In the second, shorter, letter, she’d told him she and her family were leaving. The reason was not the one she’d given Sunny. It was one that had made it impossible for her father to accept an offer from the new owner to stay and manage the farm. Lily had not asked for anything from James except his forgiveness. It was because she could not be sure who the father was, she’d said. Her conscience would not let her force responsibility on the wrong person. Of course, James had done what he’d done entirely to avoid such a responsibility, but getting his wish felt as false and hollow an accomplishment as his medal.
James slipped the major’s note among the other letters. The Eighth Army was preparing to advance up the valley. The long battle for this scrubby desolate mountain had finally been won, thanks to the Poles, who, James had to admiringly admit, had no problem screwing their courage to the sticking place.
The Poles had a bear. A real, live brown bear. It had shifted boxes of ammunition for them and they treated it better than they did themselves. Rowan would have loved seeing it.
It had been a bright but freezing Boxing Day, and James would have run fast to keep warm had he not been holding a parcel of food. Approaching the clearing by the swimming hole, the sound of male voices made him halt. But standing still, apart from the faint trickle of the waterfall, he could hear only the usual winter hush.
Rowan was waiting for him, shoulders hunched, hands shoved in the pockets of a coat that looked far too thin. As did Rowan. His friend’s face was drawn and sallow and his cheekbones jutted sharp as the rocks behind him. He looked ten years older than the healthy, strong young man James had seen this morning in the mirror.
‘Who were you with before?’ he said.
Rowan paused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I thought I heard someone else. A man.’
‘Echoes,’ Rowan said. ‘There’s only me. Talking to the robin. He and I are the only ones here now. Everyone else is hibernating.’
‘I brought food. Christmas leavings.’
James held out the package. Rowan initially did his best to be polite, but then he gave up and wolfed it down so fast, he began to choke.
James bashed him on the back. Rowan winced and stepped sideways.
‘Hell, I forgot,’ James said. ‘Your back. Still hurts then?’
‘Only if it receives a direct hit,’ Rowan said, with a small apologetic smile.
‘Sorry.’ James did not enjoy feeling ashamed. It was not he who’d beaten Rowan.
‘Why the hell did you let Ted do that to you?’ he demanded.
Rowan stared at him for a moment, as if deciding how much to tell him.
‘He needed to,’ he said.
James was astonished at the rage this provoked in him.
‘You let him thrash you.’ His voice rang off the rocks and around the quiet clearing. ‘Flog you with a stick until you bled, because he needed to?’
‘I know it won’t make sense to you,’ Rowan said. ‘If it’s any consolation, it was the last time.’
‘It most certainly will be, because I’ll have my father sack him,’ James said. ‘I’ll have him arrested. I’ll see him hanged.’
‘No,’ Rowan said. ‘No, you won’t do any of that.’
He placed his hand on James’s arm.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘Really, it is. You have to trust me.’
James felt angry tears prick his eyes. He rubbed them quickly with his clenched fist. The way a child would, he thought. But the idea that Rowan had been hurt, and for nothing, made him at once furious and sad. Rowan had suffered — was suffering now — simply for wanting to avoid hurting others. It did not seem in any way fair.
‘What the hell set him off?’ James asked. ‘Was he incensed by your being a conchie, and just took his chance when you showed up?’
Rowan shook his head. ‘It had been building up long before that. All my life.’
He picked off a dead leaf that stuck to his boot. An oak leaf, brown and damp, that only short weeks ago had been alive and green on the tree.
‘He told me the truth,’ Rowan said. ‘About my mother.’
‘Who your father was, you mean?’
‘No. About how she died.’
‘Sunny told me she died in childbirth with you.’
‘She didn’t,’ Rowan said. ‘When I was four weeks old, she went missing. She had always been a wanderer, he said, because she’d never been quite right in the head. A fey spirit, he called her. Wondered if she’d ever been his at all. She had blonde hair when he and his wife were both dark, so perhaps she was a changeling and the fairies took the real child. Or maybe it was he who’d strayed into a fairy ring and they’d cursed him. His punishment was to lose the women he loved.’
Rowan smiled at James’s expression. ‘I know. Fanciful and Ted don’t really go together, do they? But I can tell you that despair does let dark fancies creep in and take hold of your mind.’
‘Ted didn’t do anything bad to your mother, did he?’ asked James.
‘No.’ Rowan smiled again, sadly this time. ‘After I was born, she stayed with me in the cottage for the first two weeks, but then she started wandering again. Didn’t tell him, just upped and left me in the drawer that was my cot. He came home more than once to find me exhausted from crying, from hunger. Had no idea what to do, poor man.’
James shook his head in disbelief at that epithet, but said nothing.
‘Usually, he never bothered to go after her. She was never gone more than a few hours. But that last time, when she’d been missing for over a day, he went looking for her. Dropped me with Mrs Blythe, and he and Ellis went searching. They found her, quarter of a mile from here, where the stream joins the river. If she hadn’t been trapped in the rushes, they might never have caught up with her. She might have floated all the way to the sea.’
‘Did she—?’
