Annie stood there with her lips disappearing into her face. She was furious with Kate Loxley. The girl had hurt her Freddie, not answering his letters, breaking his heart Annie thought bitterly. Making him go all that way across the ferry and have his terrible accident, and lose the motorbike he’d saved up for. Annie had worked herself into a fury against this girl who had the cheek to stand there, bold as brass, in her shop. She controlled herself with difficulty, wrapping the lardy cake a bit too vigorously and putting Kate’s change down on the counter with a petulant click.
‘Was there something else you wanted?’ she asked.
‘I’d like to see Freddie please. Is he here?’
‘No, he isn’t,’ said Annie triumphantly. ‘He’s gone up the alabaster quarry with Herbie. He won’t be back until late.’
Kate looked disappointed. ‘I’ve only got half an hour before my train back to Gloucestershire. I can’t stay. Will you tell him I called?’
‘Oh yes. I’ll tell him.’ Annie thawed just a little when she saw the sadness in Kate’s eyes.
‘I did so want to see him,’ she said, and her eyes glistened with some secret she wasn’t sharing. ‘But I’ve got a long journey home, and I must get back to my parents. Daddy is so ill, and they’re grieving, we all are. My sister Ethie was drowned in the River Severn.’ Kate’s voice went down and down, to a whisper, and Annie stood in silence, a battle going on inside her mind as the angry bitter thoughts collided with an incoming rush of maternal understanding. Kate was a human being, a young girl who had lost her home, and her sister. Annie opened her heart like she opened the front door, just a crack, and began to let her in.
‘I’m sorry about your sister,’ she said.
‘Thank you.’ Kate looked into Annie’s eyes, which were so like Freddie’s, cobalt blue with flecks of violet, and full of wordless insight. Freddie’s eyes were calm but Annie’s had tinges of anxiety, similar to Ethie’s, Kate thought. Anxiety masquerading as anger. ‘Is Freddie all right?’ she asked.
‘He is now,’ Annie replied proudly. ‘And . . .’ She hesitated. ‘I should ask you in for a cup of tea. He’d want me to.’
‘That would be lovely,’ said Kate warmly, ‘but I’ve a train to catch so I must go.’
Annie nodded. ‘I’ve got some more customers coming up the road. But – there’s something you should see, Kate, before you go.’ She opened the door to the garden. ‘You take a look out there and you’ll see what my Freddie’s been doing. Go on, it won’t take you a minute.’
Kate stepped out into the garden and her mouth fell open in astonishment.
‘Night and day he’ve worked,’ said Annie, ‘and that one there, that’s St Peter and it was commissioned by the church. ’Tis not quite finished yet.’
‘This is unbelievable.’ Kate stood looking around at the display of stone carvings. There was an owl, a squirrel, a collection of stone faces, and a tiny singing bird. She looked closely at the statue of St Peter, marvelling at the way Freddie had carved the peaceful face, the drape of his robe, the bunch of keys hanging from his belt. ‘It’s marvellous. I can’t believe Freddie has done all this. How exciting! I’m thrilled to bits. How wonderful. You must be so proud, Mrs Barcussy.’
Annie beamed, enjoying Kate’s enthusiasm.
‘And what’s under that cloth?’ Kate asked in a stage whisper, her eyes very bright as she walked round something on a pedestal, completely covered in a dark blue embroidered cloth. Her fingers itched to unveil it.
‘Ah – I’m not to show you that,’ said Annie secretively. ‘Freddie said – he wants it to stay under that cloth that his Granny embroidered until – until . . .’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the words, not while she still held some of the anger and suspicion in her heart. ‘You’ll have to wait to find that out.’
‘Ooh I do LOVE mysteries!’ Kate smiled at Annie, then glanced at the time again. ‘This is Daddy’s watch! Oh dear, I’ve got to dash. Excuse me, won’t you? It’s been lovely meeting you. Thank you for showing me this – I know we’re going to be good friends, aren’t we?’
To Annie’s surprise, Kate leaned over impulsively and gave her a warm sweet kiss on the cheek. Then she whirled out of the shop and went running down the hill to the station, her red shoes clopping and her hair bouncing as she ran. Annie was left at the shop door, staring after her, a lump in her throat, her cheek glowing. No one had given her a sweet kiss for years and years, she thought, not since her girls were little.
She couldn’t wait for Freddie to come home.
‘Guess who came here?’ she’d say tantalisingly, and when he asked ‘Who?’ she wouldn’t say ‘that Loxley girl’ she’d say, ‘Kate’ as nicely as she could manage.
‘That’s a good ’un,’ said Herbie, smoothing the chunk of freshly quarried alabaster Freddie had loaded onto the back of the lorry. ‘Got plenty of pink in it. That’s what you want, that deep rose pink, ’tis hard to find in a stone. Want a fag?’
‘No thanks.’ Freddie took off his cap, rolled up his shirtsleeves and plunged his face into the stone trough of clear spring water that welled up from the hillside. He cupped his hands and drank, then splashed it over his hair. ‘Beautiful water this,’ he said. ‘’Tis a mystery where it comes from.’
‘An underground lake,’ said Herbie, lighting up his fag and sitting up on the back of the lorry. ‘Look at yer shirt – soaking wet. My missus’d be after me if I did that!’
Freddie didn’t care. It was steaming hot in the alabaster quarry, a suntrap deep in the hills where the rare translucent stone was being hacked out by teams of men, and hauled away down the wooded lanes, covering the trees in dust. At the end of the day the workers were stacking their picks in the long shed, and leaving on an assortment of bicycles or hitching rides on the stone carts drawn by heavy Shire horses.
‘You’re steaming like a pudding now,’ laughed Herbie as Freddie sat beside him on the lorry.
‘I gotta get back,’ said Freddie.
‘Ah – you gonna write that letter?’ Herbie wagged a finger and looked under his heavy brows at Freddie. ‘You do it, lad, or you’ll lose her. ’Tis like fishing – always the best ones get away and you end up wishing you’d hauled ’em in while you got ’em.’
‘I don’t want to make the same mistake again,’ said Freddie.
‘Pah! Mistakes,’ said Herbie fiercely. ‘I made plenty of they. And if I hadn’t I wouldn’t have learned nothing. You gotta give love a chance, lad. You win some, you lose some. Don’t you let mistakes stop you.’ He ground his fag end into the dust.
Freddie looked at him gratefully, thinking that Herbie’s rather brusque friendship had done more for him than any of his family. He’d helped him discover his gift for stone carving. Every time he needed a push, Herbie seemed to be there, encouraging him, and now he was reinforcing what Freddie knew in his heart. He had to respond to Kate’s letter. Forget Ian Tillerman, and give love a chance. But first there was something he needed to do.
At the end of the hot afternoon he stood outside the pawnbroker’s shop looking in the window, searching for something he couldn’t see there. He pushed the door open and went in. A woman was in there haggling over the price of a silver teapot she was pawning. Freddie padded around, waiting and thinking about Herbie’s advice. He hadn’t yet replied to Kate’s letter. It needed thought, and he was being cautious, holding back his feelings. He didn’t want to upset Kate any more, and he didn’t want to make the same mistake again. Until he knew about Ian Tillerman, he wasn’t going to bare his soul.
He was busy, helping Annie with the bread in the early mornings, then doing as many haulage trips as he could with the lorry, and working far into the night on the stone carving. The statue of St Peter was nearly finished, and then he had to start on Joan’s commission, two stone eagles for her gateposts.