A Spell of Swallows Read online

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  Contents

  Sarah Harrison

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Copyright

  Sarah Harrison

  Sarah Harrison is the bestselling author of more than twenty-five books. She is best known for her adult fiction, which has included commercial blockbusters such as The Flowers of the Field and A Flower That’s Free (both now re-released, along with the third part of the trilogy, The Wildflower Path). She has also written children’s books and the successful writer’s guide How to Write a Blockbuster, as well as numerous short stories and articles.

  Sarah is an experienced speaker and broadcaster, who has taught creative writing both here in the UK and on residential courses in Italy. She has been a judge for literary and public-speaking competitions, and is also an entertainer – her three-woman cabaret group, Pulsatillas!, has an enthusiastic and ever-growing following.

  Sarah Harrison

  A SPELL OF

  SWALLOWS

  Chapter One

  The girl, carrying the cake wrapped in a cloth, walked along the river bank towards the ford. She walked briskly, partly because in April it was still fresh at this time in the morning, but mainly because this was one of only six days off in the year and she wanted to make the most of it. Eaden Place had changed in many ways, but some of the old traditions were kept up. The girl’s mother had worked at the house twenty-five years ago, in the eighteen-nineties, and had always been given a simnel cake, made by cook, to take home at Eastertime: she said that judging by last year’s cake standards in the big kitchen had slipped, but the cake had disappeared anyway.

  The girl could have continued to follow the river round the side of the hill and had an easy, if slightly longer, walk home. But being young and strong, and in a hurry, she had decided to wade across and take the short cut over Fort Hill. On the other side she would turn south, and it was then only a mile and a half to her parents’ small farm.

  The water chuckled along next to her, going the same way. She whispered to herself:Watch out for the swallows! Her great-grandmother used to say that to her when she was off to play by the river as a child, because there was some old wives’ tale about the swallows spending the winter under water, and flying out in the spring. She’d known even then that it was nonsense, that the swallows flew south, but as the river widened towards the ford, which was now in sight, she found herself imagining what that would look like: all the swallows bursting from the surface with the water shooting off their feathers—

  She stopped. Beneath her straw hat, her hair stirred with apprehension. On the far side, in the deeper part of the river where the trout lurked in green shadows under the bank, the surface of the water was troubled. It began to churn, a small whirlpool formed, bubbles spun and burst—and then something sleek and dark broke the surface. Could it be? The girl started to move away, backwards at first, because she didn’t want to take her eyes off whatever it was.

  And then—oh my good God!—now she could see, and she let out a shriek, turned tail and ran hell for leather along the track. She dropped the cake, damn! but never mind that, and never mind the short cut, wild horses wouldn’t have dragged her over the other side now; all she wanted was to put as much distance as possible between her and that thing from beneath the water.

  As Ashe emerged, he saw there was a girl on the far bank, watching him, moving backwards with a bundle clutched to her chest, her eyes like organ stops. The next moment she screamed and fled, arms pumping and feet flying, even dropping her bundle in her haste to get away.

  Not to add to her terror, he stood still until she was out of sight. Then he waded across, retrieved the bundle—something round and solid tied up in a kitchen cloth—and returned to where his clothes and haversack lay beneath the trees. Once he’d dried himself as thoroughly as possible on his neckerchief he dressed with care and put on his boots, and a tie. The damp neckerchief he folded and put in his pocket. Only then did he sit down and undo the bundle, and his eyes closed as he inhaled the sweet, spicy smell of fruit cake and almonds.

  Ashe was very hungry. He’d taken the milk train as far as he could reasonably afford, and been walking for three hours since. He pulled the cake apart with both hands as if it had been a bread roll, and ate about a quarter of it right off before wrapping the rest up again, and even that was a struggle. Full, but somewhat disgusted with himself, he stood up, dusted off the crumbs and wiped his sticky mouth and hands on the damp neckerchief.

  What with his cold river-bath, the sun climbing in the sky and the warm weight of cake inside him Ashe felt drowsy, and lay down with his head on his haversack, to catch some sleep. Which he did, like a baby.

  An hour later he set off again. His bag wasn’t full and he’d managed to cram in the cake—an unlooked-for bonus—with his few other possessions. It was a morning of shining, new-minted perfection, such as you only got in England, early in the year. Ashe’s step was light; he felt full of walking, he could have walked to Land’s End and probably on the water after that. This last idea amused him and he began at first to hum, then to sing out loud, an obscene army song that silenced the carolling birds and sent several small animals scurrying for cover.

