Tara (19 page)

She would tell Mum everything at bedtime. She would hug her and tell her how happy she was they had moved here, and apologise for being a misery for so long. Tonight she didn't ever want to live anywhere else. London was smelly and dirty. Chew Magna was where she belonged.

Amy found out Tara's news from her mother once the children had rushed out after tea, leaving them to clear away.

'That's wonderful.' Amy beamed, guessing there was more to the story than just praise for a smocked dress. 'I've been so frightened she wouldn't ever accept life here.'

'She's so much like me.' Mabel shrugged her shoulders. 'A bit self-centred, stubborn and too proud to make the first move. I often felt alone, even when I was surrounded by people.'

'Well, it looks as if she's unbent a little,' Amy said as she caught a glimpse of Tara flying down the lane, her hair streaming behind her like a gold flag. 'I can't thank you enough for this, Mother!'

Mabel leaned over the draining board to watch the children through the window as they raced against each other back up the lane. Tara's gymslip had ridden up, exposing long slender legs. Paul looked as stocky as a pit pony, his face red with exertion.

'There's no need for thanks,' Mabel said gruffly. 'Just seeing their faces is enough.'

Chapter 8

May 1961

Amy was sitting on a bench in the yard shelling peas, enjoying the unexpectedly hot May sunshine, when Paul looked furtively round the edge of the dairy.

'What on earth have you been doing, Paul?'

She knew even without seeing him properly. She could hear the squelch of his shoes, smell the river water, and she remembered only too well what a magnet water was to children on a hot day. It was hard not to laugh as he crept out from his hiding place, head down. He looked like a half-drowned dog, dark hair plastered to a mud-streaked face, water dripping from the legs of his grey shorts.

'We were playing. I kind of slipped,' he said.

'You haven't been in the flash-hole?' she asked, raising an eyebrow. 'It's too deep, you can't swim properly and there's lots of weed and stuff to pull you under.'

'We weren't there, Mum.' His voice was plaintive. 'We were only down Dumpers making a dam.'

Dumpers Lane was a child's paradise. In winter it was often flooded, and it boasted a spooky old farm, an old stone bridge and thick woods. Any parent with a child missing had only to go down there to find them.

'So how did you get that wet?'

'I lost my footing.' His dark eyes implored her not to keep him in for the rest of the day, his sticking-out ears were almost transparent with the sun behind them.

'It seems to me you've got in too many scrapes since you made friends with Colin! Take your clothes off out here, then get washed and changed.'

Paul pulled off his clothes in record time, glancing round to check no-one was watching before removing his soggy pants and adding them to the pile on the ground.

Amy watched him with amusement. He had filled out so much in the last year he could be a different child. Satin-like olive-toned flesh so much like his father's now concealed his ribs and spine. His legs and arms were sturdy, even his bottom had what Gran laughingly called 'a bit of upholstery'. The malnourished mouse of a slum kid had been replaced by a country boy, and Amy had no doubt that Paul would eventually outstrip his father, not only in intelligence, but in height and strength.

'Don't be cross with me, Mum.' Paul came over to her, sliding one grubby hand across her shoulder. 'I'll wash my things.'

Tara still spoke with a faint Cockney accent, but Paul had adopted the Somerset burr as if born to it.

'I'm not a bit bothered about your clothes, they'll wash and dry,' Amy said evenly, catching hold of his naked little body and pulling him on to her lap. 'But I am concerned when you make a nuisance of yourself to our neighbours. Since you palled up with Colin you've been in trouble up at the Co-op for knocking over a display. You've been caught walking through crops, attempting to ride Mr Branston's goat and climbing on the church hall roof. To say nothing of plaguing the men at the mill by climbing on the sacks of grain.'

Paul's mouth drooped at the corners. 1 don't mean to be bad.'

'You aren't bad,' Amy reassured him. 'You're just a bit thoughtless, that's all. So when you go back down Dumpers Lane, if you've dammed up that river so it floods someone's land, kindly un-dam it.'

'It's our land down there.' Paul's eyes sparkled as he realised she wasn't cross at all. 'D'you know, Mum, that's the best thing about living here – so much of it belongs to us. I can run through fields shouting that they're mine.' He paused for breath. 'Well, Gran's! But that's kind of the same, isn't it?'

