A Heartbeat Away (20 page)

“Now, you be careful,” warned Harry.

I closed my calves around Timmy's heaving sides, asking him to trot. He obliged with a halfhearted amble. I nudged him sharply and suddenly we were cantering, around and around over the squelching ground of the meadow behind the house.

“Oh, Harry,” I cried when at last I reined in beside him. “Why did I ever stop?”

“You're on again now, lass. That's all that counts,” he told me with a broad grin.

How could he be so generous, I wondered, after the way I had behaved? I didn't deserve such consideration. Who else would have kept the horses all this time just in case I decided to come home?

I looked down into Harry Brown's eyes, so like Daniel's, and a lump formed in my throat. “Thank you for waiting for me,” I said quietly.

He nodded brusquely. “We all deal with things in our own different ways. I knew you'd be back sooner or later. Now, have you had enough?”

My response was instant. “Oh, no—not yet,” I pleaded, gathering up my reins again. “I thought I might go a little way up the fell.”

He laughed, slowly shaking his head.

“Not one of your best ideas, young lady. I think you need a couple more practices before you go galloping off down memory lane. That is where you were intending to go, I presume.”

I nodded, unable to trust myself to speak, and he took hold of Timmy's bridle, smiling up at me with understanding in his eyes.

“Come on. You see to Timmy, and then we'll go to the tearoom to annoyV and Edna. I could do with a nice cup of tea, and I'm sure I smelled gingerbread in the oven this morning.”

By the time I had untacked Timmy and turned him out into the far meadow, where Promise was eagerly waiting, I felt a bit better. I had been building myself up for this day for so long, the day I rode again. It hadn't occurred to me that I might not be able to go straight over the fells to where Brookbank and the meadow by the stream called to me with nagging persistence. I don't really know what I expected to find there, apart from a host of painful memories, but who can say. Deep down, I resolutely believed that everything would be different after I had retraced my steps to our special place. Having to wait when the opportunity was there in front of me was hard to bear, but at least I had ridden again, and now I knew that it was well within my grasp.

I put the head collar back on its peg in the barn and picked up Timmy's bridle, but just as I was about to heave his saddle onto my arm, it was whisked away from me. I looked around, startled, to find Harry. His hair was tousled from continuously running his fingers through it and a dull flush had turned his cheeks red.

“Whatever have you been doing?” I exclaimed.

He laughed, smoothing down his unruly mop of curls. “What? Don't you think I'm smart enough to go into the tearoom with you?”

“You look as if you've run a mile,” I retorted.

He put down the saddle and tried to tidy himself up. “I almost have,” he explained. “All the darned cows went the wrong way, and that young dog of mine is useless. I venture I ran faster than he did.”

The offending animal stood at his heels, gazing up at Harry with gentle brown eyes. He was a black-and-tan Welsh collie, one of my favorite breeds.

“You'll have to go,” Harry told him sadly.

I reached out in sympathy to stroke the dog's smooth glossy coat. “I'll have him,” I said, purely on impulse. “If you're serious, I mean.” And all of a sudden I realized just how much I really would love to have such a companion.

Harry hesitated, his forehead drawn into a frown. I waited with bated breath until he exhaled loudly.

“You just got yourself a dog!” he exclaimed, slapping me firmly on the back. “Taffy! Meet your new owner.”

I knelt on the straw and cradled the dog's beautiful head between my hands. When his long pink tongue licked my cheek, I felt something deep inside me begin to melt.

“Right,” Harry said. “You'd better go and break the news to your aunt V. I don't know what Coco will make of him.”

“Coco loves everyone and everything,” I said, standing. “Come on, Taff.”

He fell in alongside me as though it was his rightful place to be.

I think it was Fudge who turned me into a dog person—that, and seeing all those waifs and strays at the kennels where I worked a lifetime ago. I was sure Aunt V wouldn't mind me having Taffy. After all, she had been quite happy to give Coco a home, and my mom's poor old spaniel, although he was long gone now. I sighed, glancing down to make sure the handsome young sheepdog was still at my heels before turning to smile at Harry.

“He likes you already,” he told me.

I felt a kind of warmth rise up me then, an awakening, releasing an emotion that had been trapped for so long. There was just one more thing I had to do. I lifted my face toward the huge sweep of the fell and spoke with quiet determination. “I need to ride up there.”

