Chapter Two
But sometimes, to give him his due, as Linn said, Charlie would call when she was not there and would spend an hour or two talking to Jack, leaving before she returned from her work. Or he would call on a Sunday morning and take young Robert out for a jaunt, sometimes in some ramshackle car, sometimes on the back of a motor-cycle that he was ‘trying out’ for a friend.
‘I hope you don’t drive too fast,’ Linn said, ‘especially on that new main road.’
‘No harm will come to Rob through me. I give you my solemn word on that.’
He and Robert were good friends. Charlie took care that it should be so. But his liking for the boy was genuine ‒ Linn was perfectly sure of that ‒ and as far as Robert himself was concerned, Charlie Truscott could do no wrong.
‘Mother.’
‘Yes?’
‘Can I talk to you?’
‘Goodness! Whatever’s coming?’ she said. ‘Is it something to do with school?’
‘No,’ he said, with a fierce scowl. ‘That’s the last thing I want to talk about.’
‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ Linn replied.
She hoped that Robert, the following spring, would agree to sit the scholarship exam and try for a place at the Grammar School, but the boy himself loathed the idea. All he wanted was to leave school as soon as he could and go to work on one of the farms, preferably Bellhouse, with his grandfather.
‘Well, if it isn’t school,’ she said, ‘what is it you want to talk about?’
‘It’s about Charlie Truscott,’ Robert said.
‘What about him?’
‘If Charlie asks you to marry him …’
‘Oh, it’s that sort of talk! I might’ve known!’
‘Mustn’t I ask you questions, then?’
‘No. You mustn’t. It isn’t polite.’
Linn was making an apple pie. She placed a piece of dough on the board and rolled it out with her rolling-pin. A well-greased dish stood close at hand and she placed the pastry over it, trimming the edge with the back of a knife. Robert watched, his dark eyes intent, admiring the skill and speed of her hand as the knife went round the edge of the dish and the ribbon of pastry fell to the board. Linn’s glance flickered over his face.
‘If by any chance I was to marry Charlie …’
‘Yes, what?’
‘Only supposing, you understand.’
‘Yes, all right.’
‘It means he would be your stepfather. Have you ever thought of that?’
‘He’d still be my friend, though, wouldn’t he?’
There was a wistful look in his eyes and a message of trust that went straight to her heart. He had known few friends in his young life, for her father, in his search for work, had moved many times in recent years, and they had rarely been settled anywhere for more than six months, until coming to Herrick Green.
‘Yes,’ she said gently, touching his face. ‘Charlie would always be your friend, I’m sure of that.’
‘Are you going to marry him, then?’
‘Don’t be in such a hurry,’ she said. ‘People need time to think of these things.’
Briskly, she turned to her pie again, piling the sliced apples into the dish and sprinkling sugar over them. She took the remaining dough from the bowl and began rolling it out on the board.
‘Don’t you think I’m rather old to think of getting married?’ she said.
‘I don’t think you’re old at all. You haven’t gone grey or anything.’
‘No, not yet!’ she said with a laugh. ‘But it won’t be long now, I don’t suppose.’
‘Why won’t it?’
‘Oh, just because!’
She was always laughing these days and the boy could not get over it. He had seen her unhappy so much of his life, trudging about from place to place, always unsettled, always so poor, always beset by anxieties. But they had been fifteen months at Herrick Green and his mother had grown to like the place. Luck had been with them during that time and now she was full of little jokes.
‘You look like a girl,’ he said to her, ‘especially when you laugh like that.’
‘Goodness! You are buttering me up today!’ She took a piece of apple from the pie and popped it, sugary, into his mouth. ‘There!’ she said gaily, laughing again. ‘That’s what you get for flattering me!’
What her young son had said was true: a glance in the mirror told her that; she was indeed like a girl again and felt as she had done at nineteen, before things had happened to change her life.
