The Black Mountains (59 page)

She tossed her head again. As fear ebbed, the pain began again.

“I'm not his responsibility any more—if I ever was.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“It's all over between us. His lamp's still burning for Becky Church, and I'm not taking second place to a ghost.” Her voice was strong and confident, revealing nothing of the way she felt. He glanced at her, seeing the beautiful woman she had become and feeling an ache of fire within him.

“So that's what it's all about,” he said, covering his feelings as well as she had covered hers. “ When I met him outside the George I could see there was something up, but he wouldn't say what. But I thought it was funny he'd left you alone. That's why I came to look for you.”

“You came … to look for me?”

He didn't answer, and suddenly she knew what she was going to do. She'd show Ted Hall once and for all! Why, she'd worshipped him since she was knee-high, and where had it got her? He'd taken her for granted, and now he'd left her all alone with the rowdies in the market yard. Perhaps it was time someone showed him he wasn't so great after all. Perhaps it was time.

Out of the corner of her eye, she looked at Jack, knowing with sudden certainty that for all his difference, he found her attractive. Supposing I was to go off with his brother, Rosa thought. Why, he's a far better catch than Ted. He's been a pilot, and he's going to be a teacher. He's even been to Buckingham Palace and been decorated by the King. And what will Ted ever be but a general dogs-body, drifting from one job to the next—if he's lucky.

Egged on by the sting of rejection, she laid her hand on Jack's arm. Looking up at him in the light of the swinging carbide lamps, she smiled—a smile that with her looks managed to be provocative in spite of the heaviness of her heart.

“Thanks for rescuing me anyway,” she said, and as an after-thought, “It's easy to see why you were decorated, Jack. You're quite the hero, aren't you?”

A week later Ted left home, and Charlotte did not know whether to be glad or sorry. She would miss him terribly—after the long years when he was away, it was wonderful to have him back—but he was so changed, so restless and unhappy, and she thought it might be best for him to get right away and try to make a new life for himself, somewhere where Rebecca's ghost did not walk.

“I thought for a bit he might be going to make a go of it with Rosa Clements,” she said to Dolly when she came down for one of her afternoon visits. “I don't really care for the girl, but if she could make him happy, I suppose that's all that matters.”

“Rosa's all right, Mam,” Dolly said, “but our Ted isn't going to forget Becky Church in a hurry.”

“No, you're right there,” Charlotte agreed, wishing that Ted could be more like placid Dolly. After the first terrible upset of Eric being killed just before the wedding, Dolly had accepted it as she accepted everything, and already had a new beau—a boy from Bath who had been invalided out of the army suffering from the effects of gas, and who came twice a week to do Captain Fish's garden.

“There's something else worrying me, too,” Charlotte went on, changing the subject. “ I may be wrong—I hope I am—but I think our Jack is seeing her.”

“Jack?”
Dolly repeated in disbelief.

“I may be wrong,” Charlotte said again. “But I've seen them talking out in the yard several times this week. And he went off last night without saying where he was going.”

“Oh, I can't believe that!” Dolly was scathing. “ Not Jack. I've never known him take any interest in a girl—let alone Rosa.”

“Well, he's older now. He wouldn't be human if he didn't look at a girl sometime,” Charlotte told her, and she did not add that she was remembering a long-ago street party when she had caught Jack staring at Rosa with a very dreamy expression on his face.

“Rosa's an attractive girl, the sort men go for,” she went on after a moment. “And she's sly, too. If she made up her mind to it, our Jack would be putty in her hands!”

“Oh, Mam, you are funny!” Dolly teased her.

But Charlotte did not laugh. “With our Ted gone, it wouldn't surprise me,” she said grimly.

And she had no idea how close to the truth her prophesy would turn out to be.

In the spring of 1919, Jack began teaching at Hillsbridge Church of England School in the valley next to the church, but it was only a temporary measure.

