The Sea Change (7 page)

‘Aren’t you Jack Fielding’s
girl?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘I spoke with your father
earlier.’ He narrowed his eyes.

‘Violet wanted a leek for some soup,
didn’t you, Violet?’ Mrs Shelton held out the soil-coated vegetable towards
me, as if passing on the baton in a relay.

‘Yes … Mama’s got the
chills. Nothing a bit of warm broth can’t cure.’ I took the leek from her
with both hands and she turned her eyes back to the ground.

‘Mrs Shelton, if you please, I have
come to check the farmhouse,’ began the warden.

‘Whatever for, sir?’ she asked,
not looking up from her trowel.

‘I have been informed that your family
may have become embroiled in some clandestine activity.’

‘Clandestine,’ she murmured.
‘I can’t think where you might have heard such a thing.’

‘We have eyes and ears in all sorts of
places, Mrs Shelton. Eyes and ears.’ He placed his hands behind his back and
peered towards the front door of the farmhouse. ‘Is Mr Shelton at home, I wonder?
I hope it won’t be necessary to obtain a warrant.’

‘My husband is working in the fields.
And, sir, there is certainly no need for a warrant. We are all friends here. I will show
you around myself.’

‘Thank you,’ he replied,
straightening his back.

She rose from the vegetable patch in one
single motion and wiped her blackened hands on her apron. The warden followed her inside
the house while I sneaked round to the back to spy on them through the dining-room
window. I could just make out three of the six Shelton children gawping through the oak
banisters in the hallway, faces dirty from an afternoon’s work. The warden checked
everywhere for the pig – he even rolled back the dining-room rug in search of a
trap-door. Once he had finished with the house, he conducted a methodical search of the
barns, only to return to the front garden empty-handed.

‘Thank you for your time,’ he
muttered to Mrs Shelton at the gate, clearly unconvinced of her innocence. I stood with
my back against the side of the house, fingers clawing at the bricks, watching.

‘And thank you for yours, sir. You
were more than thorough.’ She unleashed a smile – similar to the one she had given
me earlier.

The warden frowned and started towards the
house, before concluding that there was no point in searching again. ‘I’ll
be off, then,’ he said curtly, tipping his hat in her direction as he made his way
down the farm track to go back to the village.

Once he was out of sight, I came out of my
hiding place, accidentally kicking over an empty pail on my way. Mrs Shelton turned
towards me calmly, as if she had been aware of my presence all along.

‘I suppose you want to know where it
is,’ she addressed me.

I nodded back at her eagerly, not quite
believing that she might let me in on the secret.

‘You mustn’t tell anyone, do you
hear?’

I shook my head. ‘I won’t
breathe a word, Mrs Shelton, I promise.’

‘Not even your father. He’s a
good man. But he can’t know.’

‘What about Pete?’ I asked
tentatively.

‘The Archams’ lad?’

‘Yes.’

‘That boy knows everything that goes
on in this place as it is.’ She smiled. ‘He’s Imber’s
spy.’

She led me through the hall and into the
dining room where she proceeded to heave a large wooden dresser back on its haunches,
causing it to take one cumbersome step across the floorboards. I smelt the meat before I
saw it, running a finger over the seamless wall, confused. As I reached the centre of
the space behind the dresser, the consistency of the wall changed from solid to soft, as
if there were nothing behind the wallpaper but air. I breathed in.

‘Give the paper a push,’ said Mrs
Shelton. ‘We might as well break in. I promised the children a pork dinner. It was
the only way to keep them quiet.’

She nodded towards the wallpaper, which was
covered with thin navy blue stripes. I placed a palm on the wall again, feeling my way
into the space where the paper became flimsy. Pushing harder, I made a puncture, then
tore off the sheet cleanly in a strip. There was a cupboard-like alcove behind it and I
could just make out the head of the pig, buried deep in a salt trough. The pork smelt
almost foreign to me, I had gone without meat for so long.

‘Ingenious!’ I whispered.

‘Join us for dinner next week and you
can taste some yourself.’ She smiled and placed a hand on the small of my back to
guide me, like a sailboat, to the front door. I was already imagining a chop between my
teeth and thanking her for it.

‘You’d best be off. Or else folk
will start wondering. And we wouldn’t want that.’

‘Are you sure about dinner?’ I
asked her.

