One Summer at Deer’s Leap

The half-moon of Saturday night was full now. It hung in the sky, large and round and glowing. Was it the harvest moon, or would that be the next one, at the end of the month?

Everything around me looked beautiful and mysterious and aloof. What was it about the moon that made people think of magic? Trees and hedges cast long shadows, and the road was clear and visible for as far ahead as I could see. Maybe it was on nights like this that witches flew. I wondered if the Pendle women had really been witches? Had a harvest moon looked down when they were hanged, one long-ago August? W. D. and M. D. would have known all about that trial in Lancaster. In 1612, when it happened, Deer’s Leap had already stood for twenty years. Mary Doe, as I thought of her, might even have visited Mistress Nutter and exchanged herbal remedies with her, because in those days the woman of the house was responsible for all the nursing and doctoring that was needed within her family. I wished like mad for that time machine. What would Mary Doe make of my bright red Mini that could rush along faster than witches on broomsticks? I threw back my head and laughed out loud just to think of it, and then my smile set on my lips and my laughter ended abruptly.

I could see him clearly in the moonlight, and instinct made me switch off my lights. I braked, and dropped a gear. I wouldn’t have expected him to be beside the clump of oak trees; further up the lane, really.

His outline stood out darkly, and there was no mistaking his extended arm, his jutting thumb. My mouth had gone dry and I ran my tongue round my lips. In the slipping of a second I asked myself if I were afraid and knew I wasn’t.

He took a step backwards as I stopped beside him. Please, please don’t vanish, Jack Hunter. I leaned over and pushed open the door.

‘I’m going to Deer’s Leap,’ I said. ‘Want a lift …?’

Chapter Five (#ulink_7504bc91-4ecf-539c-84a5-a6b3c551a5d9)

My heart was thudding; the little pulse behind my nose had joined in too. I felt a choking excitement and, at the same time, an amazing calm. I willed him to get in.

‘Thanks a lot.’ He took off his cap and pushed it under the epaulette at his shoulder. Then he tossed his respirator on the floor of the car, and sat down. This time he could stretch his legs because I hadn’t moved the passenger seat forward. He banged the door shut and I began to wish for a flock of sheep again. Without them it would take less than three minutes to Deer’s Leap, and he would take off, I knew it, just as soon as he saw the kissing gate.

‘In a hurry, are you?’ I said, staring ahead.

‘Afraid so. I shouldn’t be here really. I’m on standby …’

‘What’s that?’ This time, I had the chance to ask.

‘It means we might be going tonight.’

‘Going?’ I prompted carefully, driving slowly.

‘On ops. We might go, and then again, we mightn’t. I shouldn’t be here. When we’re on standby, we can’t leave the aerodrome – or we shouldn’t.’

‘Security?’ I suggested, trying to be with it.

‘Yes. And there might be a call to first briefing.’

‘And if that happens, you won’t be there, will you? What’s first briefing?’

I was talking gibberish; talking for the sake of talking so he wouldn’t get out.

‘First briefing is just that. Pilots and navigators only; the rest of the crew join in later on.’

He was being very patient with me, and I was grateful for the fact that his mind seemed to be on other things. Not that I blamed him. To Berlin and back in inky blackness with searchlights trying to pick you out and night fighters ready to pounce would have been a bit distracting, to say the least.

‘I see.’ I didn’t really; didn’t understand the half of it – only what I’d read in books and seen in films. There had been a lot about his war on television four years back. ‘Are you billeted at Deer’s Leap?’

‘Oh, no. The farmer lives there still. There’s a chance that the RAF will take it, though it hasn’t happened yet.’

‘They seem to do pretty well as they like, don’t they?’

‘Yes, they do.’ He turned to look at me, frowning. ‘But there is a war on.’

My God! Indoctrinated by propaganda about the nobility of the cause! I’d read about it, but I hadn’t quite believed it. And I could tell him, I thought wildly, the exact day that Hitler would commit suicide, and about the two atom bombs the Americans would drop on Japan. I could, I thought, horrified, tell him the exact day he would die!

‘I hope you won’t go tonight; not with this moon …’

‘The moon’s good for fighters. They get above it, then fly out of it, and they’re on to you before you’ve got time to think. We call it a bomber’s moon because you could go without a navigator on nights like this. Everything’s there, below you, as clear as day. On the other hand, a Lanc makes a great silhouette against the moon. Given a choice, I wouldn’t go tonight.’

‘Do you know Susan Smith?’ I asked like a fool, straight out of the blue.

‘Of course I know her! That’s why I’m going to see her; tell her I might not be able to make it. I haven’t met her parents yet, so we decided it would have to be tonight …’

‘Only you’re on standby,’ I finished for him.

‘Yes, and I don’t want her to think I’ve stood her up. We always meet at the kissing gate, you see. She’ll be waiting …’

‘Are you both – I mean, is it steady between you?’ Oh, but I was pushing my luck!

‘If you mean are we in love then yes, we are. Very much …’

His voice trailed off again. He seemed never quite to finish a sentence.

‘And you’re going to meet Susan’s parents – ask them if you can get married?’ That’s what they once did, Mum said. Ask permission.

‘Yes. And I call her Suzie, by the way.’

I could see the white gate ahead and beside it, the black-painted kissing gate.

I was annoyed now that I had carefully closed the white gate when I’d left, thinking that if I drove straight up to the front door I might disorientate him; that if he didn’t see the iron gate he would stay in the car.

But I hadn’t even time to open the door when he said, ‘Thanks a lot! See you! G’night.’

I didn’t see him leave the car – not physically, I mean – and I didn’t see him open the kissing gate, but I saw it open of its own accord and I heard its creak as I’d known I would. He had just dematerialized tonight. If I hadn’t heard the gate then I wouldn’t have known where he’d gone.

I called, ‘’Night. See you sometime!’ but had no means of knowing if he’d heard me. Shaking now, I went through the motion of starting the car, driving through the gate, then closing it behind me. Only Hector’s frantic barking pulled me back to the here and now. I took a deep breath, then fumbled my key into the lock.

Tonight – all of it – was going to take a bit of working out. I thought about the mental jigsaw puzzle and knew I had begun to fill in the outline, though there was a long way to go before I completed it – if ever I did.

Hector greeted me joyfully. I patted his head and he felt real and solid and of this age. Carefully, because I was trying to get a hold on myself, I bolted the front door, top and bottom, then double-locked it.

Only then did I say, ‘’Strewth, Hector, you’d never believe the half of what’s just happened!’

Next morning, I awoke to gloom and the sound of rain pattering against the window.

How dare it rain at Deer’s Leap! I got out of bed and closed the window. Heavy rain on wheat and barley and oats ripe and ready for harvesting for the war effort, Mr Smith could do well without!

Dammit! I was back to that war again! I was here to write and look after a house, not to dig back half a century because a ghost couldn’t find his girlfriend. We were coming up to the Millennium, and Susan Smith and Jack Hunter were history!

But they weren’t, the voice of reason whispered firmly. Jack Hunter didn’t know he had died more than fifty years ago and as far as I knew, Susan could still be alive. I not only wanted to establish that fact, but deep down I was certain that the niggling inside me would go on until I had found her!

But how do you find an elderly lady – who could perhaps be married and have children – grandchildren – and who maybe didn’t want to be found? And just supposing the impossible happened and one day she opened her front door to me, what would I say?