One Summer at Deer’s Leap

‘If it’s so important, why don’t we go down to the Rose, tonight? They don’t get a lot in there, especially since drink-drive came in. I could introduce you to Bill Jarvis, if he’s in. Bill knows most people’s business around here, past and present. Maybe he could tell you.’

‘It isn’t that important,’ I hedged. ‘It’s just that I keep wondering what it was like here when it was a working farm and before somebody tarted up the buildings at the back, and when there were animals around the place, and manure heaps.’

‘Then we’ll go to the village, like I said. The beer is good there. The further north you get from London, people say, the better the ale. I fancy a couple of pints!’

‘So who’s going to drive?’

‘You, Cassie. It’s your car.’

‘And drink Coke and orange juice all night?’

‘OK! There are loads of bikes in the stable. What say we pick out a couple, put some air in the tyres, and go supping in style?’

‘Can you get done for being drunk in charge of a bike?’ I giggled.

‘I don’t know. It depends how well you can ride one, I suppose.’

We decided to have an early tea. Fresh brown eggs, boiled, and crusty bread, then a huge dollop of the home-baked parkin Mum had slipped into the boot just as I was leaving. After which, Jeannie said she’d better have a dummy run, just to make sure she hadn’t forgotten how to ride.

It was all so lovely and free and easy. We were like a couple of kids let early out of school, and in a way I was a bit sad about it because next August, when I was writing book three and on the way to becoming a real, time-served novelist, I would look back to how it had been that summer at Deer’s Leap, and wonder who had bought the house and if they loved it as much as I did. And I knew they wouldn’t, couldn’t.

We wore leggings, the better to ride in, and shirts. Then we stuffed cardies in the saddlebags in case it was cold riding home. We pushed the bikes along the dirt road, neither of us being confident enough to brave the potholes.

When we got to the crossroads I said, ‘If we meet anything on the road, I’ll ride ahead, OK?’

‘If we meet anything on this narrow lane, I shall get off and stand on the verge! But there’s hardly any traffic hereabouts. What are you expecting – a furniture van?’

I almost said, ‘No – a flock of sheep,’ but I didn’t and we managed, after a couple of false starts and a few wobbles, to get going.

‘Don’t look down at your front wheel, Jeannie! Look at the road ahead. Y’know, I could get to like this. They say you never forget how to ride a bike.’

Jeannie soon got the hang of it and went ahead just at the spot I’d first seen the airman. I slowed and had a good look around, then told myself not to be greedy; that one sighting a day was all I could hope for.

‘Hey! Wait for me, show-off!’ I called, then pedalled like mad to catch her up.

The Red Rose wasn’t too crowded and we got a table beside an open window. Jeannie said she would get the first round and asked me what I was drinking.

‘Bitter, please. A half.’

She returned with two pint glasses, then asked me how I liked the Rose.

‘It’s ages old, isn’t it?’ The ceiling was very low, and beamed; the lounge end of the one long room had better seats in it than the other end, where there was a dartboard but not a slot machine in sight.

‘I could get to like this place,’ I said, lifting my glass. ‘Cheers!’

‘We’re in luck.’ Jeannie took a long drink from her glass. ‘Bill Jarvis is in the far corner. Would you like to meet him?’

‘You know I would! Are you going to ask him to join us?’

‘I’ll take him a pint and tell him it’s from a young lady who would like to talk to him.

‘He’s scoring for the darts, but he’ll be over in about five minutes,’ she said when she came back alone. ‘He said thanks for the beer, by the way.’

‘This is a lovely old pub. I’m glad they haven’t modernized it – made it into a gin palace.’

‘There’s no fear of that happening.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling, which was pale khaki. ‘The last time it got a lick of paint was for the Coronation. When it was first built, in the early fourteen hundreds, it was the churchwarden’s house, and I don’t think it’s changed a lot since – apart from flush toilets outside.’

‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘that at the time of the Wars of the Roses, a churchwarden was quite an important man, in the village.’

‘Mm. He held one of the three keys to the parish chest – y’know, social security, medieval style. The other two keyholders would be the priest and the local squire. The parish chest is still in the church, but there’s nothing in it. You must go and see it before you go back.’

She was already halfway down her glass. My dad, I thought, would approve of Jeannie McFadden.

‘There’s a lot of things I must see and do,’ I said obliquely, ‘before I go back. But I think your friend is coming over …’

An elderly man made his way to our table, puffing out clouds of tobacco smoke that made me glad of the open window.

‘Now then, lass,’ he said to Jeannie, ignoring me completely, ‘what was it you wanted to know?’

‘It’s my friend, actually, Bill. She’s taken a liking to Deer’s Leap and wants to know all about it. She’s a writer,’ she added.

‘Then I’m saying nowt, or it’ll all be in a book!’

‘I write fiction, Mr Jarvis,’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘What I’m interested in is the history of the house. I’m not prying. I’m Cassie, by the way. What are you drinking?’

‘Nowt at the moment, though I wouldn’t say no to a pint of bitter.’ Reluctantly he shook my hand.

