The Forbidden Path

19

PROLOGUE

The path changed its appearance many times as it wound its ancient way across the heart of England: part bridle-way, part field track, part paved by Romans, part hard-cored roadway, it both joined and divided.

It joined the villages of Loncote and Rodborough, although no one but the newest of newcomers would have dreamt of taking such a short cut. Right of way it certainly was, but here the path’s main purpose was to divide.

There was a story that had become legend of an ancient wayfarer who overnight had turned white-haired as he journeyed along the self-same path, so terrifying had been his passage. This was long before the Halls worked the land, or Sam Greenaugh married their younger daughter, but it suited Sam to know the tale was told.

Once a broad corridor, a Midland extension of the Banbury Lane of antiquity, the path had been the commercial highway for cattle fattened in the rich pastures for the Northampton and Banbury markets. The pace of demand, the press of a hungry population, found the green highway too slow, too unreliable in bad weather. The right of way established in the Iron, or even the Bronze, Age, became truncated into local short-cuts used by farm-labourers. Then with the nineteen-twenties came the age of the bicycle, and a three-quarters of an hour’s walk on the path became a ten-minute ride on the nearby new tar macadam roadway.

So the path, disused and overgrown, became a symbol, an idea. It helped divide Sam Greenaugh from the insecurity of the rest of the world. He could stand with his back to the wall of wood and leaf, look down on the farm and land that had come to him, and flirt with the belief that he was at last impregnable. It is a dangerous thing to try to separate a man from his beliefs.

1

‘A packet of our mother’s special tea for Sundays, please …’

‘Take two pence off what I owe …’

Belle Greenaugh stood in the village shop, which was replete with the smell of everything from candles to ham, paraffin to the odd mouse finding forage in a sack of locust beans (a delicacy much hankered after by sweet-toothed children).

In a detached, superior kind of way she was half listening to the brisk Saturday morning business, but was well aware of the pause in the conversations going on around her as she stepped forward to the counter. She asked for her mother’s weekly Lady magazine, and a half-pound of her father’s specially stocked flake tobacco, to be put on the Greenaugh account.

Leaving the shop, she was obscured by the large advertisement for Mazzawattee tea that covered the whole of the glass in the door, and stopped as she heard her name mentioned.

‘Isn’t that Mabel Greenaugh’s daughter? Thought she was away at school?’

‘She was!’ The answering voice held promise of more meaty information. ‘At school until she’s nearly eighteen! And if they have as much trouble with her at home as they did at school, they’re in for a lively time!’

‘Goon! You don’t say?’ The questioner was eager for more.

‘I do say. My sister lives in town and knows one of the teachers. She reckons it’s only because the place can’t afford to lose any of its pupils that her reports have been anything like reasonable. It’s not an Academy for Young Ladies that girl should have gone to!’

The exclamations of shock and curiosity were smothered as Belle re-opened the shop door. She stepped back inside, slowly surveyed the half dozen villagers inside and, with a toss of her ample chestnut hair, said: ‘It’s all quite true.’

The silence behind her compensated momentarily for the feeling of restlessness that had overtaken her since the end of the summer holidays. Belle, who had been so eager to leave the restrictions of school behind her, was missing companions of her own age, and was just beginning to realise that her life ‘back home on the farm’ stretched endlessly before her. The most exciting thing on her horizon at the moment was the new boy her father had taken on to help his two cowmen. She had resolved to make the boy blush at least once a day. Up to now that had neither been exciting nor difficult - she just looked at him and raised her eyebrows - of course as time went on it could become more interesting.

As she walked towards the village green, she noticed that the children playing had paused in their games and appeared to be listening. In the centre of a group playing five-stones a girl knelt motionless with four pebbles balanced on the back of her hand. A heap of boys lay collapsed in the remnants of their games of long-tailed pony, as one too many of their number landed on the back of the ‘ponies’ bent against the wall. All were alert, attentive to a sound still on the edge of hearing.

Belle lifted her head, listening for possible thunder and instinctively smelling for rain, but the dryness of that long hot summer and early autumn of 1921 was still in the air.

