Lost in the Flames (5 page)

‘Want one?’ he said.

‘No, thank you,’ said Rose. ‘It’s a disgusting habit. Makes your breath stink too, terrible for kissing.’

She saw Jacob eyeing up Webster’s cigarette.

‘Want one, Jacob?’ Webster said.

‘Don’t you dare, you little bugger,’ Rose said sharply. ‘If I ever see you smoking, you’re for it! And you Webster, you beast, you shouldn’t be trying to corrupt the poor little lad.’

She knocked the cigarette out of Webster’s mouth and let out a shriek as the tip of the thing touched her hand as it departed.

‘Bloody hell, Webster,’ she said. ‘Look what you’ve gone a nd done!’

‘It wasn’t my fl-flipping fault,’ he stammered.

Two hours later the sun was setting behind the hill and William sat alone by the pond at the end of his rod, still fishless, and Jacob and Webster came out and helped him pack up and they walked with him back up the hill.

‘Who’s that Rose?’ Webster asked, as they neared the Arbuckles’ house. ‘A friend of your sister’s?’

‘Yes, she’s her best friend, lives just opposite us,’ said Jacob. ‘She’s always round at ours.’

‘But father doesn’t like her,’ said William.

‘He says she’s a bit of a girl, whatever that’s supposed to mean,’ said Jacob. ‘But I like her.’

‘She’s all right, I suppose,’ said William.

‘She seems all right to me too,’ said Webster, and Jacob felt something tug at him inside. ‘Will she be at the wedding tomorrow?’

‘Oh yes, she’ll definitely be at the wedding,’ said Jacob. ‘She likes that kind of thing.’

The wedding day dawned crisp and golden, a light frost dusting the fields and the late-October sun rising over the back of Chipping Norton as Brailes tied white ribbons upon his beloved Trojan Tourer, lacing up the automobile in the colours of the day. There was no means of transport in the Arbuckle family, so Brailes had offered them a loan of the Trojan to carry the bride in style to the church, and the couple to their honeymoon in Woodstock the following day.

Alfred arrived at the farm in mid-morning and found Norman and Webster gathered around the Trojan.

‘Morning, Norman,’ he said, shaking him by the hand with excessive vigour. ‘I don’t know who’s more nervous, you or me. I’ve never done this before, you know.’

‘Me neither,’ grinned Norman. ‘Once in a lifetime.’

‘Got the ring?’ Alfred winked at Webster.

‘Not yet, Mr Arbuckle.’

Norman patted his own breast pocket.

‘She’ll be safe in here until we get to the church.’

Brailes came stumbling out of the kitchen and down the steps, his voice preceding him by a distance. He marched across to the car and the others gathered around and admired its white ribbons as Brailes settled himself into the front seat and ceremonially turned the key. The engine coughed and died, Brailes tried again, the engine sparked into life, a loud bang ensued, and a puff of black smoke exited the exhaust.

‘Well, I’ll be buggered!’ exclaimed Brailes, even louder than usual, and a pair of sheep in the nearest field hurtled away up the slope. ‘I had the bloody thing up the garage just yesterday for a service.’

‘Fatal mistake,’ said Norman.

‘What are we going to do, Mr Brailes?’ asked Webster.

‘Horse and trap?’ said Brailes.

‘It’s up to Mr Arbuckle,’ said Norman.

Alfred looked at the sky and nodded. ‘It’s a fine day.’

They transferred the white ribbons to the trap and Alfred and Mr and Mrs Brailes disappeared up the lane side by side on the bench-seat behind the horse, Norman and Webster setting off up the hill after them with the dogs. They were half-way along West Street when the horse clipped past again, Vera sitting in something simple and white and edged with lace, Brailes hurrying the horse along with a flick of his wrist and Alfred thrusting back his shoulders with pride. Vera waved at Norman and her gaze stayed upon him until the trap disappeared around the bend.

‘You’re a lucky man, Norman,’ said Webster.

‘I know, mate, I know,’ said Norman. ‘Don’t worry, Webster, your time will come.’

‘What’s that Rose like?’

‘Vera’s friend? You could do worse.’

‘Is she with anyone at the moment?’

‘Hard to say with her. Only one way to find out, though.’

As they were passing the almshouses on Church Street, Norman transferred the ring to Webster’s hand. They waited outside the church and Alfred sidled up and nudged Norman in the ribs.

‘Have a bit of this, Norman. Calms the nerves.’

