by Jane Corrie
Her uncle quickly made a space for her to sit down, gathering the papers up and putting them on a table with a shamefaced grin, and said, 'Sure, I'd better mend me ways now, girl,' then perched himself on the arm of one of the armchairs and studied her with concern. 'Now, how about a nice cup of tea?' he queried.
Teresa felt the tears spring up behind her eyes and quickly blinked them back, but she couldn't speak, just nodded as she watched him go out of the room. The unwelcome thought that she would have to tell him about her mother and brother hovered
uneasily at the back of her mind, and she closed her eyes. As if she hadn't had enough for one day!
While she waited for her uncle to reappear with the tea, she forced her mind away from the heartbreak so near the surface. She wouldn't, couldn't, think of Carl and what had happened.
Mercifully he was not long, and carrying a tray that also looked as if it could do with some attention such as a good polish, he laid it down on a side table after pushing off a pile of ancient magazines.
Handing her a cup of tea, he commented kindly, list you get that down you.'
The tea was very strong, but Teresa was too weary to ask for more milk in it and sipped the hot dark liquid. A few seconds later she was coughing and spluttering and her eyes were watering; this time not from sorrow, but from whatever it was that he had put in the tea.
Instead of looking concerned, her uncle grinned at her. 'Brandy, girl; get it down you, you could do with a bit of propping up.'
Teresa blinked back the tears and nodded mutely, then sipped the sweet fiery liquid, grateful for anything to help her through this bad time.
When she had finished she really did feel more able to cope; enough, anyway, to say what had to be said, and told him about the air crash.
For a short while afterwards her uncle sat staring at the worn lino on the floor, then abruptly he went back into the kitchen, and Teresa knew he had gone to give himself a dose of the same liquid courage he had given her.
When he came back, he was shaking his head.
'You poor wee mite,' was all he could say for a few seconds, then shook his head again, and his brow darkened. 'And fool that I was, I made things worse for you.' He sat down heavily on the chair arm again. 'It explains why our Maureen didn't tell me about you and Elton.' He sighed heavily. 'I thought maybe she'd hoped things had blown over like, though that didn't make sense, but it was all I could come up with.'
He looked across at Teresa, who was now feeling the full effects of the liberal dose of brandy, and her lids were heavy, although she was making a valiant attempt to keep awake. There was so much she wanted to know, but she was too tired to pursue the matter.
'What you need, girl, is a good night's sleep,' her uncle said, and Teresa made herself sit up straighter as if to prove she was all right—or would be, if she could only shake off this feeling of numbness. She would have liked nothing better than to be able to lie down and sink into oblivion, but her tired brain assessed the unlikely possibility of there being a spare room, and if there were, if it was in a fit state to accommodate her.
Her uncle settled the matter for her, and clearing his throat, he said, 'I maybe thought you might be needing a place to go to. I kinda hoped you'd agree to stay a while.' His gaze settled once more on the lino, and she saw his features harden as he muttered, 'And glad I am too. As I said afore, we're kin, girl, and if you've a mind, I'd be right grateful if you'd consider staying now that you're here.'
°Teresa nodded dumbly. She didn't have any-
where else to go anyway, for there was nothing in England for her now; all ties had been severed when she left.
A few minutes later she was shown round the chalet, and finally to her room which was located in an added wing tacked on to the building. 'You'll get plenty of peace here, girl,' her uncle commented. 'I have to be up early, so I won't disturb you; my room's back in the main section of the place.'
With a start, Teresa realised she didn't know what her uncle did for a living, but she was too tired to ask. There would be plenty of time in the future, she told herself dully—all the time in the world.
Not long afterwards, she took a quick shower, and was soon climbing gratefully into the small camp bed in the spare room. The cover was plain but clean, and so were the sheets. Half of her saw these things, the other half saw the room she had been given at Sunset Ridge and her heart cried out to Carl. He hadn't meant what he'd said, she told herself; tomorrow he would be round to beg her forgiveness, to say that nothing mattered so long as they were together. And on these thoughts she fell into an exhausted sleep.
