A Candle On the Moon

By Nancy Henshaw

Years after the tragedy which separated them, Joe and Dinah are reunited by a random twist of fate.

While they maintain the pretence that there is nothing between them, their story entwines with an older, wilder tale from the distant past. In the ancient stones of a landscape drenched in history, the ghosts of long-dead lovers stir.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 22, 2018
• ISBN: 9780244670313

Book preview

A Candle On the Moon

A Candle on the Moon

Nancy Henshaw

Copyright © 2018 by Nancy Henshaw

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

Prologue

He hadn't wanted visitors but the first time he emerged, struggling, from his pain and confusion he couldn't understand why she wasn't there. Not that he wanted her to be there; this wasn't how he wanted to start his life with her, muddled and helpless. But he had expected her to be there and was so hurt because she wasn't that Tess found him in tears.

'Joe,' she said, 'What's the matter? Tell me.'

He said fretfully, 'I thought she'd be here.'

His voice was loud in his head but Tess must be leaning forward because her familiar scent became stronger.

She said slowly, 'Your mother? I can send… No?'

He opened his eyes wide and gave her an appealing smile.' It's all right, old love, I know who's alive and who is dead.'

She was sitting on a wobbly little chair.

Now she was crying. What was the matter with everybody?

The chair was too small for a big girl like Tess.

'If I'm dying,' he said. 'Don't cry till I'm dead.'

But this time he had been talking to himself because Tess wasn't there any more. Only disorder and colours that were hard to bear.

Chapter 1.

I arrived at Earlstag thinking about the children and not at all about the house.

Tess Hammett met me at the front door.

'Did the agency explain?' she said, leading me inside.

I followed saying, 'Only that you and your husband are going to Germany,' and my mouth stayed open as I tilted my head backwards. The interior of Earlstag looked like a superior embassy building of the nineteenth century, with open space all the way from a hall tiled in black and white check patterned with green acanthus leaves and orange lily flowers, up to a domed ceiling, high above.

'Here we are, the kitchens.' Tess had a face made for generous smiles. 'What about some coffee and hot scones?'

The coffee and scones were up to my own standard. I liked cooking and it would be nice if Mrs Hammett's eight-year-old twins approved of my home made offerings.

The cat flap clanged shut behind a large red tabby who jumped on to my lap and opened a wide pink mouth, giving the tiniest kitten squeaks I had ever heard from a mature cat.

'Sarum,' said Tess, stroking him under the chin. 'So – this is the situation: I don't live here; the house belongs to my brother-in-law and he's coming here to recuperate.'

'Nothing serious I hope?' I said politely.

'Not catching!'

'I didn't mean...'

'Dinah, my dear, of course you didn't.' This motherly woman was about ten years older than me. Pretty, too, in a bountiful rather highly coloured way. 'An avoidable accident, or would have been if Joe could remember he's no longer a young daredevil.'

I said, 'I'll be looking after him as well your two children and the cat?' And because Tess was looking so amused I relaxed and took a second scone.

'After three years of fieldwork – just try and prise him away from the computer. He can shut himself in the master bedroom and metaphorically bolt the door. Unless he prefers the library.'

The house-sitting agency hadn't mentioned a reclusive home owner. 'Mrs Hammett, I still don't understand. I look after houses and usually the owners' pets but I'm not a nanny.' I was so keen to make myself clear that my next words to a new employer may have seemed like an accusation. 'Surely some properly trained person ought to have charge of your children in their own home?' Tess seemed to be waiting for something. Since I'd already started feeling pompous I might as well carry on. 'Or your family – grandparents?'

'Call me Tess.' She reached out and gave my hand a friendly squeeze. 'The twins will have family. Surely you haven't already forgotten their Uncle Joe?'

'But if he's not in good health...'

'The children will be his responsibility as much as yours and I'll make sure he knows it.' Her mouth and chin firmed themselves into a fleeting determination as she stood up. 'The house and gardens are for you to look after.'

'And Sarum.' He was spread out balanced on my lap, liable to slide off and I stood up with him in my arms. What a monster.

'And my husband will leave his dog here. Come with me, Dinah. I'll show you the vulnerable treasures of Earlstag before Dave brings the kids from school.'

I followed Tess who called back, 'Library first.'

