One Summer at Deer’s Leap

So when the Labrador that came snuffling up had had its water bowl filled and Danny, bless the dear man, had placed gin and tonics on handy little tables beside us, I said, with the airman in mind, of course, ‘When do you expect everyone to start arriving – and do they all know the way here?’

Danny said of course they did and they all knew to arrive not one minute before seven or Beth would blow her top and how was my second novel coming along?

‘No book talk, Dan!’ Jeannie warned.

‘But we don’t often get a famous author at Deer’s Leap. Come to think of it, apart from a long-haired youth that Jeannie once dragged in, we haven’t had an author at all!’

‘I’m not famous,’ I said very earnestly. ‘I’m what’s known as a one-book author. I was lucky with the first one; Jeannie says it’s only if the next one is any good that people will start taking notice of me.’

‘People as in publishers,’ Jeannie supplied. ‘And they will! But no more book talk, either to Cassie or me. And isn’t the weather just glorious? In summer there’s nowhere to beat these parts.’

‘Jeannie says you’re thinking of moving on,’ I ventured, not knowing what else to say and still feeling a mite stupid over the kissing gate.

‘Sadly, yes.’

‘But it’s so beautiful, Beth. I don’t know how you can leave it.’

‘Come winter when we’ll have to go it’ll be just about bearable, but on days like this I feel lousy about it. Why don’t you buy it with the loot from your next book, Cassie? It’s fine if you don’t have kids – or can afford boarding school fees.’

‘I’ll need to have at least three books behind me before I even begin to think of buying a little place of my own – let alone a house this size,’ I laughed. ‘But I’m going to dislike whoever buys it when you’ve gone.’

‘Me, too,’ Beth sighed, draining her glass. ‘Now, have you unpacked, Cassie? No? Then as soon as you have you can help me with the vol-au-vents. They’re resting in the fridge, ready to go in the oven. As soon as they’re done, you can stick the fillings in for me. And did I hear you say you were doing the dips, Sis?’

‘You didn’t, but I think I’m about to. But let’s get Cassie settled in, then we’ll report for duty.’ She gave me a long, slow wink. ‘My sister’s quite human, really, but at times like this she gets a bit bossy.’

I followed Jeannie up the narrow staircase that led off the kitchen, feeling distinctly light-headed – and it was nothing to do with the gin either. It was all to do with the lovely summer day, a peculiar kissing gate, a guest who seemed to be keeping out of the way until seven, and an old house that held me enchanted.

‘I’ve got a feeling,’ I said as I unlocked my case, ‘that this is going to be one heck of a weekend!’

My green dress lay on the bed with the silk lilies; on the floor my flat, bronze kid sandals. Everything was ready. Food lay on the kitchen table, covered with tea towels, and the second-best glasses were polished and placed upside down on a table on the terrace. Danny had seen to the summer punch, then humped furniture and dotted ashtrays about the conservatory.

‘It’s great now that smoking is antisocial,’ Beth had said as we’d filled the vol-au-vents. ‘If anyone wants to light up there’s only one place they can do it!’

‘And the plants won’t mind.’ I’d dipped into my store of horticultural knowledge. ‘The nicotine in the smoke actually kills certain greenhouse pests.’

‘Really?’ Beth had looked impressed, I thought now as I lay in the bath, the water brackish but soft as silk.

I lathered the baby soap I always use into a froth, stroking it down my legs, my arms, cupping my shoulders, sliding my fingertips over my breasts. I was in the mood for something to happen tonight. I didn’t know what, but a little pulse beat behind my nose whenever I thought about it. Beth had invited eighteen guests and catered for thirty. Surely out of all that number there would be someone interesting.

But did I want that? Didn’t I just want to flirt a little and forget Piers for the time being?

Deer’s Leap got its name, Danny thought, because just above the paddock there was once a little brook and when deer and wolves roamed the area, the shallow curve was where the deer – and maybe predators – crossed. It made sense, I supposed. It was a pretty name and that was all that mattered.

I thought again about the awful person who would be living here next summer and wished it might be me, knowing it wouldn’t be, couldn’t be. So instead, I thought about my novel and whether the publishers would like it when it was finished, reminding myself that an author is only as good as her last novel, vowing to work extra hard when I got home to justify this weekend away.

