Daughter of Dark River Farm (26 page)

We’d drawn level with Amy now, and I stooped to take her hand. ‘What’s wrong with that? It’s better than cleaning muddy old tools, surely?’

‘No it’s not.’ Belinda snatched her jumper off her head, flinging it over her arm instead. Amy watched her with solemn, interested eyes. ‘I don’t find him the slightest bit attractive, Kitty! But he’s sweet, so I feel bad when he gets all tongue-tied.’

‘Well tell him! Then you won’t have to spend your days avoiding Lizzy.’

‘Will you offer to go instead? The little girl would love a ride in the trap.’ She beamed at Amy.

I sighed. ‘If it turns out that’s what she wants you for, I’ll offer,’ I promised. We stopped at the door to knock grass and earth off our boots, and Amy banged her foot on the floor too, in imitation. Then she looked up at me, and gave me the sunniest, happiest smile I’d ever seen, and I walked into the house on air.

Jessie was in the kitchen too now, and had clearly been told of my return, and the new addition to our Dark River family. ‘Welcome back,’ she said, and I couldn’t read her mood, so I just thanked her, hoping she wouldn’t be jealous of Amy now, too. Lizzy had pushed a box across the table towards her and I could see it held two packets of butter, a biscuit tin—probably containing some of Lizzy’s home-made biscuits—and a large dewar bottle of milk. Beside these, she wedged a jar of farm honey.

‘If you go now, you’ll be home by teatime,’ she said. Jessie nodded and stood up, both hands on the box. She looked expectantly at Belinda, then back at Lizzy, who nodded. ‘And you, Bel. You know Frances doesn’t like to send you girls out alone, not since your accident.’

She turned back to pick up something else, and Bel shot me a look and mouthed, ‘You promised!’

I groaned; the last thing I wanted was to spend the next hour in the company of Jessie Goulding. Bel’s look turned pleading, and I sighed. ‘I’ll go instead of Bel,’ I said. ‘I think Amy would enjoy the ride in the trap.’

Lizzy put two large brown eggs in the box, and tucked the spare bit of lining cloth around them. Her lips twitched in a little smile as she flicked a glance at Belinda. ‘Why do you sound as if you’re reading that from a piece of paper, Kitty? Go on, then, I don’t mind who goes.’

Amy sat between us on the seat, and Jessie took the reins while I slipped an arm around the little girl. ‘Animals,’ I said, pointing to the little trap pony. I wondered if she’d remember.

‘Mulls,’ she repeated. ‘Seep.’

‘Pony,’ I said.

She looked back at Pippin. ‘Pony?’

‘Good girl.’ I hugged her again, then we moved off, and I felt her tense and grab at the seat. Again I was reminded that she hadn’t had the encouragement and the example most other four year-olds had been blessed with. Gradually, as she became used to the rocking sensation, her grip eased, and by the time we were on the main road to Princetown, her little hands were linked in her lap. She looked up at me proudly, and I smiled and hugged her again; not even Jessie’s silence could darken this moment for me.

‘Why is Nathan still here?’ I asked, when that silence had, after all, become embarrassing.

‘Why shouldn’t he be? He works hard enough now.’

‘Well, shouldn’t he have gone back by now? You know, to the war? He said he was on leave.’

She gave me a shrewd look. ‘He also said he found us by chance,’ she reminded me. ‘Neglected to mention that chance involved finding our address from Will’s friend, and making his way here deliberately.’

‘Do you think he went absent without leave?’ I thought about Oli, and went cold.

‘No, I don’t think he’s run away. He takes the trap out quite a lot, drumming up portrait-painting business, and he’d be worried about being seen I would think.’

We were nearing what had once been Dartmoor Prison, and I looked at the men in the grounds and remembered the younger McKrevie girl. ‘Do you think he might be a conchie?’

Jessie leaned over the side of the trap, and spat neatly on the ground. I was shocked. ‘Jessie!’

‘What? Ladies don’t spit, I suppose.’

‘Well, no.’

‘And men don’t shirk.’ She pointed to the figures in the distance. ‘Except they do.’

‘Have you ever given anyone a white feather?’ I asked, uncomfortable to see such an extreme version of my own sentiments. Spitting in the street!

‘A few,’ she said. ‘Back in Gloucester.’

‘And how did you know they weren’t Blighty cases, or just home on leave?’

‘I think one of them was, actually. He threw the feather back at me.’

