Sunflower Summer

by Sue Peters

  'They can have the best of both worlds, being mobile,' Keir remarked, but Nan wondered if they did, waking later that night to the sound of a rising wind rattling the window, and hard driven rain hammering coldly on the panes. She cuddled deeper under the bedclothes, thankful that she lay within the stout shelter of brick walls, instead of the insubstantial shell of a caravan, which would act as a sounding chamber to the rattle of the rain.

  An insistent gust billowed the curtain inwards. It caught on something on the dressing-table, and whatever it was upended with a crash. Nan sighed, and reluctantly slid from between her warm cocoon. The luminous hands of her bedside clock stood at half past two. With a shiver she pulled the window down and slipped the latch securely. A waning moon showed briefly between breaks in the low scudding clouds, illuminating for a moment the dark shapes of trees and bushes in the garden below, threshing and bending to the will of the storm.

  'Heavens! I'd forgotten the sunflowers!'

  Poor Timmy, she thought. He'd be so disappointed if . the flowers were broken, and after he had taken the trouble to beg the manure froth David, too. Visions of his disconsolate face, surveying a row of storm-shattered sunflowers, drove her to her wardrobe. Her dressing-gown would be useless on a night like this. She reached inside and her fingers found the familiar, smooth feel of her poplin mac. A pair of soft leather slip-ons completed her hurried preparations, and she let herself out of the bedroom door and crept downstairs, keeping to the side of the wide stairway in the hope that the boards would not creak.

  The best way out would be through the kitchen, into the scullery. She paused for a moment. Rose had put Timmy's hamster in the scullery. An extra strong gust shook the house, and resolutely she thrust down her fears. There was scant chance of the hamster being at large, Rose was much too careful for that, but there was every chance of the sunflowers being battered beyond repair by the morning if she did not do something about it right away. She remembered seeing the maize-coloured gleam of bean canes through the open potting shed door when Keir sorted out his length of wood to suspend the sack of manure that afternoon, and she knew her aunt kept a net of odd bits of string for tying up plants, hung on a nail just inside the door.

  She buttoned her mac up to her throat, and slipped through the scullery, trying not to think of hamsters. Her head was uncovered, but it was no use going back for a scarf now. Her hair was short, and it would soon dry afterwards. The garden looked eerie and unfamiliar at this hour, the crazy paving path that led to the potting shed only faintly discernible in the fitful moonlight that was all the fast sailing clouds would allow.

  I wish I'd brought a torch, she thought, hesitating, then shrugged. There was enough light for her to feel her way. Her fingers sought the latch on the potting shed door. It was the same kind as the latch on the door of Ma's cottage, the utilitarian fastening that had drawn quick sarcasm from Keir. Recollection of his remark gave Nan indignant energy that enabled her to force the door open against a fresh gust of wind, that then tore it from her fingers and banged it hard against the shed wall.

  It's a good job the others sleep in the front of the house, she thought thankfully. She knew Rose would not wake, it would need more than a mere storm to rouse their placid-natured 'help' once she had sought her bed. Nan stepped inside the shed and stumbled against a bundle of spiky objects—the bean canes. She leaned down and her exploring fingers confirmed the message of her smarting shins. She ran a mental eye along the row of sunflowers.

  'Eight or nine canes should be about enough,' she hazarded a guess. 'Best fake a dozen, to be on the safe side.' She did not want another journey to the potting shed in the blustery darkness. She felt round for the net of string, felt it swing and bump against her hand, and managed to wriggle it off its nail. She could take it back in the morning. Using both hands, she managed to get the shed door safely shut with no more undue noise, and bent to pick up her burden. The canes were surprisingly difficult to carry. They were eight feet long, and hampered by the net of string, which swung and impeded her movements, Nan could only spare them one arm. They straggled across her path and caught at her feet; upended, and tangled with the surrounding greenery, and after her, third unscheduled stop Nan grasped the top ends and dragged the length of them behind her, risking the scraping clatter they made along the rough path.

