Читать книгу Creature Comforts - Trisha Ashley - Страница 12

I hurried down the path as fast as the overgrown bushes and brambles along it would allow, for I now had an almost overwhelming urge to immerse myself in the strangely opaque greeny-blue waters – and not only in my usual ‘wash away my sins’ manner, but now, after the encounter with Dan, a ‘wash that man right out of my hair’ one, too.

The clearing lay dreaming in the crisp April sunshine, the usual hint of magic tingeing the air. Tom’s small stone cottage looked as if it belonged in a fairy tale, tucked behind a white picket fence, with a neat row of beehives at one end and a dovecote at the other, where there was a slight flurry of wings as an occupant exited.

The wild wood pigeons called and somewhere a blackbird whistled sweetly. Then a red squirrel bounded gracefully and airily across the grass, pausing briefly to turn its tufty ears and bright, inquisitive eyes in my direction. I thought there couldn’t be a spot that had more spirit of place – somewhere where the passing of centuries seemed tangible, soft and enfolding. You could feel a connection with the earth, or the life force – or even, if you’d been bashed around the head enough, an inner angelic voice telling you what to do.

Mine was telling me to go and get into the pool.

The stone wall surrounding it was silvered with circles of lichen and I had a plastic token for the old turnstile at the entrance, which had once graced Southport pier. It let me pass through with a well-oiled clanking noise, and once inside, everything was just as it had been on my last visit.

When the Romans rediscovered the pool, they deepened and extended it into a rectangular bath big enough to swim two or three strokes each way in. They’d roofed it, too, and built other rooms off it, heated by an ingenious hypocaust system, but all the stones were taken to make Spring Cottage, and now the only evidence that there had once been a superstructure lay in the hummocky shapes under the short turf.

I climbed up to the cave, took a pointed paper cup from a stack on a shelf inside and had a drink of the water, which tastes weird, though not unpleasant.

Then I changed in one of the wooden sentry huts by the pool, before sliding into the water, which, because I’m so short, came to about shoulder height. I ducked under and it closed over me as softly and silkily as cold milk. Then I turned and floated starfish-wise on the surface and the spring sun fell golden on my closed eyelids.

Debo once told me that the young Roman soldiers would have swum naked, and ever since then I had often thought I could hear echoes of them laughing and chatting … but then other times I’m convinced I can hear faint pagan chanting.

That day I wasn’t aware of any past swimmers sharing the space with me, just the softness of the water on my skin, the sun warming my eyelids and the sweet warbling of birds in the trees.

I always brought my worries and fears to the pool and now I felt them drain away, leaving a sense of peace and lightness behind in their place.

I was prepared to let go of Kieran, too, though not without some regret for the love I’d once felt for him and the hopes I’d had for our future.

He’d seemed such a kind, generous man, easy-going and popular with everyone … except, now I came to think of it, with Debo. She’d flown out to India for a visit just after we’d got engaged and immediately befriended one of the local stray dogs that attached itself to her. She’d decided to take it back home to Halfhidden with her, though of course, she couldn’t do that straight away, and I was left in charge of organising all the vet’s checks and inoculations and the rest of it, until I finally managed to get the dog onto a plane and off to her new life. (She was a sweet golden brown creature we called Rani, who was eventually adopted by the family who own the alpine plant nursery at the top of the village.)

Kieran hadn’t understood why Debo should make such a fuss about a dog, when there were children suffering so much poverty and hardship. In fact, he made no secret of it that he thought Debo’s Desperate Dog Refuge was a stupid idea altogether and a total waste of money.

‘Why take in dogs that aren’t suitable for rehoming?’ he’d asked, puzzled. ‘I mean, they must bite, or have some other antisocial behaviour, so putting them down would really be the only sensible option.’

So no, he and Debo were never going to see eye to eye. And though I could see his point about the children, animals deserve better treatment, too, and they were where Debo’s heart lay.

Apart from that one glitch over Debo’s Dogs, everything about our relationship had seemed entirely serendipitous, from our first meeting right up to the moment he introduced me to his parents for the first time …

I flipped over, took a deep breath and then swam underwater to the other end of the pool, where I let myself slowly float back to the surface, looking down into the opaque depths. I always think coming up is a bit like being born again. One minute it’s dark turquoise murk and the next – out you pop into bright light and a birdsong ‘Hallelujah’ chorus.

But this time, just as I was about to turn over, there was the sudden shock of an almighty splash right next to me and next minute I was wrenched out of the water, taking an involuntary gulp of it in the process, then upended inelegantly over someone’s arm. A hard hand thumped me between the shoulder blades and I choked and spluttered, then began to struggle.

‘You’re alive!’ said a deep voice, thankfully.

Turning me the right way up, the man waded to the side and laid me down on the stone edging, before climbing out.