“To fill in until I go to Bristol University in the autumn,” he explained to William Davies when he went to see him to tell him of his plans.

“University! Well, I'm very pleased for you, Jack.” William Davies smiled. “And to think I thought I'd be doing well to make an uncertificated teacher of you! You're doing it properly, and no mistake!”

“The way things are changing nowadays, I think I can make a better future if I'm properly qualified,” Jack told him. “I think I can get a government grant as an ex-service student, and if I put that on top of my officer's gratuity, I should be able to manage.”

William Davies nodded. Things certainly were changing in the teaching profession.

“We've got a lot to thank Fisher for,” Davies said, referring to the recent education act named after H. A.L. Fisher, which had raised salaries and brought in a pension scheme for teachers among other things. “Though I'm not sure whether it's a good idea raising the leaving age to fourteen. It's not that I want to see child labour—far from it—but the classrooms are overcrowded now, and half of them don't want to be there, anyway.”

Jack was surprised to hear his old mentor express this sentiment, but he could see he had a point. “They think it's a waste of time, having to stay on another year when they want to be earning their living,” he agreed, “ but in the end they'll come to realize it's for their own good.”

William Davies sighed. “ Will they? I'm not so sure. And if they want to, the local authorities can raise it by another year. You know that, do you?”

Jack nodded and admitted to himself that he really wouldn't relish the thought of having to teach unwilling fifteen-year-olds. The ones he had were bad enough, and he wasn't sure he'd made too auspicious a start. It had been different at the board school with William Davies always within earshot, and he had been only a pupil/ teacher then. But now he was expected to wield his own authority, and he didn't think he was doing too well. The children called him ‘ Hop-along' and ‘Peg-leg' and played him up whenever they could, and he hadn't been very proud of the fact that one day the strict and old-fashioned headmaster at the school had had to come in and lay about him with his cane to restore order.

Part of the trouble, he was sure, was that they knew him too well. He would much prefer to work further from home, and there had been a vacancy he would have liked at Sanderley, a village three miles north of Hillsbridge on the road to Bath. But he had no way of getting there each day, and walking was out of the question with his artificial leg.

He had been fitted now with what he called his ‘proper one'—the leg that attached to his stump by straps, and which he would be using, if he was lucky, for a good many years to come. After his early struggles, he found it surprisingly easy to manage, and he could get around at a good speed. But if he overdid things, the stump rubbed raw. And six miles walking a day, would certainly be overdoing things!

But he would only be at the C of E for a few months, he consoled himself, and it would be experience which would stand him in good stead. And by the time he finished his training and came to look for another job, he would be that much older.

“You were lucky to get into Bristol University,” William Davies said, harking back to the training that was so close to his heart.

Jack nodded. “Yes, it's good to be within striking distance of home. And I'm looking forward to working with the university students as well as doing my teacher training.”

“And not too far away from your girl, either,” William Davies added with a smile, and Jack coloured. He wouldn't have mentioned it, but it certainly was a consideration. He didn't want to be far away from Rosa.

Since that night when he had rescued her in the market yard, Jack's life had revolved round Rosa. Just how it had happened, he could not be sure, but suddenly he had found himself thinking about her all the time, picturing her dark eyes, her glossy hair and the curve of her red lips when she smiled.

He'd always found her attractive. Even in the days when his world had consisted of schoolwork and aeroplanes. But now, suddenly, she was within his reach, and she was not only lovely and enchanting, but there was also something of the old days about her that gave him a warm and pleasurable feeling. She had known him when he was whole, and she had known Fred, too, and all the others who had once been a part of his everyday life and were gone now.

