Indian Summer Read online

  As if he could hear them speaking he knew that Mungo was reminding Ralph of his responsibilities to Izzy’s unborn child and that Ralph was not only rejecting them but scorning Mungo and Izzy in the process. He saw Ralph speak, saw his derisive glance at Izzy; he saw Izzy burst into tears and run from the room; he saw Mungo’s fist shoot out and connect with Ralph’s jaw.

  It was at this point he hurried to the door and went into the kitchen. Ralph was sitting in a chair, his hand to his jaw, and Mungo was standing over him. He turned as Philip came in, his face anxious, but Ralph laughed.

  ‘You’ll have to do better than that, Mungo,’ he said. ‘And here’s Gabriel Oak to back you up.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Philip asked.

  ‘None of your business,’ said Ralph. ‘Your business is to get me to the station for the London train.’

  Philip was filled with rage and humiliation; he wanted to hit Ralph, too, to smash the grin from his face.

  ‘Find your own way,’ he said, turning to leave.

  ‘Wait,’ said Mungo. ‘Please, Philip. This one last time. I don’t want to leave Izzy and I want him out of here.’

  Ralph got to his feet, his hand still to his jaw. ‘Bring the Land Rover while I get my case,’ he said casually to Philip.

  ‘You can walk down,’ Mungo said. ‘Get a move on.’

  Ralph swaggered out and Mungo looked at Philip.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘This is awful. Look, I’m really sorry to drag you in on this. I can’t leave Izzy and we’ll never get a taxi out here in time. I just want him out of this house.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ Philip told him. ‘I’ll take him.’ He hesitated. ‘Is Izzy …?’

  ‘Pregnant,’ muttered Mungo. ‘The bastard says he doesn’t give a damn. He’s been offered a job in America and he’s leaving in a few days’ time. Izzy’s devastated.’

  Outside the temperature was dropping, the sky clear and full of stars as Philip walked the half-mile between the smithy and the farm. He could see a light moving in the stable and the dogs came to meet him. He called to Billy: ‘I’m taking Ralph to the station,’ and swung himself into the Land Rover. He started the engine, switched on the headlights, and drove out into the yard just as Ralph came striding in from the lane. He raised his hand to Philip and began to laugh, his expression full of amused contempt, of triumph. Remembering Izzy’s unhappiness, overwhelmed by rage, by frustration and jealousy, Philip swung the steering wheel so that the Land Rover was driving straight at Ralph and, in that brief but glorious moment, he saw Ralph’s face change to alarm, to terror. Just for that second he had the upper hand: he was in control. He turned the wheel back again but the Land Rover refused to respond. It began to slide on a patch of ice, hurtling out of control, knocking Ralph to the ground.

  He felt the jerk as the wheel passed over Ralph’s body and then Billy was beside him, shouting, while he jammed on the brake and swung open the driver’s door. They were both kneeling, hauling Ralph from beneath the vehicle, shouting to each other.

  Philip stared in fascinated horror at the immobile form, scrambled up, still unable to look away from it. His breath was uneven and he wanted to flee.

  ‘I’ll call an ambulance.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool.’ Billy kneeled beside Ralph, examining him carefully. ‘He’s dead.’

  Billy got up. The dogs circled, their lips lifted fastidiously as they sniffed cautiously at the body. Philip was rigid with horror.

  ‘Dead?’ But he knew that Ralph was dead; he’d known when he felt the wheel pass over the body. He began to tremble. ‘What shall we do?’

  ‘We’ll get rid of him. Bury him.’

  ‘Bury him?’ It was just a whisper. ‘Shouldn’t we tell someone?’

  Billy bent down and shunted the body sideways, back under the Land Rover out of sight in case someone came by. ‘No good telling anyone. He’s gonna disappear, that’s all. No questions asked. Think of Mungo. And Izzy. You said they’d had a row. Lots of people asking questions, poking their noses in.’ Billy shook his head. ‘We need a quick drink. I’ll get the brandy. You get the wheelbarrow.’

  Still trembling, Philip obeyed. Followed by the dogs, he went into the stable to find the wheelbarrow tipped up against the wall. He grasped its handles, stood for a moment trying to control the shivering that shook his whole body, and then pushed it out into the yard. Billy appeared with a bottle and offered it to him silently with a quick nod of the head. Obediently he took a swig, choked, and gave it back. No noise, no sign of anyone. They dragged the body out again and put it into the barrow, covered it with a sack, wheeled it into the stable. Billy went back for Ralph’s suitcase and dropped it on the wheelbarrow.

