Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis Page 28

  It was a brief communication—that which Jane and Molly had seen the postman delivering that afternoon. It said that James Alan Dove was missing presumed killed.

  'I'd like to have her in hospital overnight,' said the doctor. 'She's lost a good deal of blood, and is in a severe state of shock.'

  'I understand,' said Emily. 'The boy is missing. I'll ring the police and start searching myself. He can stay the night at the school house when we find him.'

  'By far the best thing,' agreed the doctor. If only more women were like Emily Davis, he thought, turning to his patient!

  The memory of that night stayed with Jane Bentley for the rest of her life. The two of them set out through the storm with only the faintest glimmer from torches, dimmed by tissue paper over the glass in accordance with black-out regulations, to guide them.

  'We'll stick together,' said Emily. 'And keep shouting his name. Not that we stand much chance of being heard in this wind.'

  'Which way?' asked Jane, at Mrs Dove's gate.

  'Towards Caxley. He may have had some muddled idea of catching a train. Anyway, he wouldn't make for the downs in this weather. There's not a shred of shelter there.'

  They splashed along the valley lane, past the school. The water gurgled on each side of the road, sometimes fanning across the full width where the surface tilted. Above their heads the wind roared in the branches, clashing them together and scattering twigs and leaves below. The elephantine grey trunks of the beech trees were streaked with rivulets of rainwater.

  Jane's shoes squelched at every step. She could feel the water between her toes, and wished she had had Emily's foresight and had thrust her feet into Wellington boots.

  The little headmistress kept up a brisk pace. Every now and again she stopped, and the two would cry:

  'Billy! Billy Dove! Billy!'

  But their voices were drowned in the turmoil about them, and Jane began to wonder if the whole venture would have to be abandoned.

  She followed in Emily's wake envying the older woman's unflagging energy.

  'Are you aiming at anywhere particular?' she shouted above the din. Emily nodded.

  'Bennett's barn and the chicken houses,' she responded. Jane knew that these buildings were Edgar Bennett's—that same Edgar, so she had recently learnt—who had jilted the indomitable little woman before her, so many years ago.

  They splashed onward. Now the lane ran close by the little river. The watercress was now large and coarse, and swept this way and that by the torrent of water rushing through it. Who would have thought that the pretty summer trickle of brook, overhung with willows and long grasses, could become such a snarling leaping force, carrying all before it!

  Emily turned left, and struck uphill along a rough track now streaming with chalky water from the downs. Some hundred yards up the hill, she left the track and beat her way, head down against the onslaught of rain, towards two large hen houses standing side by side in the field. Jane followed doggedly.

  'Stand round here. There's more shelter,' said Emily. 'I'll only open the door a crack, otherwise the hens will be out. They're kittle-cattle.'

  It was the first time Jane had heard this phrase. She savoured it now, watching Emily's small hand fumbling with the wooden catch of the door.

  'Billy! Billy Dove!' she called through the chink. A pencil of light from the dimmed torch searched every cranny of the house.

  There were a few squawks of alarm from the hens, and a preliminary rumbling from the rooster before taking suitable action against those who disturbed his rest. But there was no human voice to be heard.

  'No luck,' said Emily, shutting the door, and squelching across the grass to the next.

  They were just as unlucky here.

  'We'll try the barn,' said Emily, tucking wet strands of hair under her sodden head scarf. 'Back to the road, Jane.'

  Jane found herself stumbling along, almost in a state of collapse. She was not as strong in constitution as Emily, and this evening's tragedy had taken its toll. She longed for bed, for warmth, for shelter from the cruel buffeting of the weather, and for the relief of finding the missing child.

  She did not have to wait long. At the barn door, Emily motioned her forward. Together they moved inside, out of the wind and rain. It was quiet in here, and fragrant with the summer smell of hay.

  Emily pushed aside the wet tissue paper from the torch, and a stronger light came to rest on a dark bundle curled up in an outsize nest in one corner of the barn.

