Where Earth Meets Sky

by Annie Murray

  She watched it burning, and glowed with happiness herself, smiling at him in the orange light.

  Once everything was ready they sat together on the rug, faces and hands warmed by the flames. In the firelight Sam turned to her.

  ‘Lily, I’m so sorry about last time – that I wasn’t straight with you from the beginning. I’m not a liar, not as a rule, only I was so keen to get to know you, so set on you, I knew if I said anything about home and Helen . . . Well, I wouldn’t stand a chance, and I just . . . See, even now, I can talk to you the way I can’t to anyone else . . .’

  ‘It’s all right.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘It was terrible then. Truly, it was. You broke my heart, Sam. And your wife expecting a child – all of it . . . I never thought I’d get over it.’

  ‘I never got over you,’ he said with great seriousness.

  ‘Even now—’ She hated saying it, but it had to be brought out. ‘You’ve children, Sam – your girls.’

  Sam stared gravely into the fire and let out a long sigh. ‘Children are a blessing but sometimes . . . I suppose it’s the responsibility, the burden of it, at times. Being a father, I mean. And I wanted to do it well – take care of them. They’re lovely, of course – pretty little things. I could never not take responsibility for them, Lily. But my God, I can’t go on the way I am. Not while you exist somewhere. I feel as if everything stops when I’m not with you. As if you’re what I’m made for.’

  Moved, she reached up and kissed his cheek. ‘And you’re the same for me. You’re the only man I’ve ever loved and it never went away, Sam, even though you did.’

  ‘It’s so strange,’ he said slowly. ‘Because although I love you, I don’t know much about you. You were always a mystery. And you know a bit about me – Coventry, cars and Helen, that’s my life. Tell me about you, Lily – will you?’

  Immediately she felt the old reflex of shame for the past which made her want to hide everything, even from him. Here he was, a man she felt so much for and even so, she found it so difficult. But his eyes looked down into hers with intense love and he leaned down and lightly kissed her lips. And as well as the shame, she found herself full of an ache, a longing to talk and share with him who she was and where she had come from and feel accepted for it instead of having to pretend to be someone she wasn’t. And the longing drove her to speak.

  ‘I don’t know much about my background,’ she began, her heart beating fiercely. It felt like opening a room which had been locked for many years and being afraid of what might be inside. For the first time in her life she started to talk about the things Mary Horne had told her, about them finding her in the street in Birmingham, alone in the cold outside a dismal slum dwelling, and about the things she could remember, living with the Hornes, and Mrs Chappell.

  ‘I thought I’d never get over it when she died,’ she said, sitting wrapped in Sam’s arms, looking into the fire as she spoke. ‘I thought she was the only person in the world who would ever care for me, and when she’d gone I had no one else. I wanted to get out and start again, to go somewhere new, so that’s when I came out to work for the Fairfords. And there was Cosmo – my beautiful little Cosmo . . .’

  Leaning against Sam, warm and cherished, Lily found to her surprise that she wanted to cry, and the tears started coming even though she tried to stop them. She rested her head on his chest, quietly shaken by sobs.

  Sam stroked her head. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, gently.

  When she could speak, Lily drew back and looked up at him wet-cheeked, and seeing his face bronzed and gentle in the firelight, gazing down at her so lovingly, more tears came.

  ‘I’ve never known this. Not being held like this.’

  ‘Oh, Lily, my love . . .’ he said, moved by her and her story. He drew her even closer to him again, his hand on her head, rocking her. For a time they sat quietly, hearing the crackle and spit of the fire, and the breeze gently moving the trees. It felt like sitting in a cave, the light a halo around them, and only darkness beyond. Lily felt warm and loved and alive in a way she never had before. She couldn’t say to Sam that although she had been clasped in Dr McBride’s arms night after night, it had never felt like this. It had been not love, but being used, and this difference, the longing it answered, filled her with emotion. She felt Sam gently kissing the top of her head and she turned and looked up at him with serious eyes.

