Jubilee (12 page)

Evie tiptoed back to bed and fell almost instantly asleep.

Evie

The night of the Golden Jubilee party, June 2002.

The chairman of the parish council placed the lighted taper against one of the twists of newspaper on the beacon. A small blue flame ran up the twist, looking too anaemic to
achieve what was required of it. But the beacon-builders had done their job well. The flames multiplied and crackled as they found more twists of newspaper and dry kindling to consume. And the fire
took form, hissing as it found new food.

Evie stood apart from the others, hands folded in front of her, feeling chilled inside despite the growing heat of the flames. It was a mistake to come this evening. She’d fooled herself
into thinking she’d recovered from the party in the afternoon. She’d been keen for people to see that she could manage the Jubilee celebrations. Her pride had overrun her common
sense.

A couple of children beside her giggled at one another, already restless, probably wishing there were fireworks to go with the bonfire. Evie strained her eyes to look out for other beacons to
the north, on the Cotswold or Chiltern hills, but couldn’t see them. It wasn’t quite dark yet. These June days stretched on and on until she almost begged for darkness.

At this time of year the green of the grass and trees was almost too much to be true, as though it had been assembled for a Hollywood film set. The warmth of the bonfire stroked her back and she
moved her head to the left so that she was looking west towards the sun’s embers. Back at the time of the Silver Jubilee she’d have regarded the night sky with a farmer’s eye,
thinking of her livestock, planning ahead. She wished she still had them to preoccupy her but there were no animals left at Winter’s Copse except for the dog, Pilot. Perhaps she should buy
some more animals, chickens, possibly. But she’d only be trying to fill a gap which was impossible to fill. She recoiled, too, from the prospect of becoming an elderly lady who was too fond
of animals.

She was the last left of the Winters – for however long she might last. The Queen still sat on her throne, though, with her dogs and horses and her ill-married children and vigorous,
Germanic-looking grandchildren all around her. Some people didn’t like the Royals, Evie wasn’t sure about all of them but viewed the Queen in the same way she did the Silver Jubilee
tree on the village green, almost fizzing with new growth now but withered and naked in the winter storms that blew in from the west. The Queen, the tree and Evie herself were survivors; they just
kept on going.

But she wasn’t entirely alone, she reminded herself. There was Rachel, dearest niece anyone could have wished for. But Rachel was young and had her own life and shouldn’t be over
burdened. Especially as something had obviously gone wrong recently. Until about a month ago Evie had noticed a liveliness to her niece’s voice when they’d talked on the telephone, a
buoyancy. That bounce had vanished in recent weeks. Setbacks with the longed-for baby, perhaps. How well she could sympathize.

As the last of the sun’s rays dissolved, the bonfire light played kindly on the faces of those standing round it, making everyone glow rosily. Lines were smoothed out and eyes sparkled
from the blaze. Evie thought of the centuries during which the drovers had herded sheep and cattle along the Ridgeway. They must have lit fires at night and sat round them, singing perhaps. Or
telling stories. She glanced up at the shadowy ridge above the beacon. Some people said they saw the ghosts of the drovers and their animals up there. On a night like this, it was almost possible
to imagine the brightness of the fire drawing them down from the white pathway. Or perhaps the flames would attract those who’d lived up here long before the drovers had, back in the Bronze
Age. This area had been continuously inhabited for thousands of years before Christ was born.