  Emily knelt down beside the sleeping child. His eyes were tightly shut, his red hair dark with moisture and clinging to his forehead. The cheeks were blotched and his eyelids swollen with crying. But he was unharmed.

  'Billy,' whispered Emily. The child woke, and sat up abruptly. There was no preliminary stretching or yawning. Billy Dove was awake in an instant, and remembered all that had brought him to this place in blind panic. Emily knew how it would be.

  'Mummy?' he asked, turning anxious eyes upon Emily. She took one of his grimy hands in hers.

  'She's well again,' she told him. 'The doctor is looking after her.'

  'And Daddy?'

  'No one knows yet.' She gripped his hand more tightly. Obviously, the child had read the letter and understood his mother's action when he had found her slumped across the table.

  'But what do you think?' said Billy, his bottom lip quivering piteously.

  Jane, the silent spectator, never forgot Emily's reply, or the expression on her wet face as she made it.

  'I think it would be wrong and wicked to stop hoping,' said Emily straightly.

  The child sighed and struggled to his feet. Emily brushed the wisps of hay from his raincoat.

  'You're coming to sleep in my house now,' Emily told him.

  He managed a watery smile.

  'Thank you, Miss Davis,' he said politely, holding open the door for her.

  Jane Bentley put down The Caxley Chronicle slowly. Over thirty years had passed and yet she could remember that dimly-lit scene in every detail.

  And now Emily Davis was dead!

  Or was she, wondered Jane? What was that saying about those who lived in the hearts of others? Something to the effect that they never really died. If that were the case, then Emily Davis would certainly live on.

  She herself owed much to Emily. She had gone to Springbourne a nervous, delicate girl with little to look forward to in the career which she had chosen.

  Emily had given her strength and encouragement. She had sent her out into the healthy downland to regain her youthful spirits. She had taken in this apprehensive stranger and turned her into a happy confident member of the Springbourne family.

  Whilst she was with Emily she had found health, happiness and a husband.

  And more than that, she had found, by Emily's example, a way of living and a strength of character, both of which were to remain as guide-lines for the rest of her life.

  Little Emily Davis's influence must have spread far, thought Jane, gazing into the September sunshine. Just as a small pebble, dropped into a still pool, spreads ever-widening ripples, so must Emily's impact have travelled through all the friends and pupils she had encountered.

  What became of Billy Dove, she wondered? He certainly fulfilled the promise Emily foretold, and went on to Caxley Grammar School, then to a university, and was doing something quite important connected with mining, Jane believed.

  There had been a happy ending to Billy Dove's war-time experience, Jane remembered, for his father had been picked up from the sea by a German ship and he spent the rest of the war, tediously but safely, as a prisoner. Billy's eyes had been like stars when he told Miss Davis the news, months after that never-to-be-forgotten night of storm and horror.

  Dear Billy Dove, thought Jane, bestirring herself! He ought to know the news, but it wasn't likely that he took The Caxley Chronicle these days. He probably read The Financial Times, now that he was a prosperous man of nearly forty. No doubt he had done well for himself, but n
o doubt he often thought of Springbourne School and how much he owed to the guiding spirit who ruled it so wisely when he was young.

  And in that, thought Jane Bentley, he would not be alone.

  11. Billy Dove Goes Further

  JANE BENTLEY was wrong.

  Billy Dove read The Caxley Chronicle as well as The Financial Times. It arrived regularly each week, in a wrapper neatly addressed by his mother, wherever he might be in the wide world. The issue carrying the notice of Emily's death came to him in Scotland.

  When his father, Petty Officer Dove, returned from prison camp at the end of the war, he found that his old London employer had died and the firm was no more. In a way, he was relieved.

  He had had plenty of time for thinking in camp, and more and more his thoughts turned to the English countryside where he had been brought up. Now he longed to return.