'Yes, love.' Amy hugged him to her chest. Even through the winter, when the wind shook the windows and frost stayed on the bare branches all day, Paul had found new pleasures here. He didn't seem to feel the cold as he skipped out to collect eggs, or staggered over to the pigsty with a bucket of hot swill. 'It's ours. I hope one day your little boys will be paddling down the lane. Now off with you to wash and put some clothes on, and wear your Wellingtons this time, that's what they're for!'

'That boy goes through trousers like a fox through hen houses.' Mabel picked up a pair of grey school shorts from the mending basket and examined the tear in the seat. 'Is this the new pair?'

Amy was sewing buttons on one of his shirts, wrenched off because he rarely stopped to unbutton them.

'I'm just glad he's behaving like a real boy at last,' she said. 'I didn't think he'd ever have the courage to go out and mix with other kids, let alone be naughty. I don't care if I mend a hundred pairs of shorts.'

Mabel snorted as if in disapproval, but Amy knew better. The relationship between Paul and his grandmother was based on mutual approval. Paul liked his gran being considered weird, he liked her old men's clothes, the fact she could shin up a ladder, drive a tractor and help deliver a calf or a litter of pigs. He sat enthralled while she drew him fantasy pictures of dragons and monsters, he helped her bake bread and he considered her the font of all wisdom.

In turn Mabel adored him. She loved his sensitivity, the way he turned his sad brown eyes on her like a dog. She saw how bright he was, his love of animals and his natural sympathy with all humanity. He looked very like Bill MacDonald, even she agreed to that, but maybe it was because Bill had never acknowledged Paul that she wanted him for her own.

Paul had something special about him. All those years of anticipating his father's moods had left him supersensitive. He knew instinctively when someone was sad, ill, anxious or just in a bad mood, and he had the knack of deflecting it. He was such a serious little boy, and sometimes that alone made people laugh and feel better.

'Look at him now!' Mabel chuckled. 'To think a year ago he was even nervous of the chickens!'

They went over to the kitchen door to watch as Tara and Paul rode up the lane on Betsy.

Tara sat at her desk idly stroking her cheek with the end of one thick, golden plait. It was sixteen months since the day the family had left their father for good and the changes in Tara were dramatic.

She had grown two inches in height and her skinny gawkiness had gone. Small breasts pushed out the bodice of the checked school dress, the long slender legs wound round the chair were shapely and lightly tanned. Her plaits, dress and sturdy sandals signified she was still a child, but her face and body were those of a beautiful young woman.

Delicate fair eyebrows framed her wide amber eyes above a small straight nose. Her mouth, once too big for her face, was now perfection. Full, luscious lips with a well-defined bow shape gave more than a hint of her generous and loving nature.

She was supposed to be writing an essay on the birds at Chew Valley lake, but instead she was dreaming about Harry.

Gran had been very prickly about George and Harry, in fact she still had reservations about them. Although they kept in touch by letter, so far Gran hadn't agreed to invite them down. But she was softening now, mainly because George had written telling them he had proposed to Queenie. Tara was delighted by this news. Although, unlike Gran, she had once hoped Uncle George would marry Amy, this suited her better.

They all liked Queenie, and they all knew she was the perfect partner for George, but just now Tara's pleasure was based on entirely selfish thoughts. Once he was married off, Uncle George's would make an ideal place to have holidays without her mother. Then she could be alone with Harry.

An interest in boys had come around the time her figure began to develop. Beryl had a boyfriend called Tom and she was always mooning over him and talking about kissing. Tara had looked around at the local boys and found herself comparing them all unfavourably with Harry. Even the sixth-formers seemed such country bumpkins next to his sophistication. They didn't have smart suits, they couldn't drive and she hadn't spotted anyone as handsome.

A year apart from him, with letters the only contact, had created a kind of golden aura around his memory, a collection of mental pictures she liked to dwell on.