  It wasn’t long before he emerged from the woods to find himself on a gentle green hillside; a dozen black and white cows lifted their heads and gazed at him, jaws rotating. Away to his left a road wound up the southern slope of the hill and disappeared into the trees. A couple of hundred yards below him was a hedgerow frothing with flowering blackthorn amongst which, about halfway along, he could see a stile. On the far side of the stile lay a shaggy, ungrazed hay meadow, its lush spring growth sparked with early wild flowers, yellow, blue and white; off to right and left, rich brown plough dusted with the brilliant green of new crops. In the gentle valley he noted exactly what he was looking for: the quiet gathering of cottages and larger houses that comprised the village of Eadenford, cradled in the curve of the river. From its centre rose a church tower shaped like a dunce’s cap, topped with a cockerel weathervane.

  Ashe paused to survey the scene: picturesque, peaceful, unsuspecting, a village populated by nice, quiet people who kept themselves to themselves and hung on tight to their secrets. People who would want to keep it that way. Rich pickings: easy money.

  Yes, he said to himself. This’ll do.

  He began to make his way down the slope, fastidiously avoiding the cowpats. In the distance, someone was shooting rabbits and the crack of the gun in the still blue air made him twitch. When he drew level with the staring cows he made a sudden leap towards them, teeth bared and snarling, brandishing his haversack overhead, and they trotted away, jostling each other in their anxiety to escape, their swollen early-morning udders swinging and bouncing.

  Ashe re
ached the stile, dropped his bag on the other side, and climbed over after it. Hoisting it over his shoulder he went on his way towards the village, his long measured strides thrashing the meadow grass.

  The Reverend Saxon Mariner, still lying inside his wife, could see the whimsical church tower of St Catherine’s through the window. The weathervane might have been drawn with pen and ink on the pale blue sky. He savoured the contrast—Vivien’s body beneath him, soft, sweet and white, and the sharp black image of the strutting cockerel—and felt himself stiffen a little in response. Vivien nuzzled her mouth against his chest; she called it ‘kissing his heart’. He put his arms round her and rolled on to his side so that they were facing one another. Her eyes were still closed, but she put up a hand and stroked his cheek.

  It was a rare day on which they did not spend some time in the bedroom. The cook-housekeeper, Hilda, if her employers were not in any of the downstairs rooms, knew better than to come looking for them. Nothing short of fire, flood or invasion by a foreign power would have been accounted sufficient reason. She was a stolid, childless woman who had lost her husband in the South African war, and was not a gossip. Her lack of interest in matters marital was watertight, except insofar as they directly affected her duties—mealtimes, visitors and so on—and in those departments she had no cause for complaint; the Mariners were exemplary employers.

  Slowly, Saxon withdrew from his wife; her eyes opened. He got out of bed, leaving her lying in exactly the same position, like the sloughed skin of a snake. Only her eyes, a shortsighted speedwell blue, followed him as he went into his dressing room and closed the door.

  When he’d gone, Vivien closed her eyes once more. These moments of separation after lovemaking served as a kind of mental antechamber, a period in which each of them recalibrated and returned to their other, outward selves. She thought about her husband in that little room which was a foreign land to her, and one with closed borders. When he emerged, everything would be different. One of the questions which exercised Vivien was which married state was the true one: that which they had just experienced or the one they were now entering? They moved between the two so often, and on each occasion the transformation was complete. Though she could not be absolutely sure (she had no woman friend with whom she was intimate enough to discuss such things) she suspected that she and Saxon were unusual, and that most other couples, while they might or might not enjoy as much passion, had greater intimacy, an everyday sharing of thoughts and jokes and gossip and endearments.

  She might have liked that. There was a fluidity in such relationships, a sense of partnership . . . Vivien turned on to her other side and gazed out of the window. On the other hand theirs was a partnership, albeit of a different kind. They may not in reality have been equals, but they aspired to equality. They respected one another. Her role in running the house and dealing with parishioners was accorded as much weight and value as Saxon’s ministry to the people of Eadenford, and his poetry, which she could not always fully grasp but which she believed, in spite or because of this, to be good. He never invited her to read his work, but neither did he prevent her, and when she did look at it he always asked her opinion and listened with serious attention. She was neither patronised nor criticised. For a country vicar’s wife, she had considerable freedom.

  As she got out of bed and began to dress, it did not occur to Vivien that it was the half-expectation of patronage and criticism which made her appreciate their absence.

  Saxon stood in front of the mirror on his chest of drawers, brushing his hair with ivory-backed brushes. He heard his wife moving about in the bedroom and as always allowed her time to put her clothes on before himself emerging. His dressing room had a door on to the landing as well as one into the bedroom, and contained an austere camp bed for those nights when he worked late, was out on parish business, or when either one of them was ill and wanted peace and quiet. The room was monastic, its walls painted a dark cream, the floor of bare boards, with a small rag rug by the bed. A washbasin stood in one corner. The only decorations were Saxon’s Hogarth and Beardsley prints, and his green brocade dressing gown hanging on the back of the door.

