One Summer at Deer’s Leap
‘Somehow I don’t think you are, Cassie. Your vibes and his must match, I suppose, or why has Beth seen him, and not Danny? She told me about it years ago and swore me to secrecy in case people thought she was bonkers. She was scared witless, though. Like she said, if she sees him again and she’s in the car, she’ll put her foot down and get the hell out of it.’
‘Where do you think I should start? Where did the Smiths go when they had to leave Deer’s Leap? If we knew that we’d be some way to finding Susan.’
‘If she wants to be found. And, Cassie – you’re not going to let this business interfere with your writing, are you?’
‘Of course I’m not. Bill’s parents might have known where Susan Smith went to, but I don’t think they’re around, somehow.’
‘If they were, lovey, I doubt they’d be able to remember that far back.’
‘Don’t be too sure! Aunt Jane was born in 1915, but she remembered people going mad when World War One ended. She always called it the Great War.’
‘All right then. There just might be someone down in the village who remembers the Smiths – even knows where they went. But how do you go about finding them? Do you knock on every door in Acton Carey, or get the vicar to read it out from the pulpit next Sunday? You’ll get nothing out of that lot, Cassie. I reckon they know about the airman, too. Bill knows you’re a writer. They’d clam up on you.’
‘So that rules out the village. Y’know, Bill figured Susan Smith is about seventy-two or -three, and that isn’t old these days. Aunt Jane was eighty when she died, and bright as a button. I’ve been telling myself that at the worst, Susan Smith might not be alive, but I think she is. All I can hope is that she won’t slam her door in my face if I get lucky and find her.’
‘You really want to go on with this, don’t you, Cassie?’
‘Yes. I’m his only hope.’
‘Even though he thinks Susan is still living at Deer’s Leap?’
‘Even so. But just say I did find her – would she be willing to go along with it?’
‘I don’t know. But take it that she would – what do you both do? Drive up and down the lane until he’s in need of a lift? Or do you camp outside Deer’s Leap and wait for the kissing gate to start creaking? How long would it take, Cassie?’
‘That’s anybody’s guess. But it didn’t take me long, did it? He found me the first time I came here. But there’s something neither of us has touched on. OK – so we’re lucky – we find him first try! How is he going to recognize her? She’ll have changed, over the years. She’ll be old enough to be his grandmother now, and he’s looking for a girl of eighteen or nineteen!’
‘It won’t be easy, but if he accepts her it might be all he needs to convince him it was all a long time ago; that he’s dead, I mean. But what if Susan doesn’t believe in ghosts? What if she does, and is too scared to give it a try? What if she’s happily married? She’ll have children, by now, and grandchildren. Do you think she’ll want a past love raked up?’
‘Yes, I do, because I believe they were desperately in love. No matter how happy she is now, she won’t have forgotten her first love. I wouldn’t have forgotten him if it were me. He really was something, Jeannie.’
‘Oh, Cassie! Can’t we forget your airman, just for a little while?’
I grinned and said of course we could! Any time at all! And if she didn’t mind, I wasn’t in love with him, though he intrigued me – a lot!
In love with someone who, if he’d lived, would have been old enough to be my grandfather? I wasn’t that stupid!
Or was I? Because Jack Hunter would never be old. He was a young man my own age, and that was the way he would stay. And he’d go on thumbing a lift to Deer’s Leap for ever if someone didn’t help him.
‘Look – the sun is trying to get through. There are all sizes of wellies in the utility room. Beth never gets rid of any that are half decent. There’s sure to be some that’ll fit,’ Jeannie smiled. ‘Let’s go and sniff in some nice cool air.’
It was fresh again after the rain and the storm. The sun was shining the raindrops that still clung to everything, and the deep pools of water.
‘Let’s go puddle-jumping,’ I laughed, determined to say no more about the matter that shouldn’t be talked about. And anyway, we wouldn’t see the airman. Jeannie only half believed in him, so her vibes would be very negative. He wouldn’t appear.
‘Shall we take Hector?’
‘No! He’ll get wet through, then shake himself all over us!’
We took him for all that, and sloshed through sodden grass all the way to the end of the paddock, where the land rose. Then we walked on to the top of the adjoining field Jeannie said was called Wolfen Meadow.
‘Over there,’ she pointed. ‘You can’t really miss it, can you?’
