The Hidden Years (27 page)

After Ian Holmes had offered to ensure that Jim Sutton
received the message that his landlord wished to see him to discuss the
matter of his outstanding rents, he asked Liz how she was feeling.

Although the pair of them had managed to survive through
the summer and the autumn, he was not sure they could continue to do so
over the winter.

He had said as much to young Vic, when the doctor had seen
the shepherd in the village the previous day. What they needed was a
young and reliable farm labourer, someone to chop wood, and clear the
kitchen garden, someone to ensure that the range was lit every morning
without Liz herself having to do it. Someone adept at doing all the
small running repairs on a property like Cottingdean, which had
suffered too much already from neglect.

He also mentioned this to Edward, gently suggesting that
the rental income from the water meadows might be put to this use.

'We need someone,' Edward agreed, but then said
doubtfully, 'But there's no good labour to be had…'

'There are men returning from the war who will need jobs,'
Ian reminded him.

Liz hoped that the seed Ian had planted would take root.
She herself had longed to make a similar suggestion but she knew Edward
well enough now to accept that he had an old-fashioned reservation
about accepting such ideas from her. She was a woman. Her place was in
the drawing-room, supervising the house and its staff. That was the
image Edward had of her role, never mind the fact that the drawing-room
was a damp, mouldering room in which the plaster was falling from the
ceiling, and the paper from the walls… Edward had certain
fixed ideas which he was almost afraid to let go of. Afraid because he
was frightened that, if he did so, his whole world might fall apart,
Liz recognised com-passionately, and so she said nothing and hoped that
Ian's words would bear fruit.

She was excluded from the interview with Jim Sutton, a
large, swaggering man whom she instinctively disliked, and who she
suspected had presented himself at the house driven more by the weight
of public opinion than by any recognition of his omissions as a tenant.

What was said between him and Edward she was not told,
merely that the arrears of rent were to be paid, although Edward did
not say how much these would be, and Liz suspected that Edward had
quite probably allowed himself to be cheated of their rightful due.

No matter, if they had some money. Enough to pay the wages
of one man… but Edward had made no mention of taking anyone
on, and Liz was reluctant to bring up the subject.

They had their first fall of snow at the end of November.
Liz woke up one morning alerted to its arrival by the unfamiliar
brightness beyond the window.

She and Edward slept in separate rooms on the ground
floor, sharing the facility of a large, draughty bathroom. Only Liz
knew how much she dreaded any kind of physical intimacy between them
and how ashamed and guilty this made her feel.

Edward had regained some measure of independence since
their arrival at Cottingdean and no longer needed help in getting
dressed. He had learned to operate his wheelchair to get him around the
ground floor of the house, but on days when it was cold and wet the
pain in his amputations made him irritable and withdrawn, and so Liz
sighed as she realised what the unusual clarity of the light meant.

Once—and it seemed a very long time ago
indeed— her first sight of snow had thrilled her beyond
measure. She had never totally lost that wondering awe at this ability
of nature to completely transform the landscape overnight, but now
practicalities outweighed wonder. They were running desperately short
of fuel. The hens would need to be cooped for the winter, and as for
the goats—she had resigned herself to not getting them.

She was downstairs lighting the range when she heard the
shrill barking of the dogs, her spine tensing as she realised what the
sound meant.

The only dogs at Cottingdean belonged to young Vic, and as
she stood up and walked stiffly over to the window she saw him walking
into the yard, his back bent under the strain of the sledge he was
pulling.

Frowning, Liz opened the door. Despite the cold, his skin
looked warm, glowing with life and health. He seemed not to feel the
cold which iced into her own body. Like his dogs, he seemed impervious
to the thick flakes of snow.

'I've brought down the logs,' he told her quietly. 'I'll
stack them in the usual place, shall I? Sorry they're a bit late, but
I've had some trouble with one of the ewes. By rights they should be
stored until next winter to burn really well.'

While Liz stared at him he dragged the sled across to the
stable, and removed the cover. She saw that it was piled high with
neatly spliced logs. Enough of them to feed the boiler throughout the
entire winter.

Tears shimmered unexpected in her eyes, clogging her
throat. She realised as she fought against them how long it had been
since she had cried, how long it had been since she had wept ceaseless
tears for her dead love. Kit… she seldom allowed herself to
think about him now. What was the use? Kit was dead. He would never
hold her in his arms again, never tell her how much he loved her,
never…

She had no idea that Vic had worked all through the night
to cut down and prepare the logs, no idea, from his casual,
matter-of-fact attitude, that the provision of them was not something
he did as a routine matter of course, but rather was something done by
him for her, out of compassion for her weakness and respect for her
strength.

The sled was half empty before she managed to force
herself to walk out to the stable with a mug of tea for him, and a
slice of her homemade bread.

The smile he gave her was warm and natural, his
appreciation of her thoughtfulness making her realise again what a
truly kind person he was, even while she felt uncomfortable within his
masculine presence.

He brought the empty mug back to the kitchen when he had
finished unloading the logs. 'Best get back to the flock,' he told her
matter-of-factly as she thanked him for them.

The overnight fall of snow soon melted, but it was a
warning of the winter to come, a winter they weren't really prepared
for, Liz acknowledged as she shivered in her cold bedroom.

During the second week in December they had an
unexpectedly fine spell, when the sun shone and for some inexplicable
reason Liz experienced an overwhelming need to be outside.

In the autumn she had started trying to restore the
panelling in the hall to what it must once have been, but in recent
weeks she had grown too bulky to feel comfortable working on the lower
portions of it, and every time she walked through the hall it seemed to
reproach her for her lack of diligence.

