by K. C. Finn
I said nothing else to Leigh as he brought me back to the table and he skulked off back to his place with his head down low. Henri watched him go with a sympathetic sort of look.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, turning back to me.
I nodded, but he must have already seen the worry on my face. Henri rested his smooth hand on top of mine and I couldn’t help but smile as his warmth crept through my skin. Leighton was right, actually, I was getting cold, but if that meant Henri was going to warm my hand up then I wouldn’t complain. But Henri snatched his hand away again as a loud cough caught us both by surprise.
“You’re in my seat,” Blod snarled.
Henri jumped away quickly with an apology as the blonde goddess threw herself down hard onto the chair. She too was shivering, though I was sure it wasn’t just from the cold.
“Where’s Bickerstaff?” I asked her gently.
A tear was gathering in one corner of her eye. She pushed it away violently.
“He’s gone home,” she whispered, her voice cracking.
***
I offered Blod the chance to talk to me that night but all I got in return was the usual abuse and a very clear message that her life was none of my business, thank you very much. I was therefore terribly surprised to find her waking me up the next morning. Blod didn’t really wait for me to stir before she started to remove the night splints from my elbows; I came around fully when she was sorting out the ones on my knees.
“Why are you doing this?” I mumbled sleepily, “Mam usually-”
“Oh bugger Mam,” she said quietly, “Come on, I said I’d take you out for a walk before breakfast. Hurry up and get a wash.”
Blod gave me barely ten minutes to get sorted before she was back in the makeshift bedroom, rushing me into my shoes and grabbing my crutches and chair. I decided against questioning her any further until we were out in my usual practice space behind her bedroom window. It was a still, silent morning, so silent that I slowly realised we were awake and the rest of the house wasn’t. Blod got me up onto my crutches at the edge of the grass.
“How far d’you usually go?” she pressed.
“Almost to that tree,” I replied, and without another word we were off.
She let me do my first three, slow steps before she started to speak, all the while focused on my feet padding hard into the dewy grass.
“I don’t want your opinion, right?” Blod began, half vicious and half afraid, “But I’ve been going mad about this all night, I’ve got to tell someone, and it’s only you that knows what’s going on.”
I said nothing, finding it hard to focus on my balance at the same time as her words.
“Steven’s told me that you know about us,” Blod said, her low tone suggesting that she would even be afraid for the clouds to hear us talking, “I don’t want to know how you worked it out; I ‘spect you see a lot just sitting in that chair when no-one’s looking at you.”
I had never given Blod any credit for thinking about me as a person rather than a hindrance and that annoying urge to feel sorry for her was slowly returning as I carried on my snail-pace trek.
“But he went mad at me in the kitchen last night,” Blod continued, “He’s worried that if you worked it out then I must be giving off hints or something. He’s got a rotten temper.”
“Well so have you,” I muttered, instantly regretting that I’d let the comment slip.
Fortunately Blod gave off a tiny laugh. “Well yeah, he wound me up all right. I slapped him in the face actually. Just a bit, you know, but it left a mark and that’s why he had to go home.”
“That’s one way to get rid of him,” I supposed. Blod laughed again, this time brighter still. “Personally,” I said gingerly, “I don’t know why you ever got involved with him in the first place. Did he used to be nicer?”
“Oh God no,” Blod answered with a half-smile, “He’s always been moody. When he first came to the village all the girls fancied him, thought he was mysterious, you know?” I was surprised to feel her holding my shoulder steady as I struggled on towards the tree. “But most of them got fed up after a while; he was too temperamental for them. But not for me.”
I could well believe it. Bickerstaff had the same hot-headedness as Blod, the same selective deafness, even the same wicked smirk when he knew he was in the right about things. They were peas in a pod, no mistaking it.
“The problem was I lied to him, see, about my age,” Blod said, her golden hair falling down so I couldn’t see her face, “Nine years is a big age gap, init? I thought if I added a couple of years on, he might be interested in me.”
“And clearly he was,” I added awkwardly, “What I don’t understand is how it all went so wrong after… well, when you found out you were having Ness.”
“Steven wanted to do it all proper like,” Blod explained, “Especially when I told him my real age. He wanted to marry me, make it right.”
“Why on Earth didn’t you let him?” I asked in disbelief.
I stopped, realising we had reached the base of the tree. Blod turned on me, her angelic face hard and serious. Her blue eyes cut into me like diamonds.
“If he had, everyone would have known the reason why, especially with Ness coming along just four months later. They would have all said I’d trapped him.” Blod’s expression grew fiercer, her eyes both angry and sad. “I didn’t want people to think I was that kind of girl.” Blod took one of my crutches away as she helped me sit down on the grass. “Mam told everyone I’d gone to secretarial school until after the birth and we hushed it up, just kept it in the family.”
“But no-one knows that Bickerstaff’s the father?” I questioned.
Blod shook her head. “No, so don’t breathe a word,” she said harshly.
