Spring (22 page)

The film came to an abrupt stop.

Jack looked totally stunned.

After a while, he finally broke the silence.

‘These trips of Arthur’s, are they to do with the Hyddenworld?’

‘Yes,’ said Margaret after a pause, ‘that’s exactly what they are to do with, but can you see why it would be impossible to tell anyone? If it’s true it’s something beyond extraordinary. If it’s not it means that Arthur is mad. Either way it’s fraught with danger.’

‘And he thinks that I come from that world?’

‘He does and so do I. Let me tell you a bit more about what we think it means to be what the hydden call “giant-born” . . .’

She began telling him what she knew, what Arthur and she had worked out, and about the legendary giants-born, most particularly Beornamund of Brum.

Old stories, new times.

Jack listened but asked hardly any more questions. At some point during that long evening, which went into the night, Katherine found courage to reach over and put her hand on his. Just a touch for reassurance and empathy. She couldn’t begin to imagine what it all meant to him but she guessed it ran deep.

In the absence of questions from him and his silence as he tried to come to terms with an entirely new perception of himself and his world, she asked questions for him.

‘But . . . but . . . but . . .’

So many ifs and buts, and more questions remaining than answers given.

Finally they had all had enough for the time being and went off to their rooms.

‘Thanks, Katherine,’ he said outside her door. ‘I’m glad you were there.’

She hugged him.

‘Always,’ she whispered.

‘Yes,’ he said.

Katherine said, ‘I think that Arthur was primarily trying to
tell
you something, without actually spelling it out. He must have guessed that Mrs Foale would see the film, too, and he didn’t want to worry her unduly.’

He went to his room.

Arthur had been right in what he said: none of this was exactly a surprise. Jack had sensed something like this was coming. It shook him, even shocked him, but it also brought a sense of relief. For the first time in his life, he felt he was beginning to get a sense of who he really was.

Later that night he suddenly woke up feeling certain that Katherine was right. Arthur had been trying to warn him about something – but what?

Jack got up and opened the window, staring through the darkness towards the trees.

He stood there a long time, but somehow couldn’t work it out.

Eventually he went back to bed, and slept fitfully, until he reawakened feeling much more worried than before.

Dawn was breaking and the sky was red.

‘Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning,’ he murmured aloud.

But that was merely a caution about the weather. What was nagging at him was something that hinted at dangers far greater than the weather.

Then he got it.

The warning’s not just about me, it’s about Katherine too. They might try and get at me through her. He didn’t want her or the others to know that because it would ‘alarm them unduly’ as Katherine herself puts it.

Then he got something else.

He’s telling me the Hyddenworld is my world and I’ve got to protect Katherine from it.

The sky over White Horse Hill changed to the colour of warning red as rain clouds loomed and then, the wind shifting, retreated.

‘For the time being,’ murmured Jack, his eyes purposeful, his movements assured. ‘All I can do is watch and wait.’

He got up, washed and dressed and went out into the garden before breakfast, prowling about as if in search of the enemy. He didn’t see one but he didn’t doubt any more that one was there and it was dark and shadowed and some day, probably sooner than later, it was going to emerge out of his dreams and nightmares and show its face.

T
heir daily walks became longer, faster and more vigorous, as if providing an antidote to the shocks of Arthur’s DVD. They tried not to think what it might mean for the future and put all their thoughts and actions into the present.

They began at last to explore the chalk escarpment immediately to the north of Woolstone, and then the chalk Downs beyond. Their mysterious dry valleys and rolling slopes, littered with ancient monuments, including the White Horse itself, were as changeable in appearance as the weather which swept continually across it.

The ridge enticed both Jack and Katherine and they explored every aspect of it from the huge hill fort nearby, and even down to the solitary hawthorn that added drama to the smooth sward of grass below it.

But they did not walk those few extra yards up to the Horse itself. It didn’t feel as if it was time.

‘Not yet,’ said Katherine, her fair hair wild in the strong wind that was always blowing up the scarp face.

‘No,’ murmured Jack in agreement, hands stuck into his anorak pockets, feet solid on the grass, mouth firm over jutting jaw, eyes narrowed against the wind.

Instead they would turn back from that final exploration, and head over the crest of the scarp to the ancient Ridgeway that ran west-to-east in its lee, echoing the run of the Thames flowing to the north.

This Neolithic highway was said to be the oldest road still in use in Europe and there was the feeling, as they started along its chalky, rutted path, so hard on the ankles in dry weather, so slippery in wet, that they were joining a stream of travellers who had gone the same way since time began.

It started twenty miles to their west, at the stone circle of Avebury, rising up the scarp slope before beginning its high-level journey east and then north, a great arc of a route that ended nearly ninety miles away on Ivinghoe Beacon.

‘Except it doesn’t,’ Katherine informed Jack one stormy day. ‘Arthur said it once joined other routes and went much further, all the way up into Norfolk where it joins the Peddar’s Way, and on to the Wash . . .’

They stood, as they often did, in silent contemplation of the landscape and their place in it. Katherine had the whole route fixed as an image in her mind; Jack felt it in his very guts, and wanted to walk it then and there, right to where the North Sea’s waves hit the East Anglian shore.

