Still, I missed it. I missed the smell of horses, and the feel of them beneath me, and I couldn't help but feel a little envious of Gareth.
Owen nodded. "You'll have passed by his mare on your way to the Hib."
"That's the pub we ate dinner in," Bridget explained. "The Hibernia."
' 'There's a paddock,'' said Owen, "this side of the road, just before you reach the Hib. That's where Gareth keeps Sovereign. She'll come to the fence if you call her. Just don't feed her," he warned me, "or Gareth will never forgive you."
James stifled a yawn and remembered his manners. "A cup of tea, Owen?''
He checked his watch. "No, I can't stay. I've got to run back and get cleaned up for church. I just dropped in to ask you to lunch."
That got Bridget's attention. "Lunch?"
James shook his head. "Darling, honestly. You've just finished breakfast."
"But James, a Sunday lunch ... it will be a real Sunday lunch, won't it, Owen?"
"With all the trimmings. Come at half-past twelve," he offered, "and we'll have a drink beforehand."
Which rather clinched the deal, for James. "All right, then. Very kind of you and Dilys to invite us."
Owen grinned. "If you knew my Dilys, boy, you'd know that's not an invitation. It's an order."
*-*-*-*-*
Bridget popped her head around my bedroom door. "We still have an hour or so before lunch. Did you want to come look at the horse?"
"Mm." I nodded, not looking up. "Just give me a minute."
Like a little girl, impatient for an outing, she swung herself round with one hand on the door-jamb and entered my room, dragging her feet as she came to investigate what I was doing. "What's that?"
I shifted my seat on the edge of the bed before answering, seeking the support of the bedpost. "It's a letter from the agency."
"Not the one that came yesterday morning? You've only just opened it?"
"Well, it was from the office. And I am on holiday."
"What does it say?"
I read the letter through a third time, to make absolutely certain. "It seems that I've been offered a directorship."
"And high time, too. Congratulations."
I shook my head. "I said that I'd been offered one. I haven't got it, yet."
Bridget's sigh spoke volumes. She had never had much patience with the agency's executive directors. "What, do you have to swim the Channel, first?"
Which came so very near the mark, I couldn't help but smile. "I have to sign a certain client."
"James?" She relaxed. "Well then, there isn't any problem, is there? James is on the brink, you know. He only wants a push."
"Bridget."
"Oh, I know. You're not the pushing type. I'm only saying that you shouldn't have a problem getting James to sign. He's rather taken with you."
I caught the tiny change in her tone, and glanced up. "What?"
' 'Well, everything he says is Lyn this and Lyn that, now. You've even got him getting up for breakfast, for heaven's sake, and he never—"
"Bridget," I cut her off, in protest, "I'm not interested in James. And he's not interested in me, not in the slightest."
"No?"
"I'd know," I assured her.
She weighed this and accepted it. "You're right, I'm being stupid. Now come on, we're running out of time. Let's go and see the horse."
I sighed, and carefully folded the letter along its sharp creases, and slipped it back into its envelope. However good the offer from my agency, I didn't have a hope of ever claiming this directorship—they'd set the bar too high. I'd sign James for them, happily. But I would not, for any price, go after Gareth.
Someone, evidently, had been sharp enough to spot the connection between the playwright and the holiday address that I had left with my assistant. And Gareth hadn't lied when he'd accused my agency of not taking no for an answer. The letter they had sent was single-minded.
Well, if they wanted him so badly, I decided, they could come down here themselves. Talented the man might be, but I, for one, had no intention of trying to woo him.
Bridget had other ideas. As we walked down the lane to the village, a few minutes later, she went up on tip-toe to peer into Gareth's back garden. "Is he home, do you think?"
"How should I know?"
We rounded the corner. She sighed. "No, his car's not there. Damn."
I sent her a dry look. "I thought you were dragging me out here to show me his horse."
"Quite right. I know how you love horses." Her bounce returning, she turned and led me up the quiet street towards the pub. Just past the bus shelter and phone box, a narrow fenced paddock stretched greenly away from the roadside, and I stopped to lean my elbows on the five-barred gate.