Joe, the house owner, Julia and Reuben, eight year old twins, a cat and a dog; it was an unusual set up but I had lived in thirty homes as a house-sitter, always prepared for the unexpected: a granny-annexe with an  ungrateful, cantankerous granny in it; an unheralded arrival of teenage brats bringing friends and disreputable habits. The children of this cheerful woman with her intimation of a steel backbone ought to be a happily adjusted pair.

Awestruck, I said, 'They are beautiful.'

Tess, standing beside me, said, 'You like Joe's Elen? The male figure is her lover, Carad the charioteer.'

A large window facing the garden was finely etched with two unclothed figures; the artist had given their body language, arrested in time, such a luxurious sensuality that they might be Adam and Eve about to be expelled from Eden.

'And over here...' said Tess.

I turned away reluctantly and confronted – or was confronted by a side window. Here in glory was what my young sister, with shrieks of appreciation, would call the wow-plus factor. The frame was splendidly filled with art nouveau glass representing – what? A trick picture; as I allowed my eyes to defocus, the repeated swirling lines became the green of a woman's robe and the gold of her profiled head. Movement and ardour sprang from the woman of glass to myself, a live woman standing entranced.

My laughter sounded uncertain in my own ears. 'Elen, whoever you may be, we'll be meeting again soon.'

'But now,' said Tess, 'I'll show you where everyone will be sleeping. Feel free to change whatever you like while I'm away.' She led the way up a shallow curved staircase wide enough for two couples to pass without touching and along a landing – no, a gallery with exotic wildfowl paintings. 'The master bedroom: Reuben won't dare to enter and wreck Joe's work with a single click.'

'Your son is a wrecker?' I stopped on the threshold. 'Tess, I think I want to go home!' But I didn't have a home.

'Sometimes over enthusiastic,' she said in her placid way. 

From the windows I could see the front drive where I had left my car. It was a pleasant room but I'd seen plenty grander, and more fashionable. The bathroom wasn't the original Edwardian, neither was it a place for lounging about for hours in a fluffy bathrobe, champagne glass in hand. Functional; the claw footed bath, although now in fashion, had probably been installed pre-World War Two.

Tess's arm fastened around my shoulders. 'Come and see where I've put you, Dinah. Hope you like it.' She took me back to the end of the gallery and opened the last door..

I walked across to the open window and leaned out. 'Oh my, I like it.' A garden in May displayed itself in shades through delicate blue-green to yellow but immediately below me a jumble of brighter flowers bordered the house wall's weathered brick. Tucked into a nook sheltered on two sides by a hawthorn and beech hedge, a small human female was standing on her toes in a fountain, one outspread hand gesturing towards the garden's end. A bronze statue, slightly less than life size. 

Beyond, a strip of dark woodland and further still, grassland. Then, rings and dykes surrounding a magnificent hill fort rearing up against the sky.

'Edisbury Rings,' said Tess. 'Nice to wake up to, don't you think?'

'Yes,' I said and then, 'Oh yes.'

As she brought me back downstairs I remembered Joe the recluse. 'I certainly don't want to change anything, Tess, but I suppose Mr Hammett might.'

'Dave? He won't be here. Like I said, we'll be in Germany.' Tess had stopped where the stairs divided sounding so puzzled that I said hastily, 'I meant your brother-in-law, Joe – Joseph?  Not your husband.'

'Oh, sorry! I'm useless, not saying: Joe and Dave are half-brothers, one father but Dave took his mother's surname. Our Joe's younger but his parents were married. Joseph's - oh there's Dave already.'

A young boy and girl preceded Dave Hammett into the hall as I followed Tess downstairs. So this was the half brother of the legitimate son. Had there still been such a thing as illegitimacy thirty odd years ago? This handsome hunk, the bastard – if such he was – dwarfed me and everyone else in the house, even the tall and beautifully rounded Tess. A brown labrador bitch followed at his heel.

The boy was staring at me from his mother's squirrel-dark eyes and said, 'Dad, you said she'd be a...' His father's vast hand, raised in threat, landed on the boy's head in a hard caress.

'Don't you be cheeky, young Rube.' Dave Hammett's voice, accented with Dorset had an appealing depth and resonance. We exchanged a glance and I had a flicker of feeling, not even as strong as a lurch; I still had a weakness for those true blue eyes that never fade.