She frowned; there was something - a noise, or was it a sensation? - a faint distant trembling confirmed first by her feet. She listened more intently as it grew from a mere hint of disturbance to a suspicion of noise, then to a rumbling as of a far subterranean thunderstorm, growing in certainty and grandeur with each second.

She walked slowly nearer to the green, where more children were being drawn by the noise and several older boys on bicycles swept into the centre of the village, obviously in a high state of excitement.

‘What is it?’ some shouted, and others guessed: ‘A fair?’ ‘A travelling circus?’ One boy expansively and dangerously took both hands from the handlebars of his bicycle and described something bigger than both these and shouted, ‘Engines!’ That it was some kind of steam-engine now became obvious as the sound of great iron wheels crunching and grinding down stray pebbles, and a deep steady chugging, grew ever louder, and at last — to a spontaneous cheer from the children - a steam-engine towing two closed vans bearing the legend ‘Abbott Removals’ reached the green. ‘Furniture bumpers,’ someone commented, but these were closely followed by another steam-engine towing a large flat trailer on which seemed to be the dismantled sections of saw-milling equipment, complete with circular saw. And, as if this was not enough, Belle gasped when a third steam-engine, towing a huge threshing-drum followed. Never, not even at the biggest of stock-fairs, had she ever seen three steam-engines together, or such an array of trailers and equipment all in one place.

‘It is a parade!’ She laughed aloud, which was unnoticed in the general noise, ringing of gears and discharging of excess steam as the procession came to a halt.

The boys of the village were fascinated by the fairground quality of the engines: the spokes of the great iron wheels painted bright red; boilers panelled green and gold, fit for royal coachwork; tall black chimneys, bright brass-circled. Smoke from the funnels and steam from the pressure-valves streaked in separate plumes of coal-black and pure white into the brilliant blue sky.

The girls threw covert glances at the men, two on each engine and three more sitting on the saw-milling trailer, lastly scrutinising the green tarpaulin curtains dropped over the great red oblong housing the thresher, as if men and curtains had a special significance for them, which they would define, if only allowed to stare long enough.

One glance was sufficient for Belle to define her feelings for the driver bringing up the rear of the group. He stood like a captain on his footplate, and she responded like a hungry young cat scenting cream. She lifted her head, stood taller and breathed with a faster, more purposeful rhythm. This man was a perfect complement to his great engine, each added excitement and charisma to the other: both had that larger than strictly seemly quality — big, strong, with no doubt about their functions in life.

Even from across the green she could recognise that rare person, someone alive to his very fingertips. She appraised the breadth of his shoulders; his height - he looked over six foot (a giant when rickets and poor food so often stunted growth); a jaw that could jut in determination; black hair beneath black leather cap. She felt sure his eyes would be blue, but it was the audacity in his smile, and his enjoyment of the excitement he and his companions were causing, that attracted her most.

He stood looking in her direction as he rubbed a cloth over the shining brasswork with almost sensual pleasure. Propriety and caution were qualities only the presence of her teachers or parents could impose on her, but as she moved one foot to step down from the causeway and cross the road, he reached forward and pulled the lever which diverted a jet of steam from the idling engine through its whistle. It shrilled out like a shout of pure triumph, to the startled delight of Belle and the assembled children.

By the time she reached the far side of the green her fast-beating heart and the continued scrutiny of the young driver left her capable only of narrowing her eyes to hide her pleasure, and tilting her head to show it. She circuited the oven-like heat radiating from the boiler and sauntered past the footplate without so much as an upward glance. Then she was brought to a sudden halt as the man jumped down by her side, so near that she had to step back to feel comfortable, decent even, and to be able to look up into his face.