Below, to our left lay a huge, flat area. It had no trees nor hedges and was fenced all round, as far as we could see, with wooden railings. And just to confirm our findings, a long, narrowing jut of land pointed in the direction of Deer’s Leap.
‘It’s the same shape as the diagram in the bomber station book. We should have brought it with us,’ I said. ‘Then we could imagine exactly where everything used to be.’
‘Do we want to?’ Jeannie said soberly. ‘I mean, if there really is such a thing as vibrations, then over there must be thick with them.’ She nodded in the direction of where RAF Acton Carey had once been, her face strangely sad.
‘Well, I do believe in vibes, and there would be all kinds if we cared to take them in. Relief, at getting back from a raid, for one. And what if a pilot was trying to make an emergency landing? The air would be white with sheer terror, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Do you think that’s how Susan’s pilot was killed, Cassie?’
‘I don’t know. According to the book, it was during the daylight raid on a flying bomb launching site. That was all it said.’
‘Poor Susan,’ she whispered. ‘I wonder how it was for her?’
‘I think,’ I said as I gazed in a kind of trance over that flat piece of land, ‘that she wouldn’t even be told. They weren’t married, so she wouldn’t be his next of kin. The telegram would go to his parents. I read, somewhere, that aircrews used to leave letters behind to be sent to people. Maybe Jack left one addressed to Susan Smith at Deer’s Leap. I’m almost certain the family was still there on 8 June.’
‘Hm. I must have a look at it tonight – take it to bed with me – if you don’t want to read it, that is …’
‘No. Not tonight. You’ll find it interesting, Jeannie.’
‘I think I will.’ She turned abruptly and began to walk towards the stone wall of the paddock. ‘And I’ve had enough of ghosts for one day, if you don’t mind. Let’s get the bikes out and go to the Rose. We could eat there, if you’d like.’
She laughed out loud, almost as if she were trying to shake off the spell of the past, then set off at a run, calling to Hector, her short-cut hair bobbing with every stride.
‘A good idea,’ I panted, when we reached the paddock wall. ‘I want to phone Mum, anyway.’
‘Good, then that’s settled. Let’s have a quick shower and get changed? All of a sudden, I’m hungry!’
I thought as we walked back through the wet grass that maybe Jeannie wasn’t as blasé about vibes and ghosts as she tried to make out. She was interested in the bomber station book and her eyes had been far away as she looked down to where RAF Acton Carey had once stood. I wouldn’t mind betting, I thought as I kicked off my wellies, that if she gave it a bit of effort she’d be quite good at sending out vibes. Maybe I shouldn’t be too sure that Jack Hunter wouldn’t appear if she were with me.
‘Would you be afraid,’ I said, ‘if you were to see the airman? On your own, I mean …?’
‘N-no, I don’t think I would; not after what you’ve told me, Cassie. But I’d be very, very sad, for all that. But let’s get ourselves off! I’m famished!’
The Red Rose was quiet when we walked in at seven o’clock. The darts team, the landlord told us, had an away fixture at Waddington and Bill Jarvis had gone on the mini-bus with them.
‘No grist to the mill tonight,’ I said as we looked at the menu, disappointed that Bill wasn’t there. ‘Look – would you order for me? Scampi and salad; no chips. And get a couple of drinks in, whilst I phone Mum?’ I laid a ten-pound note on the table. ‘Won’t be long.’
‘Cassie?’ Mum answered quickly, as if she had been waiting for my call. ‘I was wanting you to phone, love. Your dad’s just got back from the flower show and he says why don’t we pop up to see you tomorrow?’
‘Of course you can, but I thought he didn’t like the roads at weekends.’
‘Well, he’s changed his mind. If we set out early we should be with you about ten-ish. Is that all right, or shall we leave it till Wednesday?’
‘No! Come tomorrow!’ All at once I wanted to see them both.
‘No problem. I’ve got a chicken in the fridge. I’ll cook it tonight and bring it with me. Shall I bring saladings?’
‘Please, Mum. Lots. I don’t suppose there’d be any parkin …’
‘As a matter of fact there is, and I’ll bring an apple pie.’
‘You’re an angel!’
‘Sounds as if you haven’t been getting enough to eat, our Cassie.’
‘I have, but your cooking tastes so much better! Jeannie’s here. She’ll be pleased to meet you both.’
‘We-e-ll, if you’re sure it’s all right – somebody else’s house, I mean.’
‘Mum! Just come!’
