The Moon Field. Judith Allnatt

back with her the way he had come.

      He handed her the sheaf of letters that he had saved until last. Straightaway she picked out the cream envelope and tucked the rest into her pocket. She felt the letter between her thumb and forefinger and frowned as if surprised by its thinness. She turned it over as if she were about to open it, but then turned it back and started to walk alongside him.

      He glanced sideways at her but she didn’t turn to look at him and the words he had planned to say deserted him. ‘Do you have anything to send?’ he asked instead. She shook her head. ‘Nothing from the house today, and I … I’m not sure. Perhaps I should read this one first.’

      ‘Where are you planning to walk today?’ he asked. ‘It’s very hot once you’re out in the sun, you might find it tiring.’

      ‘I thought I’d go up through Dodd Wood. I can take advantage of the sun and get a view of it brightening the lake without getting overheated.’

      George nodded, pleased that he could go with her for most of the way as Dodd Wood was on his route back. ‘I know a good spot where you can see the different colour of the shallows and the deeper water,’ he began, thinking to turn the conversation to lake views in general and from there to painting them and then to one painting in particular, but the thought was enough to cause him to break into a deep blush and he found himself suddenly rushing to jump ahead, ‘In fact I’ve brought something, as a token—’

      ‘I’m sorry, George,’ she said, fingering the letter. ‘Forgive me, but I feel that I can’t wait; I must open this. Would you mind?’

      George shook his head dumbly; a sense of misgiving filled him and he knew that he would not now take out the sketchbook from his pocket; that, indeed, he felt afraid that its angular lines must show through the material, its bulky shape exposed, as if he carried his feelings like a foolish badge for all to see.

      Violet took a few quick steps and then stopped; he drew to a halt a little behind her. She slit the envelope with her thumb, pulled out a single sheet of paper and bent over it, quickly scanning the page. Her hand dropped to her side.

      She turned to him. ‘It’s Edmund,’ she said. ‘He’s being sent away for more training, then he’ll be posted abroad.’

      ‘Edmund?’ he said.

      ‘Edmund Lyne, Elizabeth’s brother.’ She looked at him as though he were being obtuse. ‘We were going to be engaged,’ she said flatly. ‘I was hoping to see him again when he got leave, to have one more visit to Carlisle before … before …’ She looked away, into the trees, unable to trust herself to speak.

      ‘I see,’ George said as he began to understand. What a fool, he thought, to have imagined all those letters were exchanges between school friends: gossip and girlish confidences. Of course – they were love letters; of course they were. The phrase ‘a token of my esteem’ floated through his mind as though his brain was working minutes behind and had finally located the words he had so carefully chosen. An engagement! He swallowed hard; he mustn’t let her even glimpse his feelings. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said; then, taking a deep breath: ‘Is there anything I can do?’

      She didn’t answer but refolded the letter and then folded it again into a thin slip. Slowly, she returned it to its envelope and carried on folding, turning the letter into a small rectangle that fitted into her closed hand. ‘He writes in haste; they’re to travel to a training camp, and then be sent abroad. That’s all they’re allowed to say. He says he’ll write again.’ She nodded twice and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. At last she looked at him and her face was blotchy, her eyes reddened. ‘So silly of me,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I had better go back to the house.’

      ‘I’ll walk back with you,’ George forced himself to say although he longed to get away so he could be on his own, where no one could see him, where he could think.

      ‘No need, I’ll be fine,’ she said and took in a huge breath. ‘I’m sorry about all this.’ She half turned but then seemed to remember something. ‘Did you say you had something else for me?’

      ‘It was nothing, really,’ George said, trying to keep the misery from his voice. She was looking at him more closely now, her brows furrowed in puzzlement.

      ‘George?’ she said and he could see her expression change to concern as she scanned his face.

      ‘I told you; it was nothing!’ George said more loudly than he intended, his voice coming out hoarse and strained as he yanked the bike straight and moved past her. ‘George, I didn’t think, I’m so sorry …’ she started.

      He could hold on no longer and threw himself at the bike, nearly overbalancing as the postbag swung sideways. He pushed off and stood up on the pedals to gain speed, forcing it along the rutty drive and away from her in a spatter of grit. Gasping for breath, he looked back only once as he reached the bend. She was standing looking after him, silhouetted against the light at the end of the tunnel of trees, her camera slung across her shoulder so that it bulged at her side, her shoulders drooping and her fist still closed over the letter. Then he swung away into the trees that would hide him from view.

       2

       AT THE TWA DOGS

      When George regained the road after leaving Violet, he wanted to be alone and so he turned the opposite way from home and rode out towards Carlisle. He cursed himself as a fool to have harboured affection in the first place for someone he knew to be so far above his own station, and called himself an idiot not to have guessed that she would have an admirer. He imagined how he must seem in her eyes: a callow boy, not yet a man, a lackey, someone you had to be kind to … Yet, when he thought about her tears, the feelings he had were not boyish: he felt fierce, angry with anyone or anything that could dare to hurt her. He wished, more than anything in the world, that he could wipe the tears away, and that he could comfort her and hold her in his arms. It had been weak to run away! Yet, now that he had run away, now that she must think him a cad, how was he to face her again? The thought of the way they had walked and talked together, the camaraderie they had shared and the feeling that this would never be recaptured weighed upon him; he rode on and on, seeking to blank out emotion with physical sensation, pushing his aching muscles further, seeking relief through sheer fatigue.

      He rode and rode until he eventually came to the suburbs of the town, where dirty redbrick terraces crowded straight on to the roads and children dodged unnervingly in and out between the carts and cycles and motors. He turned out of the mêlée and into the haven of a leafy park where he sat on a bench for a considerable time, thinking about Violet and her sweetheart.

      After a while he realised that Kitty would be wondering why he hadn’t come back for tea. Three young men were kicking a football around on the lawns and larking about. The light began to wane and he remembered that his mother would be worried, yet he sat on, idly watching them and feeling dispirited.

      One of the young men, showing off, kicked the ball high into the beech tree above him, showering him with leaves and breaking his reverie. He listened to them daring each other to get the ball down and watched as they threw sticks, unsuccessfully, until eventually two of them shinned up the tree. There they jumped up and down to shake the branches and urged each other to go higher and further while the third shook his head in disbelief and sat down on the bench next to George. He introduced himself as Ernest Turland, and said to George, ‘One of the bloody fools is going to break his head. Probably Rooke,’ he added. ‘Haycock’s taller and stronger.’ The bigger chap triumphed at last by hanging from the branch where the ball had lodged, his boots appearing alarmingly in mid-air as he swung. The branch creaked ominously but the