‘Drown herself on purpose?’ Rowan said. ‘I’ve no idea. She looked very peaceful, he said, and she had a necklace of wild flowers around her neck, daisies and dandelions. Ted told me he’d never seen her make one. She never could sit still long enough.’
‘Christ, Rowan. Did he tell you all this while flaying the skin off you?’
‘Afterwards.’
‘And did he do anything to help you? Treat your wounds?’
‘He didn’t need to,’ Rowan said. ‘I know wood lore. I know which plants heal, how to make poultices.’
‘But the wounds are all over your back,’ James protested. ‘How on earth could you reach them?’
‘You’d be amazed,’ Rowan had said, ‘at what you can do when you have no choice.’
Rowan was right, thought James. But he’d had a choice then, hadn’t he? He, James, had had a choice about where to take the conversation next, about what to tell Rowan and what to leave out. About how he’d composed his face so that it appeared only sympathetic and encouraging, the face of a loyal friend. About how he had deliberately set Rowan on a path, without any heed to the consequences.
No, James had not given an ounce of thought that day to what might happen to Rowan. His only goal had been escape from a situation that might trap him forever, and he’d lied to Rowan, or at least twisted the truth, as a means to achieve that end. When the words had come slithering out of his mouth, he’d cared only for his own interests and there was no point in pretending otherwise. There was no point in pretending that he’d convinced himself Rowan would be all right, and that what happened was simply bad luck. That it had been Fate or God at work, and nothing to do with James at all.
Because, of course, that was nonsense. Rowan’s death had come as a direct result of James’s words that day in the woods. It was his fault entirely and it was irreversible. James could not go back and undo all he’d done. And because he could not change the past, now he was faced with a future over which he also had no power. Lily’s decision to give away the baby was already being enacted; there was no way he could stop it.
He had no power over anythin
g any more. All he had left was guilt and regret for his arrogance and his selfish choices. And all he could do was wait until Fate or God weighed him in the balance, and judged what should become of him.
CHAPTER 38
early October
The tan he’d had before he left had faded, but otherwise Oran looked well, April thought. The Pentangle T-shirt he had on seemed to have been bought new, and his jeans were clean and without holes. His manner was calmer than it had been, too. His bounce had less jitter in it, and he was quieter, though April suspected the latter was more because he did not really want to be with her in Sunny’s kitchen. They’d been forced in there together, on Sunny’s orders, to make tea. Edward was due within the hour and she could hardly do it one-armed, could she?
Sunny was not enjoying her enforced rest. It made her feel geriatric. April was not enjoying the coolness Oran had shown towards her over the past week. But then that was entirely her fault, and any reconciliation would likewise have to start with her.
‘I know you don’t feel much like speaking to me,’ April ventured, ‘but I would like you to know that I’m sorry for what I said to you. And I’m very glad you’re back.’
Oran laid a stack of side plates on the Ben Nevis tray. The look he gave her was one of pink-cheeked, rather prim reproof, the look a Victorian lady might give a man she’d caught staring at her ankles.
‘You were quite the cow, it must be said.’ He huffed on a silver knife, rubbed it with a napkin. ‘Your words struck me to the core.’
‘I know.’ Now it was April’s turn to blush. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Wounded me to the very quick. I felt emasculated. Gelded. The vital essence of my manhood bled dry.’
‘Yes! God! I’m—’
And then she saw he was grinning.
‘Are you truly glad to have me back?’ he said. ‘Or is that your guilt and remorse speaking?’
‘I’m truly glad.’ April put her arms around his neck and hugged him. ‘I’ve missed you.’
‘I missed you, too,’ he said. ‘After I got over railing at you in my mind, that is.’
April drew back. ‘Edward’s put the house on the market.’
‘So I gather.’ Oran kept his hands on her waist. ‘Does that mean you’ll be leaving then? For your dear native plains? Your own loved island of sorrow?’
‘I don’t know,’ April admitted. ‘I’ve been putting off making a decision.’
‘Something holding you here? Your young man, for instance?’
‘My—? Oh.’
April had no answer ready. As she’d continued to delay making plans, she’d not yet had reason to talk to Jack. More truthfully, she did not want to talk to him at all because she feared what he would say: that even if she chose to stay, he could not guarantee any kind of future with him. He could not guarantee that he’d be with her even a month from now. That’s how his life was.
Oran did not notice her hesitation.
‘Your garden god. Your Monty Adonis. Will I ever get to meet him?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said April. ‘He’s terribly private.’
‘Are you ashamed of me?’
He said it lightly, but she saw the shadow flicker.
‘Don’t be a cretin.’
April smiled and hugged him again, so he had no chance to see that the smile had been an effort. Today was the first time she and Oran had ever properly embraced. Physically, he was as she’d expected, all leanness and wire drawn taut with pent-up energy, like a greyhound poised and waiting before the rabbit is released. She had not expected him to feel so comforting. He should have felt the very opposite, she thought, as he had none of Jack’s calm and solid physical presence. Yet it was nice, being in Oran’s arms. Friendly, bolstering and oddly familiar, like hugging an old friend you had not seen for years but whom you once knew very well indeed.