‘I want to know,’ I said, when he was settled at the table, ‘who lived at Deer’s Leap in the war. Jeannie said the Air Force just turfed them out without a by-your-leave. I’d have hated that if it had been my house.’

‘Ar, but my generation had to put up with that war and we hated it, an’ all. Didn’t stop the high-ups from London taking whatever they wanted, for all that. Smiths had no choice but to sell up and get out.’

‘And where did they go?’

‘Can’t rightly say, lass. Got my calling-up papers, so what became of ’em, I never knew.’

‘Did they have a family, Mr Jarvis?’

‘Not as you’d call a family – nobbut one bairn, three or four years younger than me. Susan, if I remember rightly.’

Susan Smith, I brooded, then all at once I remembered the initials S. S. and a tiny heart on the strap of the airman’s gas mask. The initials stood for Susan Smith. She, likely, had put them there!

‘How old was Susan when she had to leave Deer’s Leap?’ I managed to ask, a kind of triumph singing inside me.

‘Now then – I’d just been called up, as I remember. Was twenty-two. Usually they took you afore that, but they’d let a young man finish his training, sort of. I was ’prenticed to a cabinet-maker, so as soon as I’d done my time they called me into the Engineers and taught me about electrics! Any road, that would make the Smith lass about eighteen or nineteen. I’m seventy-six, so she would be seventy-two or -three now – if her’s still alive. Fair, she was, and bonny, but quiet, as I remember.’

‘It was rotten about their land – especially as the government expected farmers to work all hours to produce food,’ Jeannie prompted.

‘Ar, but t’farm were no use to Smiths any more. Them fellers from the Air Ministry took all their fields in the end. Nobbut the paddock left them. 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, seeing Jeannie on to the train. Listen, Piers, what the heck is this? Are you checking up on me?’

‘No, darling. Sorry if I came over a bit snotty. But what was I to think when you didn’t even give me your phone number in the first place?’

‘You got it off Mum, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. After I’d asked for it. Why didn’t you ring me, Cassandra?’ He still sounded peeved.

‘Because!’ I said flatly and finally. ‘I’m very well, since you ask, and yes, we had a lovely, lazy weekend. Where are you?’

‘At the flat. I’ve just got up.’

‘We-e-ll, don’t ring any more in the expensive time. Leave it for after six, why don’t you?’

I’d be better able to cope with his bossiness then. An upset this early in the day could put me off my stroke – especially when he was making a meal of it, like now. ‘You’ve got to understand this book is important, Piers,’ I rushed on. ‘I came here to write – what you call my scribbling – and I do wish you would take me seriously. Just sometimes,’ I finished breathlessly.

‘But, my love, I do take you seriously.’ His tone was changing from accusing to placating. ‘It’s just that you seem to be wrapped up in it to the exclusion of all else. You and me, especially …’

‘Piers! Please not now; not this early in the day! And of course I’m wrapped up in it. It’s my work, you must accept that. This novel has got to be good and then Harrier Books might begin to take me seriously.’

‘You’re set on it, aren’t you, Cassandra? You really believe you can make a living from it when most writers need a daytime job too. Don’t you think you’ve been living off your parents long enough? Isn’t it about time you took a serious look at the way your life is going?’

‘I see. I’d be better shacking up with you, providing all the home comforts, you mean?’

‘Now you’re getting angry, sweetheart.’

‘Don’t interrupt!’ I was angry! Piers would have to learn you can only push a redhead so far! ‘I have never lived off Mum and Dad. I pulled my weight at home and only wrote when I could find the time. And yes, I do hope to make a living from writing! Ice Maiden is doing well; they’re reprinting it, as a matter of fact! Oh, don’t worry! I won’t be going into tax exile just yet, but I’m holding my own! And even if I wasn’t, I shouldn’t have to justify myself to you!’

I took a deep breath. I expected an explosion or a slamming-down of the phone, but all I got was a silence. Piers is good at pregnant pauses; can stretch five seconds into five minutes.

‘Cassie love, don’t get upset. I was anxious, hadn’t heard from you. For all I knew you could be – well …’

‘Having a passionate affair with a local yokel? Well, I’m flaming not!’

‘You seem determined to have a row. What’s the matter then – stuck for words?’

‘No, I’m not. The words are coming well, but thanks a heap, Piers, for helping me to start the day with an upset! I’m not doing a prima donna, but you narking on the phone I can do without! Ring after six, will you?’

I had meant to end the conversation firmly and with dignity, but I slammed the phone down angrily and now he’d know he’d got me rattled! I could imagine his smirk. Drat the man!

For the next two days I allowed nothing and no one to come between me and my work. Luckily Piers didn’t phone again. I existed on sandwiches and coffee, rewarding myself for my labours with a large sherry after I had switched off.

On Wednesday, at six o’clock exactly, I had safely stored two chapters on a floppy disk. I felt drained, but triumphant. Deer’s Leap was good to me, wrapping me round to keep out all interruptions.

I rotated my head, hearing little crackling sounds as I did so, deciding I needed to loosen up. My heroine had got herself into a bit of a mess, but she could stew in it until morning, I thought, well satisfied with the cliffhanger at the end of chapter twelve.

