Chapter Thirty-Five
CHAPTER
THIRTY - FIVE
Although Felicity had told her mother she was going out with Oliver on Sunday morning, she left a note on the table anyway. She didn’t feel the need to mention what time she was leaving as 5 a.m. would seem like the middle of the night to her mother. Lucinda was staying overnight with friends but if she should happen to come home early (which was unlikely) she would see the note and not worry about her.
Several minutes before the appointed hour, Felicity took some deep breaths in the hall before opening the front door. She hoped she was wearing suitable clothes. These were her ancient, faded, favourite jeans, a couple of jumpers over a shirt, topped with the tweed jacket. She had her new wellingtons in a carrier bag. She’d bought them from a ship’s chandler that Miranda told her about; she knew she’d need them.
She saw Oliver standing under a street light from a little way away. She was early and she wondered what time he must have arrived. When she reached him, her heart was beating faster than usual, and it wasn’t because of her brisk walk.
He took hold of her and hugged her so hard she couldn’t breathe for a few moments.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I had to do that. You might not have wanted it though.’
‘It’s OK.’ Felicity could still hardly breathe but she was determined to stay calm. She didn’t want Oliver to know quite how much she’d missed him. Not yet.
‘I want to take you to a different part of the river. I’ve never been there but I’ve always wanted to go.’
‘Why haven’t you been, then?’
‘It’s hard to get to. It’s very well blocked off from the City. Not many people know about it. There’s a door that’s always locked. But today I have a key!’ He was obviously delighted.
‘How did you get it?’
‘I’ll tell you on the way. What’s in the bag?’
‘Wellington boots. Miranda told me where to get them.’
He squeezed her to his side for a minute. ‘Well done! Now come on, I’ve borrowed a car.’
He tucked his arm into hers and they set off towards Westminster. ‘It’s parked outside my friend’s house,’ he said. ‘I’ve got the key for that, too.’
‘I hope the owner knows you’re borrowing it,’ said Felicity.
‘What are you talking about? I’m not such a rapscallion that I’d steal a car!’ Oliver was horrified. ‘It’s an Alvis, and it’s his father’s pride and joy.’
‘My stepmother stole a car once.’
‘My goodness!’ Oliver appeared to be shocked.
‘It was an emergency,’ Felicity explained. ‘She gave it back.’
Oliver laughed. ‘One day you must tell me more about your stepmother. I’d love to meet her.’
For a moment, Felicity imagined Oliver in the chateau at home, sitting in the garden with her family at the long table under the trees. It would be covered in dishes, fruit and cheese being eaten with glasses of the light rosé wine they always drank, the dogs lying at their feet. He fitted into the idyll perfectly. She sighed; she knew they had a long way to go between them before that could happen. ‘Maybe one day you will. Tell me how you got the key to the door to the riverbank that not many people know about?’
‘Well, you know I’ve been looking after my friend who taught me all about mudlarking? Helped me identify my early finds. And did I mention he’s a jeweller?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, he’s been very ill lately. He hasn’t been able to do much. I’m staying with him and doing some labouring locally for the money. But I’m mostly there to keep an eye on him. I cook, keep the place clean, and make sure he gets to see his doctor when he needs to.’ He laughed. ‘And he talks to me about jewellery; its history; precious stones; how they’re cut. All that sort of thing.’
‘That sounds interesting.’
‘It’s fascinating. And being a jeweller would be a proper job.’ There was a tiny silence when Felicity imagined he was thinking about their row and the words she had thrown at him.
‘I love it, but that’s not the point right now. He decided to trust me with this key. I didn’t know he had it. Or how he got it. But he was right not to tell me, or I’d have been on at him all the time, trying to persuade him to give it to me. I can be very persistent.’
There was another tiny pause in which Felicity was aware that he was silently warning that he would not give up on her.
Eventually they turned into a quiet residential street. ‘Here’s where the car is,’ he said.
‘Good!’ she said. ‘I was beginning to think we were going to have to walk all the way to where the Thames runs into the sea.’
Oliver laughed softly. ‘Nothing of the kind! And here’s the car. It’s rather smart, isn’t it? It’s known as a four-seater drophead coupé.’
‘It looks like a sports car,’ said Felicity.
‘It has a model of a hare on the radiator. Can you see?’
‘Only you would borrow a car like this, Oliver,’ said Felicity. ‘Anyone else would borrow something much more ordinary.’
‘It’s just the people I know. Do you mind?’ He seemed concerned.
‘No, it’s fine,’ said Felicity. It was in Oliver’s nature to know people who were different. Did she want him to be ordinary?
‘Then let’s get in and get on.’
The elegant old car started the moment Oliver turned the key and they drove through the quiet streets in silence. Felicity’s mind was turning over and over. There was so much about Oliver to love aside from his good looks and charming ways. But she was afraid of his charm, his vulnerability to women who would always be drawn to him. If her mother was right, she could never trust him; he would always let himself be tempted.
They travelled east towards the City for about a quarter of an hour before he parked on the side of a road. ‘Here’s the place. I’ve been on this side of the wall so often, wondering how to get over it, or through it, somehow get to the river I knew was just the other side. And now we can go together. Let’s get our boots on. I’ve brought a torch for you.’
The key to the door was heavy to turn but eventually the door creaked open. The river flashed silver beyond, but it was dark. Oliver switched on his torch and although he’d given her a torch too, she was frightened of dropping it as she followed him down the flight of steps, so left it in her jacket pocket.
