As usual, Kate kicked off her shoes, looked at him bewitchingly, and went running across the sand to paddle in the edge of the sea. He struggled out of his boots and socks, rolled up his trousers and sprinted over the velvety sand into deliciously cool crystal-clear water. Together they paddled, watching the sunlight marbling their skin.
‘Taste it. It’s SALTY.’ Kate offered him some sea water in the palm of her hand. He dipped a finger, tasted the salt, then looked into her amber eyes. Is this the moment? he thought. No wait. Wait and be sure.
Someone was guiding him that day, Freddie knew. The same feeling of being in a bubble of light with Kate lingered all day as if they were cupped in the womb of a shining angel whose wings covered the sea. He fancied there were golden ribbons in the air around them, winding, binding them together. He wanted to tell Kate, but it was hard to find an opportunity. She was so busy introducing him to the wonders of the seaside, collecting shells, popping seaweed, and building sand-castles. Then came the picnic, leaning against the hot sea wall, the taste of butter and cucumber, the burn of the sun on his white feet.
The moment came just one hour before the train home. They were sitting on the end of a wooden jetty, dangling their feet in the water, and Kate was playfully trying to link her toes with his. Her sunburned arm kept brushing against his, and the sea-breeze was blowing through her hair. The sunlight was sparkling on the water.
‘Kate.’
There was something compelling in the way he lowered his voice an octave, and the way his eyes looked at her, unwavering and deep. Kate stopped giggling and paid attention.
‘Now I’m going to tell you something,’ he began, and he reached out and took her hands in his. ‘In all of my life, I’ve never done anything major without thinking about it first, and I’ve thought and thought about this, Kate. I’ve loved you ever since I saw you riding down the lane on Daisy. I’ve kept an eye on you, in secret, all those years, and when I got the chance to meet you that day at the station, I saw something in you that is very rare and beautiful. No, don’t say anything – hear me out.’ Freddie’s voice deepened with the passion he was feeling, and Kate listened, spellbound by his intensity. ‘I don’t just mean beautiful to look at, Kate, because you are, but it’s something beyond that, some magic in your eyes. You’re a beautiful person. You’re kind and full of life and – and hope. I think you are pure goodness. And when you went I was – devastated. I put my heart and soul into carving the stone angel, and her face is your face because I carried you in my heart all those years, Kate.’ Freddie paused and squeezed her hands. He looked at the sunlight in her eyes and knew from the way she was listening that he could say everything in his heart. ‘No one else knows this, but I can pick up feelings from touching stone, as if it’s a storehouse of everything that has happened close to it. So when I’d finished the stone angel, I stood out there in the twilight, with the planet Venus bright in the west, and I put my two hands on the stone angel and recited a poem, one that says everything I feel about you, Kate, and I could feel the stone absorbing my words like a prayer.’
‘What was it? The prayer?’ Kate asked, her eyes never leaving his face.
‘It’s W. B. Yeats again.’ Freddie took out his wallet and extracted a dog-eared square of cardboard, cut from a cigarette packet covered in tiny neat handwriting.
‘My granny wrote this out for me when I was a lad,’ he said, ‘with a quill pen she’d made from a chicken feather. She’d got a dark blue tablecloth she embroidered with white and gold, and she’d done the sun, moon and stars on it, and the clouds. I got it now – and I put it over the stone angel to keep the prayer in there until you saw it. ’Tis a lovely old thing, I treasure it, and she made it because she liked the poem. Have you read it?’
‘No – you read it to me, please,’ implored Kate. ‘I love to hear your voice.’
‘Oh all right.’ Freddie studied the poem for a moment, then slowly read it in a voice so quiet and deep that it blended with the whispering of the sea.
‘Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths
Enwrought with gold and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I being poor have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’
‘That’s beautiful,’ she breathed.
Freddie took a deep breath. He sensed the golden ribbons being wound around them. He was almost there – almost.
‘Now I’ve got to ask you a question,’ he said intently.
‘Go on, then.’ Kate smiled encouragingly.
‘Do you – do you think you can love me, Kate? The way I love you?’
The answer came warm and swift, carrying him effortlessly into the moment he’d waited for all day.
‘But I DO love you, Freddie. With all my heart,’ said Kate warmly.
Freddie looked at her joyfully. He let go of her hands, reached into his heart pocket and slowly withdrew the velvet box. He hoped he wasn’t going to cry, but his voice broke a little as he gave it to her.
‘Freddie!’
‘Open it, Kate.’
She lifted the velvet lid, and gasped as the sun caught the diamond and the facets winked with the colours of sunlight.
‘I want you to have it, Kate. Because you are the diamond in my life. I’d like it to be an engagement ring – if —’
‘Freddie!’ Kate whispered, again, and her eyes brimmed with happy tears. She took the ring out, held it up to the light and then slipped it onto the ring finger of her left hand. ‘How wonderful. I’ve always loved you, and hoped you would love me too. I’ve truly – never, ever felt so blessed.’
They stared at each other, and the humour came dancing back into Kate’s brown eyes.
‘And now,’ she said bossily, ‘you are going to kiss me, aren’t you?’
Freddie took her into his arms. She felt warm and her tears tasted salty like the sea. The long slow kiss melted them together, there by the sparkling water, for one moment of time.
Chapter Twenty-Two
ONE YEAR LATER
Daisy stood patiently in the stable at the back of Herbie’s yard, wondering what all the fuss was about. She was an old horse and she’d done everything from ploughing, hauling timber in the woods, dragging hay carts, and being paraded at shows and carnivals. She’d done it all obligingly and carefully, she’d endured being muddy and wet and tired, or tolerated being dressed up in jingling brasses. Now there were three people round her: Freddie, who was grooming her vigorously with a brush, Herbie, who was shampooing her huge legs, and Joan, who was standing on a box plaiting her mane into little braids, looping them and tying in brightly coloured ribbons and tassels.
‘She’s looking good!’ Herbie grinned up at Freddie. ‘Look how white her socks are. Don’t know how I’ll ever get them dry.’
‘I’ve never done this before,’ said Freddie who was enjoying polishing the big solid horse’s coat, leaning his weight on the brush until she shone like a conker. Daisy seemed to like what he was doing.
‘Oh I have,’ said Joan brightly. ‘My parents had show horses. Now – where are those brasses?’
‘In that box.’ Freddie handed her the clinking box of horse brasses Annie had spent hours polishing. ‘They still smell of Brasso.’