The Girl by the River (6 page)

‘What’s that?’ Freddie asked.

‘Well – Susan Jarvis popped in to see me, and she’s getting married in June.’

‘About time too,’ Freddie said. Susan Jarvis had been to school with Kate, and worked with her as a nurse through the wartime.

‘Well, at least it’ll stop her making eyes at you,’ teased Kate. ‘I’m glad I got to you first!’

‘She’s never forgotten me helping her over the station bridge when she was little,’ said Freddie, remembering the blonde plaits, and the look of terror in Susan’s eyes.
‘She was scared stiff of walking over the cracks between the planks. So who’s taking her on then?’

Kate still seemed to be hanging on to a secret, her eyes bright like a magician pulling surprises out of a box. ‘Well – who do you think?’ she announced. ‘She met him at
Cheltenham Races. They’ve been courting for a year now, and he’s buying a place down here, that farm with all the stables out on the Taunton Road – and he’ll be bringing his
racehorses down.’

‘Who? Who is he?’ Freddie didn’t like the sound of that. He didn’t want Kate getting mixed up with Susan and her racehorses. Suddenly he felt pressure rising in his
head.

‘Well, you’ll remember him,’ Kate said. ‘Ian Tillerman.’

‘Ian Tillerman!’ Freddie felt the colour rush to his cheeks, his temples throbbing. A shadow crept over his life like a storm cloud across the sun. Words gathered in his mind, words
of anger and fear, words that flew up like a flock of black starlings. He felt himself go into lockdown mode. Silence was his retreat place. It held the key to his happy life, his peaceful
marriage. Kate did the talking, and he did the silence. Most of the time.

Kate chattered on about racehorses and weddings and he hardly heard her. He felt a gulf opening between them, as if the sound of Ian Tillerman’s name had cut a chasm through everything he
treasured, everything he’d worked for.

She delivered the final blow with a radiant smile. ‘The wedding is going to be here, at Monterose Church. It will be a big society wedding, and, oh I’m so thrilled, Freddie. We are
invited! I told Susan we’d come, and she wants Lucy to be a bridesmaid.’

‘I’m not going,’ said Freddie in a loud voice he hardly recognised as his own.

Kate looked startled. Her eyes searched his face, but Freddie couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t bear to see the disappointment on her face. Hurting Kate was hurting himself. But
this!

‘I told you. I’m not going.’ He stood up. ‘I need some fresh air.’

‘You haven’t finished your supper,’ Kate said caringly, but Freddie took his cap from its peg and walked out into the April evening.

There was only one person Freddie hated and it was Ian Tillerman. Ian had once tried to take Kate away from him, and the shock had caused him to lose his cool. In a rare moment
of furious anger, Freddie had crashed his motorbike into the canal. Far from home on a bitterly cold winter day, he had lain on the bank in a coma until he was hospitalised for weeks, disastrous
weeks of being unable to work and earn, a time of deep depression. He believed he’d lost Kate for ever to this ruthless toff who had everything Kate wanted. Horses, money, a big home in the
country. All the things Freddie couldn’t offer her. It had made the diamond ring he’d had in his pocket seem totally inadequate.

Yet Kate had come back to him, and when he asked her about Ian Tillerman she’d said flippantly, ‘Oh him. I told him to go to Putney on a pig.’ Freddie felt confident that Kate
loved, adored and needed him, especially after the happy years of marriage. Their love had burned steadily through the dark years of the war, through the hard times of living next door to Annie,
and the arrival of Lucy and Tessa. It was strong. It had already stood the test. So why did the mere mention of Ian Tillerman’s name set alarm bells clanging in his mind?

Ian had been safely out of the way in Gloucestershire. But now, he’d got the brass neck to come down here and invade his patch. Worse, he was marrying one of Kate’s friends. It
wasn’t going to be possible for Freddie to avoid seeing him. Susan’s mother, Joan Jarvis, had been a friend and mentor to him and to Annie. Things were going to get complicated.

Freddie walked in long strides, for once not hearing the song thrushes or seeing the elm trees along the street. His feet took him down to the stonemason’s yard.

‘What’s up wi’ you?’ Herbie was inside his office, which was made of black corrugated tin. Inside, it was festooned with cobwebs covered in stone dust and piles of flimsy
receipts stacked onto metal spikes. Old tobacco-yellowed calendars swung from the walls along with a patchwork of dog-eared postcards, each one pinned up with a single brass drawing pin. Herbie was
sitting on a battered dining chair which was tied together with baler twine.

‘Have you got a fag?’ Freddie asked.