Beyond the steps was a cobbled area, slippery and shining after the high tide.
The first thing that hit her was the smell of the river that lay before them. Although at a little distance, it was still powerful. There was no sound. Felicity thought that this area of mud and shingle must be paradise for Oliver, it was nearly paradise for her too, but for the sense of foreboding that suddenly came over her.
Dawn seemed a long way off; they were in a no man’s land between one day and another. She turned on her torch, hoping to dispel this sudden feeling with the light.
Throughout the morning, there were finds aplenty. Oliver had a small, pointed trowel but it was his sharp eyes that produced treasure. He could recognise a handmade pin from its point and knew how to tease it to the surface. ‘I won’t keep it,’ he said. ‘I’ve dozens of pins, but they were valuable in their time. In Tudor times clothes were entirely secured by pins, hundreds of them, if you were rich.’ He grinned. ‘Pinners, as they were called, would sometimes share their workshops with jewellers. Maybe that’s why I like pins so much.’
‘I can’t imagine how you’d make a pin,’ said Felicity.
‘Children used to do it. They used animal bones with grooves to make them all the same length. We also find pin ties that used to hold bundles of pins together, for sale.’
‘You do know a lot about it!’ said Felicity.
‘Sorry! I was probably being boring.’
‘Not at all,’ said Felicity, meaning it.
Oliver nodded and moved away, his eye caught by something else glistening in the light of his torch.
Other small objects went into the bag that hung at his waist. A child’s leather shoe which could have been from Tudor times; a tile; a pottery marmalade jar with Frank Cooper on the side. ‘This will look lovely when it’s washed,’ Oliver said, adding it to his bag.
He picked up a broken brooch. ‘I know how to mend this now. My soldering is really good, Rod says. I’ll find some stones and put them in the gaps.’ Oliver peered at the brooch more closely, holding his torch close to it. ‘I think the stones were prised out and then the brooch disposed of in the river. It’s early. It could even be Tudor. Can’t be sure, of course.’
Felicity began to be swept up in Oliver’s fascination, her eyes fixed on the ground, following him with her torch. She found a meat paste jar, its lid intact. ‘I know it’s nothing to you,’ she said to Oliver, ‘but I’m thrilled!’
‘I’m thrilled that you’re thrilled,’ said Oliver. Their eyes locked together and for a moment, Felicity thought he was going to kiss her. But he obviously thought better of it and he turned away. ‘Let’s keep going. I may never be able to come here again.’
Sometime later, Felicity was suddenly aware that the ground, which had been firm and stony, had become sticky with mud. The sky was brightening and they’d travelled quite a way from where they’d started. Oliver stopped and looked around. ‘No need to panic,’ he said, ‘but we need to get out of here and up the bank. And quickly.’
Felicity realised water was starting to lap at her boots. Oliver took her hand. ‘Come on. Follow me.’
She did as she was told, but she couldn’t move quickly because the mud was hard to wade through, and then it started to run over the top of her boots. She was cold and soon terrified. Every time she looked at her progress she saw the river was nearer and she understood in despair that before long they would be surrounded by water, even though they were still quite a way from the steps.
Felicity’s boots became firmly stuck in mud.
‘Leave them,’ Oliver shouted, pulling her out of her boots and dragging her behind him in her socks. The feeling of mud oozing between her toes as she floundered along was horrible. She could hardly move her legs against the pull of the tide dragging her back into its depths.
By now the water had reached her waist and she was convinced they were both about to drown. There was a moment when she stumbled over a rock and fell and was completely submerged. But then Oliver grabbed at whichever part of her he could and pulled her up. He kept his arm firmly around her.
Then, at last, he took her hands and put them round the rungs of an iron ladder that was fixed vertically against the wall. Felicity looked up. It seemed to stretch forever upwards. Her fingers were frozen and she could hardly get a grip. She was so tired, her body seemed weighted and the fight against gravity seemed too much.
Then Oliver was behind her, pushing her, urging her on, sometimes pulling her frozen fingers off one rung and on to the next. Eventually the ladder stopped and they were lying on the ground, soaked, shivering so hard from the cold they could hardly move. They were next to a wharf, she realised, and she could hear traffic beyond the wall that was ahead of them.
‘We nearly drowned,’ said Felicity when she could speak.
‘I know,’ said Oliver. ‘And it was all my fault.’
They made their way through to the street where luckily Oliver found his bearings. ‘The car is this way,’ he said. ‘Come on.’
They walked arm in arm, not as lovers but as people supporting each other after a crisis. At last they found the Alvis.
Felicity was shivering so hard, partly from cold and partly from shock, that she couldn’t speak. She wouldn’t have known what to say anyway.
Oliver half lifted her into the front seat and closed the door. For some reason the car didn’t start immediately. It was an old car, Felicity remembered as Oliver turned the key time and time again, hoping for a spark. She felt she’d never be warm or safe, and realised tears were pouring down her cheeks.
Then Oliver pulled out a knob before he turned the key and pumped his foot up and down on a pedal, muttering and cursing under his breath. At last the engine turned over and they were off.
‘My friend said I had to give the car back to him in the same state as it was when I borrowed it. I just hope I can get all the mud out of it.’
Felicity didn’t reply. She just stared out of the window, wondering if she would ever be happy again.