The following morning however, Teresa's hopes were not fulfilled. A day went by, then two, then a week, with no sign of Carl.
She tried not to run to the telephone each time it rang, or raise her hopes too high each time she answered it, for it was always someone 'wanting her uncle or wanting to leave a message for him, and these would come from the local auction sales, for this was how her uncle earned his living, by trucking
livestock from sales to outlying farms.
The work could hardly be called lucrative, and Teresa, recalling Carl's words about her uncle barely being able to support himself, started to worry about this, for she couldn't see how he could be expected to support her as well.
Somehow she had to bring up the subject of getting a job of some kind and paying her way without hurting her uncle, and this wasn't going to be easy, for he was a proud man, and never failed to show appreciation for even the smallest task Teresa carried out as she made the chalet into a real home, a task she had set about with a fervour almost amounting to fanaticism. She gave herself no time to mope, there were things to be done, curtains to be washed; windows likewise, chair covers and mats—nothing escaped Teresa's busy hands; tables were polished, the lino was given a new lease of life, and said thank-you by shining as if new.
When everything was right, Teresa promised herself, she would set about getting that job, although she hadn't much of a clue about the sort of job she could obtain, for as yet she didn't know much about the immediate territory and what chances of employment there were, if any. If she had been a man she could have assisted her uncle, for she could drive, but she was terrified of cattle and would prove more of a liability than a help in this respect.
Teresa stared at the sitting-room wall where a large patch of damp had ruined the wallpaper; now, if she had a job and could contribute towards her keep, there might just be enough left over to save
towards getting those tiles back on the roof, and prevent the rainwater from seeping through, and if that were done then the room could be repapered.
Thoughts on these lines gave her the incentive she so badly needed, and all other thoughts were pushed to the back of her mind. Carl had not come; and as the days slipped by, Teresa was able to catch a glimpse of what lay behind her uncle's reasoning in claiming their relationship, and, in a sense, why he had derived so much satisfaction from not only intervening, but as it were carrying off the intended bride from under the autocratic groom's nose.
The story came out in intermittent intervals during the evenings of that first week, and Teresa learned of the feud that had gone on between the two families for almost a decade.
'I couldn't have let you marry him, girl,' Patrick told her. 'I could have kept my mouth shut, of course, but eventually he'd have found out about the connection, and I wouldn't have given much for your chance of happiness then.'
Teresa remembered that this had been what Carl had more or less hinted himself.
'I couldn't do it any other way, either,' he said abruptly, frowning as he recalled the scene. 'Lucky for you that nothing an Elton does goes unnoticed in these parts, and like everybody else I'd heard he'd brought a girl back with him, and that they were getting married.'
He chewed on his lower lip as he marshalled his thoughts. 'If Joe Spang hadn't mentioned the name of Cottam, I guess you'd still be up at the big house, and none of us any the wiser until it w
as too late.' He
looked at Teresa, now carefully studying her hands. 'Joe works for Elton, in the stables,' he explained. 'And when he said you had a look of the Raffertyswell, that kinda clinched it for me, and I remembered the last letter that passed between your mam and me, and in it she'd told me she'd had a daughter.' He rubbed a work-roughened hand over his chin. 'I'm no letter-writer, girl. I guess I left it all to your mam; as long as she were okay, well, that was that. Time passed, and we kinda lost touch. My fault it was at that; I couldn't be bothered to put pen to paper, 'sides, weren't much I had to write about anyway.' He studied his boots. 'Would be about twenty years ago, I guess, since she wrote, I mean.'
Teresa nodded dumbly. She was twenty-one.
'If I'd known a mite earlier,' continued her uncle, 'about you and Elton, it wouldn't have got to the party stage, but I didn't. Joe only told me an hour or so before I gatecrashed that party. 'Course, I could have been wrong, but I couldn't let it go. Cottam ain't an ordinary name and Joe went to school with our Maureen, and he'd spotted the likeness.'