‘Sure. ’elp yerself.’

Herbie studied him with a penetrating stare while he lit one of the Players Navy Cut cigarettes. ‘Don’t bottle it up, Freddie,’ he advised. ‘That’s what killed your
father. Like a time bomb he was.’

‘Ah,’ Freddie said, agreeing. He drew a deep lungful of smoke and blew it towards the ceiling. He played with the end of the fag, jerking it to make little smoke rings. But he
didn’t talk. He wanted to tell Herbie everything. His concerns about Tessa, the relentless struggle to feed and clothe his family, the stress of living next door to Annie, and, top of the
list, was Ian Tillerman. He shook his head, but he still didn’t talk. The two men sat in companionable silence with only the sound of a tap dripping into the Belfast sink. Freddie appreciated
Herbie’s quiet acceptance of his need just to sit and calm down. The stone angels watched them from the yard, blushing pink in the sunset, the stacks of stone blocks somehow calming,
grounding.
Ian Tillerman couldn’t carve a stone angel
, Freddie thought.

‘Women?’ said Herbie eventually.

‘Ah – women.’

‘And babies,’ Herbie said. ‘I couldn’t stand my lot when they were babies. Love ’em now. But I think babies are an abomination. If I have to carve anymore cherubs
holding birdbaths, I’ll throw me chisels in the river.’

‘Ah – babies.’ Freddie finished the cigarette and ground the stub into the overloaded glass ashtray Herbie had filched from the pub. He stood up. ‘I’ll see you
tomorrow.’

‘Where are you going now? Home?’

‘No,’ Freddie said. ‘Down the woods. Listening to owls.’

‘You ought to take your shotgun,’ Herbie advised. ‘Good gun that. Never use it, do you? I’d be shooting rabbits if it were mine. Pity, leaving it stuck in that
cupboard.’

‘I don’t like shooting. If you look a rabbit in the eye, really look I mean, you wouldn’t shoot ’im.’

‘Get on – ya old softie. Here ya’ are, take another fag with you.’

‘Ta.’ Freddie nodded at Herbie and walked off, blowing curls of blue smoke into the late sunlight. As he headed for the woods, he was glad not to be carrying a gun. He liked to stand
in the moonlight, motionless against a tree and become part of the woods, hardly breathing, just watching, waiting, knowing that birds and animals would come close to him, accepting him as part of
their world. The gun had belonged to Kate’s father, Bertie, and she’d insisted on giving it to Freddie. He’d never used it. But now, as he struggled with his feelings, he could
think of one very good use for that gun. Ian Tillerman.

The woods stretched for miles along the southern slopes of the Polden Hills, broken only by the alabaster quarry, the railway, and the road to Hilbegut. Freddie wanted to go to a part of the
wood where lime trees grew. He wanted the calm of their cool canopy. He wanted the old secrets Granny Barcussy had taught him. ‘Take your anger into the lime wood at twilight,’ she
would say, ‘and let the tree spirits turn it into toadstools.’ Then she would cackle with laughter. ‘That’ll stop you eating poisonous fungi!’ It was part of the
folklore he’d grown up with. Freddie had puzzled over it, but discovered there was truth beyond the words, a truth that did heal his anger, a truth that was nameless and mysterious.

He walked on, through birdsong and fragrant hedges. He climbed a field gate and headed up towards the wood where the lime trees grew. Halfway up, a spring gushed out of the hillside, from under
a clump of elder bushes, their creamy flowers richly perfumed. Freddie paused to look at the water glinting in the sunset, and to listen to its gurgling music. Something made him stand very still.
His skin suddenly had goosebumps.

At the source of the stream was a shimmering light. He watched and waited, hardly daring to breathe. It was how he felt when he had a vision. Unearthly.

And then he saw her.

A young woman, with chestnut hair. She had unusual clothes, such as he’d never seen a woman wearing. Light blue flared jeans, a light blue jacket with silver studs. Beads and ribbons
gleamed in the long curly tresses of her hair and it rippled with life. She was beautiful. Just beautiful. But what took Freddie’s breath away was the radiance of her face, and the colour of
her eyes as she looked at him. Pale blue eyes with a core of gold.

‘Tessa.’

As soon as he whispered her name, the vision flickered and began to sink back into the shimmering light like a reflection glimmering in a lake of gold. He saw a rose in her hand, a peace rose,
and she threw it with graceful fingers into the stream. He thought she blew him a kiss before she vanished and became a memory, an invisible sweetness on the breeze like the perfume of the
elderflower.

