Potential Danger

‘And the man who’s in charge of the place—what does he say?’

‘Says there’s nothing to worry about, and I, for one, believe him.’

Because he wanted to believe him, Kate recognised. It would break her father’s heart if anything happened to contaminate Seton land. She heard the pride in his voice as they rounded a turn in the road and passed the boundary that divided the de Burghley acres from their own.

‘Now, lass,’ he told Cherry, ‘you’re on Seton land. What dost tha think o’ un?’

Cherry looked as though she were about to burst with pride and delight, and before Kate could stop her, and regardless of the fact that her father was driving the Land Rover, Cherry flung her arms round his neck and said ecstatically, ‘Oh, Grandpa, I’m so glad that we’re here.’

‘Now… now enough of that…’

But her father was careful not to hurt her as he disengaged himself, Kate noticed, and she also noticed the surreptitious way in which he blew his nose only seconds later.

They entered the family farmyard to a cacophany of barking from the dogs, mingling with the cackle of her mother’s hens and the bleating of half a dozen or so huge fat lambs, plainly those which had been hand-reared during the spring and which were now proving reluctant to return to the flock, Kate reflected, recognising the familiar pattern of her childhood.

‘Watch out for the bantam,’ her father warned them as he stopped the Land Rover.

‘What’s a bantam?’ Cherry demanded.

‘A small hen,’ Kate told her, ruefully remembering her mother’s affection for her bantam silkies and the ferocity of the minute males who lorded it over their harems.

‘Don’t tell me that Ma still keeps geese,’ Kate groaned as she heard the familiar alarm sound. In her childhood, even her father had not been safe from the sharp beaks of her mother’s geese, always excellent watchdogs. Their main fault was that it was impossible to teach them to discern between friend and foe.

And then the back door was opening and her mother was standing there. Not really changed at all. Her hair still neat and braided, her diminutive, wiry form still clad in a neat skirt and blouse, covered by an old-fashioned apron.

Across the yard Kate saw the look her parents exchanged, and she was at once a part and yet not a part of a magic circle that concentrated its love on the girl standing uncertainly on one foot as she stared round the unfamiliar yard.

‘I’ve brought them then, Jean, love…’

And suddenly her mother’s arms were open and both she and Cherry were caught up in them. Odd how so much strength could come from such a slight form. As she released them, Kate heard her mother saying tearfully, ‘My, but she’s the spitting image of you, John. A real Seton.’

And for the second time that day she was aware, as she had never been aware as a child, of the great love between her parents; for Cherry certainly looked like neither of them, since her features were hers, Kate knew, and her colouring and build was completely her father’s.

But there was no time to reflect any more on Cherry’s physical heritage, because she was crossing the familiar threshold into the the large square kitchen of her childhood, and the years were rolling back. She almost felt she could be Cherry’s age again, just home from school, waiting for David to finish his chores so that they could sit down and eat.

‘It’s grand to have you home, lass.’

Quiet words, but full of emotion. Kate looked at her mother.

‘It’s lovely to be here, Mum. I don’t think Cherry has talked of anything else since Christmas.’

‘Cherry… what kind of name is that to give the child?’ her father snorted.

And it was Cherry herself who answered him saying brightly, ‘But Mum called me that because the cherry trees were in blossom when I was born.’

They had tea in the large, panelled dining-room that overlooked the gardens at the front of the house. Originally built as a minor hall, the house was much larger than the other stone farmhouses that populated the dale. It had a sunny drawing-room that overlooked the dale itself and, although the ground was barren and the winter winds icy, in the protection of the walled garden countless generations of Seton women had cultivated not only fruit and vegetables, but flowers as well.

The drawing-room was only used on formal occasions, its oak furniture lovingly waxed and its parquet floor polished.

Normally they ate in the large kitchen; and in the summer, as Kate remembered it, their evening meal had often been as late as eight or nine in the evening so that her father could make the most of the long hours of daylight.