“I won’t,” I promised.
We sat together quietly for a moment under the shade of the huge tree and I made a silent congratulations to myself for making it the full thirty paces. Who would have thought that Blod, of all people, would be the one to get me there? As I looked across at the out buildings a wheelbarrow came around the side of one of them. My heart leapt into my throat when Henri appeared with it. He was wearing borrowed clothes again, but these must have belonged to Idrys since they were miles too big around the middle. Henri had tied the huge shirt in a knot at his back, leaving his chest and stomach exposed to the morning sun.
“It’s a bit wrong to fancy your cousin, you know,” Blod said, nudging me hard in the arm.
“We’re not related by blood,” I said immediately, which was true, it just also happened to be true that we weren’t related by marriage either.
“He’s a bit young for me,” Blod mused. She too was watching him push the barrow nearer to us, his slightly tanned skin glowing in the sunlight.
“Good,” I said sharply.
“Oh give over,” Blod said with a wave of her hand, “He didn’t look at me once last night. All he did was smile at you. You’re well in there.”
“D’you think so?” I asked all too keenly.
I half expected Blod to revert to form and tease me about it, but she nodded with a wicked glint in her eye. After a moment she got up and brushed herself down from the dewy grass, cupping one hand around her mouth as she started to wave with the other.
“Oi! You!” she called brazenly.
Henri caught sight of us, dropping the barrow instantly and starting to jog over. As he approached he undid the knot in his shirt and pulled the baggy fabric around him to fasten it properly. I tried my best to hide my disappointment, but it was no easy task.
“I’ve got to go in and get the breakfast started,” Blod said as Henri arrived beside her, “You walk Kit in when she’s done out yur, right?”
She leaned in against Henri’s ear and whispered something to him, then turned and gave me a wink as she slunk away through the grass back towards Ty Gwyn. Henri’s dark brows were knitted in confusion as he sat down beside me under the tree, hugging his knees up to h
is chest.
“Kit,” he began with half a smile, “What does ‘no funny business’ mean?”
I had hoped fervently that Doctor Bickerstaff wouldn’t take Leighton’s little slip up over Henri seriously, so I was suitably horrified when he turned up a few days later at Ty Gwyn asking to speak to ‘the Norwegian boy’. Henri and Idrys were loading coal into the sitting room fire when Bickerstaff came in and Idrys wheeled me away quickly to leave the two chaps to converse. But Idrys must have known something was up, because he wheeled me right into my bedroom and told me to sneak back mentally and find out what was going on. It was much quicker to find Henri’s mind with him in the same house, so the doctor had hardly begun speaking by the time I was listening in.
“You’ll be pleased to know, Mr Haugen, that the local constabulary has accepted your identification papers as genuine,” Bickerstaff said in his deadpan tone.
“I should hope so,” Henri answered stiffly. I felt rather guilty that he’d inherited so much contempt for Bickerstaff from me before ever having a chance to actually meet the man in person, but there was a suspicious look in the doctor’s eyes that told me it was probably best for Henri to be on his guard.
“Tell me, how exactly are you related to the Cavendish children?” he pressed.
“We’re cousins by marriage, on Kit’s mother’s side,” Henri explained, just as we’d rehearsed. “It’s a very distant connection, but my parents are dead now, and I had no-one else to turn to.” I felt that old sadness creep into Henri’s chest as he spoke, knowing the sincerity would lend itself to Bickerstaff believing our story.
“On her mother’s side,” the doctor repeated, “Her mother being…?”
Gail, I whispered.
Henri did all he could to stop himself from jumping with the shock of my voice in his mind.
“Gail,” he answered quickly.
“Her maiden name?” Bickerstaff pressed.
Arkwright.
The doctor asked question after question about my family to Henri, who repeated my answers to the letter. Bickerstaff didn’t seem entirely satisfied, in fact he once or twice looked around him as though there were answers hidden somewhere on the walls, like he was trying to catch a schoolboy cheating on a test. After he had exhausted his supply of questions the doctor shoved his hands into his pockets irately. I could feel Henri’s amusement at the sight of his defeat.
“Tell me then young man,” the doctor said finally, “What are your intentions now that you’re here?”
Henri was on his own now, for that was something I had no idea about. I felt him stiffen his shoulders proudly.
“Well sir, I turn eighteen in August, about six weeks from now. My intention is to enlist for the British Army and fight the Hun like everyone else.”
Something changed in the doctor’s face, his steely resolve falling away slowly. He nodded ever so gently.
“I’m sure we’re all keen to heed the call, when it comes,” he replied solemnly.
***
Henri had mentioned fighting for us a few times before, but now that he was here in North Wales I couldn’t bear the thought of having to let him go again. He was too proud to tolerate my attempts to persuade him not to enlist, so in the end I stopped talking about him going away and decided to enjoy whatever time I had with him, secretly praying every night that the war would end before he had the chance to go off to training. I thought perhaps my prayers were being answered as July rolled in, when the papers started reporting on a great on-going battle over the British airspace. It seemed like Luftwaffe planes were being shot down left, right and centre by the RAF, and every report that came in saw Mam and Blod punching the air with joy that Clive and the boys were part of that great success.
