Someone Special (49 page)

‘She’s up with the children, reading them a story,’ Nell said, putting down her knitting and getting to her feet. ‘I’ll go, Mrs Earnshaw.’

But Dot was quicker. With Paul constantly on her mind, she flew out of her chair and across the room, pulling open the big back door.

A tall figure, muffled in a Royal Air Force raincape, stood in the downpour. It was not particularly cold, but it had rained for most of the day and seemed to have decided to keep it up all night. At least it looked like that, Nell thought, peering past the figure and seeing what looked like a stormy sea between the kitchen step and the shippon.

‘Paul? Come in,’ Dot said uncertainly. ‘I thought you were duty officer to … oh, gawd!’

The tall young man had taken off his cap and pushed back his cape. It was now Nell’s turn to fly out of her chair.

‘Dan!’

He stood almost sheepishly, dripping on to the quarry tiles, grinning as though half in doubt of his welcome.

‘Nell, I’m sorry to spring this visit on you, but I felt we had to talk. I was on the river last week with a girl from my village when I … well, I thought I saw you! I suppose it was just imagination but I’ve thought of nothing else since. I chased all over the city trying to catch up with you … you weren’t really there, were you?’

Nell, her face as hot as though it had been roasted over the fire, nodded dumbly. She was staring up at his
face as though she could never see enough. Dan was here – her Dan!

‘Well, why didn’t you give me a tinkle? Come out to Scampton? I searched for you, then I went back to the station and waited for a call. Since then … well …’ his voice died. He glanced apologetically at Mrs Earnshaw knitting and watching, at Dot, simply watching, at the other landgirl, Brenda, staring at him open-mouthed.

Mrs Earnshaw, quick to take the point, laughed and got to her feet. ‘Take that wet cape off, lad, do you’ll catch your death,’ she said briskly. ‘Dot, put the kettle on, make us all a nice cup of tea. Nell, take your guest through to the livin’-room. Brenda, find up some of them ginger biscuits I made last week.’ She turned from giving orders to her troops back to Dan, who was struggling out of his wet things. ‘Boots an’ all, lad. I don’t want my carpet ruined, do I?’

‘Umm, no, I’m sure you don’t,’ Dan mumbled. In seconds he was standing before them in his stockinged feet and blue shirt and trousers. Nell, coming to her senses, had taken his cape and cap through to the scullery where she hung them on the big clothes airer. She came bustling back, bright-eyed.

‘Anything else, Mrs Earny? Then I’ll take Dan through to the living-room. Can you carry your cup, Dan?’

‘Just you put them cups down,’ Mrs Earnshaw said immediately. ‘I’ll bring the tea and the biscuits through all properly, on a tray. Want the fire lit?’

‘It’s quite all right …’ Dan began, but Mrs Earnshaw had followed them into the empty drawing-room and plumped to her knees before the fire.

‘You’re damp, if not soaked,’ she pronounced severely. ‘Don’t want you laid up here for a week, wi’ an infection o’ the lungs.’

The fire crackled and Dan and Nell, exchanging sly glances, took their places on either side of the hearth.
They talked stiltedly until the tray of tea and biscuits had been delivered – with two slices of rich plum cake, a rare treat which had Dan’s eyes glistening appreciatively – and then, with the door safely shut, Dan stood up, walked across to Nell’s side of the fireplace and sat down on the arm of her chair.

‘Nell, it was you, wasn’t it? Where did you go? Why didn’t you tell me you were in Lincoln?’

‘It was going to be a surprise; I had a couple of days’ leave,’ Nell mumbled, staring at her feet in their darned green socks and elderly carpet slippers. ‘And then, when I saw you with that girl …’

‘Good God, you can’t have been silly enough to think that little Anna meant anything to me? I’ve known her for years, she’s just a neighbour. Nell, I thought you and I had something going for us.’

‘You leaned forward and stroked her cheek,’ Nell said, her voice even lower. ‘She – she was so pretty, I wouldn’t have blamed you … we’ve only met once since I was seven.’

‘But we’ve written a great many letters,’ Dan said softly. ‘I meant what I said in those letters, Nell. There has never been a girl like you for me. Never.’

‘We’ve never even kissed each other,’ Nell protested, abruptly removing her gaze from her slippers and transferring it to his face. ‘So it’s just silly, Dan, to pretend. Why, you could have come and visited me any time, all you had to do was write and make arrangements.’

‘You kept moving about,’ Dan pointed out. ‘It’s hard enough to get leave anyway, without having to get it and then find where someone is.’

