Margaret Baumann - Design for Loving (1970)

by Margaret Baumann

  'I headed them off.'

  'I don't suppose poor Mr. Smart got any warning? Or Miss Frith?' Anxiety for her friend made her add rashly: 'I wish Luc Priolly - the French boy - had been here tonight. I'm sure he would liven up the class.'

  'He did,' Neil said dryly. 'The governors got the swinging image, all right. When we came in young Priolly was giving the class some impressions of the Moulin Rouge.'

  'Oh, no!' cried Sharon, dismayed. She caught Neil's eye and suddenly they were laughing helplessly. Seizing her advantage, she insisted: 'But it's what you wanted - French as she is spoke instead of dull grammar lessons. With this new economy drive, there's no question of a language laboratory, I'm quite certain; but the class will go like a bomb with Luc as star attraction. And exciting things are happening in Music Appreciation, too. It would be monstrous to shut down the leisure classes.'

  "You'll oblige me by minding your own business.'

  'But this is my business,' cried Sharon in desperate earnest. 'In spite of the difficulties - draughty old buildings, everything run on a shoestring - some fine work goes on up here. And Roxley needs these classes. Do you know, they provide almost the only creative outlet for the valley? You'll understand that when you get to know us better.'

  'Will I?' Neil asked bitterly. 'I've tried to understand and I've failed. Look, over a field wall I get talking to this John Ludlam who tells me he and other farmers like him sit up half the night struggling to get the hang of all the government forms they have to fill in - subsidies, tax rebates, questionnaires on every subject under the sun. So I offer a class in simple accountancy for farmers. And what happens ? Not a single enrolment!'

  Sharon's eyes gleamed. "You should have called it a discussion group with Farmer Ludlam in the chair and yourself standing by as the expert to give help if needed. And you could have marked the register in secret - for the sake of the grant. They'd have stampeded you!'

  Neil laughed bitterly. 'Fanner Ludlam being led up the path like a bull with a ring through its nose?'

  'Exactly like that.' Sharon bent forward and on the memo pad on the desk did a lightning sketch of a taurean Farmer Ludlam breathing fire and slaughter over a field wall with a ring through his nose.

  'The spit image,' said Neil, laughing. He tore the sketch off the pad and stuck it in his pocket. 'Girl, you have genius. I'll keep this in memory of a good idea that died on me. Like so many others.'

  The little joke was over. There was deep bitterness in his voice. Sharon drew a breath.

  'Mr. Haslam, I wish you'd have a talk with Ben Hallsworth on his return from London before… before you do anything rash.' Seeing his frown, she added quickly: 'I wouldn't call it lobbying the governors.'

  'What would you call it?' Neil demanded harshly. 'No, thanks. I'll stand on my own feet.' He shoved back the chair and strode across to the window, staring down at the valley with its mysterious flowering of lights, its noise of rushing waters, and that faint blurred line where the steep fells mingled with the sky.

  Behind him, Sharon said in a soft, urgent voice: 'Be lieve me, there are so many people here who'd be glad to count you as a friend.'

  He swivelled round. 'That's soon put to the test. May I drive you home, Sharon Birch?'

  Panic showed for a moment in her eyes. 'Thank you, but I've told you already I prefer to walk. I do need the exercise.'

  'In the wind and rain?'

  'It clears the head!'

  'Then how about the week-end? A run over the moors?'

  Scarlet now, Sharon stammered: 'I'm sorry. I promised Miss Frith that Adam Kershaw and I would take Luc fell- walking.'

  'You see?' jibed Neil. They stood for a moment face to face. And all the devils that haunted a lonely, disillusioned man looked out of his eyes before Sharon fled from him.

  Saturday turned out much too wet for fell-walking: a miserable cold drenching rain robbed the prospect of any joy. And Luc, though proclaiming himself un enrage du sport, showed no inclination to stir out of doors. He huddled up to the fire, tending it so assiduously that Miss Gladys reminded him that the poker was the coalman's friend, a phrase he conned over and over with delight. He spent most of the day reading Paris Match or playing his records of Becaud and Trini Lopez a dozen times over. Poor Miss Amelia! She watched her sister anxiously, dreading an ultimatum. She had been so sure all along that the arrangement wouldn't work. Miss Gladys uttered not a word of complaint, but on the list Luc took to the chemist's for her that Saturday afternoon was the item 'Earplugs'. Happily unaware of this, Luc dutifully performed his errand, then spent a session listening to new records at the music shop and came home with half a dozen more.

