The Black Mountains (38 page)

“You don't mean the old boy's let her go, do you?” he asked.

“No,” Ted said, “But now I know where she is, I can go and see her.”

“I'd write first if I was you,” Wally advised. “Just to make sure the coast's still clear.”

Ted thought about it “If I do that, someone might get hold of my letter and take her out of my way. No, I think it would be best to take them all by surprise.”

They began to tease him then, but Ted took it all in good part. He was too relieved to care what they said. Knowing where Rebecca was made him feel great, even if he couldn't go to see her until he finished his training and got his embarkation leave in just over two weeks' time. And for the moment he didn't stop to think that after that brief leave there would be the Channel between them, if not an ocean.

As the initial excitement wore off, the two weeks stretched ahead of him endlessly. Sometimes, he passed the time by wondering what she would say when she saw him. Sometimes he tried to look further ahead, making plans as to how he could get her away and marry her. He was eager now to get to the Kaiser. The sooner the war was over, the sooner he and hundreds like him would be able to return to normal living and get on with their lives.

Redvers was going home for his embarkation leave, and the night before their passing-out parade, Ted asked him yet again to explain to Charlotte why he was not coming home, too. He had written, of course, but words on paper could not adequately express his feelings, and he knew the family would be hurt to think he was going to France without seeing them first. But it couldn't be helped. It wasn't really that Rebecca was more important to him than they were, just that when he was thinking of her anyone else ceased to exist.

On the last day he managed to save his bacon rinds at breakfast time and wrap them in his handkerchief.

“Give these to Nipper, will you?” he said, pushing them into Redvers's kit-bag. “He loves a bit of bacon, always has.” But there was no time for sentiment, and even the thought of Nipper's wagging tail and rough tongue could not change his mind.

“Anybody'd think this was t'only girl in t'world,” Wally remarked. “Later on, tha'll see more on her than tha' wants.”

But Ted ignored him. He knew better than to try to explain he could never, if he lived to be a hundred, see too much of Rebecca. Here, with the other recruits, he was expected to behave like a man—and men were not supposed to have romantic notions.

With the others, Ted went to Westbury Station to catch a train, but he could not concentrate on their jokes or bother to join in when they started whistling after a buxom young woman in porter's uniform who was pushing a laden trolley up and down the platform. He had not realized that women really
were
doing men's jobs, but that was as far as it went. He couldn't be bothered to join in the catcalls, for his mind was too occupied.

As he stood in the corridor of the train, his kit-bag propped against his knees, watching the rolling hills of Wiltshire disappear into the December mists, his thoughts were far from the war. To him all that mattered—all that had mattered for the last year—was almost within his grasp once more. He was going to see Rebecca, and no one, not even the Kaiser himself, could stop him.

WYCHERLEY VILLAGE was set in a valley, not a steep-sided bowl like the one Hillsbridge had sprung up in and around, but a gentle fold in the Chiltern Hills. After leaving the train, Ted had begged a lift on a fruit wagon, and when it set him down outside the Crossways Tavern, dusk had already fallen. He looked around him and saw a handful of cottages, whitewashed and thatched behind their neat patches of garden, and a small all-purpose store whose window overlooked the spot where he was standing. The tavern was not yet open, but a light was burning behind the jars and bottles of sweets in the shop window, and Ted hoisted his kit-bag on to his shoulder, crossed the road and pushed open the door.

The jangling bell brought a woman into the shop. She emerged from a curtain behind the counter like a genie from a lamp.

“Yes, can I help you?” Her eyes moved over him quickly and with interest, and he guessed that this shop was the local gossip spot.

“I'm looking for somewhere to stay, just for a day or two. Does anybody here let rooms?”

Her brow creased. Wycherley had never enticed many visitors, and since the war had begun there had been none at all.

“Well, there's the pub. They might …”

“They aren't open yet.”

“I don't know then. I can't suggest anything. Why?”

Ted decided he might as well tell the truth now as later.

