Potential Danger

The village hadn’t changed at all. There was still the same bench outside the post office’s wistaria-draped front wall, a meeting-point for the older members of the village. During the day it was normally occupied by the women, but in the evening it was the preserve of the men. Opposite the post office was the village’s single pub, the De Burghley Arms. A rather grand name for a very small and homely building. It took its name from the follower of William the Conqueror who had once owned these lands; a family which had distant connections with Queen Elizabeth the First’s famous minister.

The last de Burghley had left the village just before Kate, in the funeral cortège taking him to the family vault within the walls of their local parish church.

One of his ancestors, robed in the stone mimicry of his Crusader uniform, lay at rest within the church itself; and the church’s stained-glass windows gave testimony to the many de Burghleys who, over the centuries, had given their lives in what they considered to be just causes.

It was her father’s proud boast that there had been Setons in the dale for as long as there had been de Burghleys, if not longer. There was even a story in the family that the first Seton had been a wild raider from the Scottish borders who had tried to steal away one of the de Burghley daughters to hold for ransom, but who had ended up falling in love with her instead, and who had received from his new father-in-law, as the price of her dowry, the lands which the Setons had farmed ever since.

If that was the case, the dowry had not been an overgenerous one, Kate reflected as the engine note of the Land Rover changed and they started to climb the ribbon of grey road between its darker grey borders of dry stone walling.

Her family’s acreage, though large, comprised not the rich pasture lands of the dale bottom, but the unproductive uplands fit only for sheep.

Once vast flocks of sheep had roamed the Seton lands, and in the Middle Ages the Setons had grown wealthy from their profit, but two World Wars and the death of her grandfather had reduced the flocks to a handful of worthless animals.

It had been her father who had had the foresight to see that the future lay in selective breeding, in producing not the world’s wool, but the rams that would produce the flocks which would produce such wool.

Seton rams were famous and prized the world over, but, as Kate knew from her childhood, those early years of establishing their reputation had been hard ones for her parents, with long separations between them while her father travelled, mainly to South America, Australia and New Zealand, doing his own marketing. Her mother remained at home, in sole charge of the farm: her children, the livestock and her husband’s precious ewes and lambs.

Through it all her parents had worked as a team, each selflessly working for the other. They had a relationship which now was considered old-fashioned, with her mother making her husband the pivot of her life.

The farm and their lives together here in the Dales; that had been the total sum of their ambitions. No wonder her father had been so disappointed when David had announced he wanted to be an engineer.

Kate had kept in sporadic touch with her brother and knew that he was married, but as yet had no children. Was that what had motivated her father to mend the breach between them? The fact that Cherry, her daughter, was the only member of the next generation?

Cherry was chattering to her grandfather as though she had known him all her life. Already there was a rapport between them completely unshadowed with the awe in which Kate herself had always held him.

Listening to Cherry talking knowledgeably to him about the sheep—throwing out snippets of facts she could only have picked up from her, Kate recognised—she was both amused and saddened by her daughter’s grave, slightly old fashioned air. Cherry was such a contained, adult child in many ways, and yet in others she was so heartbreakingly vulnerable. This visit meant so much to her; she had talked of nothing else for months, ever since Lydia had dropped her bombshell at Christmas, by announcing that she had been in touch with Kate’s mother and that her parents wanted her to go home, if only for a visit.

Kate ached to remind Cherry that a visit was all it could be, but was reluctant to cloud her daughter’s happiness.

Cherry was a country child and bloomed in a country environment. She herself had ambivalent feelings towards the Dales. She loved them; they were her heritage and no one of any sensitivity, having known them, could cut that knowledge from her soul without destroying it.

But London had been good to her as well. London had provided her with a job, with independence, with a home for Cherry, where no one expressed surprise or curiosity over her lack of a father.

With Cherry herself she had been totally honest, explaining that she had fallen in love with her father, and that, having done so, she had only discovered too late that he was married to someone else.

What she had not told Cherry was that Silas and his wife had two children. She had not wanted to burden her daughter with that knowledge. It was enough that she carried it.

Thank God that was something her parents had never known, especially her father. They had simply believed that she had ‘got herself into trouble’ with someone at university, and that that someone, once he had realised she was pregnant, had turned his back on her. And she had let them think that it was as simple as that.

They were crossing what was de Burghley land now; the great house hidden from them by the trees planted all around it. As they passed the gates, Kate noticed a large notice-board attached to the wall, and the uniformed security guard standing outside the lodge house.