Tea was the word used to describe the evening meal in the north, and not dinner, and on this occasion her mother had baked all the things for which she was justly famous in the dale: scones light as feathers from her bantam chickens, bread, still slightly warm from the old-fashioned bread ovens either side of the new Aga and still used by her mother, currant slices, lightly dusted with sugar, summer pudding made from some of the early fruits, the kind of salad that had never dreamed of seeing the inside of a supermarket but came straight from her mother’s garden, and tiny new potatoes, and home-cured ham. All the old-fashioned things she remembered from her childhood, and yet, as she sliced into her mother’s bread, Kate saw that it had been made with wholemeal flour, showing that even up here people were not totally immune to the power of the Press.

Despite the excellence of the food, Kate wasn’t hungry. Cherry was, though, tucking into her food with the healthy appetite of the young.

Already Kate thought she could see a change in her—an opening up, a stretching out and growing—as though somehow she had been cramped in their city life.

Throughout the meal she chatted to her grandparents, telling them about her school and her friends, leaving Kate alone with her own thoughts.

It was disturbing how much Silas was occupying them. She supposed she ought to have expected it and been prepared for it, for, although Silas had never visited her home, the emotional trauma of her own leaving of it was bound to have left a lingering resonance for her sensitive nerves to pick up on.

And yet she had barely thought about him at all in years. He was part of her past, and for Cherry’s sake she could not regret having known him, but the discovery that he had deceived her, that he was married with children, had totally killed her love.

And she had never allowed herself to fall into the same trap again.

Oh, she had dated—fellow schoolteachers, friends of friends who shared her interest in the theatre and with whom she had enjoyed pleasurable evenings—but there had been nothing like the intensity of emotion she had known with Silas.

Why not? She was emotionally and physically capable of that emotion, and yet, for some reason, after Silas she had had no other lovers, no man in her life who was more than a friend.

Was it perhaps because she had been afraid? Afraid of the vulnerability such a commitment would bring?

In the early years, of course, there had been Cherry. Most men shied away from a woman with a young child, and Kate’s life had been too exhausting to allow her to do anything other than care for her child and complete her education. Without Lydia’s help and love, even that much would not have been possible.

‘I’ve put Cherry in your old room.’

Her mother’s quiet words cut through her introspective thoughts.

Her old room. Tiny and cosy, up under the eaves, with its uneven walls and sloping ceiling.

‘You’re quite close to her… in the guest room. It’s got its own bathroom now, and I thought you’d prefer that.’

A guest room with its own bathroom. Nostalgia touched her with melancholy fingers. Even here, after all, things changed. She had noticed that her parents had also had central heating installed. A new innovation, indeed. She remembered vividly the arguments when her mother had first tentatively broached the subject. Then her father had flatly refused to even consider it.

But times obviously changed. People changed.

CHAPTER TWO

LATER on that evening, as she took Cherry up to bed, sitting in the familiar bedroom with its rose-patterned wallpaper, Kate listened half-heartedly to her daughter’s excited chatter, while part of her couldn’t help remembering how she had thrown herself on this very bed and wept with grief and fear, unable to believe that she was actually pregnant… that Silas was actually married… that her father was refusing to allow her in the house.

‘And Grandpa was saying that it will soon be the Dales Show. I wish I had something I could show. Mum, are you all right?’

Kate gave her a faint smile. ‘Fine…’

‘Were you thinking about my father?’

Green eyes met green, and Kate wondered at the perception of this child of hers, who could be so gravely and heart-breakingly mature.

And there was no doubt at all about where she got that perception from. It was one of the first things she had noticed about Silas… That and his almost overpoweringly male good looks.

She realised she was drifting helplessly back into the past and that she had not answered Cherry’s question. Walking over to the window, she looked out at the familiar scenery of the dale. Below them, her father’s sheep were gathered in the lowland pastures. These would be the ones that would soon need shearing.