Only that morning she had received a visit from the
vicar's wife, tactfully enquiring about her preparations for the birth
of her baby. In these days of clothing coupons, shortages and
rationing, and without any close family for her to turn to, it must be
difficult for her to get a layette together, she had suggested.

She was right; Liz had spent hours searching through the
trunks full of clothes stored away in the attic, wishing she had a
sewing machine she could use so that she could make more use of the
yellowing linen sheets and old-fashioned baby clothes.

She had also found a cradle up there, covered in cobwebs
and dust and too heavy for her to get down unaided.

She mentioned this fact to Louise Ferndean, who promptly
said that she would send her gardener round to help and that Liz must
on no account attempt any kind of heavy lifting.

As for the sewing machine, she had one Liz could borrow,
she offered, hiding her pity. She was so young, and her husband so
badly injured. A tragic couple really, and so very brave…
Look at the way they were living in this desolate, decaying house. The
vicarage was bad enough, but at least it was sound and dry.

Liz knew better by now than to tell Edward about the
vicar's wife's helpfulness. She was well acquainted with the stiffness
of his pride and the fact that he hated their dependence on others and
his jealousy when she sometimes made friendships which did not include
him. She disliked this possessiveness she sensed in him, but she put it
to the back of her mind, having neither the energy nor the desire to
dwell on it. She found it easier to bear that way, although she
sympathised with him. Financially things must now surely be a little
better with the rents coming in from the water meadow land, but times
were hard, for everyone, and for some more than others.

There was a mood of unrest in the village as men slowly
came home from the war. Wives complained that their husbands were
different, changed… that they couldn't seem to
settle… and as yet Edward seemed to have done nothing about
finding someone they could employ.

As she walked away from the house, taking the narrow track
that led up into the hills, Liz reflected on how very much her life had
changed in one short year.

It frightened her sometimes that Kit, who had been
responsible indirectly for so many of those changes, should have become
such a shadowy figure in her memory. Often at night she woke up, her
face wet with tears from her struggles to picture him in sharper
detail. She still loved him, of course she did… nothing
would ever change that, but the sharpness of her memories of him seemed
to be slipping away from her.

Cottingdean, the problems of her life here with Edward,
Edward himself and her more immediate problems overshadowed her
memories of her dead love.

And now Cottingdean itself and Edward with it were being
pushed to the back of her mind by the demanding force of the child
growing within her. Somehow without her knowing how it had happened she
had ceased to think so passionately of the child as Kit's and instead
it was as though both the child she carried and the house had somehow
become entwined, as though both the birth of her son and her
determination to breathe new life into Cottingdean itself were
inextricably linked.

The
path climbed more steeply than she had realised, causing her to stop to
ease the nagging ache in her side. No one in the village knew just when
she and Edward had been married; the fact that she had known him for
some months beforehand had made it easy to allow people to assume their
marriage was well established, and if they wondered what had made such
a young girl marry a man like Edward they were too polite to say so.
Some of them, Liz assumed, must think that she had perhaps married
Edward before he was injured, and neither of them had said anything to
correct that impression.

She knew that it was important to Edward that her child
was accepted as his, and, because she felt—despite the
hardness of her life—that it was better than bringing up her
child on her own in shame and completely alone, she was grateful enough
to him to accept his need.

Besides, she knew with female wisdom and growing maturity
that for her child's sake it was far better that Edward should want to
accept him wholly as his own rather than to be reminded that he had
been fathered by his cousin.

Edward had resented Kit. She had come to learn that much,
and for all their sakes she must take care that none of the resentment
was passed to her child.

The climb was more tiring than she remembered from her
first walk along this path. But that had been three months ago, on a
warm autumn afternoon. Now, up here, it was cold despite the sunshine,
and she was only wearing a flimsy coat, but from the top of this hill
she knew she would have a panoramic view of both Cottingdean and the
land around it. Quite what was driving her to come up here she had no
real idea; she only knew that she had felt a need to do so.

Towards the top the hill was bare of grass, rough and
stony with poor, thin soil on which little grew. Liz was panting by the
time she reached it, her legs and back aching. She knew she had perhaps
come too far, but the summit was in sight now and determinedly she
pressed on.

When she stepped unsuspectingly on a patch of loose shale
she could do nothing to save herself, falling heavily to the ground,
the shock of losing her balance so immediate and intense that she could
only lie there frozen with it, deprived of any ability to think or
reason as her body trembled and her heart pounded.

It was several minutes before she dared to move, to
stretch out her arms and legs to discover in relief that they were not
injured.

It wasn't just her own safety she had risked, she
acknowledged as she started to move cautiously downhill. It was her
child's as well.

Now, abruptly, she could not understand why she had
attempted something so reckless. Her need to be back within the safe
confines of Cottingdean was like a frantic pulse beating inside her.
She had to force herself to walk slowly and carefully, not to break
into a frantic lumbering run. Not to keep on touching the huge mound of
her belly in reassurance both to herself and her child.

As she walked she talked softly to it, telling it what a
foolish mother it had, begging its forgiveness. She had fallen into
this habit quite a lot recently, even sometimes sitting beside the
empty cradle which the vicar's gardener had brought down from the loft
and taken away with him, only to return it several days later,
marvellously cleaned and equipped with a full set of bedding, which the
vicar's wife had told her was a small gift…

What she had not told her was that she had shamelessly
cajoled her own sister-in-law to beg the items from her daughter, who
had just had her third child and who had sworn she was not going to
have any more.

She was halfway down the hill, and just beginning to
breathe a little more easily, to relax her tense muscles, when the
first pain struck, sharp enough to make her stand still and quiver with
the intensity of it. Sharp enough for her to know even while she formed
the comforting words that it was not merely a stitch.