Potential Danger

‘Did they know him?’ Cherry asked her, obviously puzzled by her instruction.

Kate shook her head. ‘No.’

And it was true. Her parents had never met Silas. She had been planning to take him home with her at Christmas. They had been going to announce their engagement, or so she had believed. God, she had been a fool… But what was the point in thinking about that now? She had been a fool as so many naïve girls were fools and would go on being fools. It was impossible to change human emotions, and girls would continue to fall in love and give themselves in the intensity of that love, to men who were simply using them to satisfy the immediacy of their sexual urges.

She reached out and pushed her daughter’s thick, dark hair back off her face. Cherry’s hair was a legacy from Silas. It had that same raven’s wing sheen, and her eyebrows his expressive lift.

She had the green Seton eyes, though, set in a face whose delicate heart shape promised to mirror her own, once the softening influence of childhood disappeared.

Her own hair was a dark, rich red and thickly curly. It vibrated with its own electric intensity, and Silas had often teased her that she was so small and tiny because all her strength went into her hair.

That was one way in which she and Cherry were not alike. Cherry promised to be tall like her father. One day, her daughter was going to be an extremely beautiful woman, Kate reflected, and it was Silas’s loss that he would not be able to witness the wonder of that woman emerging. Kate was determined that her daughter would be a woman of the eighties—feminine, warm, intelligent, honest, self-reliant—and she wondered briefly and treacherously how she would compare to Silas’s other children: those two dark-haired boys whose existence she had never even guessed at in the days when she had been drunk on love and pleasure, and believing that Silas belonged to her alone.

Heady days; days which would have been little more than a memory, perhaps, if it hadn’t been for Cherry.

It seemed odd now to remember that she had ever been such a creature of passion and intensity that she had conceived a child.

Those fires had long ago burned out, smothered by layer upon layer of panic, pain, confusion, and the sheer hard work of building a life for herself and her child.

‘I wish Aunt Lydia could have come with us, don’t you?’

Aunt Lydia was in fact Kate’s godmother; the true fairy-story kind of godmother, who had taken her in as a homeless, terrified eighteen-year-old, stood by her through Cherry’s birth, supported, advised and, most important of all, loved them both. And now, finally she had been the active force in breaking down the barriers of the eleven-year-old silence between Kate and her parents.

Knowing quite well that Cherry’s comment sprang from a sudden surge of nervousness at meeting the grandparents she had never known, Kate responded carelessly, ‘Aunt Lydia hates the countryside, love, you know that. Can you honestly see her in wellies and muddy fields?’ she asked mischievously.

Lydia was a town creature, all brittle, elegant bones and long, polished nails, her outward appearance belying her kind nature.

How she and her mother had ever become friends in the first place, never mind kept that friendship alive for over thirty years, was a mystery to Kate, but somehow they had.

They were really in the Dales now, travelling through long upland valleys, green with pastures, and the odd stand of trees, dotted with small, clinging, stone farmhouses.

Cherry was fascinated, almost glued to the carriage window.

Kate had lost count of the number of times her daughter had asked her about Abbeydale and her grandparents since that Christmas telephone call.

Initially, she herself hadn’t wanted to come; she was frightened that doing so would arouse too many painful memories. But Lydia had reminded her gently that there were others whose feelings must be considered, Cherry in particular.

‘She’s a Seton, Kate,’ she had pointed out quietly. ‘She loves the countryside. Times have changed. Illegitimacy isn’t the slur it was. Your father was wrong in behaving as he did, but he and your mother both miss and love you.’

‘Cherry wants to be a vet,’ Kate had responded illogically, and she had seen Lydia smile, that secret, pleased smile that showed she knew she had won a victory. And so here they were, within minutes now of the meeting she had been secretly fearing ever since it had been arranged.

The train slowed down, crawled through a tunnel and emerged into the golden sunlight of the July afternoon.

The small station was bedecked with hanging baskets and flowering plants, its name picked out proudly in fresh paint, but, as Kate got up to collect her things and usher Cherry towards the door, she saw no sign of her father on the platform.