The more Teresa learnt about the feud, the more she realised that there was no chance of a reconciliation between Carl and herself.
It had all started way back in her great-grandfather's time, and began over a card game between Mike Rafferty and a Jonathan Elton—at that time neighbours and friends, both of whom loved a gamble, and neither knew when to stop. On this particular night Jonathan Elton was losing heavily and had run out of cash, and having nothing else to play
with he had staked part of his land on the turn of the last card, and had lost that too.
Afterwards a bitter quarrel had developed between the two men, for Elton had claimed that he was drunk when he made the bet, and that Mike Rafferty should have known it.
Teresa had asked if it were true, and if her great-grandfather had taken advantage of Jonathan Elton, and was a little shocked by the twinkle in her uncle's eye as he replied airily, 'Oh, sure, I guess he must have done. He got a paper, signed and sealed, out of him before that last card was played, and no matter how many high and mighty city lawyers they got to work on it, that bit of paper gave him the land.'
Her eyes went to her hands. One piece of land, she thought dully, all those years ago. It didn't seem possible that some sort of settlement couldn't have been arranged, and she recalled Carl's expression when he had looked at her uncle; almost as if it had happened yesterday, and he was the actual offender instead of just carrying the name of Rafferty.
'That was jist the start,' went on her uncle. 'From then on old Jonathan Elton was out to get even. He meant to break us—and he did,' he said slowly, his eyes narrowing in memory. 'In the old days they used to share a water hole on Elton's land; well, that was fenced in for a start. We had a goodly sized herd at that time, but one by one we lost 'em. Can't keep cattle where there's no water,' he shrugged. 'Guess we didn't have much choice in the end but to keep things going best way we could. We broke those fences down and let our beasts stray on to their land.'
He frowned heavily. 'There were rustling charges levelled against us, but in them days it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black. We didn't get some of our cattle back, and had some of theirs in lieu, as you might say.'
He stared around at the poorly furnished room. 'And this is all we've left,' he said bitterly. 'This and that damned piece of land out there. The Eltons have gone from strength to strength. They own half the county, and the land this place is built on. It wouldn't surprise me-to know that he owned this place as well. I ask no questions these days, jist pays me rent at the office in town.'
Teresa's gaze centred on the damp patch on the wall, and Patrick followed her look. 'I know other places on the books,' he said slowly, 'they've all been done up—no expense spared. That's why I'm sure he owns the place. He'd let it rot before he lifts a hand to help a Rafferty.'
The stricken look in Teresa's eyes did not go unnoticed, and he nodded grimly. 'He's an Elton through and through, Teresa. Had it been anyone else but him, I guess there might have been a chance of things working out, but he's old Jonathan Elton all over again. As far as he's concerned we're thieves and vagabonds, and always will be.' He leant towards Teresa. `Do you see how it is now, girl?' he said gently.
Teresa had said nothing, but swallowed and nodded wearily.
Her uncle was silent for a few seconds, then said abruptly, 'History repeating itself. Or would be, if it were the other way round, only this time it was the
Raffertys' turn to break things up.'
There had been a slight hint of satisfaction in his voice that made Teresa glance quickly at him.
'Been doing a bit of thinking about the past,' he explained carefully. 'Going back.' He scratched his chin thoughtfully. 'Seems it's the answer, like, to things that didn't make sense, like you not knowing how things were here, and picking an Elton.' He raised a hand to stem Teresa's quick response. 'Sure, I know your mam was gone when you met him, but I couldn't make out why she'd held her peace afore, about the feud. I mean, considering it was the reason she took off all those years ago.'
