‘She’s asking if we want to see Mrs Paddick.’
‘Ask her if Geoff Paddick’s at home.’
‘Why don’t you ask her,’ says Felicia sharply, but the girl isn’t looking at me. She’s watching Felicia’s face intently, and now I understand. She’s trying to read her lips.
‘Mr Paddick,’ says Felicia slowly, distinctly. ‘Is he at home?’ The girl nods several times, very fast, and bounces back into the house. ‘She’s deaf,’ says Felicia.
‘I know.’
We glance at each other. Felicia’s wearing a shabby dark green riding habit which looks as if it came out of the Ark. Her hair is brushed smooth, and there are no red sparks in it today.
I hope it’ll be Geoff who comes out, and not old Mrs Paddick or one of his sisters. They’ll be bound to talk of my mother. The girl takes her time, and we look about us, at the well-kept yard, the rowan, the fine square shape of the farmhouse. I think of my mother scrubbing here, as this girl is scrubbing now. I kneel down by the collie, to hide my face in talking to her.
‘Good morning, Mrs Fearne,’ says Geoff Paddick, crossing the yard from the dairy. I straighten myself.
‘Felicia,’ she says, putting out her hand to him, and she smiles.
‘How’s Jeannie?’
The collie slinks behind me, pressing herself against the back of my knees.
‘She’s well, thank you.’
‘My mother wants you to bring her up here again one day, for tea. We’ve some new kittens.’
Felicia smiles again, with a quick downward look. ‘She’d like that,’ she murmurs.
‘That’s settled, then.’
He’d like it settled, I don’t doubt it. All those Paddicks’d be pleased as Punch. Albert House and ten thousand pounds, maybe more besides. Harry Fearne might have had Felicia first, but that would be a small price to pay. What does Geoff Paddick know? He stayed on the farm, eating bacon and lording it over his sisters. Now he thinks he can put out his hand and pluck what he wants.
‘Have you a pony we could hire for the day, Geoff?’ I ask him. ‘For Felicia.’ He looks at me sharply. He doesn’t like the thought of us going together, but equally he’d like to please Felicia.
‘You could borrow my sister Judith’s mare,’ he says, directly to Felicia. ‘You’re about the same height. I’ll get her saddled up for you.’
And about half the weight. The Paddick girls are as square-built as their house. He doesn’t want to take my money. That’s something, from Geoff Paddick, who hasn’t let a brass farthing slip past him since he was old enough to grasp it. He turns and hollers back into the house: ‘
Judith!
’
When Judith emerges from the dark innards of the house, she’s big and raw-faced, her body hidden in a baggy tweed skirt and jacket. Grown into a woman since last I saw her. No, she tells us, the side-saddle’s gone. They gave it to the church sale.
‘We’d no more use for it. I’ll lend you a pair of Anne’s breeches, Felicia. You’re smaller than her, but with a belt, they’ll do.’ Her eyes size up Felicia quickly, as if she were livestock.
‘I can’t borrow your clothes,’ says Felicia.
‘Anne won’t care.’ She and Anne were always like twins; they did everything together. ‘You’d better come inside.’ Judith’s high colour flares, and I see that she is shy of Felicia, while wanting to please her brother.
‘We can put her up on Susan,’ says Geoff, and his sister nods, too quickly and emphatically, so that I guess she doesn’t really want Felicia on the mare. And yet she does want to like Felicia. Geoff dominates here, with the heavy Paddick looks that have come out well in him, but not in the girls.
‘Judith and Anne wanted to volunteer for a Remount Depot upcountry,’ says Geoff, with a bit of a laugh, once his sister and Felicia have gone.
‘And did they?’
Geoff whistles softly through his teeth, shaking his head. ‘They’re dead nuts on little Jeannie. Want to get a Shetland pony for her to ride.’
‘And shall you allow it?’
He looks at me, as if surprised. ‘They do as they like.’
We keep on in silence.
Dead nuts on little Jeannie
. The child will be for all of them, until the others come, Geoff’s children. His sisters won’t marry. I can think all this, and stand apart from it, as if it has nothing to do with me, and yet as soon as Felicia comes back, awkward in Anne’s breeches, my heart is hot for her. I could knock Geoff down for even thinking of her.
‘Judith’s awfully nice,’ says Felicia, once the brother and sister have gone off to saddle the mare.
‘Is she? He’s got her well trained, that’s for sure.’
