The Healing Stream Read online

  Julian remembered his own surprise when she had got into the car still in her workman’s overalls and wellingtons. Now, though, a smile played at the corners of his mouth as he answered, ‘Not entirely. She took off her hat. But Deirdre, we should never judge people by their clothes. Mrs Pilbeam is a lady in the real sense of the word, be she in working togs or a model gown.’

  Deirdre laughed, partly at the image of Naomi in a model gown and partly out of sheer happiness that her father should speak as he had about her beloved Aunt Naomi.

  But what Julian hadn’t told her was how his ill-clad passenger had acquiesced when he had offered to leave her in the car while he registered Richard’s death and then called on the undertaker.

  Only as he opened the door for her to get out when they got back to the farm did she meet and hold his gaze. ‘Thank you – can’t tell you how grateful I am. The things you did for me – for Richard – I dreaded doing them. Silly, I know. I ought to have gone to town this morning – kept putting it off. The last thing I could do for him – and I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘Do you imagine he doesn’t know that?’ Then his tone changed as he spoke more forcefully, trying to lift her spirit before her insecure grip on control was lost. ‘And my actions weren’t entirely altruistic. Everyone needs to serve, whether it’s the community, the family, someone you love. I have Deirdre, thank God, but I do so little that’s useful these days. Promise me that if there is anything, anything at all I can do for you, you will tell me.’ Then, with a sudden smile, ‘Retiring too young can be tricky.’

  She promised, shook his outstretched hand, then watched him drive away. She was thankful and grateful that he had relieved her of the things she had been too cowardly to face; but there all thought of him ended, for she was hardly likely to ask help from a retired industrialist to whom the mysteries of farming were a closed book.

  Routine had to be Naomi’s medicine. She got through each day determined not to be beaten and, each night, went to bed almost too weary to climb the stairs. And yet once alone in the dark bedroom sleep always eluded her. There were nights when she would reach her hand to his side of the bed, almost making herself believe that she would feel the warm, familiar body. Night after night she fought her tears, but misery and exhaustion always won. She mustn’t let Tessa guess she was crying, better to pull the covers over her head, to bury her face in the already damp pillow. Richard, Richard, how can I go on without you? I’m nothing, not even a whole person. Just want to die . . . And so her days ended until at last sleep carried her away. By morning her determination was back again. Through the working hours of the day it took all her energy and concentration to carry out the tasks Gerry had taught her during the week or so they had worked together. Now she was on her own and it didn’t enter her head to worry about Tessa or the fact that there had been no mention of Giles coming back.

  But for Tessa the passage of time couldn’t be ignored. It was the beginning of August, more than eight weeks since she and Giles had driven north to that paradise in Shropshire. From her collection of books about the people of Burghton she found that his work had been published by the same firm for many years. If she were to write a letter to Giles and send it to the publisher in a sealed envelope explaining that she had typed for him when he’d been in Devon and asking that it could be forwarded to his address in Spain, that must surely get her a reply in about a fortnight. She couldn’t hide her secret much longer; in fact, she was amazed that Naomi hadn’t noticed a change in her already.

  Three days later she had a reply, not from Giles but from the publisher, regretting that he had been unable to forward her letter as all that was known of Giles Lampton’s whereabouts in Spain was that his nearest town was Llaibir. Any contact during his periods in Spain was always made by Giles himself, and if he should happen to ring, he would be advised that there was a letter waiting for him from her.

  By the end of the day Tessa had read it so many times she almost knew it by heart. Her imagination was working overtime as she stripped off the last of her clothes and, naked on this warm night, started to get into bed. Then she caught sight of her reflection in the long mirror on the wardrobe door. Forgetting bed, she stood gazing at it, turning sideways first one way and then the other; it wasn’t that she had a ‘bump’ yet, but her figure was different. Her breasts felt heavier as she cupped them in the palms of her hands, and did she imagine it or had she lost her youthful appearance of agility? She shivered – certainly not because she was cold. She had faced most things without fear, but there had never been anything like this.