A vision of the future. He had seen his daughter, waiting for him, somewhere beyond the present time. Beyond his reasoning mind.

The ordinary colours of earth filtered back into his consciousness. The grass, the cuckoo flowers and speedwell on the banks of the stream. Reed warblers and blackbirds singing. The apple green
leaves of the woods.

Freddie walked on, into the lime wood, holding the vision in his heart. As the last spark of the sun went down over the distant Quantock Hills, he found his favourite lime tree. It was ancient,
and the trunk had a little alcove where he could sit. He leaned his head back, looking up into the canopy.

The vision of Tessa had been a gift, a pearl to tuck away in his heart. Another, less welcome vision was waiting. A shadow loomed over the lime wood, something that shook the earth and made the
foliage jingle like bells. He saw birds and animals fleeing from their homes, and the bees searching hopelessly for nectar in a barren wasteland of ashes and dead wood. He opened his hands and
watched the seeds of an impossible dream fall into them like jewels.

Clearly, he and Tessa had work to do in the far distant future. Ian Tillerman was just one of the obstacles. The others were fear, poverty, and self-doubt.

Freddie walked home in long strides through the honey-scented dusk. He lingered in the garden, below the bedroom window, and smiled at the sound of Kate reading Lucy a bedtime story. Lucy would
be listening, wide-eyed, as Kate put deep sorrow into her voice.

‘. . . down came a basket all over Ping and he could see no more of the boy, or the boat, or the sky, or the beautiful yellow water of the Yangtze River.’

Thinking he shouldn’t break the spell, Freddie went over to his workshop, a low stone outbuilding with a sagging roof and no glass in the window. The air inside was beautifully cool, and
there were swallows’ nests in the rafters. He switched on the light and saw a row of baby swallows peeping over the rim of one of the nests.

He chose the block of Bath stone he wanted, and imagined the carving he would do of the girl by the stream. The waves of her hair, the grace of her hands.

But first – he picked up a piece of pink and white alabaster, and began to carve a rose.

‘SHE’S A BRAT!’

On the day of the Tillerman wedding, Tessa had her worst ever tantrum. At eight months, she was crawling and into everything.

‘She was putting stones in her mouth,’ Annie shouted to make herself heard above Tessa’s enraged howling. ‘I had to bring her inside.’ She groaned with the effort
and put the grubby infant down on the sofa. ‘You stay there, madam.’

Kate stood at the top of the stairs in her white satin petticoat, her feet bare, and her make-up half done. She’d been unrolling a brand new pair of nylon stockings with fancy seams when
she’d heard the commotion. Her one concern on this exciting day was that she had to leave Tessa with Annie.

‘Can you come down and deal with her?’ Annie shouted, her face dark with an unhealthy flush as she tried to hold the thrashing child on the sofa.

Kate ran downstairs. ‘Stop that noise,’ she said in her ‘I-must-be-obeyed’ voice. Her eyes glittered imperiously at Tessa. ‘Do you want a smack?’

Tessa squinted at her through shiny tears, her pale blue eyes drowning in a whirlpool of fear and fury. She held out her arms to Kate.

‘Don’t give in to her,’ Annie said.

Kate ignored her and sat down on the sofa next to Tessa. Her hand tingled with the desire to smack her hard, but the need to understand was stronger. She’d watched and learned from
Freddie. ‘Let her cry,’ he’d said, so often, ‘no matter how much you want her to stop. She’s gotta cry all of her tears, not half of them.’

‘There you are! Spoil her,’ Annie said contemptuously. ‘I wash my hands of her. I never spoilt MY children. There – look at her – she’s getting worse. Today
of all days,’ she added, as Kate tried to hold Tessa close and the furious child struggled even more violently, kicking and pushing her mother away, her hands smearing mud on the clean white
petticoat.

‘Look at the MESS,’ said Annie, and Kate suddenly wanted to scream herself. Caught between Tessa’s extreme distress and Annie’s avaricious judgements, her head rang with
the conflict. And now Lucy was at the top of the stairs, wailing, in her yellow organza bridesmaid’s dress, the sash trailing on the floor. ‘Mummy, I can’t do my bow. I want you
to do it.’

‘Will you help Lucy, please?’ Kate said directly, looking into Annie’s hovering eyes. She took a deep breath, the way she’d done in her years of nursing, and held on to
calm as if it were a real rock in a torrent. She was glad to see Annie hauling herself up the stairs, the ageing banister creaking under her weight. Kate didn’t care about the mud on her
petticoat. No one was going to see it, she figured. She didn’t care what Annie thought. Priority was to understand what was causing the intense distress in her child.