Annie looked up into his face and smiled.
‘I love you. Just you. Not Blake and not Paul Monmouth and nobody else in the whole world, just you,’ she said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.’
‘Annie . . .’
‘What?’
‘Will you marry me?’
Thirteen
Blake had a letter from Rose to say that Frank and Madge were to be married. She didn’t say much so Blake gathered that it wasn’t what she and Jack wanted. She asked him to come home. He had been gone for such a long time, over two years and he wanted to go back so much that he wrote to her and said he would.
He told Irene about the proposed holiday. Sylvester had granted him a week.
‘How lovely for you,’ she said.
It was a fine autumn afternoon. Robert Denham was for once talking to her father and she and Blake sat under the big oak tree in the warm sunshine.
‘I’ll miss you, you know,’ she said, smiling at him.
‘I’ll only be gone a week.’
‘You will be back for dinner the following Sunday. Promise me.’
She looked at him and there was no mistaking the sparkle in her eyes, the invitation on her lips.
‘Irene . . . there’s a girl at home.’
The sparkle went, she looked down and then back up, smiling dimly.
‘And you haven’t seen her in all this time. How awful for you. You must miss her very much.’
He would miss Irene too when he went but he did not want her to look at him with those sparkling eyes.
‘I’ll be back on Sunday,’ he said, ‘give Robert my regards.’
All the way home the train beat a comforting rhythm. It was the Friday, Madge and Frank were to be married the following day. The sun shone. It shone on the sea as he left the coast, on the river in Durham and on the fields as he approached the dale and he thought that it had never looked better. The homesickness faded into a warm glow of homecoming and when Blake fairly tumbled off the train in the village and into Rose’s arms he was all smiles and gladness. Jack was there too. They walked him home between them. Blake stood for a few moments just up the road as the farm buildings came into view, the white gates and the old stone dog and the farmhouse itself and he wanted to run but he couldn’t.
Across the cobbles and up the step into the yard and up another step and down into the gloom of the hall. Nothing had changed, his heart sang, it was all there waiting for him just as it had been and would be. They were gathered in the big kitchen and the tea was laid on the table. Tommy looking exactly the same, Elsie grown up and with her hair short, Madge arm in arm with Frank and Annie standing nearest the fire.
She was more beautiful than he had remembered, wearing a simple blue dress – her favourite colour – smiling a little uncertainly at him. Blake tried not to stare, to act naturally in front of the others.
And then he was among them and it was as if he had not been away except that they teased him about his posh suit and asked a hundred questions about his new life.
They sat down to tea and it was the best tea ever, a big cooked ham, custard pies, beef sandwiches, sausage rolls, pease pudding, pickles, jam tarts, little cakes and endless cups of tea from the big brown teapot. It made Blake more sure than ever that he didn’t want to go back to Mrs Southwark’s soda bread and grey cheese scones.
After tea all Blake wanted was to have Annie to himself but it wasn’t possible. Traditionally the groom was to take the young men out and it was taken for granted that he would go with them. Frank drove down the dale to Stanhope and there they were joined by several other of his friends, including Alistair Vane. Both Alistair and Frank treated him in a very friendly fashion, asking about the shipyard and buying drinks.
Everybody teased Frank about his marriage but Frank said that he was a very happy man and turned to Blake and said, ‘So what are the girls in Sunderland like?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never had anything to do with them.’
Alistair laughed shortly.
‘What, in two years?’
They were several drinks into the evening now. Around him a silence fell. Frank and Tommy and Alistair looked at one another and then Frank started to talk about London where he was taking Madge on honeymoon. Blake went to the bar for more drinks and everybody talked.
They walked down the main street to another pub, singing, Tommy with his arm around Blake, stopping to climb into somebody’s front garden to do a little dance on their lawn. When they came out of there they walked up to the ford and threw Frank in and ran races to the far side. When Blake was back at the farm it was this memory that brought a smile to his lips before he went to sleep, he and Alistair sitting in the middle of the ford by moonlight, singing ‘Here Comes the Bride’.
