The Widow Trapp. And the rival witch lived at Tidworth. The old-fashioned phrase set up an echo that made the guess a certainly. I took her hand. It was dry and bony and surprisingly strong. ‘How do you do, Mrs Marget?’
Her delighted reaction held a kind of echo, too. ‘There, now, didn’t she tell me? Didn’t I know the minute I laid eyes on you?’
‘Tell you what? Know what?’ She didn’t answer, but shook her head, the black eyes dancing. She picked the tin of cocoa up and pressed it into my hand. ‘You’re forgetting this. Yes, I’m Madge Marget, and you’ll know my George, I reckon – that’s my son. He’s the postman, and he was telling me that old Miss Saxon’s place looks a fair treat now, and the new young lady was the prettiest sight you’d see between here and Salisbury. So as soon as you come into the shop I says to myself, that’s her, I says, with a look of Miss Saxon that there’s no mistaking, and a right beauty, too, no offence.’
‘No – I – How could there be? Thank you.’
She folded her hands under her apron, and leaned back against the counter, obviously ready for a long chat, but I thanked her again quickly, with some sort of excuse about being in a hurry, and made for the door. As I opened it I found her close behind me. A hand came over my shoulder, pointing.
‘That’s Eddy Masson’s house, a-down there by the stacks. He keeps them there.’
‘Keeps what?’
‘Those.’
And the finger pointed to where, high over the big elms, a flight of pigeons circled, dipped, and wheeled away in the direction of Boscobel.
23
Mr Masson’s cottage stood a little apart from the road, and if I had not been told that he had no wife, I could have guessed it from the generally neglected look of house and garden. The wicket gate was rotting, and hung on one hinge. I pushed through it and picked my way over the weedy cobbles to the door. This stood open, and gave straight on to the living-room, where the remains of breakfast still stood on a table covered with newspaper. A pair of carpet slippers lay where they had been kicked off, in front of the fireless grate.
Another glimpse of bachelor living, and nothing to compare with Christopher John’s competence. The only thing they had in common was staring at me from the cold stove. A pie-dish, blue and white, containing the uneaten half of a pie. A pie-dish I recognised. Agnes, it seemed, spread her charities widely.
Purely as a matter of form, I knocked at the door, waited the conventional half-minute for a reply, then, as if looking for the back door, trod through the weeds round to the back of the cottage. There, at the foot of what had once been a garden, stood the pigeon-house. As I approached it I heard a sound from the air above me, and looked up, just as the flight of pigeons came home. Twenty or so, at a guess, grey and white and black, wheeling against a blue sky. I stood still. They circled once, twice, a third time lower and more tightly, then one by one they dropped to the landing-sill of their house, and went in.
It was apparent that all Mr Masson’s spare time and care was given to the pigeon-house. Though the exterior paint was fading and peeling the woodwork was sound, and the glass and mesh of the windows looked almost new. The door, when I tried it, was securely locked, but by standing on tiptoe I could see through the wired glass of the front.
Most of the birds were feeding. A few flew up in momentary alarm as they saw me, but they were used to being watched, and quickly settled back to their strutting and pecking. Most of them were grey, like the first of Thornyhold’s messengers, but there were dark ones among them, and a few of the soft red, and one pure and lovely white. They were all, as far as I could see, ringed, but none of them had the distinctive metallic ring of the carriers.
Not that that need mean anything, I thought, as I plodded back to the gate. For all I knew they might wear special rings to carry the tiny rolls of paper. So I had every excuse in the world for going to Black Cocks to see Mr Masson, and the best excuse in the world for passing Boscobel’s gate – and maybe calling in to ask how Rags was getting on?
I told myself angrily that I needed no excuse. He had surely made that sufficiently obvious. Was nothing, even the patent liking and admiration – all right, attraction – he had shown for me, going to cure me of the self-effacing instinct built into me by that repressed childhood, the shyness that vanished utterly once I was with him, but which paralysed me from approaching him?