  After leaving the village school, he had been bound apprentice, at the age of fourteen, to a family firm of cabinet-makers in London. He lodged with an obliging aunt in Mitcham, worked hard, and gained steady promotion with the firm as the years passed.

  In one of the terraced houses opposite his aunt's home, he found his future wife, a pretty little auburn-haired girl, who caught the same train into the City as he did to work as a copy-typist in an insurance firm.

  They married when he was twenty-five and she was twenty three, and made their home in a tiny flat two streets away from their former abodes.

  Jim Dove often thought of those early married days, as he went about his tasks in the German prisoner-of-war camp. They had been happy enough, for they were young and very much in love. Young Billy arrived within the year, and was an added joy—a good-tempered, healthy baby, with his mother's red hair and his father's cheerful disposition.

  It was now that the Doves began to long for more room. Their flat was on the first floor. Their landlady lived below, a hard-bitten widow who resented the necessity of letting part of her home.

  Billy's pram was left in her tiny hall with her grudging consent. Billy's napkins and other family washing were allowed to blow on a two-yard line near the garden rubbish heap, screened from sight by a large golden privet bush. Except for the purpose of hanging out the washing, the Dove family was not allowed in the garden.

  Peggy Dove bore the restrictions patiently. Times were hard, and she knew that it would be several years before they could hope to move to a house of their own. Meanwhile, she took Billy to the nearby park for his daily outing, and did her best to keep on good terms with the landlady.

  Jim Dove fretted far more. When war came, and settled their future for them willy-nilly, he was relieved to know that his wife and son would be settled safely at Springbourne. He knew the Caxley area fairly well, for he and his father had been great cyclists, and had camped many a time on the banks of the Cax, and had pushed their bicycles up the steep flanks of the downs nearby. At sea, and later in the prison camp, he had found comfort in the thought of Peggy and Billy enjoying the countryside he knew so well.

  He was determined that he would not return to London to live. It was no place for a boy to be brought up. Who knows? There might be more children, and a flat in London was little better than the prison he now inhabited, he told himself. He was tired of being cramped and confined. When he got back he would find a job in the country.

  But would he? That was the problem. Would any other firm employ him? Peggy, cautious as a mouse, would tremble at the thought of any risk. She would try to persuade him to return to the old life, he felt sure.

  Ah well! No use fretting about it whilst in German hands. He'd face that problem when the time came, Jim decided.

  As so often happens, the problems resolved themselves by the time he was reunited with Peggy and Billy. The old firm had gone. Billy was now doing well at Caxley Grammar School, and Peggy had found a little cottage to rent on the edge of commonland within walking distance of Caxley. She wouldn't go back to London for a thousand pounds!

  Jim found a post with a local firm of furniture makers, and the Doves settled down to make their life afresh. Jim and Peggy were destined to spend the rest of their long lives in Caxley, and to find contentment there.

  Billy remained an only child, and a highly satisfactory one. He was almost thirteen when his father returned, and working well at the grammar school. He had found the transition from the little school at Springbourne to the large boys' school somewhat unnerving, but by the time his father came back he had settled down and was enjoying the work.

  Eventually, he gained a place at Cambridge, obtained a good class Honours degree, and became a mining engineer. His work took him all over the world, but at the time of Emily Davis's death he was in Scotland with his wife and two children. His assignment there was for approximately two years, and the Doves had rented a house for that time. It stood among pine forests, on the edge of a sizeable village where the children attended the local school.

  The job was an interesting one. On the site of a long disused coal mine, other mineral deposits had been discovered, but at a depth and angle which made them difficult to work. It was Billy Dove's job to overcome the problem.

  He had been chosen expressly for it by his firm because he had done so well on a similar project for the Italian government. On the slopes of Mount Etna in Sicily, certain minerals had been discovered in the volcanic rock which were of great interest to the chemical industry. The deposits were at a considerable depth, in one particular stratum formed by lava ejected some hundreds of years earlier. Billy found the work arduous but fascinating.

