Forbidden Path

Jean Chapman

Description

"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."

Informations

• Publié par: e-bookPartnership
• Date de parution: 11 décembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783015931
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

T HE F ORBIDDEN P ATH
By the same author
THE UNREASONING EARTH
TANGLED DYNASTY
THE FORBIDDEN PATH
J EAN C HAPMAN

CENTURY
LONDON MELBOURNE AUCKLAND JOHANNESBURG
2014 Jean Chapman
Jean Chapman has asserted her rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in Great Britain in 1986 by Century Hutchinson Ltd, Brookmount House, 62-65 Chandos Place, London WC2N 4NW
Century Hutchinson Publishing Group (Australia) Pty Ltd 16-22 Church Street, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Victoria 3122
Century Hutchinson Group (NZ) Ltd 32-34 View Road, PO Box 40-086, Glenfield, Auckland 10
Century Hutchinson Group (SA) Pty Ltd PO Box 337, Bergvlei 2012, South Africa
First published in eBook format in 2014
ISBN: 9781783015931
(Printed edition: 0 7126 9487 0)
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
All names, characters, places, organisations, businesses and events are either the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
To my husband, Alan, with love and gratitude. Our path has never been dull, never long without laughter.
Contents
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
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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