A frown flitted across Harry's forehead. “And what will you find up there, Lucy?” His voice was low and vibrant, trembling with contained emotion.

My response was instant. “Some answers.”

He seemed to accept my explanation, but after we had put Taffy away, just before we went into the tearoom to see Aunt V, he took hold of my arm.

“Don't be too disappointed if the answers aren't there,” he said gently.

I imagined the golden meadow by the stream and the endless sky that stretched into eternity, where Daniel was.

“I won't be disappointed,” I told him. “He promised, you see.”

“But he's gone, Luce.”

There was a break in his voice and I felt his hand tremble on my arm.

“He'll always be here, though,” I told him, placing my hand on my heart.

His mouth set into a grim line. “Of course he will, Lucy. No matter what happens, Daniel will be a part of your life forever. But he wouldn't want to hold you back.”

“He won't,” I assured him. “There is just something…”

“I know,” he told me, his voice reassuring.

An alarm bell rang somewhere inside my head. Was there something he wasn't telling me?

I looked at him eagerly, but he turned away and quickened his pace, marching off ahead of me, down the path toward the bright lights of the tearoom. Whatever it was, the moment had gone, but I would find out. One day.

I
planned my ride up the fell for Friday. That would give me the chance to have at least three more practices, and by then perhaps Taffy would know me well enough to follow me. He was settling in so well. Coco loved him and Aunt V was just pleased to see him helping to draw me out of the doldrums that colored my life. Sometimes I felt guilty for the happiness that was gradually squeezing through the misery I had nurtured for so long. When I mentioned it to Aunt V, she gazed at me earnestly and pursed her lips.

“Do you think that Daniel would have wanted you to stay miserable forever?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Well, there you are, then.” She smiled.

Ben phoned on Wednesday. I had just come home from helping Aunt V at Homewood, and I could hear the phone ringing as I opened the front door. I hurried to answer it, dropping my bags on the floor in my haste. When his deep voice rang out in my ear, I felt a rush of pleasure.

“Ben,” I cried. “What have you been up to?”

“It's your lucky day,” he told me. “I'm working in your area for the rest of this week, so you might just get to see me again.”

Panic flooded me and my fingers tightened around the phone.

“What about tomorrow?” Ben proposed. “We could meet up in Appleton if you like…just for a coffee or something.”

There was a hush on the line and I fought to breathe. You owe him,” Aunt V had said.

“Sure,” I responded before I could change my mind. “I'll meet you at about twelve o'clock near the town hall.”

There. It was done. No going back. And what harm could one cup of coffee do?

The rest of our conversation bypassed me completely, and when I eventually put the phone down, I collapsed into a chair, overcome by excitement and guilt in similar proportions. Taffy placed his nose on my knee and I stroked his head absentmindedly.

“Whatever have I done, Taff?” I asked him. He wagged his plumed tail and wriggled closer, offering comfort for whatever it was that disturbed me.

“You would never question anything I did, would you?” I murmured. He looked up at me with warm brown eyes, reminding me suddenly of Daniel Brown. Would he always be inside my head? I wondered.

Aunt V thought it was great.

“At last you are getting out and meeting your friends!” she exclaimed. “And I don't want any of your self-recriminations. You need to get on with your life. No one begrudges you a bit of happiness, you know.”

“Don't they?” I asked quietly.

She gave me a quick hug. “Come on, make yourself useful. I thought we'd have sausage and mash for tea.”

Sausage and mash. Daniel's favorite.

 

It seemed years since I had been into Appleton, long before I went to live in the city. Today I saw the bustling market town with fresh eyes. It looked so much smaller than it used to, and far more quaint, like a town from years gone by.

The whole place appeared so alive. Market traders called out to the jostling crowd, plying their wares from the brightly colored stalls lining both sides of the busy main street, cracking jokes with passersby while filling brown paper bags with a glorious abundance of vivid fruits. And yet, despite the eager throng of shoppers intent on a bargain, Appleton had a calmer feel than London. There were no tense gray faces and stiff bodies in pin-striped suits. Small groups of people idled in the street, making the most of the brief and unexpected winter sunshine. Farmers' wives laughed and chattered, catching up with the gossip on their weekly trip to town. Young mothers with baby carriages in tow and time on their hands gazed longingly at expensive items encased behind glass windows, and workmen from the new shopping arcade along the street took time out to eye the local talent.

