‘I wanted to go to the dance.’
‘What dance?’
‘Do you ever think about anything except the farm? The one at the village hall. I was nasty to Alistair last week and he’s taking Clara.’
‘Alistair?’
‘Yes. And Frank’s taking Madge.’
‘Does your father know?’
‘She lied and said she was going with some of the other girls. Is Tommy going?’
‘He never mentioned it.’
‘And you’re not going, of course, are you? The barn roof might fall in if you leave the place for half an hour and you can’t dance anyway.’
‘Why were you nasty to Alistair?’
‘I didn’t mean to be, it was just that we’ve worked so hard and he does nothing but go to school and then he actually complained about how much work he had. I was tired and fed up and I just couldn’t stand it.’
‘But you want to go to the dance with him.’
‘Well . . . I just wanted to go. We don’t get to go far and we’ve worked so hard and I wanted to get dressed up and go out.’
‘I’ll take you.’
‘You don’t want to go. You didn’t mention it. It wouldn’t be fair.’
‘You want to go, don’t you? Say yes quick before I change my mind.’
Annie looked doubtfully at him.
‘Do you dance?’ she said.
‘Of course.’
‘You always say of course you can do everything.’
‘I can.’
‘When did you learn?’
‘When I was little. My grandmother loved to dance. She taught me.’
‘Your grandparents taught you to do a lot of things.’
‘I was all they had.’
* * *
Madge wore yellow to the dance which suited her. Clara wore pink which did not and Annie wore a blue dress which was so much prettier than Clara’s that she almost forgave Alistair for not having asked her to the dance. Madge went with her friends and met Frank there. Tommy spent the evening in the pub getting drunk and Annie was apprehensive about going with Blake because it wasn’t what she had wanted to do, but she soon discovered that the fun of being at a dance was having a partner who could dance well and to her surprise he did. Also, and she hadn’t noticed lately, he was so tall now that he looked older than he was. He held her lightly but guided her properly and it was such a pleasure dancing with him that when she danced with Frank and even with Alistair as she did later in the evening she missed the guiding hand, the sure feet, the confidence. She was happy to go back to dancing with him. She even forgot about Alistair asking Clara instead of her and when the supper was announced and Blake went off to find her a plate and Alistair was somehow beside her she wasn’t as pleased as she had thought she might be when he asked her for the dance after supper.
‘What about Clara?’ she said.
‘Clara dances rather as I think a sack of potatoes might.’
She knew that he did not mean to be unkind, that he only said it to make her laugh but she could see Clara from where she stood and Clara was alone so she didn’t laugh. She just said, ‘I promised the next dance to Blake.’
‘Whatever for? Annie, he’s your farm labourer.’
‘Yes, and I’m your dairymaid,’ Annie said and she followed Blake off to the table where the food was laid out so splendidly. ‘Are you managing?’ she asked.
He handed her a plate heaped with food. Annie was very hungry.
‘Let’s go outside,’ she said and he didn’t say how cold it was or that everybody else was here in the warmth. He followed her outside and it was then that she knew she had been right. The night was shiny with stars, she had her first ever gin and tonic in her hand in a tall thin glass so that the bubbles went on bubbling. It was dark out there and the food smelled better against the cold and he gave her his jacket to sit on.
‘You’ll be frozen,’ she said.
‘No, I won’t. Sit down.’
‘It won’t do it any good.’
‘It’s your dad’s old one. Who cares?’
‘Is it? It looked all right.’
Later Alistair came to her when Blake had gone to get her a drink of lemonade.
‘Will you come riding with me tomorrow?’
‘Why don’t you go riding with Clara, you seem to like her company well enough,’ Annie said and moved away. She thought he was following her and went right out of the way outside but Alistair was still there.
‘Why can’t you be nice to me?’ he said. ‘You know I like you.’
‘I’m as nice as you deserve.’
‘Dance with me then.’
‘I promised Blake.’
‘You like him, don’t you?’
Annie had never considered this.
‘I neither like nor dislike him,’ she said, ‘he’s just there and he’ll be wondering where I am.’
She made as if to move and he got hold of her arm.
‘You’d better let go,’ she said flatly.
