‘One more tango,’ she said.
As they danced, she looked down at her brother. He was a strikingly good-looking boy, with thick fair hair which rose in waves from his forehead, and darker eyelashes, long and curling. To Grace it seemed unfair that a brother should have the attributes which would have been so much more useful to herself.
She knew that she was not pretty. She had inherited her father’s strong features instead of her mother’s blonde beauty; and the high forehead and wide eyebrows which looked distinguished on him were forbidding on a sixteen-year-old girl. She was tall for her age, and her hands were too large. The wide stretch of her fingers was useful for playing the piano, but at other times she felt self-conscious, wishing that she – like her brothers – had pockets in which to hide them. Her dark eyes might have been attractive in someone else’s face, but contrasted too dramatically, she felt, with her pale complexion.
Often – unfairly, in her opinion – she was reproved by her mother for staring. Grace believed it only polite to look straight at anyone who was talking to her, and certainly she liked to study objects with a sustained scrutiny, as though by concentration she could see all sides – and even the centres – at once. She could not help it if her eyes seemed to focus more strongly than other people’s. She was only looking. Presumably she had also inherited from her father the intense gaze with which he seemed magically able to deduce from the outside of some bulb or even seed what it would become one day.
‘You’re staring,’ said Jay, as severely as if it were their mother speaking.
‘Sorry. I was just thinking. About what you said. It was interesting. Rather like one of Father’s lilies. Until it goes into the earth it’s just a small brown object, rather ugly, with scales flaking off it. But the flower is inside all the time, waiting to emerge.’
‘Not the same.’ Jay gave an elaborate twirl and bow as the music came to an end. ‘The lily can’t be anything but a lily, and nobody can stop it. But we have choices. And if we choose wrong, we may never find out that we’re lilies at heart. If you see what I mean,’ he added, giggling at the ridiculous comparison.
Yes, Grace saw what he meant, and her understanding made her uneasy. ‘I’m going down to the boulders,’ she said. Jay would know what she meant.
Chapter Two
Deep in thought, Grace made her way round to the side of the house and down the hill. To reach the wood and the stream she had first to pass her father’s plant room and glasshouse, and as she approached it she saw Andy Frith emerging, closing the door carefully behind him. He looked excited, as though he had been given good news. Andy spent much of his time helping her father instead of his own, and it might be that one of the new hybrids had just flowered for the first time. She could see that he was longing to tell her something; but he hung back, not liking to speak first.
His appearance reminded her of the doubts which Jay had sown in her mind when he used the gardener’s son as one of his examples. ‘We have choices,’ Jay had said, and that was undoubtedly true of himself and the other boys. But was it true for her? As her brother had pointed out, she was a girl, waiting to become a wife and mother. One day, perhaps, a young man would walk into her life as once upon a time her father had walked into a garden and fallen in love with the beautiful girl he saw there. But it would not be for Grace to choose whom she would marry. She must wait to be chosen – and who would ever want to love a tall, ungainly girl with fierce eyes and too large a nose? Grace stopped dead in her tracks and directed her gaze straight at the young gardener.
‘Do you think I’m pretty, Andy?’
Even before the words were out of her mouth, she was appalled by her own question. It might have been just permissible to ask her mother or one of her brothers, but not anyone outside the family. And especially not one of the staff. She blushed – and the more she tried to control the blush, the more rapidly it spread, suffusing her neck as well as her face. Quickly she turned away, hoping that Andy would be tactful enough to pretend that he hadn’t heard. But he was clearing his throat, determined to speak although apparently having difficulty in forcing the words out.
‘I think you’re beautiful, Miss Grace.’
Unable to believe her ears, Grace turned slowly back to face him. Had her emotions been under control, she might have laughed to see her own blush reflected in Andy’s cheeks. Although his arms were so freckled as to be almost brown, his face had the fair complexion which went with his red hair. The wide-brimmed cloth hat which he always wore for outside work prevented his skin from being reddened by the sun. But no hat could save him from the flush which rose from within as uncontrollably as her own.