“I've come to see a friend of mine—a girl—who's in service at Wycherley Grange. I'm being posted to France next week.”

Quite suddenly the little woman's attitude became more cordial. “My man's in France,” she said with pride. “A regular he is, of course, but when there's a war on …” She broke off, looking at him closely. “ Where you from then?”

“I've just been training on Salisbury Plain. Left there this morning.”

“And you've been travelling ever since?”

He nodded, and after a moment's thought, she seemed to make up her mind.

“I've got a spare room. It's not much, mind. But you can stay there the night if you want. It's not for bringing this lass of yours back to, of course. I wouldn't want them sort of goings on, but …”

“Nor me. How much will you want for it?”

She looked embarrassed. “Oh, I don't know. We can talk about that later, can't we?”

He held out his hand. “Right, it's a deal. And thanks very much. I'm Ted Hall, by the way.”

She nodded, lifting the counter for him to come through. “Mrs Pledger. Now. I expect you could do with a cup of tea …”

The rooms behind the shop were small and cluttered. It was a tiny living room which, to Ted's bewilderment, seemed to be full of the ticking of at least a dozen clocks. He climbed the narrow wooden staircase leading to an equally narrow room beneath the eaves. Ted set down his kit-bag beside the chest of drawers, flung his greatcoat across the bed, and went back down for the promised cup of tea. He was shaking with impatience to see Rebecca, but he hoped that Mrs Pledger might be able to tell him something of the situation at The Grange.

Sure enough, over a cup of tea so strong that it seared his empty stomach, she talked of the ‘gentry' from London, going into so much of their family history that Ted was soon hopelessly lost. What he did manage to learn was that The Grange was the home of Lady Harcourte's parents, and the household had moved down to the country to escape the bombing in town. After a break to make him a plateful of egg sandwiches, Mrs Pledger went on to tell him that there was a daughter, Rachel, who was about Rebecca's age.

“I should think your young lady is lady's maid to the young mistress,” she told him, proud of her knowledge.

“I think I'll go up there right away,” Ted said when he had finished his tea and sandwiches. “ I've only got a couple of days, and they'll go by like lightning.”

Mrs Pledger sighed, wiping her hands on her apron, and using the voice of experience. “You're right there. There's nothing like leave for giving the clock wings,” she said. “Well, good luck to you, my lad, that's what I say. Good luck to all of you!”

For the first time for more than a week, it was a dry night. The stars were shining, and the wind had dropped. Ted followed the road Mrs Pledger had described, turning into a lane and then into a drive.

As the house came into sight, so the drive divided, one fork leading to the high vaulted front door, the other curving around to the side of the house. He took the latter path. Every nerve in his body was taut with tension. What sort of reception would he get? If the aunt answered the door, perhaps she would not even let him see Rebecca. He climbed two stone steps, raised his hand to knock and, after the smallest hesitation, banged sharply. Almost at once he heard footsteps coming along a flagged corridor, and for the first time in years he found himself praying: “ Let her be here. Oh, dear God, let her be here.”

The door opened. Lamplight flooded out into the darkness, and he stood for a moment, half-blinded, half-disbelieving. It couldn't be, surely … She wouldn't be opening the door, would she?

“Becky,” he said.

She stood with one arm raised to hold the door open, her head tilted to one side so that she looked like a small neat bird. No words passed her lips. Then, “ Ted,” she whispered, her voice trembling, uncertain and full of awe. “Ted … oh, Ted.”

Time was suspended as they looked at one another, then, in a fluid movement that seemed to envelope them both, they were in each other's arms, laughing, crying and clinging to one another.

From the depths of the house, a stern voice called, “ Who is it at this time of night?”

Rebecca wriggled free.

“It's all right. It's someone come to see me, Mrs Haydon.”

Then, without explanation, she pressed her face to his again.

Beneath his lips, her cheeks were salt, the taste of tears mingling with the delicate perfume of her hair. Her body was smaller and firmer than he remembered it, and he moved his hands from her shoulders and breasts to her narrow waist and the curving swell of her hips, as if to remember, by touch, every inch of her.

