Whisper on the Wind (75 page)

‘Yes, I do,’ she murmured, straining closer, ‘but don’t ever stop telling me?’

And please, God, forgive me this shining happiness in a world so full of heartache. And let me keep it.

She looked at her watch. Their time was nearly gone.

‘I don’t want to leave you. Hold me, my darling. Just hold me …’

And he held her tightly, and whispered, ‘
Ti amo
, my Katarina.
Ti amo
, my love.’

Roz walked, hands in pockets, moodily kicking at piles of fallen leaves, thinking there could be no more miserable a time than this, when summer had gone and trees began to shed their leaves; when the days grew shorter and nights longer and lonelier.

She had awakened early, out of habit, listening as Kath crept downstairs and out of the house to help Mat with Sunday morning milking. She had stood at the window, watching her walk across the orchard over the wet, once-green grass.

In the east, the sky had begun to lighten, yet high in the sky to the west the half-moon still shone brightly and, with it, the morning star.

Roz envied Kath the warmth of the milking shed and the noise of the beasts, the chuck-chuck of the milking machine and oh, anything and everything that was people to talk to and laugh with.

This morning, Ridings was empty and cold, and unless she lit the kitchen fire there would be no hot water. Polly didn’t come on Sundays, either. This would be an awful day, and if the Lancasters at Peddlesbury started their circuits and bumps, she would scream.

On the other hand she could, of course, stop acting like a spoiled brat. She could dress quickly, go downstairs and rake out the remains of yesterday’s fire. Then she could light it, chop logs and fill the baskets and oh, there were so many things she could do. Indeed, she must learn to fill her days – if each day of the rest of her life were to be as long and lonely as this, then what would be the point of going on living?

She blushed furiously with shame. Paul would be glad to be this miserable; and Skip and Flight and the rest of Sugar’s crew. And Peg Bailey, too.

‘What is the matter with you?’ she demanded angrily of the malcontent who gazed at her from the dressing-table mirror.

The matter
, whispered the voice in her head,
is Paul. You can’t accept that you won’t ever see him again. You fret and fume that you lost the child you were carrying, and wonder that life dares to do such things to you, Roz Fairchild.

‘And who, really, are you?’ she asked out loud of the face in front of her. ‘Just who are you – and what does life owe
you
?’

Life owed her nothing, and she could either sit here, wallowing in her loneliness until Kath came back, or go out and walk until she couldn’t go another step. She could walk down Peddlesbury Lane and cross the field to the wood behind which Sugar had crashed; she could go to where it happened and call for Paul with her heart, tell him how wretched she was, how lonely. Maybe he would call to her, softly tell her it was all right; that she had only to cry out to him from her heart and he would hear. If she stood calm and still, would she hear his voice, quiet as a whisper, and see his face in her mind’s eye – the face that had eluded her since he’d died? Why, when she loved him to the point of madness, was he such a stranger to her, now?

We made a child together, Paul. You were real and warm, full of laughter and love of life. So why now have you left me? Why can’t I call you back, remember the sound of your voice. Is death so final, so unkind
?

She turned quickly, impatiently, reaching for her clothes, pulling them on, and ran downstairs to the kitchen, filling the kettle, placing it to boil. She
would
make herself busy, then this afternoon she would walk and walk as Polly once did, though she would not weep. Her tears were spent, though she wished they were not, because even tears were better than the black nothing that wrapped her round whenever she was alone and prey to her thoughts.

And so she walked, now, kicking the fallen leaves, knowing she was going in search of Paul, of his voice, his face and the sweet relief of discovering he had not entirely left her.

She hated this part of the year, when autumn’s richness gave way to near-winter and everything was dying without protest. She preferred the starkness of mid-winter: leafless trees, twigged branches like black lace against a sky of grey velvet. She liked the glare of winter sun on an untrodden field of snow, pheasants kark-karking as they fluttered up to roost and a setting sun so red it made your heart glad just to see it. And cold ears and fingertips, frost patterns on the windows and tall, dead grasses dusted with silver.