Evie looked into the flames again until the brightness made her eyes ache and she glanced away. A figure disentangled itself from the shadows and stood at the other side of the fire. Martha. The
flickering light gave her face no rosy hue; she looked as though she’d been carved out of stone. For seconds the two women looked at one another. Still this animosity – that was the
wrong word because nothing was ever said – this sense of something unresolved between them. And yet it had been Martha who’d provided the strangest but strongest reason for Evie to
carry on. Some mornings, flattened by longing for her daughter, Evie had sat at the kitchen table asking herself if she could be bothered to go out to the cattle or up the hill to the sheep. Martha
had appeared in the farmyard, fork in hand, or with a can of oil needed for the tractor. Her presence had been like a challenge, a suggestion to Evie that she should prove herself a true native,
someone who’d stick it out on this hillside, even if there was no point because there was no surviving Winter. She’d pull on overalls and boots and go to join the woman, silently
helping her to hitch the trailer to the tractor or to move livestock from one field to another. Martha’s quiet presence became something that marked the days and weeks, something that stopped
her from sitting in that chair by the range, even though the other woman had never once said anything about the loss of Jessamy. Perhaps because of that. Evie thought back to that evening more than
half a century ago when she’d discovered Robert and Martha together on the parlour sofa and wondered whether Martha had ever suspected that it had been she who’d let the dog out and
disturbed the lovers. Perhaps that was where the dislike had originated. And it had never faded. Even on sludge-grey days when depression wanted to clamp Evie to her bed she’d forced herself
out to meet Martha’s unfathomable stare.
Here I am. Still here. Despite everything.

Evie turned now so that the warmth of the flames bathed her back, resting her eyes on the darkening vale beneath them.

‘. . . drinks in the Packhorse,’ someone said. Tonight there’d be drinking and singing. The troubles of the previous year, the burning pyres of animals just miles from the
village, needed excising. The Jubilee was the time to forget about foot and mouth. But Evie didn’t want to follow them down to the pub. Freya Barnes lingered when the others walked on down
the hill.

‘Coming, Evie?’ But the tone of her question made it clear Freya knew the answer would be negative.

‘I’ve got things to do.’ Excuses, and Freya would know this. But she wasn’t one to press a point.

‘Look after yourself.’ Her soft eyes looked sorrowfully at Evie before she joined the others trooping down the steep lane towards the car park.

Evie lingered in the shadows of the trees to give them time to get ahead, wrapping her silk scarf more tightly around her neck. She followed the lane down the steep hill and then struck out
across the fields, not needing to stick to footpaths and barely requiring her torch to avoid young crops because she knew each one of these acres and what grew in them as well as she knew herself.
As she descended she could almost feel the difference in the soil, the downland chalk turning to sticky clay beneath her soles. She reached a stile and crossed the field of thoroughbreds shaking
their heads in enjoyment of the freedom and whinnying softly as they spotted her. The grass squeaked beneath her thick shoes and she could smell the juices at each footstep. Once she’d
welcomed early summer with an almost animal relish. But now she longed for autumn and its gold-tinted afternoons and evenings, with the wind wailing round the roof, the heat and gentle light in the
kitchen like an embrace on her return from the village shop or a walk with Pilot. The long nights could safely contain all those unanswerable but necessary questions she needed to ask herself. In
the summer brightness she’d be forced to re-examine them.

A single lantern burned bright in the western sky. Venus. She hadn’t known anything about the planets until Robert Winter had taught her their names and where to spot them. One day, Evie
Winter and her hopes and fears would just be a speck of dust on a small planet. She’d curl up in the sweet-smelling soil beside Matthew and rest in his quiet presence for eternity.

She’d reached the field in front of the house, in sight of the trees sheltering the farm. The oaks were becoming too tall. But she couldn’t bear to call in the tree surgeon and have
him cut them. She had an almost supernatural fear that the chainsaw would somehow cut into her own body. Her eyes fixed on the gilded boughs of the largest oak. She ought to leave this place while
she still possessed the strength to start again somewhere else, a small cottage on the Dorset coast, perhaps. But she couldn’t. Not just because Jessamy, assuming she still lived,
mightn’t be able to find her if she left the village; anyone could find anyone these days, using the internet. That is, if they wanted to be found.

No, she couldn’t leave because, for all the bitterness nights like this inflicted on her, the first stars in the clear evening light and the smell of the blossoming year still held her in
their grip. Even though the farm was becoming too much for her and she had been forced to close up rooms upstairs as the attempt to heat and maintain them defeated her. Once this place had employed
half a dozen men to work the land and two girls to help in the house and dairy. And Martha. Always Martha up there on the down, watching the sheep. Watching the farm. Now it was just Evie and two
afternoons of Slovakian cleaner.

