by Gwen Moffat
A SHORT TIME TO LIVE
Gwen Moffat
© Gwen Moffat 1976
Gwen Moffat has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1976 by Victor Gollancz Ltd.
This edition published in 2018 by Endeavour Media Ltd.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
In this story Sandale and its houses are imaginary, as are all the characters, who have no relation to any specific people, alive or dead.
Chapter One
It was two o’clock on a Thursday afternoon in November and the London-Glasgow express was making good time as it bored through the urban sprawl between Liverpool and Manchester. The fog was thin but it had brought an early dusk to the north country; there were lights here and there in houses, more in offices, and street lamps hung like tangerines in the opal gloom.
The train slipped through a station and past rows of dark brick cottages with outdoor lavatories in grimy yards and lines of nappies limp in the sodden air. In the restaurant car Lucy Fell played with the stem of her wineglass and watched the reflections of her rings in the window. Across the table Denis Noble remarked expansively, ‘I should have ordered champagne.’
‘We had champagne on the way up.’
‘We’re celebrating again—aren’t we? Going south it was in anticipation of a lovely time, and now we should celebrate an achievement, right?’
She smiled at him and her round and rather large face glowed. The green eyes sparkled and her expression was so infectious that Noble, a ponderous and fleshy man with anxious eyes, looked suddenly boyish and eager.
‘All relationships have their ups and downs,’ she murmured. ‘Thank God we’re not humdrum, darling. Chaps are bound to feel their oats sometimes. After all, she was very young. . . .’ She returned to contemplation of the interminable terraces, her profile classical in the light. She had good skin and high cheekbones. ‘And exciting,’ she added.
‘You can say that again!’ He shifted in his seat. ‘And I don’t mean it as a compliment. No, Lucy, that’s my last oat, I’m afraid; I’m an old man.’ He reached across the table and captured her hand. ‘You’ll have to take care of me from now on.’ He caught her expression and his eyes were contrite. ‘I know that’s a lot to ask after I’ve made such a fool of myself, not to say hurting you, but at least I’ve found my level. If I hadn’t succumbed to that little tart, I’d have gone on wanting her for the rest of my life.’
She showed no surprise. Her eyes lingered on his thick hair where there was only a suspicion of grey in the black, on the broad face sweating gently after the food and wine, on the wide shoulders and the Savile Row suit.
‘You’re still a very beautiful woman,’ he said. Her eyes slipped as if gear wheels missed a cog. He went on happily, ‘And you can still make me madly jealous. You didn’t spend much time with me in town but I suppose that was deliberate: wanted to put me in my place, eh?’
‘I was shopping.’
‘The bills told me that, my sweet.’ He smiled to show that no sting was intended and surveyed her costume with interest. She was wearing a silk blouse with a woollen skirt and she’d wound silk scarves round her head. The ensemble, including long suède boots, was in deep shades of green and red and she looked like a German film star playing at being a peasant.
‘You don’t look a day over thirty, my sweet.’
She shrugged. ‘Flatterer.’ She fingered the muscles under her jaw where they were starting to slacken. She was forty-four. ‘This outfit set me back a packet,’ she admitted. ‘I’ll have to shelve the idea of a Datsun for the time being.’
‘Why, how much have you spent?’
‘I don’t know. About three hundred perhaps.’
‘On that!’
‘Darling, you like it.’ She shot him a glance. ‘And I paid for this. Besides, there’s a cape—and these boots are gorgeous—’ Feeling went out of her eyes and left them glacial. She looked at the last of her wine. ‘Do I have to justify my spending?’ she asked quietly.
‘Of course not. It’s just that I like to buy your clothes, you know that.’ Her eyes narrowed a fraction. He rattled on: ‘I wanted to give you a cheque for the Datsun: to make up the difference when you traded in the Jensen, but I’m not sure whether I can see my way . . . not to both, you know.’ Again his eyes went over her outfit and he looked deeply concerned. He wasn’t thinking of the cost of clothes nor of the woman wearing them—and she didn’t remind him of where he’d been spending his money recently; he was thinking about his business and the state of the economy.
