Seven
The school had tried to talk Alistair’s parents into letting him go to university but nothing made any difference and somehow in the deepest part of his mind he had known all the time that he would not be allowed to go. He had wanted to escape from his parents and school and most of all from Western Isle so that he could come back to it. It was like having the prison door closed behind you and it was not all of his parents’ making. He had lain in bed at night at school when the dorm got as quiet as it was going to get and thought about the farm and the dale and how much he loved it and he thought about Annie Lowe whom he could never entirely get out of his mind but it was not enough. And worst of all was the fact that he had the ability to go to college. It didn’t have to be to do art – although that would have been the best – but just to get away. Even if he had to do agriculture or some kind of science which he detested, anything would have done, just to know that he was not going to wake up in his bedroom at Western Isle for the rest of his life and feel the weight of the responsibility. That, in the end, was the only thing which stopped him from running away. He felt that if he left something terrible would happen to that place which had for so long been his family’s. He could not let his father destroy whatever was left and he felt that as long as he was there somehow it could not entirely be destroyed.
‘A farmer doesn’t need to go to college,’ his father said when he came home from school. ‘You can learn everything from me. The best college you could have is this place. Besides, your mother and I haven’t had you here for years. Don’t you think we’d like you to be here, to take part in the farm? I can teach you to do the books, the accounts, to see how the farm is run because it will be yours one day.’
‘I want to be able to do other things,’ Alistair said.
‘This isn’t that ridiculous arty idea again, is it?’ his father said patiently. ‘You know Alistair, it’s a case of each man to his job and each man can only do one job properly. Now if you had not been my only child that would have been different perhaps, but you are the only one and this farm is your inheritance. You’re lucky, many many people would give anything for a place like this, for opportunity and prosperity such as you have. I don’t understand why it isn’t enough for you and it hurts me. Our ancestors sweated over this land so that we could have it and bring up our families here and enjoy it. Are you rejecting that?’
‘No—’
‘Well then?’
His father was not usually this reasonable. Alistair thought he liked him better when he shouted. When he was reasonable it was difficult to argue without seeming immature and selfish and also his mother hated them to argue. He felt like a traitor to Western Isle and to his parents but the longing to get away increased.
After he finished school there was nothing to look forward to, there was not even the change that school had been. Frank went to Oxford. Alistair envied him so much that it was difficult to talk to him even though Frank’s mother had died and he felt sorry because Frank’s home circumstances were as bad as his own. He wanted to go to Grayswell more but he felt guilty so at first he went nowhere, he stayed at home and did as his father asked and his mother wanted and they smiled at him and there was peace of a kind but it was so frustrating. Because he did not say anything they seemed to think that there was nothing wrong, that the things which mattered to him were of no importance. In a kind of solitary defiance Alistair began to use one of the attic rooms as a studio. The light was better there than anywhere else and he drew and painted what was around him, not just Western Isle in all its moods and colours but the other farms, the fields, the animals, the people, the river, the hills and the trees. He painted the little market towns and the sheep sales, the pubs and the marts and the women shopping in the streets and the children playing in the parks. The painting stopped him from leaving. That and the idea of Annie were the only things which prevented him from running away, and the reality of waking in the morning to the silver river and the slow sun on the stones of the farm buildings, the hens running about the yard, the cows in the thick meadow grass and the idea that somewhere his grandfather wanted him to look after the place. After all, there was nobody else to do it.
Eight
Blake paused as he ventured to the back door. There was a car parked by the gates. It was no ordinary car, it was an MG sports car, bright green and the top was down. The young man sitting in the driving seat was looking up at Annie who was perched on the gate and they were laughing. Blake didn’t linger. He walked up to the big house and collected Black Boy and then he came back into the stables and saddled up Annie’s horse. Annie sauntered in.
‘Who was that?’ Blake asked.
‘Paul Monmouth. You know him. His father has the shops. He’s got the most beautiful car. He asked me to go to the pictures with him on Saturday night to see Douglas Fairbanks and Maria Alba in
Mr Robinson Crusoe
.’
No more was said but any pleasure Blake might have felt was gone. He did not think that he had ever felt jealousy before but perhaps that was just because there had been no cause. He could not understand why he should feel so miserable because Annie had been asked out by somebody.
