Seedtime and Harvest (The Apple Tree Saga Book 5) Read online

  ‘We shall very likely end up by having to sleep in the van!’

  But she was not really nervous at all. Even her shiver was only pretence. Nobody else in the world, she thought, had ever had a honeymoon like this, and the uncertainty of where they would sleep was all part of the great adventure. Snug, with the rug wrapped warmly round her, she looked out at the bleak landscape, and even the rain was beautiful. Would the world always look like this now that she was married to Charlie and the rest of her life was in his hands? Sitting beside her, driving the van, he was the master of her fate and she was content that it should be so. As to the future, what of that? It, like their destination today, was unknown and mysterious and no one could guess what it might hold.

  She took hold of his arm and gave it a squeeze and he turned his head to look at her.

  ‘Happy?’ he said.

  ‘Yes. And you?’

  ‘Surely you don’t have to ask me that?’

  They were driving through open country now and the mountains were being left behind. The Vale of the Tywi; Carmarthen; St Clears: all were blotted out by rain; and because it rained they kept pressing on, southwards now, towards the coast, where there was just a teasing hint of lightness and brightness in the sky.

  ‘Here are your villages,’ Charlie said, ‘and here are your towns.’

  And, as the day was drawing in, he began looking out for somewhere to stay.

  ‘Not a hotel?’ Linn exclaimed. ‘I’ve never stayed in one in my life!’

  ‘Come to that, neither have I!’

  But Charlie always knew what to do. New experiences did not frighten him, or, if they did, he hid it well. And when, in the little hotel at Llanmell, he wrote their names in the register, he did it quietly, without any fuss, in a way she admired.

  The holiday season was over and they were the only guests. A fire was lit in the sitting-room and their supper was laid on a small table close by the hearth: green pea soup with croutons in it, followed by haddock in parsley sauce, with boiled potatoes and buttered beans; then, for pudding, junket and prunes. Mr Hughes, the proprietor, waited on them and cleared away, while his wife in the background nodded and smiled, never speaking to them directly but enquiring through her husband whether there was anything they wanted.

  ‘No, thanks, we’re fine as we are.’

  If there was anything, would they ring?

  ‘Yes,’ Charlie said. ‘Thanks. We will.’

  Perhaps a hot water bottle in their bed?

  ‘Well,’ Charlie said. He glanced at Linn.

  ‘No, thank you, I’m sure we shall be quite warm enough.’

  There was confusion in her face but if Mr Hughes saw it he gave no sign. Quietly he withdrew and the sitting-room door was closed on them. Charlie got up and switched out the light.

  ‘Nice old couple.’

  ‘Yes, they are.’

  ‘D’you think they guess we’re on our honeymoon?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Charlie came and sat on the couch. He put his hand over hers.

  ‘Tired?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, just a bit. I shan’t be sorry to see my bed.’

  Confusion again. Linn looked away. But after a moment she began to smile.

  ‘What’s the joke?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know! Everything! Us … This place … Our being here …’ She let her head drop on his shoulder and he looked at her in the firelight. ‘I wonder what Dad and Robert are doing now.’

  ‘We can send them a post-card tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We can put on it “Wish you were here”!’

  ‘I’m not putting that! It wouldn’t be true.’ She leant against him, closer still, and felt his lips touching her hair. ‘This is just us. Our special time.’ She put up her face to receive his kiss.

  Their bedroom was at the top of the house. Rain lashed the window continuously and wind moaned in the narrow chimney. Sometimes bits of soot fell down and ratttled among the paper flowers that decorated the fire-place.

  On the wall above the bed there hung a text in a crisscross frame, bearing the words ‘Thou God Seest Me’, and illumined with an enormous blue eye. Linn stood at the foot of the bed, undoing the buttons at the front of her dress.

  ‘I don’t like that eye looking down at me.’

  ‘That’s soon remedied,’ Charlie said. He turned the text towards the wall.

  He came to her and touched her throat. His hand moved slowly and tenderly, inside the opening of her dress, his fingers exploring the soft smooth skin between her shoulder and her neck.