Winter she could take, but the half-dead months at the end of autumn she could not, she thought, as she leaned on the field gate at the end of Peddlesbury Lane, remembering the last time she had stood here, Kath’s restraining hand on her arm and the RAF sentry warning her to go no farther, ordering her away as if she had no right to be near Paul. Well, the sentry wasn’t here, now. There was no-one to stop her opening that gate and walking to where it happened.

She looked ahead to the edge of the wood, where branches grew stark and jagged; Sugar, falling like a great wounded bird, had done that, two seconds before –

Before you died, Paul. Before you died on a soft June evening, filled with beauty.

She walked to the edge of the field. They said there had been a huge crater, but it wasn’t there, now. Someone had levelled it, then ploughed over the field. There wouldn’t be anything left of Sugar. Paul wasn’t at this place. If she waited for ever, she wouldn’t find him here.

She turned and walked back to where the sentry had stood, then crossed the lane, making for the riverbank and the copper-beech trees, their dying leaves waiting to fall. Once, she and Paul walked here, talked about soon being married. It was useless to wait, they’d decided, for the war to be over. All they had known was
now
, and their need for each other. But Paul had gone, and their child, and all around her was aloneness and despair.

‘Where are you, my darling,’ she yearned. ‘How could you leave me so completely when I need you so, love you so?’

And I love you, Roz. I always will. I promised, didn’t I
?

‘Paul?’ His voice – she had heard it! After trying and trying, she’d heard him!

She closed her eyes, and his face was back in her mind’s eye. He was smiling, loving her, looking just as he’d looked that night in the ruins when he’d said their last goodbye.

She waited, listening. The wind sighed gently through the copper-beech leaves and she heard his voice again, soft and tender.

I love you, Roz. Fifty years from now, I’ll still be loving you
…

Paul had come back to her! She could recall his face, hear his voice. He’d come, out of her remembering, like a whisper on the wind; a soft, warm wind from the summer of their loving. When she had stopped fighting the pain and accepted, Polly had said, then she would hear him.

Paul, I love you so. Don’t go away again. Don’t leave me.

Because she needed always to remember how it had been, to hear their laughter and their whispered words; needed to recall their closeness as they danced, thrill again to the love in his eyes each time they had met. And she could see him now; had called him back to her, at last.

She began to cry softly; tears of relief and love and acceptance. There was no anger in them; no bitterness. She wept for a love that would never be lost. Fifty years from now, she would still remember; see his smile, hear his voice. When she was old, he would still be young, straight-backed and handsome. And remembering, she too would be young. She smiled, not able to imagine it, not caring, knowing only that she could keep him in a small, secret corner of her heart for all time.

‘And I’ll love you, Paul Rennie,’ she whispered as the wind took her words and carried them to him. ‘Fifty years from now, I’ll still be loving you.’

Her love for him would make her nineteen again, wild with youth. Even fifty years from now, when she was old, he would make her young again.

The fire glowed warmly, lighting the shadowed corners of the little sitting-room.

‘The eighteenth of December, Roz – imagine, a whole year since I first came to Peacock Hey.’

‘And worried sick because you couldn’t milk a cow – and that Barney was going to hit the roof when he found you’d joined up.’

‘And now I’ve got my decree nisi; I’m half way divorced.’

‘And you’ll be free,
absolutely
free, at the end of June. Just in time for your birthday, Kath. Then Marco will ask you to marry him –’

‘Ask me
again
, Roz. Oh, I miss not being able to go near him, but until June I’ve got to accept that I can’t.’

‘Stupid divorce laws.’

‘Never mind. At least we can write, thanks to Jean, and oh, it doesn’t seem possible – such luck, I mean.’ She stopped, red-cheeked. ‘Sorry, Roz. I shouldn’t flaunt my happiness so, should I; not when –’

‘When I’ve lost Gran and Paul and the baby? Look, Kath, I’ve accepted it, now. I’m learning to live with it. I – I’ve grown up, I suppose.’