  'Thank goodness they're still upright,' she breathed, glancing quickly along the row of deeply bowing sunflowers. None of the stalks had broken, but from the way they bent to the wind she was only just in time. She dropped the canes and the net of string on to the path, sorting inside it to unravel the first tie. The canes were new and strong, and would hold the sunflowers firmly enough once she could get them fixed.

  'Oh, do go in!' She thrust with all her strength to force the cane into the resisting soil. There had been very little rain for the past three weeks, and the ground was unexpectedly hard. 'You'll be no good as a support unless you go in deep enough to hold upright,' she grumbled at the innocent length of wood.

  'Let me do it, my hands are stronger than yours.'

  Nan gave a gasp of fright and started violently as a deep voice sounded from just behind her. A tall figure stooped over her, garments flapping uncannily in the wind, and her hands flew momentarily to her throat.

  'Did I frighten you?' Keir turned his torch on his face, reassuring her. 'I'm sorry.' He sounded contrite.

  'What on earth are you doing out here at this hour?' Sheer relief raised her voice on a spurt of anger.

  'The same as you, I imagine,' he retorted. 'If you remember, I offered to tie the higher bits for you. O.K.,' as she gave a quick exclamation of impatience, 'the wind woke me up, and I remembered we hadn't staked the sunflowers. Then there was the most almighty crash,' he remembered, glancing round as if seeking its cause.

  'That was the shed door, the wind blew it out of my hand, but it's shut now.' Nan turned back to the stubborn cane. Keir had come out into the night so that a small boy should not be disappointed ...

  'Let me have a go.' Keir bent and grasped the thick, lower end of the stick, not risking a higher hold in case the force of his pressure should break it, and splinter it into his hands.

  'You've used canes before,' Nan said observantly.

  'Our gardener taught us the safe way to handle them, when we were children,' he replied casually, and reached for the next one; 'You start tying as far as you can reach,' he thrust the second cane a foot into the ground with an easy strength that had the effect of annoying Nan after her own futile efforts. 'I'll come along behind you and secure the tops.' He did not speak again until he had pushed in the last cane. He used the whole dozen, and Nan felt glad she had taken the precaution of bringing the extra few. 'Now I'll tie the heads for you.'

  'They're only scrap pieces of string,' she handed him the net. 'Use one for each tie, we can cut the surplus off tomorrow, when it's daylight.' She continued with her task, and soon Keir caught up with her, tying from one side of the sunflower stalk while Nan tied from the other.

  'That's the lot.' He dropped his arms with a sigh of relief. 'Gosh, this wind's cold!' He bent and swung the depleted net of string in his fingers. 'Where did this come from? The potting shed?'

  'Yes, but bring it back to the kitchen with us for now.' Nan checked his move along the path. 'You must be as cold as I am.' Her own teeth were chattering, and she turned ahead of him back towards the scullery door, strangely glad , of his company. The garden looked even darker and more mysterious now the urgency to reach the sunflowers no longer drove her, and his tall form was comforting, coming behind her under the inky blackness of the trees.

  'You're soaked!' he exclaimed, as they emerged into the light of the scullery. 'Take your mac off and shake it,' he commanded, throwing the net of string on to the scrubbed table top to await attention in the morning.

  'I'm going to.' Nan started to unbutton her mac. 'Oh ...' She stopped, disconcerted.

  'What's the matter now?' It was Keir's turn to sound impatien
t.

  'I'll shake it in my room,' she prevaricated, and went suddenly pink.

  'You'll come and have a warm first.' He stirred the embers of the kitchen fire, and added dry logs from the hod on the hearth until he got a small blaze going: 'If you go to bed now you'll wake up with the sniffles in the morning, and I don't want my chauffeur out of action,' he reminded her of her reluctant promise to drive him on his rounds until he was familiar with the district. He seemed to Nan to be taking an unconscionable time to get orientated with his new surroundings, but she was determined not to break her word and give him cause for criticism.

  'I'm—I'm in my nightie,' she blurted, and blushed furiously, leaving her mac where it was.

