Kate didn’t mind that this was his way of greeting her. Suddenly it felt like home. They were all together again; the men were mildly sparring; the girls were squabbling as usual; and her mother was trying to scold everyone at once into taking off boots and washing hands and helping to set the table for the meal.
“So what about this tree I’ve lugged all the way from Luxton’s Farm?” Donal said. “Doesn’t anybody want to see it after all my efforts?”
The girls rushed outside, and Kate followed them, laughing. Christmas was about children, she thought, and families. It was why she had been so glad that Luke had Mrs Wood’s all-enveloping household to go to, for he had no one else he could really call his own.
The tree was a splendid one and, as usual, Alice grumbled at the size of it, and said they would never get it inside the house. And, as usual, Brogan and Donal pooh-poohed her and said it would take better men than themselves not to knock it into shape. Everything was back to normal, Kate thought.
After the evening meal, they decorated the tree with fir cones and holly and sprigs of mistletoe and other berries from the hedgerows. And by the time she got into bed that night, Kate was so tired she fell asleep at once, despite thinking that she never would.
She woke early, and couldn’t think where she was for a minute. What had always been so familiar was temporarily alien, until she recognised the rose-patterned wallpaper and the picture of the stag at bay in a misty Highland scene on the wall, and the marble washstand in the corner of her bedroom. She was home, and it was Christmas Eve.
She shivered in the chill of early morning, and padded across to the window in her bare feet to stare out at the wintry scene outside. It hadn’t snowed, but the hoar-frost was thick on the ground and dripping off the trees. They would be glad of the stack of logs in the yard that the menfolk had brought home. Once the fire was rekindled, and the range warmed through, the whole place would be cosy and warm.
But right now, it was cold. She put on her thick dressing gown and slippers and went downstairs quietly to make a cup of tea. Early though it was, the men had already left the house, but her mother was there, her normally pinned-up hair hanging in wispy strands. Kate felt a litle shock, seeing how grey it was, and wondered how she had never noticed it before.
“Shall I make some tea for us both, Mother?” she asked.
“It’s brewing,” Alice said.
The small silence between them was as wide as a gulf, and Kate knew she had to be the one to bridge it.
“Everyone looks very well, Mother.”
“And why shouldn’t they? You’ve hardly been away so long that you’ve forgotten what we all look like, I hope.”
She had forgotten just how tart her mother could be when she had something on her mind. Kate sighed inwardly, knowing it would be coming. And so it did.
“Your Dada’s still not too happy about those pictures you sent home, Kate. He won’t say anything, and I’ve reassured him that they’re professionally done…”
“But now you need a bit of reassuring yourself, by the sound of it. Is that right?”
Alice eyed her silently, and Kate felt the colour steal into her cheeks.
“Mother, Luke Halliday is a gentleman. Surely Donal told you so after he and Dada met him in London.”
“Aye, he told me. But then, he introduced the other one to us as well, didn’t he?”
Kate’s cheeks burned. “So he did, and I was a fool then, but I won’t be making the same mistake again, I can promise you that!”
“Then we’ll say no more about it. I’ve said my piece, and there’s an end to it.”
It rankled, though. And when the girls came downstairs, and were given errands to run in the village for the last-minute table preparations, Kate refused their insistence that she should go with them.
“Why not?” they howled in unison.
“Because there are people I want to see, that’s why,” she invented quickly. “I promised I’d call on Vi whenever I came home, and tell her all about London. So that’s what I’m going to do this morning. Unless you want me to do anything in the cottage, Mother,” she added as an afterthought.
“There’ll be plenty for you to help me with tomorrow morning,” Alice said shortly. “You go off and show your old workmates what a fine lady you’ve become.”
Kate looked at her, hating the sarcasm with which she peppered her words. Spoiling the homecoming. Spoiling everything.
Vi Parsons opened her cottage door, her mouth dropping open with shock as she saw who was standing there.
