Annie hadn’t met Kate yet, but Freddie had tried to tell her about their friendship. Her reaction had been ominous.
‘You’re both too young to be courting,’ she’d warned.
‘We’re not courting,’ said Freddie, annoyed.
‘Well, what do you call it then?’
‘We’re just friends.’
‘You should be helping me on a Sunday, not running round with the likes of her.’
Freddie had felt his face go hot with anger at hearing Kate described in such a way. Still haunted by the memory of Levi’s rages, he deliberately distanced himself from his mother’s inflammatory remarks with a brief silence and a calm, unruffled reply.
‘Kate is a decent girl; you’d like her. She’s from a good family, farmers they are, out at Hilbegut.’
‘Oh them. That Loxley family, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t want to get mixed up with them. They’re POSH,’ Annie said bitterly. ‘Sent those girls to boarding school. They aren’t our kind of folk, Freddie. That Sally Loxley. I KNOW HER. Went to school with her. Sally Delby she was then. And when she was growing up, she was a flirt. Wild and shameless, that’s what she was – and when she married Bertie Loxley, then she turned into such a snob. She . . .’
‘Calm down, Mother. I’ll be back to help you later.’ Freddie had said no more, but left Annie grumbling to herself in the kitchen, and headed out resolutely to see Kate.
That was a fortnight ago. He thought about the last time he’d seen Kate. She hadn’t been any different. Or had she? He remembered a couple of times when a shadow had crept into her eyes, but when he’d asked her if anything was wrong she’d changed the subject in her cheery way.
As he set off for Hilbegut through the dark afternoon, Freddie felt increasingly anxious, and guilty too about leaving his mother alone with a thunderstorm brewing. Annie was frightened of thunder. She would be sitting under the table, Freddie thought, as he steered the lorry out across the Levels. The fields looked sombre, the cattle huddled into corners and the breeze was turning up the leaves of the silver poplars, their white undersides like shoals of fish underwater.
The roads across the Levels were dead straight with grass verges sloping steeply down to deep rhynes. Freddie concentrated on keeping the lorry on the narrow, uneven track. One wheel on the grass verge and the lorry would roll into the ditch. The lightning was distracting, and above the noise of his engine, he heard thunder. Hailstones bounced on the road in front of him and pinged on the bonnet of the lorry as he drove into the storm that had broken over Hilbegut. Blinded by the violent hail, Freddie was forced to stop in the middle of the Levels, and, fearing the engine would overheat, he turned it off and sat there in the cab next to an old crack willow which stood alone on the green Levels.
Within minutes the ground was white all over with a layer of crunchy hailstones, and lightning was dancing over the fields as if the thunderclouds had come right down to touch the earth. Freddie had never felt afraid of storms, in fact he’d rather enjoyed them, but out in the open, he knew there was a danger of being struck. If that happened, the petrol tank would explode in a fireball and he would die. All his life Annie had relentlessly instilled her fears into his young mind and he felt engulfed by the accumulated mass of terror, the sting of each hailstone was like a word she had spoken, bombarding him with ice. He felt he had to hack his way through it to get to the bright flame that was Kate.
Freddie wrapped his arms over the steering wheel and put his head down on them, the sound of the hail roaring in his ears, the lorry shuddering with each roll of thunder and the branches of the crack willow bending and tossing outside. He closed his eyes and saw himself hunched there in the storm, like a pip inside an apple, protected in a hard shiny case. The cab of the lorry was shielding him, the hailstones battering at the glass, building peaks of ice up the windscreen, but he was inside, and once he had travelled into the centre of his mind, he felt calm. An old sweet scent from long ago filled the cab, a sharp tang of boot polish, the heavy sweetness of meadow hay.
‘Start the engine.’
Freddie looked up into the eyes of his grandfather, the man he had seen under the lime tree in the wood. He was stunned. After all the years of unyielding toil he could still see spirit people. He wasn’t dead inside. And they hadn’t abandoned him.