  'Well, I'm ...' Keir turned in the act of adding another log to the fire, and the bright snapping flame his efforts had aroused lit up his dark face above the strong column of throat revealed by the open neck of his own waterproof. 'I see hundreds of women in their nighties. It's part of my job. Though I must say I don't often see one as pretty as yours,' he glanced appreciatively at the frilled, rosebud-printed cotton protruding from beneath her knee-length outer covering. His eyes gleamed, laughter filled in the flickering light, raking her face and the warm flush of colour suffusing her cheeks. 'I'll tell you what,' he took pity at last on her confusion, 'I'll turn my back and take off my own mac and shake it, if you'll turn your back on me and shake yours. Right?'

  Nan nodded. She was beyond speech, but common sense told her Keir was right about catching cold, and he was as wet as she was. Cream silk pyjama legs told her he was probably just as frozen. She turned her back on him and shook her waterproof vigorously. She could hear Keir behind her doing the same thing, and then his voice, lazily amused.

  'I'm decent again. What about you?'

  'I'm ready,' She did up the last button, and turned round. And realised that there was a large mirror on the kitchen mantel through which he could have ... She realised at the same time that he had. deliberately stepped to one side, so that he could not see through the glass.

  'There are one or two things I like him for,' she remembered her own words to Steve, and found she had discovered another thing to add to the list.

  'I'll make a hot drink while the logs burn up.' She turned to the stove with a sudden surge of goodwill; upended a milk bottle into a saucepan, and reached down a couple of beakers from the rack. 'Coffee? Or hot chocolate?'

  'It's years since I had a cup of chocolate ...'

  'Then we'll break your fast.' She felt like a conspirator -holding a midnight feast in a school dormitory, and knew, deliciously, that Keir felt the same from the look he flashed across to her as he poked the fire into a bright blaze, and she spooned sugar and grated chocolate with abandoned generosity.

  'Mind, it's boiling hot.' She gave him his beaker and stood beside him in front of the flames, companionably close on the confines of the rag rug, soaking in the warmth both outside and in. She felt a rosy glow envelop her, warming her through so that even her toes felt cosy.-Her hair, drying like Keir's in the blaze from the range, began to curl back from her face where it had dripped mournful locks across her forehead, and formed a soft halo round her face. She finished her chocolate, feeling sleepy now, and contented, like a kitten in its basket, she thought, smiling at the picture her mind conjured up. She held out her hands to the flames, felt Keir take her empty cup, but still reluctant to leave the magic circle of the warm, dancing glow in front of her. Through a haze she felt him beside her again, felt his arms go round her and turn her so that she was face to face with him, looking into his eyes as he bent over her.

  'You're very sweet, Nan. Stay that Way—always.' His voice was suddenly hoarse, as if he had already caught cold—or ‑

  He bent his head low over hers, his arms holding her close against him, and silenced the question on her breathless, parted lips with the firm pressure of his own.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The storm blew itself out by the time daylight came.

  The wild tempest of the night had disappeared from the outside world when Nan got up, but it seemed to have lodged inside her heart instead. Keir had kissed her! She woke up wondering if she had dreamed it all, then tried to tell herself—unsuccessfully—that it was more like a nightmare instead.

  Keir disturbed her, and she resented it. She resented her own impulsive response to his unexpected embrace, a response that seemed to have surprised Keir as much as herself, and when he tried to tighten his arms about her she tore herself away and fled upstairs to her bedroom, running away from his urgent whisper,

  'Nan! Just a minute ...' that he dared not make louder for fear of; waking the sleeping household.

  With her heart hammering inside her breast she ran, from Keir or from herself she did not know, and did not stop to ask. With a gasp that was half a sob she reached the sanctuary of her room, stumbled through the door and pushed it to behind her. She leaned against it, feeling the soft wool of her dressing gown gratefully warm against her suddenly throbbing head, and heard Keir's footsteps ascending the stairs, keeping, she guessed, to the outside edge to avoid creaks the same as she had done going down, but omitted in her panic coming up again. They came closer, paused outside her door, and after a moment that seemed like an eternity, muted knuckles rapped softly on the old wood panelling, careful to make no more noise than was necessary to reach the occupant of the room.