  ‘I’ve got to go home,’ he said at last. ‘My passage is booked. The works will be waiting for me to come back . . . But I’ll . . .’ He was struggling with his emotions. ‘Lily, I can’t be away from you again. We’ve got to be together. I’ll go and . . . finish things, somehow. There’s Helen, and the work, and then . . .’

  ‘I’ll come home,’ Lily said. ‘It’s no good, you coming out here, is it? What would you do? And your daughters . . .’

  ‘But we’d have to move away. Somewhere where no one knows us . . . I’d send Helen money . . .’

  ‘We’d have to find somewhere . . .’

  It all seemed so momentous, so shocking and terrible and wonderful a decision to be having to make that neither of them could take it in or think clearly. Only then had it become fully clear that they had to be together, at all costs, but how on earth?

  ‘I have to be with you,’ Sam said in the end, holding her tightly. ‘I don’t know how, not yet, but it’s the only thing I’ve ever known or been so sure about. Whatever it takes, Lily, I’ve got to get back to you.’

  ‘I can’t bear the thought of you going away,’ she said, gazing into his eyes. ‘I wish we could just go now, keep moving on, and be together, just you and me.’

  Sam smiled fondly. ‘I think the captain might have something to say if we just make off with his motor car.’

  ‘We’ll go in a tonga then!’

  ‘And live on air for the rest of our days?’ He squeezed her lovingly. ‘My Lily, I want to keep you better than that. I want you to be happy and comfortable.’

  She looked up at him in wonder. No one had ever told her such things before, or looked at her with such love in their eyes. Even Mrs Chappell’s concern for her was a pale shadow of this.

  ‘I love you, Sam,’ she said. ‘I want to be with you – always.’

  She could scarcely believe it was her saying these words. Sam got up for a moment to put more wood on the fire and it blazed brightly, creating more leaping shadows around them.

  ‘Here – let’s have the tea before it’s cold,’ he said. They sipped from the little tin cup, sharing it, and ate the fruit cake he had brought, and then snuggled together on the rug in the heat of the fire, a coat rolled up under their heads.

  ‘D’you think there’s anyone else around?’ Lily said. It felt as if they were the only people ever to breathe this clear mountain air.

  ‘I doubt it. There were some huts but they were a way away.’

  ‘Tell me about Helen,’ she said

  He leaned up on his elbow and looked down into her face. ‘What about her?’

  ‘Well, you know – what’s she like? Is she anything like me?’

  ‘Lily – no one is like you.’

  ‘You must have liked her or why would you marry her?’

  Sam lay back and stared up at the starlit sky. He sighed.

  ‘We’ve been married for four years. Seems like an eternity. She’s all right, Helen is. A good sort, and she’s a good mother – you know, kind-hearted and steady. She seems to know what to do for them, without anyone telling her, which must be nature, I suppose. That side of it’s all right – the children. But when it comes to me she doesn’t want me, not really. I think she married the wrong man, and she knows it. She’s got a friend, a chap called Laurie. She should have married him.’ He stopped and sighed for a second.

  ‘When you first meet someone, and you’re young, you don’t know anything, do you? You just think, This must be it, because it’s happening and you feel something – a lot of it just the body when you come down to it – and you think thi
s is it. This is love and how it’s meant to be. But you don’t know how much more it can be. We don’t do anything much for each other, Helen and me. We don’t light each other up, never have. And I didn’t know there was lighting up, not like this, until I met you.’

  Leaning up on his elbow, he reached down to kiss her and she responded passionately.

  ‘Oh God, girl . . .’ He looked down at her, face full of a wistful hunger. ‘It’s no good. You’re my woman and that’s how it is. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t go back now.’

  Wide-eyed she looked up at him, moved by the strength of his desire for her.

  ‘Don’t go back,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t leave me again, ever.’

  He kissed her forehead, stroking away strands of her hair. ‘I shan’t leave you, girl. You’re mine.’

  It came so naturally, their lovemaking. Lily had gone through the motions so many times with Dr McBride, sometimes feeling her body respond a little, in spite of itself, but never her mind. She had never before responded to a man, or opened her whole self, to anyone. Sam’s hands moving over her, his face as he touched her body, gave her feelings she had never had before. The sight of his body as they removed some of their clothes moved her, instead of repelling her the way Ewan McBride’s portly frame did.