‘Certainly.’ She smiled.
‘Saturday next.’

I pushed the gate open and began the walk
home.

‘Violet!’ she called after me.
‘Why not invite the Archams’ lad along?’

I stood still on the road. Did people think
there was something between Pete and me? The idea bloomed. I loved speaking for him,
receiving an invitation on his behalf.

It was a long run from the Sheltons’
farm to Dog Kennel Lane, taking me through the entire length of the village. I passed
along the ribbon of cottages to the north end of the valley and climbed the gradient of
the lane, the houses vanishing one by one into the valley’s bowl. The land on the
surrounding hills was sparse and treeless; it did not try to compete with the sky. Here,
the sky took prominence: it bullied the Plain with bulbous clouds
and
deep, heady blues, eschewing the neatness of the fields below with its boundlessness. I
had become fixated by its depth – how, even on overcast days, it seemed colossal,
unthinkable, a limitless expanse of blankness.

I arrived at the Archams’ farm to find
that Pete was still out on the Plain with the sheep. So I sat on the yard wall, scouring
Rough Down for a sign of his flock. To sit like this was a luxury. The children from the
farms hardly ever had a chance to enjoy the Plain for its own sake. And I felt I always
had to find a practical reason to roam it so as not to appear as if I had too much time
on my hands. Father didn’t like me wandering around for the sake of it. He said it
singled us out. Yet here I was, absorbing the whole scene as if it were a picture on a
wall. Around Imber, there was no flat idleness – the Plain made us earn our presence in
the fields. Unless you were from Imber Court, you had to be walking or working or else
not there at all. Nothing was ever still up here, not on the surface; the air was always
on the move, sifting through the grass in whispers before carrying on its way. Sitting
on the wall, I felt like one of the Whistlers, surveying the view simply for its beauty,
walking the hills for no reason other than my own leisure. I’d often hear them
readying their cart from inside the school house, loading it up with blankets and
hampers for a picnic. It was the one thing I was glad of after the evacuation: I was
spared the thought of them eating strawberries in the long grass and knapweed while I
was trapped indoors solving equations.

At last a dot appeared on the far side of
Rough Down. It grew like a pool of ink, gaining detail gradually until I recognized it
as Pete’s flock. I ran up the hill to meet him, full to the brim with the news of
Mrs Shelton’s pig.

‘Hello, Miss Violet!’ Mr Archam
shouted, when he was close enough to make out my figure. ‘Lend us a hand,
won’t you? This one’s a little weary.’ He passed me a lamb, which I
took awkwardly, unfamiliar with the best way to hold it. ‘Ah, she’s no
farmer’s daughter, is she, Pete?’ He chortled. ‘Give
her some grip, miss, or she’ll bleat the houses down.’

I tried my best to cradle the animal,
dropping behind Mr Archam in embarrassment when the lamb continued to flail in my
arms.

‘What brings you up Dog Kennel?’
he asked.

‘I wanted a word with Pete.’

‘A word, eh? It’ll be more than
a word you’ll give him, I’m sure of that.’ He smiled.
‘I’ll be heading on now. That one you’ve got there is sickly.’
He pointed to the lamb.

‘Will she be all right?’ I
asked, passing the struggling animal to Mr Archam.

‘Nothing that a cosy night by the
hearth can’t solve, Miss Violet. Don’t you lose sleep over it.’ He
pulled the lamb close to his chest as he spoke and her legs became limp. She seemed calm
all of a sudden; she knew her keeper. ‘See you back at the house, Pete.’ He
tipped his cap at him and Pete nodded back. We watched him complete his journey to the
bottom of the Down and turn into the farmyard. Mrs Archam would be happy to have a lamb
by the fire for the evening: the flock was as precious to the pair of them as
children.

‘I discovered where the Sheltons were
keeping their pig,’ I told Pete, once Mr Archam was out of earshot. He kept quiet,
eyes watching the flock. I caught myself craving his gaze – dark and unflinching – and
tried to quell my disappointment when he didn’t look up as I spoke. ‘It was
behind the dresser – they covered a hole in the wall with wallpaper, would you believe
it?’

‘You shouldn’t tell me that, Vi.
It’s Mrs Shelton’s business.’

