‘You will!’
We both laughed, and then my eyes caught a small dot in the blue, the song reeling off him like thread from a bobbin.
The breeze was now gusting over the hill. My hair streaked across my face as I took her back to the bicycle. The sun was still strong, throwing a heavy horizontal light across the chalky fields. This was the upland where little grew. The lane led flat and straight towards the horizon, where another line of hills undulated and where the fleets of clouds, darker now, waited. Beyond them lay Southampton. When the clouds parted the sea would gleam like a bar of metal.
‘I’d like to get under those clouds,’ I said to Pamela.
‘Where are we going?’ Her hands were digging into my stomach, she was clinging so hard. ‘Ellen? Where are we going?’
‘To the sea.’
It was downhill from here. All we had to do was keep pedalling. The sun brightened ahead of us somewhere out beyond the clouds gathering on the coast. How beautiful they were, stately and opalescent. Underneath them a section of the sea duly started to shine. Pamela swayed sideways to look at it and we both laughed.
‘Let me pedal, Ellen, I’m getting cold.’
‘Just a little longer.’
The tyres made a fine rushing on the smooth road and the wind buffeted my ears. We would be there in half an hour or so, I thought. A great big port city.
‘If only Edward were here,’ I told Pamela. ‘He’s a wharf rat of long-standing, you know. He’d find all the nooks and crannies. Boltholes, and so on.’
‘What’s a bolthole?’
I strove onward. The light was making my eyes water. The skyline swelled, the road became a blur. There was a kind of hatched shadow lying across it. A break of brushwood, or something. Why would anyone do that? I slowed, and as the wind in my ears abated I heard the hum of a car engine approaching behind us.
‘A bolthole,’ I was saying, ‘is a place where – when people come looking for you—’
The engine behind us was louder. The thing in the road sprawled larger and darker. I braked and the water streamed from my eyes which then saw full clear the barrier of barbed wire that crawled thick from one side of the road to the other and into the fields too. My fingers clamped down on the brakes, and the car came alongside. Pamela suddenly caught sight of the barbed wire and screamed, and pulled me sideways. I couldn’t help but yank the handlebars round. We skidded over the light gravel on the edge of the road and onto the verge, and fell with the bicycle. Pamela shrieked and scrambled out from under the frame. I couldn’t move my leg, and for a moment the pain in my ankle was so intense that I thought I’d broken it. I flexed my foot, cried out. Pamela’s hands were on my leg. ‘Ellen! Ellen! You’ve broken your bones!’
I lifted my hand, saw a graze on the ball of my thumb. Beads of blood were springing.
‘I’ve just twisted my ankle a bit,’ I heard myself say. ‘Honestly, Pamela. What a tragedy queen.’
The car had halted just ahead of us. It was Lady Brock’s motor. I waited for Lady Brock’s feathered hat to emerge from the driver’s door. But it was William Kennet who got out.
‘Oh, William.’ I struggled into a sitting position. ‘We’re all at sixes and sevens.’
He lifted the bicycle off my leg and laid it on the edge of the road. Then he came and kneeled down beside me. ‘Can you move?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good job you didn’t hit that.’ We looked at the barbed wire. It was a nasty hedge, four or five foot high. ‘We laid it out to see how much we needed. Didn’t you see the signs?’
‘I had tears in my eyes.’
‘Tears in your eyes. You’d have had more than tears in your eyes.’ His voice was peremptory, bleak. ‘Get up now, girl.’
I lumbered to my feet. William took not my hand but Pamela’s, and she allowed herself to be led to the car. I followed them, limping, and leaned against the car while he loaded the bicycle into the boot. The boot wouldn’t close, of course, so he lashed the handle to the mudguard with a piece of twine, his hands skilful, angry and quick. He glanced up at me. ‘What a right mess you look.’
Pamela climbed into the back of the car, her face frozen. ‘What did you bump?’ I asked her. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Nothing.’ She looked at William as she answered. ‘I’m quite all right.’
I levered myself into the passenger seat. Now that I was seated the pain in my ankle lessened. William turned the car in the narrow lane. We drove in silence for a mile or so. Then he said, ‘You were above Galley Down. That’s how far you got.’
‘Is that all?’ I spoke with difficulty, being suddenly terribly cold. ‘I thought it was further.’
‘They’re frantic at the Hall. If you were younger I’d put you over my knee.’
I started to laugh at that, a sliding wail of a laugh that rose and fell beyond my control. William took no notice, speaking on through the unseemly noise. ‘We’ll say you sprained your ankle and couldn’t move. You just thought you’d take a turn along the Beacon Hill road, and you lost track of time. But on the way back you fell off because of a— Stop now, with that racket. Ellen. Stop.’
I clamped my hand over my mouth and held it firm there until I was sure I had quelled the wailing. ‘Because of a farm dog,’ I said finally. ‘Which ran out. That awful dog that belongs to the farm nobody goes to.’
‘And you couldn’t budge,’ he went on. ‘Never mind what the little one says. She’s always full of stories.’
I craned my head round towards the back seat. Pamela was huddled wet-eyed in the corner. My wailing had shocked her. I stretched out my hand in remorse: she considered it, and looked away out of the window.
William drove easily, his maimed hand a soft claw gripping the rim of the wheel.
‘I suppose you drove all over the place, looking. I’m so sorry, William.’
‘I had an idea where you’d be. You like those top roads.’
The sun lowered at last, striking the glass of the windscreen, hazing his hair.
Pamela was calm when we reached the Hall. Selwyn and Aubrey came out, followed by Lady Brock. William got out of the car and went to speak to them, the words indistinguishable. Then Lady Brock bent down to my window. ‘Just as long as you and Pamela are all right.’
‘She’s unharmed. Only upset. By the accident, and the wait.’
Lady Brock peered into the car. Pamela was sitting motionless, her hair across her face, her dress rumpled. ‘Dear little child. Did no one come by, on the road?’
‘Not a soul. I was so glad to see Mr Kennet.’
Her small brown eyes held mine. I could hardly see her expression. ‘You must be cold. Sitting so long, immobilized. You’d all better get back to the mill.’ She glanced behind her and straightened up. ‘Selwyn, take the wheel. Lieutenant Commander Lovell, your daughter needs you. You’re keeping the motor for tomorrow, anyway, so off you go.’
I heard light male voices. I looked for William but he’d gone. ‘Please thank Mr Kennet,’ I told Lady Brock, but she had turned her back and was walking towards the steps of her house.
Selwyn got in behind the wheel and started the car as Aubrey took his place beside Pamela. He put his arm around her shoulders and she leaned her head against his chest. Over her ruffled hair he met my gaze.
‘I was silly,’ I said to him.
But it was Selwyn who replied. ‘Everybody does silly things from time to time, my love.’ His face was turned away from me as he reversed the car over the gravel.