The Homecoming by Mary Lide

Author:Mary Lide
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0 246 13791 6
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 1992-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

In a blaze of denial I rushed from the dining room, brushing waiters aside, startling guests. I heard a man say, ‘My gum, who’s that?’ Another cried, ‘Steady on’, while his wife drew back her skirt as if afraid of contamination. I didn’t care. Head high, defying the world, I stalked through the crowded hall, out the main doors, across the pavement to the inn yard. It was the work of a moment to untie the pony, climb into the trap; I had trotted smartly over the cobble stones before they knew we’d gone.

Once on the highway, the pony pricked up its ears at my remembered voice, put on unusual speed in anticipation of home, its little hooves tip-tapping. Long before Farmer Penwith could have recovered to pay the bill and slink after me we were out on the Bodmin road, heading inland towards the moors. I was halfway back to Penwith Farm before I drew breath.

It wasn’t on my own account that I wanted Farmer Penwith to be guilty of lying. I didn’t care how he insulted me, or my mother; it was the story of Julian’s imprisonment that had to be invention, a spur-of-the-moment cruelty. Hadn’t he let slip earlier that when he’d returned the saddle Julian had been at the manor? Desperately I searched for nuance in every word, in my mind re-scanning every remark. One could go crazy with such searching. Despite my bravado, instinctively I knew Farmer Penwith wasn’t that clever.

Julian’s name had cropped up by chance, had not been used for deliberate reason except by myself.

I couldn’t let myself think that. Because if I did then Penwith must have told the truth, and truth in this instance was worse than lie. Some things are worth fighting for. But not to have Julian shut up far from home, hungry, cold, perhaps wounded. The rumours of what Boer prison camps were like were already rife, if they took prisoners that is.

Instead of turning back to the coast, I urged the pony forward. And if I must put a reason to what I did next, say simply it was the need to sort falsehood from fact.

By then it was early afternoon. We had passed few people on the open road in contrast to the morning; everyone who could would have finished their travelling. Village streets however were more busy, people in and out of the local shops doing last-minute buying. A man went by carrying a goose, reminding me of Cyril; small boys cracked walnuts under a stone making the pony jump. The crisp air had reddened my cheeks, my hair was flying, the pony tossed its head as if to say, ‘Hurry!’ To a casual passer-by we might have seemed bound on a simple Christmas journey.

We rumbled over a cattle grid, came up on the moors. A wind was blowing, sending white clouds scudding; tattered strips of gorse bowled along the edges of the track, their yellowing prickles rattling. A few scrawny cattle picked at the grass which in this season was white and sparse; only the bogs kept their emerald.

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