Geoff Paddick’s dad was a hard bugger, too. Felicia doesn’t see it. It’d be all soft, until the ring was on her finger. And what’s worse is that there’d be plenty who would reckon she’d done well for herself if she got Geoff Paddick, now there are so many girls without men to marry them.
I am glad when we are out of the yard. The morning is bright and sharp, and when we come off the farm track on to the high road the mare’s hooves dance a little, as if she too is glad to stretch her legs. The high road unrolls, pale and quiet, although there are men working in the fields. On our right hand the land falls away westward, to the sea. I carry the canvas bag of food and drink that Felicia brought. Felicia reins the mare back to a walk, and I go at her side, like a groom, breathing in the smell of the mare, the open land, the catch of salt. There are violets and primroses along the stone hedges, and campion coming up among them. The mare slows to drop her dung, and Felicia peeps at me. That would have made us laugh, when we were little. I think how harmless the beast is, walking on the white road. A horse will walk anywhere you ask of it, or nearly. But when they smell death they can dig in their hooves.
There’s Felicia’s left leg, in the clumsy breeches. She rides easily, without thinking about it. Her thin hands gather the reins just as they should. I watch her muscles flex, and then relax. Her knee is just right, against the mare’s flank, and her foot sits lightly in the stirrup. She told me once that she was put up on a pony before she was two years old, with the gardener holding the leading rein and taking her round and round.
We walk on as if in a dream, almost without speaking. If a cart passes, we rouse ourselves to call a greeting. The sky is still blue, but it is skeining over with mares’ tails, and the sea has a dark, clear rim at its horizon.
‘I used to think I could see the rain before it fell,’ says Felicia.
‘How do you mean?’
‘I’d screw up my eyes – like this – and I’d see it thickening in the air, sometimes hours before. At least, I thought I could. And we had that piece of seaweed hung up, do you remember? If it turned limp then there was sure to be rain coming.’
All rain meant then was the hiss of it on roof and windows; the battering of a gale; the shine of the cobbles early next morning. It meant a heavy canvas sack over my shoulders at work. It meant, if we were lucky, an hour in the potting shed while the gutter chuckled with overflow. If we had mud on our boots we scraped them clean on the door-scraper at the back door, before going into the kitchen for our dinners. On bad days, we took off our boots and went to the table in our stockinged feet.
‘I hate the noise of rain,’ I say.
‘It won’t fall before tonight,’ says Felicia. ‘We’ll be back home safe.’
We clip on. I’ve almost forgotten where we’re going, and why. I went to Bass Head with Frederick. The day was so beautiful, but it’s just as lovely now. Nothing cares a bit that he’s dead. He doesn’t take up an inch of soil. They ought to have put the graveyards of all the dead over here. They ought to have covered the farms and dug up the furze and foxgloves and had nothing but crosses as far as you could see. Miles and miles of them, going from town to town. Hasty wooden crosses like the ones we made, all leaning different ways from shell-blast. Bodies blown out of their graves.
I lean my head in, against Felicia’s leg. The mare doesn’t like it: she snorts and tries to dance aside, but Felicia holds her still.
‘What are you doing, Daniel?’
But the landscape dances too. Men are rising lazily out of their beds. They stretch their limbs, and the soil falls off them. The uniforms are unmarked. Their faces are round, and tanned with living in the open air. They stare about them. I am afraid that one of them will catch my eye and so I lean my face right into Felicia and the flank of the mare, and I shut my eyes, but they are still there. Puzzled, looking about them. They don’t know this place. I want them to go back. I want the earth to cover them. I want them to be blown to bits again if it only stops them coming on.
‘Daniel,’ says Felicia. ‘Daniel!’
The mare has stopped. I pull myself away from her, and open my eyes. Everything is steady, and empty. There’s only a distant cart, pulling slowly uphill.
‘It’s all right,’ I say to her. ‘I came over a bit queer, that’s all.’
‘We can go back if you’re not well. It doesn’t matter about going to Bass Head.’
Of course we can’t go back. Felicia doesn’t understand.
We leave the mare in a field at Bass Farm, then walk down the track until it narrows to a footpath. I carry the canvas bag, and a rolled-up blanket for us to sit on. It’s easy to miss the turn in high summer because then the bracken grows up over it, but now, in March, it’s obvious. Once it was a broad way, trodden by dozens of boots every morning and evening, before the mine closed. The tunnels ran out under the seabed. They say the men would stop for their croust and listen to the surge and drag of the tide far above them, but I don’t know that it’s true. Even with the pumps working day and night, the mine often flooded.