I settled in behind a cluster of women who stood chatting in front of the town hall, and took confidence from anonymity while I scoured the pavement for a glimpse of Ben. My heart was beating overtime and the palms of my hands felt clammy. What was I doing here? Should I just go home? I moved from foot to foot, arms crossed over my chest. Then, just as I'd made up my mind to leave, as if from nowhere his tall frame materialized beside the small fountain in the center of the square. My stomach churned. I couldn't do this.

I turned to walk away with one last reluctant glance in his direction. Across the distance his eyes found mine, and then it was too late for second thoughts.

I had forgotten how tall he was—and how good-looking. His honey-brown eyes glowed with pleasure as they peered into mine, and a kind of warmth crept into my limbs.

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” he echoed, holding out his hand.

Without a second thought I slipped mine inside his broad palm like a trusting child.

We sat in a tiny café off the market square and just talked, about anything and everything. He told me about his job, but not about his life, and I told him about Taffy and Aunt V and how I loved the fells, but not about Daniel Brown. Maybe we both had taboo areas in our lives.

Afterward, we walked alongside the river. In a comfortable lull in our conversation I glanced up to see, way above us, the majestic slopes of the fells, with the clear winter sky stretching above them to eternity. A cold hand clamped itself around my thawing heart, and when Ben reached for my hand with gentle fingers, this time I drew mine away. Fear engulfed me, fear and guilt and regret. I hadn't even fulfilled my promise to myself yet, and here I was meeting another man. This afternoon, whatever Harry said, I would ride over the fell to try to find the answers I was searching for.

“I have to go,” I told Ben, wincing at the confusion in his eyes.

He clasped my sleeve. “We'll meet up again, though?”

A warmth coursed through my veins, the breath caught in my throat and I nodded sharply.

“Call me,” I said, and then I was running, through the bustling street, toward the safety of my car.

As soon as I got home, I threw off my clothes and pulled on jodhpurs and a thick sweater. Even down here in the valley the air was bitingly cold, so up on the fells it was sure to be below freezing.

“You ready?” I asked Taffy, who was watching my every move with an air of anxiety. He hadn't yet forgiven me for leaving him all morning, and now he moved around behind me like a shadow at my heels.

“Don't worry,” I told him. “I'll never leave you.”

When his plumed tail thumped on the carpet, I closed my eyes tightly, feeling my fingernails digging into my thumbs. Remembering Daniel's face when he had uttered those exact words. “If I can help it,” I finished with a sigh. Taffy looked up at me with such a worried expression in his brown eyes that I knelt to take his head in my hands and pressed my cheek against his face. He slid his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and curled it around my chin, and I laughed and jumped up.

“It's time to go,” I announced, with a sudden prickle of excitement.

Harry Brown had left for the auction, so he wasn't there to contest my decision to ride up the fell, and when I popped my head around the door of the tearoom Aunt V and Edna had their heads together, poring over a catalog of wooden toys, so they paid me little heed. A tingle rippled across my skin. This was finally it. At last I could go and find my answers.

“See you later,” I called, grabbing an apple from a bowl on the counter. Aunt V glanced around with a distracted smile.

“Have fun,” she told me.

“And take care,” advised Edna.

I smiled to myself, raising a hand in farewell.
Fun
it was definitely not going to be.

The horses were out in the far meadow, and by the time I had caught Timmy, brushed him off and tacked him up, the weather no longer seemed cold, for I was glowing with a heat brought about as much by excitement as by my efforts with a dandy brush.

“Come on,” I called to Taffy, swinging myself up into the saddle. He slipped in behind Timmy's clopping hooves as though he had done it a hundred times before.

Up on the fell, the icy air brought a sting to my cheeks, numbing the ends of my toes, but my body was cozily warm in my down-filled parka. I urged Timmy into a trot with a song in my heart. Way, way up above my head the sky soared, crystal-clear against the awesome expanse of the fells, and the words of the poem slipped into my mind again:
Like the backs of colossal elephants, motionless against the sky, here doth winter flourish, here stay I…

I was home. I really was home.