The riding made him feel better. He was glad that Frank was not with them and Annie galloped, her hair flying in the wind. She laughed and jumped a fallen tree and went on and Blake went after her. He put Paul Monmouth from his mind. Why should thoughts like that spoil the time he had with Annie? She wanted to be there with him and he knew that she would not tolerate people’s jealousy. Blake fought with himself about it and on Saturday night when she came downstairs looking better than ever in a blue taffeta dress with a bolero which her mother had carefully made for her, she did a pirouette in the big kitchen at the bottom of the stairs in front of her mother and father and Blake. Her father said she looked very nice, her mother smiled approval. Blake said nothing. Madge was going out too, he hardly noticed her. Mrs Lowe answered the door and Blake could hear Paul Monmouth’s confident tones as he came into the room, extending his hand to Mr Lowe and saying that he would have Annie back not a second after eleven o’clock. When they had gone Mr and Mrs Lowe spent five minutes on how much they liked him and then he went back to his book and she to her knitting and the quietness was resumed around the fire.
By eleven o’clock Blake had gone to bed. The others were out but Annie came back on time and soon afterwards she crept into his bedroom and whispered, ‘We’re still going riding in the morning, aren’t we?’
A warm glow fell on Blake like a quilt. He turned over towards her as she stood in the doorway.
‘Did you have a good time?’
‘Wonderful. You’d love his car. He bought me two gin and tonics. They have such a lot of money, Blake, you wouldn’t believe. Six o’clock,’ she reminded him and went out.
That morning they jumped the fallen tree three times and raced across the fields and he won. Back in the stables at the Hall Annie was laughing so much that she nearly fell off her horse. He caught hold of her by the waist. The stable was full of sunlight, her black hair had a silver sheen, her hands were slender on his shoulders, her breath was sweet. He put her on to her feet but he didn’t let go of her. He fastened both arms around her, pulled her to him and kissed her. As first he could taste the hesitancy on her but it didn’t last. Even though her hands didn’t encourage him her mouth did and so did her body. Then she pulled back and he let go and she banged into the wall just behind her.
‘You said you wouldn’t do that again.’
‘You wanted me to.’
‘I did not.’
Blake said nothing and after a moment she looked up sheepishly at him.
‘I did want you to . . . but I wish you wouldn’t.’
‘Because I haven’t got a sports car?’
‘We’re living in the same house.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘Everything.’
‘But you like me.’
‘Of course I like you. I know you better than everybody else and we . . . we get on.’
‘You like Paul Monmouth better?’
‘No.’ Annie shifted her feet about. ‘It’s different, that’s all.’
Blake slid his hands around her waist and drew her away from the wall. She made a half-hearted attempt to stop him and then he was kissing her, one hand in her hair to turn her face up to his. Blake didn’t know how to stop once she was returning the kisses and pressing against him. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything in his life and it was only when she hesitated again and tried to turn her mouth away and made her hands sharp against him that he let go of her.
Her lips were dark red from the kisses, her face was slightly flushed and her eyes had darkened too. She stood back against the wall.
‘You’re in my way,’ she said.
‘Yes, I know.’ He brought his hands down on either side of her and leaned forward and kissed all the way down her throat and then her neck and then he reached and undid the top button on her blouse and Annie stopped him.
‘No. No, Blake, don’t. Don’t.’
‘I love you.’
‘No.’
She got herself past him and out of the stable and ran.
* * *
They saw each other all day after that at the farm and at mealtimes. She didn’t speak to him or look at him. That evening she went out again with Paul Monmouth. She was not late back but everyone had gone to bed. Since Blake was about Jack had asked him to lock up when she came home. He heard the car and her light tones, heard her unlatch the door and tread softly into the big kitchen. He wished that he had gone to bed early so that they wouldn’t be alone now.
‘Did you have a nice time?’
He didn’t wait for her reply, he went and put in the bolts but with some difficulty because his hands were shaking. When he went back into the room she was standing by the fire.
‘I want to talk to you, Blake. I feel like this is my fault.’
‘What is your fault?’
‘What happened today.’
‘It obviously didn’t matter to you. You still went out with Paul Monmouth.’
‘The one has nothing to do with the other.’
