Daughter of Dark River Farm (10 page)

‘She’s called Jessie. Well, Frances Jessica, but she likes to be known by Jessie. And yes, of course she’s nice. She’s the daughter of an old friend of mine.’

‘Another Frances? Where’s she coming from?’

‘Stop chattering! I know you’re only trying to fill time. Anyway, Jessie’s finished her training, and arrives in Princetown on the mid-morning train. You’re to take the trap and fetch her.’

‘Which one of us?’ I asked, hoping it would be Belinda. She was hoping it would be me.

‘Both of you,’ Frances said firmly. ‘I want young Will and his friend to have time to talk things over, without the likes of you silly girls poking your noses in. I’m sure Evie will tell you all she feels you need to know, later on.’

‘But we don’t
both
need to go!’ Belinda protested, and Frances shrugged.

‘All right then. Kitty can take the trap, and you can finish out in the barn since I notice you’ve still got two corners to clear.’

I saw Bel weighing up the options of a ride out to Princetown, fresh air, and a first glimpse at the new girl, against the gloom of an old barn, spiders, and the smell of damp hessian and droppings.

‘Perhaps her bags will be heavy,’ I said helpfully. ‘I’m not sure I could manage alone.’

‘Oh all right,’ Belinda agreed. ‘I’ll come and help.’

Frances gave one of her rare chuckles. ‘Speaking of bags, don’t forget to take something to tie them down with. You don’t want them flying off in the road. If you get the trap ready now you’ll be in plenty of time to meet the train.’

Belinda and I escaped with sighs of relief, and later, as we drove up to Princetown, I speculated on the new arrival. ‘She’s had some training then. Did you have any?’

‘I did, yes, but it’s only four weeks in any case,’ Belinda pointed out. ‘You can’t learn a lot in that time, and you don’t really know what you’re doing until you’ve seen a full year on a farm. Then again, if she already knows Mrs Adams she won’t have to worry about getting into bother over mistakes.’

Her slightly gloomy tone told me she was thinking of her own numerous instances of
bother
, and I smiled in sympathy and changed the subject. ‘Was Jane sad to leave?’

She nodded. ‘She did like it here, but one of us had to take care of Mother, and Jane’s got far more about her than I have. More patience too. I wonder if this new girl really wanted to do this, or if she’d rather have been off nursing or something.’

‘Like you would?’

Belinda had made it quite obvious she’d have loved to have taken my place in Flanders when Evie had gone back there earlier in the year, despite her general squeamishness. ‘Do you think you’d have made a good nurse?’

‘Probably not,’ she said. ‘But I’m sure I’d have made a rattling good ambulance driver.’

I looked at her, guiding the pony with a practised, elegant hand, and wondered what she believed it was like out there. Did she think we sat quietly behind the wheel while we were loaded up, then drove up the road and waited again, chatting with orderlies and doctors while they lifted out the quiet, smilingly grateful soldiers? I shook my head, and she saw me from the corner of her eye.

‘You may think I’m a bit silly,’ she said, a little tightly, ‘but I can drive, at least.’

‘There’s more to ambulance driving than driving ambulances,’ I said. ‘It’s truly awful out there, Bel. You should think yourself lucky to be here.’ I waved to encompass the hedges, the fields and the uneven, but relatively smooth road.

‘Evie doesn’t feel a bit lucky,’ Belinda said. ‘She hates it here; she can’t wait to get back.’

‘It’s different for her,’ I said quietly. For a moment we drove on in silence, then Belinda cleared her throat.

‘Look, it’s a lovely day. We’ve practically been banned from the house… Why don’t we have some fun while we’re out? We’ve ages before the train.’

I perked up. ‘What kind of fun?’

‘While you were harnessing Pippin I went into the barn, to get some rope for Jessie’s bags.’ She glanced over her shoulder into the trap. ‘Found something else as well.’ I followed her gaze and saw a bag, wedged upright in the corner, and the clear outline of a bottle inside it. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘There’s plenty left.’

‘Frances will be furious!’ I breathed in dark delight.

‘Not with you,’ Belinda said wryly. ‘You can’t do anything wrong for her. She won’t find out anyway.’

‘What if she does?’ Frances had a way of just
knowing
things. It was uncanny.

‘She won’t! All right, if she does, we’ll have to say it was your idea, then neither of us will take a strafing.’

I remembered feeling woozy and uncomfortable last night, but as I started to say so, a breeze lifted my hair, and almost took my hat off, and I also remembered I’d only felt horrible once I’d gone indoors. A moment later I scrambled into the back and seized the bottle.

