The Forbidden Path

by Jean Chapman

  He was torn from this enrapturing performance as he saw the measure being thrown aside. Then, afraid she might dress and be away again, he went forward and threw a pebble up at the window. It hit the glass with a sharp tap, then bounced on to the hard path below. Belle certainly heard it, for he saw her pause, listen and then turn away. A second pebble hit the wall beneath the window, then the third cracked hard at the glass.

  Belle paused, threw a cardigan around her shoulders, then came to the window. She pushed up the sash and leaned out. ‘If that’s you, Ben Langton, you can just clear off. You’re not right in the head, any of you,’ she shouted, and the dog again raised a new note of fury in its barking.

  ‘Belle!’ he called softly. ‘It’s me, Cato.’

  ‘Cato?’ Her hands clutched the windowsill. ‘Oh, Cato!’ the second calling was quieter but more urgent, and he saw she bit her lip. ‘You mustn’t be here. My cousins are staying. They’re really wild, always spoiling for a fight.’

  He heard her speak, and listening only to the sound of her voice, not the warning, he found stupid, mundane sentences slipping around in his mind: It’s been such a long time. I’ve missed you. I’ve thought of you every day. But suddenly all compressed into a husky and intense: ‘I must see you.’

  There was a moment’s silence as she leaned out further from the raised sash-window. ‘Where?’ she asked, and her tone was now round and warm as she anticipated their meeting, the Langtons temporarily forgotten. Cato smiled up in the darkness, feeling the one eager word a tangible token, like a warm egg in his hands.

  ‘The October Fair,’ he began, ‘in town, we have …’ His words were interrupted as voices, loud voices, were heard from the side of the house.

  ‘I’ll let her off, see if there is anything about.’

  ‘They’re going to unchain the dog,’ she whispered urgently. ‘She’ll come straight here. Go quickly, Cato!’

  ‘We have a stand at the fair. I’ll be there every day. Belle?’

  But someone must have knocked at Belle’s door, for she waved him away with a hasty hand, pulled down the window and drew the curtains over it with a speed that left him blinking. He stood for a moment. The dog had obviously gone the other way around the house and he heard some of Belle’s cousins following it. They seemed ready for any kind of action with their catcalling and whooping.

  ‘John!’ He began to run, careless of noise now, for it sounded as if the sportive Langtons had discovered a quarry.

  As he neared the spot where he had left his brother, a lantern had been put down near the hedge. It lit a confused mass of struggling bodies. The dog barked hysterically, rushing in from time to time to nip indiscriminately at a flailing leg or arm. Cato covered the intermediate ground in three great bounds, seized the jacket of the stranger he reached first and hurled him bodily at the dog. Then, recognising John at the bottom of the pile, hauled his brother to his feet.

  ‘Get!’ he shouted. John needed no second telling, but stooped to retrieve his gun. ‘Not so quick!’ a second man called out, and leapt on to the gun barrel, trapping John’s hand. A third man arrived and came bungling into Cato, swinging wildly at his face. Cato retaliated with a hefty shoulder-charge, which sent the man reeling into and over the top of John’s captor, who was taking pleasure in putting all his weight on the hand trapped between rock-hard ground and gun barrel. Cato sensed a determination to hurt, a viciousness now, as the three struggled to get back at himself and John.

  There were more sounds from the direction of the farm, and Cato wondered if Sam Greenaugh and his brother-in-law would be next to arrive, but there was a sudden shouting and cursing, and a woman screaming from the direction of the stockyard. He raised his eyebrows in surprise as he heard the shout, ‘Someone’s let the bull out!’ ‘Get some hurdles!’ ‘Get the pole!’ ‘Help!’

  The disturbance diverted the aggressors long enough for Cato to retrieve John’s gun, push it into his hand and then propel him beyond the light of the lantern and along the hedgerow. When they finally paused for breath at the path and knew they were not being pursued, John asked: ‘What made you think of letting the bull out?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ He paused, then added, ‘Perhaps it was Belle.’

  ‘A girl wouldn’t let a bull out!’

