The Secret by the Lake (14 page)

VIVIANE HAD ARRANGED
to bring a friend back with her from school that evening – Kitty Dowler, a rosy-faced child who lived in a farm up on the hills. She smelled of sweat and dogs, and her tunic was frayed at the hem but she was a cheerful girl not in the least put off by the darkness of the cottage, or its suffocating coldness.

‘Come on,’ she said to Viviane when she had been introduced to Julia and given a glass of milk and some bread and margarine. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’ Her accent was broad Somerset.

‘Stay out of the empty bedroom, Vivi,’ I said. ‘I’ve started to strip the walls. I don’t want you touching anything.’

‘OK.’

I smiled at Kitty. ‘I’m glad your mother didn’t mind you coming to stay tonight.’

‘I don’t have a mother. She died in childbirth,’ Kitty said in a matter-of-fact voice.

‘Oh! I’m sorry.’

‘It’s OK. I have two older brothers and a dad. And they were all glad that I was coming here because they can go out to play skittles.’

‘That’s good! Listen, girls, while I’m out this evening, Mrs Croucher’s coming round. She’s baking a cake and you can play cards with her and Mummy. That’ll be fun, won’t it?’

The children nodded.

‘I won’t be late back,’ I said. ‘You’ll be OK, won’t you?’

Viviane pulled a scornful face. ‘We’re not babies. We’ll be
fine
!’ she said.

The Hare was a small, dark pub. It was busy, with an overflow of clientele – farmers, most of them – standing outside despite the cold. Their breath made puffy clouds about them, and the smoke from their cigarettes was blue and thin amongst all the thicker, grey exhaled breaths. The rain had stopped but the wind still gusted, sending an empty cigarette packet somersaulting down the road. I made my way inside, through a narrow porch lined with posters and fliers. The public area was a tiny room with a sloping ceiling, crooked floorboards and a cavernous fireplace. It was warm and noisy and crowded; the men’s voices were loud, they filled the space with their elbows and bellies, their rolled-up sleeves and burly shoulders, their individual pewter pint jars gripped in their hands reflecting the flames of the fire. I looked around but I could not see Daniel. I excused my way through the men, looking for him, and then I heard a few notes of a guitar and then a male voice. The voice was raw and dear to me. I squeezed through the crowd and at last I saw him. He was perched on a stool in a corner curled over a battered old guitar with his hair falling all over his face. He was singing a song about missed opportunities.

I watched and listened and my heart felt as if it were swelling inside me. I watched his face, the way he kept his eyes down, looking towards the guitar. I watched the way his lips moved and his fingers strummed the strings, how tenderly he held the guitar. I watched him and I felt something I had not felt for a man before. It was a longing to be close to him, a craving to be held and played the same way he held the guitar … but it was more than that. Daniel moved me. He was a good man. I wanted, more than anything, for him to be happy. I wanted to look after him, to care for him and protect him, to be the one who made him happy.

I wished the song would never end, but when it did, the drinkers clapped and cheered. Daniel nodded his thanks then leaned down to pick up his tankard and took a long drink. He kept his head low but I saw that the flesh around his right eye was swollen and the eye narrowed to a slit.

‘Danny’s old man’s been at him again,’ someone muttered and someone else replied: ‘He stopped him beating ten bales out of some kid he caught trapping birds on the lake.’ I turned towards the voices to hear more, and while I was not looking, Daniel picked up his guitar and disappeared into the back of the pub. I tried to follow but the pub was busy and by the time I had squeezed through to the spot where he had been, there was no sign of him. I asked but nobody knew where he was. Had he forgotten that we had arranged to meet? Had he changed his mind?

I went outside, but I couldn’t see the jeep. And I couldn’t bear to go back into the pub again, to endure the sympathy or the scorn of the drinkers if it turned out that I had been stood up. I decided I would go back to the cottage, to the company of women and a slice of Mrs Croucher’s cake.

The air was bitterly cold and damp and smelled of woodsmoke. I followed a footpath down an alleyway that ran past the backs of a jumble of cottages and outbuildings until I reached the crossroads where I could either follow the path or divert back to the road. The path would be quicker but it would mean cutting across the churchyard in the dark.