When they broke the hug, Oran stepped back and tilted his head in the manner of a gallery patron studying a painting.
‘I like this new look of yours,’ he said. ‘Very pretty. Did the summer of love work its halcyon magic on you, or was it simply time for a change?’
‘Both perhaps,’ said April. ‘And how about you? You’re looking almost spruce.’
He glanced down at his T-shirt. ‘I made a tidy bit of money from busking, so I thought I’d tidy myself a bit, too.’
April was struck by a worry. ‘What will you do for money now you can’t work on the house?’
‘Oh, this and that,’ said Oran, breezily. ‘As is my wont.’ The shadow passed over his face again. ‘The only curse is that I lost my spot for the van. Some bugger slipped in there when I was away and stole it.’
‘Can’t you ask them to move?’
‘They have dogs,’ said Oran. ‘And tattoos in places that must have smarted like the very devil. Call me a coward again if you like, but even if I asked nicely I’m not sure they’d be amenable.’
An idea occurred and was out before April could think twice.
‘Why don’t you park up at the big house for now?’ she said to him. ‘It’s a bit of a trek to the cottage, but you can come down and use my bathroom if you like. I get first dibs, of course.’
Oran went quite red. ‘That’s a most kind offer. I’ll say yes right away, before you change your mind.’
He bent forward and kissed her hastily on the cheek.
A voice sounded from the courtyard.
‘We’re having afternoon tea, not supper! Must I come in there?’
‘Woah, Nelly, she’s a grouch,’ said Oran. ‘Some people should never be infirm. It disagrees with them something terrible.’
‘So where did you go?’ said April, when they were outside, and had served tea to Sunny’s satisfaction.
‘All over,’ said Oran. ‘I had no plan, just followed my nose. My only certainty was that I’d vowed to be pure and chaste, and to drink never more than four beers in succession.’
‘How did that work out for you?’
‘Remarkably well. Except that I now know that greasy takeaways are, in fact, disgusting, and not the manna from Heaven they always seem when crapulous at four a.m.’
‘And the pure and chaste bit?’
‘I see you smile, and I disdain your scepticism with as much dignity as I can muster.’
‘Quite right,’ said Sunny.
April took one of the blackberry friands she’d made. She’d had one already, but they were, if she did say so herself, delicious.
‘I apologise unreservedly.’ April saluted Oran with the friand. ‘Carry on.’
‘The only trouble I had with women was of an entirely unsexual kind,’ he said. ‘I was busking late one evening and suddenly found myself the target of attention from a hen party. They were quite badgered and very sparsely clothed, and they began to hoot at me and catcall and make suggestive suggestions. So, naturally, I upped the volume to drown them out and they took exception and started pelting me with moulded items of an X-rated nature.’
‘I thought you said this was an unsexual encounter?’
‘On my part it was, entirely!’ Oran protested. ‘And I can assure you, being sconed by a click-and-charge clitoral tongue vibrator does nothing to put you in the mood.’
‘I would have slapped them soundly,’ said Sunny.
‘I was outnumbered,’ said Oran. ‘And most of them were bigger than me. But then the knights in blue came to my rescue. They were at first unsure who had started the ruckus — I suppose I was looking a bit road-weary — but then one of the maidens kneed a rozzer below the thin blue line, and as soon as I could see I was off the hook I slung it.’
Sunny patted his knee with her free hand.
‘I’m very pleased you’re back, dear boy. And I trust you have worked what you needed to out of your system.’
Sunny was not in a position to see more than Oran’s profile, and so it was only April who saw him wince. Oran met her eye, and in his expression of embarrassed defiance she read both a confession and a plea
: that Oran was as obsessed as ever with his wife, and that he needed that secret to be kept from Sunny at all costs.
April nodded to reassure him — who was she to judge how others chose to live? But she was not happy. Oran deserved better. He deserved better than to have that darkness always in a corner of his life, to be constantly clutching at a false hope that was nothing but a noxious cloud, a malevolent will-o’-the-wisp that wanted only to drag him into a swamp and drown him. Why couldn’t he see his wife for what she was? Why did he keep a space for her in his heart instead of banishing her to the wasteland where she belonged?
But, again, who was she to judge? No one, not even those who loved her most, had been able to dissuade her from her own choices. If Oran wanted to go to his grave still loving his faithless wife, then that was his right entirely.
A curt halloo from inside the house.
‘Edward,’ said Sunny.
So far, they had carefully avoided the subject of the main business of the day, but the anxiety had hummed along underneath nonetheless, April realised, as proven by the fact that all three of them now straightened in their chairs, bracing themselves.
Edward stepped from the kitchen into the courtyard, a large, plain brown envelope in one hand. It was the envelope that Oran’s eyes followed, as Edward joined them at the table.
‘Is it only me,’ Oran said, ‘or is that thing pulsating with energy, like some druid’s talisman?’
‘It’s only you,’ said Edward. He took a friand, wolfed it in two bites. ‘Christ, I’m starving. I missed lunch because I’d forgotten how much bloody traffic there is getting in and out of London. Next time I complain about having to wait three minutes for a space in the Waitrose car park, can somebody slap me?’
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