  ‘God, you’re so beautiful,’ Sam said, gazing on her as they knelt together, their skin rosy in the firelight. His eyes were full of desire for her, and all she longed for was to hold him close and stroke his hair, his back, to pour all her pent-up affections on to him.

  ‘Come here, love,’ he said, and they wrapped their arms round each other and she was overcome by sensations, her fingers caressing his back, the supple skin over hard muscle, the long, powerful spine, and his lips first on her lips, then seeking out her breasts, filling her whole body with sensations of longing and then his urgent request for her to lie back on the rug, her head pillowed as he lay over her, looking down into her eyes.

  Sam’s desire for her and the loving way he stroked her and entered her filled her with tenderness and longing for him and she felt as if this, not the mechanical way she had fulfilled the doctor’s demands, was the first time she had ever made love with a man. This first time was so passionate, so intense that it happened urgently and quickly. But they lay together then, close and warm, pulling the rug round them.

  ‘I never knew it could be like this,’ Sam said, looking deeply into her eyes. ‘I had no idea. God, Lily, I love you so much.’

  ‘Don’t leave me, Sam,’ she whispered again, fearfully. ‘I love you.’

  ‘I won’t.’ His breath was warm on her ear. ‘Even when I’m gone, I shall be here with you, because you’re part of me. We belong together.’

  ‘We’ll be together – we will,’ she murmured, tenderly kissing his cheek, her hands caressing his warm chest and belly. They lay there, pressed close together in the firelight, among the smell of the pines, until they slept, two tiny figures amid the great Himalaya, where the dark flank of the mountain reached up to greet the star-bright sky.

  Chapter Forty

  Lily woke first. There was already a fringe of light along the eastern sky and she felt the cool breeze on her face, smelled the trees, the dampness of the dew-soaked ground and knew, even before her waking mind confirmed it, that everything was changed. The sight of Sam’s upper arm beside her in the dawn light, his slender features and dark moustache gave her a great surge of happiness. He was here, they were together, and however damp and stiff with cold, now the fire was long dead, this was the only place on earth she wanted to be.

  ‘Sam . . . Sam, my lovely . . .’

  His eyes opened and after a second’s bewilderment, a smile of wonder spread across his face.

  ‘Oh, Lily!’ His lips searched immediately for hers. ‘I thought I’d dreamed you!’ He held her as if she was the most precious thing on earth and she lay with her head on his chest, hearing the confident beat of his heart.

  ‘Lord,’ he said suddenly. ‘We’d better get back! The sun’s coming up!’

  Tearing themselves away from one another they carried the rug and picnic things through the heavy dew to the car, only then noticing how cold they were, pulling the rug across their laps to drive back through the dawn. The sun was coating the mountain ridges with pink and gold as they set off, and as they came into Mussoorie, hurrying back to Kulri and the parking place, the higgledy-piggledy mountain town was bathed in a bronze dawn light. Sam steered the Daimler into the shed and her engine sputtered into quietness.

  ‘There.’ Sam turned, smiling at her, though the thought of having to part again was unbearable. ‘Will the McBride household be up by now?’

  ‘No – but it won’t be long.’ She was fluttery with nerves, but also didn’t care what happened now. She had Sam, they were together, and nothing else mattered.

  ‘Come round to the bungalow later – can you?’ He put his arm round her, in the dark shelter, and they gazed into each other’s eyes. Sam kissed her tenderly. ‘I don’t think I can stand more than a few hours without you, my lovely.’

  ‘I’ll come – of course I’ll come,’ she said. ‘Nothing can stop me being with you.’

  When she left him, warm with his kisses, it felt like being physically torn away, but strengthened by the knowledge that she would see him again in only a few hours she hurried up the hill to the bungalow. Alone, panic filled her. It must be after five in the morning – would everyone still be asleep? Prithvi started work very early, but at least she could rely on her not to make any trouble.