‘Handing out judgement along with white feathers,’ I repeated softly, and gave Jessie a look I hoped conveyed how I felt. ‘You can’t tell, you know,’ I said. ‘I’ve sent men home who didn’t look as if they had a scratch on them. Particularly when they had their clothes on. I mean, look at Will.’ I turned back to face the road, and said again, ‘You can’t tell.’

‘That’s why I stopped doing it,’ she admitted. ‘When that man threw the feather back he had such a look of contempt on his face, I could almost see him thinking,
What do you know?
’ She flicked the reins, urging Pippin to go faster. ‘I realised I didn’t. I couldn’t. So I stopped handing out feathers.’ Her gaze lingered on the stone walls of the Work Centre as we passed. ‘But those, they’re not Blighty cases, are they?
They’re
not home on leave. They’re shirkers.’

‘And if they have genuine reason to object?’

Jessie turned back to me. ‘You, of all people, shouldn’t accept that. Not after what you’ve seen.’

‘Maybe what I’ve seen qualifies me better than you,’ I said, not realising I was thinking it until the words fell out. Her words had echoed Lawrence’s, questioning my belief that he would be safe, and the loss snatched at my breath again. He’d known, somehow… This time, he’d known. And I’d given him some nonsense about turning Oaklands into a convalescent home. I looked down at Amy’s white-blonde hair, streaming out from under her hat in the evening breeze, and I thought about her father, his arm gone from the elbow down, his livelihood ruined. I thought of Will, his courage and his pain…and of Evie’s selfless, terrifying dash across no man’s land, believing him to be dead yet unable to leave him alone out there.

And then I thought of Archie. Where he might be now, what he might be doing, whether he was even still alive. None of us had chosen the war, but we were in it, and everyone was part of it. We didn’t choose the weather, but when it was stormy we helped those caught in the worst of it. We didn’t choose sickness, but we sacrificed what we had to help those who suffered. I looked again at the diminishing figures of men swinging picks at rocks, and wondered what possible purpose was served by punishing those men who took the absolutist stance. What good was it doing, to deprive their families of an income? To make pariahs and outcasts of those families, and to cause those men to sicken and, even die?

I didn’t voice these thoughts. It wasn’t something I wanted Amy listening to. If the war continued she would be able to form her own opinions, but for now we had the peaceful evening, and the gentle sound of Pippin’s hooves and the rolling wheels beneath us, and that was what I wanted her to remember tonight, when she lay her head down to sleep in her new home.

Seth Pearce was talking to his two remaining workers, and washing his hands at the outside tap, when we rolled into the yard. He looked up, and for a moment his face was lit and seemed almost handsome, but then he saw it was only us, and he turned back to finish, taking his time and twisting the tap with unnecessary force. Disappointment manifested itself in many ways.

‘Good afternoon,’ I called out, deliberately cheerfully. ‘We’ve brought you some things from the farm.’

‘Right you are,’ he said, rubbing his hands on his mucky trousers to dry. I wondered why he’d bothered washing them.

‘Wait here, sweetheart,’ I said to Amy, and climbed into the back to hand the box down to Seth. ‘I never got the chance to say thank you, Mr Pearce.’

His smile returned, but it was a mere trace of amusement, not the hopeful light of before. ‘For what?’ he said, ‘the arrangement with Pirate, or for not telling the truth about what happened?’

I shot a glance at Jessie, who didn’t look back. I didn’t know if she’d heard. ‘For your kindness to Belinda,’ I said carefully, watching his face soften slightly. ‘She much recovered now, thank you.’

He nodded. ‘Right you are,’ he said again. He looked into the box and his smile widened. ‘This looks ’andsome. Wait there while I empty your bottle and rinse it out, then you can take it back with you.’

He went into the house that stood alongside the sawmill, the box I had struggled with sitting easily on his shoulder, and I looked around, wondering if, by any miracle, Woody was still here. The field was empty, but the stable door was half open, and a large, strong-looking horse stood with his head poking inquisitively out at the strangers to his yard. His long face was white, but a black splotch over his left eye told me who he was. I hopped down off the back of the cart and went to him.

‘Nice to meet you, Pirate,’ I said quietly, stroking his nose. He whickered and nudged my hand, but I had nothing to give him. ‘How’s things then, eh, old boy?’ I ran a hand down as much of his neck as I could reach through the door, and he stood steady, his breath blowing my hair where it had escaped my hat.

‘Mulls?’ Amy called, and I turned with a smile.

‘Big pony,’ I said. ‘Horse.’

‘Pony.’

‘All right.’ No need to confuse things now. ‘He’s called Pirate,’ I said. ‘Do you like him?’ She shrugged and went back to playing with her spoon. I turned back to Pirate. ‘I’ll come and fetch you soon. We can work together. How’d you like that?’