“God Almighty, I thought you’d vanished off the face of the earth, duck. But I can see you ain’t been doing so badly for yourself these last six months. So are you coming in, or are you going to spend the morning standing on the doorstep lettin’ the winter in?”
Kate laughed shakily. Some things never changed, she thought thankfully, and Vi was one of them.
“I’ll come in if you don’t mind my sopping feet. I’d forgotten how wet the fields get.”
“Oh, stop your fussing. Come and warm your toes by the range while we dry out your boots, and don’t talk so daft about me minding wet feet, you soft ’a’porth of nuts.”
“Is your bloke in?” Kate said, doing as Vi said, and placing her boots on top of the range where they began to exude a familiar smell of damp leather.
Vi snorted. “He’s out working in the fields, and he’ll probably call back for his tucker sometime, but then he’ll be gone again till tonight, so we’ll have some cocoa to warm us while we gossip.”
“I can’t stay too long.”
“Why not? We could have a bite to eat later if you don’t mind soup made from leftovers. Bert won’t miss his share. Though I reckon you’re used to better fare nowadays, by the looks of you,” she said, eyeing her up and down.
“I couldn’t stay that long, Vi. You know what my mother’s like. And don’t look at me like that. I’m still the same!”
Vi shook her head decisively. “Oh no, you ain’t, my girl, and don’t let anybody kid you on that score. You look a darn sight better than before you went away, for a start, and if some bloke hasn’t put them stars in your eyes, I’d like to know what grog you’ve been taking instead.”
Kate laughed. “I do work for a nice man—”
“I knew it! And I bet he don’t have you stitching half the night away by candlelight for a pittance, neither.”
Kate stared for a minute, and then the penny dropped.
“Oh, I’m not sewing garments in a sweatshop any more. I’m a – I work for a photographer. I’m his receptionist.” She had nearly said she was a photographer’s model, but she knew only too well what Vi would think about that!
“Well, fancy!” Vi obviously didn’t know what else to say for a minute. Photographers were completely outside her experience, and Kate had been very cagey about the encounter with Luke in Bournemouth.
“He’s very nice, and very respectable. And I’ve got a room in a boarding house run by a middle-aged lady. There are two other girls lodging there, Doris, who’s Irish, and Faye from Yorkshire, and an elderly theatrical man.”
“God Almighty, it sounds bloody awful!” Vi said, plonking two mugs of thick dark cocoa and a plate of shortbread biscuits in front of them both. “Does the old girl keep you all in a straitjacket, or do you get the chance to see this photographer bloke of yours outside working hours?”
“Of course I see him, whenever I like, but our association is strictly business,” she said, knowing it was far from the truth.
“And if you expect me to believe that, I’ll believe in pigs flying over Edgemoor,” Vi said dryly. “So are you quite over your other little trouble?”
Kate sipped the scalding liquid and bit into one of Vi’s less than perfect biscuits. She had expected the question. Wasn’t it really what she had come here for, as a weird kind of exorcism? And to assure herself that Vi had kept her promise never to betray her?
“Quite over it,” she said. �
�It’s past and forgotten, and nobody’s any the wiser. Nobody but us, Vi.”
She held her breath, hoping Vi would understand the unspoken question without taking it the wrong way. The older woman nodded.
“And you want to be sure that I ain’t said nothin’, is that it?”
“I never thought you would…”
“Well, I ain’t, and I never would, so you can forget any worries about that. What do you take me for, Kate?”
“A good friend,” Kate mumbled, wishing she’d never said anything at all. “I’ll have to go soon,” she went on awkwardly.
“Not until you’ve told me about this new fellow! What’s his name, and is he going to make an honest woman of you? Oh bugger it, I didn’t mean that to sound the way it did!”
She clapped a hand over her mouth, and Kate saw the pricked and sore fingers that came from the constant stabbing of sewing needles at the sweatshop. Her own hands used to look like that, and now they were soft and white, with the nails nicely trimmed so that she presented a very respectable image to the very respectable clients who frequented Luke Halliday’s studio. She was so aware of the difference between herself and Vi now, that she felt almost too embarassed to hold the cocoa mug.