  The next weekend brought one of those relenting days, the sun shining, the sky brilliant, everything forgiven. The last tatty leaves glowed out in gold and burnished copper, every spear of sunlight finding its target among the dark boughs. 'So soft, so sweet, so hushed an air' blew over the fells, earth had never seemed nearer heaven, and Sharon felt herself to be guilty of a monstrous ingratitude in setting out with such an unquiet heart and no inclination whatever for the day's adventure.

  Beforehand, Luc had enquired anxiously if he would need climbing boots.

  'Good gracious, no! This is just a stiff walk. We're not tigers!' Sharon assured him. Perhaps she should have hinted that umbrellas weren't needed, either. But what he brought with him, in fact, was Hazel Ormerod.

  Sharon tried to hide her surprise and Adam looked openly dismayed, while poor Hazel stood shyly by in her windcheater and 'casuals'.

  Luc gave Sharon a dancing glance. 'Mademoiselle Amelie is dropping me a little word in the ear. She tells me you like sometimes to pick berries on your walks - but gooseberries, never!'

  Sharon felt herself blushing furiously. But Adam was already plunging towards the ravine, a great rocky wound in the hillside half filled up with alders and twisty oaks, dead bracken and long bramble trails.

  'Mind you pick the easy climb,' Sharon called after him.

  Adam declared he could find his way blindfold up the fell by the birdsong - yes, even in November, with all the migrants flown. He knew all the birds and could imitate their calls perfectly: the robin clicking merrily away on a dead branch near the stream, the siskin giving out its needle-sharp notes from a clump of alders. 'There he goes! See him? The greenish yellow chap with a dark head.' Half way up the path, the dunnock flitted among the rocks, uttering a scale of notes that seemed to slide into one another in the best Italian style. And Adam promised them the full whistling chorus of golden plover 'up on the tops'; perhaps even a glimpse of snow bunting. There, sure enough, was the flock of golden yellow birds, brilliant against the faded heather and the brown, tufty grass of the moorland. A dewpond reflected the turquoise of the sky, and high up there the lark soared and sang.

  Adam, the musician, listened entranced. 'The power, the power! In a body weighing no more than two ounces!' He flung himself down on the turf. 'I'm ravenous. You kids won't find any berries, whether crow or goose, but this rucksack weighs a ton and I can tell you Sharon's picnics are fantastic.'

  Sharon knelt near him, unpacking the big flask of coffee and enormous packets of sandwiches, cake and fruit. Luc seized Hazel by the hand and they went plunging off across the heather, following a sheep track, the girl's hair flying like the mane of a skittish young colt.

  'They make me feel old,' said Sharon. 'What a pretty thing she is.'

  'She's a nice child. And she can sing. She has a voice it would pay to train. But don't go putting ideas in her head, for goodness' sake. It's a bit thick being stuck with her all day.'

  'Up to now, she has gone everywhere with her friend Ruby Holt. This is quite a thrill.'

  'I'm glad they've cleared off. We've so much to say to one another since…' He fumbled for words. When he flushed, Sharon discovered, his ears went red first, and the colour slowly mounted till it suffused his face right up to the line of his fair hair. It was artless and touching.

  Goodness, even Ada
m made her feel old! He struggled on: 'Since you stuck up for me with Uncle Ezra that morning in the lane.'

  At the memory of Uncle Ezra in his wheelchair beating angrily on the side of the van, Sharon couldn't help smiling.

  'Don't laugh,' said Adam. 'I'm deadly serious about… about us. And I hope you are, too.' He tried to take her hand and knocked over the coffee flask.

  Sharon grabbed it and said in a hurry: 'Adam, don't be too serious. I said some rather silly things because your uncle had me so hopping mad.'

  'But you meant them. You weren't just playing up to Uncle Ezra. I know you meant them. I wish we could talk all day and get our future straightened out. Sharon, what are we to do? I'm still tied to the wire works as long as Uncle Ezra needs me and I'd give anything to be free. God, how I envy your brother Tony!'

  Sharon sat up very straight. 'Don't envy Tony, not ever.'' She said soberly: 'In a way, I'm tied here because of Tony just as you are by Uncle Ezra.'