* * *
He slept late and awoke with surprise to find himself at home at the farm with a headache but very happy. From his window in the same tiny room as he had always had, he could see the yard and the buildings and the old stone dog beside the gate. His headache soon went and he ate breakfast and ventured out into the yard to help. The wedding was to be at the little parish church in the village and for some time there was a lot of activity upstairs and giggling and the rustling of dresses before Mrs Lowe came downstairs with Annie and Elsie, dressed alike in dark pink. When Blake saw Annie he wished that it was their wedding day, she looked so lovely, smiling at him and he still had not had any private talk with her.
There was no chance of that. Madge went up the aisle on her father’s arm in white beaming her happiness and came back on Frank’s arm looking even more happy and there were photographs outside the church. Frank’s father was sober for once, and his old aunts were dressed in pastel shades. The reception was to be at the Hall and it was obvious to Blake that the place had been what Rose called ‘turned out’. It was in all its shabby magnificence a wonderful house. The old furniture was polished to a high shine, the big dining-room with its stained glass windows let coloured sunbeams on to the polished floor. The long tables were covered in white cloths. Rose and the girls had been baking and cooking and there were big sides of beef and ham and pork, pies and tarts and puddings. Blackberries had been garnered from the hedgerows and mushrooms from the fields. There were dishes of yellow butter and great jugs of cream and Mr Harlington had raided his cellar for champagne and good claret and brandy. Blake wished Sylvester could have been there.
From that room there was the view over the valley, the village with its stone houses, the bridge, the church, the pub, the churchyard, the school, the fields, the farms, the bottom road and the river.
Blake found Annie beside the window and said in her ear, ‘I want to talk to you.’
She jumped and turned and looked nervously into his eyes.
‘Yes,’ she said, smiling and then Alistair came over. Blake frowned at him. Couldn’t he give them five minutes together?
There were more photographs in the gardens and then they all sat down to eat and Blake was not near Annie so that he couldn’t talk to her, she was being polite to his aunts and Mr Harlington, who to Blake’s great surprise still wasn’t drunk, having dispensed champagne with a generous hand to all his guests and then abstained on the grounds that he didn’t like the stuff. Blake didn’t care much for it either, it was too insubstantial somehow and the bubbles got in the way.
Later, Madge and Frank having been waved away to begin their journey to London, the Lowes and their friends drifted back to the farm where Rose made tea and sandwiches. Blake was surprised to find that he could be hungry again. There was plenty of conversation and Tommy’s friends from the silver band entertained in the garden though it was a little crowded by the time they were all outside. In the parlour Annie seemed somehow to linger with Alistair Vane and there came a coldness on Blake, watching them. He recognised it from way back when his grandfather and grandmother had died and he had lost the farm. People talked to him. He tried to make sense of what they were saying. They were eating and drinking again but Blake had had enough alcohol and more than enough food and wanted nothing.
Later still when the silver band had gone home and the evening was filled with the peace and most people had gone, Blake stood by the sundial in the garden. The leaves on the trees were going yellow, the grass was rough, the sun had gone and a cold wind picked up the few leaves on the path and played with them. It grew dark, the cream light spilled across the front of the house and left the garden in shadow.
‘Blake . . .’
He had known she was there even before she said his name and even though he was turned the other way. He had heard the rustle of her lovely dress.
‘I wanted to explain to you—’
‘There’s no need. I already know.’
He didn’t even turn around. Her presence made no difference to the truth and nothing mattered now. Before when things had gone wrong, even when he thought that he had lost everything there had still been in him some kind of hope, some resilience which told him that he would be happy again, that he would recover, there was always something at the back of his mind that carried him through, a knowledge that the best of his life had not happened, but he didn’t have that any more. He would never wake up in the morning again and know that the best thing in his life was still there. He knew now that was what had carried him through the difficult times in Sunderland, that he had left and gone through it all for her and now it had all been for nothing.
‘How could you know?’
Blake shrugged.
‘You didn’t write to me, you didn’t come to meet me at the station, you didn’t come to me when I walked into the house. I should have known then. Of course I did know really. You told me before I went away that you would marry somebody else. You are going to marry him?’
‘Yes.’ It was almost a sob though Blake couldn’t see her face clearly.