‘I’m sorry,’ Grace mumbled. Was she apologizing for her own forwardness or for Andy’s embarrassment? Without waiting to think it out she ran away from him, through the wood and towards the stream.
Panting, she came to a halt by the boulders – and almost at once, as she allowed her fingers to stroke them, they performed their usual miracle by calming her spirit.
The two huge boulders which stood on the bank of the stream were immensely old – millions of years old, according to Andy. Unlike Grace’s brothers, Andy had never learned any Latin or Greek at school, but he seemed to know more than the Hardies themselves about the land they owned. The boulders, he had told Grace, must have been moulded by a glacier during the Ice Age. Nothing else would explain their almost perfect roundness. Not quite perfect, because in each of them there was a small, scooped-out hollow about twelve inches across.
The boulders could be approached only through the densest, dampest, darkest part of the wood. They stood in a depression which in the wettest months of the year filled with rainwater to become a pool. Grace had first discovered them when she was six or seven years old. She had been angry about something – what it was, she no longer remembered – and so almost deliberately fought her way through the barrier of brambles which had discouraged exploration before. By the time she stepped into a clearing on the further side of the thorns her skirt was torn and her stockings bloodstained; but both the scratches and the punishment to come were forgotten in astonishment at what she had discovered. It was as though she had broken through a magic wall into a haven of calmness like a prince discovering his Sleeping Beauty.
At that time the hollows in the huge stones had seemed to her to be fingerholds, ready for a giant to pick up one boulder in each hand and hurl them away. Now that she was sixteen she no longer believed in giants, of course – and yet it was odd that the hollows should be so similar, when the stone was too hard to be chipped or carved. She still felt the boulders to be in some way supernatural, out of the ordinary. There was a spooky atmosphere about them.
Her mother would have said that Grace herself carried the atmosphere to the stones – and it was true that she most often visited them when her spirits were disturbed. They had a soothing quality. When she touched them she could feel them absorbing all her tensions, leaving her mind and body at peace.
Today she had no cause for unhappiness, and hardly understood her own mood as her fingers, like those of a blind woman, passed lightly over the stones. From a distance they appeared smooth, but her touch was sufficiently sensitive to register the thousands of tiny pitted circles which covered the surface – just as Andy’s arms were covered with the overlapping circles of his freckles. For a moment it was as though it was the young gardener’s arms, and not the boulders, that she was stroking. Guiltily she let her hands fall to her sides. She did not want to think about Andy now.
But she had no choice, for he had followed her down the hill and through the wood, and was standing motionless in the shadows. Grace had never before felt uneasy in his presence, but there was something different about him today – a change which could not simply be explained by her shameful behaviour of a few moments earlier. Just as Jay appeared to have left boyhood behind him during his visit to London, so Andy had abruptly matured from a youth to a man. What had happened to inspire the excit
ement he could not conceal? She did not speak, but her eyes gave him permission to step forward and explain.
‘Mr Hardie sent for me this morning. I’m to be promoted. To take over all his own work while he’s away. The plant room, the glasshouses, the seed beds, the records. Sole responsibility, he said. I’ll still help in the garden with the time I’ve got left, but my father’s to have another journeyman, so that I’ll be at no one’s beck and call. It’s what I’ve always wanted. My own kingdom, you might say. Three years. There’ll be time for me to try crosses of my own, as well as keeping to the plan Mr Hardie’s leaving behind. I might surprise him with something.’
Never in his life before had Andy been heard to deliver such a long speech, but Grace was startled by far more than his sudden fluency. Her first reaction was one of relief that her childish question had already been forgotten, but this was quickly followed by a stab of indignation. If it was true that her father was going away for three years, she ought to have been told before a member of the staff.
What a selfish reaction! She should be happy for Andy, whose whole body seemed to be glowing with pride in his new responsibilities. And indeed she was happy for him, instinctively stretching out her hands as she smiled her congratulations. ‘I’m sure you’ll do marvellously well, Andy.’