I told myself that on the count of four I would get out of the bath, drape myself in a towel, then dry my hair – in that order – yet even as I stood at the open window, hairdryer poised, little wayward pulses of excitement at the prospect of the party still beat insistently inside me.

‘Grow up, Cassandra!’ I hissed. ‘Nothing is going to happen tonight – nothing out of the ordinary, anyway! For Pete’s sake, why should it?’

‘Because you want it to!’ came the ready answer.

Beth was testing the summer punch when I got downstairs, ten minutes before seven. She was dressed in layers of lace curtain and muslin and said that later she would put on her yashmak.

‘I’m the Dance of the Seven Veils,’ she grinned, explaining it was the best and coolest way to cover up her avoirdupois, which any day now she intended to do something about.

‘Sorry about my two lilies,’ I said, thinking I should have tried harder. ‘I’m a lily of the field, actually …’

‘You look all right to me!’ Danny, in the costume of a Roman soldier, handed me a glass of punch. ‘This get-up isn’t too revealing, is it? It was all I could borrow from the amateur dramatics that fitted.’

‘I think you look very manly.’

‘You’ve got quite decent legs, Danny.’ Jeannie, in a long robe borrowed from the same source and with a terracotta jug balanced on one bare shoulder, said she was a vestal virgin and the first one to make a snide remark was in for trouble!

Beth said she wasn’t at all sure about the punch, and helped herself to another glass just as the first car arrived, followed closely by four more in convoy – sort of as if they’d all been waiting at the crossroads until seven.

The table with the upturned glasses began to fill up with assorted bottles; there were shouts of laughter and snorts of derision at the various costumes. Someone who was old enough to know better said I could come into his field any time I liked!

Danny put on a Clayderman tape and said there’d be music for smooching later, when everybody had had one or two. Jeannie put down her jug and floated around with trays of food. I followed behind with plates and folded paper serviettes, looking for a pilot with short fair hair by the name of John or Jack. He wasn’t there.

‘He wasn’t there,’ I said later when everyone had gone and we were sitting on the terrace, saying what a great party it had been. ‘He didn’t show …’

‘Who didn’t show?’ Danny held a glass of red wine up to the light, saying it was a decent vintage and wondering who had brought it.

‘The man I gave a lift to,’ I said. ‘He thanked me, then disappeared through the kissing gate.’

‘When?’ Danny took a sip from his glass, and then another.

‘This morning, on my way here. He wanted a lift to Deer’s Leap.’

‘What was he like?’ Beth was looking at me kind of peculiar.

‘Tall. Fair. Young,’ I shrugged. ‘I remember wondering at the time if he could dance. His name was John, he said, though mostly people called him Jack.’

‘He actually spoke to you?’

‘Why shouldn’t he, Beth? He looked so authentic that I asked him where he got the uniform from.’ I slid my eyes from one to the other. They had put their glasses down and were still giving me peculiar looks. ‘Listen – what’s so strange about giving a man a lift?’

‘In a country lane?’ Jeannie blustered.

‘Now see here,’ I said, because something wasn’t quite right – the expressions on their faces for one thing. ‘I’m a big girl now. I can look after myself.’

‘No one is saying you can’t,’ Beth soothed.

‘Then are you trying to say I imagined it – that I was driving under the influence? For Pete’s sake, I’ve just told you I spoke to the man!’

‘Then you’re the first one who has. Most people round these parts don’t stop – quite the opposite. They get the hell out of it if they think they might have seen him.’

‘So he is real? Other people have seen him?’

‘We-e-ll, the hard-headed people around here wouldn’t admit it if they had; don’t want to be made a laughing stock. He’s a ghost, you see, Cassie.’

‘A ghost! You can’t be serious! He was as real as you or me! Have you seen him, Beth?’

‘Yes. I think I might have.’

There was an awful silence and I felt sorry for spoiling what had been a smashing party. But my mouth had gone dry and my heart was thumping because I knew Beth meant what she was saying.

‘I see. And rather than be thought a nutter, you said nothing?’

‘Yes – we-e-ll, I only told Danny. But the airman is dead. That much I do know, Cassie, and he should be left alone to rest in peace!’

‘But he obviously isn’t at peace! You think if you ignore him he’ll go away – is that it?’

‘Are you a psychic?’ Danny asked.

‘I think I might be, but I don’t dabble.’