  ‘You don’t mind me looking at you, I hope?’

  With his hand on her throat, he could feel the quickening of her breath and the little hurried throb of her pulse beating underneath the skin. Her eyes were suddenly very dark, full of the feeling she had for him, and she answered him in a tremulous whisper.

  ‘I shall have to get used to that, shan’t I?’

  Her arms went up to clasp his neck.

  By morning the rain had stopped and they walked along the sands at Pendine, all the way to Saundersfoot. There was a lightening of the sky, and whenever the sun struggled through, it was with a gentle surge of warmth.

  Once they took off their shoes and stockings and went to the very edge of the sea, Linn with her skirts wrapped round her thighs, Charlie with his trousers rolled to the knees. They stood where the tide came sidling in: a sidelong swirl, surrounding them, licking their feet and then covering them; cold, very cold, numbing their flesh. Linn had never paddled before. Her flesh seemed to shrink upon her bones.

  ‘Oh, it’s so cold! So cold!’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you like it?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s lovely! It’s grand!’ she said.

  The noise of the sea filled her ears; its great sweeping waves came mounting the beach, running, white-edged, up the pale golden sand with a sly, deceitful, slow-seeming swiftness; coldly, silkily licking her feet and lapping the cringing flesh on her shins.

  Then, as the wave receded again, how the sand slipped and dwindled under her feet! She felt the whole world was yielding beneath her, slipping and sliding away with the tide. The earth seemed to tilt most dangerously and she flung out her arms in a gesture of panic, feeling that the sea would bear her away. But Charlie was there and she clung to him. His strong arms went round her, holding her tight, and his confident body was braced against hers, steadying her and supporting her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘you’re perfectly safe.’

  ‘Yes, I know! I know!’ she cried.

  Frightened, exultant, she clung to him, her cold-tingling feet gripping the sand, her toes curled into its quick-shifting wetness, until it became quite solid again.

  ‘I thought I was going to be swept away!’

  ‘Not while I’ve got hold of you!’

  Laughing above the noise of the sea, they clung to each other, warm and close, watching and waiting for the next sweeping wave.

  At Saundersfoot they had some lunch. Then they walked back by the sands again.

  ‘Shall we move on tomorrow, d’you think?’

  ‘Oh, no, let’s stay! I like it here.’

  So they stayed a full week at the Llanmell hotel, waited upon by Mr Hughes and with Mrs Hughes smiling and nodding in the background.

  ‘What’s the betting it’s green pea soup?’ Charlie whispered at dinner one night.

  ‘With some kind of fish for the main course …’

  ‘Followed by junket, you mark my words.’

  But they had no serious fault to find with the food, or indeed with anything else. Every day they walked by the sea, sometimes buffeted by the wind, quite often soaked by a shower of rain. They grew accustomed to sand in their shoes; to the tingle of wind-burn in their cheeks; to the taste of salt on their lips and hands.

  ‘Oh, I wish this week would last and last! I wish we could take the sea home with us!’

  ‘We could stay longer, if you like.’
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  ‘Don’t be silly. Think of the cost.’

  ‘I’ve still got a bit of money left.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you must spend it, though.’

  The weather was fine for their last day. They sat on the sand and gazed at the sea.

  ‘You looking forward to going home?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply, squeezing his arm. She thought of the cottage he had rented, overlooking the Herrick ponds; of her father and Robert, already there; of the new double bed and the chest of drawers and the lino patterned in blue and gold. ‘For almost the first time in my life I shall live in a cottage that isn’t tied.’

  When they left the next morning it was raining again, a steady downpour that lasted all day.

  ‘Maybe one day we’ll go back to Llanmell …’

  ‘Yes, in the summer, when it’s fine.’

  ‘A second honeymoon,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Staying with Mr and Mrs Hughes …’

  ‘Green pea soup for supper every night …’

  ‘That awful text on the bedroom wall …’ Linn’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Heavens!’ she said, looking at him. ‘Did you turn it the right way round?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I never did.’

