Elizabeth Elgin - One Summer at Deer’s Leap

‘And …?’

‘Look, Jeannie – I didn’t tell you, but I saw the pilot at the kissing gate, last Saturday morning! One second he was there; the next he’d gone!’

‘When you’d been to the post office, you mean?’

‘Yes. You said I was acting a bit vague; asked me if I had a headache.’

‘So I did,’ she said softly, ‘yet you said nothing!’

‘I only saw him out of the corner of my eye, but that gate opened of its own accord and I heard it squeak. He was there!’

‘That gate doesn’t squeak, Cassie!’

‘It did during the war, and was rusty and in need of painting!’

‘So when did he appear again?’ She licked the end of her forefinger, picking up biscuit crumbs with it from her plate. She was doing it, I knew, to annoy me.

‘Last Wednesday night.’ I took a deep breath, and she lifted her head and looked at me at last. ‘I’d been to the Rose, talking to Bill. I took the car, so I hadn’t been drinking! I saw him clearly, ahead of me, near the clump of oak trees. It was bright moonlight, Jeannie. I could’ve put my foot down, like it seems people around these parts do if they think it’s him. But I didn’t. I stopped. He seemed anxious to get to Deer’s Leap.’

‘Like last time?’

‘Yes. Just like last time. He wanted to let Susan Smith know he was on standby. And before you ask,’ I rushed on, ‘standby means they might be flying on a bombing mission. I asked him. Then he said he wanted to tell Susan he maybe couldn’t make it that night. Seems he was hoping to meet her parents for the first time.’

‘And it was important?’

‘Seemed so to me. They wanted to get married, you see.’

‘No, I don’t see. He’d never met her folks, yet they were planning to get married? Is that likely?’

‘Bill Jarvis said parents didn’t like their daughters dating aircrew because so many of them got killed. Jack and Susan managed to meet secretly.’

‘And the pilot told you all that – opened up his heart to you about Susan?’

‘Why shouldn’t he? Seems I’m the first person in more than fifty years to take any notice of him. And he called her Suzie, not Susan.’

‘Well, all I can say is that either you’ve got one heck of an imagination, or you really do think you’ve seen him again!’

‘I have! And talked to him. And don’t try to tell me he doesn’t exist. He’s real enough for Beth and Danny to more or less warn me off!’

‘But, Cassie – he might be something someone hereabouts invented.’

‘So who told me then? Bill didn’t say one word about him to me.’

‘Well, he wouldn’t. Nobody round Acton Carey talks about him! Like Beth said, they don’t want the press in on it.’

‘But if Jack Hunter doesn’t exist, why try to cover him up? Why not let the reporters run riot – make fools of themselves?’

‘OK, Cas!’ She threw up her hands in mock surrender. ‘So there have been rumours from time to time about – something …’

‘Too right there have! Beth has seen him. She as good as admitted it.’

‘But doesn’t he scare you?’

‘No. He doesn’t groan or rattle chains. You could take him for a real person, except he seems able to vanish into thin air like he did on Wednesday.’

‘Where did he seem to vanish to?’

‘I don’t know, exactly. I got out of the car to open the big gate and when I got back, he’d gone. All I knew was that I heard the kissing gate creak.’

‘The one that needs painting?’

‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ I was getting annoyed. How could she be so stubborn?

‘I – I, oh, I don’t know what to believe. And why does the kissing gate feature so strongly in it, will you tell me?’

‘Because to my way of thinking, Susan Smith used to sneak out and meet him there. They’d be safe enough; the blackout would hide them.’

‘Except on moonlit nights and in summer, when it was supposed to be light until eleven at night,’ she shrugged, determined to play devil’s advocate.

‘When people are in love and they know they might not have a lot of time, they find a way. I would’ve.’

‘All right. Point taken! So tell me – what is he like, your airman?’

‘He’s tall and slim – thin, almost. He’s got fair hair and it’s cut short at the sides. I suppose what they’d call a regulation cut. But it’s thick on top, and a bit flops over his right eye. He has a habit of pushing it aside.’

‘So what are you going to do, Cassie – about the airman, I mean?’

‘I don’t know. I want to help, because he’s looking for his girl and there’ll be no peace for him until he finds her – or more to the point, until she finds him. I reckon, you see, that he’s rooted to what was once an airfield.’

‘Trapped in a time warp, you mean?’

‘Exactly. Look, Jeannie – are you with me or are you against me? I’d like to know.’

‘Why? So I can help you?’

‘No. It’s me Jack Hunter is interested in. Seems I must be a bit of a medium and he’s latched on to it. So it’s all going to be up to me. But you can help by believing that I’m not going out of my tiny mind.’

‘Somehow I don’t think you are, Cassie. Your vibes and his must match, I suppose, or why has Beth seen him, and not Danny? She told me about it years ago and swore me to secrecy in case people thought she was bonkers. She was scared witless, though. Like she said, if she sees him again and she’s in the car, she’ll put her foot down and get the hell out of it.’

‘Where do you think I should start? Where did the Smiths go when they had to leave Deer’s Leap? If we knew that we’d be some way to finding Susan.’

‘If she wants to be found. And, Cassie – you’re not going to let this business interfere with your writing, are you?’

‘Of course I’m not. Bill’s parents might have known where Susan Smith went to, but I don’t think they’re around, somehow.’

‘If they were, lovey, I doubt they’d be able to remember that far back.’

‘Don’t be too sure! Aunt Jane was born in 1915, but she remembered people going mad when World War One ended. She always called it the Great War.’

‘All right then. There just might be someone down in the village who remembers the Smiths – even knows where they went. But how do you go about finding them? Do you knock on every door in Acton Carey, or get the vicar to read it out from the pulpit next Sunday? You’ll get nothing out of that lot, Cassie. I reckon they know about the airman, too. Bill knows you’re a writer. They’d clam up on you.’

‘So that rules out the village. Y’know, Bill figured Susan Smith is about seventy-two or -three, and that isn’t old these days. Aunt Jane was eighty when she died, and bright as a button. I’ve been telling myself that at the worst, Susan Smith might not be alive, but I think she is. All I can hope is that she won’t slam her door in my face if I get lucky and find her.’

‘You really want to go on with this, don’t you, Cassie?’

‘Yes. I’m his only hope.’

‘Even though he thinks Susan is still living at Deer’s Leap?’

‘Even so. But just say I did find her – would she be willing to go along with it?’

‘I don’t know. But take it that she would – what do you both do? Drive up and down the lane until he’s in need of a lift? Or do you camp outside Deer’s Leap and wait for the kissing gate to start creaking? How long would it take, Cassie?’

‘That’s anybody’s guess. But it didn’t take me long, did it? He found me the first time I came here. But there’s something neither of us has touched on. OK – so we’re lucky – we find him first try! How is he going to recognize her? She’ll have changed, over the years. She’ll be old enough to be his grandmother now, and he’s looking for a girl of eighteen or nineteen!’