Prancer lifted his head slightly, and then sank again. Bertram said, ‘That’s right, Bridie, he’s been waiting for his dear little girl to come. You have to let him go. His work is done.’
Her da was stroking his friend, crooning to him. Bridie wept, hearing the sounds she was making. Her nose was running, tears dripped onto Prancer. ‘Bridie,’ her da ordered. ‘He doesn’t need that noise to be the last thing he hears from you.’ She looked up. His voice was rock steady and firm, though running down his face was a steady stream of tears.
His hand was steadily stroking. She stopped, eased herself up, and stroked Prancer’s soft muzzle. His lips fluttered against her hands. She said, ‘I should have brought you a carrot, my love. I will if you stay with us, really I will, every day, or sugar. I will do anything if you stay with us.’
James had been to Bertram’s van and was putting a blanket over Prancer. ‘There,’ she said, ‘Good old James, he’s keeping you warm.’
Prancer lifted his head an inch. Her da soothed, ‘Easy, bonny lad. Easy with you.’ Her da’s hair flopped over his eye as it always did, his face pale, the tears dripping onto Prancer.
She saw Prancer’s eyes glazing; a long breath eased into her hand.
James put his arm around her. ‘It’s alright, Bridie. Everything will be alright.’
She stared at the horse she loved, but knew that her love did not compare to that of her da. She stroked Prancer one last time. ‘My dear old friend, my love,’ she whispered. ‘What shall we all do without you?’
James helped her to her feet, and they left her da kneeling beside his horse and moved over to the gate with Bertram and Clive. Marigold, Primrose, Fanny and Terry came to stand with them. ‘It was his heart, the dear old soldier. A long war that he didn’t deserve, and a long peace that he truly did,’ Bertram said. ‘I’ll arrange the disposal.’
James shook his head. ‘No, you won’t. Absolutely you won’t.’ Now his voice was breaking, and his eyes were full. ‘He stays here, at Easterleigh. I’ll bury him, near the old oak up at the end of the pasture. He loved it there, but first we should get Aunt Evie and my mother. They need to take Uncle Aub somewhere else while I do it. I’ll go, you stay here, Bridie.’
Clive was pale and distraught, soothing Fanny, while Marigold nuzzled his neck. ‘Horses know,’ he said. ‘They need to grieve. I’ll take them to him, just so they can say goodbye, otherwise they’ll worry, thinking he’s just abandoned them.’
He said to Bridie, ‘I didn’t know, Bridie. I just thought he wasn’t quite right, or I’d have got you here sooner.’ He walked to Prancer, and the horses followed. After a while, as the pigeons flew, and the clouds scudded, he led them out of the pasture, down the lane, to the stables.
Bridie waited, clinging to the top bar of the gate, feeling the ancient wood, deeply grained, watching her da and wondering what he was thinking. Perhaps it was about all those years, before the war, with Prancer? Perhaps it was about the war, when Prancer was taken by the army, or maybe about Aunt Ver finding Prancer again, and bringing him home? Perhaps it was the battle they had fought together to aid their mutual recovery?
She didn’t feel the cold wind, but just watched over her father until she heard the others running up the lane. Her mam and Aunt Ver clambered over the gate. Why? When they could just have opened it. The two women flew to her da. They did nothing then; merely waited either side. James arrived with Uncle Richard. ‘He’ll want to bury Prancer himself, stubborn old beggar,’ Uncle Richard said.
‘He can’t,’ Bridie objected. ‘The ground’s too hard, it’s too much for a man with one leg. James said he would.’
‘I phoned Jack. He’ll bring Mart, and Young Stan’s gone to find Charlie, who’s out feeding the grouse. The marras will do it together. They have no need of any of the rest of us, but thank you, James, for offering. Stan’ll bring along the spades and forks. Don’t you worry, they’ll see he’s alright.’
Young Stan was stumping along the lane now, his wheelbarrow full of implements.
In half an hour Uncle Jack and Uncle Mart joined Charlie, who had arrived at the run. The three of them entered the field, while Aunt Gracie and Aunt Gertrude, Charlie’s wife, joined Evie and Ver. James brought the tractor in after them, with tackle to move Prancer to the end of the field, when the time was right.
