Last Walk Home

Mrs Slater was standing by a window, carefully setting a shallow pan of milk down on a slabbed surface. She glanced briefly up as Janet came in and gave her a friendly nod, then she gently settled the pan into place. She straightened up and wiped her hands on a towel. She drew a long breath and moved her shoulders, easing them.

She was a small slim woman in her middle thirties with a clear, fine skin and short light brown hair simply cut. Her lips were curved in a faint habitual smile and her customary look was one of amiable reserve. Over her freshly laundered dress of flowered cotton she wore a white overall with the sleeves rolled up, showing her pretty arms, smooth and rounded, with delicately tanned skin.

‘It’s the end of term on Friday, isn’t it?’ she said as she poured the milk for Janet. ‘I’m sure you’re looking forward to the holidays, it must be tiring dealing with youngsters all the time.’ The Slaters had no children. ‘Have you made up your mind yet if you’re going away?’ She stood chatting for a few minutes.

Margaret Slater wasn’t a native of Longmead, she came from Stanbourne. After eighteen years of marriage she was still looked on by the village – and still looked on herself – as an incomer. Not that anyone in Longmead disliked or resented her but she wasn’t Longmead born and bred and never could be.

She had come to Mayfield Farm as a girl of sixteen, when Oswald Slater’s mother was still alive. The old lady had begun to ail and had been ordered goat’s milk by her doctor. ‘I’ve been thinking of getting someone to live in, to give me a hand with the housework and cooking,’ she told Oswald. ‘If I can find a sensible girl who also knows something about livestock, we could buy a goat and she could look after it as well as helping in the house.’

Within a short time she found Margaret, neat, capable and well-mannered, the daughter of a Stanbourne small­holder. Margaret had kept goats since she was eight, and regularly took prizes at shows. She also reared turkeys and was doing well with them on a small scale.

Twelve months later old Mrs Slater died and shortly afterwards Oswald asked Margaret to marry him. She was hard-working, easy to get on with and accustomed by now to Mayfield ways. Above all she was there. No need for him to go to all the trouble of putting on his best clothes and embarking on the long and tedious business of running round the countryside trying to locate a suitable bride.

Oswald was thirty-seven at the time of his mother’s death and had never had much time or inclination for courting. He was a powerfully built man of medium height, with large hands and little small talk.

He consulted Margaret’s parents before speaking to the girl and they in turn had a long chat with their daughter when she rode over on her bicycle for tea the following Sunday afternoon. It was agreed all round that it would be a fine match for her. She was happy to agree, she liked living at Mayfield and saw her future there as peaceful and secure. The marriage was settled and took place without delay.

Shortly afterwards Margaret suggested that she might introduce turkey-breeding to Mayfield and Oswald was rather taken with the idea. ‘But I’ll have to go into the costs,’ he said cautiously. The costs proved reasonable and he approved the plan which Margaret promptly put into operation, overseeing the whole enterprise and subsequently managing it; it had prospered well, expanding over the years.

Now she wiped over the surface of the table as Janet picked up her milk. ‘You’re not going away yourself?’ Janet asked her.

Mrs Slater shook her head. She’d never been brought up to holidays, had never formed the habit and certainly never felt the need. And Oswald Slater wasn’t a man to encourage such flighty notions.

‘I wouldn’t know what to do with all that free time,’ she said with her little smile. ‘And what about my goats? I couldn’t leave them to someone else to look after.’

As Janet walked down the field back to her cottage she glanced over at the school. The window of the head­master’s office overlooked the field but the building was empty now. Mrs Abell had finished her cleaning and locked up for the night.

I think I’ll put in an hour on the vegetable patch, Janet decided as she opened the wicket gate leading into her garden. The ground had been long neglected when she came to Rose Cottage but she’d wasted no time in getting to work on it. Now there were lettuces and peas to pick, radishes to thin out, scarlet runners to inspect. There was still a fair-sized stretch to clear and dig, as well as the regular chores of weeding and hoeing, but they were all tasks she enjoyed.