Keeping her back toward Cherry, she said quietly, ‘No. No, I wasn’t thinking about your father. I was just remembering when this was my room.’

It was the first time she had lied to Cherry, and the small deception hurt, but coming home had stirred up too many memories, had brought to the surface of her consciousness feelings and thoughts she couldn’t share with anyone.

Thoughts not just of Silas, but of David, her childhood, her parents and her own suddenly altered perceptions of past events; it was almost as though she had turned a corner and found herself confronted with an unfamiliar view of a territory so intimately well-known that the shock of the unexpected forced her to examine what she thought she had known.

‘Time for bed,’ she told Cherry, turning to smile at her. Whatever else she might think or feel, nothing could change her love for this child she and Silas had made together.

She kissed her, hugging her briefly.

‘Happy to be here, Cherry?’

‘Oh, yes… It’s even better than I hoped.’ She turned serious green eyes to her mother. ‘If I lived here, I don’t think I’d ever want to leave.’ And the sombre look she gave the view from the window made Kate’s heart tremble with apprehension.

The last thing she wanted was for Cherry to become too attached to this place. There was no way they could make their lives here on a permanent basis. Jobs in teaching in this part of the world were bound to be scarce, and where would they live, other than with her parents?

Seeing Cherry settled into bed, Kate went downstairs, automatically heading for the kitchen.

To her surprise only her father was there, engaged in the homely task of making a pot of tea. An unfamiliar sound caught her ears and she traced it to a dishwasher discreetly concealed by an oak panel that matched the rest of the kitchen.

‘Your mother’s not getting any younger,’ her father said gruffly, noticing her astonishment. ‘Time was when I hoped that David would change his mind and come back, but it looks like your mother and I will be the last Setons to live here, and I don’t want your mother dying before her time through overwork.’

Kate could scarcely conceal her astonishment. What had happened to the stern, unyielding father who had never allowed either of his children to see any hint of what he might think of as weakness?

‘Times change, lass,’ he said heavily, as though he had seen into her mind. ‘And sometimes they bring hard lessons. I was wrong to say to you what I did. Driving you out of your home like that… Hasty words spoken in the heat of the moment, and both of us too proud to back down, eh?’

Kate had never thought of it like that, never seen in her own refusal to risk rejection by getting in touch with her parents a mirror-image of her father’s notorious pride, but now she saw that he was, in part, right.

‘It took your mother to make me see sense, and thank goodness she did. Yon’s a fine lass you’ve got there. It will do your mother good to have someone to fuss over besides me and the shepherds.’

As he finished speaking Kate heard a whine outside the back door, and to her astonishment her father opened it to let in the dog who had accompanied him to the station.

‘No good in the open, this one,’ he told her slightly shamefacedly. ‘I should have got rid of him, but I hadn’t the heart. Spoiled him to death, your mother has.’

But Kate noticed, when her father carried the tea-tray through into the sitting-room, that it was at his feet that the dog lay.

With Cherry in bed, Kate felt oddly vulnerable and uncomfortable. She had left this house in fear and misery eleven years ago, and now she was back, but how could those years be bridged?

It proved to be astonishingly easy. It became apparent to Kate that there was scarcely a single feature of her and Cherry’s lives that Lydia had left untold, and that her mother was almost as familiar with the regular pattern of their lives as she was herself.

Lydia had been a good friend to both of them, Kate recognised.

Quite what she had hoped to achieve by her precipitous flight to London she didn’t really know, but after two terrifying days and nights of living rough she had suppressed her pride and gone to see her godmother.

Lydia had not, as she had dreaded, insisted on Kate going home, or even agreed with her parents that her pregnancy must be hushed up and her child adopted. Instead she had offered Kate and her baby a home with her for just as long as they needed it.