‘Helloo …’ His deep voice held an intimate teasing, but as she looked up at him he snatched off his cap. Then they were both still, and there was a moment removed from place and normal relationships, as strangers looked into each other’s faces and seemed to swear an oath of immediate mutual recognition. Belle was astonished by her own reaction, as she found herself actually looking away, trying to deny the excitement that had opened like a great bright flower in her mind, trying to discipline feelings that she knew might be quite out of place. This man could be just a labourer as he stood there smelling of steam, smoke and oil, his clothes black, no doubt so the smears of his trade were less noticeable. She held back the skirts of her dress as the wind threatened to brush them against the man’s trousers -her thoughts were not so easily restrained — and his eyes, she saw, were a bright clear grey.

‘Hello to you.’ She tried to assume the air of superiority she usually paraded on such occasions, but it was difficult to try to impose a feeling of inferiority on a man who towered above one, and the line of whose jaw and cheek-bones held that planed look of manhood, rather than the soft uncertainty of a youth.

‘You live here?’ he asked hopefully.

‘If you did, you wouldn’t need to ask.’ Her words were softened by the smile.

‘Then you’ll know the way from the village to Glebe Farm?’

‘Glebe Farm?’ An awful suspicion was dawning in Belle’s mind.

‘Yes, we tried to go along the bridle-way, got one of the engines stuck there. It’s all overgrown, needs a lot of work doing.’

‘My father prefers it like that,’ Belle told him. ‘It keeps trespassers and poachers away, he says.’

‘Your father?’

‘My father owns the adjoining land - Hall Farm – the old bridle-path is the boundary line between his land and Glebe Farm.’

‘Oh, really,’ he said, then modifying his pleasure to add, ‘that’s interesting. My father has bought Glebe Farm. I’m Cato Abbott.’

‘Belle Greenaugh,’ she replied.

He looked ruefully at his oily black hands. ‘I look forward to shaking your hand one day when I’m not working, and making your acquaintance properly.’

‘Yes,’ she answered, but could not keep the doubt from her voice. She was aware he was glancing curiously at her, but could hardly explain the fever and stress there had been in her own home when all her father’s plans to buy at least part of the glebe lands were thwarted. Belle had heard him talk of the bumper crops of corn he could produce on the coveted land. She could almost share his vision of the carts, pulled by the great Clydesdale shires he bred, coming home laden to the rick-yards; and could certainly see the sense of more corn when the government, under the 1917 wartime Corn Production Act, was giving a bonus of three pounds per acre on all land devoted to wheat and oats. She too had felt disappointment and anger, when the auction sale was cancelled because Glebe Farm was to be sold by private treaty to a buyer from out of the area - a stranger!

‘Of course,’ she added, ‘country people are very slow to accept outsiders.’

‘Aren’t you a country person?’ he asked, and again his smile teased, so she felt she half bridled, half arched with pleasure.

‘I went to a city school,’ she said, with a toss of her chin.

‘Ah! A lady with city ways!’ This time he laughed outright, and his laugh too had that louder than ordinary note -which delighted her, and would have appalled her father. He was very sensitive about the correct demeanour and the respect due to his rank as land-owning farmer, the more so perhaps because he had risen to it by marrying the elder daughter of his master.

‘Were you in the war?’ she asked, anxious to assess his age, but before she gleaned the information she found herself tutting with annoyance as she saw her father’s oldest labourer and master horseman walking towards them, sizing up engines and trailers as he came. She had hoped for at least a few more moments alone with this Cato Abbott.

‘Morning, Miss Belle,’ Levi Adams, an old, gnarled jockey of a man, wore corduroy breeches, black leather gaiters, waistcoat, jacket and cap, in spite of the heat. He tipped his cap, but there was no smile on his pain-anguished face.

‘Not more toothache, Levi?’ she asked, and the man nodded glumly.

‘Can’t get no relief.’

‘You’ll have to have it drawn,’ she added unsympathetically.

‘Aye, that’s where I’m supposed to be going. I can handle a ton of stallion …’ This time he shook his head with equal gloom, ‘I daren’t, but I’ve just met a strange woman, and she’s given me these.’ Levi opened his hand and displayed a few dark green leaves. ‘Told me to chew them into a pulp and stop up the hole in my tooth with it.’

Belle took a leaf between her fingers and smelt it. ‘It’s strong.’ She wrinkled her nose, ‘Smells like bad marigolds. Who was she?’

