All the dear faces (4 page)

“
Ladies, forgive me. I had not meant to frighten you,
”

he said, smiling his wicked 'outlaw's' smile. His voice was soft, deep and completely irresistible and his chocolate-brown eyes gazed into Annie's. He took her hand and raised it to his lips and the girls, all three, stared at him, hypnotised by his beauty and his charm, like three little rabbits which have suddenly come across an extremely handsome fox.

“
I saw you from the stage," he went on, "and could not resist coming down to greet you. I could tell you were enjoying my poor performance and . . . well . . .", his smile deepening to reveal two engaging clefts — in a woman they would have been dimples — at each side of his mouth. "I could never withstand a pretty woman and when there are three of them it seems the challenge is tripled.
”

The word 'pretty' would have been enough but to be called a 'woman' when one is only fourteen was heady stuff and Sally and Mim began to preen. In sharp contrast Annie's face appeared to pale. She became still and hushed as though in the presence of some being who is truly from another world, a world in which gods lived, for surely this could only be one of those. Her hand had remained in his and her eyes, enormous, clear and incredibly lovely as she fell headlong into the pit of love for the first time, did not even blink. He kissed her fingers again and she could feel his lips burn her flesh and beneath the bodice of her mother's wedding-gown something quivered. It was the most delightful feeling but at the same time it hurt her. She felt a great need to put up her hand and draw this man to . . . to . . . She was not sure what it was she wanted, or what to do about it since, apart from her father, when she was a child, she had been touched by no man.

“
The music has begun. Will you not dance?" he asked her softly. Her heart knocked frantically and her mouth was so dry she could not have spoken if her life depended on it but her limbs worked independently of her mind as he led her down towards the stage. Her cheeks burned with a bright flame as, with the practised ease of the
accomplished seducer he put his hands gently about her waist and whisked her away in the lively, noisy reel 'The Circassian Circle'. She had seen it performed and had tapped her foot longing to join in on many occasions and she found that her body did the dancing for her while her benumbed mind dwelled in the rapture Anthony Graham had introduced her to.

“
Won't you tell me your name?" he whispered in her ear before he returned to the stage for the second part of the play.

“
Annie . . ." The first word she had spoken since he had burst into her life like a shooting star across an empty, navy-blue sky.

“
Wait for me at the end of the performance, Annie," he pleaded, kissing her fingers again, holding her hand for a moment before he sped away to his role as the Outlaw of Sicily.

“
I see you have another little chicken all ready to be plucked," his ageing leading lady said acidly.

“
And why not since there's nothing here to excite one's interest. "

“
They get younger in every town," she replied sneeringly.

“
Which is more than can be said of some I could mention.
”

Sally and Mim were persuaded by Anthony to walk ahead of himself and Annie as the four of them sauntered up Market Place.

“
We can't 'ang about, Annie," Sally managed to mutter into the unheeding ear of her friend who was drifting along in the direction of Greta Bridge and the road to Hause on the solicitous arm of The Outlaw of Sicily. He had not stopped to remove his make-up nor change his costume in his eagerness to catch Annie when the performance ended.

“
I . . . don't mind if you go on, Sal."

“
No, you go on ... er . . . Sally, is it? I'll see Annie to her door.
”

Sally eyed him doubtfully. Did he know how far it was
from Keswick to Hause? Did he even know that Annie lived up that way or even where it was and how long it would take him? His queer get-up looked even queerer in the broad light of day. Though she had initially fallen under his fascinating spell, as Annie and Mim had done, she was not quite so bewitched as Annie appeared to be and her reason told her that no man, particularly one as handsome and silver-tongued as Anthony Graham, would walk a girl like Annie a distance of ten miles just for courtesy's sake. He had another performance that evening, he said, and Sally knew he would certainly not be back in Keswick by then, and anyway, Annie was her friend and she couldn't just walk off and leave her with a perfect stranger, could she?

“
'Tis five miles or more ter Hause," she said resolutely.

“
Five miles!" Anthony came to an abrupt stop, seemingly unaware of the comically disbelieving faces the townsfolk turned in his direction. "I thought you lived in Keswick, Annie." For a moment his face was thunderstruck, then he gently pulled her round to face him, a winsome smile softening what had almost become petulance.

“
But you'll come again tomorrow, won't you? There's no afternoon performance so you and I could spend some time together. You could take dinner with me at my lodgings at The Packhorse before I go on in the evening. Please say yes, Annie. I would be devastated if I thought I was never to see you again.
”

So would she.

“
Please, Annie." He whispered her name, softly, lovingly, and in a tone no one, not even her own mother, had ever used. He gazed longingly into her eyes and she thought she would swoon with the sheer joy of it. He held her hands to his chest and she felt the strength, the warmth, the absolute masculinity of him as his heart beat against her hand. Nothing had prepared her for this, this thrill of quivering excitement, this trembling his touch set in motion and which ran deliciously through the whole of her body, right down to her knees. They felt as though
they were made of jelly and her face was on fire with it. Her skin prickled and yet at the same time glowed and she could refuse him nothing, her eyes told him.

“
Tomorrow at noon," he said encouragingly.

“
Yes." Her eyes held stars but it meant nothing to his well-hidden and self-seeking heart
.

Sally and Mim hurried, but Annie Abbott floated, light as thistledown along the five miles of lake road from Keswick to Hause, past the darkening mass of Dodd Wood on the right, the quiet beauty of Bassenthwaite Lake on the left. The sun had almost gone from the sky and the shape of Broom Fell across the water was dark and featureless but the glory of it had leaked into the lake itself, turning the flat surface of the water to a burnished golden-orange. The fells on the far side were reflected in it, a perfect mirror-image and a dark trail of cloud, golden-edged, poured across the water and the sky, one silhouette duplicating the other. From over the meadows which lay between the road and the lake, a tiny light burned in the windows of St Bridget's Church, and from those of the farms and scattered houses, looking like golden stars in the deepening darkness
.