‘In that case, no sense wasting money on the phone. I’ll give you all the news when we arrive. Dad will work out a route.’
‘If you look on the pinboard above my desk, you’ll find one there – very detailed. And warn Dad the dog doesn’t take kindly to strange men. A few cream biscuits in his pocket should do the trick – OK?’
Sunday was going to be a bright, warm day; I knew it the minute I pulled back the curtains. The grass still looked damp, but the flowers stood straight and looked more colourful against the moist black earth.
I thought with a squiggle of delight about ten o’clock and how much I was looking forward to seeing my parents.
‘Pity we didn’t get the grass cut yesterday,’ said Jeannie, who had got up early in their honour. ‘And it’s still too wet to do today,’ she said with relief.
‘I’ll do it later in the week. Want some toast?’
‘No thanks. Just coffee. What are they like, your folks: what are they called?’
‘Lydia and Geoffrey. They’re ordinary and direct. Dad has strong opinions about things – Yorkshire-stubborn, I suppose. And Mum fusses and is cuddly. I adore them. Oh, and they’d appreciate being called Mr and Mrs. They don’t go a lot on first names until they know people better. A bit old-fashioned, that way.’
‘If your Mum brings some parkin, I’ll call her Duchess!’ Jeannie grinned. ‘Now let’s tidy the place up a bit – put out the welcome mat!’
‘As long as the kettle is on the boil, Mum won’t mind.’ I felt light-headed and happy and eager to show Mum the house. ‘But not one word about the airman, if you don’t mind. They don’t believe in ghosts.’
‘Then who did you get your kinkiness from, Cas?’
‘Obliquely, I suppose, from Aunt Jane. We were always on the same wavelength. We still have little chats, sort of. Now, will you be a love and get rid of those dead flowers, and pick some fresh ones?’
I was acting as if Deer’s Leap were my own house, which it was, really, until the end of the month. And the end of the month was a long way away!
Chapter Seven
Mum and Dad arrived ten minutes early, which meant I hadn’t opened the white gate, nor shoved Hector in the outhouse.
‘They’re here!’ Jeannie called, but it was too late to stop the angry dog rushing out and snarling and snapping from the other side of the gate.
‘Behave yourself, dog!’ I yelled. ‘Just a minute – I’ll lock him up!’
‘No! Leave him be,’ Dad said quietly. ‘He’s got to learn a few manners! Open the gate, lass.’
‘Be careful, Dad …’ I was reluctant to let go of Hector’s collar.
‘I’ve never yet met the dog that got the better of me,’ he said, standing feet apart, arms folded. ‘Now then, my lad. Stop your noise!’
Man and dog glared at each other. Neither gave way. Dad dipped into his pocket and took out a cream biscuit, tossing it from hand to hand so Hector got the scent of it. Then he dropped it at his feet, standing very still.
Hector’s nose twitched; the barking stopped. Then he sidled on his belly to snatch the biscuit, retreating behind me to crunch it. Dad went down on his haunches, then offered his hand. Hector gazed back with suspicion, then with longing at the second biscuit on Dad’s palm.
‘Come on then, lad. Either you want it, or you don’t,’ he said reasonably.
Hector wanted it. Avoiding Dad’s eyes, he took it warily, then slunk away round the side of the house to reappear later, I shouldn’t wonder, in a more friendly frame of mind. And hopefully to be given another biscuit.
‘Mum! Dad!’ I hugged them both. ‘Sorry about the reception committee – and this is Jeannie, my editor from Harriers. My mother and father, Jeannie …’
‘Lovely of you to come,’ Jeannie beamed. ‘You’ve brought good weather with you. Did you enjoy the drive?’
‘Aye. Once we got off the motorway, it was real bonny,’ Dad said. ‘Not a great deal different to Yorkshire.’
‘Only the other side of the Pennines,’ I said. ‘But wait till you see the view from the terrace. I’ve got the kettle on. Can we give you a hand with the things?’
When the chicken and vegetables my parents had brought were stowed away, I said, ‘You didn’t forget the parkin?’
‘Of course not. I brought one for Jeannie, too, to take back to London.’
‘Mrs Johns! You are an angel!’ Jeannie opened the tin, sniffing rapturously. ‘Can I have just a little piece now?’
‘No, you can’t!’ Mum said. ‘It’ll spoil your dinner!’
We all laughed. Dad and Hector were friends; Mum had charmed Jeannie. The sun shone benignly. It would be a perfect day.