“His name’s Luke, and we get on very well,” she said quickly. “And I don’t know if we’ll ever have a closer relationship than a business one. Luke would like it, but, well, I’m not sure it would be right, or if I could.”
She hadn’t meant to say anything at all about her personal worries, but she should have known Vi would put two and two together quicker than blinking.
“You ain’t going to let what happened spoil things for you, I hope! I thought you said you was over it, Kate?”
“So I am, and I never want to see Walter Radcliffe again as long as I live! But you know what he did to me. You know all that happened, Vi. And you know I’m not – I’m not—”
“A virgin, you mean.” Vi snorted again. “So you got to use your loaf and pretend, girl. You won’t be the first one.”
“I don’t know how you can pretend about something like that. It’s not like you can hide it.”
“It’s not like you’ve only got one arm that he can see right off, either! Ain’t you never heard of horse-riding women who get broken in from riding before they ever have a man?”
“Of course I have. You can’t live in the country all your life without knowing something,” Kate said crossly.
“Well then, ninny, there’s your answer. As far as your fellow’s concerned, you’ve worked on farms and you’ve ridden horses. You tell him that and he’ll get the message.”
Kate felt a wild and ridiculous desire to laugh. Vi always had an answer for anything. And she could just see herself, explaining to Luke Halliday that he didn’t have to go carefully when he made love to her, because she was already broken in.
“See?” Vi, went on, seeing her red face. “You don’t need to be lacking in that department.”
That was just where she was wrong, though. It would be one more deception, and the sudden sense of exhilaration Kate felt disappeared as quickly as it had came. She put down the half-empty mug of cocoa and stood up, not wanting to see Vi’s knowing face a minute longer.
The back door opened and she heard the sound of stomping feet as somebody kicked off the frost and mud from his boots in the scraper.
“Come and say hello to Kate Sullivan, Bert,” Vi yelled, as if he was a mile away instead of in the tiny inside porch.
The florid-faced, beefy-looking man came inside the kitchen, looked Kate up and down and gave her a nod before his mouth widened into a leering smile.
“Well, living away from home’s certainly done things for you, girl. I wouldn’t have recognised you.”
“Seeing as how you’ve only ever seen me once or twice before, that’s not surprising, is it?” Kate said, trying to keep her voice polite since she was in his house.
But she didn’t like him, and never had, and she didn’t like the way he was ogling her now. It reminded her all too clearly of oily Jenkins at the sweatshop, and the way he’d tried to get her to work extra hours.
“Put your eyes back in their sockets, Bert,” Vi said sharply. “Kate’s just here for a short visit, and she’s got to be getting back to her folks.”
“Well, when I’ve had some cocoa and picked up my tucker I could walk her part of the way back. It’s on me way.”
“Thanks all the same, but I’ve got some more people to see, and I should be gone already,” Kate said, pulling on her boots and lacing them quickly, trying not to wince at the way they had tightened up by being dried too fast on the range.
“Thanks for the cocoa and the chat, Vi,” she said. “It was good to see you again.”
“And don’t you forget what I told you, will you? There’s more than one way of skinning a cat.”
She escaped as quickly as she could, breathing in the clear, cold air of the countryside, and wanting to put as much distance between herself and the Parsons as possible. Together, they made her feel cheap and uncomfortable.
Vi had always been crude and outspoken, and although Kate was sure she would never have told Bert about Walter and the miscarriage, she couldn’t help wondering if women were somehow subtly marked when something like that happened. As if certain men could see when a woman had been ruined, and saw her as an easy touch. She shivered at the very thought of some oaf like Bert Parsons touching her intimately in the way Walter had touched her.
