Larkrigg Fell (21 page)

‘And you can keep your filthy hands off Beth,’ he growled, moments before she reached them.

‘This has got to stop,’ she cried, running between them. Jonty knocked her aside, beside himself with fury, beyond any sense of reason.

‘Leave it, Beth,’ Andrew urged. ‘I can handle him, the arrogant coward.’

He may well have done so had it not been for Pietro, who came upon him unexpectedly from behind. Grabbing his arms, he pinioned them back with a grip of steel.

‘You bastard.’ Jonty wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, then making a fist, hit out again and again, Andrew not able to break Pietro’s hold.

‘We could have - taken - the - dog - away,’ Jonty shouted above Beth’s screams, punctuating each blow as he shouted the words. ‘Kept him from your bloody sheep. You could have given him a chance.’

Andrew’s head was ringing but he lifted his head, glared his hatred of the other man through eyes puffy with pain. A dribble of blood ran from his mouth and he knew at least one tooth was broken. ‘What chance did the cur give the poor ewe?’

‘How do you like to be cornered?’ Pietro coldly enquired, easily quelling Andrew’s exhausted efforts to be free. Jonty lifted his fist again while Pietro held on, tightening his grip on Andrew’s arms the more he struggled to be free.

‘No! Beth screamed, hands slapping at them both. ‘Stop it, stop it. Sarah, do something, don’t just stand there.’

Jonty tossed her aside as he might an irritating fly.

‘OK, OK, we’ll let your precious yokel go, but we can have some fun with him first, eh? We’ll teach the cocky bugger a lesson he won’t forget.’ Jonty lifted his head to look about him, then laughed. ‘You said you liked cows? The young peasant farmer’s an expert on the subject, right? Then let’s see if you enjoy sharing a midden with one.’ He flashed a message to Pietro who laughed, then both men picked Andrew up. Pietro by the arms, Jonty by the legs, and they swung him up and over a low wall into an open pen where a young steer and his mother had been nervously contemplating the scene. Andrew fell in the stinking slime with a grunt.

The twins both froze with horror.

It was Tessa, who had been rooted to the spot by the farmhouse door who acted first. Hastily depositing James safely by the horse trough she ran over to Jonty and yanked at his arm. ‘What the hell are you doing? Get him out of there.’ She could hear her child protesting vociferously but for once ignored him, praying he’d stay put.

‘To hell with it.’ Jonty jerked his arm from her grasp. The twins came to in the next instant. They ran to look over the wall, where Andrew lay sprawled in the straw and liquid mire on the floor of the open pen. One animal stood reasonably quiet but the other was starting to fidget, looking close to panic, eyes rolling back in terror.

‘Those aren’t milk cows,’ Tessa was yelling. ‘That’s a young bullock.’

Jonty laughed. ‘No more’n a calf, it looks harmless enough to me.’

‘With his mother, a Galloway. Beef cattle.’

Beth looked at the shaggy coated cow with her calf and recalled how Andrew had told her about the Galloways. ‘The nearest thing you’ll get to an untamed animal on a farm these days. ‘But it was all right, she told herself with relief, Andrew was on his feet, staggering to the low wall.

‘For God’s sake get out of there,’ Tessa said. ‘And watch the gate. Don’t let them escape. Heaven knows how far they’d run now they’ve been spooked.’ She half glanced over her shoulder to check on James. He was starting to crawl in her direction, pleased to show off this new skill. Fear clutched her breast.

‘Stay there, cherub. Wait for Mummy.’ He took no notice.

What happened next seemed to go on for ever but in fact probably took no more than seconds. As long, in fact, as it took for the farmers to get down from the fell tops and view the dire result of the fight which had at first only amused them.

One minute Jonty and Pietro were reaching over the wall, laughing at Andrew covered in filthy slime, pushing and thumping at him to prevent him from climbing out. The two animals, almost crazed by this time, threshed about and bellowed in terror. Then Jonty somehow slid over the wall and was in the pen with Andrew, swearing he’d kill him if it was the last thing he did.