  He was at work there for six weeks, and there was a possibility of returning for a further month when the drilling had reached the second stage. It was a prospect which he viewed with mixed feelings. For, to his mingled delight and guilt, sensible, steady Billy Dove, devoted husband and father, regular church-goer and wise counsellor to those asking his advice, had fallen head over heels in love with a girl in Sicily.

  It came about like this.

  Billy's firm had booked a room for him at a modest but respectable hotel in Taormina, a few miles from the working site.

  He lost his heart to the little town at once. Perched on the sunny hillside, tall cypresses towering like dark candles above the freshly-painted houses, the place had unique charm. It was at the end of April when he saw it first, and the public gardens, laid out in broad terraces, were fragrant with wallflowers, pinks and stocks. The orange trees added the warm scent of their blossom and the beauty of their golden fruit to the scene. Wistaria hung in swags from the pergolas, and, in the sheltered garden of the hotel next door, sweet peas were already in flower.

  In all his wanderings, Billy Dove had never yet discovered a place which enchanted him so swiftly and so completely. He gazed at the vivid green-blue sea far below, at the craggy mountain which overhung the town, and at Etna against the blue sky forming a majestic backcloth to it all.

  In his spare time he explored the town thoroughly. The ruined Greek theatre fascinated him, and the view from its heights across the Straits of Messina to the distant mainland of Italy was one which never failed to thrill him.

  He enjoyed plunging down the steep steps from one level of Taormina to the next. He sampled all manner of places to eat and drink, from tiny cafes, murky with smoke and crowded with noisy Sicilians, to cosmopolitan hotels offering the accepted variety of French cooking found in every tourist centre.

  It was not long before he entered the San Domenico Hotel. It had once been a monastery, and about its ancient courts and stairways still clung the gentle silence of earlier days. Here Billy Dove found hushed peace and rare beauty. He also found unexpected, and shattering, love.

  ***

  The girl was small and golden. When Billy saw her first, she was clad in a brief white frock which contrasted with her glowing sun-tanned skin.

  She was climbing up the steep slope from the swimming pool, carrying the bulky paraphernalia of an afternoon spent swimming and sun-bathing. Billy stood aside t
o let her pass, and the towel which was flung over one shoulder slid to the ground. Billy bent to retrieve it.

  'Thank you,' said the girl, holding out a hand. Immediately, a Penguin book and one sandal clattered to the path.

  The girl laughed as Billy bent again.

  'I'm so sorry. It's like one of those circus acts, isn't it? You know, the clown drops one thing after another and then turns out to be an expert juggler.'

  'And are you?'

  'Does it look like it?' replied the girl. Her teeth were very white and even. Her eyes were a peculiarly light hazel which gave them a sunny look.

  'Let me take some of the things,' offered Billy, genuinely concerned by the untidy collection of articles in her arms. 'Couldn't we put the small stuff in your bag?'

  He squatted down and packed the book, two sandals, a spectacle case and a tube of skin-cream into the enormous beach bag. He then stood up and folded the towel neatly.

  'You take that, and I'll bring the bag,' said Billy.

  'No, really. I can manage perfectly now that you've tidied me up. You were going down to the pool, I expect.'

  'I wasn't really going anywhere. Just savouring a perfect evening.'

  More people began to descend the path, and Billy and the girl found themselves in the way.

  'Well, thank you,' she said, moving on. 'I was going to have a drink before dinner. May I offer you one after all this porterage?'

  'I should love it,' said Billy truthfully, following her nimble figure up the slope.

  Over the drinks they introduced themselves and Billy told her about the work which brought him to Sicily.

  'And you are on holiday, I expect,' he said.

  'I have been. That's why I'm staying at the San Domenico. But I've come to a tremendous decision in the past fortnight. I'm hoping to settle here for good.'