Chapter 14 #2
‘They get lost. You need a map and compass, even if you’re familiar with the landscape.’
She could smell sheep dung, wet peat, and the sweet traces of woodsmoke, but more than that she could smell and feel the wilderness coursing through her veins in an almost elemental way.
Thrilled by it, she turned abruptly, ready to touch him, but he had already moved on and was standing looking the other way.
She glanced again at the moor and at the luminous quality of the air. She really didn’t want to leave Devon.
‘In the summer,’ he said, interrupting her thoughts, ‘it’s all about the heather, and earlier in the year the amazing scent of gorse, a bit like coconut and marzipan mixed together especially when it’s warm.’
‘I read somewhere that people believed witches hid in gorse bushes.’
He laughed. ‘Only witches could survive the spikes. I used to come looking for witches when I was a boy.
‘Ever find one?’
He grinned. ‘What do you think?’
There was a momentary silence. Then he glanced at his watch. ‘How about a spot of lunch before we head back? I know a pretty decent hotel.’
She nodded as they walked back to where he’d parked.
‘So,’ he said, as they stood before the car. Then he jammed his hands into his pockets, looked down, and stubbed his heel into the ground. ‘Did you hear from your mother while I was away?’
She shook her head and there was a short pause before she spoke.
‘Jack, you never speak about your mother.’
He looked away and then back at her. ‘I had a twin brother. He died at birth, and it made Mum anxious. But, like you, she was a great baker. I remember that.’
‘How did she die?’
‘Peritonitis.’
He glanced up at the sky and changed the subject. ‘The clouds are rolling in.’
‘I’m sorry about your mother, and your twin,’ she said.
‘All in the past.’ He came closer. ‘Gladys says the kittens are ready to leave the mother cat. She has a sweet little ginger one marked out for you. Promise me you’ll stay.’
She glanced away and then back at him.
‘Jack,’ she said, recalling what Belinda had said. ‘Who is Charlie?’
He lifted his hand and brushed the hair from her eyes, the movement so tender and caring it caught at her heart.
‘It really does feels wild here, doesn’t it?’ he said, ignoring her question.
But she thought it was more than wild. It felt savage and would be dreadfully harsh under a leaden wintery sky.
‘I come here for the emptiness of the moor,’ he said. ‘And the feeling that there’s more to life than we allow ourselves to acknowledge.’
She nodded and there was a long silence.
She watched a bird, a thrush maybe, hopping just a foot away from Jack, then taking flight and heading for a hawthorn bush.
She stood very still, expecting him to answer her question, when a huge flock of speckled gold-and-black birds flew into sight and settled further away on the moor.
He spoke quietly, almost to himself. ‘Golden plovers,’ he said.
‘They’ll be moving to the lowlands any day now. ’
Then he turned to her, and as the moments slid past slowly, she noticed the faint lines around his eyes deepen.
‘Charlie was my son, Florence,’ he finally said. ‘My little boy.’
The indescribably sad look on his face took her breath away. A painting of a Madonna and child came into her head as she stifled her shock. They never painted the fathers, did they? And yet looking at Jack the grief he had kept hidden was now plain to see.
‘Once we knew she was pregnant, Belinda and I tried to patch things up as best we could.’ He stopped to look up at the sky then back at her. ‘Florence, I’d have died for that little boy. But … well it wasn’t me who died.’
She took a long silent breath, dreading hearing what terrible thing had happened to his son.
He didn’t speak at first but turned away and continued walking, but more slowly now.
Then, speaking in a detached voice, he said, ‘I was away, and Belinda was in London, already smoking and drinking too much. One night, during what she thought was a lull in the bombing in September 1940, she ran out of cigarettes. Charlie was asleep so she left him and ran to Hector’s house just around the corner, during the blackout.
He and Belinda had been seeing each other again.
She swears she wasn’t gone for long, and Hector says it’s true, but while she was out more bombs fell. ’
Florence clasped a hand over her mouth.
‘When one of them hit the apartment building, Charlie was killed outright. He would have known nothing about it.’
Florence couldn’t even swallow for the tension in her throat.
‘He was four years old,’ Jack said, now with a tremor in his voice. ‘Four.’
‘I—’
‘You don’t have to say anything. The thing is, when the war began, I pleaded with Belinda to come down to Devon with him. It was so much safer here, but she refused point blank.’
‘I don’t think anyone could make Belinda do something she didn’t want to do.’
He sighed. ‘Maybe, but I will never forgive myself.’
‘Or her?’
‘Quite.’
‘I’m so sorry about your little boy. You must … well, I can’t even imagine how awful it must have been.’
He nodded slowly but didn’t meet her eyes.
‘Still is really,’ he said. ‘At times. But life goes on. And I don’t even know if that’s good or bad.’
She almost didn’t dare to speak. After an appalling loss like this, well … it was no wonder he hadn’t wanted to tell her or anyone else either.
‘What happened to Charlie is why you kept things close to your chest in France.’
‘It was easier in France. And don’t forget I was there as part of the SOE.’
They walked on in silence for a little while, Florence staring at the ground, her head and heart bursting with anguish for Jack. She wanted to reach out and help him. Somehow. But maybe this was not the time.
‘After Charlie died this is where I used to come,’ he said. ‘It helped.’
‘I’m glad.’
He smiled and held out his hand. And just for a second there was that wonderfully deep moment of connection between them again. ‘The plovers have gone,’ he said, looking up at the sky again.
And then he pulled his hand away.