I fashioned a rough plait and tucked it into the back of my coat collar, and walked away from him. I could not look at him.
Below me the fields stretched out beneath the hill. I searched the land for cattle, dogs, people, but there was no one. Only a barren plain which would darken as the sun went down until it was lit only by a small light in the west, and then that too would be gone. Behind me William said my name, murmured, but I hardly heard him. I wanted only to walk away, far away. Yes. Later tonight I would take the seaward road on the other side of the hill, the same road that I’d taken with Pamela. And on I would go until I outstripped this pain, this desolation, left it behind in the fields and hills of Upton.
I heard his tread, soft, on the turf. He was following me.
‘Leave me alone,’ I said, without turning my head.
‘Oh, my dear,’ I heard him say. ‘If I could have kept her, stopped her going, I would have done it, to make you happy.’
I could have laughed in despair. As if my happiness counted for anything. She was the only one who mattered. If she’d gone running to her father with open arms, my heart would have broken, but I’d have lost her fairly. I’d have known that she was happy.
‘It wasn’t your job to keep her,’ I told William. ‘It was mine.’
Dusk was beginning to fall in the east. I thought about the road to the sea. Perhaps I’d see a bonfire, a brazier glowing in the woods, and go to warm my hands with other travellers, tramps or trappers, folk who were abroad in the night. It would be a relief, perhaps, to speak to people who didn’t know me or what I’d lost.
‘I must go and get that child down,’ I said at last. ‘I need to take her back to Upton Hall. There’s no need for you to stay.’
‘I’ll wait here, all the same,’ William said.
‘I don’t need you to. I don’t need you.’
‘Well, I need you.’
I shook my head. ‘I can’t think why.’
*
Penny was sitting beside me at the edge of the dry, sheltered bowl of a dewpond, her suitcase by her knees, looking out towards the sea. She had her back to me. She hadn’t turned round when I sat down next to her on the springy, scented turf. I wondered if the wind had snatched away the tramp of my feet across the ground, and she didn’t know I was there.
But then she said, ‘Go away please.’
Such a high, sweet little voice.
I ran my eyes over Southampton Water, along the cranes and warehouses that crouched blotted at the waterline, hatched out in bleeding ink under a bank of heavy iron-grey clouds that were massing on the sea. Below them there was a line of yellow light.
‘Where were you going with your suitcase, Penny? Ireland?’
She nodded. ‘I knew I had to go south. But I didn’t have a map. So I came up here to look. Then I saw how awfully far away it was.’ She hunched her shoulders, turned her face more adamantly towards Southampton. ‘Why are you here, anyway, Mrs Parr? I shan’t call you Ellen any more. Since you don’t care about me.’
‘I do care about you, Penny.’
‘That’s not true. You only care about this Pamela girl. Even though she broke your bird.’
‘Yes, I did care about her.’ How easily the words came when looking at the sea, at that bright stripe of water fifteen miles away. ‘Her mother died during the war. I looked after her for a while, and then her father came and took her away to live with her cousins. She didn’t want to leave, but her father and I, we made her go.’
There it was. My sad little story of wartime. Viewed as through the wrong end of a telescope, distant, gem-clear.
‘I loved her, you see,’ I said. ‘And you reminded me of her. And I was a bit silly about it.’
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her squint at me.
‘Hm. That wasn’t very fair, was it. Making her go.’
The iron clouds parted, the yellow light mounted over the refinery.
‘We thought it was for the best.’
Somewhere high above us a long sweet song of adulation began. Penny stared upwards. ‘A lark, Mrs Parr. Can you hear him? Where is he?’
‘He’ll be a little dot in the sky somewhere.’ I watched her as she searched. ‘When I came here with Pamela, we heard a lark. We were having a picnic. I had some seedcake – it was a bit stale, but never mind. We were running away, you see. Trying to escape, so that she wouldn’t have to go away with her father. So we didn’t care too much about cake. It was a warm day and she dozed off.’ I pointed. ‘We were lying down there, at the bottom of this bowl.’
Penny didn’t see. She was looking up at the sky.
I closed my eyes. Pamela lay on the warm springy turf, in that pale-blue summer dress with the trim of white daisies around the hem, her head pillowed on her arm. The grass making little prints on her forearm as she dozed. I told her about the lark and she moved her head and looked up at the sky through her eyelashes. A lock of hair blew across her forehead. In her drowsiness she seemed once again like a small child.
‘If you were running away,’ Penny said, ‘why did you stop for a picnic? You’d have been better off biking as fast as you could, till you got clean away. Instead of hanging about eating cake.’
Pamela’s cheeks were rosy from the sunshine. All I wanted was to hold her and kiss her again.
‘Maybe you knew it was useless, really. Like me. I knew you’d find me in the end.’ Penny sighed. ‘Did she like it up here?’
‘She did.’
‘So that was good, wasn’t it?’
I opened my eyes. Penny was looking at me. A small child, narrow-shouldered, with shiny light-brown hair and light-brown eyes. A few glints in them but they were greenish. None of that deep pebble-grey of a peat brook. Eager, she was, quick and seeking life.
‘Yes, it was.’
‘I should think Pamela had fun with you. That’s why she didn’t want to go.’ She picked at a loose thread on her knee patch, her head down. ‘I’ve had fun. But I don’t suppose you’ll want me to come back now I’ve torn up your letter and run away.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘I expect you’ll tell the Dennis and she’ll gate me.’
‘The Dennis.’ I couldn’t help chuckling. ‘Penny, that’s awfully rude. And what on earth’s gating?’
‘They don’t let you out.’
‘Penny,’ I said, ‘I will make sure that doesn’t happen. And I don’t care about the letter. I’d already crumpled it up, remember.’
She sniffed, glanced up at the sky again. ‘Oh! I can see the lark.’ She pointed. ‘Look, Ellen. There he is!’
I gazed upwards. His soliloquy ran on and on, but I couldn’t spot him. Nevertheless, he was up there somewhere. The trick was to let the gaze wander, to wait for the vision to clear. And I was starting to see very clearly now. Yes. There he was, a small brown dot in the blue, buoyed up by his own singing.
We left the dewpond and walked down the ridge. Upton Hall lay below us, a winged building of grey stone and brick. My eye was caught by movement on the path. Two figures were approaching: one wiry, holding on to his hat brim; the other tweed-skirted with a stalwart tread.
‘Mr Kennet’s coming up now, Penny. He’s got Mrs Dennis with him.’
They stopped short of the brow of the hill like strangers unsure of their welcome, come to parley. Penny clung to my hand.
‘Please stick up for me, Ellen.’
‘Always.’
I let go of her hand and strode down the hill.
‘Dear Mrs Parr,’ Mrs Dennis began, as I approached. ‘We were a little anxious. Althea—’
‘Lady Brock might not have heard me quite correctly,’ I said. ‘Her hearing’s not to be relied on, especially on the telephone, as I’m sure you’re aware. Now, Penny needs to see her father. I’m sure you can do something about that, Mrs Dennis. You’re very persuasive.’
Mrs Dennis nodded. ‘As it happens, Mrs Parr, I’ve arranged for him to come and visit. He’s arriving in a few days.’
‘I’m so glad.’