‘I’ve been at the Withies for more than a year, sitting right here,’ Nell said with spirit. ‘That sounds awfully like an excuse, Dan.’

‘It isn’t an excuse, honestly. But I didn’t want to make a move and risk losing you,’ Dan said ruefully.
‘You were always quite an elusive kid, Nell, and when you and your mother upped and left Pengarth I didn’t know what to think.’

‘You left too.’

‘Yes, because Geraint didn’t want my mother and me staying at the castle any more. He said we made too much work and he’d have to go down on his bended knee to some woman – Cledwen I think he called her – to get her to come back. My mother left in a rage, you can imagine, and said she’d never go back. I just didn’t have a choice.’

He sounded wistful. Nell remembered how she had felt when she was deprived of Pengarth and timidly squeezed his hand. He bent and kissed the smooth crown of her head.

‘Poor little Nell, it wasn’t your fault. My mother was always an exacting woman, I suppose poor old Geraint just got fed up with doing her bidding – or rather, getting your mother to do her bidding. So anyway, I was afraid of getting too close to you in case you just disappeared again. But when I saw you leaning over the bridge, looking down at me, I just sort of knew. I’ve had lots of girls, and I’m sure you’ve had a heap of boyfriends, but there’s only one girl who will ever mean anything to me, and that’s Nell Coburn.’

‘Makerfield,’ Nell mumbled. ‘We changed our name.’

Dan stood up and took his cup of tea from the tray, balancing a couple of large ginger biscuits in the saucer. Then he sat in his own chair, put the teacup on a small side table and moved over so that a sliver of cushion was vacant. He patted this encouragingly.

‘You changed your
name
? For goodness sake, why? You’d done nothing wrong, committed no crime, so why run away? Come and sit on this spare bit of chair and we can really sort out what’s been happening since we both left Pengarth.’ He smiled his old beguiling smile, a long
amusement crease beside his mouth. ‘Come on, I won’t bite you.’

Nell stood up and shuffled over. She squeezed into the big old chair with him, warm thigh crushed against warm thigh, and leaned back against the comfort of his arm.

‘You start,’ she said. ‘Where did you go?’

‘To relatives, again. In a small village about six miles outside Norwich. I stayed at Wellington for a bit, then Mama ran out of money, or said she had, and I transferred to the Norwich Grammar School. When war broke out, I volunteered for the Air Force and started my training then and there. I’ve never been back to Wales, let alone Pengarth. It’s funny, but it would have seemed, well, disloyal in a way. Because I knew Mama wanted desperately to go back but felt she couldn’t.’

‘Poor Dan; did you miss Wellington dreadfully?’

Dan considered, staring into the flames. ‘No-o, not dreadfully, not after a bit. And my old friends were very good. I was staying with a cousin who was still at Wellington the day you and I bumped, quite literally, into each other. I was very cut-up when I realised I’d let you get away without you giving me your address, but then you sent me that post office one, and I wrote to you … and the rest, as they say, is history. Now you.’

‘We had a bad time at first. Oh, but I’ve not told you what happened, not really, to send us off. Sorry.

‘It’s quite a long story and I only know a little bit of it, but I’ll try to make it as clear and short as I can. It seems that Mr Geraint told my father that I was his little girl, not Matthew’s. Matthew came home in a terrible rage and told Mum that if she didn’t clear out and take me with her, he’d kill us both. Mum believed him and we ran.’

‘Where did you run to? What did you do for a living?’

‘Oh, we went all over the place, but we started off in Liverpool,’ Nell said airily. ‘Mum worked at keeping
house for people, cleaning, anything. We moved about a lot because she was afraid of Da … Matthew, I mean, for absolutely ages. She really thought he would come after us and either steal me away or kill us. No, I think it was Mr Geraint who was supposed to steal me away … oh Dan, I’m sorry, it’s very complicated and for a bit I think Mum wasn’t sure what she was frightened of. But then she met Ug … she met Jack and they’re settled down together and everything seems fine.’

‘Ug Jack did you say?’

Nell laughed. ‘His nickname is Ugly Jack but really he’s Jack Gulliver. He’s the best and kindest man, he even puts up with Phillips –’ she broke off, looking self-conscious. ‘So anyway, that was that until I was old enough to leave home and I joined the Land Army and here I am!’

‘Here we both are,’ Dan said. He squeezed her, then rested his chin on the top of her head. ‘How would you like to marry me when this little lot’s over?’

‘Oh, Dan, but we don’t know each other very well,’ Nell said feebly. ‘You don’t marry someone you’ve only met a couple of times.’

