The Fleethaven Trilogy (125 page)

The tractor was stationary and he was not sitting on the
seat but standing on the ground, leaning against the huge
wheel, bending over slightly as if he had a pain somewhere.

‘Grandpa? Grandpa, what is it?’

As he heard her voice, he straightened up and she saw
the sweat glistening on his forehead.

‘Nothing, lass. Just a bit of indigestion. I must have
eaten my sandwiches your grannie packed up for me a bit
too quick.’

Ella glanced to her left. Only a square of uncut grass in
the very centre of the field remained. ‘You go on back to
the house, Grandpa. I can finish this field on my own.’

‘Oh no, lass . . .’

‘Go on, Grandpa.’ She gave him a gentle little push. ‘Do
as I say.’

He straightened up and stretched and the smile crinkled
his eyes, the lines deeply etched into his brown face. ‘You
sound just like your grannie.’

‘Thank you very much!’ Ella said in mock dismay, but
she was laughing as she said it.

As she reached for the starting handle and inserted it
into the front of the tractor, she glanced up to watch her
grandfather crossing the field towards the gate. Her hand
rested on the cool metal of the handle as she noticed with
a shock how he seemed to be hobbling, his tall frame
stooping. She sighed heavily. It was only the beginning of
the harvesting season; hay was the first crop to be brought
in, with the corn in a month or two’s time.

Watching him, Ella felt her summer holidays slipping
away from her. There would be no point in asking to be
allowed to go to Aunty Peggy’s in Lincoln; that she was
needed to help this year was only too obvious even without
her grandmother saying so.

Late into the summer evening as the sun slipped down
in the western sky casting long shadows across the field,
Ella drove the tractor up and down the field, the square of
whispering grass diminishing with each swath cut.

Above the noise of the tractor, she didn’t hear Rob until
she glanced back at the reaper and saw him following it.
He waved his arms and she pressed down the clutch and
slipped the engine out of gear. She jumped down and went
towards him.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Come to see if you need a hand. Only I daren’t get in
front to catch ya eye. Ya might have run me down.’ His
white teeth shone through the gathering dusk as he
grinned. ‘I dun’t trust women drivers, not even in a field.’

She slapped his arm and he reached out with his long
arms and tickled her just under her ribs. She laughed and
squirmed away, then her expression sobered. ‘Have you
been to the house? Did you see Grandpa?’

‘Yeah. Why?’ His tone was puzzled.

‘I sent him in to rest. He looked harrowed out.’

‘’Arrered out! My word, Townie, you’re even starting
to sound like a country girl now,’ he teased, then, more
seriously, he added, ‘He seemed all right. He was seeing to
the milking.’

Ella made a noise just like her grandmother’s click of
exasperation. ‘I might have known. Where’s Gran? Isn’t
she making him rest?’

‘Didn’t see her.’

‘Oh,’ Ella said, then shrugged and turned away to climb
back on to the tractor. ‘Well, I’d better get on. If she
catches me standing talking to you with the engine still
running, I’ll be in for it,’ and added to herself as she
increased the revs on the engine, ‘yet again.’

Esther was waiting for her in the yard when Ella drove
the tractor through the gate, with Rob perched to one side
of her on the mudguard over the huge back wheel. She had
unhooked the reaper and left it in the field ready for the
following day when the adjacent field would be cut, but
Jonathan liked the tractor to be brought back to the yard
each night and put under cover in the open-sided barn.

As she walked towards her grandmother, with Rob
following, she was struck suddenly by the older woman’s
stillness. Though she could not see Esther’s face in the
gathering dusk, Ella was filled with a sudden fear.

‘What is it, Gran?’ Something was wrong, she could
sense it. Her heart began to thump painfully. ‘Grandpa?
Oh, it’s not Grandpa?’

‘No – no,’ Esther said swiftly, and reached out her hand
towards Ella. ‘Lass – I’m sorry. It’s ya cat, Tibby. Ya
grandpa found him when he was takin’ the cows back to
the field. In the road. He – he’d been knocked down.’

Ella drew in a swift breath. ‘Oh no!’ Her lovely cat; the
tiny kitten that Rob had given her to comfort her in the
loss of her mother over six years ago now; the young cat
who’d crept under the covers on her bed and nestled
against her cold feet, who jumped into her lap, purring and
kneading his paws against her legs, and then the grown
cat, round and contented, purring a greeting every time he
saw her. ‘Is he . . . ?’