‘No, she showed me. And she said I
could tell you.’ I drew a breath. ‘Actually, she invited both of us for a
pork dinner on Saturday.’

Pete frowned. ‘That’s
kind.’

A gust of wind caught my skirt and I rushed
to pin it to my knees. ‘I thought you’d be more pleased.’

‘It’s just that I’m
busy.’

‘But you will come, won’t
you?’

‘No, Vi … I mean, it’s
difficult. I’m … Mr and Mrs Archam need me.’

As we reached the neck of the hill he busied
himself with the flock so that they clung together more tightly. I tried to meet his eye
but he would not look up from the field beneath his feet.

‘It’s all right,’ I
faltered. ‘Annie will be just as pleased to come.’

At the crossroads, I turned in the opposite
direction to the farmhouse, knowing he would not follow or call after me. Clouds
blossomed and parted, and the light grew in intensity – the final swelling of the sun
before dusk. The brightness – as sudden as a gasp – made me wish for shade but there
were no trees for a mile, only the Downs. I felt exposed, as if the sky had witnessed
everything. As soon as I had rounded the corner and was out of Pete’s sight, I
ran, red-faced, down into the valley.

The church was dark inside; I could sense
the cool balm of the walls without touching them. All the light was shut out except for
six shafts that fell in pillars across the nave. I settled myself in a side pew beneath
the west window. The church was empty except for the dust that drew slow circles inside
each line of light. In Imber, where every building had a dual purpose, where even houses
doubled as barns for lambs, it felt rare to have a space so completely void of toil,
movement and activity. And yet, somehow, I needed it, returning, as the other villagers
did, to its quiet whenever I felt out of sorts. Only in the church could I still myself
for long enough to feel as immutable as the vast expanse of the Plain outside.

From my place in the pew, I heard a shuffle
in the base of the tower. I crossed to the back of the nave and found Father sorting a
pile of bell ropes. He always punctuated his days with physical jobs like this one. Such
was the pleasure he took in caring for the church that he refused to appoint a verger.
It was only later,
once we had left Imber and I came across other
well-read men, that I realized how rare this was – to take as much trouble over fixing a
bell as he would over writing a sermon.

‘Hello, Violet.’ My father did
not need to look up from the ropes to know who had entered. He was familiar with my
steps – my incapacity for stillness. ‘Come and help me with these,’ he
gestured to the ropes, ‘and tell me what’s the bother.’

I crossed the floor of the tower and delved
my hands into the pile, selecting a rope to untangle from the rest.

‘Mrs Shelton offered Pete and me a
pork dinner but Pete won’t come with me,’ I blurted, the problem shrinking
even as I voiced it.

Father smiled to himself as he prised apart
another knot. ‘It takes a foolish boy to refuse a pork dinner in the midst of a
war.’ He laughed. Then he put down his completed rope and pulled me under his arm.
‘Don’t take it to heart, Vi. He’ll be thinking of the lambs,
that’s all.’

Father knew exactly how to get me to let go
of my worries – how to place them next to a simple task so that I could examine them
from a distance and think,
There, it’s only a matter of persisting until every
knot is untangled, until every rope is smooth.
But I was not a girl who could
let things rest. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate on the ropes, I returned to
Pete’s words again and again, knotting and unknotting them and not getting any
nearer to the truth.

No sooner had I left Father in the church
than I began to fret again. I went and found Annie, who was fetching kale from the
bottom of her cottage garden.

‘Something isn’t right.’
She frowned when I had told her everything – so much for keeping the pig a secret.

‘I’ve ruined it, haven’t
I? Perhaps I was too keen.’ I stood up from the wall where we were both sitting
and paced up and down its length.

‘Since when has your keenness stopped
him?’ she quipped.

‘Oh, don’t! I can’t bear it!
It’s all right for you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re the one he really likes,
silly.’

She looked at me vacantly.

‘Never mind.’ I sighed.

‘Maybe Mr Archam really does need
him.’

‘Do you think …?’

‘Your father’s right. You know
how it is with the lambing. Mr Archam will want an extra pair of hands at the
ready.’ We stayed silent for a moment, testing Annie’s theory in the quiet
between us.

‘No, it’s no use,’ I
began. ‘You know how the Archams are. They’re too afraid to make demands on
him. And he’s not the kind of boy to ever feel obliged, is he?’