The house was Georgian and very gracious, with the customary long windows and lofty ceilings. Several generations had handed down the beautiful furniture, Persian carpets, exquisite chandeliers and beautiful paintings that made it a remarkable yet extremely comfortable home.
They had aperitifs out on the terrace, because it was such a warm night. The position of the house at Top O’ Town gave it a wonderful view over the fields and river down below.
It was the first time Mabel had been close to Harriet, Michael’s guest. She had seen her several times, but not talked to her, and she realized immediately that when people said how sweet she was, that translated as insipid. She was pretty – blonde, blue-eyed, small and curvy in an attractive pink dress – but she had a very tiny mouth, reminding Mabel of a doll.
Mabel went out of her way to talk to her, but she smiled rather vacantly and agreed with everything Mabel said. It was tempting to say something outrageous, just to see if that would jolt her out of her tiresome dullness.
But Clara had warned Mabel that, whatever she thought of the girl, she wasn’t to show it. So Mabel admired her dress, and her hair, talked about the weather and how much she liked listening to the band in Borough Gardens.
She was very relieved when she was rescued by Paul and Marcia Henderson, who were impressed that she’d done some nursing and wanted to know about the prison camp.
Thankfully, Leticia had put Mabel between Thomas and Paul Henderson for dinner. Harriet was on the other side of the table, between Michael and Gerald.
But Clara, sitting at the top of the table, led the conversation. She sparkled with fun, drawing people out, and had clearly found out facts about the Hendersons and the Toons to aid her in this. She did try with Harriet too, but even she couldn’t winkle an interesting topic or outrageous remark out of her. Clara noticed that Michael seemed tense, but all Harriet did was look at him and giggle and simper.
One thing struck Mabel as she tackled her beef Wellington: she was the girl from Hallsands who would sooner have jumped in the sea from the cliff top than be sitting at this fancy table. Somehow, in only two and a half years, she had managed to lose her fishing past, and make people believe she was a gently-brought-up young lady. She owed her table manners to Mrs Hardy and Clara, and she’d gathered enough poise to be able to talk to people who would once have terrified her.
‘I just love you,’ Thomas whispered to her as he retrieved his dropped napkin. ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’
‘Yes, of course I am. I’m here with you, after all. Everything is good with you.’
He leaned even closer to her. ‘I keep looking at your breasts and wishing I could stroke and kiss them,’ he whispered. ‘Shall I shout it out and really shock everyone?’
Mabel blushed. ‘You’ll do no such thing, behave yourself.’
She wished she had the nerve to tell him she was always imagining him caressing her, and how she really wanted to make love. But until Clara had put the idea into her head about him coming to the cottage, she hadn’t been able to think of anywhere they could go. Should she suggest it? But what if she got pregnant?
‘What are you thinking about?’ he whispered again.
‘You, of course. What else?’ she whispered back. ‘But this isn’t the place to be talking about it.’
‘When, then?’
‘I’m not sure, I need to think about it first.’
17
Thomas called round on Sunday afternoon as Mabel was mowing the grass in the front garden. It was hot, and he wore an open-necked shirt and grey flannel trousers.
‘Hello,’ she exclaimed. ‘This is a surprise. If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve made myself more presentable.’
‘You look perfectly presentable to me,’ he said. ‘I like the peasant look.’
Mabel laughed, but more from embarrassment than pleasure. Her dress was the old grey thing she’d been wearing when she ran away from Hallsands. She only ever wore it for gardening or dirty work. She also had a scarf tied round her head like a turban.
‘You said you wanted to discuss something with me. Is this an appropriate time?’
‘Hardly,’ she said, wondering how men could be so stupid sometimes. As if she would want to discuss going to bed with him, in broad daylight, while she was dressed like a scullery maid, and probably smelling sweaty!
‘I see. I’d better push off, then,’ he said, looking hurt.
