Kate was breaking her heart over every single duck, chicken and cow. All had gone to auction, except for Polly and Daisy who were loaned to the farm next door until they could be transported to Gloucestershire. Bertie had insisted on the four of them travelling together in a friend’s motorcar, and Kate had been terribly sick all the way to the ferry, giving Ethie another opportunity to say scathingly, ‘For goodness’ sake, Kate, can’t you stop being sick?’ It was either ‘stop crying’ or ‘stop being sick’ or ‘stop mooning over that BOY.’
Nobody knew how Kate felt about Freddie. Since the day on the hills she’d respected the depth of his artistic soul, the determined pragmatism that had driven him to save his money and build a business, and her admiration for him had grown. She’d found herself longing to be looking into his eyes. They reminded her of the sea, so blue and sparkling, but so deep and so full of immense perception. Freddie hadn’t had an education like she’d had, yet she felt he knew so much more, and when he looked at her she felt a steadiness and a kindliness, a feeling of guardianship, as if Freddie was a harbour and she a boat coming home from a storm.
Kate was seventeen, and she loved to flirt and laugh with the local lads on the farm, but she had boundaries. Her sexuality felt to her like a secret jewel she must not wear. She made sure that no man touched her, and if they tried she would deflect them in a firm but humorous way, and she felt confident of her ability to do that. It was something Ethie didn’t understand. Ethie ragged her constantly, berating her for being a flirt and a shameless hussy. Kate rarely reacted. She felt sorry for Ethie who seemed cursed with unpleasantness both in her dour appearance and her mood.
Freddie had only held her for a few moments, but Kate had heard his deep slow heartbeat, and smelled the tweed of his jacket, and sensed the gentleness of his big hands on her back, holding her as if she were a fragile shell. She’d felt a tiny movement as his fingers explored the curls at the ends of her hair, and that had been strangely electrifying, as if her hair itself was sensitive, as if he was touching her whole being. Wary of the intensity, she had pulled away. Now she wished with all her heart that she’d kissed him.
The throbbing engine of the incoming ferry boat had a finality about it, yet on previous trips it had excited her and set her dancing around on the quay. Something else was pulling at her mind. Kate didn’t want to be a cheese-maker and a farm girl. She wanted to be a nurse. Sally had taken her one day to Yeovil Hospital to enquire about training, and the matron had liked her and said to come back when she was seventeen.
The boat was pulling in to the jetty, with much hauling of ropes and shouting.
‘Stand back. Stand back. Let ’em off,’ shouted the pier attendant, as the ramp was lowered and the first passengers disembarked. Next came the motorbikes and bicycles.
‘They say that one day they’ll build a boat that will carry motorcars,’ said Bertie, ‘think of that. A great heavy motorcar being driven onto a boat. But that’s years ahead – years ahead.’
‘You say that every time we come here, Daddy,’ Ethie said and strode ahead of them onto the boat. ‘We can get on now.’
‘Come on, Kate.’ Sally saw her daughter hanging back, white-faced, and she was sad. She’d never known Kate so uncannily silent. ‘Come on, dear,’ she encouraged. ‘We’ve got to make the best of it. You stick with your family, girl. Come on – chin up.’
‘You’ll feel better when we get settled in,’ said Bertie. ‘And it won’t be easy for Don and his family, having us lot. We’re lucky to have a place to go. Don will be waiting for us over there at Beechley, in his motorcar.’
‘At least it’s a farm,’ said Ethie, making a rare attempt to be cheerful. ‘At least we haven’t got to live in a town.’
Kate squared her shoulders and stepped onto the boat. She went to stand by herself at the back, leaning on the rail so that she could take a last gaze at the land she was leaving. And she thought about the secret letter she’d left tucked into a crack in the wall by the front door. He had to find it, he just had to. Freddie would think she had just abandoned him.
The sky was plum dark over Monterose as Freddie unloaded the last pine plank into the furniture-maker’s warehouse. Coppery lightning was playing in the distance, illuminating clouds and hilltops. It hadn’t rained for weeks, the earth was cracked, and a haze of dust hung in the air above the streets.
‘Cuppa tea, Freddie?’
‘No thanks, Bill. I’ve got to go somewhere else before dark,’ said Freddie. He took out his wallet and added the two crumpled pound notes that Bill had paid him. It was four o’clock on a Saturday, and he had a few hours of daylight left. Part of him wanted to go home and start carving the block of stone, but going to Hilbegut seemed more important. He’d been due to see Kate tomorrow, after she’d been to church and had lunch with her family, then she had a few hours before milking time. Since the picnic they’d been meeting most Sundays, spending the time strolling in the lanes around Hilbegut, or sitting by the river. Precious hours for both of them. In the busy lives they had, work came first.
Annie hadn’t met Kate yet, but Freddie had tried to tell her about their friendship. Her reaction had been ominous.
‘You’re both too young to be courting,’ she’d warned.
‘We’re not courting,’ said Freddie, annoyed.
‘Well, what do you call it then?’
‘We’re just friends.’
‘You should be helping me on a Sunday, not running round with the likes of her.’
Freddie had felt his face go hot with anger at hearing Kate described in such a way. Still haunted by the memory of Levi’s rages, he deliberately distanced himself from his mother’s inflammatory remarks with a brief silence and a calm, unruffled reply.
‘Kate is a decent girl; you’d like her. She’s from a good family, farmers they are, out at Hilbegut.’
‘Oh them. That Loxley family, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t want to get mixed up with them. They’re POSH,’ Annie said bitterly. ‘Sent those girls to boarding school. They aren’t our kind of folk, Freddie. That Sally Loxley. I KNOW HER. Went to school with her. Sally Delby she was then. And when she was growing up, she was a flirt. Wild and shameless, that’s what she was – and when she married Bertie Loxley, then she turned into such a snob. She . . .’
‘Calm down, Mother. I’ll be back to help you later.’ Freddie had said no more, but left Annie grumbling to herself in the kitchen, and headed out resolutely to see Kate.
That was a fortnight ago. He thought about the last time he’d seen Kate. She hadn’t been any different. Or had she? He remembered a couple of times when a shadow had crept into her eyes, but when he’d asked her if anything was wrong she’d changed the subject in her cheery way.
As he set off for Hilbegut through the dark afternoon, Freddie felt increasingly anxious, and guilty too about leaving his mother alone with a thunderstorm brewing. Annie was frightened of thunder. She would be sitting under the table, Freddie thought, as he steered the lorry out across the Levels. The fields looked sombre, the cattle huddled into corners and the breeze was turning up the leaves of the silver poplars, their white undersides like shoals of fish underwater.
The roads across the Levels were dead straight with grass verges sloping steeply down to deep rhynes. Freddie concentrated on keeping the lorry on the narrow, uneven track. One wheel on the grass verge and the lorry would roll into the ditch. The lightning was distracting, and above the noise of his engine, he heard thunder. Hailstones bounced on the road in front of him and pinged on the bonnet of the lorry as he drove into the storm that had broken over Hilbegut. Blinded by the violent hail, Freddie was forced to stop in the middle of the Levels, and, fearing the engine would overheat, he turned it off and sat there in the cab next to an old crack willow which stood alone on the green Levels.