A Heartbeat Away (7 page)

“Your gran was called Lucy, too. That is who you are named after. She was sweet and pretty, and ill-equipped to deal with the harsh nature of your grandfather, Tom. He treated us all as though we were in the barracks and he was a general in his own little army. He had to leave the forces because of an injury, and I think he took his bitterness out on your gran. She was much like Mary, you see, gentle and vulnerable.

“Being the older one, I was always expected to be sensible and strong, and I used to long for her to be strong, too. If only she had stood up to him, just once, I'm sure she would have had a better life. You must always stand up to a bully. Remember that, Lucy. Never let words hurt you. Anyway…”

She paused and sighed, and a knot tightened in my stomach.

“Eventually it all became too much, and she just gave in. We lived in Yorkshire, in a lovely mellow sandstone house with a barn attached. It was in the barn that I found her.

“Your grandfather had been on at her all day—nothing was ever done well enough for him. I was fifteen at the time, and your mother was just a little girl. Five, she must have been. Five years old. That's all she was…”

Her mind seemed to wander then, as if she was unwilling to face what had happened next, and I took hold of her arm and waited impatiently. At last she pulled in a deep breath and went on.

“I yelled at him and called him a bully, then I ran out of the house. I just had to get away, you see. But I should have stayed…If only I had stayed….”

Her head fell forward into her hands and she spoke through her fingers in a broken, muffled voice.

“She was just hanging there. I'll never forget the creaking sound of the rope, and her face was…I should have been able to do something.”

The breath froze in my throat and a horror flooded through me, leaving my limbs weak and trembling, as I watched my impenetrable aunt break down into someone totally human. I cried, too. For my poor dead gran, for my mom and for that teenage girl whose life was changed by the winds of tide.

After a while we collected ourselves. Aunt V wiped her eyes and gave an embarrassed laugh.

“Silly old fool,” she said gruffly. “It was all a long time ago and it should be left in the past, where it belongs.”

Her face assumed a closed look then, but I was not to be put off so easily.

“So you ran away?” I prompted.

She gazed at me vaguely for a moment, then she let out a long sigh and splayed her hands.

“Not right then. But I always blamed him, and ultimately, after another terrible row, I left and joined the army. Silly, really, isn't it, to go and do the same thing he did, when I hated him so? Perhaps there is more of him in me than I like to believe. I suppose you can't get away from blood after all.”

She jumped up and started poking the fire again, with such aggression that sparks flashed into the room and yellow flames curled up the chimney.

“I should have stayed for your mom,” she muttered. And as she pushed the poker firmly back into its holder, I got the impression that she was doing exactly the same thing with the emotions she had temporarily released—pushing them back into their hiding place.

“Right,” she announced with a set smile. “Now, how about a nice cup of tea.”

That was the first and only time I ever really saw Aunt V break down. Even years later, when heartbreak came to haunt both our lives, she maintained her staunch strength. But perhaps she needed to assuage the guilt she felt over my mom by being there for me.

 

“So come on. What did she say?”

We were sitting in our old tree house, Daniel and I. All morning I had longed to tell him what Aunt V had said last night, but first he had had to finish the milking and then the cows had had to go out. I did that while he washed out the parlor. While we followed their laborious progress down the lane to the far meadow, I pondered my gran and my mom and how things might have been. I found myself wondering what made you into the person you were. If my gran hadn't killed herself, would my mom have been different? Would she have stayed well and whole and happy, and have been much more well-equipped to deal with my handsome selfish father? Was it her illness that made her weak, or was it her weak nature that had made her ill? I had such a horror of following in her footsteps that I longed to know the answer. If there was an answer to be had.

The clumsy black-and-white cows had just looked at me with huge soulful eyes as I'd shooed them through the gate, shut it firmly and walked quickly down the lane in the morning sunshine, eager to share with Daniel all the confusion in my heart.

It had been ages since we had climbed up into the tree house, so long in fact that he could hardly fit his lanky six-foot frame through the narrow entrance anymore. He must have been one of the tallest seventeen-year-olds that I had ever met.

“Are you sure that this is a good idea?” he'd groaned as he'd struggled to get in.

But I had just laughed at his efforts and told him to try harder.