A career woman with no ties, she had adapted remarkably well to the responsibility of a pregnant teenage girl, Kate thought. It had been Lydia who had encouraged her to go back to her studies and complete her degree, who had insisted on sharing the care of Cherry with her so that she was free to do so, and who had also encouraged her to buy her own small flat once she had finally got a job, thus giving both her and Cherry their independence.

Not once had she ever asked about Silas, and not once had Kate mentioned him. So why start thinking about him now? What was the point?

Her mother hadn’t been wrong to remind her of her father’s habit of early rising, Kate reflected ruefully the next morning when the sound of her father whistling to his dog woke her from her slumbers.

Without even going to the window, she could picture the scene in the yard below: her father in his ancient tweed jacket, crook in one hand, as he summoned his dog for the start of their day’s work.

On a summer morning like this he would be working the fells, checking on his sheep and preparing his dogs for the Dales Show.

As she lay there, other sounds penetrated her consciousness; the muted baaing of the wool-sheep in the paddock on the far side of the house; the cackling of her mother’s hens and then the impatient roar of her father’s voice as he called his dog to order.

They hadn’t had a sheepdog yet unable to resist the temptation of trying to round up the hens, and Kate grinned to herself as she burrowed deeper under the blankets. As a teenager she had cherished every extra stolen moment in bed in the mornings, but this morning she couldn’t recapture that teenage pleasure. Instead she found she was thinking about her mother, who would be busy downstairs.

Groaning at the extra burdens of conscience that adulthood brought, she started to get up, pausing by her window and frowning as she heard Cherry’s excited voice floating up to her from the yard.

‘I’m up, Grandpa. Can I come with you?’

‘You’ll have to ask your mother about that,’ she heard her father growl. ‘And you’ll need something inside you first.’

‘But you will wait for me, won’t you?’ Cherry persisted, and Kate found that she was holding her breath, praying that her father wouldn’t hurt Cherry’s feelings by refusing her request.

Half of her was already prepared for it when he said brusquely, ‘The fells are no place for someone who doesn’t know them,’ but then, to her surprise and relief, he softened his refusal by adding more gently, ‘You go in and speak to your mother and have your breakfast, and then later on you can come and watch while I put Laddie through his paces in the paddock. Not that it will do the stupid creature the least bit of good. Never make a champion… Too soft, that’s what he is.’

Kate was downstairs by the time Cherry came in, her small face alight with excitement.

‘Mum, I’m going to help Gramps train Laddie,’ she told Kate importantly.

And because she loved and understood her, Kate overlooked the small exaggeration and said instead, ‘Are you, indeed? Well then, you’re going to need something to eat first, aren’t you?’

Cherry had always had a healthy appetite, but already the upland air seemed to have sharpened it, and Kate saw the pleasure touch her own mother’s face as Cherry devoured the meal Jean had made for her.

‘You should have let me do that, Mum,’ Kate protested quietly, when Cherry had gone upstairs to clean her teeth. ‘You’ve got enough to do already.’

‘It’s no trouble. It’s a long time since I’ve had a young one to cook for,’ she added quietly, and somehow her words underlined the loneliness of their lives, making Kate guiltily conscious that she could and should have done more earlier to heal the rift between them.

For too long she had retained her childhood perceptions of her parents and her father’s anger, and now it hurt her to acknowledge that she might have been guilty of deliberately holding on to her own anger and resentment. They were both so patently thrilled with Cherry, and she made up her mind there and then that she would see to it that she made it up to both Cherry and her parents for all the times together they had missed.

When her father came back later in the morning, Cherry rushed out to join him.

Watching her daughter skipping happily at her grandfather’s side with the black and white collie, plumy tail waving happily from side to side as it followed them, Kate felt an unexpected prickle of tears sting her eyes.

She was standing in the kitchen at the window, and behind her her mother said quietly, ‘I’m glad you came, love. Your dad’s missed you…’

‘And David,’ Kate acknowledged, blinking away her tears. ‘He was always his favourite.’