  'It's all wrong. Between us, we could conquer the world — I with my music, you with your art. God, sometimes I think we should chuck everything and everybody and clear out.' He grabbed both her hands fiercely. 'Sharon, would you? Would you?'

  Below them and round the bluff came sudden screams and cries for help. Adam scrambled to his feet. 'It's Hazel. What's that French boy up to?'

  They set off at a slithery run and suddenly came upon Luc and Hazel beside a little hill-stream. Luc was crouching beside the stream holding the girl's feet in the ice-cold water. She was half laughing and half crying, wriggling toes as pink as prawns. Luc said with his wicked grin: 'We are not tigers. Already we have une fameuse ampoule.' He indicated an enormous blister on the girl's heel. 'So I make the cold water treatment.'

  "You'll be making pneumonia,' said Adam disgustedly. 'Come on, let's eat.'

  They ate their picnic in a heathery hollow with a lot of teasing and laughter; but there was something unreal about it all to Sharon. How was Neil Haslam spending his weekend? She knew he was at the Institute on Saturday morning. It was a favourite time for interviews, official meetings, clearing off paper work. But after that? She tried to picture how it would have been if they had had that run over the moors, what they would have talked about, where they would have stopped to look at the view. Would he drive around by himself? She couldn't endure the thought of such aloneness.

  Luc Priolly produced a small pair of field-glasses and studied the fells with their wandering stone walls, the grazing sheep, the wooded river valley.

  'This is becoming some day a carpet design, I think? First the little park - then the whole valley.'

  So he had seen her sketch of the park. There wasn't much he missed! Squinting at the view through half- closed eyes, Sharon said: "Not a carpet. I just can't see it in repeats. But I could do a gorgeous collage with metallic threads worked in. How blind people are who find our fell country grey!'

  But grey it was, all of a sudden, the brilliant sky overcast, the gentle breeze becoming a storm-wind that stung the cheeks and brought tears to the eyes.

  'Everything one says about the English weather is true!' commented Luc, turning up his collar dejectedly.

  'I'm afraid it is,' agreed Sharon, trying to sound cheerful. 'You'll have lots to write home about! We'd better move fast. This could turn out to be quite a storm.'

  The descent, with the path now slippery with rain, was difficult, especially to Hazel who was quite unused to walking and had those silly shoes. Sharon had put a strip of plaster on the blistered heel, but she kept turning her ankle and crying out in alarm. At the roughest parts, Adam practically had to carry her. It was dark by the time they reached the valley road and a violent gust of wind brought hail with it. Hazel burst into tears and said nothing so awful had ever happened to her before and wild horses wouldn't drag her up the fells again. Luc gave her a look of reproach, then gallantly offered her his arm and said he would be enchante to see her home. They moved off slowly and disappeared behind a curtain of cold rain.

  'Poor Hazel! We've seen the end of a beautiful friendship,' said Sharon. 'To think the day started out so delightfully!'

  Adam took the rucksack from her and slid an arm through hers.

  'I promise you it will end delightfully, too. We've something to celebrate, remember? I'm going to give you a slap-up meal at the Raven.'

  'It's mad, reckless extravagance and I can't let you,' said Sharon, hunger and cold gnawing at her inside.

  Adam bent his head and smiled into her eyes. 'A funeral and two weddings this week. The money's burning my pocket. Let it rain, let it hail; let Hazel punch young Luc in the eye when he tries to kiss her goodnight… What do we care? Darling Sharon, Uncle Ezra can't keep me chained down with coils of wire for ever! Some day we'll inherit the earth. Isn't that worth celebrating?'

  Please don't hope too much, Sharon begged silently.

  She didn't know her own heart. Storm winds raged over it, as they raged now over the high moors where only this morning the lark sang in the clear air.

  Bending to her, one shoulder awry because of the rucksack, his face reddened and glistening with the rain, Adam said: 'Sharon, if I haven't told you so before, I do love you and I always will.'

  But how could anyone be sure? Committed body and soul to another person's keeping, for ever and ever?

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  'How about this, then?' said Adam with satisfaction. They had exchanged the sleety rain and the buffeting of the wind for the old-world comfort of the Raven: a log fire leaping and sizzling in the vast inglenook hearth, the murmur of voices, the smell of good food. 'What would you say to a mad, reckless champagne cocktail?'