He pulled the starter, and the engine hiccupped a few times, then fired, blowing smoke out of the exhaust. Freddie smeared the steamed-up windscreen and peered out. Now he could see the far edge of the storm like a slice of apple in the western sky. It was still hailing, but he drove forward slowly, the tyres crunching through slush. He didn’t dare turn his head but he sensed his grandfather was still beside him along the treacherous road, over the river bridge, and up onto higher ground, the hailstones melting and pouring down the lanes in twisting rivulets of brown water. The hail changed to silver bristles of rain sweeping and swerving across the landscape, and when he reached the village of Hilbegut it was awash with flood-water. People were rushing about with brooms and buckets, the water lapping at their doorsteps.
Freddie drove slowly through, making a small bow-wave, and headed uphill towards the chimneys and turrets of Hilbegut Court. He paused outside the entrance to the avenue of copper beeches, and saw that the great wrought iron gates were closed, the lawn grass was long and unkempt, and a thousand jackdaws sat on the roof, beaks to the western sky, the brassy light glistening on their black feathers.
Turning in to Hilbegut Farm brought a familiar buzz of excitement in his body. He imagined Kate opening the door to him, her big bright eyes filling his soul. She always made him feel like the most important person on earth. When he’d spent a couple of hours with her, his face actually ached from unaccustomed smiling.
He knew that Kate’s parents liked him. Sally and Bertie had made him welcome with cups of tea and scones fresh from the oven. Only Ethie had been offhand and resentful, and he’d been surprised to find Kate being so kind and understanding towards her prickly-natured sister. Today he felt sure they would welcome him and perhaps be glad of the help he and his lorry could offer if they were moving house.
The storm had slunk away towards Monterose and the late afternoon light glowed mellow on the farmhouse chimneys. But the stone lions were gone, the tall gateposts demolished, and in their place were two iron stakes and a pair of metal gates.
A dread, cold as the hailstones, entered Freddie’s heart. He parked the lorry and got out, stretched, and picked his way through puddles to open the gates. A terrible sight confronted him. Barbed wire had been wound along the tops of the gates, and a padlock on a heavy chain held them firmly closed. Inside was a white notice with black letters: ‘TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED’.
Devastated, Freddie stood at the forbidding gates, looking in at the farmyard. Not a duck or a goose or a chicken, no sound of cows from the milking shed, no dogs barking. Only the swallows dived in and out of the barns. The swing hung, unused, in the barn doorway. And the windows of the farmhouse, which had always been bright with curtains and ornaments, had the wooden shutters closed, barred and padlocked. It made the friendly old house look blind and sad.
They couldn’t have gone far, Freddie reasoned. Kate knew he lived at the bakery in Monterose, and surely she would contact him. He walked along the boundary wall round to the back, seeking a way in. The back gate was locked and wired and he peered through, noticing that the saddle stones which had lined the path had gone. He stood on a milk churn against the wall and climbed over, using the espalier pear tree as a ladder to climb down inside. He listened, and heard the garden dripping and the gurgle of water pouring over the sides of the rain butt. Even the sparrows seemed to have gone, and only a robin sang in the abandoned garden, the ground covered in lingering clusters of hailstones and mirror-like puddles.
One of the shutters was broken, and he squinted through into the interior of the kitchen. In the dim light he was surprised to see the kitchen table a
nd chairs still there, the mat still on the flagstone floor in front of the stove. A shining trickle of water was creeping across the floor. He watched it gathering into a pool, and no one was there to sweep it out with the brooms that stood unused against the wall. The room which had been a hub of life with Sally and her two girls bottling fruit and making butter, a room which had rung with Kate’s laughter, now looked colourless and tomb-like.
Freddie needed to think, so he sat on the swing in the barn door, feeling sure that no one was watching him, a grown man swinging like a child in a place where trespassers would be prosecuted. The words sounded dreadful to him, like ‘hung, drawn and quartered’, but he didn’t care. He moved the swing to and fro, higher and higher, and he could feel Kate there with him, her red ribbon flying as she swung out of the barn and in again. The higher he swung the more he could see over the wall, and in the golden, storm-washed sky of late afternoon a tower of black smoke was rising. Freddie got off the swing and climbed the stone steps up the side of the barn to the open archway of the hayloft. From there he could see across the Levels to Monterose, the rhynes gleaming in the sunlight, the fields glinting with water. Freddie focused on the smoke billowing from a blazing fire in the middle of the Levels. A tree. It was a tree on fire. A cold realisation crept up Freddie’s spine. The old crack willow where he had parked his lorry had been struck by lightning and was burning fiercely.
