The Healing Stream

by Connie Monk

  ‘It’s on the edge of Downing Wood, west side of the estuary. I want you to see it, Tessa. Please let me take you there.’

  ‘We’d have to arrange a time so that you’d be in. I mean, there’s no point in your coming to fetch us when I’d have to bring Deirdre in the hybrid.’

  Deirdre willed him to speak loudly enough for her to hear. Why did he want to take them to this Downing Wood place? Then she wished she hadn’t listened.

  ‘It’s you I want to see the cottage. What time do you finish here?’

  ‘At six o’clock. I’ll have to go home with my bike. Don’t call for me – I’ll meet you at the end of the lane at, say, half past six.’ Tessa’s spontaneous reaction was to say nothing to Richard and Naomi; the evening ahead was too wonderful to be idly enquired about.

  But Giles misjudged the reason for the secrecy and laughed, putting his hand on her shoulder then moving it to the back of her neck and gently ruffling her short hair.

  ‘Funny girl. Are you frightened your family wouldn’t approve of your visiting a lonely bachelor’s cottage? You’ll be quite safe. We shall eat dinner together.’

  It was the teasing note in his voice that made her embarrassed and prevented her finding a quick retort. She felt gauche and was uncomfortably conscious of the difference between his life and her own, and sure that he must be able to see into her mind. If only she were older, more worldly – more like the women he was probably used to entertaining in his flat in London.

  Her only defence was to answer him coolly. ‘If you’d like to meet my aunt and uncle of course you can call for me at the farm. But it’s a rough, narrow lane; I thought it would be easier for you to meet me on the proper road.’ Even though she heard it as a lame excuse, she forced herself to speak calmly, sounding as if the whole incident were of no importance. He listened with his eyebrows slightly raised.

  ‘Not this evening. Next time, perhaps. Tonight we’ll have a secret assignation. I’ll pick you up at the corner of the lane at half past six. That should give you time to get home and give them some plausible reason for going out.’

  Tessa clutched at the words ‘next time’, her hard-fought-for coolness lost and her eyes telling him more than any words.

  Listening, Deirdre scowled. Her former jaundiced view of life must have been waiting just below the surface. The idea of going to the cottage hadn’t held much appeal, but hearing what Giles had said was a reminder, as if she needed one, of how different she was from other girls. She moved away from her listening post just as Miss Sherwin came into the room.

  ‘You still in here, child? I thought you and Tessa were going to take a ride out. If you don’t get a move on the daylight will be fading.’

  ‘She’s busy hanging around Giles Lampton. Haven’t you seen the way she looks at him?’

  ‘Then she’s sillier than I gave her credit for. She’ll bite off more than she can chew with that one. He’s a regular Casanova – and Tessa’s nought but a child.’

  ‘She’s nearly twenty.’

  ‘It’s not the number of years that count; it’s whether or not you hang on to the trust and innocence you had as a child. It’s my guess young Tessa has never been pushed into the rough and tumble. Well, let’s hope Giles Lampton soon loses interest in the Devon countryside and takes himself off back to London. I’m not stupid and I’ve watched that young man for years enough – well, he was no more than a lad when first I knew him when you were a babe in arms. And I tell you, I’d not mind a five-pound note for every woman he’s kept dancing attendance on him. Keen as mustard some of them; silly creatures. Give a man a bit of success – and he’s had more than his share of that – and they’re all over him. Now then Deirdre, before I help you into your coat I’ll just take you along to the bathroom. By then I dare say Tessa will have brought the car round to the door.’

  Promptly at half past six Tessa hurried up the lane to the road where she could see his car waiting.

  ‘They let you out?’ he greeted her in that same teasing note.

