by Tania Crosse
I screamed and woke up in a bath of hot sweat. I had turned awkwardly in the bed and my ankle really was protesting. I shifted until it was comfortable again and settled down to go back to sleep. It took me some time to drift off. The nightmare had unnerved me and I kept thinking of the ungracious stranger. In its unravelling of the previous day, my mind had muddled everything together. The fellow had been as appalled by the sacrifice as I had been – unless he was an extremely accomplished actor! But although he had shown me grudging kindness, his attitude had been insufferable. And he had committed the ultimate sin of teasing me about my hair as if I was some sort of alien creature with no feelings of my own. I vowed never to walk in that part of the moor again. Hopefully our paths would never cross, for if I didn’t see him again, it would be too soon. Why I should feel so adamant about it, I couldn’t think, especially in the middle of the night. But having decided that there were plenty of other places to walk, and anyway, I didn’t want to come across the horrendous sight of a sacrificed sheep again, I felt more relaxed and was able at last to slip back over the brink into a deep and peaceful slumber.
‘Hello, Lily, dear! What on earth have you been up to?’
The next morning I was hanging out some washing, limping on my bandaged ankle, when Gloria’s concerned head appeared over the garden fence.
‘Oh, I fell over yesterday out on the moor,’ I answered, shaking my head. ‘Silly, really. Should have been looking where I was going.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Anything I can do?’
‘No, not really, thank you.’ And then I hesitated. Perhaps Gloria was just the person… ‘Actually…’ I hopped up to the fence. ‘I came across what looked like a sacrificed sheep at Down Tor row. It was horrible. But,’ and I felt the colour flood into my cheeks, ‘you’re interested in things ancient, aren’t you, so I just wondered if you’d know—’
‘Sheep sacrifice, you say?’ Gloria frowned darkly, her lips knotted in caution. ‘No, I wouldn’t know anything about that, but I’d keep away for the time being if I were you.’
‘I certainly will,’ I told her with a shiver. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be doing much walking for a while anyway.’
‘Well, you look after yourself!’ she commanded, raising her eyebrows at me. ‘And how are things progressing between you and your father?’
I caught my bottom lip between my teeth. I should have liked to tell her what had happened the previous day, but I didn’t think Sidney would have approved. ‘Oh, I think things will be better between us now,’ I answered enigmatically.
Gloria nodded her head at me with a knowing smile.
‘Oh, there you are! I came in last week looking for you, but someone else was on your counter.’
I turned my head and looked into the radiant face of Wendy Franfield as I hobbled across to the plants counter, concentrating on the stock list in my hand. A wave of pleasure washed through me at the sight of the pretty girl I had thought of several times over the last few weeks.
‘Oh, hello!’ I beamed back at her. ‘How are you? How did the wedding go?’
‘It was wonderful! But my sister’s gone to live in America now, and we really miss her. You know, she met Wayne at the very end of the war when he was stationed here. She was only fourteen then, but they kept in contact all that time! Frightfully romantic, don’t you think? But where have you been?’ she asked brightly, swiftly changing the subject.
‘I’ve been promoted!’ I preened. ‘To assistant supervisor. So I’m in the office a lot of the time. And I was on holiday last week. I spent half of it walking on the moor and the other half with my foot up on a cushion! Sprained my ankle,’ I grimaced.
‘Oh, dear! Yes, I saw you limping a bit. Has anyone looked at it?’
‘Well, we have two visiting doctors in Princetown, but I didn’t bother. It seems to be getting better on its own.’
‘Oh, I insist my dad has a look!’ Wendy said determinedly. ‘When’s your lunchtime?’
I consulted my watch. ‘In about five minutes, actually.’
‘I’ll wait for you, then.’ She crossed her arms purposefully. ‘Dad should be at home, unless there’s been an emergency at the hospital.’
‘I really don’t want to bother him—’
‘Nonsense! What are friends for? Anyway, we can have lunch there! And you can meet my parents. Dad’s Uncle Artie’s younger half-brother,’ she added, frowning in concentration, ‘but I think you know that. Mum’s from Plymouth. She was a nursing sister. That’s how she and Dad met. Now she’s Practice Nurse and Secretary rolled into one. Oh, come on, that five minutes must be up by now! And they should be lenient with you, coming into work when you could be off sick.’