“This is where we always used to talk and I need to talk to you now,” I told him firmly. So he'd pulled a funny face and wriggled up into the tiny space, while poor old Fudge, graying around the muzzle now and too fat to run very far, but still Daniel's loyal comrade after eight years, sat on the grass below, staring up at us mournfully and whining to be lifted up.

“So come on,” he urged anew. “I've managed to get up here. Now tell me what she said.”

For a moment I looked at him, musing on all those other times we'd climbed up here to share a secret or to tell a tale. His fair hair had since darkened into a reddish brown and his features seemed to have grown too big for his face, but his warm brown eyes still shone with kindness and honesty.

“Do you realize,” I told him with a smile, “that you haven't changed at all since I first met you?”

He grimaced and tilted his head to one side, giving me the lopsided grin I loved so much.

“I'm only about five sizes bigger. Now, out with it.”

And so I told him, everything that my aunt had told me, and when I'd finished, we just sat for a while, saying nothing, until I broke the silence.

“Do you think it's the things that happen to us that make us into the kind of people we are, Daniel?” I asked him. He frowned and shrugged, trying to uncurl his legs from beneath him.

“I don't think so,” he eventually responded. “It's not the things that happen to you that make you into the person you are. It's the way you deal with them. I mean, things go wrong in everyone's lives, don't they? You have to face up to them and deal with whatever they are, I suppose.”

“I'll never be like my mom,” I told him, with all the passion that the subject brought out in me.

“Well, if something goes wrong in your life,
I'll
be there to help you deal with it, Luce,” he told me.

My smile spread right through my body. It was easy to be strong with Daniel Brown to help me.

“Promise?” I asked him.

“Promise,” he replied.

I
t seemed inevitable that we would always be together, Daniel and I. Yet we were far too good friends ever to think of being lovers.

When he told me about his intended date, not that long after the episode in the tree house, my first reaction was one of surprise. Of course I already knew that he fancied Josie Walsh, but when he actually said that he was taking her to the cinema, I felt a bit weird, as if I should be going, too—which was ridiculous.

A group of us had hung out together through most of our teenage years. Daniel, me, Joey Bates—another farmer's son, Timmy Brocklebank and, oddly, the girl who in a way had been the cause of Daniel and me meeting in the first place, Mollie Flynn, the primary-school bully who had turned out to be not so bad after all.

The group of us flirted around, mainly with one another; I for instance, had had a real
thing
going with Timmy for a while. But it had never amounted to more than a few fumbled kisses, so when Daniel announced that he was going on a proper date, it gave me a kind of jolt. I laughed about it, of course, and teased him constantly, but on the night he was supposed to meet her at seven-thirty, I found that I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Josie Walsh was everything I wasn't—petite, with fair hair, blue eyes and a porcelain complexion. I stared at my image in the mirror that night, hating the comparison as I twisted my head this way and that.
Fair enough,
I decided. My clear eyes were a pleasant silvery color, but they were set much too far apart, and the combination of that and my mouth being too wide made my nose appear small in comparison, plus I hated how it tilted up at the end.

“Damn Josie bloody Walsh,” I muttered, pursing up my lips and eyeing my generously proportioned backside with distaste.

Aunt V guessed that something was bothering me—I could tell by the way she looked at me when I walked back into the living room. But she didn't say anything. Sometimes her perceptiveness annoyed me, so I wasn't really that surprised when she put down her knitting and peered at me over her spectacles.

“Grow your hair,” she said.

I laughed and ran my hand through my short, thick, silky curls.

“You have lovely hair,” she went on. “Grow it really long and you'll have every boy in Appleton running after you.”

“I don't want every boy in Appleton,” I told her with an embarrassed laugh. She gave me a knowing glance and picked up her knitting again.
Clicketty-clack, clicketty
-
clack
went her needles as she raised her eyebrows without looking up.

“Then perhaps the boy you really want might notice that you are no longer a little girl,” she remarked.

“What boy?”

Her comment made me angry, and I felt a dull flush creep up my neck as I turned away to stare at the television.

Aunt V just sighed, smiled, put down her knitting once more and heaved herself out of her chair.

“Well, if you don't know, I'm not going to tell you. Would you like a cup of tea?”