‘Or what? You’ll set your tame watchdog on me? All right then, I will take Clara riding and to hell with you,’ and he walked off back into the hall.
Annie wasn’t very happy. She stayed outside so long that Blake came looking for her. She was sitting on a low wall with her head down. He went over and sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulders.
‘Have you had enough? Do you want to go home now?’
‘In a minute.’
Blake took off his jacket and put it around her and she looked up. Afterwards she could never quite work out why but at the time it seemed natural to lift her face and kiss him. She thought that it would be like kissing Alistair had been but it wasn’t. For a start he already had an arm around her over the jacket and that stopped it from being a brief casual thing. Also he hadn’t initiated it and surprising somebody by kissing them had an exciting element to Annie. And then he didn’t let go. He tightened the hold he had on her and drew her nearer. His lips were warm and sweet and being close against him was even better than Annie had imagined being close would be. Annie stopped thinking and just did what she wanted to do which was to put one hand into his straight fair hair at the back of his neck and invite the kind of assault on her mouth that brought from her a little sigh of pleasure.
The sound of voices in the doorway brought her back to reality and she drew away and he let her. People were leaving, talking and laughing. She listened to the noise until they had gone down the road which led into the village.
‘I think I’d like to go home now,’ she said woodenly and she slid down from the wall.
‘Annie—’
‘I just want to go home.’
All the way there nobody said anything and when she finally thankfully reached the house Annie fled. She didn’t even say goodnight and when she was safely in bed she lay there and wished and wished that she hadn’t done it or that he had been Alistair or that she had had enough sense to come home straight after supper. She wished it was before the dance. Things had seemed so simple then and now they weren’t.
She didn’t sleep and therefore slept in the next morning. Luckily it was Sunday but her mother was not well pleased when she appeared in the middle of the morning when everybody else had either gone to church or was doing something useful. She set Annie to peeling potatoes and all Annie could think was that she would have to face Blake at dinner across the table.
She couldn’t eat and afterwards would have escaped to her room but that her mother made her do the washing up and when it was finally done Annie fled again, out of the house and down the fields to the river.
After a while of just sitting there in what was trying to be a warm day she felt calmer. An hour or so later she didn’t even hear Blake until he was right there. Even so she managed a face the colour of poppies before she turned away.
‘I want to be by myself.’
‘I know you do. I’m not staying. I don’t want you to be upset, that’s all.’
‘I’m not upset.’
‘Yes, you are. It was only a kiss. It was just the – the night and the dancing and the gin and the fact that we worked too hard and . . . it was like being let out. It doesn’t matter at all if you don’t want it to.’
‘It did matter,’ Annie said quickly. ‘I didn’t think, I didn’t know . . . When Alistair kissed me it wasn’t anything like that at all.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like that. Like . . . I didn’t want to go to the dance with you. I wanted to go with Alistair.’
‘I know.’
‘You dance too well,’ she said.
‘We had long winters at Sunniside.’
‘I want it never to happen again.’
‘All right,’ Blake said.
* * *
The following day when she went to work Alistair appeared in the dairy and since they were alone she turned to him and said, ‘I’m sorry I was nasty to you.’
Alistair smiled.
‘Clara fell off the horse,’ he said.
Six
The autumn that Frank went off to university his mother died. She drove her car into a wall one afternoon when she was drunk. His father’s response was to drink even more and Frank declared to Annie that he was glad to get away. Madge was not glad. She cried on and off for days after he had gone.
On Sunday afternoons Annie often walked over to meet Madge since she went there every day because Mr Harlington wanted her to. Sometimes Blake went with her and now that Mr Harlington had dispensed with help in the house except for Madge they ended up bringing in wood and coal, washing dishes, helping with anything which might make things comfortable but it was so neglected there, so dusty now, Mr Harlington contenting himself with drinking whisky during the afternoons by the fire and the two old aunts dozing that it was past help, Annie thought.
Mr Harlington had one thing which encouraged Blake to go. He kept two horses in the stables, one for himself and one for Frank and when Blake talked enthusiastically about them Mr Harlington encouraged him to go there and ride them. There was a stable lad to feed them and muck out and Blake went to help sometimes until Jack told him he was not to go. There was a row about it which surprised Annie since Blake rarely put up a fight about anything but after the first Monday that Blake went there to help Jack stopped him in the big kitchen.
