Distant Voices. Barbara Erskine

have recovered your shoe –’ he raised an eyebrow slightly, ‘– perhaps I can escort you back to the party and fetch you a glass of lemonade.’

      She could hear in the still heat of the garden beyond the hedge the deep voices of the sober, assembled clerics, the higher voices of the women, the occasional constrained laugh. She and Mr Dawson were uncompromisingly alone.

      No one had noticed when she had slipped away. Her father, the Reverend George Hayward, had been deep in conversation with his bishop, his daughter long forgotten, when she had glanced round the company, many of whom she had known all her life, and experienced her sudden, quite unexpected wave of rebellion.

      The violence of the emotion which had swept over her had astonished her. She was overcome with anger and despair. She was still a young woman, wasn’t she? She was still reasonably attractive, wasn’t she? She was still full of day dreams and of hopes. So why was she here, at her father’s side, faithfully accompanying him as ever on parish business, in the role into which she had slipped almost without realising it when her mother had died? Her sisters were married, her brother now lived in London. She alone was left. And it had been expected and accepted by everyone that she would fill her mother’s shoes. All thoughts of her marriage seemed to have flown from her father’s mind. The few persistent suitors who had called on her slowly slipped away. And no one seemed to have noticed but her.

      She glared at Charles Dawson. She had not been one of the young women clustering round him with adoring looks and simpering giggles. No, she had been beside her father listening dutifully as he talked church business with the bishop! Not that she would have talked to Charles anyway, she reminded herself sternly. It was no problem for her to remain immune to his handsome good looks, behaving as he was like an extension of her father in his obvious disapproval of her. She had always detested him for his pompous ways. And he would never, ever, have been one of her suitors. Rich and well connected, he would look far higher than a mere rector’s daughter.

      The thought made her even more cross. She had never allowed any of the young men who had found their way to the Rectory door in Hancombe to arouse their hopes when they had come calling upon her and now it was too late to change her mind. She was old. She was destined to look after her father for the rest of his life. She was on the shelf. She was twenty-nine years old.

      ‘… don’t you think so, Miss Hayward?’

      With a start she realised Charles Dawson had been speaking to her as he escorted her away from the swing and back towards the party. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and, oh yes, he was good-looking. As he looked down at her she realised she had been staring at him.

      ‘Don’t you think so?’ he repeated.

      ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t catch what you said,’ she murmured.

      She caught the expression of impatience, quickly hidden, which crossed his face before she looked away.

      ‘I said, that I fear there may be a storm later,’ he repeated.

      ‘Yes indeed, the air is heavy.’ Now he would think her deaf as well as rude and stupid!

      As they emerged through the gap in the hedge she noticed several pairs of eyes speculatively upon them. Her father’s were not amongst them, she saw at once with relief, and suddenly she was overcome by an irresistible urge to laugh. Here she was, dishevelled, her hair down and her gown awry, appearing in the company of the most eligible man there, and quite unchaperoned!

      As if reading her thoughts Charles Dawson stepped away from her rather too hastily. ‘May I suggest, Miss Hayward, that you retire to the house to tidy yourself,’ he said curtly, and with a bow he left her. For a moment she stood where she was, aware that she was still being watched closely, then slowly and demurely she began to walk across the grass.

      Somehow she managed to reach the ladies’ withdrawing room in the palace and there she managed to redo her hair and replace her bonnet. Outwardly she was docile and smiling. Inwardly, her moment of amusement gone, she was seething with resentment and anger. Of all the pompous, sarcastic men why did it have to be Charles Dawson who had followed her? He would tell his father what he had caught her doing and no doubt they would smile about it together over the port that evening, and then the bishop would tell her father! And her father would not find it amusing. He would be very, very angry. Oh, the humiliation of it all!

      Leaving the shelter of the palace at last she ventured back onto the lawn and, in spite of herself, she found herself looking for Charles. She saw him at once, talking to a group of elderly ladies, and to her chagrin he looked up and caught her eye. For a moment she felt his gaze sweep up and down her body, as if checking her appearance, then infinitesimally he smiled.

      Anger erupted in her once more and riding home beside her father in the carriage later she could feel her resentment still seething. But to her relief it appeared that nothing had been said to him about her escapade for he was in high good humour as they trotted through the leafy lanes back to Hancombe, nestling in its fold of the Downs.

      ‘Tomorrow, Caroline, you and I shall visit the cottage up the Neck,’ he was saying, sure as always of her obedience and her time. ‘I should like to take baskets of food to Widow Moffat and the Eldron family. Poor things, it is two years since Sam worked …’ He broke off suddenly. ‘Caroline, are you listening to me?’

      Guiltily Caroline turned to him. Her gaze had been fixed on the crest of the Downs where the golden haze of the afternoon had settled in a shimmering blur on the woods.

      ‘Of course, Papa. I shall prepare the baskets myself.’

      The shadows were running up the valleys between the hills, turning the green of the fields to soft purple beneath the haze. She could smell the rich drift of honeysuckle and roses from the hedgerows on either side of the lane. There was a beauty and a poignancy in the air which soothed her and at the same time unsettled her strangely.

      She longed to be alone, away from her father’s strident demands, but it was hours before she was able to escape to the privacy of her bedroom. With relief she closed the door at last behind the maid, Polly, and, drawing her loose wrapper over her nightgown she went to the window and leaned out, staring down at the dusk-shadowed garden. She still felt tense and unsettled; lonely.

      It was very hot; the coming darkness was bringing no relief from the heat. If anything it was hotter now. Her mind turned back to the party and the cool freedom of the swing. If Charles Dawson hadn’t found her she could have remained there all afternoon, with the breeze combing its untidy fingers through her hair. Unbidden, a picture of her host’s son floated before her eyes; his tall, stern features, the arrogant smile, the quirked eyebrow when he saw that she had lost her shoe. Almost she had thought he was laughing at her, but then she realised that he must have despised her for being such a hoyden. His own white shirt and silk cravat had been immaculate; not a hair of his head nor his beard was out of place. No doubt he had never sat on a swing in his life.

      Slopping some water from the ewer into the flowered basin on her washstand she bathed her face and neck. Then she lay down on the bed. There was no point in thinking about Charles Dawson; no point in thinking about men at all. Lighting her bedside candle she picked up a book and allowed it to fall open.

      It was several weeks now since her sister, with a finger to her lips, and a stern warning not to tell their father, had given her the leather-covered volume of Lord Byron’s works and from the day she had first opened it it had become her most treasured possession. Her favourite poem was To Caroline.

      ‘Thinkst thou I saw thy beauteous eyes …’

      She shivered as she read the impassioned words, words she knew by heart she had repeated them so often in the lonely darkness of her room. If only they had been addressed to her.

      ‘Caroline!’

      The abruptness with which her door flew open startled her so much she dropped the book. It slid to the floor with a crash. Her father, still fully dressed, stood silhouetted in the doorway, the candles on the table in the passage behind him streaming in the sudden draught. ‘Caroline,