Sometimes, it was true, he still thought of Stella O'Halloran, and blushed to remember how he had thought she might care for him. Had she known how he had felt? He hoped not, although he thought that after nursing as many soldiers as she had, she was probably used to them falling in love with her, and understood, or even dismissed it as a part of the healing process. But in spite of his embarrassment, and the brief, warm intimacy they had shared when she had listened to his fears and comforted him, she was unreal to him now. In fact, had it not been for the reality of his stump, he sometimes found it difficult to believe those months in hospital had ever happened at all. While Rosa …

Rosa was beautiful and mysterious, a potent mixture of the untamed and the vulnerable. And there was no doubt at all that
she
was real, though he sometimes felt as if she had woven a spell about him.

“You're a witch,” he told her one night, smiling into the dark eyes that seemed to hypnotize him, and he had no way of knowing how much the remark pleased her, even now.

“You think so?” she asked, tossing her head and looking at him narrowly, and he put his arms around her, pulling her into the gap between the coal-houses and kissing her until she was breathless.

It was a warm April evening. After the harsh winter, spring had come early and it had been just the right weather for Jack to take his ‘constitutionals' as he described the slow, painful excursions when he tried to teach himself to walk without a stick. But painful or not, he did not mind, for they also provided a good excuse to be alone with Rosa in the way that both of them liked best—out in the lanes, away from distractions, where they could simply enjoy one another's company and watch the countryside wake up from its winter sleep.

Jack had never been a one for the entertainments Ted enjoyed, and Rosa was more at home under the stars, so this at least they had in common, and for Jack, just being with Rosa was a delight.

He knew Charlotte disapproved. And he would have liked her to accept Rosa as she had accepted Jim's Sarah or even Ted's Becky, but she didn't, and he was determined not to spoil things by worrying about it. She was his mother, maybe, but he had his own life to lead, and with Rosa, it promised to be very exciting.

As he felt himself rise and harden he drew her deeper into the shadow of the outbuildings, balancing himself against the wall and pulling her close. If only there was somewhere they could go for a bit of real privacy! But there wasn't, and perhaps it was just as well. If he had her on his own for too long, he didn't know how long he would be able to resist her.

He bent her head beneath his, kissing her again and feeling her lips open gently like the petals of a water lily. As the layers unfolded he tasted the sweetness of her mouth and his desire mounted, spreading from the heart of him in ever-widening circles like the molten lava that pours from a volcano. The kiss became deeper and more demanding: her arms were around his neck, her fingers playing in his hair, and her body moved against his with a sensuous insistence that brought him to a pitch of desire. He moved his body against hers and felt her thighs yield beneath the pressure. One of her hands left his neck and moved slowly down his back, setting every nerve alight, and each time he raised his head, her mouth sought his again, drawing it down until he felt he was drowning in her.

It was sweet torture. Part of him wanted to stay locked in the embrace forever, part demanded the release of passion in an earth-shattering climax. But this was far too public a place, and even if it wasn't …

There was only one way he could have her, without guilt. It had occurred to him before, when he had lain awake aching to have her with him, but he had dismissed it, telling himself it was too soon. Now, however, it was there again, and he knew that where Rosa was concerned, it could never be too soon.

He held her away from him so that he felt her warm breath slide over his cheek. “ Rosa, I want you to marry me,” he said.

The ripple of breath against his face stopped, so did her hands and the gentle, sensuous movement of her hips. She looked at him, her eyes wide with surprise, then he felt a shudder run through her body. It stirred a new depth in him, and he shifted himself awkwardly, aware suddenly of the importance of her answer.

Time seemed suspended, the sounds of the night very far away. In the kitchen of one of the houses along the rank, someone was whistling tunelessly. From a nearby coal-house came the sound of a scraping shovel and the thud of falling coal, and far out over the valley an owl hooted its low, mournful call. Jack shifted again so that Rosa's profile came into focus, the clearly defined line of nose and chin, the slender throat, the rounded thrust of breast.

“Rosa …” he said again, but she interrupted him, as if the sound of his voice had broken the spell.

“Yes,” she said, and he wasn't sure if he imagined the slight harshness in her tone.

He swallowed at the lump of nervousness that seemed to be choking him. “ You mean …”