  Despite her worries, once in bed she soon fell asleep. What time it was when a sound woke her she didn’t know, but she was sure she heard movements downstairs. In an instant she was pulling on her dressing gown. Creeping on to the landing she saw that Naomi’s door was pulled to and her room in darkness. If there was an intruder she couldn’t have heard. In the dark Tessa crept barefoot down the stairs, relieved to see a streak of light shining under the kitchen door. Surely a burglar wouldn’t have switched on the electric light. Even so, she squared her shoulders and took a deep breath before throwing open the door to face whatever was before her.

  Naomi turned at the sound. ‘Do you want some tea?’ she asked, as if middle of the night refreshment was the normal thing.

  Tessa nodded. In that moment she made her decision: she must tell Naomi the whole truth. Yet as she took a cup from the hook on the dresser, at the front of her consciousness was what had happened to her aunt in these last weeks. Always thin, but usually fully clothed, it had never been as apparent; tonight, wearing just a thin, cotton, sleeveless nightdress, there seemed to be no flesh on her bones. Her figure had always been saved because she had retained the firm breasts of her youth, which now seemed just to emphasize her bony frame. Her face was gaunt, the only colour the dark shadows beneath her eyes.

  ‘I woke you. Sorry,’ she said as she poured tea into Tessa’s cup.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep either,’ Tessa lied. ‘Auntie, I have to talk to you. Is now a good time?’

  For a second something akin to a smile flitted across Naomi’s face. ‘Why not,’ she said, ‘no one is going to interrupt us.’

  ‘It goes back to my holiday with Giles . . .’ And so she told her story: the holiday, her absolute trust that Giles meant them to marry as soon as she was twenty-one, her fear that he must have met with an accident or fallen ill – and finally that she was expecting their child.

  Naomi let her talk without interrupting, yet all the while she seemed to hear Richard’s voice saying what, in her heart, she believed to be true.

  ‘Even his publisher doesn’t know his address,’ Tessa explained. ‘But he knows the town. Auntie, I know what I have to do: I have to go to Spain; I have to find him. Not just for me and the baby, but for him. I know, positively know, that if he could he would have been back long before this. He loves me just like I do him. I’m not some silly love-struck child, and I know him better than any living person. I know he’s always been a Casanova but that was because he was just amusing himself. With me it was different. You’ve got to believe that.’

  The news had cleared Naomi’s thoughts of everything else; even Tessa could see a subtle and nameless difference in her. Her eyes seemed to look and really see.

  ‘Have you spoken to Mr Masters? Surely an old friend like that must know where he is?’

  ‘He doesn’t know. He says that Giles has always disappeared for months at a time, then come back as if he’d been gone no time at all. But this is different. Aunt Naomi, we are going to be married after my birthday, but the baby must be due at the beginning of March.’

  ‘How can I let you make a journey like that on your own? But I can’t possibly leave everything to come with you.’

  ‘I bet you’ve never been abroad any more than I have. I’m not stupid and I’ll phone each day if you like while I’m looking for him.’

  ‘But you don’t speak Spanish. And you’d have to go on a
ferry to France, then get a train to goodness knows where, then on to Spain. How can I let you go off like that, especially when you’re pregnant?’

  Reaching across the kitchen table Tessa took Naomi’s hand in hers, looking at her earnestly.

  ‘I must. And I’m ever so well; I’ve not felt sick, not even once. Don’t you see – even if I weren’t expecting our baby, I simply have to find out what’s wrong? He promised. The last thing he said was “I’ll be back as soon as I can”. He must have been in an accident; perhaps he’s ill or lost his memory. Anything might have happened. He’s alone out there.’ Then, knowing she wasn’t being fair, ‘Supposing it were Uncle Richard. You’d move heaven and earth to get to him.’

  ‘You’ll need a passport. Get the application and I’ll sign it. But Tessa, are you sure, one hundred per cent sure that he wasn’t just running away? Suppose you get out there and you find he had no intention of coming back?’

