Some Old Lover's Ghost (7 page)

Tilda pulled off her boots and, bare-legged, dipped a toe in the water. ‘It’s freezing, Daragh.’

‘Oh, you’re a baby, so you are.’ He waded back to the bank, and picked her up in his arms. She screamed, but curled her legs around him and laughed.

‘You’re a witch, so you are, Tilda Greenlees,’ he said softly. Then he bent his head and kissed her. His mouth was firm and hungry, and the clasp of his arms pressed her to him, and she did not want him to let her go. When, eventually, they drew apart, he said again, ‘You’re a witch, little Tilda, and you have enchanted me,’ and slowly let her fall, so that she tumbled, laughing and protesting, into the cool, green water.

On Daragh’s half-days, he met Tilda after classes and they cycled back to Southam together. Once, the tyre of her bicycle punctured, and they had to abandon the machine in a ditch. With Tilda perched on his cross-bar, Daragh rode, singing ‘The Star of the County Down’ and ‘Galway Bay’ at the top of his voice. The men working in the fields looked up and stared as he zigzagged in tighter and tighter sweeps across the road, so that she shrieked and cried out for him to stop. So he stopped, and she tumbled into his arms, and he kissed her again.

He borrowed a horse – Tilda never knew where from – and she sat on the saddle bow, his arms around her as they rode for miles. When they reached the long barrier of the Hundred Foot Drain, he slowed the animal with a click of his tongue, and leaned forward, his hands encircling Tilda’s waist, his mouth caressing her neck. When he stroked her breast, she wanted to forget all Aunt Sarah’s warnings and give herself to him, but instead she kicked the horse into a canter, and they flew across the field, Daragh pretending to slide from the saddle, Tilda clinging to the horse’s mane.

She had never known anyone like Daragh Canavan. He took her to a posh tea shop one day, ordering cakes and scones in a
cut-glass English accent, a monocle (one of the inn’s guests had left it in the bar) half masking one mocking green eye. On her eighteenth birthday in May, she came out of Long Cottage in the morning to find cowslips and ladies’ smock in bunches round the front door, and her name spelled out in flowers on the tiny pocket of front lawn. She skipped classes one afternoon, and he took her to a tea dance, guiding her around the floor with careless, easy grace. Then, in front of matrons and shop girls, he kissed her, standing in the middle of the crowded little room, taking the breath away from her. The matrons muttered disapprovingly, but Tilda glimpsed envy in the young girls’ eyes.

In the church at Southam, he fiddled with the lock on the little door that led up to the belfry until it gave way, and they scrambled up the narrow, winding stairs. From the tower, they could see for miles across the level fields to the straight line of the dike, and the large, four-square house in the distance.

‘Where’s that?’ asked Daragh, pointing.

‘That’s the Hall,’ Tilda explained. ‘The de Paveleys live there. Just the two of them, an old man and his daughter. It must be so strange, only two of you in a big house like that. I can’t imagine it, can you?’

Daragh stood behind her. His arms folded around her, touching her breasts. Her head fitted the curve of his neck and chin, but he did not kiss her, because it was a church, and he didn’t approve of kissing in churches.

‘Oh, I can,’ he said. ‘I can.’

In July, when the droves were white with dust, Sarah fell ill with a fever, and Edward de Paveley lay on his deathbed. The impending death of the old squire hung like a pall over the village. There was a stillness in the air, a sense of nervous expectation. Though the de Paveleys’ property had diminished during the decade and a half since the end of the Great War, Edward de Paveley still owned a row of cottages in Southam and many of the fields that surrounded it. Though to Tilda the squire and his daughter were no more than faces glimpsed in a passing car, she, too, sensed
the unease that had become a part of the heat and dust of high summer.

To Daragh, Tilda confided her ambition to be a nurse; and he in turn told her of his plans to buy a little bit of land – his own, no-one else’s, not rented, but bought. To Tilda, and only Tilda, he spoke of his last difficult months in Ireland – the mess he had made of his life there, his decision to leave, and to start again.

Aunt Sarah recovered only slowly. Returning to Long Cottage after a stolen half-hour with Daragh, Tilda found her aunt waiting at the door, still in her nightdress, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

‘Is he gone yet?’ said Aunt Sarah.

Tilda stood motionless, her heart pounding. Words darted around her head as she searched for a way to make her aunt understand what Daragh meant to her. Before she could answer, Sarah Greenlees spoke again.

‘Have they put the black up?’

A moment’s panicking incomprehension, and then Tilda understood, and shook her head.