‘Salut,’ I said, and pulled the cork out with my teeth. I climbed back onto the front seat, and took a drink before passing the bottle over.

‘Cheers,’ Belinda said, and did likewise. ‘Almost there, better drink up before someone sees us.’

After a minute she took the bottle off me, and peered into it with an expression of disappointment. ‘You drank more last night than I thought,’ she complained. ‘Either that, or you’ve drunk a lot more now.’ She threw the bottle back over her shoulder, where it landed on the floor of the trap and rolled under the seat. ‘There. Out of sight, out of mind. We must be sure to tell Nathan it went down well.’

‘What do you think of him?’ I asked, curious. ‘I mean, I know he’s good-looking, but Evie obviously doesn’t rate him, and she’s met him before.’

‘I tend to trust a man who’s not afraid to cry in front of strangers. And besides, Evie didn’t know who he was. It’s Will he’s hurt, and if Will forgives him, who are we to judge?’

‘You’re right.’ The pleasant part of the wine-hum was back now, and I squinted through the midday sunshine at the grey little village. ‘It’s lovely here.’

She gave me an amused look. ‘Drunk a lot more now,’ she decided, and I aimed a light blow at her arm.

‘All right, it’s not pretty, but it’s very dramatic. Especially compared to Ecclesley.’

‘Will you ever go back there, d’you think?’

I shrugged. The wine had loosened my tongue or I would never have said, ‘Perhaps. I miss my family, even though they don’t miss me.’ Then I cleared my throat, hurrying on before she could press me any further. ‘Slow down—station ahead on the left.’

‘I know. I was born here!’ But instead of turning in, she urged Pippin on with a flick of the reins. ‘I want to show you something first.’

As we passed out of the village my gaze was drawn down to our right, where the fields fell away to meet the stone wall that housed the massive and notorious Dartmoor Prison. Although since the prisoners had all been freed for service, they called it the Princetown Work Centre. Small figures still worked in the fields just outside the wall—a party of conscientious objectors. I thought, with a twist of sorrow, about Oliver in his London prison, with none of this stark but beautiful landscape to take some of the grim loneliness away from his days.

But Bel wasn’t interested in the prison. She drew to a stop, instead, just beyond the sawmill on the outskirts of the village. ‘Look, what do you see there?’ She pointed into the field that lay immediately behind the smaller one by the road, and I squinted.

‘A horse.’

‘Not just
a horse
! Look again.’

I did so, and realised I was looking at something altogether more special than a lumber-lugging workhorse. The animal grazed, calmly unaware of his audience, and the smooth, clean legs shifted slightly in the grass as he moved to a fresh clump. It was hard to look away again.

‘I come here all the time to look at the horses,’ Belinda said, and her voice had dropped. ‘But now most of them have been called up there’re usually just workhorses left. I saw this one when I dropped Jane back home last week.’

‘Where did he come from then?’ I realised my voice had taken on the same hushed tones, as if we stood right next to the animal and didn’t want to startle him.

‘According to Jane it’s on loan from the ARS.’

‘The what?’

‘The Army Remount Service. It’s a stud.’ She paused, and her expression altered subtly, but tellingly. ‘I used to ride Mrs Adams’s horses, you know, before they were called up. I miss it.’

I looked at her with dawning suspicion. ‘You’re not suggesting you try and ride that thoroughbred. Are you completely mad?’

In answer, Belinda threw Pippin’s reins to me, and climbed into the trap to start rummaging under the seat. She pulled out the rope we’d brought with us to tie down Jessie’s bags, around twenty feet of it, and shoved a few sacks out of the way to make a space on the floor of the trap. She looked at it for a moment, considering, and swiftly tied two simple knots around a foot apart along its length; I could feel my eyes narrow, recognising the technique but hoping I was wrong. Then she knelt down, and, with her tongue firmly locked between her teeth, she laid the rope out, and began tying a series of further, more intricate knots.

I resigned myself to the fact that I’d been right, and sighed. ‘You’re making a halter.’

Belinda looked up briefly, and grinned. ‘Come on, Kitty! I said we should have some fun!’

‘But that horse is huge!’ I looked over at the field again and tried to guess just how huge. ‘Probably at least seventeen hands.’

‘Ah, you know about horses.’

