Someone Special (20 page)

Mr Geraint gave a short bark of laughter.

‘I daresay she did, the minx,’ he observed. ‘But does she remind you of anyone?’

‘I don’t know many ladies apart from the teachers at school …’ Nell was beginning, when the door opened and her mother stood framed in the doorway, frowning at them both.

‘Nell, I’ve just been in to Mrs Clifton’s room and … oh, I’m sorry, Mr Geraint, I didn’t realise she was with you. But she does have her tasks to do and Mrs Clifton won’t thank me if she goes up to bed tonight and finds it unmade and the room still in disarray. Nell, if I’ve told you once …’

‘Don’t nag, Mrs Coburn. I told the child to leave the bed. Mrs Clifton is quite capable of making it herself, and of emptying – of tidying her own room. I wanted to get Nell’s opinion of the work we’ve done in here.’

Hester glanced around her and Nell could see her mother’s eyes widen.

‘Goodness, Mr Geraint, what an improvement,’ she said. ‘What’s it all in aid of?’

‘Forty water-colourists,’ Nell said before her companion could reply. ‘And Mr Geraint says this lady might remind me of someone …’

She pointed to the portrait. Hester walked towards them, glancing up at the paintings as she came. She stopped once, to examine a water-colour of a seascape, then, reaching them, she glanced casually up at the portrait on the wall. She froze into a momentary stillness so complete that Nell wondered whether a giant spider hovered over the picture, or whether the lady had come alive and was about to step down and join them.

But there was nothing. Only the ringleted, dark-haired beauty, her long, white fingers toying with the stem of a red rose, her face smiling enigmatically.

‘Well?’

Mr Geraint’s voice cut across the silence like a whip-crack. Hester relaxed; unfroze, as it were.

‘Well what, Mr Geraint?’

‘Well, who does my great-grandmother remind you of, Mrs Coburn?’

‘No one, Mr Geraint,’ Hester said sweetly but positively. ‘No one at all. And now, if you don’t mind, I think Nell and I had best make our way back to the kitchen, where we both belong.’

Was there a slight emphasis on the word
both
? Nell saw Mr Geraint’s lips tighten for a moment, but then he walked casually away from them, to hold the door open for them. Puzzled, Nell followed her mother out of the gallery, along the corridor and down the stairs. Back in the kitchen, she flung her arms round Hester’s waist and squeezed. Hester did not squeeze back, or laugh, but remained stiff in her daughter’s embrace.

‘Mum, I’m sorry I didn’t do the bed, but it truly wasn’t my fault. After all, the old man is the boss, isn’t he?’

She had heard her parents throw the remark at each other’s heads when it suited them, and now it made her mother laugh, took the stiffness out of her slim, strong body.

‘Oh, you! Yes, he’s the boss, but he’s … he’s nothing else. Nothing to either of us. And now let’s prepare them a cold supper, then we can get back to the lodge early for once.’

The next day was Sunday. On a Sunday they all went to church for the eleven o’clock service, Matthew driving everyone, but the Coburns would slip out before the sermon to go home and start getting Sunday dinner. Supper was a cold meal, a buffet set out in advance so that they could go to evening service if they wished, but the morning was always given up to church first and then to preparing the Sunday roast.

Lately, Mr Geraint had said he thought Nell should stay for the whole service with him and Mrs Clifton but Hester had disagreed. She had said briskly that Nell got quite enough religion with most of the morning service and all of the evening one, and that cooking the hot Sunday dinner was a task beyond her powers if she was given no assistance. Mr Geraint, who was sometimes flush and generous but usually broke and tight, had sighed but not pursued the point, so today Nell and her mother were driven back to the castle by Matthew in the Lagonda, and began to cook the vegetables, to turn the joint, to baste, to lay the table, to prepare.

It was hot in the kitchen, even hotter than outside, which was saying something. An Indian summer had descended on the land and the heat seemed sultry and unseasonal in mid-September. Nell, laying the table in the dining-room with many trips to and fro and her best dress a size too small and scratchy round the neck, longed for the time when they would all have eaten and would be able to please themselves for the rest of the afternoon.