I was wondering whether to eat at the Rose or whether to boil the last couple of eggs, when Mum phoned.

‘Hullo, there! You sound a long way away!’

‘I am, Mum! I’ve just finished work, actually. I’ve got two chapters done since I came here! I’m having a sherry, then I’ll make myself some supper. How’s everything?’

‘We’re fine, only I’m afraid we won’t be able to make it up there this week. I’d forgotten your dad is judging at two flower shows. We’ll probably make it the week following. Is that all right with you, love?’

‘Come whenever you want to. I’d really like you to see this place. When I win the Lottery, I shall buy it!’

‘Ha! More to the point, are you getting enough to eat?’

‘I am, though I work while the mood is on me, and eat when I’m hungry. Jeannie is coming up again on Friday.’

‘Have you spoken to Piers, yet? I don’t suppose he’ll be coming to see you?’

‘Not unless you give him my address, Mum! I’m here to work. I don’t want any interruptions – leastways, not from him.’

‘Aah,’ she sighed, and I knew I had said the right thing.

‘I’m going to Clitheroe tomorrow. There’s something I want to look up at the library.’

‘You’re sure you’re all right, Cassie?’

‘I’m fine. We’ve eaten all the parkin, by the way. Bring me another piece when you come up, there’s a love? Jeannie really liked it.’

I could feel Mum’s glow of pleasure in my ear. Tomorrow, I’d take bets on her making a double mixing, then putting my piece in a tin to moisten. Parkin is best kept a few days before eating.

‘Of course I will! Anything else you want?’

‘No thanks, I’m fine, and working well. I miss you both. Take care of yourselves, won’t you?’

‘We will, lovey. And don’t go answering the door after dark!’

‘I won’t. And I’ve got Hector to look after me. He doesn’t like strangers very much!’

‘Well, then …’

‘I’ll phone you at the weekend, Mum. We’ll have a good long chat, then. Love you!’

I smiled at the receiver as I put it down, deciding to take the car down to Acton Carey, and drink Coke instead of bitter, even though it was unlikely I would meet any traffic on the way back.

The way back. Would I meet anyone, though? I hadn’t seen the airman since Saturday morning at the kissing gate, though I hadn’t gone out of my way to find him. I wondered if he was once billeted at Deer’s Leap after the Smiths left. At least I now knew the names of those long-ago people.

Maybe, though, Jack Hunter had been quartered somewhere else. He’d said he wanted to get to Deer’s Leap, but could he have been going there to meet Susan Smith? Had they been an item – or courting, walking-out as it would have been called in those days?

I put eggs to boil, then sliced bread. Lotus walked daintily into the kitchen, indicating, nose in air, that she would accept a saucer of milk. Tommy tried to share it and was warned off. I put a saucer down for him, then began to time the eggs as they came to the bubble.

That was when the phone began to ring. It was Piers, dammit! I moved the pan from the heat.

‘Hullo, darling. In a better mood, are we?’

‘I’m fine. Put in a good day’s work. I’m just about to eat.’ This time I wouldn’t let him get me rattled! ‘How was your day, Piers?’

‘Oh, routine, as always.’

‘Hm.’ He never explained what went on in that lab he worked in. I suppose that he supposed I wouldn’t understand it anyway. ‘I’m going out tonight.’

‘Oooh! Got a heavy date?’

‘Yes, and I’m looking forward to it. He’s called Bill Jarvis. I’m meeting him at the pub.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘In the village!’ Nice try, Piers!

‘And he’ll wine you and dine you, I suppose, then have his wicked way!’ It was meant to sound like a joke, but I knew he was purring with his claws out.

‘In the back of a Mini?’ I laughed. ‘I’m doing a spot of research, actually. I’m interested in World War Two. For a small village, it must once have been fairly jumping hereabouts. Lately, people seem to have got interested in that period. I might just use it for the next book. And for your information, I’ll be buying the ale! Bill is a pensioner, Piers. He’s seventy-six, and like I said, it’s research.’

‘Of course. As a matter of fact I thought it would be something like that, Cassandra.’

‘Oh, you did! Think I’m only capable of pulling a senior citizen, then?’

‘The thought never entered my mind! Have you been drinking? You sound – peculiar.’

‘Of course I haven’t!’ I smirked at the empty sherry glass on the drainer. ‘I just feel good, that’s all.’

‘Then it’s a welcome change! Usually, you snap my head off. Getting that book accepted has changed you, Cassie.’

‘Has it?’ I had a vision of him telling it to the long-suffering man in the mirror over the telephone. Piers Yardley was wasted on research! ‘Anyway, I’m going to have my tea now. Don’t ring again because I’ll be either in the bath or out! Take care of yourself, Piers. I’ll phone you at the weekend. Promise!’

‘Do I only merit off-peak, then?’

‘Bye, love!’ I ignored the snide remark.

Round two to Cassie Johns!

I parked the Mini at the back of the Red Rose, and, once inside, was glad to see Bill sitting alone, an empty glass in front of him.