  ‘This one just might,’ Cato answered, picturing her again in her petticoat, as she ran the tape-measure around her bust and waist, the epitome of slim femininity. ‘She just might,’ he repeated.

  Had it been any other girl, he would have taken pleasure in detailing all he had seen for his brother’s enjoyment. Belle he did not want to share.

  Belle spent the beginning of the next week in a fever of anticipation, and aggravation with her relatives. There was much discussion about which day everyone wished to go to the fair.

  ‘Thursday’s sheep,’ her uncle Horace Langton said, ‘so that’ll do me, and I can keep an eye on things here other days.’

  ‘Friday I’m taking some beasts in. Should fetch a decent price, with plenty of extra buyers around,’ Sam said.

  ‘So Friday, I reckon we’ll go, shall we, Lucy?’ her mother said, consulting her sister. ‘Belle can come, and we’ll go and have a look round town as well.’ Lucy turned to her three sons, who were still sitting down to a late breakfast. ‘What about you three boys?’

  ‘We’ll go with you Friday, keep the ladies company,’ the eldest, Ben, said without looking up.

  ‘That’ll make a change from sheep for you.’ Belle, who had felt she must not join in the discussion about going to the fair, or she might arouse suspicion, could keep quiet no longer. She was utterly weary of the company of all the Langtons; first the visit to the totally boring environment of a remote sheep farm, and now the crude boisterousness of her cousins - like bears let loose from a zoo, she felt.

  ‘We thought we’d play the good shepherd and keep the flock in order.’ Ben looked up at her under his black eyebrows, his smile degenerating into a sneer as he saw Belle’s face flame with anger.

  ‘If you’re so interested in sheep, I wonder you don’t keep your father company when he goes on Thursday.’

  ‘Aye, you can do, all of you.’ It was a measure of Horace Langton’s authority that not one of his three grown sons dared argue. Unseen by the rest of the company, Belle lifted her top lip in scornful derision.

  ‘Well, we’re on holiday, Father. We’ll go Thursday and Friday, if that’s all right by you,’ Ben said, looking to score the final point of the encounter.

  ‘I wonder you can all come and stay a week with all those sheep at home to be looked after,’ Belle snapped ungraciously.

  Horace Langton laughed. The sparring between the cousins was long-standing and accepted as a family joke by their parents. It was deadly serious as far as Belle and Benjamin Langton were concerned.

  ‘Oh, we have other men and good neighbours around, you know,’ Ben retorted, ‘and in any case the sheep are busy at the moment.’

  The other boys spluttered and coughed as they collapsed with laughter at his remark. The youngest, Douglas, was foolish enough to put matters into words. ‘Aye, the tups are in with them.’

  ‘That’ll be enough of that talk,’ his father thundered. ‘Go and get yourselves out for a walk, all of you.’

  It was both a relief and an aggravation to Belle on Friday morning, long before dawn, when she found that the three brothers intended making their trip to town ‘when the roads are aired.’

  ‘Should have thought they might help with the herding, great idle things,’ Belle snapped as her aunt Lucy went to lay out clean shirts for her sons. Hushed to silence by her mother, she went to wait outside until the trap was brought round.

  The fog lay thick and low over the fields below the farmhouse, although towards the ridge-path it was clear. Every leaf and blade of grass was weighted with great drops of dew, each cobweb discovered by pearl-like beads strung along every interweaving.

  Belle’s skin thrilled in the chill October dawn
, half with cold, half with anticipation. In the east there was a hint of pink and gold in the greyness as the sun rose. It would be a beautiful day.

  She could hear some of her father’s men behind the high corrugated iron gates of the stockyard and the bellows of the beasts brought in from their sojourn in the meadows, registering their protests and their fears.

  Her mother and her aunt came, buttoning gloves, carrying large handbags and empty baskets. ‘Never thought I’d see the time when bed pulled on a fair day!’ Mabel said, fussing unnecessarily, allotting and re-allotting the seats in the trap.

  Her father came, shrugging himself into his coat, carrying his long droving stick. Today, like his men, he would walk to town.