Bridie walked down the lane. If she didn’t see it, it wouldn’t hurt so much. She reached the road where Uncle Jack had left his Austin and waited. She would return in twenty minutes. She leaned against the signpost. Fordington and Easton to the left, Easterleigh Hall to the right. Her Uncle Richard had arranged for it to be erected to help to guide their guests. Two cars passed, one driven by a guest, who stopped and wound down the window. ‘Bridie, are you quite well?’
She smiled. ‘Perfectly, thank you, Sir Peter. Just waiting for someone.’
Well, she was, because Prancer was a person, really. Sir Peter drove on, hooting his farewell. She watched, but she was drawn back by the sound of a motorbike. She stared as it roared along the road, then changed down through its gears and pulled in, the engine idling as the rider put one foot down to steady the bike. Tim pulled up his goggles. ‘Bridie, I . . .’ he started to say, then stopped, looking down.
She couldn’t believe he was here, out of the blue, after he had done so much damage. She felt the blow, remembered the enjoyment he had felt, the tears her mother told her Gracie had shed in the kitchen, the paleness of her Uncle Jack when he arrived, the look of defeat and hurt she had seen on their faces too often since then.
Now he was here, on a day like this, when none of them needed any more conflict, any more grief. She went to him, so close, she could hear his breathing. ‘Go away. You’re like a bad penny, turning up, causing trouble. Well, not today, you don’t. Leave us in peace, and never hurt my family again. It is my family, Tim, not yours, as you made quite clear to your da. How could you? You’ve broken their hearts.’
His mouth set, his lips clamped together. He started to speak, but she shook her head. ‘Don’t you dare come near us, especially not at a time like this. Prancer is dead, and I won’t have your poison on top of it all. My father’s heart is broken, his marras are needed, not you.’
She turned on her heel and ran up the lane.
James was waiting for her at the gate. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Just walking, and waiting.’ They watched the activity at the end of the field.
James said, ‘It will soon be over.’
‘I can’t believe it. It’s all so strange. Everything is changing. I know I keep thinking this, but look at the world, look at today.’
James was staring up at the pigeons flying from the woods, just as she did, and as Tim once would have done. ‘Something must have spooked them,’ he said.
Over to the left, where wheat had been sown, green shoots were appearing. At the top of the field the marras were filling in the hole while the women looked on. James said, ‘While we’re talking of things changing, I’m definitely going to Spain, Bridie. Not yet. I can’t let your dad down now this has happened. I’ll wait until the end of summer, sometime in August. But I have to go. It won’t just be the Italians helping Franco to knock at the Republicans’ door, but Tim’s friends will be there too. I need to do something to stop them. I decided a while ago.’
Two days later, Bridie finished a training session with Terry as David pushed his wheelchair over from the Neave Wing, with Daniel Forsyth tapping his white stick beside him. She led the roan back to the stables, her entourage in tow, David laughing and saying, ‘It’s the blind leading the legless, not the blind leading the blind.’
Daniel muttered, ‘I’ll let your tyres down if you go on.’
She called over her shoulder as she handed Terry to Clive. ‘How are the pneumatic tyres?’
‘Fine,’ David said. ‘As long as I don’t go over anything sharp, which is something I wouldn’t put past young fellow m’lad to organise, if he could only see where
to put the tacks.’
She smiled, wiping her hands down her jodhpurs. Young Stan came into the yard. ‘How did he do, Bridie?’ he asked.
From the stables came Terry’s whicker. Dave laughed. ‘There you go, Bridie. Our Terry’s heard his master’s voice.’
Bridie laughed, but not inside. Yes, Terry did prefer Young Stan, just as Prancer had preferred her. She wasn’t needed anywhere, not really, and soon James would be gone. She nodded to the two young men. ‘So, are you staying here, Dave, to cheer on those who need help?’
Dave looked up at her. ‘Of course I am. We’re down to two trained horses, and we need a few young crocks to cheer on the beginners from the Wing.’
She walked away, striding out to the pasture, straight to the top end where the turfs were yellowing. Would they grow and green up? Young Stan said so. She stared down at them.