'A fine dog, Mr Hammett,' I said.

'Ah, she's sulking. Father didn't take her rabbiting this morning.'

I made the mental jump, telling myself that Dave Hammett thought he was the dog's father. A huge man and a softy with children and dogs.

'You let me have that car of yours for a good going-over, Dinah Barnes,' he said. 'I'll be interested...'

'Don't bother Dinah now,' said Tess, a frown making a groove between those dark brown eyes made for merriment.

He looked back at her, then at me like a friendly ox as she said, 'Dinah, meet Julia and Reuben.'

Eyes, the blue and the brown were giving me a frank appraisal, neither friendly nor hostile.

I said at random, 'Shall we have supper? Can you show me where everything is?'

Julia, skipped to the kitchen chanting, 'Yes, yes, yes.'

Before following Reuben told me in a threatening growl, 'I'm flaming starving.' 

The five of us were to have supper in a room next to the kitchen with a hatch between. All I had to do was dish up Tess's steak and kidney pie, roasted potatoes and caramelised veg.

'It's called the breakfast room,' said Julia, passing cutlery through to Reuben. 'When we were young me and Rube used to crawl through.'

There must be plenty that Tess hadn't told me. Not private, let alone secret; simply things that hadn't occurred to her.

So I asked Julia, 'Have you often stayed here with your Uncle Joseph?'

She was a slender, dark haired child with an alert little face. 'We stay here quite a lot with Mum and Daddy when Joe's away. My Mum likes there to be people in the house. They've got to go to Germany...'

'Boar hunting,' shouted Reuben through the hatch. 

'They are not. Not Mum, anyway.'

'Supper's ready. Julia, will you tell your parents; Reuben, don't try and lift the pie dish.'

'I can do it.' He reached through, keeping it steady and taking the weight.  

My momentary picture of a scarifying accident and a scalded child was illusory, like most of my fears.

Throughout supper Dave behaved like an intelligent peasant invited to eat with his betters. It had to be an act; he was simply entertaining himself. He was a motor engineer and car dealer. He'd been to college to learn his skills, he told me with artless pride. He owned a garage near Edisbury, the town I had driven through on my way to Earlstag.

'That's why I want a look at your TVR. I'll take it off your hands any day.' I didn't know what he read from my face but he backtracked, 'Tess doesn't like me bringing work home.'

After supper he went to the pub with his dog. 'The Green Woman along the beech avenue.' He told me that he started work early and would want breakfast at half six: two boiled eggs and soldiers. I wasn't sure if he was winding me up but decided to take him at his word.

With the twins in bed after homework, Tess and I spent a restful evening exchanging confidences. I found this easy with someone I'd never learn to know really well, as she would never know me.

'Dave and I'll stay here until Thursday and time for us to leave.' She gave me a big easy smile. 'Don't think you're on probation, Dinah. If I hadn't made up my mind about you Dave certainly would have!' 

She and Dave, with Joe and three or four local friends, had known one another lifelong. 'I've been lucky. We've always been close, even when Joe was in the US and afterwards he's always travelled a lot. You'll...' She stopped. Had she been going to say, 'You'll like him?' I was always put off unknown men by having them recommended in advance. Then she told me, 'Dave and I have been married just ten years. How about a German hunting lodge for an anniversary treat?'

I agreed, 'Better than a candlelit dinner.' My round-eyed envy was only partly assumed because I was pleased that this vigorous, friendly woman was going to have a treat.

'Earlier this year,' said Tess. 'A people carrier loaded with toffs had, um,  conked out on a mountain pass and Dave fixed it. The baron - punctilious with aristocratic gratitude – hence the invite. Reuben's head is full of boar-hunting in Germanic forests.'

'Oh, shame! The poor little chap will have to make do with that woodland outside my bedroom window.'

Ten years ago Tess had begun married life with desirable Dave while I was facing – or rather trying not to face a life that had snapped. The past – good. Present and future – 'never glad confident morning again!' I found that line in a poem we learned at school and it stayed in my mind.

I began to repay Tess's confidences with a few of my own. My young sister, Claudia, was due to give birth very soon and, yes, I intended to enjoy being an auntie.

