Kate put the book on the windowsill. Outside, in the home field, baby lambs were scampering and blackbirds were warbling. Through the trees glinted a silver strip of river, and she looked away, suppressing the twinge of longing for Hilbegut.
‘We’d better turn the mattress, hadn’t we?’ Sally said, getting hold of the two fabric handles. ‘Lift it up, then we’ll put it on the floor and turn it.’
They heaved the mattress and slid it onto the floor. Then both women gasped. Lying on the brown Hessian that covered the bed base was a pile of little blue envelopes.
Kate went pale. She picked one up.
‘Letters. My letters. From Freddie.’
Sally stood watching her, transfixed. Ethie had hurt Kate, even from the grave, and Sally felt devastated and ashamed. For the first time since Ethie’s death, Kate was openly weeping, her face red with fury as she gathered the precious letters, each one beautifully addressed to Oriole Kate Loxley in Freddie’s copperplate script.
‘How could she DO this? My own SISTER.’ She wept and wept, clutching the letters close against her heart. ‘How could she take Freddie’s letters? And why? WHY?’
Sally put her arms round Kate and let her cry, but Kate whirled around out of the room and ran downstairs to her father who was sitting on a bench outside in the sun. By the time Kate reached him, she couldn’t speak for the sobs racking her body.
‘Kate!’ he said in surprise and held out his arms. She slumped onto his shoulder, the letters still tight in her hand.
‘What is it? My lovely Kate. Come on, don’t cry. I’m here,’ Bertie soothed, alarmed to feel Kate shaking all over. He hugged her close and leaned his pale cheek on her hair. ‘We’re all grieving for Ethie,’ he said, thinking he was sure to be right. But Kate sat up and looked at him, her cheeks flushed, her mouth twitching, and a look of burning fury in her eyes that Bertie had never seen before.
‘Kate?’
But Kate couldn’t speak. She held it in, knowing that if she did speak it would be a scream that would never stop. Fearing she might crush them, she put Freddie’s letters down on the bench. Bertie glanced at them, his brow furrowed, then up at Sally who appeared in the door. He raised his eyebrows, questioning.
‘Freddie’s letters. Hidden under Ethie’s mattress,’ she mouthed.
‘Come here.’
Bertie moved sideways to let Sally sit on the other side of him, and put his arms around both of them like the wings of an angel.
‘Shh,’ he said. ‘No – don’t try to talk. Let’s just be quiet. Be quiet and listen. Shh.’
At first Kate could only hear the awful sound of her own sobbing, and with each sob, a pain that felt like broken glass. Then she heard her heartbeat loud and fast, and her father’s slow, peaceful one, and Sally’s rhythmic breathing. She heard the chickens having a dust bath, their wings flapping madly, the baby lambs bleating out in the fields, the distant throb of Uncle Don’s tractor. She heard the blackbird singing and her father’s watch ticking deep in his waistcoat pocket. And then she heard the bees. She was back in the woods at Hilbegut, looking so deep into the blue of Freddie’s eyes as he told her the poem, and she felt love come flooding back into her being.
She dried her eyes on Bertie’s hanky, and looked at her parents’ concerned faces.
‘What am I crying about?’ she said brightly. ‘I’ve got all these letters to read!’
‘That’s my girl,’ said Bertie. ‘My golden bird.’
‘Letter for you.’ Annie tutted, as she put the plump envelope on Freddie’s plate. ‘It’s got a Gloucestershire postmark. That Loxley girl, is it? Took her long enough to answer your letters! Looks like she’s got a lot to say. It’s a wonder that envelope hasn’t exploded.’
Freddie picked up the bulging envelope and turned it over and over in his hands. He’d left the pain of losing Kate far behind, back in that autumn time of cold rain and Ian Tillerman’s eyes, and his motorbike going in the canal. He didn’t want to go back there.
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ asked Annie sharply.
‘Not yet,’ said Freddie.
‘I should burn it.’
‘Burn it? Why?’
‘That Loxley girl’s hurt you enough,’ Annie said fiercely, her arms folded over her bust. ‘Just give me five minutes with her.’
‘Kate doesn’t deliberately hurt people.’ The look in Freddie’s blue eyes silenced Annie. She set about dishing up lunch, her cheeks twitching with disapproval. Freddie tucked Kate’s letter into his inner pocket to read when his mother wasn’t breathing down his neck. ‘This looks good, thanks.’ He rolled up his sleeves and tackled the steaming meal of steak and kidney pudding with purple sprouting broccoli and carrots. It calmed Annie to see him enjoying it. He knew she’d been trying to build him up after the long winter of illness, and it was working. It was good not to be hungry.
Kate’s letter felt like a warm hand over his heart. Yet something was haunting him. Ethie! Those pale tormented eyes kept staring into his mind. He didn’t like Ethie. So why was she there, in his mind, wanting to tell him something? On his visits to Hilbegut Farm, Ethie had regarded him with smouldering resentment. It hadn’t bothered him then, but now it hung on his conscience like a sparrow hawk.
Unable to concentrate on the stone carving, Freddie downed tools and headed for the hills in his lorry, drawn as always to the ridge of hill where he and Kate had picnicked. Still Ethie’s eyes followed him as he drove through the scented, blossom rich lanes, past swathes of dog violets, stitchwort and primroses. He longed to have Kate there beside him on the beautiful April day, and by the time he reached the parking place, her letter was hot in his pocket. Before he even opened it, he felt powerless. She was his love. That hadn’t changed and never could until the end of time. No matter how much he immersed himself in his work, his love for Kate was an eternal presence; it was both a wound and a passion.
Hundreds of butterflies bobbed and danced over the hillside. Orange-tips and yellow brimstones, hoverflies and bumblebees gathering nectar from the flowers. Kate would have loved it, Freddie thought, allowing himself the dream. He’d paint her a picture.
The sun was warm for April, and he sat on the ridge, gazing across the Levels towards the Bristol Channel. A sparrow hawk hovered right in his line of vision. Without warning it swooped like a deadly arrow and caught a linnet from a pair that were fluttering over the grasses. Freddie heard the bird scream, and saw its mate cowering in the grass, its wings trembling, its little voice cheeping in distress. He watched the hawk fly off with the tiny bird struggling in its claws, and Ethie’s eyes again looked cruelly into his soul. With a sudden foreboding, he opened Kate’s letter.
Dearest Freddie,
I hardly know how to tell you this, but your beautiful letters have only just reached me, every one since September. I sat down and read them over and over again, Freddie, and oh how I cried! Happy tears, and sad tears. I was distraught to find you had written me those interesting, lovely letters and I had not been able to respond. No wonder you stopped writing to me. You must have been hurt, and undeservedly so. I hope that the sad news I must tell you now will help you to understand and forgive me.
Two weeks ago my sister, Ethie, was out in the estuary, alone, checking the putchers as she always did. We don’t know exactly how it happened, only that she must have been caught unawares by the Severn Bore. She was swept away, tragically drowned, and when the tide ebbed, they found her body miles upstream.
Freddie stopped reading, the letter frozen in his hands. He looked up, and the sparrow hawk was there again, chillingly close, circling in a sky which was the colour of Ethie’s eyes – pale blue with that leonine tinge of gold. His vision had been true. He’d never doubted or questioned his visions before, but this one had disturbed him at a very deep level. Finding it true was shocking. Why did he have this gift? Why hadn’t he shared it? Could he have saved Ethie’s life? Was that why her eyes were haunting him now? He dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. Nobody would have believed him, especially a rebellious young woman like Ethie. Had his parents been right to forbid him to speak of it? Wise, he thought, but not right.