‘My word, yes. You’re a real farmer – you’ve harvested your very first crops, don’t forget. Ridings is a farm now.’

‘And paying its way again, thank heaven.’

They sat for a moment, gazing into the fireglow, strangely at peace.

‘Kath?’ Roz murmured, her eyes not leaving the flickering flames. ‘Do you ever wonder about your father?’

‘No. Now that you mention it, I don’t. Only about my mother and why she had to leave me. Do you?’

‘Funnily enough, I don’t, either. I did, once, and then I realized he mightn’t even have known – or cared – that he’d got my mother pregnant. Megan, I mean, not Janet. But I do sometimes think about Megan, and hope she found happiness, somewhere along the way. I won’t look at every red-haired, green-eyed woman I see, though, and wonder if she’s the one. And I won’t ever try to find her, Kath. It wouldn’t be fair, either to her or to Janet.’

‘It wouldn’t. You’re a Fairchild, and you must look after Ridings, for your gran.’

‘Mm. Dratted old ruin.’

‘No it isn’t! You know you love it. And you will get used to – well – being like me. You’ll accept it, Roz, as I did, and not feel too sad about it. You learned about it suddenly, you see; it came as a shock. But me – well, I always sort of knew it; always knew I was different from most other kids – an orphan …’

‘But we
aren’t
orphans. We do have mothers – somewhere. And we’ve got each other, Kath. Sisters, remember?’

‘Sisters. But no more talking about the past, uh?’ Because Roz was doing well, now; starting to live again. The sadness had gone from her eyes and she laughed more often. But she would never forget Paul. Kath knew he would always be with her, and thoughts of what might have been never far away.

‘Mm. And I suppose I
am
a farmer – or I will be, when the place is really mine. I want to farm properly, Kath, just as Jonty does. Ridings can’t ever be just a house again. Do you suppose, when the gypsies came on Luke’s Day, that they blessed the land, as well – when they lifted the curse, I mean?’

‘How do you know they lifted it? I didn’t see anything happening, come to think of it.’

‘No chanting, you mean; no creeping widdershins around the place? Neither did I, but I know the bad luck has gone, Kath. I can feel it has.’

‘They’ll come every year, now – you realize that, don’t you? You’re stuck with them every October,’ Kath, still the practical one, reminded her.

‘I know. But they didn’t do any damage – only left a lot of horse muck in the lane …’

‘And horse muck is good for mushrooms, I suppose.’

‘And rhubarb.’

‘
Rhubarb
? Now what good is rhubarb without sugar, Roz? Didn’t you hear it on the wireless yesterday? That lot in London are cutting the sugar ration in the new year. Wouldn’t it make you sick?’

‘Yes, but we have had a victory.’

The winning of a battle, a
big
battle. Rommel’s Panzers routed and prisoners taken,
by us
; thousands of prisoners! The light at the end of the tunnel. Not the beginning of the end, Mr Churchill said, but the end of the beginning. We
were
going to win!

A victory – wasn’t it just! And wasn’t it great to hear the church bells again?’

Once, the ringing of church bells would have sent fear into every man, woman and child; would have warned them that Britain was being invaded. On that wonderful November Sunday every bell in the land had rung out joyously for the winning of a battle and the scenting, at last, of victory to come.

‘By the way,’ Kath murmured, placing a log on the fire, ‘what were you and Jonty talking about so earnestly this afternoon?’ Leaning on the stackyard gate they’d been; talking, heads close. ‘You were nattering as if you were putting the world to rights.’

‘Were we? I could have sworn we were talking about pigs.’

‘
Pigs?
’ Kath wailed. ‘We’re not back to pigs again? I thought you once said you didn’t want them so near to the house?’

‘No, I didn’t. Gran said it. Ridings is a farm, remember, and those doghouses would make good sties. Wouldn’t it be marvellous to have our own bacon?’