Norman took a sip from the silver flask and felt the brandy warm his throat. Alfred passed it to Webster, then took several quick swigs for himself. Jacob and William came over and stood by their imminent brother-in-law and attempted to copy his posture, pushing back their childish shoulders in futile imitation of Norman’s broadness of beam.

The vicar appeared silently behind them and accepted the flask, ignoring Jacob’s repeated requests for a sip.

‘No, Jacob,’ he said. ‘There’ll be plenty of time to sin when you’re older.’ He knocked back a good long swig. ‘Good for the constitution, purifies the soul. Right then, Norman, we’d best be going in. Are you ready?’

‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ said Norman. ‘Come on Webster, let’s go.’

The dogs waited outside as the ceremony was conducted and when the newly-weds emerged the dogs took their place at their master’s heel as the photos were taken, and Vera stood next to Norman and he felt the nudge of her against him, the fit of her hand in his own, and he suddenly realised that for the first time in his life he had someone of his own, someone who would be with him until the end of his days, and he knew that at last everything was going to be all right.

Rose, the maid of honour, took her place next to Webster, and when the photos were done they walked up the hill together to the Fox Hotel for the reception.

‘What’s your name, Webster?’ Rose asked as they stood at the bar.

‘Webster.’

‘No, Webster. I mean what’s your name, Webster? I can’t keep calling you Webster, can I?’

‘Why not? Everyone else does.’

Several hours later, when the party had passed the stage of politeness and well regimented consumption of food, and moved on to an urgent milling of bodies around the room, Rose cornered Webster in a dark recess where the lights were dim and the fire burned warm beside them. In the orange glow of the flames he saw her lips move and her eyes fix on his.

‘Webster, tell me your name. Please.’

She leaned towards him and as he backed away she leaned further in and whispered in his ear.

‘Webster, you know what they call me, don’t you?’

Webster swallowed and shook his head.

‘Wild Rose. Can you guess why?’

Webster shook his head again. ‘Because you smell nice and live at the bottom of the garden?’

‘No, because I can’t be tamed. Do you think that’s awful?’

‘No.’

‘Most people do.’

‘Like who?’

‘Norman.’

‘Norman?’

Webster looked over Rose’s shoulder towards the far side of the room where Norman and Vera stood together next to Alfred, his flask long since drained and his feet skipping in time to the music that filtered in from the next room where a violin led a rag-bag medley of sentimental tunes.

‘Yes, Norman. He’s always telling Vera I’m a bad influence.’

‘He told me I could do worse.’

‘From him that’s almost a compliment. He doesn’t understand people, just his cows and his sheep. Just his beasts.’

‘I think he understands me,’ said Webster.

‘That’s because you’re a bloke,’ she smiled. ‘And blokes are just one step removed from the animals, and sometimes not even that.’

Rose kissed Webster on the cheek, then brushed her lips against his.

‘Tell me your name, Webster. It’ll be our secret.’

And as little Jacob Arbuckle looked on from the far side of the room, Rose parted her lips and Webster closed his eyes as the taste of her stilled him, and an aphorism occurred to Jacob that he had heard from Rose the previous day, ‘Love is being stupid together’, and he thought that if Rose saw him looking she should somehow feel guilty, though he did not understand why. But she did not see him and she carried right on and Jacob turned away and wondered what Eric would have thought if it had been Penelope pecking away at another in the light of the flames.

Rose knew Webster’s name by the time dawn lightened the morning mists around Elm Tree Farm. She whispered it to him as he
woke, and before the farmyard drifted into life she slipped out of bed and they dressed and walked back up the hill towards Chipping Norton. At the gate of her house they parted. Webster waited until he heard her front door slip quietly shut and as he turned away in the mist she crept up the stairs and past her grandmother’s room and was asleep in bed when her breakfast arrived on a tray in mid-morning.

‘Did you kiss her, Webster?’ Jacob asked him later that day.

‘Might have done.’

‘Liar. I saw you. Did you kiss her much?’

‘None of your business.’

‘What else did you do? Did you touch her down there?’

‘Do you think I’d bl-bloody tell you if I had?’ he stammered. The mere thought of her made him quiver.

‘Why bl-bloody not?’ echoed Jacob.

‘Fuck off, Jacob.’

‘I’ll tell Rose you said that. She’ll hate you for it.’

‘No, she won’t.’