Stunned, he watched it, suddenly aware that his life had been saved. Why? he thought. Why me? Why does my life matter? The answers came as he thought of Kate, and he thought of the stone angel waiting to be carved from the block of Hilbegut stone. I’m not a lorry driver, he thought. I’m someone else, someone I haven’t discovered.
A loneliness crept over him. Cold and tired, he headed back to climb over the wall and go home. Then something made him turn, as if a hand pushed him, and he walked round to the front of the house. He stood looking at the front door under its thatched porch, and a fragment of red caught his eye. A red ribbon, hanging from a crack in the wall.
Freddie reached up and pulled it gently, and found it attached to a white sealed envelope which slid out of the crack and into his hands.
Chapter Fifteen
THE WATER IS WIDE
‘How much is this map?’
‘Ninepence,’ said the postmistress, peering at Freddie through the iron grille of her domain. ‘And they’re good ones. You won’t find better. It’s got all the roads, and the railways and even the hills and valleys in Great Britain.’
‘What about the rivers?’ Freddie asked.
‘And the rivers. They’re shown in blue squiggly lines,’ she said, hanging on to the tightly folded map.
‘I’ll take it, please.’ Freddie delved into his pocket and produced a sixpence and three pennies. He wasn’t used to shopping, and it had taken him about ten minutes to decide to buy the map which he wasn’t allowed to look at first. Ninepence seemed expensive for a bit of paper.
‘Going travelling, are you?’ The postmistress raised her eyebrows, teasing him as she took the money and slid the map over the counter. ‘Now, is there anything else? We’ve got a long queue behind you.’
Freddie hesitated.
‘Well – a box of writing paper and envelopes please – and a book of stamps.’
‘Ah!’ she grinned knowingly. ‘Got a young lady to write to, have we?’
Freddie could hear some girls giggling in the queue behind him, and he felt his neck going red as he stood there, his trousers too short and covered in dust and oil.
‘That’ll be another shilling.’
He had a shilling but chose to rummage in his pockets again, the postmistress rolling her eyes as he slowly counted out twelve pennies. Then he paused to put the map into his inner jacket pocket, and turned to pad thoughtfully out of the post office, his eyes staring at a kestrel hovering in the sky outside. He didn’t want to look at anyone. The pain of losing Kate stung in his throat and he wanted to go home, spread the map out on the scullery table, and see where she had gone to live.
‘Hello, Freddie!’ Joan Jarvis was at the back of the queue, dressed up in her fox furs, a brand new willow basket squeaking on her arm.
‘Oh – hello, Mrs Jarvis,’ said Freddie, respectfully. He looked down at the hand she had put on his arm and saw long red painted nails. Bird’s claws, he thought with a shudder.
‘Joan,’ she insisted. ‘How’s business?’
‘Pretty good. Busy.’
‘I hear you’ll be getting a second lorry soon,’ said Joan brightly. ‘You are doing well.’
Freddie knew that Joan liked and admired him. She’d often stopped to talk to him in her encouraging way, but right now he didn’t feel like talking, especially as her voice carried all over the shop and out into the street.
‘You remember Susan, my daughter.’
Freddie glanced at the slim girl with bobbed blonde hair who looked as if she didn’t want to be there.
‘This is Freddie Barcussy, Susan. You know – he used to help you over the bridge. Oh, you were silly.’
‘Hello.’ Freddie looked briefly at Susan. She didn’t interest him, but he remembered the frightened little girl she had been, and thought she still looked frightened, of her mother, he guessed. ‘I won’t shake hands,’ he said, ‘I’m covered in stone dust.’
‘Stone dust? What have you been doing?’ asked Joan.
‘I’m having a go at a bit of stone carving,’ said Freddie.