  'Well, on a funeral and two weddings…' conceded Sharon.

  'Just look there,' said Adam in a different tone. 'Would you believe it?'

  'Blistered heel and all,' said Sharon.

  Perched at the bar were Luc Priolly and Hazel. The girl had changed into a pretty f*>ck, back-combed her hair and stiffened it to a fuzz with lacquer. Her cheeks were flushed and she was laughing a lot.

  'Outrageous,' fumed Adam, all his pleasure gone.

  'It's only shandy,' said Sharon.

  'And Priolly fancies himself the complete Englishman with a whisky and soda in front of him.'

  The French boy saluted them gaily. 'You others go to take also the pneumonia remedy, no?'

  'No,' said Adam sourly.

  Sharon put a hand on his arm. 'Suppose we skip the drinks and grab a table? I'm starving!'

  But the romantic mood couldn't be recaptured. As they ordered and ate their meal, Adam was still glowering.

  'He's turning that girl's head. We're supposed to be looking after her.'

  'I never heard of anything so silly! She's eighteen and quite capable of looking after herself, believe me!'

  "What match is she for a Frenchman up to his tricks?'

  "You disgust me. She's as safe as… as Miss Frith was with his people.'

  'All right, so I'm narrow and prejudiced,' Adam flung at her. 'Isn't that natural? At least you escaped to London for your art training, but the valley has been my whole world till now.'

  Sharon smiled across at him and said in a softer voice: 'We're going to change all that, aren't we?'

  'Are we? Shall we ever be free? If the chance came to live for our art, I wouldn't say no to an attic in Paris.'

  'Or a tumbledown villa in Florence…'

  Hazel's laugh rang out, rather shrill and common, making Adam wince. As a background to dreams, the meal frankly wasn't a success. Perhaps they'd catch the right mood over coffee in the small lounge, where the only other people were an elderly couple who appeared to be residents. They were seated near the fire with a large silver tray of tea-things and sandwiches in front of them, chatting in a pleasant undertone. Sharon and Adam took the small table in the far corner, with easy-chairs under a softly shaded lamp. The waiter served their coffee and withdrew. Sharon let her tired body relax, and Adam leaned towards her, his face alight and ten
der. Then, glancing up, Sharon saw Neil Haslam. He was standing quietly in the doorway, filling his pipe and watching them. She sat bolt upright.

  Neil strolled across. 'So here we all are at the Moulin Rouge!' This was a joke Adam couldn't share and the explanation would have been too complicated, so Neil let it pass. 'I'd like you to meet my parents.' He glanced at their cups. 'No hurry. When you've finished your coffee.'

  But Adam stood up at once, as if to get the thing over. Sharon approached more shyly, studying the couple by the fire with very real interest.

  Matthew Haslam was a heavily built man in the late fifties with a grey moustache and something of a military air about him, though his voice and slight stoop rather suggested the man of law. His wife was small, delicately built, with abundant white hair, and this had caused Sharon to think her older than she was. Despite the slight build, she had a striking resemblance to her tall son. Sharon thought it lay in the set of the brow, the puckered smile and keen, searching, vital glance which gave the eyes a life of their own in a still face.

  Neil's introduction was informal. 'Sharon Birch, Adam Kershaw: members of my staff.' He glanced over his shoulder and his mouth took on that wry smile. 'The young man at the bar likewise does his stint up at the Institute - corporal, acting unpaid.' This, too, was lost on Adam, but it brought the dancing glint to Sharon's eyes. Neil looked at her hard. 'He is extremely witty on the subject of fell-walking. I'm afraid one couldn't help overhearing. You must have had a beastly day.'

  Sharon got a smouldering glance from Adam. She said with spirit: 'I'm glad Luc finds it so funny. To us it has been hard work!'

  'And house-hunting in the rain is hard work, too,' said Mrs. Haslam. She smiled at Sharon with a charming air of taking the girl into her confidence. 'If I were a local councillor, I'd have all your uphills made into downhills! We had orders to view several houses, but they weren't easy of approach. And oh, the mud in the lanes after all this wet weather! But the job had to be tackled. Neil can't go on living indefinitely in a hotel room. I'm sure you agree that the Principal of Roxley Institute - which we still have to visit, by the way - should establish himself in some style. It will be expected of him, yet he seems scarcely to have given it a thought! That's why I insisted on coming over.'