‘What shall I do, Prancer?’ She laughed slightly. ‘Well, if you told me, it would be the shock of the century. So, it’s up to me, bonny lad, I suppose. I want to go with James, but how? He would send me back, I know it.’ She hunkered down, patting the ground. ‘See you tomorrow, old lad.’
She headed towards the Hall, but at the last minute diverted to the cedar tree, where everything always seemed better. She stood beneath it, staring up, seeing glimpses of the sky through its branches, feeling her tension leaching from her. What was it about trees that did this for people? Her da had planted so many on his return that the new arboretum was larger than the one started a century ago on the west side.
Well, perhaps to say he had planted them was a step too far, her mam had said. Old Stan had got his weight behind the spade, but her da had helped manoeuvre the young trees into the holes, and sort out the supports.
Old Stan, eh? Now it was Young Stan. Forget Middle Stan, because he was dead, killed in the war, but there were still battles to fight. Would bullies never learn? Would others always have to stop them? Would none of it ever end? It wasn’t twenty years since the end of the last war, for pity’s sake.
There was a rushing in the branches above her, and a pigeon flew out to flap across the lawn towards the ha-ha. ‘If Uncle Charlie sees you, it’ll be pigeon pie again, my lad. There are too many of you by half, and you’ll be after the grain and the shoots. We’ll be sick of the taste of you,’ she murmured.
She sat down, her back against the trunk, facing the Hall. Beneath her the roots would be reaching down and across. Was that the secret of the magic of trees? Did humans in some way think of those strong roots holding the tree steady in the face of whatever the elements threw? Unless it was blown up, as the earlier cedar was, by whom the children had never been told, but she thought she knew.
She felt the tension in her shoulders again. Surely it was Millie, and that POW, Heine, before they scarpered. Well, now the two of them had even destroyed the threesome she, James and Tim had always been. On top of that, James was off to fight, while she, Bridie Brampton, was just talking a good talk, and fiddling about stopping a sponge mix from curdling.
She heard her mam calling from the archway into the stable yard, ‘Bridie, we need you.’
Some guests were walking their poodles along the drive: crunch, crunch, yap, yap. What on earth would Currant and Raisin think of these primped and precious little creatures with their pom-pom tails? Did they bark in French? Was Paris absolutely stuffed full of them? The idea of the dachshunds being faced with a flurry of them as they eyed up the legs of the Eiffel Tower, seeing if they were ripe for marking, made her laugh as she rose, brushed off her skirts and headed for the kitchen.
*
A week later, while Bridie prepared a large bowl of sponge mixture after luncheon for some fancies, she heard Mrs Moore tutting. The old lady sat in the armchair, knitting, with Currant on her lap.
Bridie called, ‘Dropped a stitch?’
‘More than one, pet. Sometimes my hands are canny and do what I want; sometimes they’re a right pain.’
‘Is it another scarf?’
‘What else? I like to use bits and bobs of leftover wool, which the WI at Easton collect for me. I can’t abide waste.’ She laid down her needles, and Currant sniffed the knitting and then thought better of it, as Mrs Moore fixed her with a glare. ‘Which brings me to you, lass.’
‘What does?’ Bridie had creamed the butter and sugar together and was now beating the eggs in a separate bowl.
Mrs Moore was untangling some wool. ‘Waste. Now, my Bridie. There’s change in the air, I can sense it. You’re restless, James is like a cat on a hot tin roof while he waits for university, and Tim . . . Well, he’s chasing around trying to find himself. You are making yet another sponge cake, and it will be delicious. But it is something you have done many, many times before. Sixteen and a half is almost old age, so what’s to be done?’
Bridie folded some whisked egg into the cake mixture. It began to curdle, so she sieved, and then more egg, and then more . . . She could do it blindfold; and longed to have the time to try other things. She sieved, stirred, added eggs, sieved, stirred and sighed. She looked at Mrs Moore, and then around the kitchen, her beloved kitchen. It had been the same last year, the year before, the decade before. Would it be the same always? Good English cooking, fancies for tea?
She sieved the remains of the flour and slumped onto the stool. Raisin yelped in his sleep.