I sat up, still coughing up water, and exclaimed indignantly, ‘Of course I’m alive, you idiot! I was swimming!’

‘My God,’ he said blankly, looking down at me from a great height, ‘I’ve rescued a pixie!’

His hair was darkly plastered to his head and his clothes dripping, but there was something strangely familiar about him. Then, when he reached down and hauled me to my feet, I found myself staring up, stunned, into a distinctive and unforgettable pair of eyes the soft green of sea-washed bottle glass, edged with smudgy black around the iris.

‘Harry?’ I whispered, my heart suddenly stopping, then restarting, but faster and more erratically.

It was he who broke the long eye contact, frowning and letting go of his grip on my arms so suddenly that I nearly sank down again.

‘I’m Rufus – Rufus Carlyle,’ he said, looking at me strangely.

And of course, after that first brief shock I could see he was a total stranger. He might be much the same age as Harry, his half-brother, would have been by now, but other than the eyes, his face was entirely different, all planes and angles, with a cleft chin and a Roman nose that wouldn’t have looked out of place under a plumed helmet on the obverse of an ancient coin.

In fact, it occurred to me that if he hadn’t been wearing clothes, he would have been a dead ringer for the fantasy Roman soldiers I’d often imagined sharing the pool with me.

I felt a slightly hysterical bubble of laughter trying to escape my lips and clamped them together, but I must have looked weird, because he asked tersely, ‘Are you all right?’

I nodded and then swallowed. ‘Yes. Or at least I was, until you started half-drowning me and bashing me around.’

‘Only because you were floating face down and looked drowned. What on earth were you doing in there, anyway? The place is closed to visitors until two. Did you climb over the fence?’

He looked me up and down and then added, before I’d had a chance to get a word in among all the questions, ‘Presumably not dressed like that. You looked so small in the pool I thought you were a child – but now, obviously not.’

I’d forgotten what I was wearing – or not wearing. My old and modest one-piece swimsuit appeared to have vanished in my absence, so I’d grabbed the first alternative that came to hand, the white bikini I’d bought years before when going on holiday to Corfu with Lulu and her parents. It hadn’t looked particularly skimpy when I was a skinny teenager, but I’d acquired a few curves since then and I have to admit it had been a struggle to fasten the top …

I crossed my arms over my chest defensively. ‘I’m local, so I’ve got a token to get through the turnstile and Tom doesn’t mind my having a swim whenever I want one.’

‘So, who are you?’

‘I’m Izzy,’ I said reluctantly. ‘Isabella Dane.’

He took a sudden step back, as if I’d offered him a poisoned chalice and suggested he take a tiny sip for his health’s sake.

‘You’re Izzy Dane? Dan Clew told me all about you, but he said you lived abroad.’

‘I bet he’s told you all about me,’ I said bitterly. ‘And I was living and working abroad, but now I’m back. For good. And we didn’t even know you existed till a few weeks ago. Debo thinks you’re probably an impostor,’ I added, even though I’d known straight away that he wasn’t.

‘Then she’s wrong,’ he snapped. ‘You think I wanted to discover the man I’d thought was my father all my life, wasn’t?’

We stared at each other, and then I shivered violently.

‘Presumably even pixies can get pneumonia,’ he said. ‘Hadn’t you better get changed? Or do you walk around the woods like that?’

I gave him a look and stalked off across the grass to the changing hut, slamming the door after me. The sun was well down now, one stray beam shining through the heart-shaped cut-out high in the door, like a celestial message. I only wished I knew what it was saying.

When I came out, towelling my urchin crop into an even more pixie state, he was still there, dripping gently onto the short turf.

He’d taken his fleecy blue sweatshirt off and was wringing it out, revealing a broad-shouldered frame tapering to a narrow waist. He wasn’t heavily muscled, but either he worked out, or wrestling heavy bits of garden antiquities about was more strenuous than I’d imagined.

With some difficulty, he put the garment back on again. ‘I’m not sure that’s an improvement,’ he said.

‘I thought you’d have gone home: you’re going to catch your death, hanging about in wet clothes,’ I said, and this actually seemed a good idea to me, so I didn’t offer him my towel to dry his hair with.

‘We’re presumably going the same way, since I expect you walked through the estate from the Lodge?’

‘It’s actually an ancient right of way,’ I said defensively, wondering how it was that he constantly made me feel in the wrong. ‘It goes all the way from Middlemoss, across the main road at the bottom of the hill, and then up behind the pub to here. Then it cuts through the corner of your estate and comes out by the Sweetwell gates. That’s why there’s that wooden door in the wall just there.’

He frowned. ‘Which door?’

‘You probably didn’t notice it because it’s painted the same green as the ivy. But most people just walk up to your drive and then go through the gates, because they’re always open.’