‘I didn’t mean to be sharp with you, but look at me! I’m dressed for gardening. What I wanted to talk about needs soft light, a glass or two of something special, and somewhere comfy to sit.’
‘Oh, I see.’ He leaned back on the gate, arms folded across his chest. ‘So go and get changed. I can’t make the light softer in full daylight, or even get a drink of champagne, as all the shops are closed. But I could lead you to a haystack.’
She had to laugh then. ‘You win, I’ll settle for a walk. You wait here while I get washed and changed.’
She filled her ewer from the garden tap and took it into the cottage bedroom. Washing in cold water was no hardship when it was so hot outside.
After washing she put on her grey-and-white striped dress, but only a camisole underneath; it was far too hot for petticoats or even stockings. She brushed her hair, fixed it up, with a few curls loose on her cheeks. A dab of powder on her nose, some eau de cologne on her neck and wrists, her straw boater on her head and she was ready.
Thomas smiled as she approached him. ‘A transformation! I hope you’ve left the grumpy Mabel indoors.’
She noticed he had finished mowing the lawn while she’d been gone. ‘I have, and it was kind of you to finish the lawn.’
‘Always ready to offer assistance, that’s me. I also popped in to tell Clara we were going for a walk, in case she needed you.’ He took her hand and led her out on to the riverbank path.
‘Michael told me this morning he’s going to propose to Harriet,’ he said. ‘But I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.’
‘My lips will remain sealed,’ she said. ‘But is he sure? She seemed a bit –’ She stopped suddenly, not liking to say something insulting.
‘Drippy?’ he suggested, raising one eyebrow. ‘Well, I said that to Michael, and he said, “Maybe, but she’ll make a perfect wife and mother.”’
‘Really!’ Mabel exclaimed. ‘I can’t imagine her getting across the road on her own.’
‘He’s not the man he was before he was wounded,’ Thomas sighed. ‘His body is very scarred, he is often in pain, and I think he feels he has to settle for what he can get.’
‘Oh, Thomas, it’s awful he feels that way. He’s a handsome, intelligent man, with so much to offer. She’ll bore him to death in no time.’
‘Or maybe she’ll just keep him alive, Mabel,’ he said in a resigned tone. ‘I know he’s considered the quick way out. I caught him once, soon after we got here, with my father’s pistol in his hand. He said he was just looking at it. But he’d found the bullets and loaded it.’
Mabel’s eyes grew wide with shock. ‘He seems so well balanced to me. He’s not talkative like you, but I didn’t pick up on melancholy.’
‘He has perked up a bit since we started seeing you and Clara regularly. He feels safe with Clara, you see, not just because she takes him out of himself, but because nothing is expected of him, only to turn up and be jolly.’
‘But isn’t he putting his head into the lion’s mouth by contemplating marriage? Does Harriet know about his injuries? Won’t it affect him when they go to bed?’
‘I can’t ask him personal questions like that,’ Thomas sighed again. ‘Who could?’
‘A woman who loved him could,’ Mabel said.
‘She’s all frills and flounces – she reminds me of a fluffy day-old chick. I doubt she even has a clue about what happens on a wedding night. Much less what brutal things war and injuries can do to men’s minds.’
‘Has your leg injury affected you?’ Mabel wondered if he had something affec
ting him too. ‘Now’s the time to own up, if it has.’
‘I think all vital parts are in good working order.’ He grinned. ‘But even I, the most optimistic, never-say-die kind of chap, has to admit to a few trench nightmares. But Michael lay injured in no-man’s-land for hours. He thought he was going to die – he told me he wished for it, he was in such pain. I was lucky. When I got shot my sergeant got me on to a stretcher and back behind the lines within half an hour. I was seen quickly at the dressing station and put on a train to the hospital before I knew it. It’s true I have nightmares about the trenches – the rats, the body parts that came to light when it rained heavily – but not about my injured leg, because that was dealt with, and I was relieved to be sent home.’
‘I see. I’m awfully glad to hear that.’