Now it was she who leaned across the table intimately. ‘You’re going to have a brandy,’ she told him. ‘Champagne would have been an anti-climax anyway: going home; we’ll have a bottle tomorrow night instead. Here’s the steward.’ She sat back smiling vaguely while Noble saw to the brandy, then she leaned forward again. ‘I’ll sell a ring,’ she said with an air of conspiracy.
He was shocked. ‘Those rings are an investment. You’re not to sell one to buy something that’s going to depreciate. I won’t allow it.’
‘You didn’t give them to me, Denny.’
‘But nor would Edward allow you to sell them if he were alive, and he expected me to watch your business affairs, you know that. He said to me, when he knew the end was near—’
‘Yes, yes, darling. I won’t sell a ring then; I’ll sell the bread cupboard, or something. Quentin was suggesting—’
‘You haven’t told Quentin!’
‘Told him what?’
‘That you’re short of money.’
‘Hell, Denny! Everyone’s short.’
‘Not you; not while I’m alive. You shouldn’t have told Quentin about your affairs; what will he—’
The steward came with the brandy. When he’d gone, she said softly, ‘Stop bullying me, Denis.’
‘You’d set your heart on that Datsun.’
‘And I’ve spent it on clothes. That is, I’ve broken into what I was—’
‘How much do you need for the car?’
She licked her lips and looked guilty. He was very red in the face. ‘Tell me, Lucy. Five hundred? A thousand?’
‘Well, more than five hundred. . . .’
‘I don’t know whether I could manage a thousand anyway,’ he grumbled, reaching for his cheque book, unscrewing the gold cap of his pen. ‘Would eight hundred do?’
She nodded. ‘It will be ample, darling. You’re sweet.’
He signed the cheque and grinned at her, then his face changed. ‘What’s wrong?’ He proffered it abstractedly.
She put it loose in her bag. ‘Thank you, darling.’ She looked out of the window. ‘I was wondering what might be in the post when I get home.’
‘Are you worried about something?’
‘Not really. Are you?’
‘I don’t understand. I should be worried about my mail? About the factory, d’you mean?’
‘No, I didn’t mean the factory.’ She sounded a little tired. ‘Denny, have you had any anonymous letters?’
He considered the question at its face value. ‘Yes, we’ve had
a few: about employees, you know, almost certainly written by other—’ He stared at her, astonished. ‘You mean, in the dale? You’ve had an anonymous letter?’ She nodded, her eyes wide. ‘What did it say?’ He was grim.
Her face expressed disgust and she tasted her brandy before she answered. ‘It was filthy. It accused me of . . . I’m not sure; it was worded so crudely and written by an illiterate. . . . There was something about a baby and burying it in the garden: the garden at Thornbarrow! But whether it meant a live baby or a foetus I couldn’t say. And I don’t care,’ she added.
‘Nasty.’ He was frowning but then his face cleared and he grinned. ‘They could hardly accuse me of the same crime.’
‘They could—in conjunction.’
‘I didn’t think of that. So you think it’s someone who disapproves of us?’
‘Well, I wouldn’t want to think too much about the kind of person who was compelled to write letters like that.’
‘Did you think it was Peta?’
‘Peta!’ She stared at him. ‘This person was illiterate,’ she added on a lower note.
‘Illiterates can’t write.’
‘Semi-literate then. Why did you think of Peta as soon as I mentioned it? I never thought—but, of course, she does hate me—and there was that breakdown a few years ago. Poor girl, she really is in love with you, darling, in her fashion. How fortunate you managed to extricate yourself before—well, before any harm was done. You ought to be nice to her when we get back; she could be a bit tricky if she’s hostile.’
‘If she’s writing anonymous letters, I’ll avoid her like the plague. She’s gone quite haywire, you know.’