  ‘Now, you and me are going to drive to Newton,’ Billy told him, opening the Land Rover door and letting the dogs jump in. ‘We’re gonna make sure that someone sees us at the station and then we’ll come back again and sort him out.’

  Billy drove. Philip sat in frightened silence, dazed and shocked. Inside his head he played the scene over and over: Ralph’s amusement changing to terror, the sense of shock when the Land Rover refused to respond; that desperate turn of the wheel and his whole frame clenched as he willed the sliding vehicle away from Ralph; the soft jolt as the wheel passed over his body. He knew that it would live with him for ever. He stayed in the Land Rover while Billy disappeared into the station and then reappeared, calling cheerfully to someone over his shoulder, and hoisted himself back into the driving seat.

  ‘Good,’ he grunted, starting the engine, swinging out on to the road. ‘That’s good.’

  The nightmare continued. Back at the farm in the icy black night, they wrapped Ralph’s body in tarpaulins, wheeled it into the orchard, and began to dig. The spades sliced the frozen earth, striking into the cold ground. Somewhere a vixen screamed.

  ‘Put ’un in deep, boy. Foxes’ll get ’un else.’

  They hauled the body out between them and tipped it along with the suitcase into the empty space at their feet. Quickly, violently they hurled in spadefuls of heavy earth, filling the hole, covering it again with rough tussocks of grass. Billy stamped them in.

  ‘Our turn to walk all over him for a change,’ he said. ‘Always treated us like dirt. And that little maid.’ He looked at Philip, still shivering with shock. ‘Come on. We need another drink.’

  Billy is still watching him: compassionate, unrepentant. ‘We had no choice, boy,’ he says. ‘Mungo’ll understand.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Philip; he feels ill and sick. ‘I’m going to phone him now and tell him I want to talk to him.’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  ‘ARE YOU SERIOUSLY trying to tell me,’ says Mungo, ‘that Ralph Stead is buried in the orchard? Look, I’m sorry, I can’t get my head round this.’

  He turns away from Philip, hands bunched in his pockets, unable to grasp what Philip has just said. Philip doesn’t move. He leans against the dresser, arms folded, waiting. Mopsa watches them from her basket whilst Mungo wrestles with a whole variety of reactions: disbelief, shock – and an odd and reprehensible desire to burst out laughing. This is risible. Ralph, whom he’s loved and missed and raged against all these years, is just down the lane in the old orchard.

  ‘So you left here,’ he says, repeating Philip’s story, ‘ran Ralph over when he turned up, drove to Newton Abbot to provide an alibi should it be needed, and then you and Billy came home and planted him in the orchard.’

  Just for a minute he can visualize the scene. The vicious twist of the wheel, Ralph’s horrified expression caught in the beam of the headlights, the inexorable slide of the Land Rover …

  ‘But why didn’t he jump clear when you began to skid?’ he asks. Surely that’s what would happen? He can see it clearly in his head: Ralph leaping to one side, out of the path of the moving vehicle. That’s how he would direct it.

  ‘The wheel just wouldn’t respond and he seemed to disappear underneath,’ says Philip. ‘Perhaps he lost his footing, slipped on
the ice and was knocked off balance. It just went straight over him.’

  Mungo paces, assembling the facts. ‘No ambulance?’

  ‘No point,’ says Philip bleakly.

  ‘But why didn’t you report it? It was clearly an accident.’

  ‘It wasn’t that simple. I hated him. When I swung the wheel I was just trying to scare him but somewhere deep down I’d’ve been glad to see the back of him. The way he treated Izzy. You’d hit him just minutes earlier, damn it! It would all’ve had to come out, wouldn’t it? Izzy and the baby, the way he was walking out on her and going to America. It wasn’t just me. It was all of us. Even though it was an accident, it was as if we were all implicated in it and I was afraid. It happened so quick. I kept thinking about Izzy and how she looked that weekend. Like Billy said, there would have been people asking questions, poking their noses in, digging the dirt. You and she were just getting famous by then. It would have been disastrous. That’s what it felt like back then. Surely you can remember how it was?’

