THE WALK

Sophie is woken up by the sound of the telephone ringing downstairs. She gets out of bed and draws back the chintz curtains of her room in Emily’s cottage and opens the windows wide. Like Emily’s bedroom, the guest room is at the front of the house and overlooks the countryside through trees. Sophie inhales deeply as she surveys the view over the stream, past the woods and across the meadow towards the distant high ground that runs down to the estuary. It is going to be another lovely late summer day. In bare feet she treads softly down the old wooden staircase, to find Emily in the kitchen and coffee brewing.

‘That was Edward,’ says Emily. ‘He was asking if we would like to walk round the estate with him this afternoon.’ Emily thinks that if she goes too, it will make it all right with Margaret. She noticed how Margaret looked at Sophie over dinner, and how keenly she was watching Edward.

‘That would be lovely,’ Sophie says, thinking much the same thoughts.  Since her arrival two weeks ago, Sophie has made a habit of walking in the woods along this side of the estate, enjoying the peace of the natural world. She has met Edward once or twice, and when hidden behind a tangle of green branches they have almost lost track of time. As they lingered by the field’s edge in the late afternoon sunlight she has wondered if Emily suspects anything. If she saw the two of them, their hands touching, would she think it was it a trick of the light?

Once, Sophie returned laden with the wildflowers and grasses she loved to gather, to find Emily seated on a garden bench reading some papers. Hastily thrusting the documents into a brown folder, Emily looked up at Sophie and saw the light playing in her hair, her arms full of foliage.

‘Just some work I have to read.’ Emily smiles. ‘My word, Sophie, but you look like the goddess of plenty.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ Sophie returns the smile, ‘thank you for the compliment.’

They take the flowers indoors. As she arranges them in a large Victorian vase, Sophie hums a tune to herself, and Emily says, ‘I haven’t heard that since we were all together as children. Edward’s mother taught it to us, do you remember?’

‘Yes. We marched round the garden chanting it until my mother told us to stop. It got on her nerves.’

‘Your mother was lovely. She was always having to bandage my knees when I fell over,’ says Emily. ‘Edward’s mother was kind to me. But I thought she was very much in control.’ She pauses. ‘Diana must have persuaded Tom that I needed a decent education, because they helped me through grammar school, and that’s how I got into Oxford. I had a lot to thank her for.’ 

Sophie has this conversation in mind as she gets ready for the walk. Jeans, t-shirt, plimsolls, a floppy sunhat and her camera.

Edward is waiting for her and Emily on the track and Sophie is surprised to see how like a country farmer he looks in his boots and checked shirt. It is a long walk round the estate, taking in the views of the estuary from the high ground and down to the beach by the head of the creek. Larks sing, hovering above the high pastures, and Sophie envies them their freedom while Edward talks of land values, the price of barley, the agricultural policy and what a hard time land-owners are having. Emily asks questions and makes observations, while Sophie listens. 

She learns that the hands-on work of the farm is done by Mr Byghan, who lives in the farmhouse. When they eventually reach the farm, Mrs Byghan asks them in for tea and a home-made scone fresh from the oven. Sophie is enchanted. Here is a woman she can relate to. Mrs Byghan talks of real life, of children, life in the village, and how hard her husband is working – even now he is over on the other side somewhere with the tractor and the dog, and their son Treve who is 21 and fair to becoming a good farmer like his dad. Treve plans to marry his childhood sweetheart as soon as they can get enough money together.

They are about to leave when a Land Rover draws up outside. A man in overalls walks in through the back door, and Sophie is introduced to Joe Greatwood. ‘Joe here is the one who holds the estate together,’ says Edward, ‘I don’t know what we would do without him.’

Joe Greatwood is a man of few words, but Sophie feels instinctively that he is someone you could trust, and probably a great strength about the estate. He explains to Sophie that he is engaged with clearing the ditches that criss-cross the land because, ‘Come rain, if the leats fill then the land floods.’

The talk moves to farming and tractors, and Sophie begins to lose interest. She watches Edward, who seems to know what he is talking about. But as they walk on, she notices him glancing towards the sea, as if what he really desires is somewhere else. Their eyes have hardly met during the whole afternoon, and now Edward is saying, ‘Time to go, I’ve got things to do.’ They part outside the farmhouse, Edward walks back to the house and Margaret, while Sophie and Emily return to the cottage.

Sophie is thoughtful, wondering how it is that Edward is someone else here, someone so different from the carefree lover she knew at sea. She has noticed the frown lines appearing on his face and the first grey hairs in the burnished auburn curls beside his temples. Time, she thinks, does not wait for you.

That evening, Sophie and Emily eat tinned tomato soup and scrambled eggs on toast.

‘What did you think of the estate?’ asks Emily.

‘It’s much bigger than I remember,’ says Sophie. ‘All those fields, and the old stone walls, and the farm. I liked Mrs Byghan, and I thought Joe Greatwood was, well, great.’

‘So he is,’ says Emily. ‘Salt of the earth, both of them. And young Treve Byghan too. You’d have liked him.’ The young man who will marry his childhood sweetheart: Sophie cannot imagine falling in love so permanently.

‘Joe’s right about the ditches.’ Emily continues. ‘The land is dry now after the drought, but when it starts to rain it turns to mud, and if the ditches are blocked the water runs wherever it can find a way. I keep an eye on the stream here and if it rises I give Joe a call and ask him to check in the high fields.’

‘Does Edward need to spend all his time looking after everything?’ asks Sophie.

‘Pretty well,’ says Emily, ‘except when he takes off in Iolanthe. I think he likes to get away once in a while. But I don’t see that much of him. There’s Margaret of course, and I imagine that she feels a bit left out once we start reminiscing about the old days.’

Sophie nods. ‘I can imagine. We were all so close, weren’t we? But we can’t re-run the past. We are where we are now.’

Emily looks at her keenly. ‘True. Nobody is getting any younger, and Edward still doesn’t have a family. You know, “An heir and a spare,” as the saying goes.’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ says Sophie. She changes the subject. ‘You are happy, aren’t you Emily, as things are?

‘Yes, I decided long ago that I would make my own future, do what I want and have the things that I want. When I was a child I used to gaze at the wonderful things in the big house, and I knew that’s what I wanted. Not a great big place like that, but my own place with my own nice things in it. And my own car in the garage.’ She laughs, and Sophie smiles, thinking of the sporty Mercedes that lives in Emily’s garage and the exciting day they spent exploring the lanes of West Cornwall. Not that Sophie would want such a thing, but Emily has worked hard to get what she wanted and she is her own person.

‘I think you are right,’ Sophie says as they start to wash up. ‘What I admire about you is that you have done all this by yourself, and you haven’t had to depend on a man for anything.’

Emily changes the subject. ‘I have to go back to London for a while,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry, but please do feel free to stay on. I’ll try to come down at the weekend.’ That’s all right,’ says Sophie. ‘I’ll be fine here. I’ll look after it for you and I can explore more of the coast.’

Chapter 35