I couldn’t help but chuckle. Wendy was so lively that she reminded me of Jeannie, but in a much more sophisticated way. I felt in my bones that we were going to become firm friends.
A few minutes later, Wendy was insisting on propping me up as we walked through the town centre and soon we were turning into one of the grand Victorian villas in Plymouth Road. There was a sign by the gate to the long front garden, saying Doctor’s Surgery, and as we approached the front door through a wide conservatory, I noticed a brass plate on the wall. Wendy let herself in, and waving her hand at a room on the right of the spacious hallway, made for a door at the back of a lovely staircase.
‘That’s Dad’s surgery,’ she informed me flippantly. ‘Mum sits at that desk in the hall and patients wait in the conservatory. Mum and Dad will be down in the kitchen. Oh, do you think you can manage the stairs all right?’
‘Oh, yes, thank you. My ankle’s not that bad.’
I could see that the house was as elegant inside as it was out, with large windows that let in plenty of light, but I followed Wendy down a servants’ staircase to a huge kitchen in the semi-basement. Her parents were sitting at the table, a couple in their early fifties I would have thought. Mrs Franfield was a little on the plump side, but with a pretty face and a surprised, welcoming smile, while her husband was tall and athletic with those lovely green-blue eyes Wendy had inherited.
‘This is Lily!’ she announced without preamble. ‘Remember I told you about her? She was the person Uncle Artie met up at the quarry. Only take a look at her ankle, would you, Dad? She sprained it last week and, very naughtily, hasn’t seen anyone about it.’
‘Hello, dear,’ Mrs Franfield beamed as the doctor got to his feet, swallowing a mouthful of his lunch and holding out his hand.
‘Mmm, yes, just a minute. Of course I’ll take a look.’
‘You will join us for lunch, won’t you, Lily?’
‘I’ve actually got my sandwiches,’ I answered, overwhelmed by their hospitality. ‘But thank you all the same.’
‘Cup of tea or coffee, then? Or something cold?’
It was as if we had all known each other for years, and I instantly felt at ease. It struck me that the atmosphere in the Franfield household was the nearest I had come across to my home back in London, happy and animated and yet secure at the same time. Wendy’s father examined my ankle and strapped it firmly while Mrs Franfield chatted merrily to me. I could see exactly where Wendy got her talkative disposition from!
‘I’m Deborah, by the way,’ she smiled at me. ‘And my husband’s William.’
‘After my father’s mentor, Dr William Greenwood of Tavistock,’ he explained, pulling on his suit jacket. ‘Well, I’m off to the hospital. Don’t you be late back to work, Wendy.’
‘And I’ve got some paperwork to do, if you’ll excuse me.’
‘Yes, of course. And thank you both so much.’
‘You wouldn’t mind if Lily stayed over any time, would you? She could have Joanna’s room.’
‘No, of course not. See you later.’
I glanced at the large kitchen clock on the wall. Wendy and I had ten minutes before we had to leave.
‘Your parents are really nice,’ I said with envious enthusiasm. ‘I wish my father was like that.�
�� I hesitated as I wondered if I should confide in my new friend about Sidney turning out not to be my father after all, but perhaps it was too soon. ‘He’s, well, odd to say the least. I do like your house, though,’ I went on to change the subject. ‘It reminds me of my home in London. Someone else lived in the semi-basement. She had the original kitchen and a bedsit, a bit like this but much smaller. We had our own little kitchen on the ground floor.’
‘Yes, Mum wishes we had a kitchen upstairs instead of down here. The other room down here’s the surgery office. And the surgery takes up the dining room, and there’s a patients’ cloakroom squeezed in under the stairs. But it’s more than my Grandfather Elliott had to start with. His first practice was in a cottage in the little street at the back of here. He was there for years before he was able to buy this house. It was all private medicine back then, of course, long before the Health Service. Dad says he used to charge his patients what they could afford, which often wasn’t much. Eventually he inherited his parents’ house up in Watts Road, but it wasn’t practical to have a surgery so far from the town centre and up such a steep hill, so he sold it and bought this instead.’