She intended to go berrying up on the mountain above the castle, to take some apples for a picnic and to eat them at the very top of the mountain, on a big boulder
with a magnificent view of the sea, where she and Daniel had often sat before his return to school. It was a good place, up there on the mountain. You walked along the lane, which wound higher and higher into the hills, until you came to open, rocky country dotted with gorse, furze and bramble, and then you climbed farther until it was just rocks. She and Dan had gone there less than a month ago, playing high cockalorum on the rocks, pushing each other off the biggest boulder of them all, then sitting back to back and gazing across the misty plain below, dreaming of the day when they were old enough to walk to that distant line of blue which was the sea.

‘Nell, is that table ready yet? Good girl, well, push the trolley through, would you? I’ve done the vegetables, they’re in the tureens, so if you take them in, the old man will be back by the time you deliver the pork.’

Trundling the laden trolley, Nell could smell the pork, crispy in its crackling jacket, the roast potatoes, golden-brown without and softly white within; the gravy bubbled with golden fat in the gravy boat. For pudding there were apple dumplings and custard … I’m going to eat everything on my plate and then take my picnic and when I’m right at the top of the mountain I’ll write to Dan, she decided, decanting the tureens on to the gleaming dining table. From the hallway she heard the scuffle and murmur of voices which meant that the church party had returned. Today it was Mrs Clifton, the old man, Miss Carruthers and the vicar and his wife. No wonder the weight of vegetables in the tureens had almost caused the trolley to founder, Nell thought, hurrying back to the kitchen. Vicars were usually especially hungry, and cleared their plates just as she meant to clear hers.

The rest of the meal was rush, rush, rush, just as it always was when the old man had guests. Hester served, Matthew carried, Nell pushed the laden trolley. The old man called for wine. Hester had a bottle of red breathing
and a bottle of white dangling down the well in a string bag, keeping cool. Matthew fetched tall crystal glasses, Nell carried through last year’s walnuts, a glass jar of celery, some cheese on a round blue dish and Hester’s oat-cakes. The guests cracked walnuts with their fingers or with the elegant silver nutcrackers, laughed, ate. Nell helped to make the coffee and then poured it into a tall silver jug, heated the milk on the fire, poured that into a squat silver jug, wheeled everything through on the trolley, smiled, hurried back to help with the washing up …

By three o’clock they had finished and Nell was so hot and tired that she considered giving up on her berrying and walking down to the stream instead, to paddle her hot feet, fish for tiddlers and possibly have a snooze. But she did want to write to Dan and she couldn’t keep telling him that she had done nothing interesting. Anyway, it was breathlessly hot, the air was full of those little black flies which often mean thunder and she thought how nice it would be high on the mountain, where the air would be cool and the wind fresh.

Hester put the last clean dish away and flopped into a chair, her legs stretched out before her, her face pale with heat and exhaustion.

‘I am totally worn out,’ she said. ‘Next time his lordship wants to host a lunch party he can choose a cooler day. And where are you off to, dear?’

‘Up the hills, berrying,’ Nell said briefly. ‘Can I take some left-over coffee?’

‘No, the milk will turn in this weather,’ Hester murmured. She had shut her eyes and looked half asleep already. ‘Why don’t you pick the blackberries in the lane, though? It’s a long walk up into the hills on a day like today. Come to that, if you pick in the wild garden you’d be even nearer home. You could duck back into the house if it rains; that seems more sensible.’

‘Ye-es, I suppose I could,’ Nell said unwillingly. ‘Or I could go on a ghost hunt, that would be indoors. But could I take a picnic, Mum? It would make it more fun.’

‘I don’t see why not. In fact I made you some jam sandwiches, they’re on the dresser, wrapped in greaseproof. And there’s a bottle of lemon barley-water keeping cool under the sink.’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ Nell said, fetching the deep, stained basket they always used for berrying. She put the sandwiches into the pocket of her dress and the drink into the basket. She saw no point in saying that she had already made up her mind to go into the hills. Grown-ups were so strange, they could forbid you to do something you most urgently wanted to do for no real reason. She patted her mother’s hand, lying loosely on the chair-arm. ‘You have a nice rest now.’

‘Mm-hmm, I will,’ Hester droned. ‘Don’t be late, love. Supper’s easy today; just salad, cold pork and a junket. I’ll make bramble jelly tomorrow, if you get enough berries.’