  ‘How do you mean, let me out? I told them you asked me out to dinner,’ she answered in a voice aimed at showing she was mistress of her own destiny. Then, that established, she settled in the passenger seat prepared for what she thought of as a magic evening. In her mind’s eye she saw a country cottage, tastefully and elegantly furnished, a log fire burning in the open grate, a faithful retainer bringing a tray of food to the table. She imagined Giles taking her to his study and perhaps even showing her the work he was doing on this latest book about the people of Burghton. In her wildest and very private dreams she imagined him falling in love with her – but such were the dreams of many an adolescent whose head was filled with thoughts of some hero of screen or literature. Tessa allowed herself to dream, but even when at the end of the day she was in her own warm bed and cut off from the world, as she let her thoughts carry her where they would, she had no illusions. Dreams and reality were poles apart and she knew that was how they would remain. But on that evening reality was carrying her across the border; in a few minutes she would be warming herself by that great open fire, letting the atmosphere and elegance of his country retreat paint a lasting picture on her mind.

  The evening was a milestone and there would be no turning back.

  Three

  Reaching the main road, they turned to the left then, instead of continuing over the long bridge that crossed the Dere Estuary, Giles took a turning to the right towards Otterton St Giles. Before they reached the village he again turned right into a narrow lane, the dark night made even darker by the trees of Downing Wood.

  ‘There’s only just enough width for the car. Are there any passing places?’ Tessa asked in a voice she hoped sounded politely curious enough to hide her wild excitement for the evening ahead.

  ‘The track turns into a footpath, hardly that even once we get to Hideaway Cottage. Hideous name for it, even though it’s very appropriate. The postman leaves my mail at the village post office; I have no telephone. When I want to work undisturbed, this is where I come. No visitors, and not even a wireless. A week here is worth a month in London. Sometimes with so much going on, it’s hard to stay immersed in the atmosphere one is creating. So if it’s only to be for a few weeks I come to Devon. In Spain I have a finca – a house in agricultural ground – but it’s not worth driving all that way for just a few weeks.’

  But it wasn’t the seldom-visited house in Spain that interested her, it was what he’d said about the cottage: no visitors, no wireless. And yet he was bringing her there. Did he see her as different from an ordinary visitor?

  ‘That’s a contradiction in terms,’ she laughed. ‘What am I if not a visitor?’

  ‘You? I am bringing you to my hideaway because I have imagined you there when I’ve been alone in the evenings. This evening we have to fend for ourselves, no silver service. Just a gas cooker. Are you still glad you’ve come?’ There was a teasing note in his voice, almost as though she were still a child.

  ‘I like cooking. When I lived on the island with Gran I always did the cooking on the days I wasn’t working at the hotel.’ A reminder to him that she had lived an adult life before she became carer-oblique-friend to Deirdre. ‘Look! I can see a light through the trees.’

  ‘I left the lamp on in the porch. We leave the car on this patch of scrub – there’s no room for it in the garden. Nearer the truth, there’s no garden; the woods are my garden. Out you hop.’ Leaning across her he unlatched the door and pushed it open for her to get out. ‘Wait there while I park, then I’ll guide you around the puddles.’ Once the lights from the car were out nothing pierced the darkness but the dull light from the porch. ‘Now then,’ Giles said as he walked unerringly to her side, ‘there’s a puddle just here, I’ll steer you round it.’ He had his arm around her shoulder; she wanted the moment to last forever.

  Grow up, she told herself, what’s the matter with you? You’ll soon be twenty. At your age most girls have probably been out with men lots
of times. But I never have, this is the very first time and he isn’t like ordinary people, he isn’t just anybody, he’s Giles Lampton. Even now, in the light from the porch, he’s still keeping his arm around me. Does that mean he feels like I do, so churned up with – with – with what? Love? But he can’t be, not with me.

  ‘You’re miles away,’ he said softly. ‘What is it, sweet Tessa? Are you frightened that I’ve brought you here, just the two of us in the middle of the dark wood? Are you remembering all the wise warnings about being alone with strange men?’

  ‘Of course I’m not frightened. And you’re not a strange man. If you were I wouldn’t be here with you. I’m really interested to see your cottage.’

