The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [160]
Time twisted round on itself. Couldn’t help it, I flinched.
Everything pulled itself out then, into a long moment. Heartbreaker…The wind picked at the seed heads and the hem of my dress. Davey was frozen, his hand an inch away from my knee.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s…Mam, you know…’
But he heard the lie in the pause. ‘You met someone.’
‘No. Yes–’ Too late again, I tried to grasp the excuse.
‘I’ve been stupid,’ he said. He put his chin on his hand and looked away, trying to hide the wetness in his eyes. ‘I’ve always been stupid about you, Fran. I let myself think you’d come round, eventual, I only had to be patient. And I was, wasn’t I? I thought you had come round, that night at the Starfish–and these last months, I’ve fooled myself into believing the only problem was with me, and one day if I was patient we’d be over that too. But it’s like that sodding car, innit? I coax the bugger into starting, but she in’t ever going to run sweet, is she?’
‘No,’ I said. It was a relief to tell the truth, though I could hear the tearing grief in his voice. ‘There in’t–what there needs to be. I do love you, you’re my friend, but I can’t love you the way you want me to.’
‘So who is he?’
‘There in’t anyone.’ Then, bugger it, I was crying. Couldn’t stop myself. Was in that place where you cry so hard feels like the earth under you ought to be washed away. Face down on the barrow, grasses prickling my arms and chest, cheeks scalding. There was a moment I felt Davey touch my back, very light, but I tensed and he drew his hand away.
Don’t know how long I cried. Sun went on beating down on us, a plane droning in the distance, one of the training craft at Yatesbury, probably. Imagined Mr Cromley in it, flying circuits, looking down like a god and laughing his socks off. But he wasn’t at Yatesbury now. Davey saw him every day at Colerne, bless him, and Davey didn’t know.
After a while I realized Davey was talking, his voice low, like an embarrassed man mumbling prayers, the wind whipping the words out of his mouth and scattering them.
‘…Look for the moon shining on water…Kennet and Avon running east-west, a straight road home and lock onto the signal…’
‘Davey.’ My voice was all claggy with tears, but it still worked.
I heard the rustle of grasses. I rolled over, and there he was, good couple of yards off, sitting at the edge of the barrow’s pudding top, back to me but his head turned to look over his shoulder. ‘You all right, Fran?’
‘What in buggeration you on about?’
He shuffled his body round to face me, his hands still wrapped tight about his knees. ‘Navigator’s Prayer. Reminding myself we always do come home in the end. Dun’t matter who he is, I want you to be happy. Best friends, eh? We still best friends?’ Then he saw my face. ‘Dun’t he make you happy? What’s wrong, Fran?’
I was a godforsaken fool. Could have told him then, everything, every blessed detail. But I was afraid of the strength of what he felt for me. If he’d known about the baby that was on the way, he’d have made me see it through and keep it. He’d have married me, like Mam wanted; it wouldn’t have been love, or not the kind I was after, but it would have been family. And I nearly did tell him about the baby. But I knew that baby was a curse; it was Mr Cromley’s bastard, and I’d be getting rid of it. And we were on Windmill Hill, where I’d lain in the grass daydreaming about Mr Keiller. I wasn’t yet the age where you see more than one shade of green.
I told him everything else, though. What happened in the churchyard. What Mr Cromley made me do. All the way back to the sick little ritual, the two of them, spilling my blood and taking my virginity in the house by the cemetery because I’d begged them to do it.
CHAPTER 43
1942
After I’d told him about Mr Cromley and the house backing onto the cemetery, Davey said nothing. The wind shivered the flowers and the long grasses on top of the barrow; a skylark was singing somewhere overhead.
‘So now you know,’ I said, to break the silence.
‘You should’ve told me before.’ He was tearing