By the time she had walked aimlessly across the fields towards home again, she knew it had been a mistake to call on Vi. She had needed to know that her secret was safe, but inevitably it had stirred up all the bad memories again. She thought they had been behind her for ever, but they weren’t. They were always there, the way a bad penny always threatened to turn up when you least expected it to. Like a bomb that was biding its time to explode.
They all went to church on Christmas Eve, and Alice would have no arguments from Brogan about the annual pilgrimage. To Kate and the girls, it was one of the most beautiful nights of the year, when the entire congregation celebrated midnight mass, carols were sung, and the Christmas crib was displayed in all its glory in front of the altar. The rituals were always the same. Everyone entering the church was handed a candle, and as the first ones were lit, each person touched his lighted candle to the one alongside him, until the whole church was ablaze with light. It was a scene that was always throat-catching.
The Sullivans always lit two special candles for their own wee twin boys who weren’t here to share Christmas with them. But once the service was over, and the priest was standing at the door of the church bidding all his flock goodbye and the compliments of the season, they all felt a slight sense of relief.
Father Mulheeny clutched each pair of hands of the Sullivan family, giving Kate’s a special squeeze.
“Tis good to welcome you back to the fold, Katie, for however long a time you plan to be here with us,” he said. “If you can spare yourself for a longer visit, let me know.”
“I can’t do that, Father,” she said quickly, wondering why he had to make a simple remark sound like a censure. “I can stay a week but no more, so I’d be obliged if you’d take me back to the station next Wednesday as arranged.”
“I’ll be at the cottage for you to be sure.”
He passed his pious, blessing hands along the rest of the congregation, and as the Sullivans snuggled deeper into the collars of their coats and began their procession home, Kate felt Donal’s hand press her elbow.
“Take no notice of him, Kate. It’s part of his job to make folk feel guilty. If everybody was perfect, priests would have nothing to do.”
She laughed ruefully. “He’ll never be out of a job, then, since none of us is perfect. We’re all blemished in some way.”
The rest of the family were ahead of them by now. The small girls chattered excitedly to their parents. Donal spoke more quietly to his sister.
“Whatever h
appened in the past, Kate, you’ve come out of it unscathed, and you’re making a better life for yourself, so you’ve got nothing to blame yourself for. I’m proud of you, and that’s the last I’m going to say about it.”
Her eyes prickled at the unexpected praise. But she knew he only saw what she let him see, the way everybody did. He didn’t know the secret shame of her, or how his one-time friend had ruined her. And he never would, she vowed.
“Did you ever see such a bright moon, or so many stars?” Donal went on, as if determined to dispel the sudden charge of emotion between them. “There’s snow in the air, and we may yet get a white Christmas to please the girls.”
Kate looked upwards. The moon was full and it seemed low enough to touch, and the stars were a brilliant mass of silver against the deep indigo of the sky. She had always thought the sense of infinity was closest right here, where the vastness of the heavens blanketed the gentle hills and fields of the Somerset countryside. The sound of her sisters’ laughter brought her back to earth, and she wondered instead just how the sky looked in London right now, and if city folk appreciated its beauty among all those concrete buildings.
Was Luke gazing up at the night sky at this very moment, and thinking of her? Were they watching the same moon and stars, and wishing they were together? The thought overpowered everything else in Kate’s head, and she knew instantly how much she loved him. And with that realisation came the certainty that she could never deceive him as Vi had suggested. On this night, especially, it seemed like sacrilege even to consider it.
When they got back to the cottage, Alice made them all a drink of hot Bovril before the girls were bundled off to bed. The adults lingered, talking quietly for a few minutes more as always. The goose was already prepared and in the side oven of the range, to begin its long, slow cooking before morning when the fire would be stoked up, and the winter vegetables had been pulled from the garden ready for peeling.
Kate felt the same sense of anticipation she had felt as a child, when Christmas Day was almost here, knowing there would be a feast of humble proportions to eat, and presents to unwrap, however modest. She felt a wave of love for them all as she finally said goodnight, and went upstairs to bed.
A Different Kind of Love Page 20