She stared at Mrs Moore, remembering the French poodles who had yelped for two hours one night in their owners’ bedroom, and why not? A strange room, and a strange country. Their owners were from Paris, and had chatted to her about haute cuisine when they came to have a look at the stables. Mrs Moore had been there, listening too.
That was it. The confusion fell from her. ‘You are a witch, you know, dear Mrs Moore. I think you have a cauldron in your apartment, one that you sit over while poor Mr Harvey wonders what spell you’re about to cast. How can you sum up what’s going on in my head, just like that, when I didn’t even know what I was thinking, until this minute?’
‘Aye, well, I’ve had your mother through my hands, and look what she and Ver got up to, attending suffrage meetings, organising the hospital, dealing with things you must hope you never see. Then there’s Gracie, pacing her kitchen until she packed her bags and took herself off to war. So I know “restless” when I see it. The thing is, what are you going to do about it, apart from get on with that sponge before it spoils?’
Bridie poured the mixture into greased pans, and slid them into the oven. ‘Cookery School,’ she breathed. She’d go to Paris, learn haute cuisine. Then James could come to see her when he was on his way to Spain, and she would go with him, somehow, hanging unseen on his coat-tails, if that’s what it took. Then Tim would see what a mistake he’d made: he was a Nazi; they were in opposition. That would teach him.
That evening, Bridie knocked at her father’s study door at Home Farm.
‘Come in, Bridie.’
She entered. ‘Have you eyes that are not only in the back of your head, but that can see through doors?’
He grinned up at her. ‘That’s right, nothing to do with the fact that I’ve been hearing you knock on that door since you were able to walk. Come and sit with me. I’m just sorting out the stock ordering. You’ll be fascinated, I don’t think.’
She laughed, her heart lighter than it had been for what seemed years. She walked across the polished and spotless old oak flooring. Molly, the farmhouse housekeeper from Easton, ruled the house with a rod of iron, and the floor was her pride and joy.
She brought him a piece of the sandwich sponge she had baked that afternoon, while she and Mrs Moore had worked on a plan to change the idea of a Paris cookery school into reality. He took the plate, as she settled herself in the ‘swing around’ chair he kept next to his.
He tried a forkful. ‘Delicious. I love the gooseberry jam with the cream. Perhaps it would help if I put in an order to Home Farm dairy to feed the cows jam? Then you could just whack it in the sandwich. Is that why you’re here
– because I only have cake if I’ve been a very good father, or you want something very important? So I must eat it quickly in case I have to say no.’
He gobbled it up while Bridie laughed, but couldn’t hide her nervousness. She gathered herself, then embarked on pretty much the same conversation she’d had with Mrs Moore, telling him that she was restless, that she needed to expand her experience, that she was sixteen and a half.
At that point her da put his plate on the desk, wiped his mouth on the napkin she’d brought, and sat back in his chair, looking not at her, but swinging round to look out of the window. She did the same. The trees, dimly lit by the moon, moved in the wind.
‘Goodness,’ he said, ‘how very old. Sixteen and a half, eh, and needing a change of scene, and an expansion of skills.’
She rushed on, ‘Easton lads were fighting in the war and working down in the mines at my age. Alright, the soldiers lied about their age, but . . .’ She stopped.
He had swung back to his desk and was doodling on his blotting pad. She swung back too, used to the ritual. Her da said into the silence, ‘Not sure that you can compare war with a cookery course, darling girl.’ He looked up now, staring intently into her eyes. Had he guessed?
He continued, ‘However, I think perhaps we could compare your mother’s reaction to you leaving for Paris, to you asking to join up.’
‘Paris? How did you know I was thinking of Paris?’
‘Do you think Mrs Moore would let you go into battle on your own? She is more formidable than any sergeant major I have ever had the misfortune to come across, except perhaps for Matron. She has briefed me on every single aspect of your recent conversation.’
‘Oh, Da, and you let me go on, and bring cake.’ Relief and stress vied with one another.
‘I need you to convince me, Bridie, that you will brush up on your French before you leave, though I know Gracie and your mam have taught you well; I need to know that you will work hard, and most of all behave. I want you to come back. I do not want you falling in love with a Frenchman and leaving us.’
A House Divided: An Easterleigh Hall Novel Page 14