‘Not from these parts,’ Levi answered with a shrug. ‘Her bags was full of bits and pieces she’d been collecting from the hedgerows. Knew all their proper names, she did. Your mother’d be interested to talk to her.’

‘My father wouldn’t,’ Belle said emphatically. ‘He hates my mother to talk about signs and portents, cures and potions. She’ll be on the roads, making a living selling a few herbs,’ Belle said, dismissing the woman, and hoping to dismiss Levi. But even with toothache the old man was always willing to talk.

‘Passing through, are you?’ he asked Cato, and Belle saw the same apprehension in Levi’s pursed lips as the Abbotts’ coming occupancy of Glebe Farm was explained.

‘They’ve tried to get along the bridle-way,’ she added.

Levi pushed back his cap and scratched his head. ‘The gaffer won’t like that!’

‘It is a public right of way,’ Cato said, ‘marked on the map.’

‘Not used for years, not walked since most folks got bikes. Should think the right’s lapsed,’ Levi said, casting a crafty glance at Cato to see what his reaction might be.

‘Oh, I very often come that way,’ Belle said airily, ‘short cut from the farm to the village.’

‘That you do not, Miss Belle, ‘tis too overgrown!’

‘I take to the fields for those parts.’ She was not going to back down from her lie in front of this young man who was to be their neighbour.

‘You’ll get no thanks from your father for telling all and sundry.’ Levi tried to caution her, indicating that the driver of the other engine and the men from the trailer were walking towards them and could hear. She in turn gave the same haughty shrug she had mastered even as a first-standard pupil, and used to dismiss Levi’s remonstrations ever since.

‘Next time you go over the fields to get here’ll be the first!’ Levi said, unimpressed by the young-mistress act, then he nodded in the direction of the main village street, adding, ‘and if you’m looking for a rumpus, seems you’re about to get it.’

The toss of her hair stopped midway as she recognised the horse and rider coming towards them. ‘My father …’ she began glancing at Cato, who raised an interrogative eyebrow. ‘What’s he doing here?’ she demanded of Levi, who gave a short laugh.

‘I don’t know,’ he answered, ‘but by the look on his face it’s bad news for somebody.’

Belle had once heard her father described as a handsome opportunist. It suited him, she thought, with his dark eyes, and dark hair only just beginning to be touched by grey at the temples. The clean lines of his high cheek-bones and brow had the fineness of a classical sculpture. He had a habit too of perfect stillness, before an outburst of anger or the issuing of orders, so that those closest to him fell into a way of paying the greatest attention to him when he was at his most still and most quiet.

For all his tight-lipped smile and nod of acknowledgement to her, she sensed his tension and knew, even as he addressed Levi, that it was the men he was not looking at who were the main object of his anger and the reason for his unscheduled ride to the village.

‘Levi?’ The dismal shake of the old farmhand’s head confirmed what Sam Greenaugh obviously suspected, that once again Levi had gibbed at venturing into the backroom of the chemist’s shop, where traditionally the blind was pulled down and the door bolted before a tooth was extracted.

Sam gave him a look of disapproval, but there were other more urgent matters on his mind than Levi taking yet another working morning off and still not ridding himself of the aching tooth. Without speaking again, he instructed his black mare gently with a movement of his knee, and went to inspect the other engines. Belle, Cato and Levi automatically followed him. The front engine seemed to provide him with the meagre proof he needed. He waved his riding crop officiously in the direction of small snags of leaves and twigs caught behind the lamp bracket and some of the boiler rivets.

‘You’re interested in steam-engines?’ The question came from the stocky, big-shouldered man who jumped down to the road from the front machine. His clothing and all that could be seen of his face, hands and arms were black from his work, but he had the assurance of a successful self-made man in his stance, and the hard look of a businessman in his eye, as he stood wiping his hands on an oily cloth.

‘I’m interested in this one,’ Sam replied, indicating the leaves. ‘This one has been used to try to force a way along my path, has ruined one of my hedges and allowed my stock to stray.’