‘She will, Webster, she will. Give me a cigarette and I won’t tell her.’

‘If I did that she really would hate me.’

‘Give me one anyway. I won’t say that you did.’

Webster took one from the pack and passed it to Jacob. ‘Don’t you fli-flippin’ tell her, though.’

‘Don’t fli-flippin’ worry, Webster, I won’t.’

A few miles away in Woodstock, a room in a small guest-house near the gate to Blenheim Palace had been booked for two nights, a short honeymoon fitted in around the needs of the farm. Norman and Vera spent the night in intimate celibacy, only too aware of the promise to Alfred that Norman had made. Norman woke early and turned on his side and watched Vera as she slept, the little twitching around her eyes as she dreamed. She woke later to find him sitting in the chair by the window, looking out over the parkland and the expanse of the lake and the burnished woods beyond, studying the sheep as they grazed up the slopes.

He heard her turn, then her soft voice.

‘What are you doing over there, Norman?’

‘Thinking about my dogs.’

‘Come back to bed for a while.’

They spent the morning in the Blenheim estate grounds and the afternoon in the shops and tea-rooms clustered in the streets either side of the town hall, and by evening they were both longing to get back to Chipping Norton where the rest of their lives awaited them. When they arrived back at the farm the next day, they found a vase of flowers and a loaf of fresh bread on the kitchen table in their cottage.

‘That armchair will have to go,’ said Vera when she saw the tatty wingback.

‘But it’s my favourite. And I haven’t got another.’

‘It’s covered in pigeon business,’ said Vera firmly. ‘I’ll ask father to bring one down later.’

They left their overnight bags in the bedroom and Norman showed her the space he had cleared in the bathroom for her bottles and soaps and then they sat in the kitchen and grinned at each other. The dogs saw the open door and hurtled in from the yard, Mr and Mrs Brailes followed, and before long the conversation had turned to the requirements of the day and the jobs that would need attending to before evening, and by the time Brailes was flipping the tops off bottles of beer in the kitchen that evening, Vera’s things had been brought down from the house up the hill and she had been absorbed into the life of the farm.

A fortnight later a letter arrived for Norman, the address scrawled in a hand unaccustomed to significant use of a pen.

‘It’s Webster,’ he said. ‘He wants to come back.’

He passed the letter to Vera.

‘Rose!’ she said. ‘I knew she had her eye on him.’

‘Should he come?’

‘If he’s coming for the job, then yes. If it’s for Rose, then I wouldn’t advise it.’

‘But he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. I’ll go and speak to Brailes.’

Webster was back within a week and he moved into the cottage
again next to Norman and Vera.

‘You’ll have to share it with Pete the pig-man now, I’m afraid,’ said Norman.

‘Pete the pig-man?’ said Webster.

‘We took him on two weeks ago but I’ve told Brailes to get rid. He’s good for nothing, lazy as a toad. You’ll meet him soon enough.’

‘So this is your room now?’ said Pete that evening, standing with Webster in the box-room at the back. ‘Looks like you’ve messed it up already, clothes all over the place.’

‘They’re my clothes,’ said Webster. ‘I can put them where I want, can’t I?’

‘Yes, but I like my cottage to look nice,’ said Pete. ‘I prefer it that way.’

‘Is that right?’ said Webster.

‘I do hope you’ll like it here, Webster.’

‘Don’t worry, I will, I’ve been here before.’

‘So why did you leave, then? It’s a right cushy number, this. That fool Norman does all the work and Brailes doesn’t give a sod any more, he’s right over the hill and coming down the other side. I reckon the land-owner’s going to be after a change of manager soon, someone a bit more youthful. Reckon I could be in there if I play my cards right, know what I mean?’

He winked at Webster, a clumsy movement of the eye.

‘Know what I mean?’

Another wink.

‘Got something in your eye, Pete?’

A pause.

‘Why do they call you Pete the pig-man anyway?’

‘Because I look like a bloody pig, don’t I? Not my fault.’

‘Very true,’ said Webster. ‘And no, I suppose it’s not your fault.’

The following day Norman and Webster left Pete the pig-man to muck out the cow-sheds while they went to set traps for the pheasants in the top wood with Jacob trailing along behind, asking endless questions and hanging on Norman’s every word, tipping the small gems of knowledge around in his head as he walked, counting the facts he had learned that day, repeating them internally, silently imitating Norman’s verbal mannerisms so that the boy’s lips moved as he walked.