  Oh, he can remember all right. The arguments, the tears, the pleadings. Izzy wanted him there as advocate, friend, persuader: but nothing moved Ralph.

  ‘What shall I do?’ Izzy asked desperately. ‘Help me, Mungo.’

  He invited them down to the smithy as a last resort, a reminder of those happier times when friendships were developing into something much stronger and durable, hoping to soften Ralph, to appeal to his loyalty. It didn’t work. Ralph’s underlying cruelty, which Mungo found rather exciting to bring out and work on in direction, grew more destructive. He delighted in mocking Izzy’s pathetic attempts to resurrect times past, to rekindle the love that had been between them. The weekend slid into disaster.

  ‘I warned you,’ Ralph said to Izzy. ‘I told you not to plan a future around me. I told you I’m not that kind of guy. It was very silly of you to take such a chance.’

  ‘I didn’t plan it.’ Izzy’s face was pulpy with tears; she was drenched in them. Mungo had never seen such anguish. ‘You know I wouldn’t. Please, Ralph, don’t go. Don’t leave us and go so far away. It’s not just about our baby. I can’t believe you were just going to walk out without telling me.’

  His smile was wolfish. ‘Well, now you can see why. I get enough theatricals on the stage. I don’t need it in my private life. It’s over, Izzy.’

  ‘Then you can get out,’ Mungo said. ‘I’ll ask Philip to give you a lift to the train.’

  ‘In that case I’ll go and pack,’ Ralph said cheerfully. ‘And let’s try to be civilized with our farewells, shall we?’

  But when he came back into the kitchen it all started up again. Izzy pleading, tear-stained; Mungo trying to beat down his own pain in the face of Izzy’s desperation. He’d wanted to reach out to Ralph, to hold on to him. Instead, he hit him.

  ‘Anyway,’ Ralph said, leaning across the table, ‘how do I know it’s my child? It might be Mungo’s. After all, you’re very versatile, aren’t you, old chap?’

  There was a freeze-frame of silence; two heartbeats, maybe three. Then Izzy fled from the kitchen and he hit Ralph. It was a long stretch but Mungo’s speed and accuracy, and the surprise of the blow, unbalanced Ralph. He staggered backwards with his hand to his jaw, and for the first time that weekend his face wore a genuine expression: shock and admiration.

  ‘I didn’t think you had it in you,’ he said.

  Then Philip came bursting in and it was all over.

  ‘You see?’ Philip says. ‘It wasn’t so simple, was it? The newspapers would have had a field day. Even so, it’s my responsibility. I killed him. For years I used to wake up sweating with terror, listening for a knock at the door, terrified at the sight of a police car. But what good would it have done to anybody to know the truth?’

  Mungo knows he’s right. It would have been a catastrophe.

  ‘But why are you telling me now?’ he asks.

  ‘Something Mags said. She saw Archie and said he was looking his age, that he might want to sell up or develop some land. She said if he got planning permission he’d get quite a few houses in the orchard. He could do just that, couldn’t he? It’s not actually part of the farm.’

  Mungo frowns. Archie has spoken to him of selling up, downsizing, though Camilla is fighting it tooth and nail. Supposing he were to decide to do some development to raise some money? So what? The orchard is the obvious choice, of course … And then he sees it. He imagines the diggers moving in, turning the earth, the cries of discovery, the scandal.

  ‘It’s possible, isn’t it?’ Philip is saying.

  Mungo tries to quieten his heartbeat, to be rational and cool.

  ‘Let me think about it,’ he says. ‘Give me time to take it all in. It’s been a shock.’

  ‘Has it?’ Philip’s look is quizzical, hopeful.

  Mungo stares at him. ‘What d’you mean?’

  Philip shrugs. ‘Dunno. Just always had a feeling that you knew something. Guessed, perhaps.’

  ‘No.’ Mungo stands up. ‘I promise you, Philip, I had no idea that Ralph Stead was buried in the orchard.’

  He feels confused, nervous, but Philip smiles at him complicitly.

  ‘Secrets,’ he says. ‘Dangerous things, secrets.’

  Friendship stretching back for a lifetime flows between them. Mungo holds out his hand and Philip grasps it in a strong grip.

  ‘Billy said you’d understand,’ he says simply.

  ‘Billy,’ snorts Mungo. ‘I bet that old bugger was behind it all, wasn’t he? I can see him.’ His eyes widen, remembering his last conversation with Billy. ‘Is that what he meant? “First he walked all over her and then she walked all over him.” My God.’