‘Then in that case you’d attract him, wouldn’t you? All we know is that his name was John – or Jack – Hunter, and his plane crashed in 1944, about the time of the Normandy landings. The Parish Council put the names of the crew on the local war memorial. You probably passed it on your way here.’

‘Go on …’ I looked from him to Beth, and she nodded.

‘Seems he was a Lancaster bomber pilot. There was an airfield near here once – that much we did find out – but people are reluctant to talk about it.’

‘Then they shouldn’t be! Can’t they see he needs help?’

‘You said you didn’t dabble,’ Jeannie said softly. ‘Now isn’t a good time to start. Leave it, Cassie.’

‘I don’t believe any of this!’ My voice sounded strange. I felt strange. I really didn’t believe they could be so offhand about it.

‘Good. Then just keep telling yourself that and there’ll be nothing to worry about, will there? No one wants a fuss,’ Beth said gently. ‘Imagine the tabloids getting hold of it! There’d be no peace around here for anybody!’

‘It certainly seems there’s to be no peace for Jack Hunter. What did he do?’

‘Nobody seems to know. All I could find out was that he was close to a girl who once lived here.’

‘And he’s still looking for her,’ I persisted. ‘Then don’t you think it’s about time someone helped him to find her?’

‘Cassie love!’ Danny put an arm round my shoulders. ‘Have a nightcap, uh? How is he to find her when nobody knows her name, or anything about her?’

‘But that’s ridiculous! There must be someone in the village who remembers who lived in this house during the war!’

‘If there is, they haven’t said. And the war was a long time ago. The girl might be dead, even …’

‘And she’ll no longer be a girl if she isn’t,’ Beth said coaxingly.

‘OK. I’ll accept that. But someone should find out and tell Jack Hunter, because he doesn’t know he’s dead. It happens, sometimes, when someone dies suddenly or violently. He’s a lost soul, Beth!’

‘And you mean you’d try to get on his wavelength again,’ Jeannie said incredulously, ‘if you could winkle out the girl he’s still looking for?’

‘I don’t see why not.’ By now I’d got a hold on my feelings. ‘She’d be easy enough to trace without a lot of publicity. Have you ever thought to look at Deer’s Leap’s deeds? Whoever lived here in 1944 will show there.’

‘We’ve never seen the deeds,’ Danny said, offering me a glass of wine. ‘We don’t own this house, remember. And I know what it’s like for you writers, Cassie.’

‘What do you mean, we writers?’ I accepted the glass to show there wasn’t any ill feeling, then took a gulp from it. ‘Surely you don’t think I want to go sniffing around because I think it might make a good story? Book number three, is that it, Jeannie?’

‘Not at all!’ Now Jeannie was using her soothing voice. ‘What Danny means is that he thinks writers are a bit imaginative, sort of.’

‘We are, I suppose, though I wouldn’t go playing around with someone’s love life, even if it happened more than fifty years ago. But if you’re prepared to admit that I saw something – or someone – and that I’m not going out of my tiny mind, then I’ll take your advice and let it drop.’

‘I think you saw him,’ Beth said softly. ‘We all do. But like you said, Cassie, he’s a lost soul and there isn’t a lot anyone can do about it.’

‘You’re right. Mind, I wouldn’t want him exorcized,’ I said hastily.

‘He won’t be, I’m sure of it, if we don’t go stirring things.’

‘Right, then.’ I lifted my glass. ‘Bless you for having me, both of you. It’s been great. And if you have a wake before you leave, will you invite me, please, because I do so love this house?’

‘What a great idea,’ Beth laughed, her relief obvious. ‘We’ll have a goodbye party for Deer’s Leap whilst the Christmas decorations are still up – if we aren’t snowed up, that is!’

They’d believed I’d let it drop, I thought as I lay in bed that night, and I knew it was sneaky of me and deceitful because they were smashing people who had made me welcome and were prepared to ask me back at Christmas. But there was a young man looking for his girl and who needed my help. Besides which, I’d found him attractive; had wanted him to be at the party. OK – so he was in love with someone else, but I’d have given that girl at Deer’s Leap a run for her money if I’d been around fifty years ago! And I knew, too, that I would never let Piers make love to me again.

‘Sorry, Piers,’ I whispered, feeling almost relieved.

And then I said a silent sorry to Danny and Beth, because I knew too that I would try to find Jack Hunter again, but secretly, so no one would know – especially Beth and Danny. How I’d go about it I hadn’t a clue, but if the pilot really wanted to be in touch again, then I’d find a way.