There’s the engine-house, half ruined now. Crows fly up as we approach. The walls are thick with ivy.
‘Could we go inside?’ asks Felicia.
‘It’s not safe.’
There are shafts, lipped with soft grass that quakes when the wind blows, so that you think you could walk on it. Frederick and I crawled on our stomachs, and dropped down stones to hear how they echoed.
The path skirts the cliff. We are above the cove, with its quay where the boats came to take off the ore from the mine. The cobbled slipway is as good as ever. How they got the loads down there, I don’t know. They had winches, I suppose, I say to Felicia. All kinds of machinery that was taken away for use in other mines when this one closed.
No boats now. Only the tide, sighing its way in under the cliff. The white sand is all hidden. There are caves you can walk into at low tide, but they’re covered too. I point out the way down across the rocks. It’s a rough way, and not easily discovered until you’ve been shown. You have the cove to yourself then. If we didn’t go down, we’d lie in the sun on the clifftops, while the seabirds wheeled above us, screaming out as the crows cawed in answer. All those cries, going up and up above us.
There’s a broad, grassy shelf in the side of the cliff, above the cove. You can walk along it. The path must have gone right round once, but the rock has broken away. The shelf is wide enough for us to sit comfortably, with our backs against rock. Protected by the overhang, the grass is soft and dry, but I lay the blanket down all the same. The sunlight is hazy, but still has some warmth in it. Felicia unpacks the canvas bag, taking out bread, cheese, apples, chocolate and a bottle of cold tea stoppered with a cork. As we eat, a gull floats lazily, just below us, tipping its wings for balance and turning its yellow eye to watch us. A boat noses its way around the headland and we keep as still as still, but it’s only a crabber. The sea is so flat we see the wrinkles on it spreading out long after the boat has passed.
‘We could have made a fire. Are you cold?’
Felicia shakes her head. ‘Someone might see the smoke.’
‘What if they did?’
‘I don’t want anyone to know we’re here. Did you come down here with Frederick, Dan?’
‘You know I did.’
‘I wasn’t sure. Did you sit just here?’
‘Not just here.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘Why?’
‘Because sometimes it seems as if whatever you do with me, it’s because of Frederick. We don’t do anything for its own sake. And because this is the last time, I wanted it not to be like that.’
‘It’s not the last time.’
‘It has to be. You’ll go to London, and I’ll be here with Jeannie.’
‘You’ll marry Geoff Paddick, won’t you?’
She sits back on her heels and laughs. ‘You can’t really think that.’
‘It’s obvious. His sisters are dead nuts about Jeannie.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘And they’re looking out for a Shetland pony, so she can learn to ride.’
Felicia is no longer laughing. ‘They mean well,’ she says. ‘He’s a good man. I like him.’
I let this pass. ‘But marriage, Dan – it’s got nothing to do with liking someone. I suppose you know that.’
I have a faint but certain feeling that Felicia is daring to tell me about her own marriage. Harry Fearne wanted her. Jeannie was born out of that wanting. She must think that I don’t know as much as she does; not really. Only in the way that boys and men think they know everything.
‘Judith and Anne share a bed. They can’t sleep apart,’ says Felicia. ‘And then there’s old Mrs Paddick in her room. As Dolly Quick says, it’d be a braver woman than her who walked into that.’ She lifts the tea-bottle, takes a swig, wipes her mouth on her sleeve and smiles at me. ‘You don’t like Dolly, I know that. But she was good to me, when Jeannie was born. I don’t know what I’d have done without her. Harry was gone, and the doctor was away up in Truro. You know Jeannie was born three weeks before she was expected? And I was so frightened. You’ve no idea, Dan. I was sitting on the stairs, crying, and Dolly came back because she’d forgotten something – I can’t remember what it was. Maybe it wasn’t anything. She was so kind. She knew just what to do, and she got me upstairs and told me it didn’t matter if the doctor came or not, we’d be all right. The thing I remember most is that she never took her hat off. I kept seeing that little jet bead on her hatpin. She was so good to me, but when the doctor came he ordered her about as if she knew nothing. His hands were cold when he touched me. When Jeannie was born he picked her up by her feet and shook her like a rabbit, and I couldn’t stop him.’