  Linn’s guilty laughter mingled with his.

  The cottage, when they had seen it last, had been a dingy shade of brown, for its roughcast walls had never known the touch of a whitewash brush. But Jack had been busy during their absence and now, when they came home to it, it was transformed, a dazzling white, and the woodwork was painted black and cream. The shrubs in the garden had been pruned and the grass leading down the edge of the pond had been mown till it looked like a bowling-green.

  Jack and Robert came out to them and helped to carry their luggage in.

  ‘I can’t get over it!’ Charlie said. ‘I thought we’d come to the wrong house!’

  ‘Did you really?’ Robert said. There was excitement in his eyes. ‘Granddad did most of it. I only gave him a hand, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, it’s beautiful!’ Linn exclaimed.

  Inside the cottage as well as out amazing changes had taken place. The kitchen walls, newly distempered, were now a pale primrose yellow, and the parlour walls were shell-pink. But the best and most beautiful room of all was Linn and Charlie’s bedroom, overlooking the garden and ponds. The wallpaper, bought at Bennett’s shop, had been chosen specially for this room and Linn, surveying it from the doorway, thought she had never seen anything quite so pretty as its pattern of blue-grey trellis-work with full-blown yellow roses on it, rioting among their leaves. Her mouth opened in a neat round ‘o’ and she let out her breath in a little gasp.

  ‘I never dreamt it would look like this!’

  ‘I can’t get over it!’ Charlie said. ‘The work that’s been done in one short week!’

  Jack, with his pipe in his mouth, unlit, stood with his hands in his trousers pockets, and Robert, taking his cue from him, lounged beside him as though unconcerned, while the newly-weds walked about the room, exclaiming at everything they saw.

  ‘This paper’s been hung by a master hand! I can’t hardly see the joins at all, the pattern’s been matched up so perfectly.’

  ‘I do think that frieze is beautiful!’

  ‘Just look at this lino, how it’s been cut, fitting all round the doorway here.’

  ‘Dad was always good with his hands.’

  ‘Somebody’s even lined the drawers.’

  ‘And made the bed for us!’ Linn exclaimed. ‘They’ve worked so hard, the pair of them!’

  Jack removed his pipe from his mouth and looked at Robert.

  ‘Seems your mother’s quite pleased,’ he said.

  ‘Are you, Mother? Are you pleased?’ The boy was almost beside himself. His unconcern had been costing him dear. ‘Do you like what we’ve done in the house?’

  ‘Oh!’ Linn said. She was overcome. ‘How can you ask me such a thing?’

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, with a little grunt, ‘You’d better come down and have some tea.’

  ‘So you ended by spending your honeymoon in Wales? We had your post-card from Pendine.’

  ‘Oh, it was lovely there!’ Linn said. ‘I wish you could see it, so beautiful …’

  ‘What sort of weather did you have? Rain, I suppose, the same as here?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t the same at all! The rain is quite different in Wales!’ she said.

  ‘Wetter, for one thing,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Is it really?’ Robert asked.

  ‘Charlie’s just teasing you,’ Linn said. ‘He’s a terrible tease, this husband of mine.’

  Sitting upright in her chair, flushed and brimming with happiness, she kept glancing from Robert to Jack.

  ‘Well, did you miss me, both of you?’

  ‘We missed your cooking,’ Robert said. ‘Granddad’s not much good at it. He burnt the sausages yesterday.’

  ‘Is that all I am to you, then, just a cook?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, young Rob,’ Charlie said. ‘If you were to ask your mother nicely, you might get a special treat for dinner tomorrow.’

  ‘What special treat?’

  ‘Green pea soup!’

  There was plenty of laughter at teatime that day as they told Jack and Robert about the hotel, and Charlie made such a tale of it that when he was done the room was quite dark and Linn had to rise and light the lamp.

  Robert, seeing how dark it was, suddenly made a face of disgust. He had wanted to take Charlie out and show him the waterfowl on the ponds. Now darkness had come and it was too late.