The tea solution again. If in doubt, have a cup of tea. Maybe she was right. Maybe stopping for a cup of tea gave you time to sort out your head. But she was wrong about me. I wasn't interested in boys—at least, not one boy in particular. I ran my hand through my short curls again; maybe I
should
grow my hair…

The day after Daniel's date was a Sunday, so I couldn't go to Homewood until after lunch because Aunt V always insisted on church in the morning and then we had to come home for a nice roast dinner. Even in the height of summer she made a roast. Today it was lamb. It stuck in my throat, but I diligently chewed my way through it and helped with the washing up.

“Why don't you just get yourself off to see him?” suggested Aunt V. “I can't stand to hear your puffing and moaning anymore.”

Needing no further encouragement, I put down my tea towel and flashed her a grateful smile.

“Thanks. I won't be late back.”

The Browns had just finished their lunch when I arrived. Mr. Brown was snoring softly in the chair beside the fire and Mrs. Brown was busy with the dishes, Daniel sat at the kitchen table, staring into space.

“Hello, love,” called Mrs. Brown when I burst through the back door.

Daniel glanced around with a grin and I gave a heartfelt sigh. I don't know what I expected, but he looked just the same.

“Fancy going for ride?” he asked.

I nodded happily. “Good idea.”

As we rode side by side along the lane, our horses' hooves
clip-clopping
in unison, he started telling me about the college course he had just enrolled in. Strange to think that in another month or so, Daniel would be leaving school forever. But, as he carefully explained, he would still be doing a course at agricultural college, as well as working on the farm, and he had always intended to be a farmer anyway, so why should he stay on at school to study subjects he wasn't really interested in?

“I want to get on with my life, Luce,” he cried, urging Timmy into a canter across the fell. “Come on. I'll race you to the copse.”

We followed, Chocolate and I, at a very sedate canter, since he was getting a bit too long in the tooth for mad gallops. I watched Daniel way up ahead, standing in his stirrups to punch the air as Timmy skidded to a halt. How full of living Daniel was. How very full of life.

I dreaded the start of the next term, when he would no longer be at the bus stop, waiting for me each morning. I would still be just a schoolgirl and he would be off at college, meeting new people and making new friends. The thought that his life would no longer include me—apart from here in this closeted little world—was scary stuff that spoke of change and brought an unbearable ache to my heart.

When we walked down the lane together later that day to fetch in the milk cows, we fell back into our old camaraderie. I teased him about Josie, but when I asked him if he had kissed her, he put his finger on one side of his nose and tapped it. I felt stupid, like a little kid. It was the very first time I had ever really felt like that with Daniel, and when I got home I went up to my room and stared at my reflection for ages. Aunt V was right I decided. I needed to grow my hair.

 

In the time it took for my hair to reach past my shoulders, Daniel must have dated at least a dozen girls. Some lasted one date, some lasted weeks and tall, elegant Emma Robins stayed around for almost a month.

I pushed aside my hidden resentment of his female friends by widening my own social circle, but that didn't amount to much more than going to the cinema with Joey a few times and the odd date with a new boy at school named Mickey Oldroyd. He was very good-looking and he kissed me with a passion that left me breathless, but when he tried to make it more than just a snog in the back of his dad's car, I freaked out and dumped him, despite his apologies. Not that there was anything wrong with him wanting more—all my school friends had had sex by the time they were my age—but for me it just didn't feel right and I would never allow myself to dig too deeply into why.

I only saw Daniel when I went down to Homewood on weekends to help out on the farm, and there, on common ground, we could slip back into the comfortable friendship we had shared for so long. I loved to perch on the back of his quad bike while he checked on the lambing sheep, and there was no greater satisfaction than helping to bring a newborn lamb into the world.

“You should go to agricultural college,” he told me one crisp winter's morning, after I had helped to ease a huge lamb from its struggling mother. I looked up at him with shining eyes.

“Maybe I will,” I announced, suddenly realizing that that was what I would really love to do.

Mrs. Brown was a bit more skeptical when I mentioned it to her over breakfast.

“It sounds like a good idea, Lucy,” she told me, “but just think about it. Every single day spent outside in the wind and weather. It's nice in bursts, but would you be able to stand it all day and every day?”

“Your face will get even redder than it already is,” laughed Daniel. “And your skin will turn to leather.”

