When the Bough Breaks (29 page)

What a relief it was to Kathie to hear them talking, even laughing. Claudia had always been a welcome visitor, but never more than now.

With autumn the weather broke, something that Kathie had been dreading. To sit outside was a thing of the past, but there were plenty of gloriously bright days. What was the magic in Claudia that made Dennis fall in with her plan that they should walk – or in his case sit – to the Boatman's Arms, an ancient inn by the River Dere. It was quite two miles away, and once out of the village there were no footpaths, but the road was smooth.

‘We might get there and find it closed with a sign on the door telling us there is no beer,' Dennis warned her.

‘Then we'll have enjoyed the walk anyway,' she answered cheerfully, forgetting that ‘walk' was hardly an accurate description.

‘Claudia, you have much better things to do with your days than push a useless hulk like me around. I feel—'

‘I'm not pushing this chair just out of kindness, Den. I thought we had fun together. Stop grizzling and keep your fingers crossed that the pub's open. Which way do we go at this T-junction?'

Occasionally there would be a day when Claudia didn't come to Westways. She had other things to do – a trip to Exeter, a hairdresser appointment, a visit to the manicurist to have her nails painted, fingers and toes too. Like a lost soul Dennis would stare into space, his mouth turning down at the corners, his eyes seeing nothing. Kathie tried to arouse his interest in the work she was doing in the field, ask his opinion even though she had been managing very well without it while he was away. With a bored shrug of his shoulders he would answer her questions then pick up the newspaper and make a pretence of reading. On the days he had Claudia for company, whether in her garden, being pushed for a walk to the Boatman's Arms or playing Monopoly in the warm room his spirits were lifted and he forgot his frustrations.

That was part of the reason for Kathie's troubled conscience. The other part was less complicated but just as hard to bear. Bruce's visits were rare; sometimes he would look in on Saturdays on the pretence of seeing that the boys were helping; sometimes he would just ‘happen to pass' the gate and drop in to have a few words with Den as he did around teatime on a Saturday in early December. Like Kathie, he too was troubled by conscience even though for weeks they had had no time alone. He had enormous sympathy for Den, a man who had gone to war leaving a wife and daughter and the happiness that had been so apparent at Westways, only to return crippled, with no daughter and a wife who had moved on from their old life just as surely as he had himself. How was it that Bruce was so certain Kathie and Den hadn't slotted back to the way things used to be, ‘two sides of the same coin'? It was a question he didn't ask himself, for he only had to be in the same room with her to be aware that for her, as for him, what they felt had been no midsummer madness.

‘How are you getting on with this year's party from the school, Kathie?' he asked her on that December Saturday.

‘They're great. Clive got the mechanical digger out this morning and worked with it. It's heavy work, but he's as strong as an adult.'

Bruce nodded. ‘Clive Dunster. He's head boy, you know. I have great hopes for Clive, he's a bright lad. He came to me when he was six, the youngest boarder I'd had. Now he's just eighteen. I trust by the time he comes out of university this wretched war will be over.'

His eyes met Kathie's, both of them thinking along the same lines: the war over, evacuees sent home, Brockleigh gone from the Hall.

Dennis shrugged his shoulders. ‘Bloody war!'

‘I must go. Young Marley was in the garden with Beth, I believe. I'll take him back with me, it'll be getting dark soon. Don't bother to see me out, Kathie, I'll use the back door and collect Marley.'

‘I expect he's helping her with the chickens.'

They dreaded Christmas, always a time for heightened emotions. No Jess, Den so changed and with his resenting Beth's presence even more than for the rest of the year. Under Claudia's casually cheerful manner lurked a spirit more sensitive than she was prepared to show, and it was she who suggested they should spend the day with her.

‘I expect I'm being selfish,' she chuckled, ‘but I've ordered a turkey and I haven't a clue what I have to do with it. Will it come with its clothes on? It won't, will it? If you're there you can tell me what to do, Kathie. Please come. Bruce has promised to help me pretty the place up, I bought lots of sparkly bits when I was in Exeter.'