‘No, he’s not dead, but he’s got a nasty bump on his
head and he’s hurt here.’ She touched her own stomach.
‘Ya grandpa thinks mebbe . . .’

First hope, and then dreadful fear, shot through Ella.
‘What?’

Her grandmother sighed. ‘Perhaps it would be kindest
if—’

‘No! You’re not drowning him in the water butt. Not
Tibby. I won’t let you.’ Ella stared at her grandmother, but
in the moment of sudden terror for her pet, she failed to
hear the concern in her grandmother’s voice, the tenderness.
‘Lass, the cat’s unconscious. He’s badly injured,
maybe bleeding inside. We must do what is best.’

I mustn’t cry, Ella told herself, at least not in front of
her. Esther would despise sentiment over a cat. If she didn’t
cry at her own daughter’s funeral then . . .

Drawing in a deep, shuddering breath, Ella clenched her
jaw, and, her voice unnaturally high-pitched, saying, ‘Oh
well, Gran, it’s only an
animal
, isn’t it? And a useless, lazy
one at that.’

Then the girl turned and ran round the corner of the
house, through the orchard towards the hole in the hedge.
Squeezing through, she ran pell-mell into the field,
tears blinding her now, oblivious to the fact that she
was trampling down the ripening wheat. She stumbled,
tripped and fell. She gave a groan of anguish, screwed up
her face, closed her eyes and gave way to a paroxysm of
weeping that had as much to do with six long years of loss
as with the anguish over her pet, beloved though the cat
was.

She must have lain there for a long time, for when at
last she rolled over and sat up, the dusk had deepened into
darkness and she saw the beam from a torch wavering a
few yards from her.

‘Ella? Ella, where are you?’

She sniffled and tried to rub away the tears with the
back of her hand. ‘Here – over here.’

The corn whispered as he pushed his way through.
Flashing the beam over her just once, he tactfully turned it
away and sat down beside her, the night enveloping them
in its soft blackness. Without any trace of embarrassment
the young man put his arm about her shoulders and hugged
her to him.

‘Ya shouldn’t have said that to ya gran,’ Rob said
gently. ‘She was upset at having to tell ya.’

‘She’s going to – to kill him.’

‘No, she’s not.’

She sniffed. ‘What? But she said . . .’

‘After you rushed off, we went and looked at Tibby
again and I said I’d take him to me dad. You know how
good he is with animals?’

‘And she – she agreed?’

‘Course she did.’

‘Well, she would, wouldn’t she, if it was
you
doing the
asking?’

‘Now don’t be like that, Ella.’

‘What did your dad say?’

‘He reckons Tibby’s stomach is very badly bruised, but
there doesn’t seem to be anything broken.’

‘Really? Then Tibby’s going to be all right?’

‘Well,’ he said slowly, not wanting to promise something
that might not, in the end, happen, ‘he got a bump
on the head too, but me dad bathed it and its only a small
cut. He’s started to come round, but he’s a bit dopey.
You’d better come and have a look at him.’

She was scrambling to her feet. ‘Where is he?’

‘At our place. Me mam’s found an old dog basket you
can have. Come on, we’ll go and fetch him home.’

‘I’ll stay up all night with him in the barn,’ she said
deter minedly, ‘whatever Gran says.’

As they went back to the edge of the field and walked
around it towards Rookery Farm, through the stillness of
the night, when sounds seemed to echo so plainly for some
distance, they heard the sound of shouting and high-pitched
laughter coming from the direction of the Point.
Then the noise of several motorbike engines being started
rent the air.

‘Just listen to them fools revving their engines,’ Rob
muttered in disgust. ‘They’ll be using the Hump as a ramp
and flying over it. Daft beggars!’

‘Maybe they’re the ones that – that knocked Tibby
over.’

‘Probably,’ Rob said, resentfully, then he sighed and
added, ‘Though, to be fair, it could have been anyone
coming down the lane. He’s always hunting on the sandhills,
isn’t he? It could even have been me.’

‘You don’t go as fast as that mad lot.’

They listened to the noise of the bikes roaring up the
lane towards the town, growing fainter and fainter.

‘Well, I’ve got to admit it, we go at a fair old lick when
we get on the straight, don’t we?’

