echo his faulty English as if it is the highest praise. His face lights up at the unlooked-for compliment. ‘It looks real, alive, just like Jessy.’
‘I enjoy to make things, to … to draw.’ He fiddles with an arm of his spectacles, adjusts it around his ear. ‘Mmm … if … if it had been different, I should like to have been an artist.’ He comes to stand beside me. I pick up the notebook. ‘I do not think those are accept. Not worth your attention.’
I catch my breath as I turn the gilded pages and see picture after picture of Bedwyr Farm, the animals, the sheep, the pigs, the chickens, the cows and Jessy the horse, from every angle. I study the trees and fields I know like my own body, the valley, the sky turning the land on its head, the changing seasons, and me … me … drawings of me. I pick up the book and inspect it more closely. Me at all my tasks observed in intricate detail. It is over three-quarters full. The last sketch is a portrait of my face, my strawberry-blonde hair loose for once and not bound up in a scarf. My eyes look wistful, distant, focused on something only I can see.
‘You are very gifted, Thorston. You have captured such a likeness.’ And the utterance is low with admiration and respect.
‘And you,’ he responds, his voice the rustle of corn cobs tousled by a breeze on a summer’s day, ‘you … you are most beautiful, Bethan.’
He takes the book from me, closes it and places it back on the table. He pulls me to my feet, undoes the buttons of my coat and slides his hands inside it until his arms encircle me. My heart is jumping and every inch of me seems grated raw. I lean into him, my body craving his, wrapping him round here … and here … and here too. And then I know what it is to have our lips come together, to feel his energy sprint like a hare beyond the plodding tortoise of me, to have it tunnel into my belly, then lower … and lower. He undresses me under the coat. Then he lifts me, still folded in it onto the bed, and covers me with the blankets while he sheds his own clothes. He is molten gold, the lamplight ladling gold over the hollows and ridges and plains and arches of him.
When he climbs in beside me, I try to remember who I am. You are Bethan Modron Haverd. You are the only surviving child of Seren and Ifan Haverd. Your country has been at war with Germany for almost six years. German soldiers killed your brother, Brice. You are lying naked in bed with a German soldier who might have shot your brother, who would certainly have murdered him if he’d had a chance.
‘I am Bethan Modron Haverd,’ I mutter. ‘I am Bethan Modron Haverd.’ But my identity lies under an avalanche, and the snow press beyond our little shack rubs out my name.
‘
Schatz
.
Ich liebe dich
, Bethan.’ His words scald my ear and make my reason deaf. Thorston kisses a fugue, light as clouds, into every cell of my body. I am floating into him. He is breathing into me. Who am I? I am snowmelt. I am the coming of spring. I am the conception of life. In some distant part of my senses this registers, as, with a momentary tear of pain, his seed sinks into the virgin earth of me.
The times we lie together in the coming months may be counted on my fingers. I know a dreadful reckoning is coming. I sense the chemistry of me changing. I stare at the shivering pools of amber light flickering on the walls, and I follow our shadows making love. I know this is my entire harvest of happiness, these hours, these minutes, these seconds, spent here with him. There is the rough of the blankets, abrasive on my bare skin, and me soaking up the scent of him like blotting paper, making him mine, and the song of the keening wind whistling away all caution. Soon I will have gambled all of myself, and the remainder of my days will be taken up with repaying the debt.
Chapter 6
Lucilla, 1995
‘The Homeless Child for the Childless Home’
The Church Adoption Society
(Founded in 1913 in Cambridge by
‘I enjoy to make things, to … to draw.’ He fiddles with an arm of his spectacles, adjusts it around his ear. ‘Mmm … if … if it had been different, I should like to have been an artist.’ He comes to stand beside me. I pick up the notebook. ‘I do not think those are accept. Not worth your attention.’
I catch my breath as I turn the gilded pages and see picture after picture of Bedwyr Farm, the animals, the sheep, the pigs, the chickens, the cows and Jessy the horse, from every angle. I study the trees and fields I know like my own body, the valley, the sky turning the land on its head, the changing seasons, and me … me … drawings of me. I pick up the book and inspect it more closely. Me at all my tasks observed in intricate detail. It is over three-quarters full. The last sketch is a portrait of my face, my strawberry-blonde hair loose for once and not bound up in a scarf. My eyes look wistful, distant, focused on something only I can see.
‘You are very gifted, Thorston. You have captured such a likeness.’ And the utterance is low with admiration and respect.
‘And you,’ he responds, his voice the rustle of corn cobs tousled by a breeze on a summer’s day, ‘you … you are most beautiful, Bethan.’
He takes the book from me, closes it and places it back on the table. He pulls me to my feet, undoes the buttons of my coat and slides his hands inside it until his arms encircle me. My heart is jumping and every inch of me seems grated raw. I lean into him, my body craving his, wrapping him round here … and here … and here too. And then I know what it is to have our lips come together, to feel his energy sprint like a hare beyond the plodding tortoise of me, to have it tunnel into my belly, then lower … and lower. He undresses me under the coat. Then he lifts me, still folded in it onto the bed, and covers me with the blankets while he sheds his own clothes. He is molten gold, the lamplight ladling gold over the hollows and ridges and plains and arches of him.
When he climbs in beside me, I try to remember who I am. You are Bethan Modron Haverd. You are the only surviving child of Seren and Ifan Haverd. Your country has been at war with Germany for almost six years. German soldiers killed your brother, Brice. You are lying naked in bed with a German soldier who might have shot your brother, who would certainly have murdered him if he’d had a chance.
‘I am Bethan Modron Haverd,’ I mutter. ‘I am Bethan Modron Haverd.’ But my identity lies under an avalanche, and the snow press beyond our little shack rubs out my name.
‘
Schatz
.
Ich liebe dich
, Bethan.’ His words scald my ear and make my reason deaf. Thorston kisses a fugue, light as clouds, into every cell of my body. I am floating into him. He is breathing into me. Who am I? I am snowmelt. I am the coming of spring. I am the conception of life. In some distant part of my senses this registers, as, with a momentary tear of pain, his seed sinks into the virgin earth of me.
The times we lie together in the coming months may be counted on my fingers. I know a dreadful reckoning is coming. I sense the chemistry of me changing. I stare at the shivering pools of amber light flickering on the walls, and I follow our shadows making love. I know this is my entire harvest of happiness, these hours, these minutes, these seconds, spent here with him. There is the rough of the blankets, abrasive on my bare skin, and me soaking up the scent of him like blotting paper, making him mine, and the song of the keening wind whistling away all caution. Soon I will have gambled all of myself, and the remainder of my days will be taken up with repaying the debt.
Chapter 6
Lucilla, 1995
‘The Homeless Child for the Childless Home’
The Church Adoption Society
(Founded in 1913 in Cambridge by
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