I studied my face in the mirror that night before I got into bed, running my fingers across my cheeks in despair. They
were
ruddy, just with being out in the wind and weather today. Was that how Daniel saw me? I wondered. Red-faced and boyish? I considered the girls he took out and sighed. They were always glamorous and perfectly made up. Nothing like me.

 

The year I turned seventeen, I left school despite Aunt V's reservations. Not to go to agricultural college, as I'd really yearned to, but to do the next best thing—to work in a kennel on the outskirts of Appleton town. To keep Aunt V happy, I also enrolled in a part-time computer secretarial course, which I hated, but Aunt V said that every girl should have more than one string to her bow, so I put up with it for her sake.

Whitfields, the kennel where I was employed, accepted stray dogs for an animal rescue organization. I loved caring for the poor ill-treated creatures and finding them a decent life again. I had managed to persuade Mr. and Mrs. Brown to take on a half-grown border collie pup that Mr. Brown was going to try to train as a sheepdog, and, after much persuasion, Aunt V was now the proud new owner of a chocolate-brown Heinz 57 named Coco. I had even found an elderly spaniel for my mom. He just sat at her feet day and night while she muttered to him in her own funny way. Aunt V said he was good for her and I hoped it was true.

I still saw Daniel when I went to the farm on my days off, and I would store up amusing incidents from work to tell him about when we met, still needing him to share my life as he always had. But everything seemed different somehow, until dear old Fudge's death brought us together again and helped to pave the way back toward the total closeness of our youth.

Fudge must have been twelve years old that summer, and he still followed Daniel's every move whenever he could. He loved to go for walks, and would amble down the lane behind him on shaky legs, while Daniel walked very slowly, stopping every few yards for his old friend to rest. He said that the day the old dog could no longer follow him was the day he would have to be put to sleep because he would be so miserable that his life would no longer be worthwhile.

One Sunday in spring, while we were eating our traditional roast, my phone rang. I picked it up and Daniel's deep voice boomed in my ear—Daniel couldn't do anything quietly. I hadn't spoken to him for a couple of weeks, and I felt a rush of delight when I recognized its familiar sound.

“Where have you been, Luce?” he asked me.

“Working,” I responded. “Where have you been? Busy with the latest love in your life?”

I could almost hear him grin.

“Well, kind of,” he admitted. “Only, this love has four legs and is far more reliable than the two-legged version.”

I squirmed with delight. “You've bought a horse,” I cried.

“Not just a horse,” he told me. “But the most beautiful gray three-year-old filly you have ever set eyes on, and I need you to come help me break her in.”

“What—today?”

I glanced at Aunt V who was eyeing me with a knowing expression on her round face.

“Right,” she said when I put the phone down. “You get yourself off and we will do the washing up.”

She turned toward my mother, who was picking at her lunch.

“Won't we, Mary,” she barked. My mother smiled vacantly, and I thought that Aunt V would probably do it much quicker by herself.

Almost two weeks had passed since I had been to Homewood. The owners of the kennel had been away on holiday and I had worked without a break until they returned. Now I had three days off in a row, and the prospect of spending them with Daniel brought a warm glow to my heart. I had so many things stored up to tell him.

As I kissed my mother's pale cheek and went to do the same to Aunt V, she eyed me sternly and shook her head.

“Shouldn't you go comb your hair,” she suggested. “And put a bit of makeup on.”

“But I'm only going to Homewood,” I laughed. She shook her head slowly for a moment, then shrugged and went back to her paper.

Bristling with impatience, I raced up the stairs, ran a brush through my wild mass of hair and tied it back with a brown-velvet bobble. I studied my face in the mirror. Not pretty, not plain, just boringly ordinary, with a mouth that was too big and a nose that was too small. Anyway, what was the point? Daniel wouldn't notice what
I
looked like. How could I ever compare with the beauties he took out—even if I wanted to, which I didn't. It just wasn't about that with Daniel and me. But when I put on some black mascara to accentuate my silvery eyes and touched my lips with a soft pink lipstick, I had to admit I did look better.

As I set off along the dusty lane toward Homewood, a breeze sprang up from nowhere and I broke into a jog, enjoying the cool air against my face and breathing in the scents of spring. The hedgerows were bursting into life again after the long cold winter. Daffodils were just beginning to reveal their golden glory and the whole world seemed full of birdsong.