One Summer at Deer’s Leap. Elizabeth Elgin
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to his knock, and came at once to tell us. We found her curled up under her patchwork quilt with such a look of contentment on her face that we knew her going had been gentle.
Had she been thinking of the three sherries of the night before, or her niece’s success? Whatever the reason for that smile, we could only be sorry for ourselves because there hadn’t been a last goodbye. For Jane Johns there was only relief that she had gone the way most people would like: peacefully, in her sleep.
She left her cottage to Dad, the contents to me and sufficient money in her bankbook to pay for a good funeral with a decent knife-and-fork tea to follow. And to Mum’s surprise and consternation – because Aunt Jane had never been one to gamble – she also left me two thousand pounds in Premium Bonds.
I’m still sad that she didn’t live to see my novel, with an eye-catching jacket and its title changed to Ice Maiden, hit the bookshelves, and sorrier still she wasn’t there the Sunday it made the lists, albeit at the bottom. I wondered if, with a first novel, I hadn’t been just a bit too lucky and wouldn’t I walk under a bus the very next time I crossed the road, because of it? Then I got all weepy inside and went to the churchyard to tell the one person who really mattered – at least as far as Ice Maiden was concerned. And Aunt Jane chuckled and said that with a name like Cassandra she’d always known I’d be famous one day, and how about writing a real hot number next, so I could be infamous?
‘And isn’t it about time you cashed those Premium Bonds,’ she said, ‘and bought yourself a little car?’
Aunt Jane and I could talk to each other, not with words, but with our minds, because truth known she and I both were kind of psychic.
‘I’ll have to cash them – when I get them,’ I told her. ‘The solicitor said that Premium Bonds aren’t transferable.’
‘Well then, that’s settled, Cassie girl. You deserve a car.’
I bought a second-hand Mini with Aunt Jane’s money: one careful owner, 20,000 miles on the clock. The bodywork was immaculate, as if the careful owner had spent more time polishing it than driving it. But it was the colour that finally clinched it. Bright red. Aunt Jane would have approved. Even so, Dad felt duty-bound to say, ‘You don’t get something that looks as good as that thing for two grand. There’s a catch.’
I agreed to have the AA send a man to look it over. The little red car had nothing at all wrong with it except that it needed new tyres. It was coming up to three years old and would never pass its MOT with tyres like that, he said.
Something maternal and protective welled up inside me. Mini wasn’t an it or a thing. Red Mini epitomized Aunt Jane’s faith in me. If I’d been inclined to give it a name, I’d have called it Jane.
‘New tyres it is then.’ I glared at Dad, who asked me if I knew what a set of new tyres cost.
‘Is it a deal, then?’ Defiantly I avoided Dad’s eyes.
The one careful owner took my hand, patted the car with a polishing movement and said it was and in that moment I knew that no matter how famous – or infamous – or how rich I became, I would never part with my first car. Not even if I kept it in one of Dad’s outhouses with a tarpaulin over it for ever!
As soon as Dad had got a lady from the village to look after the stall, I’d taken to writing full time. At first I’d wallowed in the luxury of a new word processor and being able to write when I wanted to and not in snatched half-hours at odd times of the day.
True, the novelty soon wore off and I had to discipline myself to work office hours, and even when the words didn’t come properly, I typed stoically on. Mind, there were bonus days when the words flowed. At such times I kidded myself I was a genius, even though the flow days were few and far between.
On the whole, though, I was content. With a contract in my pocket for book two – the make-or-break book, had I known it – my own car and just enough in the bank to keep me afloat until Ice Maiden came up with some royalties, I’d felt justified in giving up my daytime job and only helping Dad out at busy times.
So after being overtaken by the tractor, I pulled the car onto the grass at the side of the road and reached for the carefully written, beautifully illustrated directions. Winding down the window I breathed in deeply, then studied the map. Half a mile back I had passed a clump of oak trees; now I must look out for the crossroads, turn right, and after 200 yards on what was described as little more than a dirt road, I would be there.
‘It’s my sister’s place,’ said my editor, Jeannie, of whom I’d become extremely fond. ‘There’s a bit of a do on next weekend and I’m invited. Why don’t you tag along, too? You don’t live all that far away and it’s Welcome Hall at Deer’s Leap. Bring fancy dress, if you have one.’
I didn’t have fancy dress, and had said so; said too that not all that far on her map was all of fifty-two miles in reality and that Yorkshire was a very large county.
‘Oh, c’mon, Cassie. A break from words will do you good,’ she’d urged, then went on to remind me that the rather clingy, low-cut green sheath dress I’d worn to Harrier Books’ Christmas party would fit the bill nicely. ‘Stick a lily behind your ear and you’ve cracked it. Come as a lily of the field. Nobody’s going to mind when they see your cleavage.’
So I’d checked that my green sheath still fitted, then bought two silk arum lilies, one to be worn as suggested, the other stuck down my cleavage. Thus, hopefully, I would pass for a lily of the field that toiled not, neither did she spin and hoped I wouldn’t look too ordinary against Cleopatra, Elizabeth Tudor and Isadora Duncan.
I took a peek in the rear mirror. Considering my outdoor upbringing, I wasn’t all that bad to look at. My complexion had remained fair in spite of northern winters; my hair was genuine carrot, though Mum called it russet, and my eyes, by far my best asset, were very blue. I wasn’t one bit like Mum or Dad or Aunt Jane, and not for the first time did I wonder who had bestowed my looks. Some long-ago Viking, had it been, on the rampage in northern England? Or was I a changeling?
I laughed out loud. I was on holiday. I was going to a house called Deer’s Leap and Jeannie would be there when I arrived. To add to my blessings, book two was at chapter seven and with Aunt Jane in mind was becoming something of a hot number. I shouldn’t have a care in the world. I didn’t have a care in the world except that maybe my love life was not all it should be.
‘Why are you going to a weekend party?’ Piers had demanded when I’d told him on the phone.
‘Because I need a break.’
‘Then hadn’t it occurred to you that maybe I’d be glad to see you? Why can’t you come to London?’
‘You said you were frantically busy,’ I’d hedged.
‘Never too busy for you, darling. Come to my place, instead?’
Why didn’t he and I shack up down there, he’d said, throwing the two-can-live-as-cheaply-as-one cliché at me.
And iron shirts and do the cooking, I’d thought, and be back to writing odd half-hours again. Besides, Piers wasn’t my soulmate. I didn’t see us ever making a proper go of it. If my ego hadn’t balked at being manless our relationship could well have ended ages ago.
We’d made love, of course. Piers was good to look at; dark and lean and somehow always tanned. His designer stubble suited him, too, though I wished sometimes it wasn’t so hard on my face – afterwards.
And that was something else about him and me: the afterwards bit. It never felt quite right for me. When it was over I found myself not liking him as much as I ought to, and to love a man you’ve got to like him – afterwards. Even I knew that.
‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I’d said. ‘I can’t call it off now, and anyway my editor will be there. It isn’t just a weekend party; it’s business.’ Sometimes I tell lies to Piers. ‘More to the point, when are you coming north