She had been full of laughter then; her childhood and girlhood had been full of joys; but the war had come and put paid to that. War, and its aftermath of waste, had made her old before her time. But those bad years were behind her now; she was grasping at happiness while she could. There were plenty of things to make her content: she and her father were both in work; they had a good cottage, tied but rent-free; and they had been settled for over a year. All this to Linn was purest balm, after the years of worry and want. And, of course, there was Charlie Truscott.
She saw him almost every day and by now they knew each other well. She knew of his four years’ soldiering; of the girl who had jilted him while he was away; of his careless career with women since then. Charlie, like herself and so many others, had lost four years of his life in the war. He never talked about it directly, but once in the bar at the Fox and Cubs, when somebody mentioned Kemal Pasha, he suddenly said with bitterness: ‘Don’t talk to me about the Turks! I had a bellyful of them when I was out in Gallipoli!’; and his face, in that moment, was terribly harsh.
But Charlie was resilient; always the happy optimist; and whatever had happened to him in the war, he had retained his youthfulness. At thirty-five he was still a boy; full of energy, full of zest; and in his company Linn recaptured something of her own lost youth. The sight of him driving some old sputtering tractor along the mazy Herrick lanes, standing up to it, scorning the seat, eagerly looking over the hedges to see what was happening in the fields, always brought a smile to her lips and caused a disturbance in her heart. Charlie drove with a certain panache, ‘standing up in the stirrups’ as Robert said; he wore his cap at a jaunty angle, always had a spanner stuck in his belt, and carried a packet of cigarettes tucked in the bib of his overalls.
‘What a lot you must smoke in a day!’ she said once.
‘Don’t you approve of it?’ Charlie asked.
‘Oh, it’s not that. Good gracious no! My father smokes and I’m used to it. I was only thinking what it must cost.’
‘Cigarettes are cheap enough, but I’d give it up if you wanted me to.’
‘Would you really?’ she asked, surprised.
‘Yes, if it really mattered to you.’
Linn was impressed. She looked at him. But after a while she shook her head.
‘I shan’t ask you to give it up. What sort of woman would I be if I asked you to do such a thing for me?’
Charlie’s face relaxed in a smile.
‘Golly! That’s a relief!’ he said. ‘For a moment I thought you were going to say yes!’
‘Why, you’re nothing but a sprucer, after all! You never meant to give it up.’
‘Didn’t I? Well, I don’t know!’ There was mischief in his eyes. ‘All I can say is this,’ he said, ‘I’m glad you never put me to the test!’
Friday was Linn’s shopping-day, when she went to Bennett’s at Herrick St John and stocked up with groceries for the week. One wet Friday in October she was surprised, on getting home, to find her father already there.
‘I’ve been laid off,’ he said, grim-faced. ‘The rain has put paid to ploughing for the time being ‒ what tiddly bit there is ‒ and Mr Lawn has sent me home.’
‘Oh, dear, so it’s come at last!’ She hoisted her baskets on to the table and leant over them, wearily easing the stiffness in her arms. ‘How long for? Did Mr Lawn say?’
‘He’ll send for me when he needs me again. God only knows when that’ll be!’
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‘At least he won’t be turning us out of this cottage.’
‘No, he’ll be charging us rent instead.’
‘How much will it be?’
‘Two shillings a week.’
‘Oh, well, that’s not too bad.’ She went to hang up her coat and hat. ‘We can manage that all right.’
‘Yes, well, maybe we can. ‒ If we stop here!’ her father said.
‘What do you mean by that?’ Linn said. Facing him, she was suddenly still. ‘Why shouldn’t we stop here?’
‘Because we’d be better moving on, going some place where I can get work.’
‘Are you serious?’ Linn exclaimed. ‘Are we to go through that again, traipsing about from place to place, living like gipsies, the three of us?’ Standing before him, her hands on her hips, she unleashed the full fury of her wrath. ‘Have you any idea how many times we’ve upped sticks and moved in the past six years? It’s happened no less than thirteen times! Yes, you may stare, but that’s the truth! Thirteen times we’ve shifted about, pillar to post, Robert and me, and if you think I’m going to start again ‒’
‘It’s no fault of mine we’ve had to move. I have to go where the work is.’