The picture of him lifting her mother up from the floor that terrible day had stayed with Tara. His strong features had shown anger and disgust at the injuries her father had inflicted on Amy, yet such tenderness, too. Once she had taken him an early cup of tea and caught him asleep, dark hair falling over those bright blue eyes, prickly stubble on his chin. But best of all was the memory of the last hug out in the yard – the strength of his arms around her, the smell of Old Spice wafting from his skin, his lips against her ear and the words he had said to make her strong. 'Don't think you can marry some spotty-faced farmboy, I'll be watching you.' In reality she knew he had been telling her not to give up on her dreams of being a designer, but now she preferred to interpret his words as an admission of dawning love.

Loving Harry was a secret she hadn't shared with anyone. It made her feel good inside, like knowing your school report was excellent or getting the most goals at netball.

She was happy to be living in the country now. She had friends at school, she knew most of the neighbours and shopkeepers. During the long winter nights her dressmaking skills had improved dramatically, with Mum teaching her the difficult bits of collars and sleeves. Gran had let her use the old treadle machine, and she quickly progressed from dolls' clothes to things for herself.

Gran encouraged big ideas. She didn't throw a wet blanket over ideas of art college, of painting in Paris, or opening her own boutique. She said anyone could do anything if they had a mind to stick at it. Well, she would make it to the top. One day she would be driving a Mercedes down Park Lane, there would be pictures of her and her designs in every fashion magazine and, best of all, Harry would be her man.

An outraged yell outside made her start. Pushing her chair back from the desk Tara stood up and went over to the window.

She saw Paul scrabbling over a pile of timber in the woodyard on the other side of the river. Colin was with him and, even at a distance of some five-hundred yards, Tara could sense their panic.

'Stop, you little toads!'

She laughed at the abusive order coming from an unseen man and wondered what Paul and Colin had done this time.

It was just after seven in the evening. The sun perched just above the square church tower and the shadows of the tall poplar trees were reaching out like fingers across the meadow. As Tara leaned out of her window to see better, she saw the owner of the loud voice come into view. He too was climbing up the wood pile, a big, dark-haired man wearing a singlet and waving a stick.

The two boys disappeared for a moment, then emerged seconds later to jump down into the river from a low wall, and wade across. They looked over their shoulders fearfully as they reached the bank of the meadow but, as the sound of the man's boots rang out from the stone bridge, they began to run to the farm.

Another shout of outrage made them halt for a second, but as they saw the man leap over the meadow fence they fled, arms and legs going like pistons.

'I'll get you, don't think you'll get away with it!' The man ran after them, brandishing the stick.

'What's happening?' Gran called out from the yard below. She stood with one hand on her hip, the other shielding her eyes from the sun. 'Who's that shouting?'

'There's a man chasing Paul and Colin,' Tara shouted down, realising her grandmother's line of vision was obscured by the dry-stone wall between her and the meadow. 'They must have upset him!'

Gran frowned in irritation. "They'll get a hiding from me, too, if they've been up to no good.'

The man was gaining on the two boys with each long stride.

'Getting back to your gran won't save your skin!' he yelled. 'Stop now or it'll be the worse for you!'

The air was so still Tara could hear the boys' feet thudding on the uneven ground and the rasp of their breath. She was laughing, wishing she dared cheer her brother on, when out of nowhere came a premonition of disaster. Fear caught her stomach, freezing the smile on her lips, clutching at her heart and throat.

Paul was some three-hundred yards from her now, purple with exertion, cheeks puffed out, eyes bulging with effort as his thin legs sped over the rough ground. But it was mindless terror that drove him, the kind of wild-eyed panic she'd seen on heifers' faces as they were herded into the abattoir.

'Whatever is all the noise about?' Amy came out of the dairy drying her hands on her apron.

Tara froze at her window, unable to move a muscle. She saw Colin give up the race and sink panting to his knees in the long grass, but Paul raced on relentlessly towards the wall between him and the farmyard.

From her position Tara could see everything – her gran striding over to the wall, her back stiff with indignation; Amy standing still, blonde hair tucked under the white cap she always wore to work in the dairy, her hands flapping as if she sensed something was about to happen. Paul was steaming towards the wall at break-neck speed. As he lifted his arms in readiness to vault it, suddenly Tara screamed.