One Summer at Deer’s Leap

The storm passed over us and I calculated they would be getting the worst of it in Acton Carey. Lightning still forked and flickered, but we were becoming blasé after the shock of that one awful blast.

‘I wonder if it was like this in the blitz – the bombing, you know.’

‘Far worse, I should imagine. Bombs killed people. Are we back to your war again, Cassie?’

‘It isn’t my war, but there’s something I’ve got to tell you.’

Even as I spoke, I knew I was being all kinds of a fool, so I blamed the storm again.

‘About …?’

‘About what we agreed not to talk about. Shall I make us a cup of tea?’

I was glad to retreat into the kitchen, to get my thoughts into some kind of order, relieved to find the storm had not affected the electric kettle. When I carried the tray into the conservatory, Jeannie was standing at the door, gazing out.

‘You think you’ve seen the ghost again – is that it?’ she said, her back still to me.

‘I’ve seen him. Twice more. Come and sit down.’ I made a great fuss of stirring the tea in the pot, pouring it.

‘Right then!’ She placed her cup on the wicker table at her side, then selected three biscuits, still without looking at me. ‘And I don’t for the life of me know why I’m so silly as to listen to you,’ she flung, tight-lipped. ‘You’re normally such a down-to-earth person!’

‘I know what I saw and heard,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Do you want to hear, or don’t you?’ I took a gulp of my tea. ‘Well – do you?’

‘There’ll be no peace, I suppose, till you’ve told me.’

There came another startling flash of lightning, followed almost at once by a loud peal of thunder. The storm we thought was passing had turned round on itself as if it were searching for a way out of the encircling hills.

‘I’m getting bored with this!’ Jeannie lifted her eyes to the glass roof. The rain was still falling heavily and making a dreadful noise above us. ‘Let’s go into the kitchen.’ She picked up the tray and I followed her, carrying the plate of biscuits. Hector slunk behind me, whining, so I gave him a pat and a custard cream.

‘Now.’ Jeannie settled herself at the table, back to the window. ‘You are serious? After all we agreed, you’ve been poking about again!’

‘I have not! I went to the Rose on Wednesday night, and I’ll admit asking Bill about the people who once lived here. It was natural that since the RAF was the cause of them getting thrown out, we should talk about the Smiths.’

‘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?’