‘There’s no mourning in the shop window. Mr de Paveley must still be alive.’ Relief mingled with astonishment that Sarah, who had never taken the slightest interest in village affairs, should appear to care about the ailing old squire. Tilda tried to take her aunt’s hand and lead her back into the house, but Sarah shook her off. When Tilda went out to the garden to pick beans for their supper, she found that she was trembling, so she lay on the grass, letting the warm sunlight wash over her. The rooms of the cottage had seemed small and dark, and Aunt Sarah had become, for a fraction of a second, someone unfamiliar and disturbing.

When Edward de Paveley died on the last day of July, Sarah Greenlees took the witches’ bottle from its hiding place beneath the floorboards, and kissed it. Then she went to bed and slept for twelve consecutive hours, her first uninterrupted night’s sleep since she had returned to Southam.

Waking the next day, listening to the church bell tolling
fifty-four times – the age of the dead man – Sarah felt as though a heavy load had fallen from her shoulders. She had not realized how much it would hurt her to return to her birthplace. She had come back for Deborah. And for justice. Sarah believed in justice. Not conventionally religious, she nevertheless saw that there was a natural order in the world, an order which, imperilled, could distort the future as well as the past. Once, when she was a little girl, Sarah had knocked over a bottle of elderberry wine on the draining board, and that bottle had felled its neighbour, and that the one beside it, until half a dozen bottles had crashed to the floor, the child watching aghast. Sarah knew that what Edward de Paveley had done was like that, that its consequences were not yet finished with, they would echo through generations.

Pinning a flat black hat, slightly greenish with age, to her hair the next morning, Sarah called Tilda in from the yard, and told her that they were going to church. To Tilda’s amazed protests, she made no response. They were going to church to attend Mr de Paveley’s funeral, and that was that.

In church, Sarah led Tilda boldly down the aisle. The villagers stared at them, wide-eyed and foolish, some of them the same people who hadn’t lifted a finger to help Deborah all those years ago. Sarah sat three pews from the front, behind the publican and his wife. She disliked churches. God was outside in the skies and the seas and the meadows, not imprisoned in a dark, cold stone building. She sat up straight, oblivious of the curious gaze of the villagers. When the vicar came in, everyone rose. As they placed the coffin in front of the altar, Sarah began to laugh. Tilda tugged at her sleeve; Sarah struggled to change the laugh to a cough.

Glancing across to the adjacent pew, Sarah thought scornfully what a pallid, feeble lot the de Paveleys were. Christopher de Paveley was tall and gaunt, stoop-shouldered at fifty or so, his face cadaverous, his hair thinning. His son was a fairer, shorter version of his father. Wrapped in an ugly black coat, veiled and hatted, most of Joscelin de Paveley was hidden from the congregation.

Later, in the churchyard, Miss de Paveley’s veil blew back in the breeze, revealing her features. Round face, brown eyes, crinkly brown hair falling over a black velvet collar. She couldn’t hold a candle to Edward de Paveley’s other daughter, who stood beside Sarah, wearing a faded cotton dress that had already seen three summers and a cardigan that Sarah herself had knitted. Sarah reminded herself that now that Edward de Paveley was dead, Deborah could at last rest in peace. Which left only the child to be avenged. Sarah imagined the privileged life that Joscelin de Paveley led. Never having to worry where her next meal was coming from, maidservants at her beck and call. As the coffin was lowered into the grave, Sarah felt an anger so intense that it dizzied her.

Then it was over, and the mourners ambled out of the churchyard into the street. Sarah was a few paces behind Joscelin de Paveley when the girl suddenly stopped walking and stood, frozen.

At first, Sarah couldn’t work out what Miss de Paveley was looking at. Her mouth hung open, and her eyes were wide and burning. Then Sarah saw the Irishman. The good-for-nothing was lounging against the gate of Long Cottage. It was his day to cut the wood.

Joscelin de Paveley was staring at Daragh Canavan. Sarah had never seen such naked desire in a woman’s eyes. For a fraction of a second Sarah almost pitied her. Then she seized Tilda’s arm, and marched her up the street.

Tilda was late home from Ely. Sarah watched for her at the window, twitching the curtain. The whirr of a bicycle released her from anxiety, and she returned to the bread dough, stretching and rolling it, knocking out the air with her strong, square hands. Tilda dumped her shopping basket on the table. Sarah glanced through its contents and said, ‘Where is the ink?’

‘Ink?’