‘What’s happened to the Hall?’ she questioned her father curiously.

De Burghley land ran alongside theirs, which no doubt had given rise to that old story about a Seton having married a de Burghley daughter.

‘Government’s bought it,’ her father told her abruptly. ‘Started up some kind of monitoring unit there, where they do all kinds of special tests. All very hush-hush it is, and no one allowed inside the grounds, or on to the land for that matter, without permission. Opened up about twelve months ago. The man who runs it is a reasonable sort. Keeps himself to himself, but there’s some locally say that it can only cause trouble…’

‘What kind of trouble, Grandpa?’ Cherry asked curiously.

Kate saw her father frown.

‘The sort I don’t know much about, lass,’ he told her heavily, adding for Kate’s benefit, ‘Been a lot of ewes aborting this last year, and then all that business from Russia.’

Having correctly interpreted his remarks as a reference to the Chernobyl disaster which Kate knew from newspaper reports had badly affected lamb and cattle sales for meat, it was Kate’s turn to frown.

She knew, of course, about the nuclear fall-out which had been rumoured to have affected some parts of the area, and of course no one could live in these times and not be aware of the fears caused by such places as Windscale, but to see the concern in her father’s eyes brought the reality of it home to her.

‘You’re not saying that you’ve been affected by nuclear fall-out up here, Dad, are you?’ she questioned him, immediately worried for Cherry, for who knew what effects even minute amounts of radiation could have on growing children?

‘We’re not told. But why else open this research station… and why keep it all so secret? There’s a lot of concern in the village about it, I can tell you. Protest meetings and the like.’

‘And the man who’s in charge of the place—what does he say?’

‘Says there’s nothing to worry about, and I, for one, believe him.’

Because he wanted to believe him, Kate recognised. It would break her father’s heart if anything happened to contaminate Seton land. She heard the pride in his voice as they rounded a turn in the road and passed the boundary that divided the de Burghley acres from their own.

‘Now, lass,’ he told Cherry, ‘you’re on Seton land. What dost tha think o’ un?’

Cherry looked as though she were about to burst with pride and delight, and before Kate could stop her, and regardless of the fact that her father was driving the Land Rover, Cherry flung her arms round his neck and said ecstatically, ‘Oh, Grandpa, I’m so glad that we’re here.’

‘Now… now enough of that…’

But her father was careful not to hurt her as he disengaged himself, Kate noticed, and she also noticed the surreptitious way in which he blew his nose only seconds later.

They entered the family farmyard to a cacophany of barking from the dogs, mingling with the cackle of her mother’s hens and the bleating of half a dozen or so huge fat lambs, plainly those which had been hand-reared during the spring and which were now proving reluctant to return to the flock, Kate reflected, recognising the familiar pattern of her childhood.

‘Watch out for the bantam,’ her father warned them as he stopped the Land Rover.

‘What’s a bantam?’ Cherry demanded.

‘A small hen,’ Kate told her, ruefully remembering her mother’s affection for her bantam silkies and the ferocity of the minute males who lorded it over their harems.

‘Don’t tell me that Ma still keeps geese,’ Kate groaned as she heard the familiar alarm sound. In her childhood, even her father had not been safe from the sharp beaks of her mother’s geese, always excellent watchdogs. Their main fault was that it was impossible to teach them to discern between friend and foe.

And then the back door was opening and her mother was standing there. Not really changed at all. Her hair still neat and braided, her diminutive, wiry form still clad in a neat skirt and blouse, covered by an old-fashioned apron.

Across the yard Kate saw the look her parents exchanged, and she was at once a part and yet not a part of a magic circle that concentrated its love on the girl standing uncertainly on one foot as she stared round the unfamiliar yard.

‘I’ve brought them then, Jean, love…’

And suddenly her mother’s arms were open and both she and Cherry were caught up in them. Odd how so much strength could come from such a slight form. As she released them, Kate heard her mother saying tearfully, ‘My, but she’s the spitting image of you, John. A real Seton.’

And for the second time that day she was aware, as she had never been aware as a child, of the great love between her parents; for Cherry certainly looked like neither of them, since her features were hers, Kate knew, and her colouring and build was completely her father’s.

But there was no time to reflect any more on Cherry’s physical heritage, because she was crossing the familiar threshold into the the large square kitchen of her childhood, and the years were rolling back. She almost felt she could be Cherry’s age again, just home from school, waiting for David to finish his chores so that they could sit down and eat.

‘It’s grand to have you home, lass.’