They agreed with no hesitation. Like Kathie and Dennis, Beth had been dreading the festival. Mr H could make everyone feel miserable without even saying a word. But if they all went to Ollie's house, and nice Mr Meredith too, it would be new and different, not like last year when they'd gone to the common to cut the holly and she had learnt about the spirit of Christmas.

Good times and bad, they all pass. Somehow they lived through that first year without Jess. Claudia had a piano but no great expertise as a pianist, so she persuaded Bruce to accompany their sing-song. Surprisingly she had quite a lot of sheet music, well known songs, some old and some new. She led the singing, performing with no more skill than she had in the repertory company but looking even lovelier than she had in those days ten years earlier. They played games, charades being the children's favourite, and somehow the day melted into history. At Claudia's suggestion, Beth stayed the night so that the others didn't have anything to hurry home for and when at last they left it was already Boxing Day. Bruce pushed the wheelchair and insisted on coming right along the lane to Westways before, by the light of the moon, he managed to see to undo the padlock, then with his pocket torch aimed at the ground, make his way through the wood and back to school.

After four months at home Den had become more independent and managed the stairs in half the time he had originally. Once he was in bed, Kathie pulled back the curtains and opened the window, then climbed in by his side.

‘Didn't she do well?' she said in little more than a whisper, the effect of the silence of night. Her words carried an unspoken message. Somehow they had got through the day without Jess. The pain never got any less, and neither could they talk to each other about her.

Lying on his back Den put his arm around her, easing her towards him. She recognized that he was unsettled and read the message in his action. Tonight she had wanted to lie awake in the isolation of the dark bedroom. She wanted to remember every moment of the hours that had gone, the brief exchanged glances, the surprise of Bruce's ability on the piano. She wanted her mind to reach out to his, for he would be thinking of her just as she was of him, of that she was sure. Instead she raised herself to lie on Den, answering his need of her. Then, just as he wanted, she drew her knees up and sat straighter, so that she could guide him. Bruce, Bruce, she cried silently as she moved slowly and firmly, forcing Den deeper into her, I want this to be
you
, nearer, deeper, you, you. She kept her eyes closed cutting her off from everything but her dream of being one with Bruce.

‘Quicker, Kathie, quicker, yes, yes, aahhh . . .' It was over, her illusion gone. Duty done, she climbed off him and lay down by his side. Dear Dennis, consciously she brought the thought to the top of her mind. She had never felt so full of self-contempt, nor yet so frightened of the future.

So the days went on. Kathie told herself she was a realist, and if when she looked into the future she could see no shape, no hope, then it had to be up to
her
to set the scene. Work was her salvation and in the early weeks of the year she threw herself into it wholeheartedly. Perhaps that was what made her so blind.

It was a day during the Easter school holiday when, working with her seedlings in the greenhouse (surely Den could have done this, some evil spirit whispered to her) she heard an unfamiliar sound. Raising her head she listened again. Beth and Ollie were at the Hall where Bruce had given them permission to play during the school break. Anyway, this wasn't a child's cry, it was a woman, a woman who was being swept along on a tide of despair.

Following the sound, Kathie found the girls at the far end of the field. Sally was sitting on the stile, bent forward so that her head was almost on her knees, her whole body twitching and shaking as she pressed her clenched fists against her face as if that way she could force her out-of-control outburst into silence. In front of her knelt Sarah, and whatever it was she was saying was lost to Kathie who could hear nothing above the wild hysteria. Glancing helplessly at Sarah, she too dropped to her knees pulling the shaking body into her arms.

‘Whatever is it, Sally? Nothing can be
that
bad. Come on, love, tell me. Whatever it is, we'll sort it out.'

‘Can't sort it out. Oh Mrs H, I don't knows what to do. Mum's found out. And I can't do what they say. I won't!'

To Kathie it made no sense. ‘Start from the beginning, Sally.'

Making a huge effort and accompanied by spasmodic snorts and gulps, and a quick glance at Sarah who nodded her silent reply, Sally began at the beginning.