  'Nan?'

  She did not answer. She could not, for the wild pulsing inside her throat stopped her utterance, and in any case what could she say? That she, the calm, self-contained Sister Durrant of Bartholomews, was afraid? Frightened of the wild, siren singing of her heart, that beckoned her like Pan music to the edge of a precipice, turning her so that she gazed over her shoulder to the calm, ordered, 'and until now wholly satisfying life of work and friends and home that lay behind her; and in front, nothing but obscuring mist through which the beckoning music called her to trust her feet to a frail bridge, and follow it into the beauty that lay beyond. But was it beauty that lay there? Or was it only illusion? There was no sure means of finding out. She only knew that to take one step was to be lost. And so she remained silent behind her door, and after long minutes she heard Keir speak again.

  'Goodnight, Nan,' he said quietly. 'Sleep tight.' And his footsteps receded along the corridor to his room.

  Against her expectations, she did sleep. Emotional tension relaxed in the warm security of the blankets, pulled up childishly round her ears to keep the darkness—and her thoughts —at bay, and she was surprised by the bright morning sunshine and the sound of breakfast preparations coming from the kitchen regions, and discovered a stone cold cup of tea on her bedside table.

  'You was sound asleep, miss, so I didn't disturb you,' Rose answered Nan's 'Good Morning' with her usual early morning aplomb. 'I thought the extra rest would do you more good than a cup of tea. Now, young man,' she broke off to deftly capture Timmy on his way through the hall, with shoes that looked as if he had waded across the soaked lawns, 'into the kitchen with you and take off those wet shoes. And bring Sauce with you before he shakes himself all over the furniture.' The mongrel's rough coat was starred with wet. 'The coffee's nearly ready, miss, I'll bring it in,' she continued to Nan. 'The master and mistress are already in the breakfast room, and Doctor Raven won't be long from the sound of it.'

  So Keir was not down yet. Nan caught the sound of his bedroom door; as Rose had done, and her heart began to flutter uneasily. What Would he say to her when they met? she wondered, uneasily. What would she say to him?

  'Morning, doctor.' Rose saved her from having to decide by reappearing with the coffee pot just as Keir descended the stairs. 'In you go, in front of me,' she ushered Timmy ahead of her to the breakfast room, safely out of the way of the scalding liquid she carried. 'I'll give him his cereals, miss, you sit down and start your own breakfast,' Rose ministered to the boy's requirements, leaving Nan free to settle herself in the chair that Keir held out for her courteously before
he himself sat down at the opposite side of the table.

  Nan kept her eyes fixed on her plate, unwilling—or afraid? she asked herself scornfully—to meet his.

  'By the way, miss,' Rose turned as she was about to quit the room, 'there's a bundle of long straight straw been left for you at the kitchen door. They was cropping at Coton Hill yesterday, and one of the men scythed you a patch, special.

  And he left four nice fat rabbits with it, too,' she added contentedly.

  'The rabbits I can understand.' Keir spoke directly to Nan across the table, so that at last she had to raise her eyes to his, and found in them a pleasant morning smile that gave no hint of the storm emotion of the night before, and put them back on their old footing. Almost. Contrarily, she found she did not want to go back .. . 'But what about the straw?' She brought her mind back with an effort to what he was sayings 'Surely Rose isn't going to cook that, as well?' He pretended mock dismay for Timmy's benefit, and drew a delighted giggle from the child.

  'Straw stew !' he gurgled helplessly, and Nan laughed, the tension broken.

  'It's for straw dollies,' she explained. 'To decorate the church for the harvest festival,' she enlarged, seeing that he still looked puzzled. 'The straw left by the combine harvester isn't any good to work with, it needs long straight pieces.'

  'Old-fashioned straw,' her uncle put in drily.

  'I'm greatly relieved,' Keir answered in kind, and rose with his partner to go and start the morning surgery.

  'Rose said I could go'n feed Fluffy.' Timmy looked an appeal at Nan, and she nodded.