  He cupped her chin in his hand and raised her face. ‘My cottage is merely an excuse to get you to myself for the evening,’ he said in a voice that made it impossible for her to meet his gaze. Surely he must know how hard her heart was beating. But apparently he didn’t, for when he spoke again those last wonderful words might have been a dream. ‘Don’t expect too much of it. It’s a bit of a tip, really.’ Then releasing his hold of her and taking a large key from under an empty upside-down plant pot, ‘Although I did my best to tidy it before I came to meet you.’

  ‘You needn’t have done that. Honestly, I wouldn’t have minded. Silly, isn’t it, but if I went into a house belonging to another woman and found it a muddle I would mind. But it seems different for a man.’

  He laughed as he ushered her inside and flicking his cigarette lighter held the flame so that he could see the box of matches left in readiness to light the oil lamps. ‘A very proper sentiment,’ he said with mock seriousness.

  ‘I didn’t mean that men have to be fussed over and waited on. I don’t believe that at all. It’s just that I expect they have different priorities. Actually Uncle Richard is very tidy, always puts his wellingtons properly side by side in the lobby, folds the newspaper, opens his envelopes with a blade, things like that. But I don’t expect all men are like that. Are you?’

  ‘I’ve never thought about it. Tell you what: I’ll watch myself and let you know.’

  She chuckled as she said, ‘Silly!’ That moment of self-awareness in the porch might never have happened. ‘What a dear little house. And lamplight is so much nicer than electricity, don’t you think? So warm, sort of full of comfort.’

  Watching her, Giles thought what a delightful child she was. Child? As unworldly as a child, certainly, yet there was something wise about her for all her naivety. A delightful child, he repeated silently, that’s what she is and that’s how I must think of her. In the glow of the hurricane lamp swinging from the hook in the porch he had felt he had seen into her secret soul. Don’t be an ass, he told himself; you know damn well she has some sort of adolescent crush on you. What he hadn’t expected was an emotion within himself, an unknown sensation. Right from the day he had first met her, often he’d found it hard to put the thought of her out of his head. It had come between him and his work, it had haunted him as he lay in bed unable to sleep, it had followed him into his dreams. There had been plenty of women in his life, women of his own sort, enjoying their sexuality. So why couldn’t he put Tessa from his thoughts? What he felt for her was lust, unadulterated lust, he told himself repeatedly. If he were completely honest he had even let himself imagine how this evening might have turned imagination into reality. But he mustn’t let that happen. Somewhere in the world there must be a young lad who would one day be her husband, who would awaken her dormant passion; for beneath her rather old-fashioned manner he instinctively knew there was passion, like a silent volcano waiting to erupt.

  It took no more than seconds for these thoughts to chase across Giles’ mind.

  ‘There’s no heating in the kitchen so you may prefer to keep your coat on while we organize supper. Steak, mushrooms, crusty bread. Not much of a feast to invite you to share – especially to share the cooking of it.’

  ‘It sounds delicious and sharing getting it ready will be fun. I don’t need my coat: the grill will keep me warm.’ Then, watching him light the oil lamp that hung from a beam in the kitchen ceiling, ‘But how come you have a gas cooker?’

  ‘It’s bottle gas. A pipe comes in through the wall. A chap comes every month and changes the bottle. Not that I’m here that often and when I am I don’t bother with much cooking if I’m working so the one he takes away is never empty – sometimes it won’t have been used at all. But if I altered the arrangement I might find I’d have to fix it myself.’

  ‘I don’t expect it’s very complicated.’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not to some folk, I dare say. Anyway, I’ve no intention of finding out.’

  To some people his approach to a simple task might have lost him respect, but to love-struck Tessa it was yet another example of how removed he was from the world of lesser men.

  ‘Do you know about grilling?’ she asked. ‘Or would you rather I did the steak and you peeled the mushrooms and fried them?’

  ‘Steak I can do. The frying pan is in that cupboard and you’ll find oil on the end of the bench. How do you like your steak? I have mine a bit charred on the outside and very rare in the middle. But you can have it as you prefer. My cooking talents are limited but I can cook steak to perfection.’

  ‘Do mine the same as yours. But let me get going first, or give me a hand peeling the mushrooms.’