‘There isn’t any work on the land these days! It’s time you woke up and accepted that fact! You’re entitled to a pension now. It’s high time you swallowed your stupid pride and put in a claim like anyone else.’
‘God Almighty! Ten bob a week! What good is that, I’d like to know?’
‘So long as I’m working, we can manage all right. Plenty of men are retiring these days, once they’re drawing their pension, and you’ve earnt your rest more than most, what with your bad leg and all.’
‘I can still work, bad leg or no, and there’s jobs to be had if you look for them.’
‘Then why not leave them for the younger men? Those with wives and young children to keep? You’re not obliged to work any more and it’s up to you to stand aside.’
‘Are you saying I’m past it?’
‘All I’m saying is that I am not willing to leave this place and go traipsing about again the way we have done in the past!’
There was silence in the room. Jack sat, stony-faced, the smoke from his pipe swirling about him, clinging in wisps to his beard and moustache. Linn, still trembling after her outburst, turned to the baskets on the table and began unloading her groceries. Tea; sugar; matches; lard; she checked them against her shopping-list; and, glancing at her father’s face, she tried to speak normally.
‘I’m glad I made all that damson jam. It’s gone up a ha’penny at the shop. Here are the laces you asked me for. Leather ones, I hope that’s right? I told Mrs Bennett they had to be strong. Oh, yes, I nearly forgot! ‒ I asked about the corduroys and she’s got some your size at twelve-and-six. I asked her to put them aside for me.’
Jack took the pipe out of his mouth and pressed the tobacco down in the bowl.
‘Is it because of Charlie Truscott that you don’t want to move from here?’
‘I just want to be settled, that’s all. That’s a good enough reason, I should have thought.’
‘Are you going to marry him?’
‘Why, you’re as bad as Robert!’ she said, doing her best to answer lightly. ‘You’re both very free in quizzing me.’ She leant again over her basket and took out candles, sultanas, and rice. ‘Charlie hasn’t asked me yet,’ she said in a carefully guarded tone.
‘And what’ll your answer be when he does?’
‘I’ll think about that when the time comes. If it ever comes at all.’
Jack got up and limped to the door. He snatched down his cap and put it on.
‘Are you going out?’ she said. ‘I was thinking of making some tea.’
‘You needn’t bother on my account!’ And he went out into the drizzling rain.
He had not gone far along the road when Charlie drew up in Clew Wilson’s van.
‘I was just on my way to your place.’
‘Not to see me, though, I’ll be bound.’ Jack jerked his thumb towards the cottage. ‘Linn’s just got back from doing the shopping. I daresay you know the way by now.’
‘Anything up?’ Charlie asked.
‘Yes!’ Jack said. ‘The price of jam!’
‘I just met your dad outside. It seemed he was in a bit of a mood.’
‘He’s been laid off, that’s why.’
‘Ah, of course, I ought to have guessed.’ Charlie watched her making the tea. ‘Jack’s not the only one,’ he said. ‘It’s much the same everywhere, this time of year.’
‘I know that. So does he. And yet he talks of moving on!’ Linn brought the teapot to the table and sat down opposite Charlie. ‘We’ve just had words about it,’ she said. ‘I told him I wouldn’t move again.’ She poured tea into two mugs and pushed Charlie’s across to him. ‘We’ve just got nicely settled here. It’s too much to ask, it really is.’
Charlie could see that she was upset. He had come at the right time, he thought.
‘I’ve just been down to Herrick Green. There’s a cottage to let there. It’s a nice little place, right by the ponds, just this side of the Ryerley turn. It only needs a lick of paint and a bit of new wallpaper here and there. Apart from that it’s in pretty good shape.’
Pausing a moment, he studied her, waiting for her to meet his gaze.
‘It’s just about the right size for us … You and me, your father and Rob … So what do you say to moving there? That’s not too far away for you? Not too much of an upheaval, like?’
The tears, so close, now filled her eyes, and her voice when she tried to answer him was held back painfully in her throat.