‘You’ve got enough to do here without helping the Harlingtons.’
‘All they’ve got is a stable lad.’
‘They’ve got a great deal that we’ve never had, including this place. They don’t need your help.’
‘I wanted to do it.’
‘Yes, well, I’m telling you you’re not. He doesn’t pay you for going there so what use is it?’
‘I feel sorry for him.’
Jack glared at Blake just as Annie walked in.
‘You feel sorry for Joe Harlington? What’s he ever done for you except put you out of your house?’
‘I like the horses—’
‘I’m telling you, lad. You don’t set foot in Harlington’s yard again,’ and Jack turned and walked out, passing Annie without a word.
‘What was all that about?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. Mr Harlington promised me I could ride his horse.’
Annie whistled.
‘He’s a beauty too. Daddy will never give you the time off.’
Blake said nothing. After dinner, a good time to approach him when he was full of meat, potatoes and crumble with custard, Annie followed her father out to the fields.
‘What do you want, miss?’ he growled, stopping when he saw her.
‘Mr Harlington has said that Blake can ride Black Boy. Don’t you think he’s entitled to a bit of time for himself?’
‘Blake doesn’t need you to fight his battles. I just don’t want that man taking advantage. He’s done Blake enough harm.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean if they’d given the lad a bit of help for a year or so he could have kept that farm, but people like that, they never think about other folk.’
‘Blake doesn’t have a horse.’
‘I know that.’
‘Please.’
‘Ah, you’d turn stone to mush you would,’ her father said.
* * *
After that Annie and Blake went riding nearly every day. Frank came back at Christmas and they went out, the three of them. One evening when Frank had come over to the farm he and Annie were talking in the back kitchen, at first just about general things, then about Madge who was baby-sitting in the village and then Frank began complaining.
‘I’m perfectly capable of exercising the horses. I don’t know why my father wants Blake there.’
‘You aren’t here most of the time.’
‘There is a stable boy. We don’t need another.’
‘Blake’s not a stable boy.’
‘It’s the same thing. I don’t really care to go riding with the servants.’
‘That’s not very nice, Frank.’ Frank, she reflected, was a very bitter young man since his mother had died and he didn’t care who he took it out on.
‘I don’t know what to say to him,’ Frank said. ‘He’s nobody. He’s just somebody’s bastard.’
‘Frank, if my mother hears you use a word like that in this house, you’ll be an ex-visitor.’
‘Do you know who he is?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean do you know who his father is?’
‘Nobody knows.’
‘I do. Charles Vane.’
Annie wanted to shiver.
‘That’s not true,’ she said.
‘Yes, it is. I heard my father say so when he was drunk. Drunk people always tell the truth. He’s a Vane, that’s who he is, or rather isn’t.’
Frank stopped there and Annie heard or rather sensed somebody outside the door in the darkness of the passage.
‘Oh, go away, Frank, why don’t you?’ she said.
Frank went, fumbling in the darkness for the back door and Annie walked through the big kitchen where her parents were sitting and up the stairs. She didn’t knock or ask if she could come into his room, she just opened the door and walked in. There was no light when she had closed the door.
‘Blake, are you in here?’ she said, narrowing her eyes to try and see him. ‘I think Tommy’s gone to the pub again. If he gets drunk Dad will find out. Come and help me. Blake?’
She could just make out where he was sitting on the bed.
‘It isn’t true,’ he said roughly.
Annie gave a sigh of horror that her notion was confirmed and Blake had been about to walk into the kitchen and heard them talking about him.
‘It couldn’t be true,’ she said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Frank’s a fool.’
Even without touching him she could feel the distress.
‘What if it is true, what if Alistair’s father is mine? That would make us brothers.’ He sounded as though this was the worst thing that could possibly happen.
‘Alistair’s not that bad,’ she said.
‘It’s not that. It would make him my older brother. It would mean . . .’
And then she understood.
‘So it can’t possibly be true. Alistair’s parents were married when you were born.’
‘Do you think my mother went with a married man?’