Or he would!

Chapter Two

We left Deer’s Leap at six the following evening; three cars, in convoy, sort of. Me to pick up the A59, Beth to take Jeannie to Preston station in an ancient Beetle that was worth a bomb, did she but know it, and Danny in the estate car to pick up the children and their gear down in Acton Carey.

I drove with Danny in front going far too fast for the narrow lane and Beth driving much too close behind. I knew what they were up to. I was being hustled into the village so that if the airman appeared again, I wouldn’t be able to stop.

We got there without incident and Danny flagged us down. Then he and Beth and Jeannie gave me a hug and a kiss through my open window and said I really must visit over the Christmas break – if not before – and how lovely it had been to have me.

‘Let me have a look at the book, uh, as soon as you can.’ The holiday was over. Jeannie was wearing her editorial hat again. ‘When you get to chapter ten, run me off a copy; I’d like to see how it’s going.’

‘Of course. Want to make sure I don’t start mucking about with the storyline,’ I grinned; ‘introduce a good-looking ghost?’

‘Now, Cassie,’ she said quite sternly, ‘I thought we’d forgotten all that. You said you’d keep shtoom about it.’

‘And I will. Not a word to the parents when I get home. Promise.’

Mum and Dad didn’t believe in ghosts anyway; only in things they could touch and see and smell – and in Dad’s case, drink from a pint pot.

‘That’s all right, then,’ Beth beamed. ‘Mind how you go, Cassie. See you!’

Waving, I pulled out, yet before I’d gone a couple of miles I was planning how I could get to drive past that place again without Beth and Danny getting wind of it.

I concentrated on the winding, tree-lined road that dropped slowly down to Clitheroe, then rose sharply at the crossing of a river bridge. Not far away was Pendle Hill; somewhere not too distant was Downham. Witch country, without a doubt, with wild, lonely tracts of land where ghosts and witches could roam free; one ghost in particular, looking for a girl who once lived at Deer’s Leap. A young man who didn’t realize he was dead.

Jack Hunter. He had flown, I shouldn’t wonder, from the airfield that was probably called RAF Acton Carey. The coming of bombers to that little village must have caused quite a stir, yet now all traces of the base had gone. Even the track that ran round the perimeter of the airfield had grassed over and could only be picked out, Danny said, in an exceptionally dry summer when the grass on it browned and died. You could trace the outline of it then, he said, and wonder about those too-young men who trundled their huge bombers around it before takeoff.

Jack had been one of them, though I’d thought it politic not to ask Danny specifically about him in view of what had happened. He’d looked about my age. I frowned. I couldn’t imagine those nervous fingers grasping whatever it was they had to pull back to get that great, death-loaded plane into the air. Lancasters, they’d been. A Lancaster bomber and a Spitfire and a Hurricane flew over London during the Victory in Europe celebrations, fifty years on, yet Jack Hunter was still twenty-four.

A great choke of tears rose in my throat and in that moment I didn’t care about broken promises, nor letting well alone nor even about snoopers from the tabloids upsetting the peace of Acton Carey if news of a World War Two ghost leaked out. As far as I was concerned it was, and would remain, between me and Jack Hunter and the girl it seemed he was looking for.

How I would go about it, where I would begin, I didn’t know. But I liked doing research; could pretend I was setting my next novel in the countryside around Deer’s Leap; might even be able to poke around there if the house stood too long empty and for sale after Beth and Danny had left.

Yet they weren’t leaving for six months and I couldn’t wait that long.

I noticed I was passing the Golf Balls at Menwith and decided to think about Jack Hunter tomorrow and concentrate instead on the roundabout ahead at which I would turn left to bypass Harrogate, a pretty run through Guy Fawkes country.

I indicated left, then closed my mind to everything save getting home before dark. Home to Greenleas Market Garden, Rowbeck. Safe and sound and ordinary.

Rowbeck is very small. Everyone knows everyone else and their parentage. We’ve been lucky, with only one weekender in the place. She’s a teacher who intends living in the village when she retires, so she has been made welcome and the neighbourhood watch keeps an eye on her cottage when she isn’t there.

Rowbeck is on the Plain of York where the earth is rich and black and bounteous. Distantly we can see the tops – the hills of Herriot country – where winters can be vicious and shepherds work hard to make a living.

