'This is the tricky bit,' she said. She slipped off her shoes and stepped down from the bank into the stream. 'Be careful, the stones are slippery.' She moved slowly through the ankle-deep water, holding the cushions and blanket in a bundle above her head.
When she was past the bushes she climbed up on the bank again.
Madden took off his shoes and socks and put them on top of the hamper. He rolled up his trousers and stepped down into the cool water. She was waiting on the bank, hand outstretched, to take the basket from him.
'I used to come here with my brother, Peter, when we were children. It was our secret place.'
They were on a small patch of grass enclosed by bushes. Close to the bank, water-lilies tugged weakly at their stems in the faint current of the stream.
'He was the pilot, wasn't he?'
'You remembered…' Her deep blue gaze brushed his. 'That was such a terrible night. All I could think of was how we'd been young together — Lucy and Peter and David and I — and now they were all dead.
And then I looked into your eyes and saw that you must have been in the war, too, and I couldn't stop thinking about all those dead… the ghosts we live with.'
He wanted to speak, but could find no words, and he looked away.
She studied his face for a moment, then began to spread the blanket and cushions on the grass. Madden retrieved his shoes and socks. About to put them on, he was arrested by the sight of her sitting beside him. She was leaning on one hand, her legs tucked to the side, looking down, her face hidden by the fall of thick, honey-coloured hair. In the stillness that enveloped them the whirr of a pigeon's wings sounded loud overhead. Not knowing what to do or say, he unfastened the sleeve of his shirt and began to roll it up.
'Shrapnel.' She spoke, and he felt the touch of her fingers on his forearm where the scars were spread like strewn coins.
'I worked in an Army hospital for a year. I know all the wounds.' Her fingers stayed on his skin. Her touch went through him like fire. 'And that scar on your forehead…' She took her hand off his arm and raised it to his head, sliding her fingers under the lock of hair that fell across his brow and running them gently across the skin. 'That's most likely a shell fragment, too.'
Madden began to tremble. Her face was close, but their eyes didn't meet. Her glance was fixed on his forehead. He saw a faint line of sweat on her upper lip and the golden hairs on her forearm. He put his arm around her waist, clumsy, unsure of what he was doing, but when he bent to kiss her, her hand went from his forehead to the back of his neck and she pressed her lips to his, meeting his tongue with hers, kissing him deeply.
She drew him down and in a moment they were lying stretched on the blanket, side by side. He could feel his heart racing, the blood drumming in his ears.
Then she moved again, pulling him over her until she was on her back and he was above her. They continued to kiss. When he put his hand on her hip she caught it with hers and held it and then brought it to her stomach and pressed it there. He began to fumble with her dress, but she reached down herself and drew it up and then took his hand again and brought it to her bare stomach at the top of her pants and guided it down inside them. He felt the stiff curly hair and then the wetness.
She reached for him, and he broke their kiss to tear open his trousers. When she took him in her hand he groaned. She let go of him to push at her pants and he joined his hand with hers and together they stripped them off her. She spread her legs to receive him and cried out when he entered her.
He never knew how long they were together. To him, it seemed only moments, and then his body was shaken by spasms and he felt her bucking and reaching for him. She cried out again.
They lay together, unmoving. In the silence he heard a blackbird call in the woods across the stream.
Her breathing, hot in his ear, slowly abated. His weight lay on her, crushing her, he thought, but when he sought to shift it she held him imprisoned in her arms.
'Stay with me,' she pleaded, and they lay together.
Her thighs held him fast, both slippery with sweat.
Finally she relaxed, sinking under him, and he moved and lay alongside her. She turned her head so that her face was close to his and when he kissed her she responded, bringing her hand up to his cheek, stroking him. He looked down at her body. Her long legs, one bent over the other, were flushed in the sunlight. Moisture shone in her dark golden bush. He could smell his semen mixed with their sweat. He was close to tears.
'John…?' Her eyes were open, she was smiling at him. 'Your name is John, isn't it?' Her soft laughter in his ear gave him the release he needed and his laughter joined with hers. 'Oh, God! I wasn't sure I had the nerve… and you wouldn't speak.'
'Speak?' At first he didn't understand. And then, when he did, he couldn't tell her that he had never imagined such a scene. Had never pictured himself lying in her arms, lying between her legs. That he no longer thought of his life as holding such possibilities.
'I knew it that first night. It was awful, I suddenly found myself wondering what it would be like to… make love with you. And then I remembered poor Lucy lying there with her throat cut and Charles and the others and I couldn't believe I was thinking that.'
She was silent, looking away. Then she turned her head and smiled into his eyes. 'They talk about the demon rum, but I think it should be the demon sex.'
He put his arms around her. She rested her head on his chest. A light breeze stirred the bushes around them, bringing relief from the heat. 'After the war, after Guy was killed, I had an affair with a man. I needed someone. But I found it didn't work, I didn't really care for him, and I had to stop it…'
Madden thought of his own barren life. But he couldn't bring himself to speak of it. Instead, he asked, 'There's been no one since?'
She laughed softly against his chest. 'How did St Paul put it? Marry or burn?' Then her brow creased and she looked up at him. 'Oh dear, I never even asked, I just took it for granted — you're not married, are you?'
He shook his head. 'I was. But it was years ago.' He needed to tell her. 'We had a child, a little girl. They both died of influenza. It was before the war.'
She held him in her steady gaze. 'I saw that when you looked at Sophy. I didn't know what it meant. She knew… she felt something. The way she went with you…'
She kissed him and then released herself from his arms, sitting up and covering her legs as she did so.
She ran her fingers through her hair.
'I must pull myself together. My new locum will be here in an hour and I have to get him settled in.
Then Lord Stratton's giving me a lift to London. I'm spending the night with my aunt and catching the train to Yorkshire tomorrow morning.'
She smiled down at him.
'You were laughing earlier because the other one fell off his horse,' Madden said. 'Why?'
'If he hadn't, you and I wouldn't be here now.'
'But that was before…' He was amazed.
'Yes, but I knew this was going to happen.' Her eyes held his. 'Are you shocked?'
He drew her down to him.
She said, 'I never even gave you any lunch. There's still time.' He felt her breath on his lips. 'Or we could make love again. Though I don't know… can we?'
Smiling, she slipped her hand between his legs and took him gently, like a bird, in her folded palm.
'Oh, yes…'
They left the hamper with the blanket and cushions by the garden gate.
'I'll get Mary to collect them later. I haven't the strength now.'
She watched, smiling, as he put on his tie and jacket, and then they walked arm in arm through the dappled shade of the orchard until they came in sight of the house, when he started to pull away from her.