  ‘Never mind. You can show me tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s not only ducks. There are dabchicks as well. One day I even saw a coot.’

  ‘There’s plenty to see out there, then, it seems?’ Charlie looked at the boy’s eager face. ‘D’you think you’ll like living here in this house?’

  Robert gave a shy nod.

  ‘Not too lonely?’ Charlie asked. ‘We haven’t got many neighbours here.’

  ‘We’ve got Mrs Ransome,’ Robert said.

  ‘Is that in the cottage opposite? Have you seen her?’

  ‘Seen her?’ said Jack. ‘I should think we have! She was in and out of her door like a jack-in-the-box the day we moved in, and as for that little dog of hers, he’s a handful and no mistake!’

  ‘What’s she like?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘Oh, a good enough neighbour, I should think.’

  Linn, as she cleared away the tea-things, listened to her menfolk talking together and felt a glow of thankfulness. Her son’s joy in his new home was plain to see: he was full of the hundred and one sights he wanted to show Charlie next day; and her father, it seemed, had accepted the change and was settling down to it, for her sake.

  ‘How long do honeymoons last?’ Robert asked.

  ‘That all depends,’ Charlie said. ‘For your mother and me, tomorrow will be the last day, I suppose. Then it’s back to work for us and settling down to plain married life.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jack, lighting his pipe, ‘it seems to suit you well enough.’

  Charlie exchanged a glance with Linn.

  ‘I’ve got no complaints so far,’ he said.

  Chapter Three

  The three ponds, strung out beside the road, were a never-failing source of delight to Robert, and he would sit for hours on the bank, watching the mallards and pintails as they dived and fed in the cool clear water.

  ‘Will they go away when the bad weather comes?’

  ‘If you were to put out food for them, they might well stay, bad weather or no.’

  Winter that year was mild on the whole but in January there were severe frosts. Robert put out crusts for the birds and watched from a distance while they ate. To his great joy, the mallards remained all winter, often coming into the garden itself to sit in the sun on the grassy bank. They grew quite used to the sight of the boy watching them, so silent, so still, and sometimes if he was patient enough they wo
uld even take food out of his hands.

  The frosts, when they came, lasted three weeks and every morning before school Robert went out with a heavy hammer to break as much of the ice as he could, so that the ducks could still swim. In the third week of January the ice was so hard it could not be broken and then on Saturday afternoon children from the villages around came to skate or slide on the ponds.

  Robert hated them there at first because they kept the ducks away, but the lure of the ice was too strong and soon he was out sliding with the other children. A few of the luckier ones had skates and he would stand watching enviously as they skimmed the length of the three ponds which, in winter, became as one. He longed to be able to skate with them, but skates in the shop at Overbridge cost twenty-five shillings, and such a sum was out of his reach, at least this winter, anyway. Next winter? Well, perhaps! But he knew he would have to save very hard to raise such a sum even by then.

  Soon the ice was gone from the ponds and there was a hint of spring in the air. The mallards and pintails swam in the ponds and in April nested among the reeds. There was plenty to watch as they played and displayed in the act of courtship and to Robert, lying along a willow branch that stretched out over the water, winter with its ice and ice-skates soon seemed nothing but a dream.

  ‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ Linn said. It brought her heart into her mouth to see the slender willow branch bending under him as he climbed. ‘If you should slip and fall into that pond ‒’

  ‘For pity’s sake don’t fuss the boy, he knows what he’s doing,’ her father said.

  ‘I shouldn’t worry if he could swim ‒’

  ‘If he falls in, he’ll soon learn to swim! That’s how I learnt when I was a boy.’ And before Linn could protest at this: ‘I’ll keep an eye on him, don’t you worry. I’ve got little else to do with my time.’

  Time had hung heavily on Jack’s hands all through that winter and early spring. He hated having nothing to do and although he tried hard to accept his position he felt his dependence like a sore. When he drew his pension each week, he insisted on giving Linn half, and nothing she or Charlie said would ever dissuade him.

  ‘I always like to pay my way, such as it is,’ he used to say.