When the vegetables were cooking, the dining-room table laid and a bottle of white wine placed on the dairy floor to chill, I left Dad and Jeannie together, and showed Mum the house.
‘I noticed when we got here,’ she said, ‘that this place is over four hundred years old. What tales it could tell!’
‘Mm. Even going back to the war, there’s a story. I could write a series of books with Deer’s Leap as the focal point, sort of, starting when it was built until the present day. It was here when the Pendle Witches were tried and hanged, and I don’t know whose side it would be on in the Civil War; probably they’d be King’s men. I could get half a dozen books out of it if I set my mind to it.’
We walked round, up and down the many steps, Mum marvelling at the solidity of the house and its cosiness.
Then: ‘Cassie?’ She hesitated in a bedroom doorway. ‘Now you know I’m not one to pry, but has anything – well – happened since you came here?’
‘N-no. What makes you think it has?’
‘I can’t put a finger on it. It’s just that you seem different, somehow.’
‘We-e-11, Jeannie did say she liked the first ten chapters of the book and that I’m writing with more authority, though what she means I don’t quite know.’
‘Not the writing,’ Mum said, very positively. ‘It’s this place. There are no ghosts here but not far away is witch country, you said. Did a witch ever live here?’
‘I’m almost certain not or there’d be some record of it. Anyway, why are you worrying? You don’t believe in witches!’ I teased, because for the life of me I couldn’t tell her about the airman.
‘There’s something different about you, Cassie, for all that,’ she persisted.
‘Then blame it on Deer’s Leap. I’ve fallen in love with the old house! But we’d better be getting downstairs or Dad is going to think we’ve fallen into a priest’s hole!’
‘Oooh! There isn’t a priest hole too?’ Suddenly Mum forgot witches.
‘Not that I know of, but the house is the right age, and it’s very higgledy-piggledy, isn’t it? I’ll bet you anything you like that if someone tried hard enough, and went round measuring and knocking on walls, they’d find one. Around these parts is priest-hole country. A lot of northern people refused to acknowledge the Church of England and they mostly got away with it because this was such wild country. Catholic priests came and went almost as they wished.’
‘It still is wild country,’ Mum sighed as we walked through the kitchen. ‘I can understand why it’s got you bewitched. I wouldn’t mind living here myself.’
‘If you did, we’d be able to look for priest holes to our hearts’ content, wouldn’t we?’
We broke into giggles, which made Dad ask us what was so funny and we said, ‘Priest holes!’ at one and the same time, then refused to say another word on the matter.
After our lovely Sunday, and when I had taken Jeannie to the station next day, the house seemed empty and quiet. I went to sit in the kitchen armchair and Tommy jumped on my lap, purring loudly to be stroked; Hector settled himself at my feet and fell into a snuffling sleep.
Yet I couldn’t feel lonely; Deer’s Leap was a safe, snug house. And I wasn’t entirely alone; not if you counted the airman who was never very far away – of that I was sure.
Yet Mum was right. This house had no ghosts, which made me certain that Jack Hunter could not have met Susan’s parents before he was killed. I’d have felt his presence here if he had. Were they ever lovers, even though in those days girls were expected to keep their virginity for their wedding night? I wished fiercely that they had been.
I tutted impatiently. This place had got me hog tied, and the ghost of an airman and an airfield that had long ago disappeared were a part of it. And could a witch have lived at Deer’s Leap? Had Mary Doe practised the old religion and never been found out? Did she escape the hangman on Lancaster Common?
All at once I knew I had to read everything I could find about the Pendle Witches and about these wide, wild acres of Lancashire too. There were books in my head and this house had put them there; books spanning the centuries and ending with two star-crossed lovers. I had two weeks left in which to do it, yet Firedance must be finished on time, as my contract with Harrier Books demanded. Somehow I had to close my mind to all else but that; only then could I, as Deer’s Leap demanded of me, write its story.
And by then it would belong to someone else. It would be too late.
I wrote steadily for two days, not needing to leave the house because I was able to exist on chicken and salad, thick slices of sticky parkin and left-over apple pie.
The words flowed. By Wednesday evening I had completed a chapter and roughed out another. I rotated my head. I had been sitting far too long. There was a tenseness in my neck and shoulders and my eyes felt gritty. The chicken was all gone; only the carcass left for soup, and I’d had my fill of saladings.