I set off at once, without giving my imagination time to get to work, walking quickly, hearing the rhythm of my own footsteps, the in and out of the air in my lungs, my heartbeat. I passed the last few houses in the village, light shining around the edges of the curtains and the flicker of Christmas lights in the windows. The lake, down below, was wide and quiet, like something sleeping, something old and knowing. I could not see, from this distance, but I imagined how full it must be after so much rainfall, and how the excess would be gushing over the overflow into the spillway, thousands of gallons of ice-cold water rushing back to the sea. I thought of all those cold, dark tunnels that carried the water away, all those secret passageways, the power of all that water.

I reached the churchyard, took a deep breath and went through the lych-gate. It was perhaps forty paces to the other side.

I counted to seven, and then I broke into a trot as I went into the shadow of the great church tower, out of the moonlight. I was blinded by the dark, immersed in it as if it were something solid. I had to slow down; I couldn’t see two feet in front of my face. I held out my hands, feeling my way through, counting my footsteps, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one … Then from the darkness, I heard footsteps behind me. I quickened my pace until I was running, and then I stumbled on something and fell on to the grass.

The footsteps grew closer; I could hear panting, and a voice.

‘Amy, it’s OK, it’s me, Daniel!’

I turned and he was there, behind me. He helped me to my feet and I held on to him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to frighten you. Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’ I was embarrassed now by my show of panic. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘to make such a fuss of nothing.’

‘I shouldn’t have come up behind you like that but I didn’t see you until the last minute. I always come this way. I know it like the back of my hand.’

‘I know – I know it’s stupid. I just … oh, what an idiot I am!’

I put my face into the shoulder of Daniel’s jacket, and the feeling I had felt before in the pub returned, only now it was me being protected by him. Alone I had been vulnerable, with him I was inviolate. He put his arm around my shoulder and we walked on slowly together.

‘My mother’s grave is here,’ he said.

‘Yes, I noticed it before. What happened to her, Daniel, if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘You haven’t heard?’

‘I hardly speak to anyone. Only the shopkeepers and Mrs Croucher.’

‘Well, she drowned. In the lake.’

‘This lake? Blackwater?’

‘Yes.’

I looked over towards the moonlit lake flattening the valley below, so smooth and quiet, so large and, from this distance, so still. How deceptive it was. It seemed benevolent and gentle, but beneath the surface the water was moving. It was forming currents, shifting and sliding, deep streams of water weaving past one another like sinews, travelling from the river inlet towards the spillway, water twisting and twining like huge, invisible eels trying to find their way back to the sea.

And Daniel’s mother had drowned in that water.

‘Oh Daniel, I’m so sorry. Being here, living so near to the lake must remind you of her all the time.’

‘My father likes to take a boat out, and he sits there alone and thinks of my mother.’

‘That’s romantic.’

‘He likes to feel close to her. He still loves her so very much. I don’t believe he will ever stop loving her.’

I didn’t want to have a reason to dislike Mr Aldridge any the less, but this revelation caused me to feel a pang of sympathy in my heart.

We reached the gate on the far side of the churchyard, went through it, and walked away from the darkness together, our bodies touching in a way that was both comforting and companionable. ‘I heard you singing,’ I said. ‘You’re very good.’

‘I wasn’t sure if it would be your kind of thing.’

I held on to his arm. ‘Well, it is. And you are my kind of thing, Daniel Aldridge.’

I sensed that this pleased him. ‘Is it too late to buy you a drink?’ he asked. ‘We’re only two minutes away from the Lake Inn.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not too late.’

The Lake Inn was not like the Hare, it had been done up to appeal to the kind of people who drove out to Blackwater on Sundays for the view: flock wallpaper, stuffed fish in glass cases on the walls, fishing rods strung on the ceiling, horse brasses nailed to the beams and silk flowers in coloured glass vases on the tables. That evening, the Blackwater Horticultural Society had taken over one side of the bar for their Christmas social and a dozen elderly men and women in paper hats were arguing gleefully about the best time to plant Hellebore. I sat on a bench by the window, feeling the draught on my back while Daniel went to the bar. He returned with two pints of cider, pulled up the stool opposite and sat with his elbows on his knees and his head held low so the wound to his eye was less obvious. I wondered if I was supposed to avoid talking about this for the rest of the evening, or if it would be impolite to ask about it already knowing, as I did, the cause.