‘Dan said the path wasn’t a right of way above the Spring; it ends here.’

‘Dan says a lot of stupid things,’ I remarked, pushing through the turnstile and setting off home. He followed suit and then fell into step beside me, squelching.

‘So, it wasn’t true when he said you’d killed my half-brother, Harry, drink-driving?’

I stopped and glared at him. ‘I may have been driving, but I certainly wasn’t drunk – and it was an accident!’

‘Oh, well, that’s all right then,’ he said sarcastically.

‘Look, I don’t even remember what happened, because I had a head injury,’ I said angrily.

‘That’s lucky,’ he remarked. He seemed to be a very bitter and nasty person and I strongly felt I could do without his company.

‘Well, that’s good, coming from the son of the woman responsible for the death of my mother!’ I snapped furiously, without thinking what I was saying. ‘I bet she didn’t tell you that when she found out Debo was living at the Lodge.’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’ He gazed at me in astonishment. ‘My mother’s done a lot of crazy things, but at least, unlike you, she’s never killed anyone.’

My fists clenched and goodness knew what I would have said to him next if my attention hadn’t been distracted by a sudden loud crashing noise in the bushes. A vast, black hairy creature bounded out and threw itself at me and I fell flat on my back.

The monster landed on top of me with all four giant feet, and then started licking my face with a tongue like a sheet of wet sandpaper.

‘Get off, Babybelle!’ I ordered crossly, when I’d managed to gasp some air into my lungs, and tried to push her away, to no avail.

‘And you –’ I said to the man – ‘don’t just stand there, but this time do something useful, before she suffocates me. Haul her off!’

Obediently, he took hold of Belle’s collar and pulled. She resisted, but eventually gave in, so he must be pretty strong. I got up gingerly, picking leaves out of my hair. ‘I’m bruised all over, you stupid creature!’

‘Which one of us?’ he asked, though through lips so tight he could have started a new career as a ventriloquist.

‘Both,’ I said shortly, then threading the belt of my jeans through her collar, I hauled Belle off towards home. She followed me like a lamb … as did Rufus Carlyle – or so I thought, until I reached the drive and turned to find he’d vanished silently, presumably up the side path.

I tried not to wish pneumonia on him … just a teeny, but very snotty, running cold.

Judy was standing on the drive and looked relieved when she spotted us.

‘Oh, you’ve got her! Debo headed up towards the house, because Sandy saw her go that way.’

‘The daft creature suddenly jumped on me while I was walking back and knocked me flat.’

Babybelle took the opportunity to sit down, mostly on my feet, and pant in a pleased sort of way, as if she’d rescued me from mortal peril.

‘I’m bruised all over, though actually some of that was from being manhandled by Rufus Carlyle.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘He thought I was drowning in the pool and rescued me. He’s a horrible man, because when he found out who I was, he said Dan had told him I’d killed his half-brother, by driving while drunk.’

‘That Dan Clew is poison,’ Judy said. ‘I’ll give him a piece of my mind next time I see him.’

Debo appeared round the bend and we waved before heading for the Lodge, Babybelle plodding after us.

‘I told him that was rich, considering his mother had killed mine,’ I confessed to Judy. ‘I didn’t mean to, he just made me angry.’

‘Well … possibly that was slightly rash, considering he has the power to make our lives difficult if he wants to,’ she said, ‘but it was probably irresistible, given the provocation. And Debo’s just as likely to speak her mind when she finally meets him – you know what she’s like.’

And it was true: Debo was prone to saying exactly what was in her head, sometimes with disastrous consequences.

‘Let’s not tell Debo I’ve had a run-in with him just yet,’ I suggested. ‘She looks much more cheerful now.’

‘She is, because she’s decided that, having carefully not touched your money for years, it’s now perfectly OK to accept it as a loan. She’s convinced she’ll be able to pay you back, though you do realise that that’s unlikely, don’t you?’

‘Oh, yes, and I don’t want it back. I’ve put aside enough to get the business going.’

‘Don’t you think you should wait till you can see Kieran again before making a final decision? I mean, if he’s worth his salt and loves you, he’ll move north, and then you might want some of the money for a house deposit after all.’

‘No I won’t. I never agreed to use it to buy one in Oxford in the first place, and anyway, at the moment I’m not sure I even want to see him again, let alone marry him.’

‘He still hasn’t rung, or anything?’

‘No, not even a text message to say he’s back,’ I said shortly, and she let it lie.

Debo caught us up and after a tussle we got Belle back in her kennel, though I had a feeling she could get out again any time she liked, just by leaning on the fence till it gave way and then walking over it, much as she’d walked over me.

I hoped I hadn’t let Rufus Carlyle walk all over me too … but on the whole, I thought that honours were so far about even.