‘All right,’ Nell whispered, stealing across the kitchen and slipping out of the back door. She did not want her mother to realise that time was getting on and they should be preparing supper in less than an hour. I’m sick of making meals and serving them and washing up, she thought rebelliously. I wish Mum had another job, a different sort of job, where I didn’t have to help so much. It isn’t fair, other kids don’t work as hard as me!

But the work would be forgotten once she had left the castle behind, she knew that. It’s Mum I ought to feel sorry for, Nell told herself, slogging along the lane and longing for the moment when the high banks began to dwindle and she could feel a breath of breeze. Poor Mum, working from crack of dawn until ten at night, and she isn’t even very old. She’s much younger than Dad, but he’s free from six o’clock most nights – earlier, in winter.
Mum just keeps on and on … golly, shan’t I be glad to reach the top!

However, even when she was quite high up where the brambles were thickest and began lethargically picking berries, she could feel no breeze. The sky was an ugly metallic colour yet the sun blazed down relentlessly and the myriad tiny insects still whirred and buzzed in the listless air. Perspiration trickled down Nell’s face, soaked into the collar of her old shirt and gathered in the small of her back. Still, she was out of doors and doing something she enjoyed; anything was better than dancing attendance on Mrs Clifton.

She had promised Hester a good picking of berries, so she had best get on with the job. As she worked, the very act of picking the berries became soothing, and she ate a good few, letting the slightly bitter taste ease her increasing thirst. I ought to leave the lemon barley water for later, when I’ve done all the picking, she told herself righteously, moving higher up the mountain. I’ll have a drink when the basket’s half-full. As she filled the basket a breeze got up at last, quite a cooling breeze, so Nell took a quick swig at the barley water. With renewed vigour, she began picking again, going up through a great thicket of furze and on to the very top of the mountain, where the big boulders were and even the brilliant green and gold gorse did not prosper.

She filled her basket completely with the enormous blackberries on those brambles which had gained a foothold in the thin soil. She was just about to call it a day and have her tea, for the basket was brimming, when she heard the first distant rumble of thunder.

‘Figgins,’ Nell muttered. She didn’t much like storms. ‘Perhaps it won’t be much, though. Perhaps it’ll stop soon.’

Even as she said the words there was the most enormous crack, seemingly right overhead, and a lightning
fork arrowed to earth in the valley below. Nell jumped and dropped the basket which, by a great piece of good fortune, landed stolidly on its bottom without the loss of as much as one berry. ‘Oh! Oh, that was hateful!’ she muttered, picking the basket up once more and looking wildly round her. She would get soaked, and wasn’t there something about lightning liking wet things? Things which stood out on a bare mountainside? What should she do? Where should she run? She dared not stay here, she must be the clearest target for miles around!

She was still wondering how quickly she could run downhill without breaking her neck when the storm was on her in earnest. The thunder roared and reverberated around the hills, the lightning flickered and stabbed at the earth, the air seemed one moment stifling, the next so alive with electricity that she was sure her hair was standing on end.

Panic-stricken, Nell ran up the hill to where the biggest boulder stood. She and Dan had been here together – would that he were here now! She crouched by the boulder and watched, terrified, as the lightning seemed to pursue her, actually striking one of the pines only twenty or thirty feet below. The pine tottered, smoked, then flared into vivid blue and yellow flames which roared into the dazzling air.

Then, without warning, the wind came. A gale which tore at the trees, gripped the gorse and flung it about madly, tipped the bottle of lemon barley water on its side and sent it bouncing wildly over the rocky scree, snatched at Nell’s plume of hair and her brief brown gingham skirt. For a moment it was almost exciting, then the wind seemed to realise its own power and howled round the mountain top with such strength that Nell was forced to throw herself flat on the ground and cling to the boulder like a limpet so as not to be bowled down the hill after the barley water.

Lying there, she realised that she was in real danger; this wasn’t an adventure, it was something which could cause her death. And she didn’t want to die, not at all, not one tiny bit. But her choices were narrowing: if she stood up she was sure she would be knocked off the edge of the mountain; if she stayed put she might be struck by the lightning which was now playing round the mountain top with such frequency that its livid, unnatural light flickered around her constantly. Where to go, where to be safe?