LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter 5

      Freddy’s face regained colour almost the moment we stepped back outside into the warm evening and I was relieved to see it. There was no question now of dithering to telephone my cousin in the hope that she’d suggest I gave up the cottage and instead take a room in a hotel near her in Gloucester, nor did I spare much thought for worrying about strangers or the whereabouts of Mrs Cooke. This was more vital; this was my responsibility because I had brought him here.

      The sense of it lurked in knowing that the time I had spent seeking that telephone was the time that had preyed on Freddy’s nerves until he had finally grown desperate enough to come inside to find me. His decision must have been prompted by a premonition of something very terrible indeed. I knew it had because the release as we left by that kitchen door shone in the flush that burned the boy’s cheeks. This was a kind of bravery that hurt. It was all wrong that such a kind, harmless youth like this boy should have ever known fear enough to think it necessary to overcome the memory of it in this moment for the sake of me.

      I could see now that my cousin’s description of a wintery incident with the Colonel’s younger son had misled me. Her letter had led me to imagine something along the lines of an over-bred buffoon caught up in a tragic accident involving the March bad weather. The winter had been a chaos of deep snows and extreme freezes but, all that aside, several things were now very clear to me. The first was that the fracas in March was no more an accident than Mr Winstone’s collapse on his path. The second was that while my cousin had at least hinted that the chill of last winter had left its mark on the whole community, it had taken their reaction to Mrs Abbey’s mistake to make me realise the shadow of what had befallen still lived in this place. For Freddy, it dwelt in that house if not in that beautiful room with the bay window. And now there was a chance that the family was set to be brought back into his sphere again and a trace of the dread that haunted Freddy was even detectable in a grown man like the Captain. In the man it took a different form, but all the same, even in the Captain’s voice I thought there had been a glimpse of something that came strangely close to fear.

      I could hear it in the boy’s voice now when he asked above the creak of the valley gate as it was opened and pressed shut, ‘They’re coming back then?’

      ‘They are,’ I confirmed gently. ‘Or rather, the Colonel is.’

      I took Freddy swiftly onwards down the hill because I didn’t know what else to do. True twilight had descended in the time that we had been indoors and the hillside was a picture of warm summer tranquillity. I eyed my companion carefully as we neared the valley bottom. His face was angular in this light; sharp beneath unruly hair. He didn’t seem so much afraid now as resolutely expressionless as we passed beneath the scented dark of the small plantation of pines.

      ‘Did he say why the Colonel was coming back?’

      I noted that Freddy didn’t consider himself one of the Colonel’s subjects. It was left to men like Danny Hannis to pay the squire his due deference. ‘No,’ I said carefully, ‘Captain Langton didn’t say why. He didn’t have much time because the train was being called. I imagine his father wants to come back and check that the harvest is progressing as it should. I do remember that he said something about the barley.’

      ‘Oh, is that all?’ He said it in that flat way youths have of dismissing something desperately worrying quite as if it didn’t matter at all. Then he said briskly, ‘They’re taking in a late cut of hay at the moment. The corn’s behind because of the late summer.’ It was said in a rush of an apology because he didn’t like to contradict. Then he asked in an altogether brighter way, ‘Do you think we should go and have a look at it?’

      This last question was because we had reached the last turn of the track above the turbine house. The brickwork was rendered in crumbling plaster and it shone white before us against the curling black line of the stream. Now that I knew, this tiny hut really was quite unlike a dwelling. It was also unlike any electricity station that I had ever known. The power stations of London were great smoking beasts with towering black pillars for chimneys. This small brick house straddled a neat platform and water made a faint shushing sound somewhere beneath, where it was released following its racing fall through a pipe from a pond high up by the village. Further downstream I could just make out the broader area of the ford and, a short way beyond that, the end wall of my cousin’s cottage shone grubby silver where the trackway rounded the base of the hillside.

      ‘We can take a little detour to the turbine house to have a look, if you like.’ My agreement was given doubtfully. Then I perceived the fierce concentration in Freddy’s face and wondered if people persisted in asking him questions, probing what he knew, and it was this little inquisition he was presently bracing himself for rather than any particular concern about our recent trespass in that house. Immediately, I found I would like to examine the turbine house very much. ‘I know it would make me sleep more easily if I knew we’d done our bit to check that poor Mr Winstone has really left no sign behind.’

      The change in Freddy’s demeanour was instant. It was, I thought, a reassuring sign that the boy’s life did not appear in general to give him much sense of fear but all the same I expended significantly less effort on looking the part of a valiant sleuth as I followed him over the last of the roughened hillside and worked rather harder at staying alert to signs of life.

      There was no one here. The hut’s rotten door was locked. The single metal-framed window with its flaking white paint was securely fastened and nothing could be made out through the filthy glass. Concealed within would, I knew, be the neat little turbine and an array of vast batteries that stored the generated power for future use. It was all wonderfully clean and efficient, and also decidedly exclusive.

      My voice sounded loud in the hush of a sleeping valley. ‘Don’t the villagers mind that their houses stay dark while all this awaits someone’s return to the Manor?’

      ‘Not really. It’s very old. It’s always been like this.’ Freddy seemed surprised by my question, which in turn surprised me. It seemed

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