek. She realised what an emotional moment it must have been and waited to let him recover his composure before saying gently: ‘Yes, music can make one remember times past, both happy and sad. Was that how it was for you?’

John nodded, produced a handkerchief and blew his nose, then resumed his story. ‘Sorry about that. Well, as soon as I heard the melody, I remembered myself as a small boy, struggling to play it on just such a whistle. I could even see the scene in my head: I was standing in the farmyard, with hens clucking about my feet and my father’s dogs in the distance, rounding up the sheep and bringing them down from the hills for shearing. I could actually smell the oil in their fleeces, which was even stronger at that moment than the sweet scent of the pinks which Mother had planted under the cottage windows.

‘I turned to Maria and began to speak in Welsh, which caused her eyes to widen with dismay, for I had not used the language for months. Then, for a moment, I spoke in English, hastily switching to French before the poor girl grew too confused.

‘She, bless her, took one look at my face and immediately grasped my hand, leading me away from the hustle and bustle of the market to a quiet little lane. “You’ve remembered! That’s wonderful,” she cried, putting he hands behind my head and pulling it down until our eyes were on a level. She stared very hard at me for a moment, and at that moment she looked beautiful to me. “What’s your name? Quick, tell me, before something distracts your attention.”

‘Her gaze was almost hypnotic and I replied at once that I was John Williams. Then, I have to admit, we both shed a few tears and I gave her a hug. She had been the best of friends, but as we returned to the market I think we both knew that our friendship would have to end. I would go to the authorities, tell them who I was – remember, I had no idea I’d been posted first missing, and then dead – and after that I would return to England.

‘A few days later, however, I learned to my horror that everyone had been told I was dead; everyone in this case, my love, being my “next of kin” Owain – and therefore yourself. It seems that there had been a huge explosion virtually on the gun I commanded and what remained of the crew was pretty well unrecognisable. But there had been a sniper shooting at us from the shelter of a nearby hayloft and I’d waved my pay book to distaract him; when they found it, it had two bullet holes clear through it, so naturally enough they thought I was one of the unidentified dead. Anyway, as soon as I possibly could, I left the Duvals, and the farm and set out for England, meaning to find you.’

‘When was that?’ Kath asked eagerly. ‘Why didn’t you come to Kingfisher Court? I was there until the spring of 1919.’

‘It was in the spring of 1920 and that’s exactly what I did do. But I never reached Kingfisher Court. I was heading for the Scottie, because I knew the court was off one of the side streets somewhere, when a voice shouted my name. It was Reggie Jackson; d’you remember him?’

Kath nodded. Reggie, though a good-tempered and jovial man, was a heavy drinker and most definitely not on the Ripleys’ visiting list. ‘What did he tell you?’ she asked bluntly. ‘He knew I was married, of course.’

‘Yes, he told me that, but he had no idea where you were living, though he thought it was somewhere in Wales. He said you’d married a chap called Tom Whitaker and gone away with him . . . there had been bad feeling, he said, between the sisters, but he could tell me nothing more.’

‘Oh, how typical of Reggie!’ Kath cried. ‘And to think that if only he hadn’t muddled me up with. Trivie, you might have searched for me. Yes, Owain and I were married, but just to know you were still alive would have thrilled us both.’

John shook his head. ‘No; what was the point? Once I knew you were married – it didn’t matten who to – I felt strongly that to turn up on your doorstep would only give us both pain. If I could have discovered your doorstep, that is. I decided that my best course would be to return to France. Maria had cried when I left, though even through her tears she was wishing me luck and praying that we would meet again one day. So I returned to the smallholding, told the Duvals that I had sorted things out with the authorities in England, and asked Maria to marry me. Together, we toiled on the farm; her father died after half a dozen years, and though the work was incredibly hard, it served to keep my mind off what might have been.