‘You and I learn things in different ways,’ observed Jack, looking along the Ridgeway as if to discern its distant end. ‘You read it in books, or learn it from people like Arthur, and then you discover it on the ground itself. I do it the other way round, and learn what I’m feeling from you and Mrs Foale and your Mum.’

Their arms and shoulders brushed each other as they stood leaning against the wind.

‘Shall we walk the whole way one day?’ suggested Katherine. ‘Right to the sea? We could go for a swim in celebration.’

‘If we do, when we get there I’ll strip off and dive straight into the water.’

He turned away because he knew it was something he would not want to do with her watching.

Katherine glanced at him, puzzled and slightly distressed – not for the first time with Jack. She looked at the scars that disfigured his neck, rightly guessing what had made him fall silent. He had let his guard down.

‘Jack . . . ?’

That was the first time she wanted to reach out to him as a woman might, to take him in her arms and run her fingers over his wounds.

‘Let’s head on,’ he said, shutting down, stepping forward once more. But he was not silent for long. He wasn’t good at silences or sulking.

The moment over, he suddenly laughed and said with a rueful grin, ‘Except I’m not sure where we’re going right now, are
you
?’

His face had caught the wind and sun and he looked bronzed and healthy, his eyes brighter and more alight than when he had first arrived, weeks before.

She too looked different, more relaxed, her hair more blonde, made curly by the wind.

‘I always feel safe on the Ridgeway,’ she said slowly. ‘The spirits of the past protect the likes of us up here. You know what I think? I think we should go to Avebury tomorrow.’

Avebury had been one of Arthur’s favourite stone circles, even more so than Stonehenge, and Jack had never been there.

‘Isn’t it too far to walk?’

‘We could get a bus there, or Mrs Foale could drop us off early in the morning, and we could start walking back. It’s only twenty miles.’

‘Only!’

Jack was as fit as Katherine but had never been used to walking the distances she had. He still thought of them as much longer than they were.

‘We could see it as the beginning of our walk to the North Sea. We’ll do it in stages, bit by bit, year by year, and when we get there we’ll become different people and . . .’

She stood staring at him, heart thumping, about to step out into a void.

‘Then what?’

Until that moment she had no idea what she was going to say, but instinct took over and she blurted it out. ‘Then you’ll know it doesn’t matter if you take your shirt off and I see your burns. That just won’t matter any more.’

She felt at once it was the wrong thing to say, because his face darkened, his grin faded.

‘It’ll always matter,’ said Jack, retreating, unable yet to go so far. ‘It’ll always matter.’

She stood staring at him in alarm. She had said too much and made too many presumptions. But it felt unfair. Sometimes that instinct and bluntness was all right for Jack to display but not for her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

They walked home in uncomfortable silence, each lost in their thoughts and in regret that finding a common language was so hard.

They didn’t do the trip to Avebury the next day, or the day after that.

Clare Shore was dying and everything was on hold.

T
he doctor was just leaving when they arrived back at Woolstone House, late from seeing a film in Newbury. He reported that Clare was now as weak as she had ever been.

She was heavily sedated when they looked in on her.

‘Tomorrow . . . maybe the next day,’ said Mrs Foale quietly. ‘I’m afraid she hasn’t got long.’

The tears started pouring down Katherine’s face. Even though she had accepted the inevitable a long time ago, it was still a shock. Jack put his arms around her and pulled her close – she buried her head in his shoulder and sobbed.

When she’d calmed down a little she found a warm change of clothes and prepared to sit with her mother through the night. She was there when Clare woke up just after eight next morning and asked, ‘Where’s Jack? I want to talk to him.’

He came at once and sat on the edge of her bed, taking her hand as he had done when he first arrived.

‘Alone,’ whispered Clare.

Katherine and Mrs Foale left the room.

Jack looked into her dark eyes, no longer so bright, which had now given up the struggle against pain. He knew it was goodbye. The stranger ever hovering in this room was at her shoulder now.

Jack had to lean close to hear her.

‘You must do for me what I can no longer do for myself. You must climb White Horse Hill.’

‘I—’ he began.

‘Today, this afternoon, go to the White Horse and say I’m ready now. For so very long I’ve wanted to climb up there myself, but of course I never had the strength. Now you must do it for me.’

They sat for a while.

Then: ‘Jack?’

He looked at her.

‘Look after her,’ she said, ‘and listen,
listen
. . . learn to let her look after you. That’ll be your greatest gift to her.
Let her look after you, Jack.
’

He nodded as if he understood, but he was unsure if he properly heard what she had said.

Then, with great effort, she reached up and touched his face. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, ‘for coming to us. Now . . . go and climb that hill for me!’

Jack got up.

Katherine was waiting outside and they took each other in their arms.

‘She’s near the end isn’t she?’

Jack nodded.

He held her tight until she was ready to go to Clare.

Then, when she was gone, he knew what he had to do.

Jack set off after lunch, leaving Katherine and Mrs Foale now to take turns in watching over Clare. He didn’t say where he was going but explained it was something Clare had specially asked him to do.

He walked the length of the garden, circling the clump of trees, till he reached the far boundary fence. Then he crossed the field beyond to where the ground dropped away into further trees, where he then lost sight of White Horse Hill. He found the right path and followed it into the oppressive air which was heavy with humidity again, and charged with a dark energy. Rain was imminent once more, which added a sense of urgency to his steps in case, if he did not hurry, he might not reach White Horse Hill in time.