‘Our map of the area shows a double line marked as a bridle-way, giving access to a driveway to my land. If we’ve done damage to anything that is yours, then I’ll have my men put it right. The name’s Joe Abbott, moving into Glebe Farm.’

It was a moment of decision, a taking-up of attitudes. Belle watched her father closely, then glanced at Cato Abbott’s father. They were like two powerful dogs, strange to each other, yet realising their territories adjoined and they were probably going to have to live each with the other — unless one was powerful or savage enough to frighten the other away.

Joe looked down at his hand. ‘I’m. not in a state to offer to shake hands,’ he said.

‘No.’ The word came too abruptly, making Sam’s agreement a near insult. ‘And perhaps if we each respect the other’s property matters can rest there.’

‘Rest there,’ Joe Abbott was quick to take up the ambiguity, ‘what do you mean by that?’

‘There is a law of trespass …’

‘Ah! I see the way the wind blows around here,’ Joe interrupted. ‘Strangers not welcome … well, amen to that, but don’t try to tell me that a bridle-way is private land.’

‘We’re not against anyone who comes here,’ Sam said stiffly, ‘but we object to people moving in and despoiling things that have existed peaceably for generations. Rights lapse when they’re not used for many years.’

‘This one’s not lapsed then, governor,’ called one of the group of Joe’s men who had drawn nearer to hear the exchange, and Belle’s heart gave a little twist of apprehension as the man indicated her. ‘That lass there has just said she walks it regular to the village.’

‘Ah, good,’ Joe Abbott said. ‘That lass seems to settle the point, then.’

‘It settles nothing,’ Sam snapped. ‘That lass’ – he insultingly made his voice broader to mimic Joe’s tone- ‘as you call her, is my daughter, and never walks that way into the village. It is impassable — and has been for generations.’ ‘She says she takes to the fields in those parts,’ the same workman interposed with obvious satisfaction at being able to stoke up this novel disagreement.

‘You don’t mean she trespasses on my land!’ It was Joe’s turn now to borrow word and tone from Sam Greenaugh.

Belle’s apprehension turned to awed amusement. Mockery was something her father could not tolerate, and, so particular about his own appearance, she knew how he would resent having to converse with this deeply grimy man, backed by his motley-looking crew of workmen. She was well aware, too, that quite a few of the assembled villagers would not be averse to seeing the ever immaculate Sam Greenaugh (who had risen from the rank of hired orphan labourer) taken down a peg or two.

‘The girl imagines all sorts of things, you need set no store by that!’

Belle drew in a sharp, audible breath, stung under the realisation that her father had not only as good as called her a liar in front of this young man who attracted her so strongly, and all these strangers, but he had made her look like some sort of idiot daughter no one should pay any regard to. The fact that her statement wasn’t true was, she felt, beside the point. Her father had never put her down in front of anyone before. She glanced at Cato Abbott, who looked both puzzled and surprised, but half smiled at her. She was unsure whether or not she caught a hint of pity in his smile?

She vowed then and there to take the first opportunity to correct his opinion of her, and to make her father sorry he had showed her up. If she had not walked the path before, she certainly would now.

‘What the girl said’ll do for me.’ Joe Abbott was not going to let this advantage go. ‘Legally, I reckon it settles the way as still used and open.’ He paused, as if still making a try to bring in an element of friendly cooperation. ‘As soon as we’re settled in, I shall see to it that a proper work-manlike job is made of clearing the path, and any damage to your hedge will be restaked and fenced first thing tomorrow morning.’

‘I’ll mend my own fences, and I’ll thank you to keep away from my boundaries.’

‘They’re my boundaries too.’ Joe paused to give full effect to his words, then added, ‘and that bridle-path may be no use to you, but it’ll give me a good quick access to my property with my machines — and I intend to use it!’ He took a step forward in a kind of symbolic gesture of determination.

Sam’s mare, already made restless by the steam-engines and the press of interested people, was startled by this more definite movement towards her, and swung round nervously. Sam, as if equally determined not to be seen to veer from the line being toed, pulled sharply on one rein to bring his mount back again to face the