‘I particularly asked you to buy ink, Tilda. I have letters to write.’

‘I forgot. Sorry, Aunt Sarah.’

When she looked up, she was shaken by Tilda’s expression of dazed happiness. As Tilda crossed the kitchen to take a cup of water from the jug, Sarah watched her. She knew her well; she had brought her up from a baby. Tilda’s face, which Sarah knew to be beautiful, was blurred, altered, transformed.

Transformed by love, Sarah guessed with a sudden leap of intuition. Tilda was in love.

Sarah had to lean against the table, the floury palms of her hands taking her weight. It wasn’t hard for Sarah to guess the object of Tilda’s love. Though she had always regarded men as at best a nuisance, at worst a curse, Sarah saw how a man like Daragh Canavan, with his seductive looks and honeyed tongue, might charm a girl. Daragh was fit and young, and his hungry green eyes followed Tilda with an expression which reminded Sarah of a mongrel dog she had once rescued from a mantrap. She had been unable to do anything for the dog, its wounds had been too deep, and she had gently helped it from this world. She would have liked to do as much for Daragh Canavan, though less gently. She knew that, unchecked, he would break Tilda’s heart.

The thought that Tilda’s life might be ruined in the same way as Deborah’s had been terrified Sarah. Part of her had always feared for this child, her dead sister’s child. All she had done to protect Tilda, all the plans she had made for her niece, could be turned to nothing by a man like Daragh Canavan. Sarah saw through him, saw to the weak and capricious heart of him, and knew that Daragh should not have her. As Tilda left the kitchen to feed the hens, Sarah’s hands fisted against her forehead. She could forbid Tilda to see the wretched man, but she saw clearly the dangers in that. She could leave Southam, now that Edward de Paveley was dead. She could confront Daragh, ask his intentions – but if he offered marriage, what should she do?

Sarah remembered the funeral, and the way that Joscelin de Paveley had looked at Daragh Canavan. The beginnings of a wild and freakish idea hovered at the edges of her mind, but could not yet be seized and thrown into view. Then the thought came clear,
and Sarah’s heart began to pound like a kettle drum. Her fisted hand pressed at the pain in her chest as she sat down again. Joscelin de Paveley is rich, she whispered out loud. Joscelin de Paveley has land aplenty. She stared, her breath tight in her lungs, at the list she had written for Tilda that morning.
Ink
, the final entry said.

And oh, such sweet revenge.

Sarah insisted on accompanying Tilda to Ely next market day. They walked; Sarah refused to cycle and thought the bus a waste of money. Crossing the fields with their seas of ochre corn waved by the wind, Sarah’s stout boots tramped purposefully through poppies and pineapple weed; Tilda, behind her, carrying the basket, saw nothing and schemed continually.

In Ely, Sarah bought a reel of thread, harangued the cobbler about the price of shoelaces, and posted her letter. Tilda knew that Daragh would be waiting for her outside the Electric Cinema. When Tilda pleaded for a drink or the lavatory, Sarah went with her to the water fountain and insisted they take turns in the cubicle in the Ladies, to save the penny. Walking home, Tilda’s boots scuffed miserably in the dust.

Because of the hot, dry weather, Sarah decided to wash the curtains, rugs and bedlinen. Steam ran down the walls of the scullery, and Tilda’s back ached from hauling coal into the stove to boil water. All the rooms in the cottage smelt of household soap and starch, rows of washing hung limply on the line in the windless air, and every moment of the day was busy. When Daragh came to chop the wood, Tilda saw the questions in his eyes. Aunt Sarah watched him, checking that he was doing the job properly, only turning away when he flung off his shirt to wash his face under the pump in the yard.

Joscelin de Paveley’s overriding emotion on her father’s death was one of immense relief. The house seemed suddenly a more pleasant place. She no longer flinched at the sound of a footstep
in the corridor, she no longer dreaded dinner times. Although she wore black, she felt light-hearted.

She sorted through her father’s bedroom and study, and made a huge bonfire, burning all his possessions. The false leg, which had lost some of its terror now that it was no longer attached to her father, smouldered in the heart of the flames. Jossy endured a long, dull afternoon while Mr Verney, the solicitor, read out Edward de Paveley’s will. ‘To my daughter, Joscelin, the Hall and its contents and the residue of the estate. To my brother, Christopher, and his son, the use of the steward’s house for their lifetimes.’ Small legacies to Nana and Cook and the gardener, and not a word of love or affection. Jossy didn’t care. Jossy had seen the Gentleman.