She let herself in at the back door. Flickering shafts of sunlight strayed into the living-room through the branches of an apple tree, there was a light pervasive scent of roses. She hummed a tune as she put the goat’s milk away in the fridge.

CHAPTER 5

Early on Friday morning, when the horizon was streaked with rose and gold, the first blackbird uttered a soft whistle in the Brookside garden, followed a moment later by a missel thrush. In his narrow bed George Pickthorn heard the sounds in his sleep and smiled with pleasure. In his dream he was running over the common – the old common, the common of his childhood – with his little Jack Russell terrier, dead these sixty years. Some part of George’s waking adult mind leaned into the dream and formulated the thought: I could get a little dog, a Jack Russell, no reason why I shouldn’t have one now, why didn’t I think of it before? I’ll start looking out for one right away.

Along the lane at Rose Cottage, Janet Marshall lay sound asleep in her little bedroom, dreaming she was shut tight inside a box. Outside the box something breathed and panted, trying to get in at her, scratching and tearing at the wooden sides, but she felt no fear, knowing herself safe and snug in her stout little nest.

A mile and a half away, in the best bedroom at Parkwood, Rachel Lloyd lay at ease in the large double bed that had been her parents’. She wore a faint smile on her dreaming face. She was skimming along the fields and hedgerows of the village like a bird, soaring up over the church into the cloudless blue, looking down on the houses and farms spread out below.

Across the landing in the second-best bedroom Henry woke, as always these days, thirty seconds after the first bird uttered its morning note. He had been trying to make his way through a dense black wreathing fog but his feet and legs were weighed down, his arms heavy and powerless.

He came fully awake. Friday, his brain registered, the last day of term. He stared up at the ceiling with its ornate mouldings. How many more terms would he see? Year by year the school roll fell relentlessly. Fourteen years ago there had been three teachers, now there were two.

It was only a matter of time before Longmead went the way of other village schools and closed its doors for the last time. He had no illusions about what that would mean for him. It would be almost impossible at his age to get another teaching job of any kind, let alone a headship.

And in any case Rachel wouldn’t dream of moving away from Longmead. He believed now that she’d never had any such intention, she had merely allowed him to believe she had.

Her parents hadn’t obligingly departed this life as early as he’d been led to expect. They had lingered on into ripe old age and year by year the city headship had receded. It was ten years after the marriage before Rachel’s father died and her mother had finally closed her eyes only twelve months ago; by then it was far too late, the dream was over. All he’d amounted to was the head of a dwindling school in a little village.

He viewed with horror the thought of continuing to live in Longmead after the school finally closed. One by one all the other services and functions of the village would wither and die, Longmead would slide into stagnation and decay.

The rosy visions of expansion had come to nothing, there was no industrial estate, no blossoming of new houses. Already the parish had been amalgamated with that of Stanbourne, there was no resident vicar now at Longmead.

At one time when Henry thought of retirement he had looked forward to it as an exciting, fertile time of life. He saw himself active and energetic, speaking at conferences, lecturing to interested groups up and down the country, writing on educational matters for the national press, being interviewed on television and radio. Now he knew he would simply be stranded here in this tiny backwater, isolated, growing old; nobody would give a damn what he thought about anything.

It was a struggle every morning now to rouse himself to tackle the day’s work. He dreaded to think what his state would be when there was no longer even that regular stimulus to spur him up out of the dark pit.

He threw back the covers and got out of bed, thrust his feet into slippers. When he and Rachel returned from their honeymoon Rachel had firmly indicated that at Parkwood they would occupy separate rooms. ‘In case Mother needs attention in the night,’ she told him. ‘It will mean less disturbance for you.’ Now, as he went silently down the wide staircase, he was deeply thankful that he had his own room and could wander about when restless­ness woke him, could read or listen to the radio.

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