“Oh, Becky, I want you so,” he said breathlessly.

“And I want you. Oh, Ted, I've wanted you and wanted you.”

He laughed then, delighted by her, and she turned to pull the door after her, shutting them out into the night.

“Won't you be missed?” he asked. “ Your aunt?”

“Lady Harcourte had to go visiting for a couple of days. Aunt Amelia has gone with her. Oh, Ted, what luck that you should come just now! Look, let's go into the garden. There's so much to say …”

“But you'll be cold …”

“Oh, I don't care if I am. I don't care about anything now.”

“Go back and get a coat.”

“No, you might disappear again.”

“Well, have mine then.”

He took it off and slipped it round her shoulders, taking the opportunity to caress her again, and she leaned fondly against him.

“You came, Ted, you came,” she whispered.

“Soon as I could. I've joined up.”

“Yes. But why ever did you go and volunteer for a soldier?”

They were in the garden now, walking along the narrow path between the shadowy cabbages and making for the shelter of the wall that divided it from the orchard. Ted did not want to talk. He was burning with urgent desire, and he wanted only to hold her again and feel her so close to him that a single thrust could make them one. His body ached for her, his senses reeling.

“I did it for you, Becky,” he said.

They passed through the stone archway, and he turned into the shadow of the wall, leaning his back against it and pulling her against him.

“For me? Why for me?”

“So we can make a new life together when it's all over. I'd take you away—I'd have done it long ago, but there's nowhere to take you.”

“But to go and enlist! Supposing you're …” She could not bring herself to speak the word “killed”.

“Suppose something should happen to you?”

He laughed softly, sure in the knowledge of having faced death once before and won through.

“Nothing will happen to me. And afterwards I shan't go back to the pits, Becky. I'll make the sort of life for you that you deserve. That's a promise.”

“You mean, we'll be married?”

“That's right. Oh, Becky, Becky …”

His coat slipped unheeded from her shoulders as he pulled her close again, and above them the fitful moon slid behind a ragged cloud. But lost in one another they noticed nothing. This was the meeting they had longed for, and too soon it would be over. They had no intention of wasting a single second.

FOR TED and Rebecca the next two days were a wonderful, stolen interlude. For the first time since they had met, they were free to be together almost as often as they wished.

Rebecca confided the whole story to Miss Rachel, her young mistress, who was enchanted by the romance and intrigue of it all. She was wildly in love with a young Grenadiers officer who was himself leading a troop into battle in France, and without hesitation she gave Rebecca all the help she needed to meet Ted secretly.

“Of course, I couldn't do it if Mother were here,” she whispered. “But as it is I'm just so envious of you I can hardly bear it. And oh, he is so very handsome! You must see as much of him as you can before he goes off to war, in case he never comes back. And don't look at me like that! Facts have to be faced. We all have to face them.”

Her blue eyes filled with tears, and Rebecca thought again of the dashing young Grenadier and decided that Rachel was a great deal braver than she, to talk so blithely about men who might never come back.

With Rachel's help, she met him both in the village and in the garden behind the house, and on the day before he was due to leave, her young mistress actually suggested that she should entertain him in her personal drawing room.

“Oh, I couldn't!” Rebecca had said, but Rachel quashed her arguments.

“I'll bring him up here myself,” she said, with the firm decisiveness that came from a life already spent in giving orders. “Then all you have to do is slip up here yourself. Oh, Rebecca, for heavens sake remember he's going straight to hell. Be nice to him.”

Her words had brought Rebecca face to face with reality. In the strange, dream-like atmosphere of the last two days, she had asked nothing more than to be with Ted, talking, laughing and kissing. There had been so much to say, so much to tell.

She chattered on and on about London and her new life, wanting to share every experience with him. And all the while there had been the excitement of his nearness, the thrill that darted inside her when he touched or kissed her, the warmth that swept through her body when their eyes met.