‘Don’t be stupid. Get out!’ Tessa shouted, again glancing back over her shoulder as she heard James’s gurgle of delighted laughter. Perhaps it was because everyone else’s attention in that moment was likewise diverted by the innocent James, now perilously close to the pen, that they didn’t anticipate what was about to happen. Almost as wild-eyed as the animals, Jonty swung round and thumped what he believed to be Andrew out of the way. ‘You and your bloody cows.’ But it was not Andrew at all. It was the calf.

‘Jonty,’ Sarah’s scream echoed over the fellside as she realised the danger at last. But it was too late.

The calf was half demented already, and somehow Jonty had got himself between the calf and his mother. It was perfectly plain to everyone that she did not like it. Before anyone could move or do a thing to prevent it, she’d lowered her head and shoulders and begun to pummel Jonty against the wall of the pen.

Sarah lay on the big bed she’d once shared with Jonty and let herself sink into deep depression.

It wasn’t as if she’d loved him, she told herself. They’d had fun together, that was all. Sex. Teasing. Fun. Games. I won’t grieve. I refuse to. But the image of the scene tortured her, filling her mind, waking and sleeping. She saw the blood spurting, forming scarlet splashes all over her skirt and Beth’s cream ‘wedding’ dress as they’d struggled to drag him clear. She woke sometimes in the night in a hot sweat, screaming and trying to brush the stains away, then she’d go to the bathroom and fill the old bath and scrub herself raw to rid herself of the memory. But it was impossible. She would remember those sickening moments and the crack of bones splintering, for as long as she lived.

‘It was you, Beth, and your bloody cows,’ she said, violet eyes big as bruises in her pale face. ‘If you hadn’t fussed so much in the first place about a dratted cow, Jonty would never have thought to tease Andrew with one. He never meant to hurt anyone. It was all a joke. If you hadn’t been so prissy and just enjoyed sex with Pietro instead of wanting flowers and wedding bells, this might never have happened.’

Beth had no strength to argue. She sat shivering, arms wrapped about herself as she stared at the floor, not wanting to hear Sarah’s words.

‘Now I have no one,’ Sarah wailed. ‘What a goddammed mess.’

‘He’s not dead,’ Tessa screamed, standing up and facing them all in furious despair, fists clenched, tears running down her face. ‘Stop talking about him as if he were dead. Stop thinking of yourselves. They say he’ll never walk again. Think about him.’ Then she ran from the room, leaving Beth to pick up and console baby James, reduced to sobs by the emotion in his mother.

Sarah turned her face into her pillow and wept too.

To Beth’s great astonishment in the days following, Tessa cried even more than Sarah. Great gulping sobs which threatened to overwhelm her by their anguish. At first she thought that it was Tessa’s fears for baby James, who’d been so dangerously close by. But later it came out how she’d secretly cared for Jonty all along, without saying a word to anyone. Finding the right words to comfort her seemed a near impossibility. Tessa kept saying how unlucky she was with men and Beth could only wonder at her own misjudgement. What a terrible muddle.

It hadn’t been Andrew who Tessa had wanted at all, but Jonty. Perhaps Andrew’s jealousy over losing Tessa had finally overwhelmed him. No wonder the fight had got so quickly out of control.

Questioned endlessly by the police about the accident, seeing two of his best cattle sold off cheap because he couldn’t bear to keep them on the place, and now to lose the woman he loved. Poor man. Beth could hardly bear to think of it.

Chapter Twelve

No one felt much like work during those long, nerve-wracking days, Beth agonising over whether Sarah was right about it being all her fault? If she’d never become obsessed with her rural dream and the idea of owning a cow, would Jonty still be well and whole to this day? Beth tried to tell herself that the undercurrents of tension had been there from the first between Andrew and Jonty. They’d taken an instant dislike to each other and there’d been nothing she could do about that.

But perhaps these tensions had been made worse by trying to live together, had become heated and finally exploded in a most terrible way.