Blake turned reluctantly and looked at her. She was so beautiful. She was not his, she was never going to be his and there was a part of him which had always known it. How could he ever have imagined otherwise? He could see now – how could he not have noticed before? – that she had a ring on her finger. It matched the stars which were even now beginning to glow faintly above them, the cold diamond on her left hand. It was like a perfect chip of ice, the dew under the horses’ hooves, the rain caught on a branch.
‘Happy families?’ Blake said. ‘Mrs Vane, the farmer’s wife?’
‘It wasn’t like that. I know I said that things like that mattered but it wasn’t like that in the end.’
Blake thought about telling her about his job but there was no point now. He had let them go on thinking he was nothing more than a clerk, firstly because he wasn’t sure that he would ever make an engineer and then because he wanted it to be a surprise. And even then he had hesitated. The future was always so uncertain. Now it wouldn’t even make ammunition.
‘So you fell passionately in love with Alistair Vane? I don’t believe it.’
‘He’s not like you think he is.’
‘Isn’t he? Then how is he? He’s rich, of course. He has a big farm, a herd of fine beef cattle and hundreds of acres. Is that what you gave me up for, a paltry place in this godforsaken hole and some cows? Do you know that there is a world out there where the dale ends? This is not a heaven.’
‘I know that.’
‘Do you? You’re going to be gaoled here now for the rest of your life.’
Annie glared at him.
‘I love him!’ she declared.
‘No, you don’t. You don’t love him—’
‘You weren’t here,’ she said loudly, ‘you weren’t here and everything got changed around in my mind.’
‘Is that right? Or was it just that you got bored with Paul Monmouth and his serviettes?’
‘I hate the way you say things!’
‘Why didn’t you wait? I was going to come back here and ask you to marry me—’
‘I couldn’t help it.’
‘You could help it with me though, couldn’t you? Because I’m not a Vane, because I don’t have a great big farm and a car and people to fawn on me.’
‘That’s not true—’
‘Why couldn’t you wait?’
‘I was tired of waiting,’ Annie said in a low voice. ‘I love Alistair.’
‘No!’ Blake got hold of her and shook her. ‘You can’t love him. You love me.’
‘No, I don’t. Let go of me. Let go!’
Blake did and she went back and banged herself off the wall.
Jack stepped into the garden, closely followed by a rather worse-for-drink Tommy.
‘What is all the noise?’ he said.
‘Nothing. It’s nothing,’ Blake said. ‘It’s finished now.’
‘You’ve made Annie cry,’ Jack said, scrutinising his daughter’s face.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.’
‘They’re getting married at Christmas,’ Tommy said triumphantly and Annie turned and lifted her long skirts and ran back into the house. ‘You didn’t really think she was going to marry you.’
‘That’s enough, Tommy,’ Jack said and he looked kindly at Blake.
‘You should be pleased. One daughter married well and another about to,’ Blake said.
‘I am pleased.’
‘Good name, good family—’
Tommy laughed.
‘I don’t know that I’d want to put up with Alistair’s father though he does have his good points.’
‘Does he?’ Blake said. ‘I never noticed.’
‘Tommy, have you thought about giving your brain a rest and going to bed?’ his father suggested.
‘He’s giving them Sunniside as a wedding present.’
‘Sunniside?’
‘Frank’s father sold it. He needs the money and they need somewhere to live. The Austins moved out a while back. Didn’t you know?’
Nobody spoke. Jack looked down. Tommy glanced first at one and then at the other.
‘Go to bed, Tommy,’ his father said softly.
‘He had to know, didn’t he? It isn’t a secret. Charlie Vane’s not a bad man, he’s just a bit sharp sometimes, that’s all.’
‘Go to bed.’
Tommy stared at his father for a few seconds and then he went. Jack looked steadily at Blake.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry? Why should you be sorry?’
‘About the – about the farm.’
‘It’s all right. It doesn’t matter to me any more. It’s just a little hillfarm. It was never mine.’
* * *
Blake went to bed. Jack went off to the kitchen where Rose was alone finishing the last of the clearing up. He only had to look at her.
‘Does Blake know?’