‘You’re a very special young man.’ Her mother, draped in fox furs and an immaculate cream suit, looked at Freddie approvingly. She opened her heavy pigskin handbag, took out a coin that flashed in the sun, and pressed it into his hand. A florin! Two whole shillings. He’d never had one before.
‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure. And the name is Joan Jarvis.’
The platform was now crowded with children and their parents. The man in the signal box pulled a lever with both hands, and the red and white signal clunked down. A train whistle screeched through the cutting and from the top of the bridge Freddie could see puffs of steam rising from the hills. Charlie pounded over the bridge, a rolled-up green flag in his hand.
‘Be glad to see this lot off,’ he winked at Freddie. ‘Spoilt little madams, ain’t ’em?’
Freddie leaned on the bridge to wait for the train, while he tied the precious florin into his hanky, which was now so full of money it weighed his pocket down like a stone. He relished the anticipation of counting it and hiding it under the floorboards.
Then he heard a terrible sound.
The clatter of hooves on the road, the banging of wheels. And screaming. Everyone seemed to be screaming.
‘Look out. Stand back.’
‘Out of the way.’
‘Stop that pony.’
Freddie bounded down the stairs two at a time and out of the station gate, the nerves twanging in his stomach. It was Annie’s story, for real. A horse and cart bolting through a crowded street, people screaming, barrows overturning.
It was quick, and yet the moments seemed ponderously slow to Freddie. With his hand over his mouth, he watched in horror as a pony came galloping wildly, sweat flying from its flanks, foam and blood around its mouth. The cart was bouncing and zig-zagging, and driving it was a girl with dripping wet hair and a face contorted with rage. She wasn’t trying to stop the pony, she was thrashing the reins up and down. Words of fury spouted from her mouth as if she was a gargoyle.
Clinging with both hands to the sides of the cart was a girl in a scarlet and grey uniform, her plaits flying.
‘Stop! Stop!’ people were shouting.
‘Whoa now. Whoa Polly.’ Ethie hauled on the reins and Polly slid to a halt, her flanks heaving. Ethie turned and shouted. ‘Get out. Now. The train’s coming.’
Freddie strode forward to help, and as he did so the train surged noisily into the station. He saw the younger girl trying to stand up from where she’d been clinging. Then the pony saw the train. Terrified, she wheeled around in a panic, the cart was hurled onto its side and both girls were flung into the air.
Ethie landed on the grass bank and quickly rolled over and sat up. But the girl in the St Christopher’s uniform landed on the road with a sickening crack, and lay still.
A man in a cap moved forward to calm the plunging pony who was trying to drag the twisted wreckage of the cart. The train hissed as it pulled into the station, and a terrible silence descended over the scene.
Freddie reached the girl in a few strides. He picked up her hat from the road and knelt down beside her. She was motionless, her eyes tightly closed, her face peaceful. He remembered Granny Barcussy, how she had looked when he’d found her dead, how her shining aura had gone. This beautiful young girl wasn’t dead, he knew that. She was in a cocoon of golden light, and only Freddie could see it.
But she was badly hurt, and deeply unconscious. Blood was oozing in a dark pool across the road, soaking into the dust around her head. Freddie touched her arm and she felt hot and limp. He was aware of the people crowding round her, someone shouting and shouting for a doctor. He looked into the shocked eyes of the girl who had been driving the pony, and her skin was deathly white and blotchy, her lips still with terror.
‘She’s not dead,’ said Freddie.
He glanced at the girl’s suitcase lying nearby, and read the name embossed in white letters on the lid.
MISS ORIOLE KATE LOXLEY
HILBEGUT FARM
Hilbegut Farm! The stone lions. The girl on the Shire horse. It was her. Oriole Kate Loxley.
Chapter Nine
THE BONDING
The ten-thirty train steamed out of Monterose station with its precious cargo of children leaning out of the windows, waving to their parents. The atmosphere simmered with emotion, as parents craned on the edge of the platform to catch a last glimpse of the departing train. Hearing a shout, they turned to see Charlie thundering down the steps.
‘Is there a doctor here? Or a Red Cross nurse?’ he shouted. ‘There’s been a terrible accident – a little girl. Is there anyone who can help?’
The lady with the fox furs stepped forward.
‘I’m Joan Jarvis and I was a Red Cross nurse,’ she said. ‘And I have a motorcar here if she needs to go to hospital.’
‘Come quickly, then. Quickly.’
A crowd had gathered around Kate, and Freddie was in the middle of it. In the moments before help arrived, he knelt close to Kate, hoping that somehow his presence might comfort her. He didn’t know many prayers, so he made one up, saying it over and over in his mind. And he memorised every detail of Kate’s face. To him she looked like a beautiful rose petal that had fallen there, her skin translucent, her lips a peachy pink, her eyelashes dark curling silks. She had high cheekbones, a softly rounded chin, and her nose, Freddie thought, was aristocratic, her nostrils like two perfect little shells. On her left temple was a small mole, and on her neck a tiny pink scar like a crescent moon.
Freddie had never been that close to a beautiful girl. Oblivious to everyone around him he committed her face to memory so that he could keep her image with him forever. It seemed like the longest and most fruitful moment of his life.
Clasping her hand between his two rough palms, he sensed the subtle vibration that was uniquely hers, singing to him like the harmonics from a bell, those rhythmic sound waves that rippled out and out until they were gone but not lost. He hoped his own hands were transferring a stream of his energy and strength into her. This mysterious healing force was something Freddie had experienced himself, from his mother’s hand touching him when he was ill or hurt.
Watching Kate, through those eternal moments, he felt he was floating beside her, in a place of shining light, a sanctuary where there was no pain, no fear but only peace.
The noise of voices and running feet brought Freddie out of his trance unpleasantly like gravel spattering into his mind. Still holding Kate’s hand, he kept his gaze focused on her face, watching her skin becoming paler and paler, the stillness deepening. He felt he was watching an angel, an angel slowly turning to stone.
‘Move aside. Move back. Give her some air.’ Charlie’s voice was loud and rasp-like. ‘This lady’s a Red Cross nurse. Come on. Move back PLEASE.’
Freddie looked up then, into the coal-dark eyes of Ethie who was kneeling on the other side of Kate, and he saw straight into her frightened soul where guilt, frustration and terror were huddled together.
‘Now then. I’m Joan. Let’s have a look at the poor girl.’
The fox-fur lady was puffing and blowing from her run across the footbridge. She took off her hat, and the fox furs fell to the ground in a slinky russet-coloured heap.
‘Here, kneel on this, madam.’ Charlie took off his coat and put it on the ground for her.
‘Joan,’ she said firmly. ‘And put the coat over her, she’s getting cold. Let go of her hands now, please.’ She turned to Freddie. ‘Ah – you again – you stay here, will you? I might need your help.’