made, the more dangerous the ground became.
‘So, the end,’ she said.
‘It was in the Christmas holidays,’ he said slowly. ‘We’d both gone back to school in the autumn, her to her fancy ladies’ college in the south, me to the comp. I couldn’t wait for the term to finish.’
‘You didn’t think she might have had second thoughts about your relationship during those months apart?’
‘Never crossed my mind,’ he said wearily. ‘Not vanity, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was just a certainty, like knowing the sun would rise. But when we met in December, it was harder for us to get whole days together when the weather was bad. I mean, a teenage girl wanting to go for a solitary stroll in the summer sunshine is one thing. In a winter gale it’s much more suspicious. We met more and more often under the rowan tree. A blizzard blew up, it was practically a white-out. We sheltered among the trees till things improved a bit, then I insisted on accompanying her back through the grounds till the castle was in sight. Sir Leon had got worried and organized a little search party that included my dad. We met them on the estate drive. I’d have tried to bluff it out, say I’d run into Imogen somewhere and offered to see her home, but she didn’t bother. I think she was right. They weren’t going to believe us. I went home with Fred, she went home with Sir Leon to face her mother.’
‘What did Fred say?’
‘He asked me what I thought I was doing. I told him we were in love, that I was going to marry her as soon as I legally could. He said, “Forget the law, there’s no law ever passed that’ll let you marry that lass!” I said, “Why not? There’s nowt anyone can say that’ll make a difference.” And he laughed, more snarl than a laugh, and he said that up at the castle the difference had been made a long time back. I didn’t know what he meant, not until the next day.’
‘You saw Imogen again?’ guessed Alva.
‘Oh yes. Sir Leon brought her down to Birkstane. They left us alone together. I grabbed hold of her and began gabbling about it making no difference, we could still do what we planned, we could run away together, and so on, lots of callow adolescent stuff. She pushed me away and said, sort of puzzled, “Wolf, don’t talk silly. We never planned anything.” And she was right, I realized later. All the plans had been in my head.’
‘And was this when she set you the three impossible tasks?’ asked Alva.
‘Who’s a clever little shrink then?’ he mocked. ‘Yes, suddenly this girl every bit of whose body I knew as well as my own turned into something as cold and distant as the North Pole. She said she was sorry, it had been great fun, but she’d assumed I knew as well as she did that it would have to come to an end eventually. I managed to stutter, “Why?” And she told me. With brutal frankness.’
His face darkened at the memory, still potent after all these years.
Alva prompted, ‘What did she say?’
‘She said surely I could see how impossible it would be for her to marry someone who couldn’t speak properly, had neither manners nor education, and was likely to remain on a working man’s wage all his life.’
Jesus! thought Alva. They really do bring their princesses up differently!
‘So these were the three impossible tasks?’ she said. ‘Get elocution lessons, get educated, get rich. And you resolved you would amaze everyone by performing them?’
‘Don’t be silly. I had a short fuse, remember? I went into a right strop, told her she was a stuck-up little cow just like her mam, that I weren’t ashamed to talk the way everyone else round here talked, that a Hadda were as good as an Ulphingstone any day of the week, and that my dad said all a man needs is enough money to buy what’s necessary for him to live. She smiled and said, “Clearly you don’t put me in that category. That’s good. I’ll see you around.” And she went.’
‘She sounds very self-contained for a fourteen-year-old,’ said Alva.
‘She was fifteen by then,’ he said, as if this made a difference. ‘And I was sixteen.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I moped all over Christmas. Must have been unliveable with. Dad headed off to the Dog as often as he could. Then New Year came. Time for resolutions about changing your life, according to the guys on the telly. I started fantasizing about leaving home, having lots of adventures, striking it rich by finding a gold mine or something, then returning, all suave and sexy like one of them TV presenters, to woo Imogen. Only she wouldn’t know it was me till she’d been overcome by my manly charms. Pathetic, eh?’
‘We all have our dreams,’ said Alva, recalling her teenage fantasies of collecting a best actress Oscar.
‘Yeah. I’d like to say I set off to chase mine, but it wouldn’t be true. I just knew that, whatever I wanted, I wasn’t going to get it hanging around in Cumbria. So I set off to school one morning with everything I owned in my sports bag and all the money I could raise in my pocket. And I just kept on going. The rest as they say is history.’
‘I’d still like to hear it,’ said Alva.
‘Come on!’ he said. ‘You strike me as a conscientious little researcher. The meteoric rise of Wilfred Hadda from uncouth Cumbrian peasant to multi-millionaire master of the universe has been charted so often you must have got it by heart!’
‘Indeed,’ she said, reaching into her document case. ‘I’ve got copies of most of the articles here. There’s general agreement on events after your return. But their guesses at what you did between running away as a poor woodcutter’s son and coming back with your rough edges smoothed and enough money in the bank to launch your business career make speculation about Lord Lucan read like a Noddy story. Anyone get close?’
‘How would I know? I never read them. Which looks best to you?’
‘Well, I’m torn between the South American diamond mine and the Mexican lottery. But on the whole I’d go for the Observer writer, who reckons you probably got kidnapped by the fairies, like True Thomas in the ballad.’
That made him laugh, a rare sound, the kind of laugh that made you want to join in.
‘Yeah, go with that one,’ he said. ‘Away with the fairies, that’s about right. Did he have a good time, this Thomas fellow?’
‘It was a strange place they took him too,’ said Alva. ‘Hang on, he quotes from the ballad in his article. You’ll have to excuse my Scots accent.’
She opened the file and began to read.
‘It was mirk mirk night, there was nae stern light,
And they waded through red blude to the knee;
For a’ the blude that’s shed on earth
Rins through the springs o’ that countrie.’
When she finished he nodded vigorously and said, ‘Oh yes, that guy knows what he’s talking about. So how did Thomas make out when he got back?’
‘Well, he had a bit of a problem, Wolf,’ she said. ‘The one condition of his return was that thereafter he was never able to tell a lie.’
Their gazes locked. Then he smiled, not his attractive winning smile this time, but something a lot more knowing, almost mocking.
‘Just like me then, Elf,’ he said. ‘That old lie-detector mind of yours must have spotted long ago that you’re getting nothing but gospel truth from me!’
‘Gospel? Somehow I doubt if your runaway years had much of religion in them!’
‘You’re so wrong, Elf,’ he said with a grin. ‘I was a regular attender at chapel.’
‘Chapel?’