The weather worsened, growing wet and bitterly cold, the fells taking on the silence of winter. November was here, Christmas on the horizon.

Even the curlew had deserted them for milder climes on the coast, and Beth felt very much alone.

They took it in turns to visit Jonty but he never spoke. He lay surrounded by drips and trollies and unimaginably frightening medical equipment, either asleep or feigning it. Despite their vigilance he resolutely ignored them all.

The nurses tried to reassure them. ‘He’s doing fine.’

‘He’ll be starting physiotherapy as soon as his ribs mend and his internal wounds are healed. He’ll be able to lead a pretty full life from a wheelchair. People do these days. Don’t despair.’

But they did despair and Beth suffered an intolerable level of guilt, more than she had ever imagined possible.

Once, Jonty opened his eyes and glared straight at her as if saying that yes, it had been entirely her fault. But he still didn’t speak and after a long moment closed them again. As long as she lived she would never forget the accusation in that pain-wracked stare.

She tried to bury her guilt and misery in work, spent hours digging and weeding the garden, cleaning the duck pond, mending dry-stone walls and chopping logs. Anything which would exhaust her and help her sleep at night.

When she wasn’t working she took long walks over the fells, gratefully breathing in the cold crisp air, trying to come to terms with what had happened, to convince herself that she was not the cause of this disaster.

But it did no good. Sleep eluded her and if ever the accident did slip from her mind for a moment, a mere glance at her sister brought all the terrible anguish rushing back. However unfair and illogical, Sarah held her entirely responsible, and made no attempt to disguise that fact.

Everyday reality returned with the drop of a letter on the mat. It was from the bank manager. Beth read it in disbelief and hurried at once to Sarah.

‘Did you know we’ve spent all the savings, and Derry’s loan too. Every penny we have in our bank account? This letter says we’re overdrawn.’

Sarah lay in bed. She never rose before lunch these days which invariably was brought to her on a tray by Beth, which she would pick at in a perfunctory way. ‘What does it matter?’ she said, pulling the bedclothes over her head. ‘There’s more in the building society.’

‘For how long? You have to get up, Sarah. We have to sort this out.’

‘I don’t give a damn about the account. What the hell does money matter?’

‘We have to face life, Sarah.’

But Sarah blankly refused to speak to anyone, even the bank manager, however reasonable he might sound. She stayed in her room day after day, not crying, not sleeping, simply lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling or sitting on the window seat gazing out over the fells. Every now and then she’d storm about on the bare boards, and everyone would lift their heads and listen until she’d go quiet again.

Tessa moved about the place like a zombie, going through the motions of feeding and caring for James with no conscious thought, spending more and more time at the hospital. She said at least she could be of some use there, keep Jonty company. No one could quarrel with that.
 

It seemed perfectly ridiculous to Beth that Pietro should fall into a sulk because she’d told him their wedding must be indefinitely postponed.

‘Postponed? But why? This was all very tragic but it is over. Life must go on.’

‘No one is in the mood for weddings, or playing games.’

‘It would cheer us all up.’

‘I don’t think so.’

He put his arms about her. ‘You can at least come and share my bed,’ but Beth eased herself free.

‘I’m sorry, I know it might sound foolish but I really don’t think that would be right, not yet. How could I think of love-making when Jonty is lying in bed, partially paralysed. It would be too callous. Perhaps when he begins to recover ...’

‘But that could be weeks - months.’

Beth looked bleak. ‘I’m not saying we have to wait quite that long, but I can’t help the way I feel. I’m worried about Sarah and Tess. How can I be selfish and think only of myself? It wouldn’t be right. You do understand, don’t you?’

For a moment Beth thought the quarrel would erupt into something worse as Pietro glowered at her from beneath dark brows. Then he put his arms out and gathered her close, stroking her hair and kissing her brow. ‘But of course. I am being selfish, wanting you too much. What you must do is to write and tell your mamma that we are engaged. Tell her to come over quickly, then in a month or two, when Jonty is feeling better, we can have the proper wedding. No more silly games.’