‘It’s not important. I only asked because I wondered if she’d—if you’d had a letter as well and were keeping quiet but were worried all the same. You’ve got enough on your plate with the factory and—everything.’ She shivered. ‘Anonymous letters aren’t the kind of thing one wants to keep to oneself. The letter doesn’t matter, but no one can be easy with that kind of mind living near us, perhaps even in the same dale.’
Chapter Two
At five o’clock on the day after Lucy Fell returned from London, George Harper glanced across the beck and saw a light in her kitchen window and a faint glimmer in Rumney’s cow-house. If she’d started cooking that meant she would have fetched her milk and he didn’t have to run into her. He shrugged on his sheepskin, took a torch and the aluminium can and crept down his garden path with caution. The paving stones glistened wickedly and he’d already found to his cost how hazardous slates could be with a veneer of frost.
Sunset lingered above the fells but the dale was black as the pit except for the lights across the beck. Upstream the line of the headwall was humped like a herd of elephants across a fading backcloth and an owl called far out towards Dalehead.
He went down the iron-hard track and crossed the packhorse bridge where the water was unusually subdued; the bogs were frozen above a thousand feet and the level of the streams had dropped.
He came stealthily round Lucy Fell’s cottage assessing the stillness in the hamlet. There was no street lamp. Then a bucket rang on stone, a cow coughed, and Rumney’s voice came from a byre where the door stood open on a dim interior. The voice was cultured—for the shank-end of a Cumbrian dale.
‘Come up there, Isbell; move over.’
‘’Evening, Zeke.’ Harper spoke quietly so that he wouldn’t alarm the cattle.
Inside the cow-house a hurricane lamp gave as much light as a five-watt bulb. He could just make out the cows’ rumps with their incredible hip joints but he couldn’t see Zeke, only hear the twin streams of milk as they sang in an empty bucket.
‘Good evening.’ The disembodied voice came from the direction of the middle cow and Harper moved along and stared at its flank. Now he could just discern the gleam of Rumney’s cheek. ‘I’m running late,’ the voice went on, ‘I’ve been getting the sheep down.’
‘I don’t mind waiting,’ Harper said. ‘Have you finished the sheep?’
There was a long pause during which he listened to the cows masticating. Milk started to froth in the bucket.
‘Not altogether,’ Rumney said at last. ‘There’s a few missing.’
‘Where would they be?’
‘Depends.’ The milker’s face turned to the other but the eyes remained shadowed. The voice continued as if answering an academic question but with the Cumbrian creeping in as it did when Rumney became emotional. ‘If they went last night they could still be in t’slaughter-house, but if they be gone longer, they could be in them lyle packets tha picks out of t’freezer in t’supermarket.’
‘Oh.’ Harper regarded the pale moon-face fixedly. ‘Is that kind of thing common round here?’
‘Not as tha might call common.’
‘Have you any idea—? Or don’t you like to make a guess?’
‘I would prefer to speculate on a certainty,’ Rumney said drily and with a return to his normal accent. ‘There could be repercussions if one put a load of shot up the wrong arse.’
‘The Law’s no help?’
‘The Law? Does the Law repay you for your shepherding, for the work you’ve put into training your dogs, and the lambing, and building up your flock? Are you covered even for market value? I don’t know about the Law.’ The face turned away and the voice seemed to come through fur. ‘We’ve allus been the Law,’ Rumney said.
Harper cocked his head. ‘Someone’s singing.’
‘It’ll be Arabella; well, there’s enough milk for the two of you. You don’t want it cooled tonight, do you? I’ll finish Isbell and you can take what I’ve got here.’
A figure came and stood in the doorway, cheeks and eyes shining, breath steaming in the lamplight.
‘Who’s that?’ The girl peered at Harper, her accent charmingly American. ‘A glow-worm would give a better light than this, Uncle Zeke.’
‘Wrong season for glow-worms. It’s George Harper.’