‘May I remind you this walk was supposed to be about us discussing something personal? So is it really the moment for grisly talk of injuries, rats and trenches?’
One of the things she liked most about Thomas was his ability to make light of things, especially when the conversation was growing weighty.
‘It was about you wanting to caress my –’ She stopped short.
‘Your breasts and any other part of your body too,’ he said with a grin.
She blushed. ‘I have to admit I feel the same, but we can’t, can we? There’s nowhere to be alone.’
‘There is marriage, of course.’
She hadn’t expected him to say that, and it threw her.
‘Lusting after someone isn’t an ideal reason for marriage,’ she said.
‘In my view it’s the best one,’ he laughed.
‘I don’t know if I ever want to get married again, but that isn’t to say I’ve turned my back on love-making.’
Thomas stopped stock-still and just looked at her. ‘That sounds dangerously like a proposition?’ he said, his eyes glinting with amusement. ‘But I never thought I’d ever meet a woman who would suggest it. Have you thought ahead to where this could take place? If not in woods or fields.’
‘In the little cottage I live in,’ she suggested, blushing furiously, because she couldn’t really believe she was being this bold. ‘You could easily slip across the garden without Clara or anyone else seeing you. Or even better, come through the fence at the side of the cottage.’
‘Well, well, well,’ he said, and swept her into his arms without even checking to see if anyone was coming.
As always, his kiss robbed her of even the will to open her eyes and see if they were being watched. She could feel him hardening, and that made her want him even more. A faint, discreet cough warned them someone was coming, and he had to let her go.
They pretended to be looking at some wild flowers, both shaking with laughter, while they let the elderly couple go by.
‘Can we go there now?’ Thomas asked, once the couple had passed, snorting their disapproval.
‘There is something else, before we take the plunge,’ she said, hanging her head, as it was embarrassing. ‘I don’t want to get pregnant.’
‘I can take care of that,’ he said, tilting her chin up. ‘But not today, I’m afraid. So let’s go to the haystack.’
Later that evening, when Mabel had retired to her cottage, she sat for a while by the open door, watching darkness fall over the garden, noting how all the white flowers showed up in the half-light. She thought how delicious it had been with Thomas during the afternoon. They had found a partially made haystack and climbed into it.
It was bliss, just pleasuring each other without penetration, and Thomas was good at it, finding places to touch and stroke that she’d never been aware of before.
But a haystack was a very prickly place, and it made them sneeze. Eventually, they had to get out of it, feeling as if they had ants inside their clothes.
‘Tomorrow night,’ he’d said, as they parted at the gate for Mabel to go in and make tea for her and Clara. ‘I’ll come to the cottage around nine. You tell Clara you are going to bed early.’
The prospect of doing something most people would consider quite wrong made the thought of it even more exciting. Mabel knew it would seem an extra-long day tomorrow, waiting till nine at night.
As darkness finally fell, Mabel lit the oil lamp, shut the door and drew the curtains to stop moths coming in, then took the oil lamp into the bedroom.
She sat at the dressing table, taking the pins out of her hair, and as she brushed it loose, a couple of bits of hay fell out, making her smile.
It was then she saw her mother’s green glass beads. She’d hung them on the mirror when she first moved into the cottage and hadn’t touched them since. But for some reason they seemed to be drawing her to them, so she picked them up and held them in her hand.
The green of the glass reminded her of the colour of the sea just before a storm, and the colour of her mother’s eyes. She looked in the mirror then and saw her eyes were the same; her father had often joked that they were sea green.
As she let the smooth glass beads twine around her fingers, she experienced that familiar sensation of heat, as she had each time she’d had contact with a spirit.
The thought crossed her mind that, if there was no one here to listen to the message, how would she know what was said? But it didn’t seem to matter, as she was slipping away, she didn’t know where, but it wasn’t frightening.
