Land Girls: The Promise: A moving and heartwarming wartime saga. Roland Moore
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Название: Land Girls: The Promise: A moving and heartwarming wartime saga
Автор: Roland Moore
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Исторические любовные романы
isbn: 9780008204419
isbn:
“How is Iris?” Finch asked.
“Asleep, I think,” Esther replied. “Sorry to interrupt your night.”
“No, this is more important.” But Esther could see the hint of disappointment on Finch’s face. She knew he’d been looking forward to it for some time. She couldn’t help but notice that the shirt she had ironed was now looking creased and dirty, but she didn’t say anything. As Martin made a cup of tea for everyone, Esther and Joyce told Finch what had been happening. They all agreed on what was the root of the problem. Iris was obsessed with the thought of Vernon coming back for her. She was imagining that she could see him and hear him, and she would have regular nightmares about him coming to kill her. And this was causing her to mess up at work, her mind too distracted to focus on the job in hand. They all wanted to sort this out.
“She’s a bright girl, but she’s obsessed about this. And nothing we can say seems to stop her thinking about it,” Frank said.
“How about if we get Dr Channing up at Hoxley Manor to take a look at her?” Esther suggested. “If there is something wrong in Iris’s mind, he might be able to treat it.”
“She just needs a distraction. Something to take her mind off it,” Joyce said.
“We’ve got to sort her out because she’s pretty much good for nothing on the farm,” Esther snapped.
“Yeah, we’re all agreed we’ve got to do something. But what?” Finch said.
“I think we should vote on it,” Esther announced. Joyce looked uncertain. She didn’t like the thought of voting, somewhat arbitrarily, on someone else’s future.
“All right.” Frank nodded. “All those in favour of taking her mind off things?”
Joyce put her hand up. She was the only one. She put it down again, despondently. “So much for that, then.”
“All those in favour of getting her seen by Dr Channing?” Esther said, raising her own hand.
Joyce shrugged and reluctantly stuck her hand in the air. It was probably the best thing. Channing might be able to cure the root of the problem, whereas something like going to a dance would only be a temporary sticking plaster. Frank added his own hand to the vote.
“Fred?” Esther said, turning to Finch.
“All right, then,” he replied, adding himself to the vote. “Here, this is like one of those Women’s Institute meetings, isn’t it? All voting on what to do. Except we’re not making loads of jam.”
“I’ll have you know we don’t just make jam. Bloody cheek. Anyway, this is the closest you’re going to get to one of those meetings.” Esther smiled. “Motion carried. I’ll talk to the doctor in the morning.”
But as she and the others debated what to do, they didn’t realise that Iris was sitting at the top of the stairs formulating her own plan of action. Her head felt pleasantly fuzzy from a few numbing slugs of carrot whisky and she had decided what to do. Holding the bottle in her hand, she felt her head swaying and her cheeks flushing. Suddenly it all seemed clear. The answer. And she had to do something fast as she didn’t want to be seen by Dr Channing.
She decided she would go back to the place where Vernon Storey had made his promise.
I’ll come back for you.
Tomorrow, she would return to Shallow Brook Farm and confront her demons head on.
As the first rays of daylight started to beat away the shadows in the kitchen of Pasture Farm, Iris laced up her boots. She finished buttering a slice of bread and carefully lifted the latch on the door. It was four in the morning; perhaps an hour before Esther and the others would be awake. Iris thought she had time to walk the mile and a half to the neighbouring Shallow Brook Farm and get back before she was due to start work. She sneaked out the door, closing it behind her, the bread lodged in her mouth as if she was a bird about to feed its young. Then she set off down the path, crossing through the yard and finding herself on the single track that connected the two farms. The air was cold, not yet warmed by the rising sun, and Iris found herself gasping occasionally as she struggled to walk fast and finish the food in her mouth.
Eventually, she reached a blind corner and turned it to find herself facing a sign that read Shallow Brook Farm. Iris looked beyond the faded, painted sign, its black letters long since bleached grey by years of sunlight. There was the farmhouse itself, a small red-brick building with eves that hung low over the windows like drooping eyelids. And whereas this might give the appearance of a picture-book home, there was something foreboding and cold about it. The curtains were thin, plain white veils like cataracts behind dirty, darkened windows. Iris edged closer, past an ancient hay barrow. Something squealed from within and there was a flurry of movement as she moved alongside it. She didn’t look, preferring not to know what was living in there. The stone cobbles of the yard were broken and smashed in places, and in one corner there was a bucket, trowel and a pile of cement under tarpaulin, where John and Martin had started to repair things. The work was progressing slowly as, with a whole farm to run, they couldn’t focus all their time on the one job and much of the yard was still overgrown with weeds. She reached the front door. As she extended her hand towards the latch, she remembered the last time she entered this house. The time she had discovered the truth about poor Walter Storey. The time Vernon had made his dreadful promise.
This time, she knew that the house wouldn’t be empty. John Fisher was staying here. She didn’t want to wake him as she entered so, carefully she lifted the latch and crept inside. The broken barometer was still showing the prospect of snow. The side table in the hallway had a pile of unopened post and some bills that had been opened, presumably by John. Iris took a deep breath and moved towards the living room. She pushed open its door and felt her stomach lurch, as adrenaline and fear suddenly rose up in her body. It was just like it was before. There was the carpet, patterned, but predominantly red. The carpet where she had found the shard of broken bottle with Walter’s blood on it. The mantelpiece that she had stood alongside when she made the discovery. And there was the small desk where Vernon had attacked her, forcing her onto it as he threatened her.
I’ll come back for you, Iris …
The words whispered around the ghostly room. Iris looked at the fire, where the poker was now cradled in the coal scuttle. The telephone had been put back in place on its small table near the desk. But apart from those two aspects, little had changed about the room since she had last been here.
Iris opened the drawer on the desk. It was full of papers, letters. She picked one up and could tell, by the way it was laid out, it was a bill for payment. But she couldn’t read the words. She put it back and looked at the photographs on the mantelpiece. There he was. The small, dark figure of Vernon Storey, smiling as he posed with a gigantic pike he’d caught in the river. She wasn’t sure which one had the worst teeth. Next to him was a small gate-fold photograph frame with Walter Storey in one half and his brother, Samuel, in the other. A hairbrush near the end of the mantelpiece caught her eye, the red-brown hair on it catching the early morning light that was peeking through the gap in the curtains. Vernon’s hair. Iris found herself compelled to reach out for it, to touch it. As her fingers neared the hairbrush, suddenly a man’s voice made СКАЧАТЬ