I was twenty four; many women didn't start their families until much older. I thought Tess might say something along those lines. But she said, 'When I was young I always longed for a sister.'

As for Dave with his crusted Dorset vowels and friendly, though slightly overwhelming presence, I could imagine him stalking through the woods beyond my bedroom window like a creature from some legend of the Green Man. But Green Men didn't run garages in towns like Edisbury. That was what I was thinking as I leaned out of my bedroom window breathing in the strong night scents, not so much sweet as green and sappy. The little bronze statue was visible in  starlight as bright as moonlight. Edisbury, a market town, lay only a few  miles away on my right but the sky was so clear and unpolluted I might have been in the depths of the country.

A stab of longing made me pull back from the window; not pain, nothing physical, only a wish that would never be granted.

With Dave and the dog at his garage, Tess in his office doing the accounts and the twins at school, I was often alone apart from Sarum. He would walk round the garden with me as far as the gate that opened directly on to the wood visible from my bedroom window. I hadn't been into the wood. In this house I had little enough to do so it was only polite to be on hand to take phone calls, of which there were quite a lot. But otherwise – I was used to more demanding assignments than Earlstag: a pot-bellied pig in a bedroom; a pet sheep with untreated maggots, a valuable mare that went down with sudden, terrifying symptoms needing a vet's hectoring but  effective presence - Earlstag was pure sinecure.

So, I was alone on the window seat, looking up at Elen, The Green Woman, and asking her, 'Do you know why I'm here?' when the phone rang. Occasionally you can tell, before hearing a word, that the voice will be peremptory.

'Tess, put me through to Joseph. And tell him to switch on his cell phone.'

'Tess isn't here and neither is Joseph. I'm sorry, Mrs…?'

'Rebecca Granville. Tell him next month I'll be flying in to that little airfield, whatever it's called, and I'll see him for dinner at Earlstag. I'll bring Eugene. Have you got that?'

Luckily I had because the phone went click, buzz.

'Rebecca Granville?' said Tess when we both met Julia and Reuben at the gates of St. Mark's School. She looked as solemn as her face would allow. 'She speaks – we grovel.'

'Dad doesn't,' said Reuben. 'He calls her a right...'

'That's enough! Dinah, she's Joe's mother. Will you cook her a nice dinner?'

'His mother? I haven't even met Joe yet. I hope he comes home first or I'll have to tell Mrs Granville he's been mislaid.' Because Tess's bright eyes were laughing I added, 'You don't have to tell me: she doesn't like her plans going awry.'

'He's coming soon.' Julia held hands as we walked to the car. 'I bought him a personalised mug before he went away but I expect it's got broken.' She was so hoping to be contradicted.

Reuben said, 'I bet it's not,' and then spoilt his kind words by adding, 'I bet he never took it with him, yar, yar, yar.'

So he was Joseph Granville. Nice name.

'Joe hardly ever sees his mother because he's not often here and anyway when he is, she isn't because she never liked Earlstag,' Tess explained as I carefully drew out into the traffic.

She was allowing me to practice driving this brand new car that Dave had bought for his brother, instead of using my own which was a TVR Griffith, not my style; running it was an expense I could only afford because my lifestyle was otherwise modest. I had never been able to bring myself to part with something probably by now a collector's item.

When I went to bed that night I rang my mother.

'A boy and girl…no, I know I'm not a nanny. They don't need one.' I shuddered at the thought of offering to give Reuben a bath. 'Their parents are still here but leaving any minute to be replaced like a relay race by their uncle called Mr Granville. Some sort of workaholic scientist. Oh, and Mum, probably best if you use my mobile number, don't want to disturb Uncle Granville at work. Yes, promise I'll be over to see you soonest. Tell Dad and Claudia. So – how is she and baby-to-be?'

Chapter 2.

Joseph Gulliver was pleased to find he could manage a longish walk with a loaded backpack from the railway station to Earlstag. A short while ago his muscle tone had been as useful as frog's jelly. He went in by the back door and the first person he saw was his sister-in-law, Tess Hammett.

'Is my bloody brother treating you right?' he said when he could fight free of her strong, beautiful arms.

'Keeping me busy. Plus the twins.'