"I don't see her."
"She's probably up in the back corner there, behind the shed." Climbing with confidence on to the gate's bottom rung, she gave a sharp whistle. Bridget whistled like a boy—it nearly split my ears.
But it caught the mare's attention.
"There, you see?" said Bridget proudly, rocking backwards on the gate. "That's Sovereign, now."
I watched the horse emerging from behind the shed, a lovely coal-black mare with one white stocking and a white race slashing boldly down her forehead. "She's enormous," I said. And she was, for a mare, standing easily sixteen hands tall; sixteen-two, maybe. In spite of her size she came forward with uncommon grace, and her dark liquid eyes held a gentle intelligence.
"Pretty, though, isn't she?" Bridget leaned forward and held out a carrot she'd fished from her pocket. "Come on, girl. Come look what I've brought you."
"I thought you weren't supposed to feed her."
"You weren't. Owen didn't say anything to me." She held the carrot higher and the mare crossed the soft grass obligingly, sniffing the air. A few feet from the gate she stopped, planting her feet and extending her neck to investigate. Encouraged by her eyes, I reached one hand to stroke her questing nose, and felt the soft warm puff of breath against my fingers.
"Oh, you beautiful thing," I said, sliding my free hand up under her forelock to scratch round the base of her ears. They twitched at the sound of my voice. Twitched again as a faint squeaking of wheels approached along the kerb. A child's bike, I thought at first. But no, this sound was different, with a springiness I couldn't place ...
"You shouldn't do that," Elen's voice warned. "Gareth doesn't like it."
I turned. She'd stopped the pram between us, and her baby, who'd been sleeping, started fussing at the sudden lack of movement. It wasn't proper crying, really—more like a half-hearted sputtering, but I found myself pressing my back to the gate.
Sovereign, munching a piece of the carrot, didn't seem to mind the noise. She watched with mild eyes as Elen tried again. "Gareth really doesn't like it."
"Oh, it's only a carrot." Bridget wrinkled her nose and climbed down from the gate, wiping her hand on the leg of her jeans. "And anyway, he isn't here now, is he?"
The baby, impatient with waiting, broke into a howl and grasped at the side of the pram, as though urging it to move. At eight months of age, Stevie Vaughan made a solid little bundle in his hooded coat and mittens. But even in a temper, nose running, his face red and mottled from crying, he still looked a beautiful baby, with curling fair hair and blue eyes ringed with spiky dark lashes.
Pulling himself up on wobbly legs to reach out for his mother, he tottered, unsteady, then tipped to one side and went over the edge of the pram.
I reacted from instinct.
I couldn't remember, afterwards, how I came to catch him. We were all three of us reaching for him, holding out our hands to stop his fall towards the pavement, and then suddenly my hands were full, and I was holding him, an unexpected weight that huddled warm against my breast, his tiny fingers clutching at my shirt.
Elen straightened to stare at me, eyes wide with wonder, as though she'd just had an epiphany. "You ..." The word was the barest of whispers.
The baby moved
, warm in my arms, and his soft hair, sweet-smelling, brushed under my chin. I felt a chill between my shoulder-blades, a blade of ice that barely missed my heart, and in reflex I pushed him away from me, holding him out to his mother. "Here, he's too heavy for me."
She took him, unoffended, and tucked him back into his pram. Stevie wriggled a protest and reached his mittened hands towards me, and Elen bit her lower lip. The smile she showed me trembled just a little, but it radiated happiness. "I knew you'd come," she told me. "Margaret promised me you'd come."
And then she turned and started off again along the road, before I could reply.
XIV
Why dost thou fix thine eye so deeply on that book?
William Rowley, The Birth of Merlin
“She's not right in the head." Owen's wife uncorked the sherry and began to pour it out, her mouth tightening. "I sometimes think our Angle men have lost their sense. It's all 'poor Elen this, poor Elen that,' but no one spares a thought for little Stevie, and it's him that's going to suffer."