  ‘He used to enjoy the joke. He was very fond of Izzy. We all were, weren’t we?’ Philip pauses. ‘What happened to the baby?’

  ‘She lost the baby. You know that.’

  ‘Yes. I know that. See you later.’

  He goes out, leaving the door open to the warm night air. Mungo stands quite still, grateful that Kit has not yet returned from her date with Jake, thinking about Philip’s extraordinary story. How poignant it is, this little history; death coming for Ralph one icy February night, and for his unborn child, a few weeks later on a cold wet March morning with Izzy alone at her flat.

  What happened to the baby?

  Secrets. Dangerous things, secrets.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  AS SHE DRIVES Jake from the Sea Trout Inn at Staverton, out through Dartington, along the road beside the river and back to Totnes, Kit begins to feel nervous again. But this time she feels nervous in an excited way because it’s been such a good evening. Driving in to meet him, all kinds of terrors raised themselves and she wondered if it would always be like this when she was away from Jake. When she was with him she had more courage; alone, she could see the hazards of embarking on this new adventure, the risks she’d have to take. Jake was a family man, she reminded herself, with a whole life in another country. How could they possibly make it work? She had her work, friends, family here and she couldn’t abandon them. It was foolish to imagine that any relationship apart from an ordinary friendship could be managed. During the journey she talked herself into such a state of negativity that by the time she arrived at Jake’s hotel she’d convinced herself that the whole thing was impossible. He was waiting for her in the bar, casual and elegant in a linen jacket and cotton chinos, smiling at her with his own particular Jake smile: affection, humour, secret knowledge. She was glad that she’d packed her pretty dress from Monsoon; confident after Mungo’s critical praise that she looked good. If Jake noticed her tension he made no mention of it and within minutes she began to relax.

  Now, after the delicious food and the one glass of wine she’s allowed herself, she’s experiencing the familiar euphoria that Jake’s company engenders. She feels more confident, able to see around difficulties, and is simply happy to be with him. Kit wonders if he’s thought ahead to the rest of the evening or whether she simply drops him off a
nd goes home to Mungo. That seems like a pretty flat idea and she gives a little sideways glance to gauge Jake’s mood. He’s been a little bit quiet since they left the pub and she wonders if he’s feeling nervous. Immediately she feels huge sympathy and love for him; she remembers how she messed things up all those years ago and she’s determined to try not to be so feeble now. At the same time it’s a tricky one. She can hardly suggest that they go up to his room and she doesn’t want to drink any more because of driving home. It would be an anticlimax simply to sit in the hotel bar. Perhaps she’ll suggest a stroll along the river. She remembers how natural it was simply to roll into bed together and she yearns for those easy, happy days of their youth.

  ‘Don’t forget, sweetie,’ Mungo said earlier, ‘that when you get old you need a good sense of humour when it comes to sex.’

  Somehow this remark isn’t particularly comforting at the moment and she wonders if Jake is having the same problem trying to figure out the next move. She touches him lightly on the knee and he glances at her and smiles.

  She looks ahead again, changing gear ready for the lights, which are changing, her heart bumping.

  I love him, she thinks. I do love him. I wonder if he’s thinking the same about me.

  Jake fingers his mobile in his jacket pocket and wonders how he can send a text without alerting Kit and so risk breaking their happy, intimate mood. His youngest daughter, Gabrielle, is expecting her first baby in six weeks’ time and he is in touch with her regularly. Of all the girls, Gaby misses her mother most. She is heartbroken that Madeleine will never see the baby and Jake has promised that he will be there when the time comes. His eldest daughter, Amélie, has told him that she will watch over Gaby in his absence and make sure that all is well, and Jake has every confidence that she will. Amélie is strong, bossy, practical and loving, and she has always been ready to keep an eye on her younger sisters. He suspects that Amélie will be glad to see him settled with someone, rather than remaining as her own particular responsibility – which is how she sees him – and she will influence the younger girls, who might look askance at a new woman in their mother’s place. Gaby will be the most difficult to persuade, he knows that. She adores her papa, and might well see his affection for Kit as a betrayal of her mother. She was a frail child, and she is suffering with this pregnancy, so he is trying to take Madeleine’s place by sending Gaby texts and keeping in touch.