She lengthened her stride, suddenly anxious to make the farm before the shadows grew any deeper. The house was now only a minute away if she kept to the fields and climbed the stile. The bottom
plank swayed as it took her weight. Evie made a mental note to find hammer and nails in the morning, feeling her shoulders hunch at the prospect of yet another chore. How cheerfully she could have
fixed a loose plank if her daughter had still been in her life. ‘I had to mend that stile again,’ she’d have said in the course of their weekly telephone catch-up call with Jess.
‘Damn nuisance.’

‘Can’t you get someone to do it for you?’ Jessamy would have replied, impatient at this imposition on her mother. ‘Or leave it for me to do when I come up next
week.’ Because, of course, her daughter and her young family would be regular weekend visitors.

‘I need more biscuits,’ she’d announce in the village shop. ‘And some boxes of cereal. The grandchildren will be here tomorrow and you know how much they eat.’ And
all the old women and young mothers standing in the queue would roll their eyes and laugh indulgently.

Or would Jessamy have perhaps been living at Winter’s Copse by now? If so, the responsibility for the stile would have been hers. Or her husband’s. Jessamy would have brought a
strong, handsome, kindly man to live on the farm. The grandchildren would be living here, running down the lane to the village school each morning and bringing their friends back to play on the
bales, just as she and Charlie had all those years ago. She, Evie, would have converted one of the farm cottages as a home for herself; on hand in case she were needed to help with the animals or
grandchildren, but at a discreet distance.

Evie gave herself a mental shake and felt for the torch she always carried in her pocket so she could see to undo the lock on the gate. If she let herself she could fall into a familiar trap:
she’d imagine that Jessamy was striding out just ahead of her, just yards away, reachable if only Evie could quicken her pace. She forced herself to slow down, not to play the game with its
inevitable painful ending.

She could make out the chimney pots and the swaying outline of the first roses on the trellis above the garden gate. Pilot would be pacing up and down behind the door, anxious about his supper,
anxious to have her back with him.

‘Evie.’ The figure stepped out from behind the cherry tree and her heart shot into her mouth.

She clutched at the torch.

‘Didn’t mean to frighten you.’

‘You gave me a shock.’ She barely managed to utter the words.

‘Sometimes I think she’s come back.’ Martha’s voice was a whisper. ‘I think I’ll see her playing in the garden. Especially on nights like this.’

‘She’d be a grown woman now, like Rachel.’

The idea seemed to shock Martha. ‘Grown?’ She swallowed. ‘I suppose so.’

‘You never give up hope she’ll come back one day, do you, Martha?’

The idea seemed to freeze Martha. Her face was immobile when she spoke again. ‘The child’s life was never the same after her father died.’

Evie’s fingers curled. But it was pointless to defend herself against whatever accusation was being made. Hadn’t she gone over the afternoon of the Silver Jubilee and the preceding
weeks again and again in her mind, trying to pinpoint any possible blame she should attribute to herself? There’d been a time when even finding something for which she could blame herself
would have been a relief. ‘Night, Martha.’

‘Good night.’ It was the longest conversation she’d had with Martha for years, since most of the fields had been contracted out and Evie no longer had need of extra help.
Martha was too old to work now, anyway. God knows what she did with her days: she always seemed to be walking around outside, refusing to join in with the Afternoon Club or the WI like everyone
else her age. Sometimes Evie would come across a fresh nail in a fence plank and know that the other woman still walked around the farm with that shepherd’s crook of hers, checking on things.
It might have made her angry once but not any longer.

She went inside, into the drawing room. Not quite cold enough for a fire, though she yearned for the comfort of yellow flames. She switched on the television, to see the roundup of Jubilee
celebrations. All round the country people were huddling round beacons.

‘Jubilees and Coronations are always cold,’ the pretty presenter said, with the air of someone reading an official verdict. ‘But Coronation Day was supposed to be sunny,
that’s why they chose the date.’ Evie remembered Richard Dimbleby saying something similar when she’d watched the Coronation coverage. She and Matthew had laughed. The weather
here in Oxfordshire, or Berkshire, as it had been back then, had been terrible too. She remembered running out of the house and up the hill, the wet seeping down the back of her cardigan and
turning her dress into a soggy dishcloth. Then she remembered Jessamy’d been wearing that thin cardigan over her cotton frock at the Silver Jubilee party.