Owen's Dilys was, indeed, a formidable woman. Short, round and sturdy, her chest puffed before her, she put me in mind of a little Napoleon, stoutly determined to marshal her troops. We had only just arrived, but she already had us organized in chairs around her sitting-room, knees down, heads up, backs ramrod straight, like children in a Sunday school.
The Sunday school impression was made stronger by the sitting-room itself. From the crisply pleated curtains to the glass-topped coffee table, everything appeared to have been starched and polished into submission. Even the plants stood erect in their pots at the window, not daring to droop or display a dead flower. The homely smell of chicken slowly roasting in the oven seemed quite out of place in here. Almost as out of place as Owen, who even in his Sunday best looked anything but formal.
He sat balanced on an armless chair, feet braced against the carpet so he wouldn't slide straight off the slippery chintz upholstery. But like the plants, I thought, he wouldn't dare complain. This room belonged to Dilys, not to him. And she was, as I had quickly learned, a woman of opinions.
"It's all these so-called experts who deserve the blame. Psychologists." She spat the word. "Saying how you shouldn't take a baby from his mother. Well, that's nonsense. I say, if the mother's mad, you take that baby, so you do, and give him to a couple who can bring the boy up proper."
As she started passing round the glasses, Christopher, beside me on the sofa, broke formation, leaning back against the cushions with a vaguely idle air. "Elen isn't mad."
I took my sherry meekly, with a murmured word of thanks, and ducked neatly out of Dilys's line of fire.
"And what would you call it, then, when a girl goes round the village telling everyone there's a dragon trying to steal her child? You call that normal?"
Owen sighed. "Now, Dilys ..."
"No, I simply can't allow that." She shook her dark head, passing judgement. "A dragon. Just imagine. She's a danger to that boy, and no mistake. A good job you were there to catch him when he fell," she said, to me.
I'd been trying not to think about it. "Really, it was nothing."
Bridget admitted that she'd been impressed. "Anyone would have thought you were keeping goal for England, the way you dived after that baby. I've never seen anything like it."
Dilys said, "Yes, well, I do hope that Elen was properly grateful."
"She didn't say thank you, though, did she?" Bridget looked to me for confirmation. "She only said she'd known that you would come, whatever that means."
"Ah," said James, with knowing eyes. "That's it then, she's pegged you as Stevie's protector."
My dream flashed before me. I stared at him. "What?"
"Madness," Dilys said, standing very straight and righteous. "Don't you take any notice, my dear. You've come down for a holiday. Don't let that foolish girl spoil it. Really," she said, with a shake of her head, "I can't think what possessed that boy Tony to marry her. She's always been peculiar. Such an unattractive child, she was—all hair and bony knees—no friends to speak of. And her mother was just the same, wasn't she, Owen?"
Owen stirred in his chair and remarked that, as he recalled it, Elen's mother had had many friends.
"Male friends, yes. She had plenty of those." Dilys sniffed. "She loved stirring things up, that one, causing a scandal. Always chasing after someone's husband."
Owen frowned. "Now then, you know that's—"
"Any decent woman," Dilys cut him off, "would have died of shame to have a baby out of wedlock, but not her. I can still see her pushing that pram round the village, as though it were a thing to be proud of. It's no wonder her daughter turned out like she did."
Christopher took a deliberate sip of sherry. "How is your son doing, these days, Dilys? Married again, I hear."
"Yes, that's right."
"That would make this ... what? His third?"
Owen answered, cheerfully. "His fourth, the little sod. It's not the marriages I mind so much, it's all the grandkids. We must have a baker's dozen of them, now. Makes for a tangle, at holidays."
"Now, Owen," said Dilys, "you know he's a very good father."
"Oh, he's good at it, I'll give you that. He makes babies like nobody's business." The older man grinned, and drained his glass of sherry in a single swallow. “Must be that place where he works, rubbing off on him."
Bridget glanced up. "Oh? And where does he work?"
"A fertility clinic, in Cardiff," said Owen. "He does all the technical work in the lab."
