One Summer at Deer’s Leap. Elizabeth Elgin
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Then they said they wanted the farmhouse, an’ all.’
‘That was a bit vindictive,’ I said hotly.
‘No. Stood to sense, really. The Air Force wanted to extend the runway at the aerodrome, and they took Deer’s Leap to billet airmen in. ’em could do what they wanted in those days. Would have the shirt off your back if they thought it would help the war effort! They couldn’t get away with it now. Folk wouldn’t stand for it!
‘Mind, once they’d no more use for bombers, they soon upped and went! I suppose Smiths could have got their house back and their fields, an’ all, but they never tried. That farmhouse stood empty for years. It’d have fallen down if it hadn’t been solid-built and a good, tight roof on it. A man who’d won money on the football pools bought it eventually and fancied it up. He couldn’t stand the quiet, though, so it’s been rented out ever since.’
‘I think it’s a beautiful house,’ I said softly as Jeannie took Bill’s empty glass to the bar for a refill. ‘I wish it belonged to me.’
‘You’d never stand the quiet, lass.’
‘I would. I’m there for a month and I wish it was for ever.’
‘Ah, well, there’s folk in it now, so you can stop your fretting for it. Reckon they’m well satisfied with the place.’
‘Yes. They love it.’ I didn’t mention they’d be leaving it, come New Year. ‘I think the view from the front is unbelievable. There’s such peace there.’
‘Weren’t a lot of peace for folk around here in the war. ’Em had an aerodrome, don’t forget, on their doorsteps, and bombers overhead day and night. Bits of kids flying them. It’s a miracle there weren’t more crashes.’
Jeannie returned with a tin tray with three pint glasses on it. Bill Jarvis smiled, and took one of them.
‘Crashes?’ I probed.
‘Oh my word, yes!’ He pushed his empty pipe into his top pocket and took a long drink from his glass. ‘Mind, those bombers were great big things and needed a lot of room for takeoff, but folk around here could never see the sense in the Air Force wanting more land for longer runways. ’Em thought it was going to be something to do with the invasion; that we had a secret weapon that was going to take off from Acton Carey. But it was the Americans came in the end. Mind, I can’t help you a lot there. I was in Italy at the time, on the invasion.’
‘I wonder why the Smiths didn’t come back. I’d have wanted to,’ I said.
‘Ar, but talk had it that he was given some fancy job with the Ag and Fish; didn’t have to work so hard for his money.’
‘Ag and Fish?’ Jeannie frowned.
‘The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. For once, they took on a man as knew a bit about farming! I never found out what happened to him after that. Was none of my business. Now, I mind when I was in Italy …’ His eyes took on a remembering look, and I knew there would be no more Deer’s Leap talk. But I had made contact, and before we left I had arranged to meet the old man again at the Rose on Wednesday night.
‘You’re a fast worker,’ Jeannie laughed as we cycled home. ‘What are you up to with Bill Jarvis?’
‘Nothing at all,’ I called back over my shoulder. ‘But like I said, it’s all grist to a writer’s mill. Life here must have been a bit tame all round once the war was over.’
‘Yes, and a whole lot safer!’
We closed the white gate behind us. It would have been dark by now, but for a half-moon. We hadn’t passed one street-lamp. It made me feel good, just to think of how remote we were. Tommy was waiting, purring, on the doorstep; Lotus was away on her nightly prowl. Hector barked loudly as Jeannie unlocked the back door, then hurtled past us to run round and round the stableyard like a mad thing. I switched on the kitchen light, then filled the kettle.
‘Want a sarnie?’ I asked. ‘There’s ham in the fridge.’
‘Please.’ Jeannie kicked off her pumps, then flopped into a chair. ‘No mustard.’
‘It’s been a lovely, lovely day,’ I sighed as I cut bread. ‘Bet our legs’ll be stiff in the morning, though. I haven’t ridden a bike in years.’
We sat at the kitchen table. It was too late now to sit on the terrace and watch distant lights. Even the birds were quiet.
‘I’m tired,’ Jeannie yawned not long afterwards. ‘All this country air …’
‘Me too.’ I said I would check the doors and windows. I considered it my responsibility since Beth had left me in loco parentis, so to speak. ‘Off you go. I’ll be right behind you.’
Tommy had settled himself on the bottom of my bed, but I didn’t shift him. I cleaned my teeth, washed my face, then lifted the quilt carefully so as not to waken him. Then I sighed and stared into the shifting darkness, glad that Jeannie hadn’t wanted to stay up late, talking, because I needed to think.
Up until tonight, things had been a muddle, yet now it was as if I was looking down on a table top with the pieces of a jigsaw piled on it in a heap. I had found the corner pieces of that puzzle and laid them out carefully in my mind.
One was a long-ago airfield – aerodrome, Bill called it – at Acton Carey. It had been the cause of the Smiths – piece number two – leaving Deer’s Leap, which was corner piece three. The fourth was Jack Hunter, I knew it without a doubt, and that he and Susan were connected – or why were her initials on his respirator?
I had made a start! Next I must complete the entire outline of the puzzle so I could begin to fill in the story, which was the middle bit. I could rely on Bill for some things because Jeannie had been right: his brain was still razor-sharp. For the rest of it, I needed to talk to a sergeant pilot. Only he could help me with the difficult bits.
Were we to meet face to face again, and talk, or was he to be a wraith, slipping in and out of shadows – and through gates – always just out of my reach?
Susan Smith, I brooded. Born 1924, or thereabouts. Fair and bonny and shy. Jack Hunter – tall and fair and straight, and old before his time. Died in 1944 and a name now on a stone memorial. The really sad thing, I sighed, as my eyes began to close, was that he didn’t know it.
What, or who, had he been searching for over the years? I hoped he would tell me …
There was a comfortable silence about the place when I got up early on Tuesday morning. After making Jeannie promise hand on heart to visit next weekend, I’d stood waving as her London-bound train snaked from the station the previous evening.
I coughed, and the sound echoed loudly around the kitchen. The quiet was bliss, the only sounds, Tommy’s rhythmic purring at my feet and a swell of birdsong outside. Hector lay on the back doorstep, on guard. There was just me and the animals and the view from the kitchen window that stretched into forever.
The phone on the dresser rang, intruding noisily into my world. Reluctantly I answered it.
‘Cassandra?’
‘Piers! Oh – hi!’
‘What have you been up to? I’ve been ringing all the time!’
‘You can’t have.’ I felt a bit guilty for hardly thinking about him all weekend.
‘I phoned on Saturday night. Twice. Where have you been until now?’
‘We biked down to the pub on Saturday night. Jeannie had someone to see.’
‘What about Sunday?’
‘If you rang, then we were probably in the garden, cutting the grass.’
‘And last night?’
‘Most likely I’d gone to Preston,