‘I used to ride. I didn’t have my own horse, like Evie did, but some friends of my parents used to let Oli and me ride theirs.’ I couldn’t bring myself to mention that Archie had been my more frequent companion, and that he was the most natural horseman I had ever seen—it had been a joy, even before I’d acknowledged my more mature feelings for him, to watch him on horseback. ‘I’ve never ridden anything bigger than fifteen hands though,’ I said, ‘and never bareback.’

‘Then it’s high time you did.’ Belinda looked critically at the mess of rope in front of her, then she picked up an end, threaded it over and under one of the bigger knots in the middle, and the tangled rope seemed to melt into the right shape. ‘There!’ She took Pippin’s reins out of my hands and hooked them securely over the fence post. Her voice turned wistful. ‘Embrace life, Kitty. Find the fun where you can. God knows it’s grim enough the rest of the time.’

She was right. I looked from her to the field, and felt the wine doing its dangerous work again. Suddenly I didn’t care. ‘Come on then!’

Chapter Seven

Belinda and I ran, crouched low and laughing, across the field that lay alongside the yard of the sawmill, and, hugging the hedgerow, we followed it to the wall at the top. Belinda went up first, finding handholds easily in the stones, and dropping down the other side. My head was still buzzing a little, but rather than hindering me, it seemed to take away my hesitation and tension, and before I realised it I was thudding to the ground beside her.

The stallion raised his head and sniffed the air, but did not appear likely to bolt. I took a moment to appreciate the splendour of him; his chestnut coat gave off waves of light that changed from minute to minute, flashes of deep red against the brown, and I imagined how it would feel to be up there on his back, feeling him respond to my movements…

‘Watch the house,’ Belinda whispered.

My blood thrumming, I glanced behind us but there was no movement from the yard of the timber mill. When I looked back Belinda was carefully walking towards the horse, letting him see her but keeping the halter down at her side; she was clearly an expert, and I relaxed as she ran a practised hand down the stallion’s long nose, then stepped up to stand alongside him, patting his neck. He stamped and snorted, and I turned to check the yard again, but no-one came out of any of the large sheds to investigate. Somewhere in my clouded thoughts I wondered what the time was, and how long we had been here, but I was distracted by the little thrill of shared triumph as Belinda slipped the halter beneath the stallion’s head, and, in one quick movement, drew it over his nose and cheek.

To our surprise, he stood stock-still as soon as he felt the touch of the rope, and Belinda turned to me with a grin of delight and gestured me over. ‘Slow,’ she cautioned, but she hadn’t needed to warn me. I was used to far more skittish horses. Standing this close to the thoroughbred made me realise just how huge he really was; straddling his back seemed an impossibility, and I didn’t know how Belinda would manage, but when I glanced to the side I saw her stooping to make a stirrup with her hands.

‘Me? I’m not going first!’

‘Yes, you are, come on.’

I didn’t give myself time to think. I just slipped my foot into her linked hands, and she boosted me up until I was able to throw my right leg over the stallion’s back. He shifted again, and his head dropped, but he didn’t sidestep, or make a sound, and the memories came sweeping back as I picked up the makeshift rein, feeling my fingers move to let the rough rope slide into place.

Belinda’s face, turned up to me, was shining. She looked like a child at that moment, and her excitement found its echo in me… I was nineteen, not ninety; I’d missed out on so much fun, and the war showed no signs of ending; this might be my last chance for a long time. Maybe ever.

Belinda must have seen something of this in my face, because she nodded and stepped back. ‘I’ll keep watch. Go on; just don’t let him jump the gate into the road.’

‘We have to name him,’ I said, ‘just for today.’

She thought for a moment, then glanced at the timber yard and smiled. ‘Woody?’

‘Perfect!’ I sat up straight, missing the solid feel of a stirrup beneath my feet, and gently pressed with my knees. Nothing happened. I pressed harder, still nothing, then I brought my heels in, and Woody took off.

The field flew by beneath us, and before I had time to realise what had happened, we had reached the top corner, and I could feel Woody’s strides shortening, and the muscles beneath my legs bunching. At least it wasn’t the gate at the bottom of the field, but this wall was no small thing either and, panicked, I gripped tighter with my knees, wondering why on earth I’d thought I could do this without a saddle. My fingers let go of the rope and instead twisted into Woody’s mane, and I fought the urge to lie down over his neck and wrap my arms around him, and then we were up, and over. As we landed I felt my grip slipping, and my breath stopped until I settled into the rhythm again. I slowly sat up straight and let go of Woody’s mane, relaxing and letting myself once more enjoy the sensation of grace and power afforded me by this unexpected and thrilling experience.