  ‘But I tell you, he did. I know there’s gossip about him, but that’s not the Giles I know. Auntie, I never knew there could be such joy as we found together. It wasn’t just me, it was him, too.’

  Naomi sat gazing into space, her hands wrapped around her half-empty teacup. ‘. . . never knew there could be such joy . . .’ What right had she to cast doubt on Tessa’s trust? If she stopped her going, all it would do would put an insurmountable barrier between them. But if she made the journey – a frightening thought for a young girl alone in a strange country and with no knowledge of the language – and if she found Giles not ill nor with a lost memory, simply wanting to put time and space between himself and his entanglement with her, it would be an unbearably hard lesson to learn. Then there was the complication of the pregnancy. The longer the journey was delayed, the harder it would be for her.

  ‘Get the form tomorrow and we must think about money.’ Then, seeing Tessa was trying to hold back her tears, ‘My dear, you shouldn’t have kept this to yourself so long. I’m sorry. I’ve been selfish; I’ve not looked beyond myself.’

  ‘You’ve got enough troubles.’ Tessa snorted. ‘It’s so good to have told you.’

  ‘Mother – your grandmother – left money for your keep. Each month Richard paid it into an account he opened in your name. I’ve got some savings in the post office—’

  ‘No, Auntie. I won’t need much more than my fare. Once I get to the town in his region, someone will know where he lives. Then I’ll be fine.’ She didn’t say how often she had felt resentful, believing that Richard had been paid to give her a home.

  ‘How much did you tell them at Fiddlers’ Green?’

  ‘I’ve only told Mr Masters – but not about the baby.’

  Naomi nodded. ‘We must go back to bed, my dear. It’ll be milking time before we know it.’ For a moment she shut her eyes as if she would escape the world.

  Watching her, Tessa was aware of just how fond she had grown of her. ‘Auntie,’ she said, almost timidly, ‘when I find Giles, I shan’t come back until after we’re married. I feel awfully mean. That’s the one thing that has worried me, thinking of you here. But I have a plan.’ And so she told Naomi her thoughts on Hideaway Cottage being taken off the market so that she and Giles could live there. ‘That way I could still come and help you here.’

  ‘Dear Tessa, it doesn’t do to look ahead and plan. Live your life, my dear, grab every bit of happiness you can. And if you and Giles have found real love, then give yourself to it heart and soul.’

  ‘That’s what you did, you and Uncle Richard.’ Even as she said it Tessa thought how strange it was that in the middle of the night it was easy to say things that would remain unsaid by daylight.

  ‘Yes,’ Naomi answered softly, her thoughts going on a journey of their own. ‘And nothing can ever take away from you the joy you’ve known.’ Then, drawing a line under a conversation that had become uncharacteristically emotional, she stacked their empty cups and carried them to the sink to rinse them.

  Then together they mounted the stairs, knowing that this time they would sleep.

  It was late in the afternoon the following week when Julian walked across the lower meadow where Naomi was coaxing the Jersey herd into some sort of group to start their leisurely walk to the milking shed.

  ‘You’re busy.’ He greeted her. ‘I know I mustn’t hold you up, but I wanted to take the opportunity of our having a word while the girls are out. Having finished in the dairy they said they were going into Deremouth – Deirdre wanted shoes.’

  ‘Deirdre loves shoes, doesn’t she?’ Naomi answered, smiling a welcome at her unexpected visitor.

  ‘If only she could wear them out.’

  ‘Amen to that. Has Tessa made a clean breast of things to you?’ For any day the passport would arrive and then, although it was hard to imagine how Tessa would manage in a country where she didn’t speak the language and, even worse, what the outcome would be if she did track down the elusive Giles Lampton, the sooner she started out the better.

  ‘She has. But to be honest, I never doubted the situation. That’s what worries me. Did Lampton realize what could have happened and decided to go while the going was good? If I could lay my hands on him . . .’ And there was no doubt what he would like to do to the younger man.

  ‘That’s exactly what Richard said. But all we knew then was that they’d been on holiday together. If it weren’t for the coming child I’d have refused to sign her passport application. How could I, though, as things are? If only I could go with her. Not that I’d be any use. Even if I could leave Chagleigh, I don’t even have a passport.’

