‘Here you are. I brought you some roses.’
‘Oooh – Freddie!’ Kate buried her face in the bouquet and breathed its fragrance. Then she looked up straight into his eyes. ‘That’s beautiful. Oh, aren’t they beautiful? Thank you!’
Soon they were heading across the peat moors towards the blue-green ridge of the Polden Hills, with Polly trotting smartly along the narrow lane bordered by deep ditches and pollarded willows. Kate held the reins attentively and Freddie felt redundant, as if he suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands. He wasn’t used to being a passenger, and he could scarcely believe that he was sitting next to the beautiful girl who had chosen to go on a picnic with him. They weren’t going fast, yet he felt he was flying through the diamond summer, the grass and the willow leaves sparkling and the sun flashing over the brown water.
Kate began to sing, and Polly flicked her ears back to listen, and her hoof beats clip-clopped to the music. When she started on ‘Danny Boy’, Freddie found himself joining in, surprised by the new depth and texture of his voice, and surprised at the joy it gave him and the feeling of camaraderie with Kate.
But when they reached the woods at the foot of the hills, a different feeling lulled them into silence. Polly slowed to a walk as they entered the luminous green flickering twilight, the beeches, limes and oaks towering like the pillars of a temple. Cool and smelling sweetly of leaves and moss, the woods whispered around them, Polly’s hoof beats were muffled and the wheels of the cart crackled softly on the pink brown layer of calyx fallen from buds and blossom.
‘Stop,’ said Freddie suddenly.
Kate glanced at him, her startled eyes bright in the shadowy wood. She pulled Polly’s reins gently and the pony stopped and stood motionless, listening, the cart creaking a little as the wheels became still.
‘What is it?’ Kate asked in a whisper.
‘Listen!’ said Freddie in an electrifying tone.
Kate froze and they were totally still together. They were in a wide glade surrounded by trees, the ground thickly covered in the stripy leaves and black seed-heads of dead bluebells. The sound of the glade filtered into Freddie’s consciousness, stirring a distant memory. Above the clink of Polly’s harness and the occasional chuck-chuck of the woodpeckers, was a humming, droning sound, at first high among the leaves, then close, then distant again. He looked deep into the woodland flora and saw the sunlight glisten on the zig-zagging bodies of dozens of bees. Honeybees, bumbles and tiny hoverflies, and the bright gold of a queen hornet buzzing through the nettles and campion.
He looked at Kate and her face was like that of a startled child, listening to the unexpected symphony of silence.
‘The bees,’ whispered Freddie. ‘Can you hear them?’
She nodded, her mouth open in surprise, and the sunlight glinted through the trees onto her cream silk dress and the gloss of her dark hair.
‘Magic,’ she whispered.
They listened together.
‘It’s the bee-loud glade,’ whispered Freddie. ‘From Innisfree.’
‘What?’
‘It’s a poem I used to like.’
‘Ooh – tell me. I want to hear it.’
Freddie hesitated, embarrassed. And as soon as the embarrassment came, the magic disappeared and the bees melted away into the emerald light.
‘Why are we whispering?’ whispered Kate and her eyes danced with amusement. Polly gave a reverberating whinny, her harness jingled and the cart trembled and creaked. Kate broke into one of her peals of laughter. She picked up the reins again and Polly moved on, up the sloping lane through the shady wood.
‘You’re going to tell me that poem, when we’re having our picnic,’ Kate said bossily. ‘I shan’t let you have one of my cucumber sandwiches until you’ve told me.’
The spell was broken, but Freddie felt as if she had opened a door to a part of his mind that had lain forgotten for years. Hearing the bees, then the sound of Kate’s bell-like laughter ringing through the woods, he felt a sense of restored happiness, a wild precious freedom he’d only experienced with Granny Barcussy.
Kate pulled Polly to a halt again.
‘We must walk with her from here, Freddie,’ she said. ‘It’s too steep for her to pull us as well.’
They plodded one on each side of Polly as the gradient increased and the ground wound upwards into the hills. At every bend the view across the Somerset Levels grew bluer and more panoramic, the tall trees gave way to dense hazel copses, gnarled hawthorn bushes and field maples festooned with bunches of pale green winged seeds. Freddie was quiet, feeling he wanted to drink deeply of the beauty around him, and Kate chattered like a bubbling stream. Only when he linked his index finger with hers in Polly’s hot mane did she become quiet. The touch was charged with a gentle energy like the tip of a candle flame which had the potential to ignite into a hungry fire.
Finally they reached the top of the Poldens, the lane undulating into the distance. Kate steered Polly through a gap in the hedge. She unhitched her from the cart and tied her under the shade of an oak tree.
‘Now for the best bit,’ she said, her eyes shining. ‘Let’s walk up the ridge and see the view. Then we’ll choose a place for our picnic’
Before them stretched a ridge of hill against the sky. Freddie and Kate walked up towards it, winding their way through enormous anthills, patches of wild thyme, and domes of yellow trefoil.
‘Tom Thumbs,’ said Kate, picking one of the tiny pea-like flowers, ‘– and ORCHIDS! Look Freddie – orchids. They smell divine.’
‘Butterfly orchids,’ said Freddie. ‘That’s what those white ones are – and look, here’s a bee orchid.’ He bent to touch the complex flower which had a petal resembling a small bumblebee.
Kate looked at him in surprise.
‘Fancy you knowing that, Freddie.’
‘I grew up in the country, not far from here,’ he said. ‘And I had a granny who taught me a lot about nature, and what she didn’t teach me, I learned from watching. I know all these butterflies.’
‘I thought you only loved engines,’ said Kate. ‘You never told me.’
‘Well,’ Freddie considered what he wanted to say, and decided against it. He didn’t want to risk upsetting her.
She looked up at him with a searching, caring gaze. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I’ve done all the talking, haven’t I? I know I’m a chatterbox but I do want to know about your life, and your hopes and dreams, Freddie – oh, don’t look so serious! Come on, I’ll race you up to the ridge.’ She kicked off her red shoes and ran, grinning wickedly back at him, her hair and dress flying.
Freddie watched the two red shoes land far apart in the grass, then he ran after her in long strides, the money jingling in his pockets. He felt like an old man who wasn’t used to running, and he felt like a young man who hadn’t discovered himself. As soon as Kate heard his big creaky shoes thudding after her and his pockets jingling, she started to giggle.
It was like running up to the sky, being an aeroplane that could reach the ridge and take off into the air. At the top Kate stretched her arms, twirled around and stood barefoot, waiting for him.
‘I love it up here,’ she cried. ‘Look at this view.’
The vast landscape stunned them both into silence, even distracting Freddie from wanting to stare at Kate who looked so free and alive standing beside him with her bare toes in the wiry grass.
‘That’s Glastonbury Tor,’ she said pointing to a steep green mound with a tower at the top. ‘And the Mendips. Don’t they look blue? Turquoise blue like a peacock.’
The Levels stretched below them like a chessboard of black peat fields and hay meadows of buttercup and sorrel, the rhynes shining silver, on and on into the distance where a tiny steam train was puffing its way along the track from Glastonbury to Burnham-on-Sea.
‘What are those hills down there?’ asked Freddie, pointing south.