Instead, I steered the conversation round to the wild birds Daniel loved, and he told me about the lapwing and golden plover that only came to the Mendip Hills in the winter months, about the hunting birds – the hen harrier and the merlin – and birds with names like the words of poetry: fieldfare, siskin, whinchat, nightjar, ring ouzel and brambling. I finished my drink and he bought me another. I drank, felt pleasantly soft and dizzy.

‘Who taught you about the birds?’ I asked.

‘My father. They’re his passion. That’s how he met my mother. They were both down at the lake at the same time. He was in pursuit of the very rare Lesser Scaup and instead he found her. He lent her his binoculars.’

‘That’s a sweet story.’

Daniel took a drink. ‘Nobody sees that side of him. People don’t realize how much he loved her. I’ve heard it said that my parents’ marriage was one of convenience, that Jean Debeger wanted a young husband with prospects to save her from spinsterhood and that Robert Aldridge needed a wife with money to save the estate from bankruptcy. They say it was no more than a business arrangement between a young, impecunious man and a wealthy, middle-aged woman. But if they saw how much my father still pines for the woman he lost, then they wouldn’t talk like that.’ He put the glass back on to the beer mat. ‘I don’t remember her, of course. I only know her through what he tells me.’

In that respect, I was luckier than Daniel. I thought of my own mother smiling as she leaned to kiss me, the fur collar of her coat, her red lips. Her hair was swept back from her head, a blonde wave. She was wearing gold earrings. I wondered, for the briefest moment, if she was happy, then put her from my mind.

‘Will you have another drink?’ Daniel asked.

‘I’d like to, but I’d better get back. Vivi has a friend staying over and Mrs Croucher is keeping Julia company so I can’t be late.’

‘Half an hour won’t hurt.’

‘I don’t like to leave Julia on her own. The doctor told me it’s not good for her.’

‘Perhaps she wants to be on her own.’

‘Even if she does, Dr Croucher said I’m not to leave her.’

Daniel said: ‘When animals are hurt, what they do as a rule is find somewhere quiet and dark and private, and they lay low until their wounds are healed.’

‘Time doesn’t seem to have helped your father.’

‘He dwells on the cards life has dealt him and the drink fills him with self-pity. I’m sure Julia isn’t like that. Give her the space to mend herself and things will soon begin to get better.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Yes.’ He placed his hand over mine. ‘Do you really have to go?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Then I’ll come with you. I’ll walk you home.’

He helped me into my coat, and we left the warmth of the pub and set off once again, into the night. Daniel took my hand and put it in the pocket of his jacket. He held it warm inside his own hand. I wished all of me would fit into that pocket.

‘When will I see you again?’ he asked as we walked.

‘Whenever you like.’

‘On Christmas Eve my father always hosts a party for the village before the midnight mass. It’s tradition. Do you know the house – Fairlawn?’

‘The big one by the lake?’

‘That’s the one. Everyone will be there. If you were to come down, I could slip away and meet you outside. I could show you where I live.’

‘You mean I can’t come to the party?’

‘I’m afraid you can’t.’

‘I don’t suppose I would be welcome in your father’s house.’

‘Never mind my father. This is my invitation to you. I want you to myself. I want to show you my home.’

‘All right.’

‘Wait by the pillars outside Fairlawn at eight o’clock. I’ll come and find you.’

‘By the pillars?’

‘Do you mind? It won’t always be like this.’

‘I don’t mind.’ I smiled.

We walked on until we reached the cottages. The lights wound round a small, artificial tree were twinkling in the window of the Crouchers’ cottage, but Reservoir Cottage was as dark and self-contained as always.

‘Don’t you celebrate Christmas?’ Daniel asked.

‘We couldn’t find any decorations.’

‘That’s a shame. But then old Mrs Cummings wasn’t much of a one for Christmas.’

‘You knew her?’

‘Not really. She hardly ever left the cottage but when I was up here doing jobs for the Crouchers, she used to watch me from the windows. I would wave to her and she would wave back.’