‘Oh, good evening, Mr Harper. Isn’t it a lovely night? Are we all waiting for milk?’
‘Isbell’s holding back,’ Rumney complained. ‘She’s a cow that likes all the attention. You could do something for me, Harper, while you’re waiting.’
‘What’s that?’
‘There’s a pile of eggs in the end manger; Arabella will give them to you. I promised them to Lucy Fell: guinea fowl eggs. If you take them to Thornbarrow you could earn a sherry for your pains.’
‘I find Mrs Fell a little domineering,’ Harper said doubtfully.
‘You don’t have to be afraid of her,’ Arabella told him. ‘She’s interested only in rich gentlemen. She went after Uncle Zeke when they first came here but soon dropped him when she realised all his assets were in land and stock. Those gorgeous rings are far more portable than cows.’
‘She was a married woman when she came here!’ Rumney protested.
‘I’m not saying she’s promiscuous,’ she said earnestly, ‘but she’s a lady who’d always have an insurance policy, isn’t she? And Mr Fell wasn’t a fit man, you could see that.’
‘How do you know? You weren’t here. He died three years back.’
‘Grannie told me.’
‘Your grandmother gossips. At eighty-five—’
‘Gossip’s not amusement, Uncle Zeke.’ Arabella was grave. ‘It’s an essential part of social life.’
‘Why?’
‘It keeps up the moral values of a community by picking out the deviants and criticising their behaviour.’
‘Are you suggesting Lucy Fell’s a deviant?’
‘No—o.’ She considered this carefully. ‘Perhaps not; the healthy, intelligent courtesan has always been respected. The Victorians said she took the pressure off respectable ladies. There’s a number of unattached men in this dale,’ she added darkly.
There was a pause. ‘She frightens me,’ Harper admitted eventually. ‘I hide below the window-sill when I see her coming. She’s been across to my place, you know.’
<
br /> ‘She always takes something,’ Arabella assured him. ‘A pie or a jar of preserve: that’s a courtship display. Are you a misogynist, Mr Harper?’
‘I’m not sure—’
‘Arabella!’ Rumney broke in. ‘We’ve no idea what you’re on about! And suppose Lucy Fell came up for extra milk?’
‘And heard us talking? Uncle Zeke, if you think Lucy doesn’t know her own limitations by this time, you’ve learned nothing from the relationship.’
‘I haven’t had a relationship with her.’
‘Everyone relates. We’re all relating in this cow-shed. You relate to Isbell.’
‘Couldn’t you take the eggs to Thornbarrow,’ he pleaded, ‘and come back and tell us what Lucy Fell says about relating?’
‘I’ll do that some day but right now I have to make a caper sauce for the mutton so I must take the milk back, and if you don’t hurry with that cow, Uncle Zeke, the mutton will go dry waiting for you.’
‘There are two more cows yet, and the eggs to go to Thornbarrow.’
‘Mr Harper will take the eggs on his way home.’
Rumney filled their cans with the warm milk. Something insubstantial as a shadow slid over Harper’s feet and he jumped.
‘Drat that pawky cat,’ Rumney muttered. ‘Always stands underneath when I’m pouring milk.’
*
Thornbarrow and Sandale House, where the Rumneys lived, and their buildings, formed a kind of street. Harper, a small bucket of eggs cradled in his arms, dangling the milk-can from three fingers, stepped gingerly down the cobbles towards the bridge and round the back of Thornbarrow, having difficulty with the gate. After the darkness between the barns, Lucy Fell’s kitchen light made her garden look naked: the rocks shining with frost crystals and her great yews too black to be real. He glanced upstream at his herd of elephants. They were still there.
His boots made no sound on the flagged path. He knocked on the back door and someone shouted to him to come in. He found and depressed the thumb latch and entered a stone passage. On his right was a dim room with the doorway to the kitchen in the opposite wall. He could see the end of a table and a stove.