  She had left the front door unlocked and when she turned the iron handle it opened silently. Catching her breath she stepped into the dark hall expecting the doctor, or at least Cameron the dog, who might bark and give her away. Seeing there was no one around, she closed the door quietly behind her.

  ‘And where exactly have you been?’

  He must have been waiting there silently in the passage, because when she turned again she was no longer alone. Dr McBride’s form seemed to fill the whole doorway. In the gloom she could make out only the outline of his features, but the tone of his voice told her all she needed to know. He was seething with a rage only barely controlled.

  ‘I’ve just been out for a little walk,’ she gabbled brightly. ‘I woke early and the light was so lovely I thought I’d go out and watch the dawn – like Miss Brown does. I used to get up very early in Ambala and ride out with Mrs Fairford and it reminded me of how beautiful the early light is—’

  ‘You lying little bitch!’ He strode over to her and seized her shoulders. Lily gasped with shock at the enraged force of him. ‘You haven’t been in your bed all night so don’t play the little innocent with me! I went to you last night and you weren’t there. You were with him, weren’t you? Tell me, you overheated little whore!’ He shook her terrifyingly hard.

  ‘With who?’

  ‘With that goat McCluskie, of course! Did you go to his room? Couldn’t control yourself? Or some little tryst somewhere? My God, after all I’ve done for you you’d think you could behave in a trustworthy manner, but oh no, one male visitor to the house and I have to watch you every second.’ Again, he shook her so abruptly that her head throbbed and she felt tearful. She was tired, and this came with the shock of a slap after Sam’s loving embrace. ‘Tell me – admit it! And where is he? Where’s that bastard gone off to?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Lily gasped, confused. ‘I haven’t seen Dr McCluskie – not since yesterday morning, I swear to you.’ In her fright she grasped the fact that the only way she was going to calm him down was by appeasement. She could see the anguish mixed with his rage and she spoke to that. Taking courage, she laid her hands on his shoulders.

  ‘Ewan, dear . . .’ He went to shake her off but she persevered. ‘No, listen, please – I need to tell you something. I didn’t want to tell you, to upset you or your guest, but it seems I must now.’

  He stared at her, face full of hostility, but he was listening.
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  ‘Two nights ago Dr McCluskie came to my room and attempted to have . . . relations with me. He was the worse for drink and rather unpleasant, but I managed to make him leave without anything happening. It was all quite horrible and obviously made facing him again very difficult. But I can assure you, Ewan, dear, that nothing happened, I made sure of it, and that I have no interest in such a boor of a man who could approach me in such a way. He’s not like you, dear, not gentle and manly. He behaved like a coward and I hoped never to see him again . . .’

  ‘The cad!’ Ewan McBride was still breathing heavily, but she could see he believed her and his fury was not directed at her for the moment.

  ‘And I really have no idea at all where he is now,’ she said. ‘Let’s not worry about him, dear.’

  She thought she had talked him round, but then his mood switched again, eyes narrowing, his breath quickening in agitation.

  ‘That may be so,’ he said. ‘But you must have led him on in some way. I know you, the way you prey on men, I’ve seen you. And where have you been? You can’t just shift the blame to McCluskie. You’ve been with him, or some other man – I know it, I can smell it on you!’

  He was winding his temper up again and she became frightened that he was going to hit her. Even in his rage, on this occasion he did not raise his voice above a venomous hiss: it wouldn’t do to have anyone hear. He seized hold of her even harder, grabbing her wrists, and pulled her along the corridor.

  ‘An end to this – I’m not having it. You’re going to learn how to behave like a lady, the way I’ve taught you!’

  ‘Ewan – stop it! You’re hurting me – please, don’t!’

  ‘Inside – and don’t think you’re coming out until I say so!’ Dr McBride threw open the door of Lily’s room and forced her in, shoving her so hard that she stumbled and fell half across the bed. For a second she was stunned, but then she found herself full of explosive rage.

  ‘Don’t you push me like that!’ she shouted as he disappeared. ‘Don’t you dare treat me like that!’ She ran to the door and went furiously to open it but he was holding the handle the other side and she could not turn it.