'Five or six years old last time I we met. Shall I recognise them?'

Tess gave his question some thought. 'They're larger and both very active. Reuben's as tough as a tap root.'

'I'll keep out of his way. But Julia - that personalised mug went everywhere with me: A present for Joe XXXX in letters of gold. Nicest present I ever had. I tried to forget Reuben but failed.'

She ignored this disparagement of her eight year old son and took hold of her brother-in-law again, searching his face.

'Satisfied?' he said with the flicker of a smile.

'Not entirely; your hair hasn't turned white but you'd better sit down before you fall down.'

'Aha.' He looked round the kitchen in satisfaction at the familiar Rayburn installed by his grandmother, and the stove with its multiplicity of controls and ovens - his mother's choice but hardly ever used except by Tess. 'God, what's that?'

'A cat. It's decided to live here.'

'Word must have got round. Top class accommodation and superior nosh at Earlstag. Which I'm looking forward to myself.' Joe established himself as owner and master of the house by filling the kettle and switching it on. He turned away and caught her frown. 'What's the matter?'

'I'm ever so sorry.' She pushed him into a chair. 'Me and Dave are going away for a bit.' Tess gave him the side of her eye. 'Another second honeymoon, Joe.'

That stupid clot never changed. A second honeymoon for Tess meant Dave was feeling guilty.

She boasted, 'The hunting lodge of a German squillionaire baron and his new young bride.'

'Is that so?' Romance all round: the baron and his bride. Joe's undeserving brother and his lovely wife. 'I'll see you when you get back; I'm not going anywhere.' He started teasing: 'Why are you hanging about here, Tess? You should be ironing your gladdest rags for squillionaireland.'

'I'll be clean and tidy and so will Dave,' said Tess, a true descendant of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. 'If I'm rejected by the baron's lady I'll eat in the baronial kitchens.'

The baron would be a fool if he allowed that. Joe's sister-in-law was a real 'Tess of The D'Urbervilles', glowing and rosy with a body to match.

Then this goddess dropped her thunderbolt.

'I've hired a live-in woman from an agency to look after Earlstag while I'm away.'

'Well, you can unhire her,' said Joe promptly. 'This cat's acting hungry. Where's its food?'

'On that plate by the door. He's called Sarum; isn't he a beauty? And I can't unhire the agency woman because you'll want to work and the twins will be here.'

'Here?' Joe never minded the Hammetts making free of Earlstag but the twins with a live-in woman! No thanks. 'Why not at their Gran's?'

'She's gone to a conference in Paris.' Tess explained: 'Grans do that sort of thing these days.' Her mother was a doctor who lived on the far side of town.

He spread his hands in submission which Sarum took as an invitation to spring on to his lap. 'So I've got to have some old dame houseworking all over Earlstag, trying to sweep under my feet.'

Tess had one of those humorous faces that look likely to laugh at any moment, even when trying to be severe. 'Joseph,' she said, 'I promise you'll have superior nosh and she's not an old dame; she's only twenty four.'

'Worse, she'll expect me to take her to the pub and I'll have to get Venice Roebuck to babysit with the twins. Why can't this woman live in your house and look after your children?'

'Don't be mean. My house can't compare with Earlstag. They've always loved coming here and with you in charge they can boast to their friends...'

'Boast because they're staying with an uncle? Their friends must live boring lives.' 

Tess pointed out with unconvincing respect, 'You were on local tv, Joe.'

'My ninety seconds of fame, disembarked on a stretcher? I'm no hero, not like the locals out there who knew what they were doing without some Anglo-American busybody.' 

'Now you can stop talking twaddle, my old lover,' said Tess fondly. 'The kids are longing for me and Dave to leave. They liked the agency girl straightaway and so will you. She's a nice, quiet woman: Dinah Barnes.'

He must have misheard, or - Joe unhooked Sarum from his sweater, leant forward to put him on the floor and knelt down, stroking the great orange back…of course, not Laurie's Dinah; some other woman.

A hand on his shoulder brought him to his feet. 'You're peeved to the power of x. Over-reacting – that's not like you.'

He didn't want to worry Tess so he sat down again and framed a careful question. 'You mean she's already living here?'

'Of course. I wouldn't leave my children with just anybody. She's like one of the family and the agency