‘No. Frank was just talking, just . . . he hasn’t been right since his mother died, you know he hasn’t. He’s hurt and he wants to hurt other people.’
There was an intake of faltering breath from Blake. She couldn’t be sure since she had never heard him cry before. She certainly didn’t want it to happen now. She sat down as close as she could and took him into her arms. He fastened both arms around her and from the front of her cardigan said in muffled tones, ‘You really don’t think it’s true?’
‘I really don’t think so.’ She stroked his hair, silently cursing Frank.
‘Why would Mr Harlington say it if it wasn’t?’
That was a harder one to be reassuring about. Annie frowned in the darkness.
‘He probably never said it,’ she countered.
‘If it is true it means that he never wanted me, never liked me, would have let me go into a home when my grandparents died but Alistair . . . Alistair has everything.’
There was no point in arguing with that, Annie thought. Alistair certainly had everything – except good parents, and this wasn’t a choice moment to start comparing those. She was just beginning to think that perhaps she ought to move Blake from where he was comfortably settled against her breasts when he let her loose and moved back.
‘Let’s go and find Tommy,’ he said.
They trudged up the road in the dark.
‘Do you think I look like Alistair?’
‘No.’
‘We’ve both got blue eyes.’
‘So has half the nation.’
‘They’re rich.’
‘They’re not very happy. Mrs Vane has a face like a wet fortnight and Tommy says Mr Vane’s too mean to shit.’
She meant Blake to laugh but he didn’t.
‘Just think if he is my father. He’s such a horrible man. He’s the last man I’d want. I’d rather have Mr Harlington.’
‘Oh, I don’t think you would. Frank thinks he’ll be orphaned within a year or two. He’ll be left with those two dreadful old ladies.’
‘They’ll never die,’ Blake said.
‘I don’t think they were ever alive.’
He did laugh at that, a little. Annie was grateful.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said.
‘I’m not. I’m just worried about how we’re going to get Tommy in without your dad seeing him.’
When they reached the village there was a lot of noise coming from the pub. Annie stopped.
‘Do you think we should?’ she said.
‘I’ll go. You stay here.’
‘Dad hates drink. If Tommy’s drunk—’
‘Just give me a few minutes.’
Blake had only ever been in the pub to bring the odd drink outside for them. The landlord didn’t care whether you were underage or not. Tommy wasn’t though and was quite entitled to be there though his father wouldn’t have said so. The inside of the pub was warm and noisy and comforting and Tommy was there, singing by the bar. Blake wasn’t very happy about that. Half a mile was a long way with somebody drunk, he felt sure, and if Tommy sang how would they ever get him home without Jack finding out? How would they get him into the house?
Tommy didn’t want to come home. He had his cornet with him and was all set to give a rendering of anything anybody suggested.
‘You’ve been an age,’ Annie said when he finally managed to drag Tommy out, minus his cornet. He left that with the landlord.
‘Dad’ll kill him,’ Annie said, ‘and if he doesn’t Mam will. She hates drink more than anything because of Grandpa Ralph.’
‘Ralph doesn’t drink.’
‘He used to. Mam has a horror of it. Whatever are we going to do with him?’ she added as Tommy collapsed neatly into the road.
Blake managed to get Tommy back on to his feet, and between them they walked him the half-mile to the farm. It was quite late by then but Rose and Jack were still up.
‘Distract them,’ Blake said.
‘What?’
‘You know. Tell them you thought you heard a noise in the barn.’
‘They’re going to believe me, aren’t they?’
‘Make them believe you. Go on.’
Annie went inside and shortly afterwards came back out with her parents. Tommy groaned just then and Blake clamped a hand over his mouth and dragged him into the house and up the stairs and into his room.
‘You don’t deserve this,’ he said, pulling off Tommy’s clothes. Annie quietly opened the door. ‘Don’t come in. I’m getting him undressed.’
‘It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, you know. Stop being daft and I’ll give you a hand.’
‘No, you won’t. If your dad finds out there’ll be trouble.’
‘Are you sure you can manage?’
‘Positive.’
‘Thanks, Blake.’ She paused in the doorway. ‘We’re going riding tomorrow, aren’t we, just you and me?’
Blake thought they were the sweetest words he had ever heard in his life.