‘Do you?’ She shot me the same hard, shiny look as she had given her father. ‘So what? It’s not like either of you care the tiniest bit about me.’
I kneeled on the floor beside her and put my arms on the arms of the chair. Gently she banged her foot against my thigh. ‘I hate you,’ she said in the softest voice. She gave me another small kick, and another. ‘Hate you, hate you, hate you.’
The house was still. Elizabeth was in the garden, pegging tea cloths on the line. Aubrey showed no sign of coming downstairs. Selwyn could have been anywhere.
I pushed myself upright and fetched a canvas bag, one with a strap, that hung from a hook on the door. We needed food of some kind, and water. There was an army canteen under the sink – I brought it out and filled it. Then I wrapped a hunk of seedcake, dried out but edible, in greaseproof paper. That would do. Both these items I put into the bag.
Pamela was watching me, swinging her leg, pouting.
‘Come on, Pamela. Come with me.’
‘Why should I?’
‘Outside. Now.’ I went to the kitchen door without looking back, heard the scrape of her chair on the floor.
I wheeled the bicycle towards the double doors of the garage, pushing it fast over the uneven path. She tagged behind, recently caught up, whining.
‘Why are you putting it away? I wanted to ride to the Hall.’
‘We need to put the real tyres on. Take hold of the bicycle so I can tackle this door.’
I opened one half of the door, lifting it so that it wouldn’t groan on its hinges. Inside the garage the sheeted car was motionless in the gloom, the tank empty. The bicycle’s inner tubes lay in their box on the shelf. I fetched the box down and gave it to Pamela, who watched while I stood the bicycle on its handlebars and saddle, reached for the spanners and removed both wheels. I loved this machine. It was never a labour, caring for it.
We used a couple of old spoons for tyre irons. They worked perfectly well. The outer tyres were off in an instant.
‘Why are you changing the tyres?’
Less whining now.
‘We can’t tackle the hill road on straw ropes.’
I prised out the ropes that William had bound, which were properly made out of eight twisted strands. He and I had fitted them together, he pressing the straw neatly between the flanges of the wheel before I sewed the two ends together with waxed upholstery yarn.
‘We won’t be going on the hill road. We’re supposed to be having tea at the Hall.’
‘That’s not for an hour and a half. Do be quiet and bring me that pump. No. The black thing.’ She didn’t know what a bicycle pump was, of course. I pressed the inner tubes into place, inflating a little to give them form, and worked the outer tyres back on and pumped some more. ‘Now, on with the wheels.’
Pamela was squatting by the bicycle now, holding the pump. ‘Coo. You should be a mechanic in a bike race, Ellen.’
In my haste I tightened the front wheel-nuts unevenly and pushed the wheel out of true. It seemed to take an age before it was ticking round steady and free. I put the straw ropes in a dry bucket beneath the workbench, righted the bicycle, and wheeled it out to lean against the brick wall by the door. ‘Now a bit more air.’
‘Let me—’
‘No.’ I grabbed the pump from her. ‘There isn’t time.’
‘It’s rude to snatch.’
Behind us the front door opened. ‘Mrs Parr?’
At least it was Elizabeth, and not Selwyn or Aubrey. ‘We’re going for a spin, Elizabeth. Could you please tell the men we’ll meet them at the Hall for tea?’
It felt right to say ‘the men’ like that, airily, as one did at picnics or tennis matches, or, indeed, tea at the Hall. As if nothing untoward were happening. But Elizabeth silently wound her hands into her apron and stared at the bicycle pump.
I slipped it into my bag. ‘Come on, Pamela.’
When Mother died Edward and I walked through Pipehouse Wood together: the light-green shadow, the small ups and downs of a beech wood. Now Pamela and I travelled through the same light and shade, unseen by people on the road. I pushed the bicycle over bulbous, silvered roots; she trotted and gambolled beside me. She’d forgotten about Ireland, I could tell from the spring in her step. She was still just young enough to do that. Let things slip entirely from her mind. The path led along the bottom of the wood. We would have to join the road in the end, but at least, for this first part of the journey, the trees hid us. I walked on, and the warmth here, even among the trees, recalled the summers when Lucy and Daniel and I used to wander in and out of the deep beech-shadows here, hungry and none too clean, and glad to be in the sunshine. But I no longer cared about heat and cold. I would endure ten of the winters of my childhood, ten in a row with no summer between them, if it meant that I could keep Pamela by my side. Let me freeze and starve in the Absaloms again if, at the end of it all, my girl could stay with me.
Once on the road, the land started to incline: a tough climb, but we made better going than in the wood. I laboured from pedal to pedal. The breeze blew through the trees which lined the road. Pamela sang her song, hey, ho, but I had no breath to join her. I just listened to her clear little voice as Beacon Hill rose in the distance. The road started to level out, the air-filled tyres spun along. I didn’t remind her of the opportunity to pedal and she didn’t mention it, and I was glad, because I was faster.
We travelled past a farm where nobody went. Only the dogs saw us and barked unheeded. Dry pats of cow dung littered the road.
‘I don’t like this place,’ said Pamela.
‘We’re not staying in it.’
‘Where are we going? I’m hungry. I want to get off.’
‘We will. We’re just going over the back of the hill there. Look at those clouds, how puffy they are.’
They were marshalled on the horizon, piled up and pearly on their flat undersides, almost still in the light breeze. We reached the back of the hill. There was a stile by the side of the road leading to the summit. I dismounted by the fence and bade her get down. The bicycle toppled away from the fence, striking my calf as it fell. ‘Stupid bicycle.’ I left it there. ‘Come on, Pamela. Climb ahead of me.’
Over she went onto the other side of the stile, and then a neat jump to the ground.
‘What a girl,’ I said. ‘I’ll love you for ever.’
I watched her run ahead of me up the chalky path. I didn’t know if she’d heard me.
We had our picnic in the bowl of the tumulus on the crown of the hill, its little ramparts sheltering us from the breeze which had stiffened over the high ground. The turf was warm, peppered with dry rabbit droppings. Among the grass I saw buck’s-horn plantain, tiny spread leaves flattened by millennia of nibbling teeth. ‘When I was twelve, Pamela, I used to read a book called Downland Flora. It was the only thing I had which was nice.’
She didn’t say anything, just bit into her slice of cake, chewed, yawned, chewed again more slowly. Her cheeks were rosy in the sunshine, her eyes sleepy.
‘Will you come to Ireland, Ellen?’
‘You know that your daddy and I told you that I can’t.’
‘Not tomorrow. But in the future?’
The future. A high road on a chalk land.
‘We will all do what is best.’
She let her eyes run over me, considering my words, weighing them for truth or lies or any meaning at all. Then she seemed to give up on the task. We had told her so many things. Why should she take account of us now? She lay down on her side, pillowing her head on her arm. I lay down too, so that I could see her and also the sky on the brow of the tumulus, the clouds chasing. I shut my eyes, and then opened them to look straight up at the sky. The wind dropped for a moment, and I heard a high sweet rivulet of sound above us.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘A lark.’
She turned towards me, screwing up her eyes against the bright of the sky. ‘I can’t hear him.’
‘You will.’
The wind guttered again, the lark wheedled. She opened her eyes. ‘Oh yes!’ She pointed upward. ‘I can see him now, too.’
I lay back down on the turf. ‘I can’t.’