  ‘We’re ready, I think,’ Mabel said, finally climbing into the small high-sided trap and closing the back door after herself.

  ‘I’ll tell the men,’ Sam said, but his voice seemed to hold none of the excitement Belle usually associated with market or fair days. She glanced at her mother and saw her bustle was covering some other emotion. But, unable to think of much other than seeing Cato again, she failed to understand for the moment.

  Sam hailed the unseen men in the stockyard then, looking round, called, ‘Where are the boys?’ Two gaitered and capped youths emerged from a stable doorway - and now Belle understood. It was her brother Harry her parents’ thoughts were dwelling on. ‘Right,’ he said briskly, ‘off you go! Don’t go too far ahead, close all gates, stand in all side turnings, don’t excite the beasts, or it’ll be the last time I’ll ask you to drove for me.’

  The boys touched their forelocks and went to stand in the roadway. Sam unlatched the corrugated iron gates. ‘Let them come,’ he ordered. He and his senior cowman, Ambrose Smith, a tanned lath of a man who hailed from Cornwall, waited to herd at the rear of the twenty beasts. Mabel turned the trap to follow at the end of the procession.

  They seemed to be the only things that moved in the hushed early dawn, and the quiet rumble of over eighty hooves was only overlaid by the sedate, three-tanners-for-a-bob rhythm of the pony’s shoes, an occasional call from one of the boys, or Ambrose’s ‘Come on then, mi beauties.’

  In spite of her own mounting excitement, Belle could not help but feel the desolation of the family’s loss. She remembered sitting, as she did now, by her mother’s side, and her brother Harry walking by his father’s side, his own specially fashioned droving stick in his hand, trying nobly to match his stride to his father’s. Nine years older than Belle, he had been her hero. He had taken her on expeditions she had not understood, and had once sworn her to secrecy and shown her a cache of Christmas presents: a doll made and hidden which she had greeted as an old friend on Christmas morning, much to her parents’ bemusement. Never before or since had she kept a secret as long as that one - she had been tormented by the contents of that high cupboard - but for anyone she loved Belle could do anything.

  ‘Harry would have enjoyed today,’ she ventured speculatively.

  ‘He’s in all our thoughts,’ Aunt Lucy said piously, but her mother compressed her lips as if not trusting herself to speak.

  They drove on a way in silence, but Belle’s spirits soon began to rise again as she became aware that they were now in a stream of movement towards the town. Already on the main highway, before and behind them, she could see other droves of cattle, other family groups. Some in traps with no livestock to tend, and a few in motorcars, passed them, calling greetings, assessing the quality of the coming market.

  ‘Some good-looking Red Poll heifers behind you, Sam,’ one called. ‘And you’ll be giving the Clydesdale stallion a look over!’ He waggled his stick in the air in ready acknowledgement of that remark.

  Belle felt a sudden warmth for her father, a wistful longing to fill the gap left by Harry. Impulsively she rose and moved to the back of the trap, which tipped with the move of weight.

  ‘I’m just going to walk for a bit,’ she said, overscoring the questions and glances of her mother and aunt. She poised on the trap side for a moment then sprang lightly down and ran forward.

  ‘Thought I’d walk with you,’ she called to her father as he turned to see who was hurrying forward. He did not answer, and she saw a momentary suspicion as to her motive on his face; but then he straightened his shoulders, and his introspective pallor lessened as she smiled at him - assuming complete frankness, utter guilelessness.

  He smiled back, and she felt she would have liked to have taken his hand and dance, under his arm, as she had done as a child, twirling until he would suddenly catch her up, seize her other hand and swing her round and round, so fast her whole body stretched out in a spinning extension of his arms, the air rushing, taking her breath.

  Perhaps she recollected it now because the excitement of being on her way to see Cato again was much the same: the exhilaration tinged with danger.