A beef sandwich and a glass of bitter beckoned from the direction of the Red Rose. I switched on the kettle to boil and took a bright red mug from the dresser, all the time looking at the world outside.
The sun was still high; it wasn’t six o’clock yet, and it wouldn’t be dark until almost ten. I could cycle to Acton Carey and if I left early enough, could manage to get back without lights. Though we had tried, neither Jeannie nor I could find any lamps, though it hadn’t worried us too much. The road between Deer’s Leap and the village wasn’t what you could call busy; we had decided we could manage without them.
Mind made up, I fed the animals then changed into slacks and a sweater. With luck, Bill Jarvis would be at the Rose and might, perhaps, tell me how I could get a look at the parish records. I was hopeful he would know everything I needed so desperately to know, if only he could be steered away from the Italian campaign.
Would Jack Hunter appear tonight? Perhaps, I thought light-headedly, he didn’t thumb lifts from cyclists. And why hadn’t he reacted to the red Mini, asked why it wasn’t camouflaged in khaki and green and black? Even I knew that much about World War Two motors; surely he couldn’t miss something so startlingly red?
Or did he only react to the sound of a car engine? Could ghosts see colours or was everything in black and white? Did Jack Hunter see only what he wanted to see – a car in which he might get a lift to Deer’s Leap? I found myself wishing him, willing him to be there, but I reached the Red Rose without seeing him.
I wondered what would happen if I asked him if he knew he were dead; if I told him the war had been over for more than fifty years, showed him today’s newspaper to prove it! Would he, shocked, begin to age before my eyes? Would he become an elderly, grey-haired man, then disintegrate as I watched?
‘Eejit!’ I made for the back door of the Rose. I was hungry, and brain-damaged into the bargain from a surfeit of words! I needed the earthy presence of Bill Jarvis to bring me down from the giddy highs of my imagining.
It was a relief to see him sitting there, and the smile that crinkled his face when I said, ‘Hullo, Bill! What are you drinking?’
And when he chuckled and said, ‘Nowt at the moment. I was just off home, though I dare say I could sup another!’ I knew that for the duration of a couple of pints, the world would be back to normal again.
‘It’s quiet in here tonight. No darts?’ I asked, when we had eaten a plate of sandwiches between us.
‘No. Folks is spent up till payday and, any road, they’re busy with the last of the harvest; be at it till dark. That storm at the weekend flattened some of the standing wheat, though we needed the rain, mind.’
‘I haven’t found time to see the church yet,’ I said when I had replenished our glasses. ‘Is there anything of interest there – like old tombs?’
Or the baptismal register!
‘Not that I know of. St James’s isn’t all that old. Were a cotton man from Manchester as built most of it. Name of Ackroyd. Bought the Hall in my great-grandfather’s time. Brass, but no breeding.’
‘Oh dear. It looks quite ancient.’ I was quite put out by the intrusion of brass into Acton Carey. ‘I really thought the church was as old as this pub.’
‘He didn’t make a bad job of it, I’ll say that for him. Added it on to the little church as was already there – or so I believe.’
‘But where is the Hall? Is it old?’
‘It was. Got pulled down in the thirties and the stone bought up by a mason. Weren’t no money in cotton no more, with all them fancy fabrics getting invented. The heir couldn’t sell the place so he upped and left it. All he hung on to was the land, and a few houses in the village.’
‘They wouldn’t be allowed to demolish an old house now-a-days, Bill. It would be a listed building. Elizabeth Tudor might even have slept there.’
It was a feeble joke which rebounded on me.
‘No. Seems she never got this far north; folk in these parts was a law unto themselves in those days and her kept well away. But talk has it that King James stayed there on his way from Scotland to London. Well, that’s what my dad once told me.’
‘And we’ll never know now, will we?’ I felt quite peeved that an old house could have been demolished, with people gathering like vultures to cart away timbers and fireplaces and almost certainly the staircase.
‘No. But like I said, them at the Hall wasn’t real gentry and they weren’t locals neither.’
‘Foreigners from Manchester, Bill!’
‘Aye. But if you want to see inside the church, there’ll be someone there on Friday mornings as can talk to you. They alus gives the place a sweep and a bit of a dust ready for Sunday. My sister, Hilda, goes; collects all the news. A right gossip shop, it is!’
‘Your sister still lives here, then – the one who knew Susan from Deer’s Leap, I mean. The one you said wasn’t allowed to go to the RAF dances?’