‘Right from the first Saturday he worked here, Clive and I have been going out when he's free. Lately it's been more that just “going out”. It just seemed to happen, Mrs H. When we were walking ages ago, back in the autumn it was, we found an old barn on the lane going down to the river. There was never anyone there, no tools in it or animals or anything, just a pile of old straw. We went in to shelter when it suddenly rained. Then when the days got colder that's where we went. It was sort of
our
place. We just talked most of the time. You don't really know him, Mrs H, but if you could hear him, the things he believes, the things he means to do with his life, then you'd understand. I'd never talked to anyone like him. I hated the Christmas holidays when he wasn't at the Hall and he said he felt just the same.'

‘You fell in love with him. And does he feel the same about you?' But they were hardly more than children. And what would this sort of trouble do to his school leaving exams?

‘Yes, yes of course he does. That's how it all happened. Mum's been watching me, then yesterday she asked me straight out why I was late, if I'd been doing anything I shouldn't.' It was hard to understand her words as her crying took control again. ‘What we did was right, it wasn't dirty and beastly like they said. Called me a whore, a child of Satan, and Clive too. Said I had to go away till my baby gets born – they'll tell lies that I've got a job somewhere – then I have to have it adopted. I won't! It's mine and Clive's.'

‘They've told her that unless she does as they say they will finish with her,' Sarah took up the tale. ‘They say they can't stay in Sedgewood become of the shame.'

‘They're going to stay with Uncle Matt and Aunt Ivy. They lost Gerry, their son, trying to get home from France. They want Dad and Mum there. Would have gone before except for the chapel and all Dad does there. Now I've spoilt all that for them. But I won't do what they say. They can't make me. I want our baby.'

‘And Clive wants it too?'

‘Of course he does. He's asking his people to write permission for him to get married – when the exams are over. I asked Dad and he nearly went mad.'

‘There's no one indoors, love. Claudia's taken Den to help her with her garden. Go and wash your face and leave me to go and talk to them.'

‘They won't listen, Mrs H. And I don't care. I couldn't get big and fat with them looking at me as if I'd done something dirty. Don't know what to do.'

Taking herself by surprise Kathie kissed the girl's wet cheek.

‘You're Mrs Hawthorne, aren't you,' Ewart Brent greeted Kathie when he opened the door to her knock. ‘I suppose you've heard the disgusting way they've behaved. It's no use your looking to us to sort her out.' Not an auspicious opening to the interview.

‘It must have been a shock for you, but if we all help them it needn't be a calamity. And honestly have they done anything that we wouldn't have when we were between the innocence of childhood and being in love for the first time?' Kathie was rather pleased with her reply, it told them that she knew the situation and at the same time showed that she understood.

‘How dare you insinuate such things!'

‘I dare because you're her parents and you love her. Surely love overrides convention – it does in my book anyway.'

‘Then, madam, I suggest you change your reading. The good book lays down strict rules and if the world obeyed them it would be a better place.'

‘Yes,' she agreed, ‘of course it would. But I thought ours was a god of love – love between parents and children which lasts a lifetime, love between a man and woman which, when you first experience it is a . . . is a . . . soul-consuming emotion.'

‘Madam, you forget yourself. I will not be preached at by a woman who condones their shameful behaviour.'

‘They are children,' Mrs Brent interjected, ‘a nasty, smutty boy fumbling, exploring . . .'

‘He is a fine young man. Mr Meredith, the headmaster of Brockleigh School, is a friend of ours and he has talked of Clive, the head boy, with enormous admiration. Home for his school holiday he is getting his parents' consent to his marrying at the end of next term.' She momentarily crossed her fingers for luck as she said it. ‘Can't you give the same consent to Sally? Think of the joy of having a grandchild to love.'

‘We're not interested.' Ewart Brent didn't mean to be preached at by this gypsy-looking woman in her workman's overalls (for Dennis's old trousers had at last given up the ghost). ‘The girl seems to have no conception what her condition would do to us if she were to stay in Sedgewood. If you want to do something to ease the situation, then I suggest you use your influence to persuade her to do as we say.'