He walked all the way back with her to Brumbys’ Farm
and watched as she settled the basket into the mound of
straw in the barn and sat down beside it, gently stroking
Tibby’s back. The cat opened one eye in a tiny slit and,
very softly, there came a few purrs.

Bending over the basket, Ella felt her nose tickle and
she sneezed.

Rob laughed. ‘That’ll be the dog hairs. It’s an odd
allergy you’ve got, ain’t it?’

‘Well, for once, I don’t mind putting up with it, as long
as Tibby gets better.’

The barn door squeaked open and Esther was standing
there holding a lantern high. ‘There you are. How is he?’

Rob straightened up and moved towards her. ‘Dad
reckons he’ll be okay.’

Esther nodded and moved closer, holding the light so
she could look at the injured animal.

Ella opened her mouth to tell her grandmother she
would be staying with Tibby all night, but before she could
do so, Esther said quietly, ‘Ya can tek the basket up to ya
bedroom, just till he’s on the mend.’ She turned away
towards the door, saying over her shoulder, ‘But only till
then, mind.’

Ella stared after her, watching the swaying light move
across the yard. She shook her head and murmured, ‘If I
live to be a hundred, I’ll never understand that woman.’

Rob squeezed her shoulder and said, ‘I keep telling you,
she’s all right, is your gran.’ As he went towards the door,
he added, ‘I’ll come over tomorrow and give you a hand to
cut yon field.’

She had not expected him to appear the following morning,
but when she went out into the yard he was already there
with her grandfather, their heads bent together over the
engine of the tractor. At the sound of her feet on the
cinders in the yard, he glanced up and grinned at her, but
as she drew closer she could see his concern for her in his
brown eyes.

‘Now, then? How is he?’

Her smile was broad. ‘A bit better. He’s had a tiny drop
of milk and he seems content to lie quietly, as if he knows
he ought to.’

‘Sensible cat.’

‘So? Who’s driving?’

Rob pulled a face. ‘I dun’t reckon anyone is yet. We
can’t get her started.’

‘I reckon it’s the fuel pump.’ Jonathan raised his head.
‘I’ll have to go into town and see if any of the local garages
have a spare.’

‘I’ll go on me bike, Mester, if ya like.’

‘Are you sure, lad? I mean, doesn’t your father need
your help today? You usually help him on a Saturday,
don’t you?’

‘Oh yes, but I asked him last night if I could give Ella a
hand today, so . . .’ he grinned cheekily, stood back from
the tractor and made an exaggerated, courtly bow towards
her, ‘I’m at your service, m’lady.’

Jonathan gave a deep chuckle. ‘Go on with you, then.
And take Ella with you, now you’re
legally
permitted to
carry a passenger,’ he added pointedly.

The two youngsters glanced at each other and smiled,
knowing Jonathan had guessed just how often they had
broken the law on the quiet back lanes before Rob had
passed his test.

‘What about Gran?’ Ella asked.

He waved his hand at them both, urging them to go.
‘I’ll see to your gran. Off you go.’

Sitting on the pillion of Rob’s bike, her arms tightly
around his waist, Ella pressed her body close to the arch of
his back. Through the thin summer shirt he wore, she
could feel every rippling movement of his muscles, feel the
warmth of him.

If only, she thought suddenly, involuntarily tightening
her arms about him, he would love me as I love him. Had
she always loved him, she wondered. Ever since she had
first met him? Even as a child? Or was it only now that she
had realized, with a jolt, how she felt about Rob Eland?

For the rest of the day, when they returned from the
town and the new part had been fitted to the Ferguson and
Rob worked with her in the meadow cutting the grass, Ella
couldn’t help looking at him differently. She was quiet and
guessed Rob would think she was thinking about her pet,
and whilst this was, in part, the truth, it was not the sole
reason for her reflective mood.

She wasn’t sure whether the realization of her feelings
for him brought her happiness or sadness. The knowledge
that she loved him seemed always to have been there and
yet only now did she formulate it into words in her own
mind. It was a good feeling, to love someone like Rob, yet
there was a tinge of sadness in facing the realization that it
was unlikely he would ever love her in the same way. To
him, she was the little orphan girl he had protected and
taught the ways of the countryside; the ‘Townie’ he teased,
yet never cruelly. She was his friend; that much she knew.