Elizabeth Elgin - One Summer at Deer’s Leap

So after being overtaken by the tractor, I pulled the car onto the grass at the side of the road and reached for the carefully written, beautifully illustrated directions. Winding down the window I breathed in deeply, then studied the map. Half a mile back I had passed a clump of oak trees; now I must look out for the crossroads, turn right, and after 200 yards on what was described as little more than a dirt road, I would be there.

‘It’s my sister’s place,’ said my editor, Jeannie, of whom I’d become extremely fond. ‘There’s a bit of a do on next weekend and I’m invited. Why don’t you tag along, too? You don’t live all that far away and it’s Welcome Hall at Deer’s Leap. Bring fancy dress, if you have one.’

I didn’t have fancy dress, and had said so; said too that not all that far on her map was all of fifty-two miles in reality and that Yorkshire was a very large county.

‘Oh, c’mon, Cassie. A break from words will do you good,’ she’d urged, then went on to remind me that the rather clingy, low-cut green sheath dress I’d worn to Harrier Books’ Christmas party would fit the bill nicely. ‘Stick a lily behind your ear and you’ve cracked it. Come as a lily of the field. Nobody’s going to mind when they see your cleavage.’

So I’d checked that my green sheath still fitted, then bought two silk arum lilies, one to be worn as suggested, the other stuck down my cleavage. Thus, hopefully, I would pass for a lily of the field that toiled not, neither did she spin and hoped I wouldn’t look too ordinary against Cleopatra, Elizabeth Tudor and Isadora Duncan.

I took a peek in the rear mirror. Considering my outdoor upbringing, I wasn’t all that bad to look at. My complexion had remained fair in spite of northern winters; my hair was genuine carrot, though Mum called it russet, and my eyes, by far my best asset, were very blue. I wasn’t one bit like Mum or Dad or Aunt Jane, and not for the first time did I wonder who had bestowed my looks. Some long-ago Viking, had it been, on the rampage in northern England? Or was I a changeling?

I laughed out loud. I was on holiday. I was going to a house called Deer’s Leap and Jeannie would be there when I arrived. To add to my blessings, book two was at chapter seven and with Aunt Jane in mind was becoming something of a hot number. I shouldn’t have a care in the world. I didn’t have a care in the world except that maybe my love life was not all it should be.

‘Why are you going to a weekend party?’ Piers had demanded when I’d told him on the phone.

‘Because I need a break.’

‘Then hadn’t it occurred to you that maybe I’d be glad to see you? Why can’t you come to London?’

‘You said you were frantically busy,’ I’d hedged.

‘Never too busy for you, darling. Come to my place, instead?’

Why didn’t he and I shack up down there, he’d said, throwing the two-can-live-as-cheaply-as-one cliché at me.

And iron shirts and do the cooking, I’d thought, and be back to writing odd half-hours again. Besides, Piers wasn’t my soulmate. I didn’t see us ever making a proper go of it. If my ego hadn’t balked at being manless our relationship could well have ended ages ago.

We’d made love, of course. Piers was good to look at; dark and lean and somehow always tanned. His designer stubble suited him, too, though I wished sometimes it wasn’t so hard on my face – afterwards.

And that was something else about him and me: the afterwards bit. It never felt quite right for me. When it was over I found myself not liking him as much as I ought to, and to love a man you’ve got to like him – afterwards. Even I knew that.

‘Look, I’m sorry,’ I’d said. ‘I can’t call it off now, and anyway my editor will be there. It isn’t just a weekend party; it’s business.’ Sometimes I tell lies to Piers. ‘More to the point, when are you coming north to see me?’

I’d thrown the ball back into his court and he was just coming up with a perfectly reasonable excuse when I heard his bell chimes, quite clearly.

‘OK, Cassie. Some other time? Soon?’

He’d put the phone down then and I wondered whose fingertip had pressed his doorbell and wasn’t surprised to find I didn’t much care.

‘Forget Piers for two days and get some living in,’ I said to the girl in the rear-view mirror. No time like tonight for dipping a toe in the water, I thought, and to hell with the lily-down-the-cleavage bit!

I wound up the window and set out, smiling, on my way again. Above me the sky was blue, with only little puffs of very white cloud. Around me, and as far as I could see, were fields and hedgerows and grass verges that really had wild flowers growing in them. I was going to a party tonight and I would be a lily of the field and have a wicked time. I wasn’t in any hurry to settle down because I’d already decided there would be all the time in the world, after the third novel. And wouldn’t I know when I met the right man; the man I would love and like – afterwards?

Oh, concentrate, Cassandra! The crossroads, then a couple of hundred yards and Jeannie will be there at the front gate of Deer’s Leap, wondering where you’ve got to!

The engine revs changed from their usual sweet-natured purr to an agitated growl so I dropped a gear, put my foot down and concentrated on the lane ahead. I was just beginning to wonder how the house had got its name when I saw a man ahead. He was smiling, his thumb jutted and he was in fancy dress.

All the things Dad dinned into me about never stopping for anyone, much less for a man, went out of my head. He was undoubtedly a fellow guest, who for some reason was standing at the side of the lane and in need of a lift. I slowed and stopped, then leaned over to slip the nearside door catch.

‘Want a lift?’

‘Please. Could you? I’ve got to get to Deer’s Leap.’

‘Hop in!’

He arranged himself in the passenger seat, one long leg at a time. Then he pulled his knees almost up to his chin and balanced his khaki bag on them.

‘You can push the seat back.’ I lifted the catch to my left. ‘Shove with your feet.’

The seat slipped backwards and he stretched his legs, relief on his face. Well, six foot two at least , isn’t Mini size.

‘That’s a World War Two respirator, isn’t it?’ I envied his fancy dress. So real-looking.

‘They’re usually called gas masks,’ he smiled, and that smile was really something across a crowded Mini.

‘You already dressed for tonight, then?’ I turned the key in the ignition.

‘We-e-ll, sort of,’ he shrugged, ‘and anyway, I’m only on standby.’

‘Damn!’ A slow-moving flock of sheep ahead put paid to the question, ‘What’s standby?’

I slowed to keep well back. The lambs were well grown; almost as big as the ewes and obviously not used to being driven. If one of them panicked in the narrow road, we’d all be in trouble.

My passenger stared ahead, intent on the sheep and the black and white sheepdog that watched and nosed and slunk behind and to the side of them, and I was able to get a good look at him.

Fair, rather thin. His hands lay still on his lap though his fingers moved constantly. He’d had his hair cut short, too, just as if he’d been the pilot whose uniform he wore. Three stripes on his sleeve; wings above his top left-hand pocket. His shoes were altogether of another era.

The sheep were behaving. I hoped they would turn left at the crossroads. He was still watching them intently so I read the number stamped in black on the flap of his gas mask and thought my lily of the field would look a bit botched alongside his authentic uniform. He’d obviously gone to a lot of trouble, so with future fancy dress parties in mind I asked where he’d got it.