  ‘Fortunately, I do. And so does Deirdre. So this is why I wanted to talk to you.’

  By this time the cows had ambled as far as the gate to the yard. Once there, they knew exactly where they were heading and in their uninterested way they plodded to the milking shed. While Naomi was sorting them out and fixing the tubes of the milking machine to the swaying udder of the animal in the first stall, she needed her full concentration on what she did. She hadn’t overcome her dislike for the contraption, but using it made an enormous difference to the time it took to do the milking. At the steady rhythmical sound of the rich fluid spurting into the pail, she turned back to Justin.

  ‘What are you saying?’ she prompted.

  ‘Deirdre knows nothing and that’s the way I mean it to stay for the present. However, my idea is that I drive the two girls to Llaibir, the nearest town to wherever Giles has his house. A holiday in Spain, what could be more natural now that I have time on my hands? We’d travel in the hybrid so that Deirdre would have the independence of her chair. Once we’re there Tessa could make enquiries, as indeed I would as well. We’d play it as it comes. There must be a hotel in town or somewhere to rent. I promise you I’d see she was all right.’ Then, after a slight hesitation, ‘And if the swine has been playing with her affections and doesn’t mean to be caught, then at least she wouldn’t have to face it alone.’

  He saw how hard she clamped her teeth on the corners of her mouth while the muscles in her face twitched and jerked out of control. Even on a ‘good day’ she had lost the looks of her youth, and over these recent weeks overwork, misery and an increasing dread that she was failing in her attempt to maintain Chagleigh had left their mark.

  ‘My dear,’ Julian put his hand on her shoulder, ‘you don’t approve.’

  ‘Relieved . . . grateful . . . been so worried . . .’ One word at a time she had managed, but to string three together was her undoing. ‘Sorry. Just seem to cry for nothing lately.’ She found herself looking at Julian with complete honesty. He was almost a stranger and yet she made no attempt to hide from the truth. ‘I’m so tired, tired to death. I wanted to do well, to do all the things that Richard did so easily. Last night I went to bed meaning to listen – I knew the calf was ready to be born. But I didn’t even hear the cow calling. Richard always heard if one calved in the night, but I didn’t wake. When I went outside just after six, that’s when I heard the cow in distress. I t
ried to remember what I’d seem him do. I tried to pull the calf out but I couldn’t turn it, I just made things worse and had to call for the vet. But it was too late. Poor little thing was dead.’ She took a man-size handkerchief from her trouser pocket, a handkerchief she had last used to clean the windscreen of the van.

  Watching her, Julian was conscious of a strange sensation. He wanted to hold her close and comfort her, to strengthen her with his strength. Instead, he took out his cigarette case and held it to her, took one himself and flicked his lighter.

  ‘Thanks. Sorry about that exhibition. I ought to be seeing to the milking.’ And as if to draw a line under the last five minutes, she rubbed the grey and murky handkerchief across her face then took a deep drag on the cigarette.

  ‘You know, don’t you, that young Gerry would like nothing better than come back to give you a hand.’

  ‘He was splendid. But I can’t, I won’t take someone on to do Richard’s work. Perhaps I’m going silly – do you think I am? But as long as I’m looking after the animals I can feel he’s still with me. It’s just that I don’t do things as well as he did – everything takes me so much longer and I can’t hide from the truth: I’m failing Chagleigh. I’m failing him.’

  ‘I think you are attempting the impossible – and if Richard could hear this conversation I’m sure he would agree with me. Do you think he’d want you to wear yourself to death? No, of course he wouldn’t. And here I am, hindering you and being utterly useless.’

  For a while they stood leaning against the wall of the barn, smoking in silence. Then she threw down her half-smoked cigarette, trod on it firmly then picked it up and put it in her trouser pocket.

  ‘I must see to those poor old ladies,’ she said, turning towards the milking shed. ‘You’ve done me good. Thank you. And thank you for what you’re offering to do.’