interpreted his remarks as a reference to the Chernobyl disaster which Kate knew from newspaper reports had badly affected lamb and cattle sales for meat, it was Kate’s turn to frown.
She knew, of course, about the nuclear fall-out which had been rumoured to have affected some parts of the area, and of course no one could live in these times and not be aware of the fears caused by such places as Windscale, but to see the concern in her father’s eyes brought the reality of it home to her.
‘You’re not saying that you’ve been affected by nuclear fall-out up here, Dad, are you?’ she questioned him, immediately worried for Cherry, for who knew what effects even minute amounts of radiation could have on growing children?
‘We’re not told. But why else open this research station… and why keep it all so secret? There’s a lot of concern in the village about it, I can tell you. Protest meetings and the like.’
‘And the man who’s in charge of the place—what does he say?’
‘Says there’s nothing to worry about, and I, for one, believe him.’
Because he wanted to believe him, Kate recognised. It would break her father’s heart if anything happened to contaminate Seton land. She heard the pride in his voice as they rounded a turn in the road and passed the boundary that divided the de Burghley acres from their own.
‘Now, lass,’ he told Cherry, ‘you’re on Seton land. What dost tha think o’ un?’
Cherry looked as though she were about to burst with pride and delight, and before Kate could stop her, and regardless of the fact that her father was driving the Land Rover, Cherry flung her arms round his neck and said ecstatically, ‘Oh, Grandpa, I’m so glad that we’re here.’
‘Now… now enough of that…’
But her father was careful not to hurt her as he disengaged himself, Kate noticed, and she also noticed the surreptitious way in which he blew his nose only seconds later.
They entered the family farmyard to a cacophany of barking from the dogs, mingling with the cackle of her mother’s hens and the bleating of half a dozen or so huge fat lambs, plainly those which had been hand-reared during the spring and which were now proving reluctant to return to the flock, Kate reflected, recognising the familiar pattern of her childhood.
‘Watch out for the bantam,’ her father warned them as he stopped the Land Rover.
‘What’s a bantam?’ Cherry demanded.
‘A small hen,’ Kate told her, ruefully remembering her mother’s affection for her bantam silkies and the ferocity of the minute males who lorded it over their harems.
‘Don’t tell me that Ma still keeps geese,’ Kate groaned as she heard the familiar alarm sound. In her childhood, even her father had not been safe from the sharp beaks of her mother’s geese, always excellent watchdogs. Their main fault was that it was impossible to teach them to discern between friend and foe.
And then the back door was opening and her mother was standing there. Not really changed at all. Her hair still neat and braided, her diminutive, wiry form still clad in a neat skirt and blouse, covered by an old-fashioned apron.
Across the yard Kate saw the look her parents exchanged, and she was at once a part and yet not a part of a magic circle that concentrated its love on the girl standing uncertainly on one foot as she stared round the unfamiliar yard.
‘I’ve brought them then, Jean, love…’
And suddenly her mother’s arms were open and both she and Cherry were caught up in them. Odd how so much strength could come from such a slight form. As she released them, Kate heard her mother saying tearfully, ‘My, but she’s the spitting image of you, John. A real Seton.’
And for the second time that day she was aware, as she had never been aware as a child, of the great love between her parents; for Cherry certainly looked like neither of them, since her features were hers, Kate knew, and her colouring and build was completely her father’s.
But there was no time to reflect any more on Cherry’s physical heritage, because she was crossing the familiar threshold into the the large square kitchen of her childhood, and the years were rolling back. She almost felt she could be Cherry’s age again, just home from school, waiting for David to finish his chores so that they could sit down and eat.
‘It’s grand to have you home, lass.’
Quiet words, but full of emotion. Kate looked at her mother.
‘It’s lovely to be here, Mum. I don’t think Cherry has talked of anything else since Christmas.’
‘Cherry… what kind of name is that to give the child?’ her father snorted.
And it was Cherry herself who answered him saying brightly, ‘But Mum called me that because the cherry trees were in blossom when I was born.’
They had tea in the large, panelled dining-room that overlooked the gardens at the front of the house. Originally built as a minor hall, the house was much larger than the other stone farmhouses that populated the dale. It had a sunny drawing-room that overlooked the dale itself and, although the ground was barren and the winter winds icy, in the protection of the walled garden countless generations of Seton women had cultivated not only fruit and vegetables, but flowers as well.
The drawing-room was only used on formal occasions, its oak furniture lovingly waxed and its parquet floor polished.
Normally they ate in the large kitchen; and in the summer, as Kate remembered it, their evening meal had often been as late as eight or nine in the evening so that her father could make the most of the long hours of daylight.
Tea was the word used to describe the evening meal in the north, and not dinner, and on this occasion her mother had baked all the things for which she was justly famous in the dale: scones light as feathers from her bantam chickens, bread, still slightly warm from the old-fashioned bread ovens either side of the new Aga and still used by her mother, currant slices, lightly dusted with sugar, summer pudding made from some of the early fruits, the kind of salad that had never dreamed of seeing the inside of a supermarket but came straight from her mother’s garden, and tiny new potatoes, and home-cured ham. All the old-fashioned things she remembered from her childhood, and yet, as she sliced into her mother’s bread, Kate saw that it had been made with wholemeal flour, showing that even up here people were not totally immune to the power of the Press.
Despite the excellence of the food, Kate wasn’t hungry. Cherry was, though, tucking into her food with the healthy appetite of the young.
Already Kate thought she could see a change in her—an opening up, a stretching out and growing—as though somehow she had been cramped in their city life.
Throughout the meal she chatted to her grandparents, telling them about her school and her friends, leaving Kate alone with her own thoughts.
It was disturbing how much Silas was occupying them. She supposed she ought to have expected it and been prepared for it, for, although Silas had never visited her home, the emotional trauma of her own leaving of it was bound to have left a lingering resonance for her sensitive nerves to pick up on.
And yet she had barely thought about him at all in years. He was part of her past, and for Cherry’s sake she could not regret having known him, but the discovery that he had deceived her, that he was married with children, had totally killed her love.
And she had never allowed herself to fall into the same trap again.
Oh, she had dated—fellow schoolteachers, friends of friends who shared her interest in the theatre and with whom she had enjoyed pleasurable evenings—but there had been nothing like the intensity of emotion she had known with Silas.
Why not? She was emotionally and physically capable of that emotion, and yet, for some reason, after Silas she had had no other lovers, no man in her life who was more than a friend.
Was it perhaps because she had been