In the end, it didn’t matter. There was no sign of him at Boscobel, and his car was not in the yard. Nor could I see William’s bicycle. And of course no dog.
I pedalled by, and on to Black Cocks.
The first thing I saw there was Christopher John’s car standing just outside the farmyard gate, with William’s bicycle leaning against the wall near by. And after all, no courage was required. All that was needed, it seemed, was his nearness. The singing in the air again, the brightness, the lift of the spirit that spelled delight. I propped my bicycle beside William’s, and let myself through the gate.
At first glance the yard looked deserted, except for hens scratching and clucking among the spillings from the stacks. There were some pigeons among them, which flew up with a rattle of wings, and I saw that they were wild birds, ring doves that flew high before tilting into a circle and making for the tall elms beyond the farmhouse.
‘Hullo? Is anyone there?’
My voice sounded thin and lost in the emptiness of the yard. The sun beat down on the roofs of the buildings, and flashed from the car’s windscreen. Cattle lowed somewhere, and I heard a chain clank. No other answer.
‘Christopher John? William?’ Then, remembering where I was: ‘Mr Yelland? Mr Masson? Is anyone around?’
Still no answer, not even a dog barking.
But he was here. I knew it. Knew it even before my eye was caught by a flight of pigeons that wheeled, dipped, circled the elms where their wild cousins hid, then flew away. Grey, rosy-red, and white, the Tidworth flock was out again. The sun glinted on their tilting wings, making them the snowflake wings of the crystal. He was here. He must be here. If Cousin Geillis had been right about me, I knew he was here …
Geillis, you lovesick fool, pull yourself together. It doesn’t take a witch to know that! His car’s here, isn’t it? All right, then, he and Rags and William, and probably Masson, too, have gone off with the farmer somewhere. And at that moment, as if in answer, I heard a distant barking, and the bleating of sheep, then a long, sweet whistle, and what sounded like a shout. The sounds came from some way beyond the buildings that edged the stackyard.
I gave up, and tried what I should have done for a start; went to the door of the farmhouse and knocked there.
At first I thought I had drawn another blank, but just as I raised my hand to knock again, a girl came hurrying through from the back premises somewhere, wiping her hands on her apron as she came. ‘There now, I thought I heard someone shouting! I was in the dairy, washing up. You bin here long?’
‘No. I only knocked once. Are you Mrs Yelland?’
‘Nay, then.’ She shook black curls, and a dimple showed. ‘If you want her, she’s over to Taggs Farm giving a hand there. Twice a week, she goes, and she won’t be back till tea-time, but you’ll be going back that way, likely, and—’
‘Actually, it was Mr Masson I wanted a word with. I believe he works here?’
‘He does that. I ha’n’t seen him today, nor Mr Yelland, not since breakfast. They’re over to the thirty-acre, gathering.’
‘Gathering?’
‘Moving the sheep. You can hear them. But if you’ll wait a bit, they’ll be in for their dinners. Another half-hour, maybe. There’s fences to mend. You like to come in?’
‘I – no, I won’t, thank you very much. May I wait outside, please? It’s such a lovely day.’
‘You’re welcome, I’m sure. Well, I’d better be getting back to the dinner. ’Bye then.’ And she bustled back into the house.
I went slowly through the empty stackyard. During my absence the ring doves had returned, and
were busy again among the hens. This time, as they flew up, they went no further than the open door twenty feet or so above, in the barn wall, where they sat on the sill, watching me warily.
It was the sort of half-door, or unglazed window, that opened at floor level on a loft, for loading. And where there was a loft, there would be a way up. I left the baking sun of the stackyard for the gloom of the big barn, and peered round me. Straw was stacked at one end of the barn almost up to the cross-beams, and at the other end right up to the floor of a half-loft. A solid flight of wooden steps led up to this. I climbed the steps to reach a clean boarded floor, lit by a brilliant slant of light from the door. The pigeons had gone. I crossed to the doorway, and knelt there to look out over the roofs of the buildings towards the pastures.