Then, if she could have done so, she would have turned round and gone right back to London. That was where she belonged now. That was where her life lay, teaching as she had done ever since she had qualified.

She enjoyed her work; it held a multiplicity of challenges that constantly re-energised her; she loved the children themselves and she loved teaching them.

The train stopped. She paused before opening the door. No one else got out, and she had a sensation of stepping back in time, of being eighteen again and newly home from university.

And surely that was Mr Meadows waiting to take their tickets?

He had seemed ancient to her at eighteen, but he was probably only in his sixties now, Kate recognised as she handed over the slips of paper with a smile.

‘Your dad’s waiting for you in the car park,’ he told her, eyeing her with friendly recognition. ‘And this is the young ‘un, is it? Spit of your ma, isn’t she?’

‘Am I like Grandma?’ Cherry asked her curiously as they walked through the booking hall.

‘A little…’

Only in that she was like herself, Kate suspected. Her parents were second cousins, Setons both; both spare and wiry, and in some ways very physically alike. Her mother’s hair had never been as red as Kate’s, and it had certainly been nothing like Cherry’s polished waterfall of straight ebony.

There was only one vehicle in the car park, an ancient Land Rover, with a man standing beside it.

Kate felt the apprehension curl through her stomach. In addition to rearing and breeding sheep, her father trained prize sheep-dogs, and throughout her childhood there had never been one of these animals far from his side. There was one at his feet now, a quiver of intelligent black and white fur, the sight of which transfixed Cherry to the spot in delighted disbelief.

While her daughter studied the dog, Kate studied her father. He had aged—but then, hadn’t they all?—and working in a climate like the Dales, twelve hours a day, seven days a week, took its toll on the human frame, even one as hardy as her father’s.

He returned her look a little defensively, and then, ridiculously, she felt tears prick her eyes and she did something she had never intended to do, practically running across the car park to hug him.

He returned her embrace awkwardly, uncertainly, like a man unused to demonstrations of physical caring, and then released her to say gruffly, ‘Aye, she’s a proper Seton,’ and Kate could have sworn there was just a suspicion of moisture in his eyes as he looked at her daughter.

‘The man at the station said I was the image of my grandma,’ Cherry told him importantly.

Instantly he scowled. ‘That Tom Meadows always had a fancy for your mother,’ he told Kate irefully.

‘Grandpa, is it all right for me to stroke your dog?’ Cherry asked him formally.

Again he scowled, and Kate, well acquainted with her father’s view that dogs were working animals and best treated as such, was astounded to see him suddenly bend and fondle the silky black and white coat with gentle fingers. His hand was gnarled. An old man’s hand, she recognised shockingly.

‘Aye, I don’t see why not. His name’s Laddie.’

Lassie, Laddie, Meg, Skip—those were always the names her father chose for his dogs. A dog trained by John Seton was always in high demand, but for as long as she could remember Kate had never known her father sell a dog to a man he didn’t like.

As Cherry bent down to stroke the dog, crooning happily as his tail beat on the dusty ground, Kate asked, ‘Will you be working him in the county show, Dad?’

‘No, not this one. He’s not much good as a worker.’

He saw the astonishment on her face and added gruffly, ‘Your mother took to him, though, and I couldn’t get rid of him. Sleeps in the house an’ all, he does.’ He scowled horribly. ‘Ought to have had him put down. Dog’s no good if it can’t work…’

Had she not seen with her own eyes the love in her father’s face as he stroked his pet, Kate might almost have believed him.

How many times in the past had she been too ignorant or too immature to see that his gruff manner hid real emotion? She had thought him a cold, hard, man, and so she had run away from him and from her home, convinced that if she stayed he would make her hand over her baby for adoption.

And yet now, as he looked at Cherry, there was pride as well as grief in his eyes; love as well as regret.

‘We’d better get on, then. No use standing about here giving folks cause to gossip. Besides, your ma will be waiting.’