I hadn't allowed for the loneliness of being in such familiar places without Daniel by my side. The ache in my heart as I rode higher and higher was a physical, all-consuming pain. There was the bush we used to race to, and there, way down below us now, nestling on the lower slopes of the fell above Appleton, was Brookbank. The breath caught in my throat and my heart began to beat with great uncontrollable thumps. Soon I would be at our special place. Soon I would know—A wave of fear surged through my body. Know what?

I prodded Timmy into a canter, down the steep slope, my eyes fixed on the rooftops of Brookbank.

Something was different. The track up from the main road had been widened and it was smooth, with freshly laid pavement. Wooden gates swung on smart new gateposts, and the neglected farmyard where Daniel and I had used to turn the horses was gone. Something twisted deep inside me and a tight knot formed in my stomach; this couldn't be. This wasn't a part of my dream.

All the derelict farm buildings were being rebuilt. Machines stood where untended grass and weeds had once grown, and the dilapidated cottage at the very end of the yard had gone, pulled down to make space for a car park. Disappointment enveloped me as I reluctantly directed Timmy's head back up the fell. What about the meadow by the stream? Surely that would still be there.

I rode cautiously up the steep slope, afraid now of what I might find, but the rickety gate still hung lopsidedly, undisturbed and almost overgrown by the wild thorn hedge.

My breath came in gasps. I slipped to the ground, pausing for a moment to lean into the warmth of Timmy's neck, suddenly afraid to go on. He yanked at the rein, eager for grass, and I looped his reins over the gatepost and called to Taffy with a rush of determination.

“Come on, boy,” I told him, my voice a fierce whisper. When he ran eagerly to greet me, I crouched for a moment, burying my face in his silky coat, before standing with my shoulders held square.

I could hear the distant trickle of the rushing stream cascading over the rocks as I clambered up the rickety gate. And then at last I was there, in the place where my dreams were made. But in my dreams the grass had been soft and green, awash with golden buttercups. Birds had trilled in the thick plumage of the trees above our heads and the soft balmy air of spring and summer had caressed our skin.

Slowly I made my way across the winter landscape. The trees were now dark skeletons that reached toward the sky with a different, more austere beauty than what I had remembered. The grass was brown and dead, but the stream still tinkled in my ears, and I headed eagerly toward it. There was the gentle dip in the ground where we had first made love, where our feelings for each other had come tumbling out, consuming us both with new, overpowering emotion. Where was that emotion now? I had imagined it to be strong enough to overcome the winds of time…even of death. I had believed that here I would find something of Daniel. I sank onto the cold wet earth and shut my eyes.

“Where are you?” I cried into the moaning wind. The wind moaned on, unheeding, as desolation closed over me.

From the very moment when I had woken up in the hospital and discarded the escape route that I had been living for so long, I had felt that my life was headed toward this moment. I had been so sure that here I would find a link with Daniel, that somehow his promise really could stretch beyond the grave. I gazed around the empty space now, opening my soul for something…anything. There was nothing, nothing but a biting wind and the cold wet earth beneath my feet.

I don't know how long I sat in a void, oblivious to the numbness that was creeping into my limbs and turning my fingers blue. Taffy pushed against me, whining desperately, but I was lost in a vacuum that nothing could penetrate.

Until a firm hand descended on my shoulder.

“Come on, Luce,” said Harry Brown. “There's nothing for you here.”

How long would I have stayed there if Daniel's father hadn't arrived to find me? Would I have succumbed to the cold and gone to join Daniel, wherever he was? I hoped not, for that would have been running away, too, and I was sick of running.

I dreamed the dream again that night, my recurring dream of the peace and light that called to me as I hovered near death. And then I was desperately clawing my way back, dragging myself from the safety and comfort that drew me in, searching for Daniel Brown. And in the moment before waking, when anything seemed possible, I saw him just ahead of me.

“Daniel…Daniel…” Did I say his name, or did it just echo around and around inside my head?

The whole world stopped and held its breath while he slowly turned to look back at me, and then, in the moment of waking, when his image usually slipped away, I finally saw his face. But it was Ben. It was Ben who stared back at me with love in his eyes.