‘No, you’re wrong,’ her mother insisted. ‘If he had a favourite, it was you. Some men are like that. Real softies when it comes to their daughters. Thinking the world of them, and nothing too good for them. It was like that with your dad. That’s why…’ She sighed and broke off, but immediately Kate knew what she was thinking. That was why her father had been so shocked and so bitterly angry when she’d announced her pregnancy.

How easy it was to understand his feelings now, and how very, very difficult it had been at the time.

‘There’s some letters to post. Why don’t you take the Land Rover and drive down to the village?’ her mother suggested, and Kate wondered if she had sensed her sudden, aching need to be on her own to sort out the confusion of her own thoughts.

It had been a long time since she had driven a four-wheel-drive vehicle, but it was a skill that, once learned, was soon remembered, and by the time she had reached the village she was feeling confident enough to reverse the vehicle into a spot almost right opposite the small post office and general store.

Susan Edmonson, the postmistress, recognised her immediately, beaming a warm smile at her. Susan’s dark hair was generously flecked with grey now and she was plumper than she had been, but she still possessed the same intense curiosity about her fellow human beings that Kate had so resented as a child, but which now she found oddly warming.

After the impersonal, couldn’t-care-less attitude of the busy shops in London, it was almost pleasant to be in a place where one was known and welcomed.

‘Hear you’ve brought your daughter back with you. A right bonny girl by all accounts. And her dad…’

‘Cherry’s father isn’t and never has been a part of our lives,’ Kate told her firmly. She had never lied about the circumstances of Cherry’s birth, and she wasn’t going to start now.

She almost felt the rustle of speculation run round the small, enclosed space, but she refused to give in to the urge to turn her head and see how the other people in the queue behind her had received her information.

‘Aye, well, there’s many a woman who would like to be able to say the same thing,’ Susan Edmonson replied placidly, adding with a wryness that brought several chuckles from the other women waiting to be served, ‘And some days it’s easy to see why.’

Since her own husband was one of the most henpecked males in existence, Kate herself only just managed to stop herself from smiling.

She left the post office, head held high, feeling as though she had just emerged triumphant from an ordeal.

Times had changed, of course. Even up here there were now girls rearing their children alone, but even so, for her parents’ sake if nothing else, she wanted to re-establish herself creditably in the village.

As she turned to close the door behind her, she heard Susan Edmonson murmuring confidingly to her next customer, ‘Clever girl she was, too. A schoolteacher now. Still, these things happen. And what I always say is that it’s the innocent ones that get caught out.’

This latter comment was added in a virtuous tone that made Kate grin a little.

The sun had come out, and she had to shade her eyes from its glare as she made to cross the road and return to the Land Rover. She was thirsty; the heat of the sun was penetrating the sweatshirt she was wearing and making her wish she had put on something cooler. The pub beckoned, but she suspected that up here in the Dales it was still not totally accepted for a young woman to walk into a pub on her own, and so she contented herself by promising herself a glass of her mother’s home-made lemonade once she reached the farm. She herself had remembered the recipe and made the drink for Cherry, but somehow it never tasted quite the same.

Sighing faintly, she stepped out into the road, only to come to an abrupt halt as a Range Rover swept round the corner, surely travelling at a faster speed than was safe. She had a momentary glimpse of the driver: a hawkish male profile, set mouth that looked rather grim, thick, very dark hair, a brown forearm emerging from the stark whiteness of a short-sleeved shirt, and then the world spun dizzyingly out of focus, and she barely registered the dark blue paintwork or the initials of the government body stamped boldly on the Range Rover bodywork in white, because time had spun backwards and she was left feeling as though she had suddenly walked into the past.

That man driving the Range Rover had been so like Silas. An older Silas, of course. A harder Silas. She shivered, reproaching herself for her carelessness in stepping off the pavement and her idiocy in allowing her memories to have such a powerful effect upon her that she was actually seeing Silas in the features of a stranger.

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