There’s a Broad into Rowbeck, which runs round the green in a circular sweep, then out again by the same road; a sort of circumnavigation that takes all of forty seconds, driving slowly.

The only other way out of the village is by a narrow lane at the top end of the green by the church. That’s where we live. Half a mile further on the lane becomes little more than a track, then peters out. Only the odd farm tractor passes. It’s a nice place to live if you like the back of beyond – which I do.

Dad was doing the evening rounds of the glasshouses when I got back and putting down a saucer of food for the hedgehog that lives in the garden and eats slugs and is worth its weight in gold. Mum said did I want a cup of tea and could I unpack tonight and put out my dirty washing? Mum always washes on Mondays and bakes on Fridays, no matter what. She runs the house like clockwork, with a place for everything and everything in its place. It’s because her star sign is Virgo and she can’t help it. She’s inclined to cuddly plumpness and hasn’t a wrinkle on her face.

Dad came in and remarked that the first of the early spray chrysanths should be ready for cutting in about a week, though we could do with a drop of rain. Only when Mum had poured and we were sitting at the kitchen table did he ask if I’d had a nice weekend.

‘Dad! That house is just beautiful! I’d kill for it!’

‘Out of the way is it, like this place?’

‘Greenleas is secluded; Deer’s Leap is isolated. They get snowed up in winter, but in summer it’s magic. You can look out into forever from the upstairs windows. I’ve never seen such a view. It’s in the Trough of Bowland.’

Dad said he’d never heard of it and I said I wasn’t surprised; that it was as if the people who lived there had conspired through the ages to keep it a secret and out of the reach of incomers. Foreigners, I meant, as in Yorkshire folk and people from further north. ‘You look over to Beacon Fell and Parlick Pike and Fair Oak Fell and it isn’t far from witch country.’

‘There’s no such thing as witches.’ Mum pushed a plate of parkin in my direction.

‘I know that, but it’s so beautiful; sort of breathtaking. Jeannie’s sister is leaving there at the end of the year. It would break my heart if it were me.’

‘Seems as if it’s made an impression on you. You haven’t gone over to the Lancastrians, have you?’

Dad looked a bit put out. The Wars of the Roses may be long over, but in Lancashire and Yorkshire they still keep the feud going, if only over The Cricket.

‘Of course I haven’t, but I’d love to go there again, just for another look. Beth – that’s Jeannie’s sister – has invited me for a goodbye party, sort of. Christmas in a house like that would be wonderful.’

‘So what’s this precious Deer’s Leap like, then?’ Mum sounded a bit piqued because I was making such a fuss over a house I mightn’t even see again and because, I suppose, I could even consider spending Christmas anywhere else but Greenleas.

‘We-e-ll, it’s stone, and tile-roofed. One end of it has a gable end that’s V-shaped and it has three rooms and an attic in it. The middle bit has a huge sitting room, with a terrace outside, and two bedrooms. Then there’s an end bit with a big kitchen and dairy and pantry, and a narrow little staircase off it to three rooms above. I suppose the workers slept up there when it was a farm and they wouldn’t have been allowed to use the main staircase. The windows are stone-mullioned, and all shapes and sizes. From the front it looks as if it’s still in the sixteenth century, though it’s been tarted up at the back. It’s a smaller version of Roughlee Hall, Danny says.’

‘Never heard of that place, either,’ Dad shrugged.

‘Of course you have! Surely you’ve heard of the Pendle Witches. Alice Nutter lived at Roughlee. She was a gentle-woman and how she got mixed up in witchcraft, nobody seems to know. She was hanged on Lancaster Moor in 1612.’

‘And you believe such nonsense?’ Mum clucked. ‘All that stuff is a fairy tale, like Robin Hood.’

‘They don’t seem to think so around those parts.’

‘If they believe that, they’ll believe anything!’ Mum had the last word on witches. ‘And I forgot – Piers rang.’

‘What about?’

‘He didn’t say and I didn’t ask!’

‘Well, he’ll ring again, if it’s important.’

‘Aren’t you going to call him back?’

‘Don’t think so.’ As from this weekend, I’d stopped jumping when Piers snapped his fingers.

Mum put mugs and plates on a tray, wearing her button mouth. She placed great hopes on Piers. He was Yorkshire-born, which was a mark in his favour, and even if he had defected to parts south of the River Trent and was earning a living amongst Londoners, she considered it high time we were married.