‘I do,’ Dan said at once. ‘Why not? Don’t you believe in love at first sight?’

‘Love? Oh, Dan, but we haven’t even …’

‘Kissed? We can soon remedy that.’

The new fire crackled, pale flames shooting chimney-wards. The ginger biscuits remained uneaten, the tea cooled in the cups. Curled up in the big chair, Dan and Nell experienced the giddying glory of first love.

‘Come on, dreamy, whatever’s got into you? The war’s over bar the shouting, and there you stand with your hands in cold, greasy water, mooning away. Are you going to bark for me and Phillips or not?’

Hester’s warm and teasing voice broke into Nell’s
thoughts, bringing her abruptly back to the present, to the last night of her leave and to the realities of her mother’s job.

‘I’ll bark for you,’ she said readily. ‘And afterwards, when the show’s over, can we have fish and chips? I know we had a good tea, but I’ll be back on the farm tomorrow.’

‘Course you can, gal,’ Ugly Jack said at once. ‘No harm in a few chips once in a while. Phillips gets ‘is rabbit tonight, what’s more, so we’ll all feed well.’

Phillips, uncoiled by Hester once they got to the show-tent so that he wouldn’t be sluggish or bad-tempered when the flatties arrived, had grown a good deal since Nell had last laid eyes on him. ‘He really is huge, Mum,’ she said uneasily as she raked the sand smooth and wound the ivy around the tent-pole. ‘He could crush you easy as easy, I should think. You are careful, aren’t you?’

‘Well, I am, but old Phillips wouldn’t hurt me, love,’ Hester said reassuringly. She was brushing out her long hair, smoothing oil into her skin, struggling into the small garment she wore for her act. ‘He’s soft as a brush really, though he is getting rather heavy. I keep warning him he’ll have to go on a diet, but he takes no notice, of course, and guzzles away once a week as though he knew there was a war on and he was lucky to have a job and a full belly. Besides, the bigger he gets the more he amazes the flatties.’

‘Well, so long as you’re sure,’ Nell said, still uneasy. She had realised that Phillips wasn’t just a family pet, the way she had once thought of him, but a rather wild and quite possibly dangerous reptile. You might work up some rapport with a lion or an elephant, but a cold-blooded snake? If Phillips got really hungry and his food was not immediately forthcoming, who could say that he would not simply decide to squeeze Hester down to swallowable proportions? But when she voiced
the thought to Hester she was laughed out of court and, indeed, Phillips behaved like a perfect gentleman throughout the performance, although Hester nearly dropped him twice.

‘And now, ladies and gentlemen, you will see Jungle Woman wrestle the snake for a piece of silk, rare silk from China’s distant shores. See how Venom lashes his head, see him consider his next move, while Jungle Woman, who has known him since he was no longer than a skipping rope, works her will on him, charming him into submission.’

The familiar words rolled out, Nell pitching her voice above the constant rumble from the audience.

‘Funny sorta cobra that – thought they ’ad ’oods, like, round their little ‘eads?’

‘Aw, you don’t know nothin’, you don’t! I just see the p’ison drip from its fangs – ooh, in’t it an ’orrible great thing, though?’

‘Mum, I want to wee-wee, can I wee-wee in the grass?’

‘If that little begger piddles on my best boots he’ll get wrong wi’ me, I tell you straight, nephew or no nephew.’

Hester and Phillips came to their conclusion and Nell dropped thankfully out of character – her throat was sore – and threw her mother the starry cloak. Phillips was folded hastily into his hay-box behind the screen and the audience, still mumbling over the wonders they had seen, filed out.

‘Chips now,’ Nell said brightly as the two of them left the hut behind Ugly Jack, who carried the python, box and all, beneath one arm. ‘We don’t often get chips on the farm, being stuck miles out in the country. Does the budget run to fish as well? All that crispy, oozing batter!’

‘We’ll have both,’ Hester said, linking her arm in her daughter’s. ‘While we hot the plates, dear old Jack will nip down to the pub on the corner and bring us back a jug
of ale as well as the fish and chips. And while he’s gone, we can have a nice, cosy, mother-and-daughter chat.’

‘Lovely,’ Nell agreed. She supposed she really ought to tell Hester about Dan now. After all, she and Hester had always been close, they had never had any secrets from each other. Furthermore, she could reassure Hester with proof that their secret was safe with Dan – had he not known where they were for almost six years and never breathed a word? Besides, he and his mother had fled from Pengarth just as she and Hester had; they should be brought closer by their mutual rift with Mr Geraint, not pushed further apart.