Despite the low rations and the lack of money, Idrys managed to get Henri kitted out with some proper clothes and put him to good use on the farm. He took over my afternoon walking practice, which generally ended with us sitting under the nearest tree and talking until Idrys called him back to work. Mam invited him over most evenings for dinner, but Leighton had got into the nasty habit of following us from room to room with his watchful little eyes. It was painfully ironic that the only real privacy we had was when I went to my bedroom and Henri went to his, where we were able to talk in his head across the pasture.
It was a too-warm night in the middle of July that I found Henri standing by his window trying to cool off. I waited for a moment quietly as he took in some deep breaths of the night air, but Henri gradually stopped what he was doing and started to smile.
“You’re there, aren’t you?” he asked.
How did you know?
“I think I’m learning to recognise the change in my head,” he explained. Henri moved to lie down on his bed and look up at the cobwebbed ceiling of the Pengelly Cottage.
Listen, I began excitedly, I didn’t want to tell you when Leighton was there, but Blod told me there’s a summer dance in the village hall at the end of next week. All the teenagers are going.
“You mean somewhere your brother and Idrys can’t get into to pester us?” Henri asked with a laugh. “We have to go, of course.”
Excellent, I said, agreeing silently that between my little brother and the old farmer we couldn’t get a moment to ourselves. That’s settled then, except for one little thing.
“Oh?” Henri asked, waiting.
I’m not sure if I can actually dance, I admitted, In fact I’m not sure that I really have walking mastered yet. But I’d still like to go, even if I have to sit it out and just watch.
“Don’t be silly,” Henri said with a smile, “We’ll figure something out.”
***
Henri and I went to Mam with the suggestion of me learning a few dance steps, mostly because we knew that she would say yes without even thinking about it. Mam didn’t disappoint us; in fact she took me off potato peeling duty for the rest of the week so that the time could be reserved for Henri and I to practice. Leighton was enlisted to move the furniture around in the small sitting room to make space, which left him with a wicked scowl across his mouth. When Henri offered to help move the chairs Leigh was so vicious in replying that I shouted him out of the room, which allowed me to watch Henri shove the sofa backwards with his long, strong arms. He turned and caught me looking with a smile.
“Idrys won’t be happy, you know,” he mused guiltlessly, “I’m supposed to be picking fruit or something right now.”
“Mam’s in control of him really,” I replied, grinning from my chair and holding my crutches, impatient to get up and get started, “She’ll talk him round.”
“And who’s going to talk your brother round?” Henri asked, scratching his smoothly shaved chin.
I let loose a mighty frown. “He’ll just have to grow up,” I huffed, though I wasn’t sure I was patient enough for that. It was like Leigh had taken all of Mum and Dad’s protective instincts in over the years and now they’d all spilled out in one monstrous mood swing, one that was threatening to totally ruin my summer.
Henri broke my thoughts by taking away my crutches. I looked up at him with a frown as he threw them on the sofa.
“You’re not going to use them to dance,” he insisted, “You’ll stab me in the toe.”
“Then what will I lean on?” I asked, a smile creeping into the corner of my mouth.
Henri leant over my chair, his chin almost touching my shoulder, and wrapped his long arms around my waist, lifting me to my feet with ease. I gripped his shoulders hard as he let me take some of my own weight onto my legs. When we were settled I was looking up a little into his face, but he wasn’t quite as tall as he always seemed when I was sitting down so low. If I had the strength to be on my tip-toes, we could have been nose to nose. I made a mental note to work on that sometime.
“Keep your strongest hand on my shoulder and give me the other to hold,” he said, his rich voice so perfectly quiet. Even though there was always a ridiculous din from the kitchen and Blod’s radio upstairs
, I felt like every sound in Ty Gwyn melted off into silence when he spoke.
I did as I was told, wobbling slightly when he made the transition to only having one arm around my waist. I had to lean on him an awful lot to stay standing, but the strain was well worth it when I found him smiling proudly at me. I caught myself staring into his deep chocolately eyes and tore my gaze away with a grin.
“Aren’t we supposed to move?” I asked.
“Oh, um, yes,” he mumbled, adjusting his warm hand at my waist and pulling me a little closer, “All right. How about you step forward with the left foot and I’ll step back?”
He counted me in. I was about fifty times slower than his counting, but we managed it all the same.
“And now you bring your feet together again.”
That was somewhat easier, but I could feel Henri half lifting me off the ground to help.
“Now we step to the right side, and feet together.”
I dug my hand into his strong shoulder muscles to keep steady, feeling my face flush pink from more than just the physical strain. His nose bumped my temple as I stumbled; I could feel him grinning against the side of my face.