‘No? How do you think I felt watching you go out like that?’
‘I have to.’
‘Why?’
She looked clearly at him.
‘I have to go out with people. I have to find somebody to marry, what else am I going to do? I’m almost eighteen. I’m just a – just a farm girl in a backwater. I don’t have an education. If I’m not careful I’ll live and die here, having half a dozen children and scrubbing floors until my back aches. Do you think I want that?’
Blake stared at her.
‘I can’t stay at Grayswell forever,’ Annie said. ‘I wish I could, I love the place better than anywhere on earth but Tommy will marry and have children. There won’t be room here for me.’
‘Don’t you care about me?’
‘I do care about you, Blake, yes, but what’s the good of it? I can let you put your hands on me, I can let you take me to bed and then what? I get pregnant, we have to get married. Then we’re stuck. Where would we live and on what? You don’t really think I want that.’
‘I can work.’
‘At what? You don’t know anything except farming, you don’t have any kind of qualifications. You won’t even be
able to stay here if you marry. There’s no room. Madge and Elsie and me, we have to find husbands. Paul Monmouth has money—’
‘No—’
‘You’re not very realistic. My father doesn’t even pay you.’
‘I don’t want him to pay me. He took me in. God knows where I would have been otherwise.’
‘That may be enough now. It won’t be later. You should leave and go somewhere and find work—’
‘That would be a fine way to repay your father and mother for all the kindness they’ve shown me. They need me, they can’t afford to pay somebody, you know that.’
‘You’ve worked all these years. You don’t owe them anything and they wouldn’t expect it.’
‘God, that’s selfish. I can’t leave here.’
‘You have to. It’s the only thing you can do, otherwise you’ll spend the rest of your life as a farmhand and no girl will ever want you because you have nothing to offer.’
‘And that’s how you see me?’
There was silence, complete silence. Even the fire didn’t crackle.
‘I thought . . . I thought you wanted me,’ Blake said softly.
‘Blake—’
‘No money, no family, no name. I still thought you wanted me. Whatever made me think so?’
‘It’s not that.’
‘What is it then?’
She looked to him like she was about to cry. Her face had flushed and her eyes were huge.
‘You’re never going to be like Paul Monmouth, no matter how hard you work or what you do, you have no background and no education. If you worked from now until Doomsday you’d never be like that. He goes to university, his family have money. They have a lovely house with a great big garden and his sister plays the piano and sings and they have serviettes with every meal and—’
‘Oh, serviettes,’ Blake said. ‘I suppose you let him kiss you before you got out of the car. You let him kiss you because he has serviettes.’
‘Do shut up about it, Blake, I did not.’
‘Oh yes you did, because he has a sports car and a sister who plays the piano—’
‘You shut up!’
‘It’s all that matters to you, isn’t it?’
She didn’t answer and Blake heard himself shout.
‘Well, isn’t it?’
He was getting frightened now of the way that he felt. The anger was like a barely containable fire and the more he tried to suppress it the worse it got. He wanted to take the strides necessary across the room and get hold of her and hit her. He had to keep telling himself that he would knock her over if he did that. He had to keep telling himself that it wasn’t worth doing.
‘You horrible grasping little bitch.’
She was white-faced and her eyes were even bigger. She looked like a farm cat, ready to spit but her eyes were bright with tears.
‘Do you think I want to spend the rest of my life here?’ she said.
‘There’s nothing wrong with it.’
‘Everything’s wrong with it. I want a nice house with a garden for my children to play in. I want a car and some decent clothes and I want a china cabinet and a piano and to talk to people who know things.’
‘You wouldn’t have anything to say to people who know things,’ Blake shot back and she was across the room in seconds. She tried to hit him and he grabbed her. He put her up against the door and looked into her white face and angry frightened eyes.
‘I’m going to make you sorry,’ he said softly. ‘You go ahead and marry Paul Monmouth and have a piano and serviettes and a nice garden but I will never ever forgive you for it because you love me.’
The tears began to fall now, her mouth started to tremble.
‘I don’t love you,’ she sobbed and she raised a fist and ineffectually hit Blake on the shoulder. When he let go of her she went back and banged herself off the door. He went off upstairs to bed and she was still crying.