  ‘OK, that’s the best plan. Let me pour us a glass of wine while we’re slaving at the hot stove.’

  Often enough Tessa prepared meals at Chagleigh Farm just as when she hadn’t been working at the hotel she had cooked for her grandmother and herself, but never had she experienced an atmosphere as there was in the tiny kitchen of Hideaway Cottage. She noticed that when her wine glass was half empty Giles topped it up, just as he did his own. Was that why she had such a warm, complete sort of feeling, as if all her life had been leading to this moment? But her feet hadn’t quite left the ground and when she saw Giles coming towards her glass with the bottle for yet another top up, she shook her head.

  ‘You go ahead, but don’t give me any more. You see, at home – on the island, I mean – Gran and I only drank wine with our meal at Christmas, Easter and birthdays. I hadn’t thought about it, but I don’t think they ever have it with meals at the farm. So I mustn’t let you take me home tiddly! Gosh, doesn’t this smell good! Lunch feels like hours ago. Shall I cut some hunks of this crusty bread?’

  A couple of minutes later she carried their glasses as he led the way with the tray of food. The lamplit living room, the warmth of the flickering flames of the burning logs, the none-too-neatly-folded morning paper on the couch left there as if confirmation that Giles hadn’t a natural eye for tidiness despite the effort he said he had made in readiness for her visit, all of it added to an atmosphere Tessa felt to be perfect.

  ‘It’s a lovely cottage. But, do you know, it isn’t a bit the kind of home I expected you to have,’ she said as she waited while he carried a small gate-leg table topped by the tray of food to the fireside.

  ‘And what sort of a home would that be?’ he asked, his tone making her feel childish and out of her depth.

  ‘I don’t know that I’d really given it any thought,’ she answered, determined not to give a hint of the hours of each day when he filled her mind. ‘I suppose modern, perhaps a service flat. This is homely, the sort of place that makes you want to kick off your shoes and curl up on the sofa.’

  ‘What a delightful idea. Perhaps we’ll try it after we’ve eaten our supper. More wine?’

  About to refuse, she remembered her effort to appear sophisticated. ‘Thank you. The result of our labour deserves wine.’ But she must keep control of herself. How much wine would it take to make her ‘tiddly’? She had an uncomfortable feeling that Giles could read her thoughts. ‘After we’ve eaten and cleared up the mess, will you show me your workroom?’ Then with a chuckle that escaped before she could hold it back, ‘It’s the sort of maternity ward for
all my friends in Burghton.’

  ‘Labour ward might be the more accurate description. Yes, if you want to see it. But I fear my clearing up didn’t stretch that far.’

  But when, the meal eaten and the dishes washed, he opened the door leading off the living room and ushered her into what she thought of as his private sanctum, she was disappointed. It was surprisingly tidy, no papers left around, nothing to show that this was where the inhabitants of Burghton saw the light of day. The typewriter was covered and by its side a machine she couldn’t identify.

  ‘Where do you keep what you type? The room looks as though no one uses it.’ She couldn’t keep the disappointment from her tone.

  ‘The good folk of Burghton are safe in the top draw. And that, I’m afraid, is how things will be for a while. Someone from Deremouth cycles over to do my typing. I dictate on to this machine and leave it for her. Mrs Johnson has been very reliable, until this last week she’s never let me down. She lost her husband a year or so ago and must have quite a struggle to bring up their four children on her own. Now one of the brood has gone down with measles, no doubt to be followed in quick succession by the other three. So until she can come back I have no typist.’

  How could she keep the admiration out of her gaze as she looked at him? A man of national repute – national and international, she corrected herself – and yet he made no mention of getting rid of this Mrs Johnson and engaging a replacement; already Tessa had held him on a pedestal, but what he said raised him even higher.

  ‘I have an idea,’ she said, speaking even as it formed. ‘If you don’t want to engage a proper typist – and I think it’s splendid that you’d rather wait for this Mrs Johnson, who must need the work – what about if I keep your work up to date?’