‘You know how it is with me?’ Charlie said. ‘You know what I’m trying to say to you?’
Linn, having found her handkerchief, was trying to wipe away her tears.
‘Do I?’ she said, in a small voice.
‘It’s nearly twelve years since my girl let me down and married another man,’ he said. ‘Twelve years is a long time and I’ve never thought of marriage since then.’ Suddenly, as he looked at her, there was uncertainty in his eyes, and after a while, when he spoke again, it was with a husky, self-conscious laugh, as though he was making fun of himself. ‘Now you’ve come along and changed all that! Now I think of it all the time!’
Reaching across the table to her, he spread his hands in mute appeal, and when she responded by putting her own hands into his, he held them in a warm hard grasp, as though he would never let them go.
‘I’d do anything in the world for you. Do you believe me when I say that?’
Clinging to him, she gave a nod, and now when the tears overflowed in her eyes she was helpless to brush them away, and they fell in little splashing drops, trembling and glistening on her cheeks before splashing down to the front of her dress.
‘You don’t ask what I might do for you.’
‘So long as you marry me,’ Charlie said, ‘I don’t ask any more than that.’ He gave a sudden worried frown. ‘I don’t know what your dad will say ‒’
‘Dad will just have to settle down,’ she said with a certain decisiveness. ‘And he will settle down, I’m sure of that, when he knows how much it means to me.’
Gently withdrawing her hands from his, she fumbled again for her handkerchief, which had fallen down into her lap. She wiped the tears from her cheeks and eyes and looked at him through her wet lashes.
‘Tell me about the cottage,’ she said, ‘that we’re going to live in at Herrick Common.’
By the time they were married, in November, the new rented cottage was standing empty and it was arranged that Jack and Robert should move in while the couple were away on their honeymoon. A great many new things had been bought, including a brand-new double bed, and Jack, having plenty of time on his hands, was to make a start on the decorating.
At Fred Oakes’s insistence, the wedding-breakfast was held at the Fox and Cubs, and from there Charlie and Linn set out on their honeymoon. C
lew had lent them his motor-van and they started at noon from Herrick Cross without knowing where they were going. They had made no plans of any kind; they just took to the road and drove westwards; and soon those green hills, which normally formed their distant horizon, were rising close beside the road.
There was a great sense of adventure in setting out on the road like this and yet a feeling of safety, too, because now they were bound together in every way and the unknown held no fears for them. Sitting side by side in the warmth and closeness of the van, their intimacy grew with every mile of road they covered, so that the promises made in church that morning were already being affirmed, deep in their physical consciousness. Affirmed in flesh and blood and bone; acknowledged in every fleeting touch; confessed in the glances they exchanged and in every word they spoke to each other.
Familiar hills were left behind. Strange hills and mountains took their place, rising steeply on either side and closing behind them, fold upon fold. Wet weeping clouds hung on their tops and rolled along their grey-green flanks, and at three o’clock the rain came down, blowing aslant on the gusty wind. There was no traffic on these roads and often the only life they saw was the sheep and curly-coated cattle grazing along the mountainsides. Linn and Charlie had the world to themselves and they travelled through it, mile after mile, shut in together, close and warm, with the rain coming down, blanching the landscape, and the sweet smell of mountain turf coming in at the half-open window.
‘Just fancy!’ Charlie said. ‘Not a single soul knows where we are!’
‘No,’ she said, ‘not even us!’
‘Are you getting worried?’ he asked.
‘Well, I am just beginning to wonder where we shall get a bed for the night.’ Peering out through the misty windows, she could see nothing but rain and hills, and, in front, the wet winding road. ‘It’s ages since we passed through a village, let alone a town,’ she said. ‘If you ask me, we’re thoroughly lost.’
‘I know where we are all right.’
‘Where are we, then?’
‘We’re somewhere in Wales!’
Laughing, they drove on through the rain, and Linn, with a shiver, tucked her rug more closely about her, wrapping it round her knees and thighs.
Seedtime and Harvest (The Apple Tree Saga Book 5) Page 3
