you staying? At the Staple?’
The Staple was the village’s ancient pub, with a history dating back to the times when the village had been one of the staging posts on the long trek south to English markets for the shepherds who raised their flocks on the Border hills. Hence its name.
‘No…actually, I’m not a visitor. I’ve just moved up here from London.’
‘You’ve moved up here?’ Trixie’s expression said quite obviously that she was surprised. ‘From London, but…You must have bought the old gamekeeper’s cottage, then. Rigg said it had been sold. To a schoolteacher.’
The girl was frowning now, and for some reason she couldn’t truly explain, Harriet found herself saying, ‘I used to teach. I don’t now.’
She didn’t say what she did instead, and Trixie’s frown disappeared, to be replaced with a wide grin.
‘Thank goodness for that, otherwise Rigg would probably try to persuade you to give me extra lessons during the holidays.’ She pulled a face again. ‘He’s got this obsession about keeping me occupied. Just because both my parents were up at Oxford.’ She pulled another face. ‘I keep on telling Rigg that they may have been brilliant, but I’m not. Don’t you think that, at almost eighteen, I’m old enough to go on holiday with a girlfriend and her mother, without Rigg kicking up such a fuss?’ she then demanded indignantly.
Harriet, who suspected there was something she wasn’t being told, could only offer a gentle palliative. ‘Perhaps, but if your uncle has refused to give his permission…’
‘Refused! I thought he was going to have forty fits,’Trixie told her gloomily, ‘and all because of a silly mistake. I tried to tell him what had happened, but he wouldn’t listen, and then I tried to show him how easily circumstances can be misinterpreted, but instead of understanding what I was trying to prove he was furious with me…’
Indignation showed in the hazel eyes, and Harriet felt a sudden surge of sympathy for her uncle. The responsibility of a girl like this one could not be an easy one.
Trixie gave another faint sigh. ‘I suppose I’d better get back before he discovers I’ve broken out. Of course, he wouldn’t be like this at all if he wasn’t such a mis…such a missy…one of those men who hate women,’ she elucidated, leaving Harriet to supply the word automatically.
‘You mean a misogynist.’
‘Mmm…and all because some woman walked out on him years ago,’ Trixie told her, with all the scorn of youth.
Harriet knew she shouldn’t be listening to any of this, never mind wanting, almost encouraging the next confidence.
‘Of course, I suppose it wasn’t very nice, virtually being left at the altar, so to speak,’ Trixie allowed.
Left at the altar! Harriet blinked, wondering if after all she had jumped to erroneous conclusions about the identity of Trixie’s uncle. She couldn’t imagine any woman leaving at the altar the man she had met last night.
They were back in sight of her cottage and, guiltily aware that by rights she should have stopped Trixie’s confidences some time ago, she gave the girl another smile, and said quietly, ‘It’s been nice meeting you…I hope your uncle isn’t too angry when he finds out you’ve been out.’
‘Oh, Rigg doesn’t get angry. He just sort of looks at you…you know, as though you’re the lowest of the low. I suppose it’s true that I’m a bit of a trial to him. That’s what Mrs Arkwright, our housekeeper, says. She thinks the world of Rigg, and not a lot of me. I heard her telling her husband—he’s the gardener—that Rigg was a saint for taking me on after my parents were killed…A saint! He’s more like a devil,’ Trixie told her acidly. ‘He just can’t seem to understand that I’m almost eighteen…grown up…I like your outfit by the way,’ she added inconsequentially. ‘Rigg would have a fit if I bought anything like that.’
She scowled rebelliously at her own serviceable and eminently suitable country clothes, and it occurred to Harriet that had she herself been dressed in her normal sober clothes, this girl would probably never have been quite so forthcoming with her.
A twinge of guilt attacked her. She ought not to have allowed Trixie to tell her so much. Rigg! It was an unusual name. She longed to ask how he had come by it, but, although she suspected Trixie would have been quite willing to tell her, she firmly resisted the temptation.
They parted at Harriet’s garden gate, but later in the day, as she laboured over the outline for her new book, Harriet found it increasingly hard to subdue a sub-plot which involved a slender red-headed girl with hazel eyes, a confiding manner, and an ogre of an uncle.
In the end she gave way to it, and before the day was over she discovered that her book had changed direction completely, and that her plot had been taken over by her new characters.
It was four o’clock before she remembered that she had intended to go shopping.
The market town was a good three-quarters of an hour’s drive away. She had enough food for tonight…She looked at the telephone, trying to work out the time difference between England and California, wondering if she should ring Louise and check that she had settled into her new life happily, and then she dismissed the instinct, telling herself that Louise was an adult with a husband to take care of her. Odd, how, whenever she thought of Louise, she always thought of her in terms of needing to be looked after, when in truth Louise was far more resilient than she was—far more adaptable, far more able to take care of herself. Emotionally, at least.
As Harriet pushed away her typewriter, an unfamiliar sense of happiness filled her. Freedom…freedom to be what she wanted…to do what she wanted…with no other claims on her time or her emotions, with no need to put others first. It was the kind of hedonistic bliss that was totally unfamiliar to her, and, on the strength of it, she donned her wellingtons and her oilskin for the second time that day and marched purposefully out into the wilderness, where she spent a profitable and very muddy hour removing weeds from the crazy paving path that ran along the length of the front garden to the gate, before the growing dusk drove her inside.
Her work in the garden had produced hunger pangs which sent her straight to have a bath and prepare a meal.
The heavy rainclouds had brought an earlier dusk than might have been expected, and, having listened to the news and a weather forecast that suggested that the rain was going to continue for a few days, Harriet retired to bed with a shiny-covered, deliciously smelling, luxurious hardback copy of the latest book by one of her favourite authors.
However, for once the author’s skill failed to occupy all her attention and she found her mind wandering recklessly back not just to her meeting earlier in the day with Trixie Matthews but also to that unexpected exchange with her uncle.
‘Trixie,’ he had called her before realising his mistake, with anger and resignation in his voice. Poor man, it couldn’t be easy for him, apparently totally responsible for such a spirited teenager.
She fell asleep on the thought, a soft smile curling her mouth as she wondered how on earth even so obviously enterprising and resourceful a girl as Trixie had got a man like Rigg to strip down to his underwear in the first place, never mind leaving him stranded without either any clothes or any transport!
Well, supermarkets were obviously something that remained the same countrywide, Harriet reflected tiredly, as she collected her receipt from the girl on the checkout and wheeled her trolley out into the murky greyness of the wet autumn day and the unprepossessing expanse of the supermarket’s car park.
Had the day been pleasanter, she might have been tempted to explore a little more of the town, but the rain was falling heavily, and she felt chilled by the icy wind that whipped across the exposed tarmac.
So much for the mellow fruitfulness of autumn, she thought wryly as she packed her shopping away in the car and then drove away.
The Border hills looked bleak and alien as she drove