‘Thank you, Miss Grace.’ The words were what she expected. More startling was the movement with which he caught and gripped her hands. Grace realized that her gesture had been too impulsive – but Andy should have known better than to take advantage. Although he looked down at their clasped hands with as much surprise as she did, he did not relax his grip, but instead gave an odd kind of gasp. ‘Oh, Miss Grace!’ He pulled her close, enfolding her in his arms.
It was Grace’s first kiss and took her by surprise, giving her no time to think how she should respond. It was wetter and rougher than the cool touch of her mother’s lips on her cheek or forehead. At first she felt herself to be outside the embrace, observing and worrying about it. What was she supposed to do with her hands? Tentatively she moved them upwards until they rested on Andy’s arms. How firm and strong they were compared with Jay’s! Her fingers moved over the soft skin which covered the hard muscles rather as they had earlier explored the boulders, trying to feel through the texture of the surface the quality of what was inside.
And then, without warning, she could not remain outside the scene any longer. Andy had been holding her close enough already, but suddenly he flung himself at her, pressing her back against one of the boulders. The first long kiss was over. His mouth moved over her face and neck as if no inch of skin must be left untouched. Grace’s hands no longer awaited instructions, but held him tightly, pulling him even nearer. Their closeness robbed her of breath and the beating of her heart was suspended by happiness. When at last he let her go, she staggered a little from faintness.
Andy, for his part, was gasping. He struggled to speak, but no words emerged. Then he turned and ran away through the wood. The child that Grace had been until an hour earlier would have felt disappointment, but the woman she was now was aware only of a glow of happiness. Andy thought she was beautiful. She had found someone who could love her.
Chapter Three
It was to her aunt that Grace first confessed her feelings. Midge Hardie was as much a part of Christmas at Grey-stones as the family charades on Christmas Eve, the mince pies waiting for the wassailers and the frosty walk down the hill to Headington Quarry church on Christmas morning. No doubt she had to remain on her dignity all through the school term, so she made up for that by flinging herself wholeheartedly into all the fun of the festivities – playing silly games with her nephews and niece, as well as beating them at the pencil and paper games which required more thought.
Aunt Midge was expected to arrive on 23 December, and this year, Grace realized as she kneaded and plaited the dough for a special Christmas loaf, she would notice a difference. Grace’s father was an all-or-nothing man, who balanced any neglect of his children during the working part of the year by the vigour with which he threw himself into the celebration of birthdays or Christmas. But the head of the household was absent. He had sailed for China two months earlier.
The boys had changed, too. Well, they were not boys any longer; perhaps that was the trouble. Only Jay, who at this moment was sitting on the edge of the kitchen table, swinging his legs and eating scraps of raw dough, was still a schoolboy. He certainly was as high-spirited as ever. But the twins had left school and gave themselves the airs of grown-ups, complaining when they were still treated as juniors. David was articled to a firm of solicitors, while Kenneth, unable to produce any suggestions of his own about a career, had been placed by his father in the family business as a trainee. He grumbled that Frank used him as an errand boy, and at home was apt to become tetchy.
Like Frank, the twins were expected by their superiors to stay at work until late on Christmas Eve, being allowed only Christmas Day and Boxing Day as holidays. That was another difference from the time when the family celebrations stretched over at least a week. Philip, who was working for a degree at London University, had arrived home a few days earlier, but even he claimed that he must spend all the vacation in study, and rarely emerged from his room. So Grace and Jay had already concluded that it was up to the two of them to turn this Christmas into a merry occasion. They were confident that their aunt would prove an ally.
She came to search for them in the kitchen, looking startled and amused at the sight of Grace’s floury hands and apron, and at the anxious expression on the face of Mrs Charles, the cook, who busied herself in the larder whilst waiting to regain control of her kingdom.