  He turned his head this way and that, touching the brushes lightly to the odd stray hair. He liked a neat head, inside and out. When he was satisfied, he took his dove-grey tweed jacket from its hanger and shrugged it on over his black clerical shirt. From habit, he spread his hands and examined the backs, then the palms. Immaculate hands were important for a priest. They were the bearers of blessings, baptismal water, bridal rings, the body and blood of Christ . . . the focus of so much faith and hope. Taking a last look in the mirror, he admitted a little vanity. There was nothing the matter with taking a pride in one’s appearance. If he had a criticism of his wife it was that she, who had so many natural advantages, cared very little for presentation. She was not interested in clothes, and her exceptionally pretty brown hair, was generally untidy and without style. She stumped about the garden—and the village—in boots and a smock, to the occasional dismay of Saxon, who couldn’t help picturing the splendour of a soignée Vivien. And yet no one could have called his wife frumpy. She looked lovely in whatever she wore, and he was sufficiently observant to realise that he was not the only one who thought so.

  His own reflection showed a tall, slim man with the colouring of a fox, and the face of one, too—narrow, the eyes a little close together on either side of a long nose, mouth thin-lipped but wide; a face that was sharp, alert, self-possessed and (something Saxon didn’t himself see) a little predatory.

  Vivien, now dressed, and with her glasses on, was pushing a pin into her hair and had another in her mouth when her husband came back into the bedroom.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘On with the dance.’

  Round the pin, she answered: ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

  ‘Take your time, my dear.’

  This exchange, or something like it, was their usual one at these moments. Even after nearly five years of marriage, his telling her to take her time still had the effect of making her ever so slightly flustered. She didn’t want to ‘take time’. After all, what with? She couldn’t help inferring that he wanted her to be engaged in a more elaborate toilette—one involving make-up, and petticoats and a light but sophisticated French scent.

  She pushed her feet into her black, thick-soled shoes. Then she opened wide the window. A rustle, and a darting movement just above her head, reminded her that the first swallows had returned, bearing a flicker of southern sun on their wings. Each year she took pleasure in them: their homing instinct, their loyalty, the thought that in whatever Mediterranean place they had spent the winter the eaves of this grey English house had remained as a single, fine, background note, calling them home.

  She braced her hands on the sill and leaned out, like a figurehead on the prow of a ship. At this time of the year, before the leaves on the churchyard trees had grown too thick, you could still just see the green hill to the east of the village. It put her in mind of the arched neck of a horse, with a dark mane of trees along the top of the ridge.

  It was not yet nine o’clock and the sun struck the top of the church tower, turning the slates to silver. Vivien had an ambivalent relationship with St Catherine’s. She was not a true Christian in the doctrinal sense; there was much she did not and could not believe though she stood there on Sundays and mouthed the creed for Saxon’s sake. On the other hand she was fond of the building itself, the core of which had stood on this spot for nearly six hundred years and which was Saxon’s place of work and their livelihood. She was not the only one; others felt the same. Over the past four years people had ‘turned to the church’ in a quite literal sense, wanting to find there some reassurance in fear and comfort in loss. So many families had lost their men—excited young men, proud, stubborn older ones, baby-soft boys whose lies were greedily accepted, heroes, opportunists, cowards, fools, leaders and foot-draggers. They had set out as individuals, distinct and particular, and become T
he Fallen, a human mulch for other Springs, in other places. The memorial was still with the monumental mason in the local market town of Bridgeford, (just in case—one lad was still in hospital in London, very poorly), but it would be put in place soon, and a service of dedication held in honour of those it commemorated.

  With these thoughts running through her head it wasn’t surprising that Vivien was startled to see a man standing down in the churchyard with a haversack on the ground next to him. Could this be one of those sons of Eadenford, a late returner from the war? There was something unusually assured in his manner. He was smartly dressed, in a dark jacket, collar and tie, and was gazing about him, feet apart and hands in pockets, like a prospective buyer weighing up a purchase. She took a small step back, and he must have noticed the movement because he lifted his head and looked directly up at her. Embarrassed, she retreated swiftly from the window, but not before she had registered something very strange about his face.

  Susan Clay was the oldest child in her family, but also in a way the youngest, because she was simple. At thirty-two Susan had the mind of a seven-year-old. Her face was young, too, round and bland, and her body had matured without that tingle of womanly awareness, so it was lumpy and slack. She liked decoration as a little girl does, and her thin hair bristled with bows and colourful tin slides which she put in herself, carefully, with her chubby fingers. She hadn’t a mean bone in her body, everyone liked her. The Clays were nice people; Ted, the blacksmith, had added bicycle and even car repairs to his repertoire; not many in the village at present, but they would come. His wife, Edith, was a big, strong, no-nonsense woman who ran a tight ship at home and was well able to help in the forge when necessary, holding the heads of the great shires, or putting her shoulder to their stubborn backsides. Susan’s younger sisters were both married; one lived in the next village and one here in Eadenford. Of her two brothers one had been killed early on in the war. Jamie, the youngest, lived at home like Susan, and worked with his father in the smithy.