The Tuscan Child(2)
There was the faintest hint of dawn in the eastern sky, silhouetting the dark outlines of the hills. No sign of rooftops or a town. At least that was good news. He wasn’t likely to be observed or instantly captured. But he was also quite likely to find himself caught in the branches of a tree, hanging helplessly until he was found. He could actually hear his heart pounding in his chest. The night was so still that he almost believed the sound would carry for miles, alerting anybody who was up this early.
Then, as he came lower, he heard sounds: the rustle of wind through dead leaves, the creak of a branch, and the barking of a distant dog. So there were people nearby. And if they were peasants, they’d be rising with the dawn. The last seconds of the descent seemed an eternity. He felt helpless and horribly exposed, imagining German soldiers on the ground, standing by their vehicles, their rifles trained on him, waiting for him to come into range.
He could make out shapes now: to his left, a rocky crag of some sort, rearing above the gentler landscape. And trees—bare trees covering the hilltops and, below, more trees, in regular, orderly rows. But no empty fields. Nowhere guaranteeing a gentle landing. It doesn’t matter that much, he thought grimly. He didn’t have the skill to make the parachute go where he wanted it to.
The ground was coming up fast now. He could make out the rows of trees stretching up a hillside ahead of him. They were small, neat trees, still bearing their leaves and clearly cultivated. An orchard of some kind, with space between the rows to land if he could line himself up properly. He gulped in a big breath of frigid air. Branches snatched at him, knocking him off course. His feet made contact with the ground. His legs buckled under him, and he was half flung, half dragged forward.
“Release the chute, you idiot!” he yelled at himself. He tried to fumble with the harness release as his face bounced against frozen earth, then the parachute must have snagged on something. He lay still, smelling the loamy soil against his cheek. He tried to get up and move, but a searing pain from his leg shot through him. The last thing he heard before he blacked out was the song of a bird, greeting the dawn.
CHAPTER TWO
JOANNA
Surrey, England, April 1973
I had never thought of my father as anything but old—old and bitter, remote and resigned, one who had long ago given up on the world. In my memory, his hair had always been grey. His face was deeply etched with lines that gave him a perpetual scowl, even when he was thinking happy thoughts, which certainly wasn’t often, and he walked with a bit of a limp. So it was not a complete shock to me when I received the telegram notifying me of his death. What did shock me was to learn that he was only sixty-four.
I fought with conflicting emotions as I walked along the lane leading to Langley Hall. The countryside was bursting with spring glory. The banks were dotted with primroses. The first bluebells were appearing in the woodland beyond. The horse chestnuts that bordered the lane were sprouting their first bright green leaves. I found myself glancing up instinctively and thinking about conkers—the shiny brown horse chestnut seeds that would come later in the year. When I was a young child, the village boys would come out here with sticks to knock down the biggest and best conkers in their prickly green cases and then would thread a string through them and harden them for endless fights. I helped them in retrieving the conkers but was not allowed to join in the fights. Father did not approve of my mixing with the village children, even though our lifestyle was certainly no grander than theirs.
Overhead, a blackbird was singing, and in the distance I thought I could hear a cuckoo. I remembered how we had always listened for the first cuckoo of the year. Didn’t the song go, “In April, I open my bill”?
Other than the birdsong, the world lay in almost complete stillness. I was conscious of the sound of my footsteps echoing back from the high hedgerows that bordered the lane. After the constant noise and bustle of London, it was a shock to the system to feel that I was the only person in this universe. I suddenly realised how long it had been since I had come home. Was it over a year? Not even for Christmas, because Father didn’t approve of Adrian and had made it quite clear that he wasn’t welcome, and I was too stubborn to visit without him. Actually, he didn’t disapprove of Adrian per se. Who could find fault with a top graduate from University College London’s law school who had been accepted as a pupil in one of the most distinguished chambers at Temple Bar and was well on his way to becoming a successful barrister? It was only my living with Adrian that Father frowned upon. Father was of the old school, raised to do the right thing at all times. One did not live with a person of the opposite sex. Marriage was expected as soon as possible, and sex was something one anticipated on the wedding night. That was how the son of the squire at Langley Hall behaved, setting an example of morality and clean living to the peasants around him. Horribly quaint and anachronistic in a time when the rest of the world was enjoying a perpetual orgy of free speech, freedom of dress, and free love.
“Stupid,” I muttered out loud and wasn’t sure if I was referring to myself or to Father. I’d certainly been stupid enough, too, and if I’d only listened to Father’s admonitions, I would not be in the position I was now. It was too bad he had died before he’d had a chance to say, “I told you so.” He would have enjoyed that.
A pair of pigeons fluttered up from the grass in front of me, their wings making a sound like laundry flapping on a line, startling me out of my thoughts. I could detect other sounds now: a tractor working in a distant field, the hum of bees in the apple blossoms on the other side of the lane, and the rhythmic clickety-clack of a lawn mower. These were the sounds of my childhood: safe and reassuring. How long ago that seemed.