The men were there. In the distance I could make out a small figure that could be William, with a couple of men, and three dogs and a flock of sheep. But not Christopher John. Even at that distance I would have known—
He was not at that distance, nor any distance. As I knelt there, shading my eyes against the sun, I saw him below me, not fifty yards away, just outside the yard gate, with his hand on the door of his car. Then I saw him catch sight of my bicycle. He checked, turned, and cast a look around him.
I drew a breath to call out, then, as if a gentle touch from the air had sealed my mouth, I made no sound. For Christopher John, after that one swift look, whipped open the car door, slid into the driving seat, and almost before my held breath had gone out, was away and out of sight down the track to Boscobel.
24
Now, of course, I could not possibly stop at Boscobel. But when I passed the gate and allowed myself a swift look sideways, I could see no sign of his car. I did catch a glimpse of a woman, whom I took to be Mrs Yelland, carrying a box into the house, and there was a sack, perhaps of grain, standing where it had been dumped on the doorstep. He must have brought supplies from the farm, and then driven straight on. If he had parked his car at the back of the house, he would surely have left the goods there, or carried them in himself. No, it looked very much as if he had dumped the packages and made his escape in case I might call on my way back from the farm.
He needn’t have bothered, I thought drearily, as my bicycle bumped off the track and turned into the side road. Once he had made it obvious that he wanted to avoid me, I would be the last person to go near him even to ask why. In any case, Mrs Yelland’s presence would make it even more impossible for me to stop and ask him what the matter was. Even when – half a mile later – I realised that he could not have known that I had seen him take that avoiding action at the farm gate, I simply concluded that he had taken the same action at Boscobel in case I should call on my way home. All the old fears and uncertainties came crowding back, to settle, dark and formless, like a weeping cloud. How had I ever dreamed that my love could be returned? That someone like him would ever look my way? What had I said, done, that could have so annoyed – no, disgusted him, that he would not risk meeting me?
My eyes stung, and I lowered my head and pumped away at the pedals as I made myself go back mentally over yesterday, that peaceful and lovely day, when I had thought – been certain – that he loved me. Had the strength of my own feelings deceived me – scared him? But he had said – had looked … No, forget that, Geillis. He had been charming and friendly and kind, and I had forgotten to be shy. Perhaps because he had spoken at some length about William, and then about his dead wife, I had read too much into that kindness. So forget it. He had been kind, that was all, to William’s friend and lonely neighbour. It came to me like the final, shameful stab of self-betrayal, that he must be used to the effect he had on women. He had seen it working on me, and had decided to draw back.
Then so must I. The next move must come from him. And if it did not come, then it did not come.
The decision, inevitable as it was, came on a flash of pride that steadied my miserably churning thoughts, and brought me back to something near common sense. As the same moment I became aware, for the first time since I had left the Boscobel track, of where I was. I had sailed downhill past the Thornyhold gates without even seeing them, and there at the hill’s foot was the River Arn, and the bridge where Christopher John and I had sat yesterday, when all was happiness and the sun was shining.
Well, it was shining today, too. I dismounted at the bridge, took my packet of sandwiches and fruit out of the bicycle basket and, still sustained by that stiffening pride, sat down in the same place on the parapet to eat my lunch.
I suppose, being lovesick, I should have left most of the food, but I was hungry, and enjoyed it, and the warmth and the beauty of the autumn trees, and the flowers in the hedgerow where I had hunted for them yesterday. There was more wild arum growing in the grass beside the crumbling gateposts of the old abbey. The spike I had picked yesterday had been spoiled when I dropped the flowers in the car, so when I had finished eating I wheeled the machine the few yards to the gateway, picked the wild arum and dropped it into the basket with the empty lunch-packet, and turned for home. This was the time for that fresh start that I had promised myself; I would get out my painting tools and begin this very afternoon.