I nodded, her words conjuring up a vision of the caring physician her grandfather must have been, a trait evidently carried down into the family. I was curious. ‘You didn’t want to follow in the family tradition, then?’
Wendy shook her head, horrified. ‘Good Lord, no! Bedpans and vomit? No thank you! Being secretary to a solicitor’s suits me much better! My younger sister, though, Celia, she’s doing her nurse’s training here at Tavistock Hospital, but she lives at the Nurses’ Home. More convenient for night duty and a lot more fun, apparently! And my brother, Edwin, he’s in London, training to be a doctor at Guy’s. You’d like him. He was here for the wedding, but he took most of his holiday then. Heaven knows when he’ll be able to come down again. Come upstairs to the lounge and I’ll show you a photo.’
The lounge went the full depth of the house but was homely, despite its size. Though furnished with taste, it very much had a lived-in feel. Wendy went over to a sideboard which boasted a collection of freestanding photographs in an array of frames. She picked one up and handed it to me.
‘This was the wedding,’ she announced proudly. ‘You can see Joanna’s the only one of us who looks like Mum. That’s Celia, and that’s Edwin.’
My eyes followed her finger over the image behind the glass, and my heart vaulted into my throat. And I knew exactly why Wendy had always seemed oddly familiar to me. Although in black and white, the same smiling eyes looked at me from the handsome face of a young man with light curls. I recognised him instantly as the driver of the car that had nearly knocked me down in Duke Street when the little boy had dashed into its path.
My pulse began to pound furiously. So often I had dreamt of the polite, thoroughly apologetic gentleman who was so concerned and seemed to blame himself for something that wasn’t his fault. And it turned out he was the brother of my new friend! I felt myself blush to the roots of my hair.
‘I think I might actually have met your brother,’ I murmured.
‘Really?’ Wendy was evidently burning with curiosity.
‘Well, it looks a bit like him,’ I answered evasively in an effort to conceal my feelings. ‘Did he ever mention a little boy running out in front of his car? Here in Tavistock? It would have been shortly before Christmas.’
Wendy scratched her head quizzically. ‘Well, come to think of it, yes, he did. He was here for a few days shortly before Christmas. He was quite badly shaken by it, as I remember. He said a young girl snatched the boy out of the way and he nearly ran her down as well. Oh, Lily! That wasn’t you, was it?’ she gasped delightedly.
I felt utterly mortified. ‘Oh, you wouldn’t say anything, would you?’ I begged. ‘It would be so embarrassing if we ever met!’ Which I was, of course, secretly hoping that we would. ‘I mean, it wasn’t his fault at all. Not a bit of it. He was driving really carefully, but the little boy—’
‘Gosh, how brave of you! What a heroine! But of course I wouldn’t mention it to him. Not if you didn’t want me to. But do I detect a touch of admiration there?’ she chirped, cocking a pert eyebrow. ‘He’s frightfully handsome is Edwin.’
I lowered my eyes. ‘He was very kind to me that day,’ I mumbled, and then gasped in gratitude as my eye caught the ornate clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Oh, no! I’m going to be late! Come on, Wendy!’
‘Oh, yes, you’re right!’ But then she grinned irrepressibly. ‘Come on, Hoppalong! I’ll help you!’ And we hastily made for the door.
Chapter Nine
My life really settled into a happy routine after that day. I was still friends with Kate and Sally, travelling into Tavistock with them each morning, but their studies left them with less and less time for socialising. I spent virtually every lunchtime with Wendy, cementing our relationship which was proving every bit as strong as my long friendship with Jeannie had been. Several times, we had gone to the pictures or to a public dance in Tavistock on a Saturday evening, and I had stayed overnight, sleeping in the room next to Edwin’s! I still couldn’t believe it! The only thing was that he was unlikely to be able to come home for months. But on the other hand, I was so nervous about meeting him again because if he didn’t show any particular liking for me, I knew I would be devastated.