Annie could not have hurried had she tried. She had just lived through the most exciting experience of her young and drab existence and she still dreamed in it and in the dazzling remembrance of the man who had captured her innocent heart. She would see him tomorrow. She was to 'take dinner' with him at The Packhorse. She hadn't the faintest idea how she was to manage it since her father knew her every movement, or at least he did until today, but she would do it somehow, she told herself airily as she skipped along the last bit of track which led to the farmgate of Browhead.

“
Wheer's t'girl?" her father had asked her mother. The men of Lakeland were thrifty, not only with their emotions – of any kind – and with their cash which was more often than not in short supply, but with their words.

“
She'll not be far away, Joshua," her mother had faltered placatingly and when Joshua Abbott had demanded to know
exactly where that might be, Lizzie Abbott could not tell him for after twenty years of marriage to him, twenty years of servitude and uncommunicative constraint to his dour and unbending will, indeed ever since she had come to Browhead as a trembling bride of sixteen, her mental processes had become severely hampered by her fear of him
.

Her mind had gone dead as Joshua waited for an answer. Her tongue had stuck to the roof of her mouth and though he had never struck her or their daughter, she had cowered away from him as though expecting a blow
.

He was waiting for Annie where the farm track ran down to the road. He hit her for the first time that evening.

“
Where've tha' bin, girl?" he wanted to know, and who with? which were the words he most wanted to speak for since the night of the 'boon clip' when she had danced in such a lively fashion with Davy Mounsey, his dejected and faltering hope of a son had risen like air. Not a son, of course, but the next best thing. His farm and Jem Mounsey's allied in marriage and a man who has land, even if it comes with a bride attached to it, will look after it. He'd tie it up, naturally, so that it would still be Abbott's farm, Abbott's land, with his grandchildren working on it, but now, in the space of a day, since he had left this morning feeling more optimistic than he had for years, she had threatened the tentative dream he had allowed himself and set it to shaking and crumbling like a weakened drystone wall. All dressed up in some flibbertigibbet's gown — not even recognising the dress in which his own wife had married him and in which she had looked as pretty as a hedge rose — she had been off somewhere on her own and returned so flushed and brilliant he could only suspect the worst
.

She refused absolutely to tell him since she did not want to involve her mother who was grovelling by the fireside like a whipped dog and when Joshua opened the door and pointed silently out into the yard she had gone, her head
high and defiant, her cheek swollen, the flesh about her eye already beginning to change colour.

“
Tha'll sleep in t' barn tonight, girl," he said to her, "wheer't th'animals sleep an' in t' mornin' thee an' me'll 'ave summat to say to one another. Think on it an' remember this. No one defies me in me own 'ouse. Now get out theer an' get some sleep fer there's a field ter be ploughed tomorrow.
”

The walk back to Keswick was long and dark and her clogs blistered her bare feet. She did not weep nor did she do much thinking except to repeat the words which had sung in her head ever since Anthony had winked audaciously at her over the footlights and stolen her innocently beating heart
.

`I love him, I love him, I love him,' the song went and the rhythm of it moved her tired body along the deserted road. The night was inky black. She could see nothing, only her country senses keeping her on the track where she might have blundered into the dangerous and densely packed tree trunks of Dodd Wood on her left or down to the rippling, deep and equally dangerous waters of the lake on her right. Stones chinked beneath her feet and an owl hooted close by, the suddenness of it making her heart leap in alarm. A farm dog, sensing her passing, or perhaps scenting the fox which was raiding the hen-coop, barked hysterically, then stopped in mid-voice as though a heavy hand had persuaded him to do so
.

She reached The Packhorse at midnight, just as Anthony and the troupe of strolling players who were drinking with him were becoming deep in their cups. They were singing some bawdy song, crashing their ale pots on the table and the landlord, whose wife did not care for such `goings-on', being accustomed to a less vigorous class of customer, shepherds and farmers and the like, was about to remonstrate
.

The whole of the bar-parlour fell silent as Annie hesitated in the doorway. She had the look of a weary child about her, pale, delicate with great smudges beneath her wide, frightened eyes. The bruise her father had given
her made her appear even more vulnerable and when Anthony Graham saw her hovering there his masculine body surged towards her in ferocious and uncaring need. He stood up triumphantly, then moved across the room to take her hands, bringing them to his lips in the gallant gesture for which her girlish heart had craved on the long walk from Hause. He turned for a moment to wink at his friends who whistled and clapped their hands and stamped their feet in perfect understanding, but Annie was too tired, too love-struck to know what it meant.

“
Come," he whispered smilingly, leading her away from the noisy group and up the stairs until they reached the door of the room he shared with three others. Guiding her through he locked it behind him and within five minutes, less, Annie's trembling and virginal body was revealed to his lecherous gaze in all its naked innocence. He did not speak nor even kiss her. What was there to say? She was already his with no need of pretty speeches or persuasion
.

It was all over within minutes. She was laid on the bed with scant interest in her half-hearted protests since she wanted to tell him how much she loved him; to hear how much he loved her and desired nothing more than to spend the rest of his life with her. That was why she had left Browhead, because of their love but he didn't seem to want to know. He pulled painfully at her breasts and bit her belly, leaving teeth marks which would turn black by morning. He forced her legs open and thrust himself inside her with such force and rapidity she scarcely knew what was happening until the pain knifed her between her thighs and the blood flowed
.