Christopher put it in simpler terms. "He sorts sperm."
Dilys reddened, and was opening her mouth to respond when Owen distracted her by sniffing the air. "Something's burning."
She frowned. "I don't smell anything." But her hostessing instincts could not be ignored. As she bustled out to check her oven, Owen settled back, amused, and shook his head at Christopher.
"You'll tempt fate once too often, boy. I might not lift a finger, next time.''
"Oh, I'm not afraid." Christopher slung a lazy arm along the sofa back, well pleased. "My mother's just the same, you know. All bark and no bite."
"Well, wind her up another notch—we'll see who's laughing then."
But Christopher's appetite for argument appeared to vanish when the food was served.
Her opinions notwithstanding, Owen's Dilys made a smashing Sunday lunch. I could barely see the table for the food—a platter heaped with tender chicken, thickly sliced and steaming; bowls of peas and sage and onion stuffing; roast potatoes, richly browned to crunching on the outside, that I knew would melt to nothing on the tongue; fat leeks swimming round in a savoury white sauce; seasoned carrots and swedes, and two jugs of gravy to pour over everything.
"Eat," she instructed me, pushing the dish of leeks closer. "You're too thin."
I'd been called many things in my life, but "too thin" wasn't one of them. Still, I confess that I didn't raise much of a protest. At the risk of bursting zips I ate a second plateful, and a third, and chased it down with gooey chocolate pudding drizzled thick with double cream. By the time we waddled homewards, I felt rather like a pampered goose, force-fed to fullness, drowsy with contentment.
Climbing the stairs to my bedroom was out of the question, I thought. Too much effort. Instead I followed everyone else to the dim, quiet warmth of the dining-room, and collapsed with a sigh into one of the comfy pink chairs by the window, tipping my head back to watch the lights twinkle and dance in the fragrant fairyland of Bridget's Christmas tree.
"It's a wonder that Owen's not twenty-five stone," I remarked, with a yawn.
Christopher, who'd managed somehow to retain the energy to saunter round the room, glanced over his shoulder and grinned. "He works it all off, between his farm and this one. But you're right, if he ever retires, he's in trouble." Pausing by the bookcase where I'd found the Wilkie Collins book, he crouched to examine its contents. "Hey, James, did you know Uncle Ralph has your books?"
"Of course he does. I
gave them to him."
"Ah, well that explains it, then. I shouldn't have thought they were quite to his taste, really. Nor this," he added, prising out a larger book and reading the title spelled out on the glossy white cover: "The Druid's Year. Now what the devil..." Flipping it open to read the flap he caught sight of an inscription and said, "Oh, it's from Gareth. That does make more sense."
Bridget recognized the name. "The Druid's Year! I think my friend Julia illustrated that—is her name on the cover? Julia Beckett?"
Christopher checked. "Yes, it is. She's a friend of yours, really? She's terribly good."
"I know. She illustrated all my early books. Here, toss that over, will you?"
I'd have recognized Julia's work from the cover alone, from the rich use of colour and the almost fussy amount of detail that were her trademarks. The book itself appeared to be a calendar of days, detailing the seasons and the rituals and feast days of the mystical religion that had brought a sense of order to the ancient Celtic world. Bridget immediately turned to the month of June, looking for her birthday, while Christopher gave his attention back to the bookcase.
"I'd think this comes from Gareth as well," he said, holding up a slim red volume.
James turned, and squinted. "What is that, his play?"
"Mm." Christopher straightened, and flipped a few pages. ' 'Lots of good juicy battle scenes, you know, in this one. Manly stuff."
I stretched my hand out, curious. "May I please see that, for a moment?"
Christopher passed it to James, who was nearer; he tossed it to me in a flutter of pages. "Here, catch," James said. "What do you want it for?"
"Oh, just testing my memory." I skipped to the end of the first act, in search of that one speech by Owain Glyn Dwr. He had mentioned dragon kings, surely—that's where that small bit of my dream had been born. That's where ...