‘You’ve got a car?’ she said.
‘Oh, it’s just an old van, but it’s a necessity up here. I bring all my stores from Alnwick once a week, and of course I’ll need even a bigger one when I get going.’
‘Yes, yes, of course.’ She nodded.
He walked past the barn now and along a tangled pathway, saying, ‘This was a sort of vegetable garden.’
‘Has the house been long empty?’ she asked.
‘No, it has never been empty.’ He spoke over his shoulder. ‘An old couple lived here. The old man died and she went down into the town. It’s too far out for most but it suits me, just what I wanted. Moreover, it was going cheap. Twelve hundred she was asking, that was all. Amazing these days. When I get the house finished it’ll be worth six times that, let alone the land.’
It was just talk. He knew it, and she knew it. He would never get the house finished, not without her he wouldn’t. Without her he might work out part of his sickness on building the greenhouses, and when they were completed he would move on. This could be a temporary resting place for him, or it could be a home for life. It all depended on her and how she handled him within the next hour. She couldn’t just say to him, ‘I’ll marry you;’ it wouldn’t be enough, she knew she would have to convince him that he meant more to her than that, that there was nothing he would ask that she wouldn’t do for him. Even more than that, that he would have no need to ask.
He was saying now, ‘The old man was born in the house and he was eighty-four when he died, amazing.’
She could imagine old people having lived in the house for a long time. It looked like it, and smelt like it. She would alter all that.
Her back was straight and her head was up. Then she stumbled over a bramble. He turned quickly but he did not touch her. Instead he looked at her shoes and she felt he was about to criticise them; but when he saw they were flat-heeled, he said, ‘I must get the paths cleared.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going.’
When they came to the greenhouse she said, ‘It’s very clever of you to be able to build it on your own.’ And to this he replied, ‘Oh, there’s nothing in it, it all comes in sections. The difficult part of the job is getting the stuff carted up here, cement and things for the foundations.’
She was surprised he knew how to handle cement. Likely he hadn’t at first, as two burst bags of hardened cement indicated.
‘Later on I mean to make up the track to the main road; it’ll be easier on the van.’
As he led the way back to the house he looked up at the sky in a casual manner and remarked, ‘I think we’re in for another shower.’
In the room again she could not control her shivering, for it seemed colder inside the house than it did out. He was aware that she was cold and he walked towards the fireplace, saying as he went, ‘I usually don’t light up until the evening; I—I’ll get it going. Would…would you like a cup of tea?’
‘No, no thanks.’ She paused, then asked, ‘Is there a telephone box on the main road?’
‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘About a hundred yards along from the bottom of the lane.’
‘I’ll have to make a phone call,’ she said. ‘Pat is staying with the mother of one of the girls at the office. I would like to get in touch with her. I’d better be getting down,’ she said.
He turned from her towards the fireplace again and she saw his left shoulder twitch; then as quickly he turned back and stared at her. His distress was too much to bear without going to him, and the time was not yet. When she moved to the door he muttered thickly, ‘If you’ll wait a minute I’ll take you down in the van.’
‘Thank you; it would be a help.’
He went past her, almost knocking her aside, and she watched him hurry along the side of the house. A minute or so later she heard him starting up the van, and then he appeared at the corner, shouting roughly, ‘You’ll have to come this way.’
She went quickly towards the courtyard where the van was now standing, and he opened the door for her but did not help her up the steep step. And then he was sitting behind the wheel and thrusting in the gears.
Going down the rutted lane she was bumped and jostled, and twice she fell against his arm, until she found that by bracing herself with her feet she could curtail her movements somewhat.
He had not spoken during the journey down but when they neared the road he said gruffly, ‘They don’t like you parking on this stretch, it’s narrow and on the bend. There’s the kiosk along there.’ He pointed across the corner of the field.
Out of the van, she would not let herself look at him. She must burn her boats completely before she made the final move. She said under her breath, ‘Thanks,’ then walked down the road conscious that he was watching her.
It was a funny thing about the burning of boats, you were always frightened; even if you wanted to burn them you were still frightened. She had once before burnt her boats when she ran away from home and married Harry. The result of that burning was her loathing of sex, the abhorrence of even the thought of physical contact. Yet within the next few minutes she was going to set the seal on another episode of physical contact—and not under the sanction of marriage either. She was going to do what she had been suspected of doing for years, and perhaps she would never be really able to convince him that she hadn’t. Well, that was as might be, but at that moment she knew instinctively that the only way to help him was to give him her love…unreservedly. That’s what she had come to do, but she had never imagined he would need it as much as he did.
She lifted the receiver and got through to Jean’s mother. Yes, Mrs Watson said, Pat was fine; eaten a big dinner. And, no, no, of course she wouldn’t mind having him for the night. Was she herself fixed up for the night? Oh, that was good. Some of those country people did you well.
As Mrs Watson continued to talk Cissie was startled by the distant sound of the van starting up. She twisted around, the phone still to her ear, and saw the van turning in the road…She said ‘Yes, yes,’ to Mrs Watson, then gabbled, ‘I’ll have to ring off. There’s a bus coming.’
She jammed the receiver down, but moved no further than the door, and from there she watched the van bounding and bumping up the hill. She closed her eyes for a moment, then walked heavily towards the track, and just as she reached it she saw the bus winding its way towards her from the far distance. Another two minutes and it would be here. Perhaps that’s what he had thought; the bus would be along in a minute, and it was no use prolonging the agony. When the bus passed the bottom of the road she was a few hundred yards up the track.
Before she reached the fork in the road it was raining heavily. When she reached the house door she was very wet, tired, and sad.
She didn’t knock this time but, lifting the latch, she pushed the door open. She watched his head jerk up from his arms on the table. His face looked ghastly, and she did now what she should have done when she first entered the house. She went to him and put her arms about him.
His face buried in her breasts, his body shook convulsively and she muttered over him, ‘There now. There now. It’s all right.’ It was like talking to Pat until, after a while, she brought his head up and, bending to him, placed her lips on his. After a long moment he pulled himself up and held her tightly to him, and, both their faces awash now, they looked at each other. And then she said, ‘I—I was just phoning to say I wouldn’t be home tonight.’
She saw the greyness seep from his face. And now, her voice high and cracking between laughter and tears, she gabbled, ‘We can go in tomorrow and clear the flat, and collect Pat…You won’t mind Pat?’
For answer he held her face tightly between his hands, and after searching it with his limited gaze he muttered, ‘Oh, Cissie, Cissie.’
Not Cecilia, she noted, but Cissie.
‘You’ll have to marry me sometime…doesn’t matter when, just to make it right with Pat.’
‘Oh, Cissie, Cissie.’ He gat
hered up handfuls of her hair as he kept repeating, ‘Oh, Cissie, Cissie.’
She put up her hands and caught his and pressed them to her head.
It was funny. She was about to throw her hat over the windmill, so to speak. Well it was done every day, but she had always resisted it, not alone, she knew now, merely because she had been sickened of sex, but because in giving way to it she’d really be doing what people expected of her. So she had lived a way of life that belied her looks, just to keep her self-respect. But now that didn’t matter any more; nothing mattered, except his peace of mind and happiness, and she could give him both
… Yes, she could do that so long as they didn’t talk about his father. And as long as she herself stayed shut away in this wild separate world and didn’t see him…Oh John, John I’m sorry.
The End
The Unbaited Trap Page 25