All at once she saw the view of the sea from the cliff top at Hallsands, a view she knew so well. As a child she’d stood in the same spot waiting to spot the shoals of herring. Then she saw Agnes, and she was crying; not the quiet, restrained crying people did at funerals, but wailing, as if she’d suffered a huge personal loss.
As quickly as the image had come, so it disappeared, and Mabel was left with the glass beads in her hands, wondering what it meant.
She was so shaken that she had to go to the door of the cottage and then outside, into the cool night air. There was only one person who would make Agnes cry that way, and that was Martin. Was the message to alert Mabel that he had died?
But the beads had belonged to Mabel’s mother, so the message had come from her. Was she trying to tell her daughter she had to go back to Hallsands?
18
‘What on earth is up with you this morning?’ Clara asked. ‘It’s as if you are sleepwalking.’
Mabel couldn’t tell her friend what was troubling her. She’d lain awake all night just thinking about it. She even picked up the glass beads again several times, in the hope that something else would come through. But there was nothing. The beads remained as cold in her hands as pieces of green ice.
By ten in the morning she knew she had to go to Hallsands and find out what had happened there. Another night of anxiety would be too much to bear. She finished up the normal daily chores and then went to see Clara in her studio upstairs.
‘I’ve got to go back to Hallsands,’ she blurted out. ‘Something has happened there.’
Clara put down her paintbrush and wiped her fingers on a rag. ‘Explain, please!’
Mabel told her about the glass beads. ‘The only time I ever saw Agnes cry was when we went to see Martin in the hospital in Plymouth, when they first brought him home from France. The one thing that would make her as distressed as I saw, or sensed, last night, was if he were dead. I have to know for sure.’
‘I can understand you wanting to know – he was your husband, after all. But isn’t there some way you can find out, without showing your face in the village?’
‘I can’t see how. I certainly don’t want to see Agnes. She’ll attack me, I’m sure of that. I suppose I could go to Kingsbridge and ask a few questions, I wasn’t well known there. If I kept my hair covered up, I might not be recognized – it was nearly three years ago that I left.’
‘I’ve got a pair of dark glasses somewhere, they’d be useful to hide behind. And wear black, people don’t tend to notice women in mourning, let alone ask questions. Do you know the way there?’
‘I can get a train to Exe
ter, and I think there’s one from there to Kingsbridge. But Clara, I arranged for Thomas to come here tonight. I’ll leave a note for him on the cottage door.’
‘You can leave it with me,’ Clara said.
‘He wasn’t going to come until nine, and not to the house,’ Mabel was forced to admit.
Clara half smiled. ‘I see. Well, that makes it easier for me. I won’t have to tell him any lies. But where are you going to say you’ve gone?’
‘To see Mrs Hardy in Bristol,’ Mabel said on the spur of the moment. ‘Yes, that’s it, I’ll say she’s sick. And I felt I must go and see her.’
‘Go, then,’ Clara said. ‘There’s a train just after twelve. Will you telephone me? I’ll be worried.’ She stepped forward and embraced Mabel.
Clara never embraced people. Changing the habit of a lifetime, just when Mabel needed reassurance and affection, made the gesture even more poignant.
‘Yes, of course I’ll ring,’ Mabel said into her neck. ‘I don’t know what to think about this, Clara. If I’m right, and Martin has died, it would solve so many problems, but I can’t be glad of that. I did love him.’
‘I know. And I also know that if it hadn’t been for his hateful mother, you’d never have left. You deserve happiness, Mabel, I want that for you more than anything. Go now, put your mind at rest.’
It was after six in the evening when Mabel got to Kingsbridge. She walked in the opposite direction, away from where Mr and Mrs Porter, who she used to work for, lived. She headed towards a boarding house on the outskirts of the village; she felt she was less likely to run into anyone she knew there.
Fortunately, they had one small room free. Mabel flung herself down on the bed. She had never felt more alone. Even those first few days in Bristol before she got the job with Mrs Gladsworthy, frightening though they were, hadn’t felt quite this desolate.
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