  6

  It was the usual custom for the men and their womenfolk to part company on fair days, even eating separately at midday. The men went to a special buffet: cold meats, sliced from huge joints; whole cheeses, often split and laced with beer or port; new cottage loaves in doorstep-size pieces; great pork and mutton pies; and beer. They ate standing up, and striking voice-top bargains, where their refreshments were laid out in the long skittle alley of the nearby public house. The ladies made it the occasion for a little more refined eating, making their way into the town cafes and restaurants, where string quartets, tastefully set around with potted palms, aided their sense of occasion.

  Belle was relying on the custom, at least to be free of her father’s supervision. He sent her back to ride in the trap as the streets became more and more congested. Her mother now had to click her tongue repeatedly to encourage the pony to make its way through the press of animals, and humanity, converging before the market entrance. Once through the huge wrought-iron entrance gates with their iron heads of sheep, ram, cow and bull, the animals went to the pens on the left and the vehicles to the area set aside for them to the right.

  Belle felt her skin prickle with anticipation and impatience to find some way to be on her own, so she could look for Cato. Each dark head set her heart beating faster. It seemed the world, his wife and all their animals had come to market that day, and she began to wonder if they would ever find each other. Then the distinctive melodious sound of a steam-engine whistle set her pulses racing. She searched for an excuse to leave her mother and her aunt.

  Her chance came quicker than she anticipated. They were letting the pony drink, before taking it to the hitching rails, when Belle exclaimed, ‘Oh! There’s Gladys Parker.’ She waved enthusiastically to a surprised acquaintance from schooldays. ‘Can me and Gladys go off together? You’ve got Aunt Lucy for company.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Mabel answered. ‘It’ll cost me less in the shops.’ Belle laughed and, before her mother could change her mind, was away towards Gladys. She chatted long enough to see her mother and aunt disappearing into the crowd. Then, after allowing a couple of minutes to elapse, she waved a cheery goodbye to Gladys and pretended to hurry off after her mother.

  Now, she thought, the steam-whistle. She made her way past the fast-filling pens, where white-coated market workers were numbering the enclosures and sticking round white labels with black numbers on each beast’s rump. Farmers and their men were having to shout to make themselves heard above the alarmed bellows of the animals.

  Beyond the selling areas were stands with displays of veterinary doses and drenches, and huge head-collars, ornamental brasses and thick leathers — harness for the working shire horses - that made the harness for hunters and ponies on the next stall look mere effeminate affectation. As if in order of agricultural development, there was a poster advertising a test of skill between a team of working Suffolk shires and a steam traction engine, and the next stand contained the latest petrol-driven tractor. To Belle it looked like a huge beetle on huge wide-spaced wheels, as it towered above the crowd on its raised stand.

 
There was a constant movement of people, so she felt as if she swam through a sea of gaitered, stick-carrying, bowler-hatted farmers and their cloth-capped employees. As yet the crowd seemed a little aimless; they had not settled to anything - neither selling nor sight-seeing proper had begun.

  The sound of the steam-whistle again had her nerves raw-ended with anticipation. She went quickly in that direction, but found the whistle was part of a display of miniature static steam boilers - toys for young boys. She turned away, disappointment turning to disgust. Then on a rough, hard-cored square at the far side of the stands she glimpsed a pair of steam ploughing engines. She set off on her new track as quickly as the press of people would allow, peering at faces, detouring for a broad pair of shoulders, she approached the twin machines. Both Fowler engines were slick with touches of new paint; bright panels of coachwork-green were outlined in gold, more as if they were royal vehicles than practical working machines. But the name ‘Joe Abbott & Sons’ on the boilers told their ownership.

  ‘Capable of eight acres a day,’ she heard a voice say. ‘That beats your one-acre-a-day horse, or them stinking tractors, which’ll get bogged down mid-field every time there’s a good rain.’ She jumped up and down trying to see who was recommending the engines — it was not Cato - but then she felt someone’s attention focused on her. She scanned the front of the crowd again and saw his brother, John, staring fixedly in her direction. Even as she questioned him with her own glance, his father came from behind one of the engines. John just had time to nod his head away to the right. Belle lowered her head in acknowledgement, and to hide the excitement in her own eyes as Joe Abbott glanced her way.