Teresa stared at him—her mother? She waited for him to go on, which he did after-a few seconds. 'James Elton, it was,' he began slowly, as if sorting out the facts in his mind. 'He took a real shine to our Maureen, he was always hanging around. She was a looker in those days, girl, like you,' he gave a half-smile at the memory, 'and as proud as they come. She could have taken her pick at that, there were no shortage of likely swains.' He sighed heavily. 'But like I said, there was this Elton,' he screwed his eyes up in thought. 'He would have been Carl Elton's uncle, I guess.' He shook his head impatiently. 'No mind, he's gone now, but it was around the time that he began to look at Maureen when she was offered this job as nursemaid to some kids of a rich family that was going back to the old country. The offer came out of the blue, but we knew full well who'd put them up to it. As I said, this James had it real bad, and the Eltons weren't taking any chances of the pair making a match of it.'
Teresa's lovely eyes widened as she digested this information, and she watched her uncle get out his tobacco pouch and take his time in rolling a cigarette before resuming the narration.
He took a quick pull at the thin wafer in his hand and expelled the smoke slowly, then continued: 'I guess our girl saw the writing on the wall. I've a feeling she was just as soft on him as he was on her, but she knew the drill well enough, and that there was no future in it, so she accepted the job.'
He sighed. 'Well, a job's a job after all, and it was a chance to see the world—more than she'd ever see if she stayed here.' He grinned at Teresa. 'Seems like she made the right decision. She met your dad soon afterwards, and from what she told me in those early letters, I guess she was happy enough.'
Although tired, Teresa's mind was too active for sleep that night, and as she lay in the narrow bed her thoughts were centred on the extraordinary story her uncle had told her about her mother and James Elton, and particularly on her uncle's ruminations that she had loved this man.
Teresa recalled finding a faded rose and an equally faded card in her mother's dressing table drawer, tucked away out of sight, and her puzzlement over the discovery at the time, for the card had read simply, 'Love, James'. And that was indeed odd, as her father's name had been John, but as it had been a puzzle that was unlikely to be solved, Teresa had pushed it out of her mind. She had had more pressing matters to attend to at that time; but she knew the answer now.
A tiny tear escaped from under her closed lids. So her mother had loved James Elton; enough to have preserved that rose and card—enough, she thought wearily, to never mention the feud, or indeed elaborate on her earlier life in Australia, apart from the fact that they had relations out there.
She had wanted to bury the past, Teresa thought wildly, but I'm living it. A sob caught in her throat, and the tears held back for so long cascaded down her cheeks, and brought relief of a kind to her.
As unhappy as she was, Teresa couldn'
t blame her mother for not forewarning her or Rob about the slim likelihood of either of them ever meeting an Elton, and the probable consequences. She wouldn't have thought it possible that history would be repeated, but it had been, and the heartbreak was just as real now as it had been all those years ago for her mother.
On the thought of Rob, her tears fell faster. How he would have chuckled about the whole thing; about a feud that went on after all those years. He would have found it, as Teresa had, hard to believe in such goings-on. Although Rob had been a year younger than his sister, he had always seemed wiser than his years, probably, Teresa used to think, because he had had to assume responsibility for the family in his early teens when their father died. She knew, too, what advice he would have given her now; he would have told her to forget Carl Elton, for a man who could nurse a grievance about something that had happened long before his time wasn't worth a candle, and couldn't have loved her anyway.
Not that Teresa needed to be told these things,
she didn't, but it didn't make things any easier for her. No matter what, she still loved Carl, would always do, even if it was only for what he'd done for her when her world had come to a full stop. In some indefinable way, all her love for her mother and brother had been transferred to him, and in him had lain the centre of her world.
Her unhappy thoughts roamed on; she couldn't entirely blame the Eltons, for she couldn't see the Raffertys calmly sitting back and taking their just retribution for the underhanded way they had gained that piece of land—to make a man sign a document when he was befuddled with drink was no better than stealing, and that, Teresa thought miserably, from a man who had been a friend; no, she couldn't condone that under any circumstances.
There was no doubt that her mother had felt the same way, and that that was why she had accepted the job that took her right out of the country, for there would have been slim chance of happiness with such a background.