Joan looked at him with keen interest, and to Freddie’s relief the queue moved forward. ‘I shall come and see what you’ve made one day.’ Joan looked back at him perkily like a bird on the lawn. ‘Bye now.’
‘Bye.’
He walked home without looking at anyone, carrying the box of writing paper. The bakery was busy with customers, Annie in the shop and Gladys making scones in the back. Freddie escaped upstairs and spread the map on the table in his bedroom window. He found Monterose, and followed the road with his pencil stub, along the ridge of the Poldens where he and Kate had picnicked, on through Glastonbury and Wells, then over the Mendips. Kate had vividly described the River Severn to him, but when he found Aust Ferry and saw how wide it was, Freddie’s heart sank. He’d visualised an ordinary river, a bit wider than the Cary or the Brue, not such an expanse of water coloured blue like the sea. He took his ruler, looked at the scale of the map, and measured, once, then again in disbelief. The Severn was a mile wide at Aust Ferry. Freddie had never even seen the sea, and he couldn’t imagine a mile of water. All that space, hills and valleys and a wide, wide river separating him from Kate.
Kate’s letter was in his inner pocket next to his heart. Extracting it from the silky lining of his jacket he read it again.
Dear Freddie,
I will always treasure the time I have spent with you, such a happy time, and I thank you for sharing it with me.
Sadly, I must tell you that we are leaving Hilbegut. The Squire has died, and his family from Canada are ruthlessly reclaiming his estate, and we were given two weeks’ notice to leave. I didn’t want to go, of course, but I must support our family, Mother and Dad and Ethie. We are all broken-hearted, but we must make the best of it. Luckily we have somewhere to go. We shall be living with Dad’s brother, Uncle Don, at Asan Farm on the banks of the Severn River. He’s said we can live in the gatehouse cottage. It’s derelict but we can make it nice and we shall all help with the farm. Polly and Daisy are still in Hilbegut, on the next-door farm, and they are being looked after there until we can find a way to transport them to Gloucestershire.
I still want to be a nurse, and perhaps one day I can, but for now I must stay and help the family.
I’ll never, ever forget you Freddie, and I hope with all my heart that we will one day meet again.
All my love,
Kate xx
PS. Write to me!
A small sepia photograph on a square of cream cardboard was enclosed. It was a portrait of Kate’s face, a serious i
mage of a young woman with bright caring eyes. Freddie placed it on the map, in Gloucestershire, and was suddenly overwhelmed by the enormity of the space between them. His heart was no longer in his haulage business. He felt unsettled and disconnected from everyone; he needed time alone to think about his life, and how to disentangle himself from his present commitments. The biggest of these was his bond with his mother. He loved her, yet she drained his energy and his time. Since Levi’s death he’d felt sorry for her, and her agoraphobia had intensified. She was totally dependent on Freddie, and on Gladys who she now employed for a few hours a day.
When he had finished his haulage job, Freddie felt an old familiar feeling – he couldn’t stay at home. He filled the lorry with petrol and headed for the Polden Hills in the balmy afternoon, driving past orchards where the trees were laden to the ground with ripening apples and the hawthorns heavy with berries. He drove slowly along the hilltop until he reached the gap in the hedge where Kate had taken him for the picnic. He parked the lorry tight against the hedge and walked up to the ridge of hill, aware that the grassland around him was now bobbing with seed heads, the orchids had died, the thyme had turned brown, and the trefoil was covered in tiny black pods of seed. Summer was over. And so was his life, Freddie thought gloomily.
He sat down in the spot where they’d had the picnic, and touched the earth where Kate had been sitting. It was warm and crisp like fresh bread, but there was an emptiness, a hollow place in his soul where Kate should have been. His eyes roamed the landscape, scanning that empty strip of silver sky between the Mendips and the Quantocks. Far away he could see the islands of the Bristol Channel floating in some shimmering misty place, and beyond was a whisper of an outline of high and distant hills. Was he seeing over that mile-wide estuary into Gloucestershire where Kate was now? It comforted Freddie to think that he could come up here and gaze directly towards her.
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