But then I hesitated. Less than ever, after this morning’s distress, did I want to tackle Agnes. She was quite capable of hurrying up to Thornyhold as soon as she saw me pass the lodge. I would keep away until I felt more able to face her.
I propped my bicycle by the gateway and went in through the high hedges to the field where the ruins stood.
As Mr Hannaker had said, there was nothing much to see. This was not a national monument, with shaved turf carpeting a noble nave, and carefully pointed pillars lining aisles open to the sky. St Thorn had been a small foundation, but the remains of the church showed spacious lines, with one pointed arch, still intact, framing the sky. Nothing was left of the abbey buildings except, outlined here and there in the grass, the bases of the old walls, long since plundered for their stones by the local builders and farmers. The bigger stones from doorways and pillars – and from graves, too, by the look of them – had been cleared more recently, and set back against the hedges, presumably to make the place into pasture. That cows were pastured here was very obvious.
I picked my way into the remains of the church. Nettles grew everywhere, and the grass was long and rank in the shadows, but the centre was grazed clear, where the worst of the debris of fallen masonry had been shovelled aside to make way for the cattle. It was very quiet. No cattle were about, and no birds sang.
I stood in the sunlit nave and looked about me. Towering above me, with the fragments of its tracery still clinging, was the arch that could be seen from the road. The only other remains of any size were the two massive jambs of the west door, and lesser columns to either side where the north and south doors had opened on cloister and garth. Some of the pillars that had lined the aisles still stood, but most were reduced to grass-grown stumps. Nothing else, except, near the west end, a flat slab of stone – what my father would have called a ‘resurrection-defier’ – that must once have marked an important grave. All meaningless now, deserted, sad. Beyond the broken stones stretched the empty field. Even the sunlight could bring nothing back; it was a place for darkness.
It was indeed. I recognised it now. It was not the same, of course, but it could have been the setting of my dream. The standing stones of cleared graves and broken pillars. The empty sky beyond the uprights of the west door. The flat stone half hidden in the grass. The feeling of desolation.
‘Well, Miss Ramsey, fancy seeing you here!’
I spun round.
Agnes Trapp leaned her bicycle against the gatepost opposite my own, and came towards me, smiling.
The sight of her banished all other preoccupations from my mind. So powerfully had I already gone in imagination through the interview I had planned with her that I half expected her to tackle me with it straight away, but all she said was: ‘You come in to look at the old place, then? Pretty, isn’
t it?’
‘Ye-es. Actually, I came to get some flowers and things. That yellow one growing on the wall is quite rare.’
‘Flowers? Han’t you plenty in the garden, then?’
‘Wild ones. I want to draw them. I used to do quite a bit of flower painting. I thought I’d like to start again. Agnes—’
‘Yes?’
She had been looking about her as we talked and now turned back to me, with a kind of smiling complacency that made me wonder, suddenly, if she was here by chance, or if the jungle drums – Jessamy or the Widow Marget? – had set her looking for me, to find me here on her own ground. I took a deep breath, and with it a fast hold on my courage. This was certainly not the place I would have chosen, but something told me it was now or never. I left the shadowy precinct of the church, and walked over to where, in sunlight, lay a log; no old unhallowed stone, just a fallen tree, clean and dead. ‘I was hoping to see you today.’ My voice sounded calm and pleasant. ‘I called at your house, but Jessamy told me you’d gone into town. I wanted to tell you that I found the book.’
‘You did?’ She looked pleased. More than pleased; she sparkled. There was something about her this morning, a shine of pleasure, almost of gaiety, and with it something of that force I had seen in her before. Well, I had not chosen my ground as I would have wished, but this would have to do. I sat down on the fallen log.
‘Yes. I was right about it. My cousin had given it to someone for safe keeping because, as we thought, it is actually rather valuable. So you’ll understand that I’d rather not let it out of the house, at any rate till I’ve let some expert or other take a look at it.’
‘But she told me I could have it! She—’
‘I know. Let me finish. It’s there at home, and if you want to, you can come up and look at it and copy out anything you want. One thing, though—’