Encounters. Barbara Erskine

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СКАЧАТЬ stared at her. ‘You’re mad.’

      ‘It will only take me a couple of hours to drive over there and back. She’s asked me to have a cup of tea with her.’

      ‘But why? Why go? I’ve told you. We can’t afford it. That house is going to go for more than we could pay. Be reasonable, Victoria.’ He turned to face her desperately. ‘I don’t understand you, darling. What’s happened to you?’ She was a stranger.

      She shrugged unhappily. ‘I don’t know. It was meeting Stephen. I have to find out who he is; where I knew him before. I can’t get him out of my mind …’

       You and I were lovers once, in a land, long ago.

      She closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to rid herself of the echo of his voice, the image of his clear, grey eyes.

      ‘OK. Go then.’ Robert threw himself down onto a chair. ‘Who was he? A boyfriend? You fancied him, did you? He was younger than me, I suppose; not crippled? Are you in love with him?’

      ‘How could I be? I only saw him for a few minutes.’ She realized suddenly what he had said and for the first time she saw what she was doing to him. ‘Robert!’ She ran to him and put her arms around his neck. ‘It’s not like that. Perhaps he didn’t even exist! Perhaps he was a dream! I don’t know. That’s why I‘ve got to find out, don’t you see? And he was crippled, as you call it, too. I told you. Look,’ she hesitated. ‘Come back with me. Come and meet him yourself. Please.’

      He shook his head and tried to smile. ‘No. You go. Whatever it is you have to prove, Victoria, you have to do it alone.’

      Lady Penelope opened the door herself. She was a slim, elegant woman in her early eighties, with bright intelligent eyes. Once she had poured the tea she sat quite still behind the tea tray listening with complete attention as Victoria told her story.

      When Victoria finished there was a long silence. ‘Stephen Cheney,’ she repeated at last.

      ‘He and I knew each other once,’ Victoria said softly. She looked down at her hands, covertly twisting her wedding ring around her finger.

       You and I were lovers once, in a land, long ago.

      ‘You do know him?’

      ‘Oh yes, I know him.’ Lady Penelope frowned. ‘After tea, I’ll take you to him.’

      ‘He looked so ill.’

      ‘Yes, poor boy, I expect he did.’ Lady Penelope glanced up at Victoria. ‘What made you and your husband come to look around this house?’

      ‘The agents sent it. My husband has just been invalided out of the army and it seemed the sort of place we would like to live. We inherited Robert’s father’s house in London and neither of us wanted to live in town, so we sold it. But I’m afraid this is going to be too expensive.’ She smiled anxiously. ‘Mr Turner from the agents said you’d already had offers above the asking price.’

      ‘Even if I hadn’t I wouldn’t sell it to you, Mrs Holland.’ Lady Penelope’s smile belied the harshness of the words. ‘This is not the house for you, my dear. You’ll see why presently.’ She stood up. ‘Now. If you’ve finished your tea, I’ll take you to see Stephen.’

      The heat wave had broken at last and the air was cool and damp after a night of rain as they walked slowly round the side of the house, through the laurels and across the lawn beneath the cedar tree. The west wing was still tightly closed up. No music rang across the grass. Victoria stopped and stared at it. The whole place gave off a sense of deep sadness. Lady Penelope watched her, but she said nothing and after a moment she moved on. Victoria stayed where she was. He had been here. On the grass. Near the flowers. She closed her eyes. She knew already where they were going.

      Her hostess moved with deceptive rapidity in spite of her eighty years and Victoria found herself almost running to keep up with her as they cut through the shrubbery and found themselves on another unkempt lawn. Beyond it a high yew hedge separated them from the church.

      Opening a gate in the hedge Lady Penelope glanced at Victoria. ‘I hope you’re strong, I think you are.’

      She set off up a path between huddled gravestones, overgrown with nettles, some of them lost beneath moss and lichen. One of them had been recently cleared. They stopped in front of it.

       Stephen John Cheney

       Born 20 June 1894. Died 24 August 1918

       in God I trust

      ‘I remembered the name when you mentioned it on the phone.’ Lady Penelope poked at the grave with her walking stick. ‘I came up yesterday to see if I was right, and cleared the stone. Then I went back to the records. We still have the nursing home ledgers in the house. My son found them years ago. I suppose they got overlooked with all the other stuff at the end of the war. Stephen died two days after they amputated his arm.’

      ‘No.’ Victoria stared down at the grave. ‘No. You don’t understand. I saw him. I spoke to him.’

      ‘There is no Stephen Cheney now, my dear.’ The old lady’s voice was gentle.

       You and I were lovers once, in a land, long ago.

      ‘It’s not possible.’ It was a whisper. ‘He gave me a rose.’

      ‘Everything is possible.’

      ‘Perhaps it was his son – or his grandson,’ Victoria said uncertainly.

      The old lady shrugged. They both stood, staring down at the mossy tombstone. Both knew somehow that Stephen had had no son.

      ‘I learned the names on all these stones, walking to church every Sunday over the years,’ Lady Penelope said slowly. ‘My family have lived in this house for more than a century. We had to move out during the last war, just as we did during the first one. But they didn’t use the place as a hospital again. The last time round it was the home guard. I brought my husband here in 1940, but we never lived here. He was killed in 1941, before our son was born.’ She paused for a moment. ‘The house is too much for me now. And my son doesn’t want it. So, sadly, it must go.’ She smiled. ‘Are you all right? Do you want to sit down?’

      Victoria was fighting back her tears.

      ‘I’m sorry. It’s such a shock.’

      ‘There was no gentle way to tell you.’

      ‘You must think I’m mad.’

      ‘Oh no, my dear. I don’t think you’re mad. Far from it. On the contrary. I’ve heard their music from the old gramophone. I’ve smelt the Lysol in those wards. But I‘ve never seen any of the boys. You are lucky.’

      ‘Am I?’ Victoria tried to smile through her tears. ‘Why did I know him? Why did he know me?’

      He had touched her; given her a rose. She could hear his voice … see his eyes. She stared down at the grey stone, seeing it swimming through her tears. ‘How?’ she whispered. ‘How?’

      There СКАЧАТЬ