‘Have you become assistant cook?’ Midge embraced her niece more cautiously than usual, lest her clothes should be marked with flour.
Grace shook her head laughingly. ‘I’m just making one special thing. A Christmas loaf.’
‘You make bread!’
‘This is only the second time,’ Grace explained. ‘In the autumn one of Mother’s friends asked if I could help her. She always makes the loaf for the church’s harvest festival, but this year her hands were too rheumaticky and she couldn’t manage the little fiddly bits. She told me what to do, and I did it. It was beautiful. We made a huge wheat-sheaf, with every ear of corn showing and two little mice nibbling.’
‘It was inedible.’ Jay, as usual, was teasing. ‘Hard as rock. Convict fare.’
‘Nobody was expected to eat it. It was for looking at.’ Grace had had this argument with Jay before and was not prepared to waste time on it again. ‘I enjoyed doing it,’ she told her aunt. ‘So I thought I’d try making one by myself, for Christmas. Not a wheatsheaf, of course. It was meant to be finished before you arrived, so that I could be waiting with Mother to say hello; but everything took longer than I expected.’ She glanced at the kitchen clock. ‘It should be ready now.’
As she opened the oven door, Jay slipped down from the table, ready to help; and Mrs Charles also stood by. But Grace – taller and sturdier than either of them – was already thrusting in the paddle to slide the tray out. She set it down on the table and studied her handiwork with critical pride.
She had fashioned a holly wreath, weaving the stems into a plait. The leaves lay neatly in a circle, but eight sprays of berries curved slightly outwards to break the solidity of the shape, and a robin perched above to give it height. Except for the robin’s dark raisin eyes and the sesame seeds decorating what had been made to look like a bow of ribbon, the surface had a smooth, honey-golden gloss.
Her aunt took a deep, appreciative breath. ‘There is nothing, nothing in the world that smells quite as good as newly-baked bread.’ She laughed as Grace glanced anxiously at her. ‘Oh, don’t worry, dear. I’m not going to start breaking pieces off.’
‘Jay’s right, really,’ Grace admitted. ‘It’s too dense to taste nice. If I used ordinary rising dough, it wouldn’t keep its shape. I had to make a tougher mixture, so that I could model it like
clay.’
‘Have you ever made anything out of clay?’
Grace shook her head. ‘No. But I can imagine what it feels like, or nearly. When I was small I used to make mud pies down by the stream. And then squeeze the water out so that I could make little men and animals out of the mud. They always crumbled as soon as they were dry, though. Clay must have the same sort of feeling, but stickier and stronger. Well, that’s finished.’
She pulled off her apron, leaving the clearing up to the cook. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’ she asked. It was always the first thing that her aunt wanted to do – to fill her lungs with country air. They separated only for a few minutes, to dress themselves warmly before setting out together.
The first snow of winter had not yet fallen, but the grass, stiffened by frost, crackled beneath their feet. Grace, tall and long-legged, set off with the athletic stride of someone used to walking in male company, but quickly adjusted to her aunt’s pace.
‘You walk like your father,’ Midge told her. ‘I suppose at this moment he’s pressing through the Himalayan valleys, full of purposeful energy, sniffing out new plants. Have you heard from him since he left?’
‘No. There’s hardly been time. He wasn’t going to write until he reached Shanghai. I expect the first letter’s on its way now. I hope so. Mother’s worried. She didn’t want him to go. She thinks it’s too dangerous.’
‘Of course it’s dangerous. But that didn’t stop her from going with him when she was only a few months older than you are now.’
‘It’s worse now, she says. He first planned this expedition a few years ago, if you remember – just before the news came through about all the awful things that were happening in China.’
Midge nodded. ‘That terrible Boxer Rising. Murders, massacres. Yes, I do remember how disappointed he was at having to abandon his plans.’
‘Mother says, that the area he wants to explore is unfriendly to foreigners even at the best of times. But when the agent wrote to say that the situation was calm again, I suppose she didn’t like to argue.’
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