‘Whenever you like,’ Seth said, appearing with Frances’s now-washed dewar bottle, ‘Exercise’ll be good for him, but take it easy with him if you can; things will get busy here soon, ready for the winter. I need him fit and healthy.’

‘Don’t worry. I won’t work him too hard. We’ll be starting to get the hay in, in a day or two. He’ll be perfect for that. It’ll mean we can use the big cart and get it done in half the time.’

‘Right you are.’ He handed me the bottle, and I gave Pirate a last pat.

‘Thank you. I’ll call for him in a few days, if that’s all right?’

‘Will you, uh…’ he looked past me at Jessie, sitting with Pippin’s reins ready to flick him into motion ‘…will you be bringing the other miss? I’d like to see how she’s faring, you know.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully, and made up my mind to get Belinda here no matter what, even if it was just to put Mr Pearce straight about her intentions. Or lack of them. ‘It depends who’s free at the time.’

He nodded, then abruptly changed the subject. ‘Are you ladies keeping your barns locked?’

‘I…I don’t know,’ I said, and turned to Jessie. ‘Are we?’

‘Not that I know of,’ she said, equally puzzled. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, best lock ’em. Tell Mrs Adams to get a good sturdy padlock. I’ll fix it for her if she can’t find anyone to ’elp.’

‘Mrs Adams is quite capable of doing that herself,’ Jessie replied, somewhat sharply.

‘Why is it necessary?’ I asked, embarrassed; Mr Pearce had only been offering help, after all.

‘Some folks round ’ere have found tools gone missing. Fetch a good price they do, on the markets up Exeter way, where no-one recognises them.’

‘I’ll tell her,’ I promised, and climbed back onto the front seat next to Amy.

‘How do you know?’ Jessie asked, before we pulled away.

‘Beg pardon, miss?’

‘How do you know they fetch a good price in Exeter?’

He fixed her with a steady look, and his helpful manner slipped away. ‘Because I bloody well searched everywhere until I found them, that’s how.’

We were almost back at Dark River before Jessie spoke. ‘You know why Belinda’s not interested in Mr Pearce, of course.’

I didn’t like her knowing tone, and my own voice was more than a little frosty. ‘No, how could I? How could
you
know?’

‘It’s because of Nathan.’

‘Bel’s not interested in Nathan.’

‘She told you that, I take it.’

‘She did. And I believe her.’

Jessie chuckled. It was a surprisingly, and annoyingly, pleasant sound. ‘That must have been before you went away, then.’

‘It was.’ I had a nasty feeling, and a glance at Jessie confirmed it.

She turned to me with a little quirk to her mouth. ‘They’re spending an awful lot of time together, for someone who’s not interested.’

We were coming up on the entrance to the long track that led to Dark River now, and she slowed Pippin’s trot, ready for the turn. One of her hands came out and steadied Amy on the seat, and I wanted to shove it away. I was supposed to be the one who protected the child. Then I felt a lurch of shame; was I really just as suspicious and jealous as she was?

‘Belinda’s flighty,’ I said, putting my own hand on Amy’s back. ‘She’s just looking for fun, that’s all. And he’s a charmer.’

‘If you say so. But I’d say she was more interested in him than vice versa. Hold tight, lovey,’ she said to Amy, and the cart wobbled onto the rough track, giving me that warm sense of homecoming again and pushing thoughts of Belinda and Nathan to the back of my mind.

It was three days later that Jessie’s words came back to me. I chose a time when she was unavoidably busy with Frances, and asked Belinda to come with me to pick up Pirate. ‘You can ride him back, if you like,’ I offered. ‘I’ll bring the cart.’

Amy looked up from her scribbling paper, and I saw it was covered only with thick black lines. ‘I comin’ too?’

‘Of course,’ I said, and held out my hand. ‘Come with me. We’ll tell Miss Lizzy where we’re going.’ She put down her pencil and checked her spoon still hung on the ribbon Frances had fastened to her pinafore. I couldn’t believe the solution had been so simple—no more screams. As long as she had it, she was happy, and could use two hands. She slid down from her chair and ran ahead of me to the stairs.

Belinda had stopped, with one arm in her jacket sleeve. ‘I don’t want to go out there; you know that.’

‘Don’t be soft,’ I said briskly. ‘All you have to do is make it quite clear you have no feelings for Mr Pearce, then we can all stop treading on eggshells around him, and you won’t have to keep finding excuses to disappear whenever there’s an errand to be run.’