It didn’t spoil my present contentment, though. I woke up each morning, looking forward to the day ahead. As far as Sidney was concerned, since that awful day at the beginning of September when his bitterness had erupted and overflowed, we appeared to have cleared the air and had been getting on so much better ever since. Although the outside world still believed us to be father and daughter, at home we weren’t pretending any more. It felt as if the barrier between us had been broken down. Sidney seemed to be accepting me as a person in my own right rather than the enemy, and as such we were getting on as friends.
‘Neither Ellen nor John had any family,’ he told me out of the blue one evening. ‘They were both only children and both had lost their parents before I met Cynthia.’
I looked up sharply and with no little surprise. I had been quietly studying the blurred photograph of my mother hidden between the pages of the book I was reading, and Sidney must have noticed. It was the first time he had ever volunteered any information without being prompted, and I held my breath.
‘There might have been distant cousins through your great grandparents, but I don’t remember anyone like that ever being mentioned,’ he went on, scrutinising my face. ‘John came from the Midlands and Ellen from somewhere in Essex. I never knew her maiden name, I’m afraid, so that’s all I can tell you.’
I nodded. ‘Yes, she told me she was from Essex. It was where she got her sense of humour from, she always said. But she never told me any more.’
‘And I can’t help you, either.’
I sucked in my cheeks. It was a start, even if I hadn’t learnt anything new. Perhaps, some time in the future, he might speak more of my mother. I could hardly expect him to talk about the man she’d had the affair with, but I realised the little he had said had cost him a deal of courage.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and I kissed him good-night.
It was nearing the end of October. British Summer Time was over, the evenings drawing in, and we had the long and difficult winter in our exposed moorland home to look forward to. But I was facing life with renewed spirit. The whole area, though, was reeling under the tragic death of the Twelfth Duke of Bedford a couple of weeks earlier. Shot himself in the most dreadful freak accident, and him such a lovely man, respected by all, as were his ancestors, for his generosity and care for the local people. He was deeply mourned, especially in Tavistock, where his death was seen as the end of an era. Times were changing, I mused, although for me it would seem for the better.
It was Wednesday and my afternoon off. I had just got off the train in Princetown and had decided to call in at Bolts for some bread. They baked it themselves
, and especially now that the white loaf was back, it was mouth-wateringly delicious.
‘Oh, come on, the team needs you!’ I heard the exhortation as I shut the door. ‘You were a star player as a lad. We’ve lost every match this season against the Rangers and the Prison Officers’ Club. We need someone like you—’
‘I told you, I don’t play football any more!’
Somewhere at the back of my mind I recognised the irate voice. Sure enough, as I turned round into the shop, I almost collided with the tall, thin figure of my rescuer as he made a dash for the door. It was as if he was so desperate to escape that he was blind to anything in his path, including me. He seemed startled, pulling back sharply when he noticed me. I was ready to tell him to mind where he was going, but something in his expression stopped me. His skin was still tanned as if he spent much time outdoors, but somehow, beneath it, he looked ashen. His penetrating, violet-blue eyes were savage, trapped. I read recognition in them as he stared at me, and for a moment, they softened. But then they were sharp again, and defensive.
‘Oh, if it isn’t my little miss Carrot Top!’ The anger had gone out of him now, as if his jeer had put him in control again. It spurred my contempt that he was humiliating me for his own needs, and to add insult to injury, he half smiled as if I should be friends with him. ‘I take it your ankle is mended?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ I answered coldly. I gazed at him, keeping my eyes steady, determined not to back down. I noticed that although still lean, he had gained a little flesh and looked better for it. His hair was growing and was thick and dark, and as the hint of a smile persisted, his wide mouth and strong, white teeth made him strikingly handsome. It made me instantly rebel, and I wished I could think of some belittling response. I couldn’t, and instead I said cuttingly, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have shopping to do.’
He blinked at me, one eyebrow lifting, and stood aside with a mocking half bow. ‘Please forgive me, miss.’ And as he made for the door, he threw up his head with a light, teasing laugh.
